Michelangelo's Notebook Part 8

The sergeant got out his binoculars and swung them slowly from left to right. Everything was the same as it had been before, only closer. He could see the break in the bramble-covered stone wall and the post and a few splintered pieces of wood that had once been the gate into the place. There was a guard just visible on the left side, looking miserable in a canvas rain cape even though it had stopped raining hours ago. The sergeant could see the glow of a cigarette moving in an arc from the man's hand to his mouth. It would have been an easy shot, payback for Hayes, but who the f.u.c.k cared about Hayes anyway? If the sniper was still in the tower of the abbey he'd pick up the muzzle flash and take him out easy as one two three. No, this was a look-see, no more.

The sergeant could also see that getting over the stone wall was going to be a b.i.t.c.h. Too high and covered with brambles. They'd get hung up like birds in a f.u.c.king net. As far as he could see they'd have to go through the front gate if they were going to go in at all. On the other hand, if he told that to Cornwall or either of the other two phony officers, they'd probably do it and wind up getting them all killed. Like somebody told him back before France, to know more was to have more. He told Teitelbaum and Reid to park it, gave them the evening pa.s.sword and told them he'd be back in a while. If they smoked and got themselves picked off by the sniper in the abbey ruins, that was their lookout.

He slipped back into the trees and moved north. He'd seen the big topo map that Cornwall carried and he knew there was the vague possibility of one of those monster King Tigers coming down the road and blowing them all to h.e.l.l with its 88mm, but he hadn't seen one yet and he didn't think he was likely to. The worst he'd seen was a burned-out old Panzer I that looked like it dated back to the Spanish civil war lying half in the ditch at the top of the hill. He'd been sidetracked with the OSS dudes and as long as they didn't do anything stupid that was fine with him. He was no hero-that was for sure. At this point all he wanted was to do his time and then go back to Canarsie.

He moved through the trees, his eyes automatically scanning the ground for deadfalls or trip wires, his ears c.o.c.ked by long practice to the sounds around him, his mind in some kind of automatic autonomic state that was more animal than human, ready to react at any moment to any sight or sound that was out of the natural order of things. Eventually he reached another drainage ditch, this one leading to a culvert that ran under the road to the field on the other side. If there was going to be any kind of warning mechanism, mines or trips he knew it would be here, but there was nothing. The plates on the trucks said SS but this was no crack unit. Those p.r.i.c.ks, h.e.l.l, even the straight army types would know better than to leave their flank open like this. He checked the ground carefully; no cigarette b.u.t.ts, no matches or food waste, no stink of p.i.s.s that would give away a perimeter guard. Nothing. He smiled to himself, glad he'd left the others behind. Something was going on here, something as squirrelly as Cornwall and his two so-called lieutenants.

The sergeant squatted by the culvert, staring at the ground. He'd been with the little band for more than six months now, him and the others taken out of Antwerp just after Holland was liberated and attached to G2 by orders of G.o.d knows who. Since then they'd been working their way across Europe, mostly talking to people without the slightest sign of combat. Two weeks ago they'd been sitting around fifty miles from Koblenz waiting for the Brits to make up their minds and Cornwall had found out something that had them pushing south and east like a c.o.o.n dog with a b.i.t.c.h's scent up his schnoz. Maybe what he was sniffing was this: a phony SS unit out in the middle of the f.u.c.king Bavarian nowhere and six Opel Blitzes.

At this stage of the war a gas guzzler like the Blitz-capable of at least thirty miles an hour, or even more with a good enough road-was worth its weight in gold, and that had the sergeant thinking quick. The trucks had to have some kind of special designation and doc.u.ments to get this far south, and from here they could head for Switzerland, Italy or Austria. The Russkies were to the east, the Allies were to the west and they were being squeezed like a pimple. Odds were they were heading for Switzerland, since Italy had already surrendered and Austria wasn't far behind. That meant Lake Constance, no more than sixty miles away.

The sergeant looked through the culvert, wondering how much trouble his curiosity could get him into. Say the shipment in those six Opels really was valuable, and say that Cornwall meant to take it. But the real question was, what did he intend doing with it after that. His job was to recover the stuff then get it through proper channels back to its owners, but he was beginning to wonder. Maybe now they were past war, and playing finders keepers. Maybe it was every man for himself. Maybe it was time for the boy from Canarsie to cut himself a big slab of that pie. Maybe.

The sergeant let his hand drop to the b.u.t.t of the firearm holstered on his hip. Three phony officers who weren't really army at all, who all had soft jobs stateside, who were probably true-blue as all get-out. It would be easy enough, but then what would he do with the six trucks? It was all in the paperwork.

He stood up. The dawn was coming on pretty quick and the ground fog was running through the trees like so many torn rags. Six trucks and close enough to the Swiss border to make it in a day, maybe two. It was worth thinking about. He peered through the patchy fog at the distant entrance to the farm. For a moment he was almost sure he saw a figure moving across the gated opening. He lifted his binoculars. Not a guard. A man in uniform. A general, right down to the red stripe on his f.u.c.king jodhpurs. But he was way too young-hawk-faced, pointy chin, young side of forty. Some kind of disguise, maybe. He stopped at the edge of the gate and a second figure appeared. A woman in a sweater and a head-scarf. The guy in uniform lit her cigarette. They were laughing about something. A young woman; now that was interesting. The farmer's wife or daughter, someone along for the ride? Six Opel trucks, a phony general and a woman. What was that all about?

21.Gatty's residence was a six-story house on West Seventy-second that looked as though it had been transported away from beside a ca.n.a.l in Amsterdam a few hundred years ago. To the left was a brownstone, to the right there was a fair-sized apartment building. The front door was in the bas.e.m.e.nt and they had to walk down into a little well surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The door knocker was huge: a black hand on a hinge holding something that looked like a small cannonball. In the middle of the cannonball was an unblinking eye. Valentine tapped the knocker twice against the heavy oak door. They could hear it echoing inside and then they heard the sound of footsteps on stone.

"Spooky," said Finn.

Valentine smiled. "The kind of money that can afford a house like this on the West Side usually is," he answered. A light went on over their heads. There was a short pause and then a man in a plain black suit answered the door. He was in his seventies and the little hair he had on his head was silver-white. He had dark eyes that had seen too much and a thin mouth. A scar pulled his upper lip upward, revealing a piece of yellow tooth. He'd been born before operations for split lips and cleft pallets were commonplace.

"We'd like to speak to the colonel, if you don't mind," said Valentine. "It's to do with Greyfriars Academy. He was just visiting there, I believe."

"Wait," said the man. There was a slight snuffle to his voice but it was clear enough. He closed the door on them and the light went off, leaving the two standing in the darkness.

"The butler did it," said Finn. "He's really spooky."

"Not just a butler," Valentine commented.

"Bodyguard. He's wearing a shoulder rig. I saw it when he turned away."

The butler-bodyguard returned a few moments later and let them in. They followed him into a gloomy, slate-floored foyer set with old-fashioned wall sconces, then up a wide flight of worn oak steps to an enormous room on the main floor. It was two stories high, a blend of church nave and baronial hall. The ceiling was plaster, worked in ornate cl.u.s.ters of ivy and grapes, the walls paneled three quarters of the way up in dark oak, the floor done in wide planks. At one end of the room three arched windows, heavily leaded, looked out onto Seventy-second Street while at the other end more than a dozen smaller windows rising from floor to ceiling looked out onto a small walled garden, dark except for two or three small lights set into the corners of the wall.

There were dozens of paintings on the walls, almost all of them Dutch: meticulous DeWitte architectural renderings, DeHooch domestic interiors, seascapes by Cuyp and Hobbema's gloomy castles. The only exception was a large Renoir, the head of a young girl, placed in a position of honor above the large tiled fireplace.

Heraldic banners hung around the room from a second-floor gallery running around three sides of the room, and there were four blue-black suits of armor, one in each corner. A bright red rug covered most of the floor and on it, facing each other were two large, tufted leather sofas in caramel brown. Between the sofas, resting on a large, splayed zebra skin was a square coffee table framed in teak and surfaced in squares of heavy beaten bra.s.s. There were end tables and side tables here and there loaded with photographs in silver frames and a.s.sorted small treasures from ornate gold cigarette boxes to at least three silver koummyas that Finn could see.

"I see you are enjoying my things," said a voice from somewhere above them. "Please, enjoy yourself." Finn looked up and saw the face of a heavily jowled man looking down at them from the gallery. The man disappeared and there was a low humming sound. A moment later the man appeared at the far end of the room. He was dressed in a very formal-looking Saville Row suit at least thirty years out of date. He had a full head of flat black hair that might have come out of a tin of shoe polish, Ronald Reagan-style, and his large blue eyes were washed out and pale. He had large liver spots on his gnarled hands and when he walked, he leaned heavily on a three-point cane. His right leg appeared to hitch a little as he moved and his left shoulder was fractionally higher than his right. Despite the black hair he appeared to be well into his eighties. Using his left hand, he gestured with the cane.

"Sit," he said pleasantly, pointing at the brown leather couches. Finn and Valentine did as he asked. The old man chose a heavy-looking straight-backed wooden chair at right angles to them. The butler-bodyguard appeared carrying an antique silver coffee service. The man put it down and disappeared. "Edward Winslow," said the old man. "People often mistake it for Paul Revere." He took a gnarled briar pipe out of his jacket pocket and lit it with a World War Two-vintage, black, crackle-finish lighter. He snapped it shut with a practiced motion and blew out a cloud of apple-scented smoke. One mystery solved, Finn thought.

"Winslow was much earlier than Revere, though," commented Valentine. "And better, in my opinion, especially his smaller pieces. Revere was like his politics, a little bit melodramatic."

"You know something of silver?"

"And politics." Valentine smiled. "Especially the melodramatic kind."

"Who is your young and singularly pretty companion?"

"My name is Finn Ryan, Colonel. We're here about the koummya you donated to Greyfriars."

"The one that wound up being shoved down poor Alex Crawley's throat, you mean?" The old man laughed. "Much as I would have enjoyed doing it, I seriously doubt that my arthritis would have allowed it, not to mention the stroke I had a year or so ago. I don't get around the way I used to."

"You knew Crawley?" asked Valentine.

"I knew him well enough to dislike him. He was what they refer to as a bean counter. Had no feel for the art he represented."

"How did you know him?" Finn asked. "Through the museum or through Greyfriars?" The old man gave her a long, almost predatory look that made her skin crawl.

"Neither. Not that it's any of your business. Look around you, Miss Ryan. Do I have your name right? I live for art. I purchase a great deal of it. When you buy art at the scale I do you often find yourself making purchases from deaccessioned works from places like the Parker-Hale.

They had a number of Dutch works-Dutch is what I collect."

"Except for the Renoir," Valentine commented, nodding toward the painting over the fireplace.

"Yes, I purchased that just toward the end of the war."

"Oh." Valentine let it hang. Gatty was a collector-a vulgar one, if the decor of his living room was anything to go by-and collectors loved to boast.

"In Switzerland, as a matter of fact."

"Odd posting."

"Not really. I was army liaison to Allen Dulles in Berne."

"Really?"

"Yes. Cloak-and-dagger stuff. Still can't talk about most of it."

"Dulles ran an OSS listening post. How does Renoir come into it?"

The colonel seemed surprised that Valentine knew as much as he did. He raised an eyebrow, then smiled. "There was a great deal of art for sale in Europe. Before, during and after the war. I merely took advantage of what one might call a downturn in the market. The provenance is perfectly legitimate."

"I didn't say it wasn't," Valentine answered mildly.

"I still buy from them now and again."

"Who might that be?"

"The Hoffman Gallery," replied Gatty. Finn made a small startled movement. Valentine casually dropped his hand onto her knee and left it there. Finn wasn't sure which was more shocking-the touch of Valentine's hand or the name of the gallery. Hoffman was the same name as the one on the computer file for the provenance of the Michelangelo drawing. It was no answer to the mystery, but at least it was another piece of the puzzle put into play. The dagger, Greyfriars, Gatty's connection to Crawley and now the Swiss art gallery linking everything together. Connections, but no real meaning.

"Doesn't it seem a little strange that a murderer would go to all the trouble to break into a school in Connecticut for a murder weapon he used in New York?"

"As far as I know it was a coincidence. A robbery in one place, the dagger turning up in another. The killer could just as easily have purchased the knife from a p.a.w.nshop here; there's nothing to say they were one and the same person."

"I suppose if you were defending yourself in court that would be true."

"But I'm not, am I?" Gatty answered. "And not likely to be."

"No, I suppose not," answered Valentine. One finger tapped lightly on Finn's knee. Valentine stood up and she followed suit. The old man remained in his seat. The white-haired bodyguard appeared as though Gatty had pressed some kind of hidden b.u.t.ton.

"Bert, show these two people out." The old man gave them a cold smile and the bodyguard led them to the front door.

"What was that all about?" asked Finn as they walked down the block to the rental car. "You never really asked him about anything except the Renoir. And how did you know there was a connection to the drawing?"

"I didn't," said Valentine. "I knew I'd seen the Renoir before, though."

"Where?"

"The same place as the Juan Gris back at the school-on an International Fine Arts Register Bulletin. The Renoir disappeared along with a p.i.s.saro landscape in 1938. It was being shipped from Amsterdam to Switzerland. Supposedly it never arrived. That's two pieces of stolen art in one day." He paused. "And that's two too many."

22.The top floor loft of Ex Libris was as stark as the lower floors were overflowing. Returning from Gatty's, Valentine keyed the big freight elevator and they rode up in silence. Finn stepped out into a five thousand square foot expanse that looked like something out of a Fellini film. One huge, high-ceilinged room led into the next. The first had faux brick walls in pressed tin painted Chinese red with a centerpiece table surfaced with a huge slab of black Georgia marble. From there they went into a wide hallway set out with John Kulik neon sculptures on deep green walls and round Chinese carpets on the gleaming black tile floor. The third area, obviously a living room, had more Chinese carpets on the floor and a huge Sidney Goldman surrealist canvas of nudes and nuns on the far wall. Finn sat down on one of three couches in the room and looked around. Valentine disappeared around the corner and came back a few minutes later with a tray holding two immense, stacked bagels and a couple of long-necked beers.

"Blatz?"

"From Wisconsin." Valentine smiled. "I went to school in Madison and got a taste for it."

"My dad taught at UW," said Finn, taking a swallow of beer. She bit a chunk out of the bagel and chewed, staring across at Valentine as he sat down across from her.

"That's right." Valentine nodded. He drank from his bottle and ignored the sandwich on the tray in front of him. "That's where I met him."

"How did you meet him?"

"He was my anthropology prof."

"When was this?"

"Late sixties, early seventies."

"He must have been young."

"He was. So was I-even younger." He laughed.

Finn took another bite of her sandwich and another swallow of beer. She looked around the room at the furniture and the art, thought about the piece of New York real estate she was sitting on top of, thought about Valentine. It was all so tiring. Her head began to whirl. Overkill.

"You didn't buy this place selling old books, Mr. Valentine."

"It's Michael, and that sounds like a pa.s.sive-aggressive statement, Ms. Ryan."

"I'm really not a fan of dime-store shrinkology. You do more than sell books and do research."

"Yes."

"You're some kind of spook, aren't you?"

"Spook?"

"Spy."

"No, not really."

"And my dad, what was he?"

"An anthropology professor."

"When he died they shipped his body back to Columbus for the funeral."

"Yes?"

"It was a closed-coffin funeral. I didn't really think about it much back then. I was just mad that I'd never get to see his face again."

Valentine said nothing.

"But later, a lot later, I started thinking about all the places he'd been-always politically unstable, always dangerous-and then I wondered why he had a closed coffin when he supposedly had a perfectly innocent heart attack."

Valentine shrugged. "He died in the jungle. Maybe it took time to get his remains back to civilization."

"Or maybe he was missing his fingernails, or maybe he was tortured, or maybe it really wasn't my father's body in that coffin at all."

"You're saying you think your father was a spy?"

"I'm from Columbus, Ohio. I'm what my teachers used to call a linear thinker. Straight lines, you know-line up the facts like dominoes and see where they take you. In this case my mother gives me your phone number, you're definitely no stodgy old bookseller and you used to be a student of my dad's . . . probably more than a student. Is my a.n.a.lysis wrong? My boyfriend gets murdered, I get attacked, my ex-boss winds up with a dagger stuck into him and you don't turn a hair . . . Michael."

"You sound just like him."

"Who?"

"Your dad. He used to count facts off on his fingers like that too." He smiled. Finn looked down and realized what she'd been doing with her hands. She flushed, remembering her father at the dinner table, explaining something, his hands playing over each other, one finger on another. When he ran out of fingers the lecture was usually over.

Finn closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted. What she really wanted to do was find a bed and fall into it for the next month or so. How long had it been, twenty-four, thirty-six hours? Something like that. Like a bolt of lightning. Like driving in a car one second and finding yourself wrapped around a telephone pole the next. Life didn't happen this way, or it wasn't supposed to. She'd done all the right things, got good grades, brushed her teeth from side to side as well as up and down, played well with others, colored inside the lines, all of that, so this just should . . . not . . . be . . . happening.

She opened her eyes.

"I don't want any more bulls.h.i.t, Michael. I'm not playing games, and I'm not playing Holmes and Watson. This is my life-or maybe my death we're talking about. Murder. I want the truth. And I want to know just who the h.e.l.l you are."

"You may not like it."

"Try me."

"Do you know anything about your grandfather-your paternal grandfather?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"A great deal."

"He was some kind of businessman. My father never talked about him. He was Irish, obviously." She sighed. "This is all ancient history."