Tarnished Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  With no prudish guests or closed-minded clients in the next room who could barge in and discover Hagen’s secret, ruin his reputation and his career, Hagen’s more at ease with Vern tonight than he was in his Park Avenue study. He’s free to return his lover’s affection, which he does through the tenderness in his eyes and a doting smile.

  Their romance is touching, I’m even envious of their happiness, but it shatters my open-and-shut case against Vivienne as the killer, throws all the broken pieces around the room. I don’t understand how to fit all the broken pieces back together. I don’t understand who belongs where in the splintered puzzle: Vivienne’s the dame with the motive, but Vern’s the dame with the hat.

  Hagen gently disentangles himself from Vern. “Vern’s right,” he says, and reaches for the telephone on the side table. “I really must see to my guests, and then get to bed. Vern and I have an early start in the morning. We’re preparing the hunt breakfast, you know, so we need to wind this up and call the authorities, let them take Vivienne away.” He starts to dial.

  Two hands, Vivienne’s and mine, move fast and at the same time, but hers comes down on the phone first, stopping Hagen from dialing.

  The surprise on Vivienne’s face as she throws me a quick glance is equal to the surprise and confusion on Hagen’s face and the plain old confusion on Vern’s, whose hand is back on his hip, diva style. He asks Hagen, “Why do you want the authorities to take Vivienne away?”

  “Because she’s a killer. Did you know she murdered two people?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. She knifed a poor old woman and shot the woman’s brother.”

  “Oh my,” Vern says so casually you’d think Hagen said nothing more alarming than maybe Vivienne swiped a couple of sandwiches from a lunchroom.

  Graceful as a swan aware of his own beauty, Vern bends to take a cigarette from the box on the coffee table. He rises, supple and slinky, slips the cigarette between his lips, and waits for Hagen to light it, which Hagen dutifully does with the gold lighter from his pocket.

  Still holding the phone’s receiver in his other hand, Hagen says to me, “Listen, Gold, I want this business over with. I can understand Vivienne preventing me from calling the police—I’m sure she’d rather not go to jail. But I don’t understand your motive at all.”

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t. But maybe Vern does.”

  Pretty Vern eyes me like he woke up from a pleasant dream only to find a monster standing at the foot of the bed. He lowers the hat veil, hiding, I guess, from the monster that scared him, as he sashays across the room and leans against the pistol rack, lithe as a ballet dancer. “Why, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Hagen chimes in, “And neither do I.”

  Vivienne says, “But I do,” and sits down again on the sofa with renewed poise and a small but satisfied smile. “Or at least I’m beginning to, and it certainly gets me off the hook.”

  But I kill her ease. “You’re not off the hook yet, dearie. You’re still my best bet. You’ve got a motive I can put my finger on. All Vern has is a veiled hat.”

  Hagen, finally catching on, his eyebrows rising, his mustache spreading over a sneer, slams the phone down and snaps at me. “Just a minute, Gold. You can’t be serious. Are you really suggesting Vern killed two people? Why would he?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I say with a smart-alecky shrug. “Why wouldn’t he? Hannah Jacobson and Marcus Stern were killed for the Dürer watercolor. Maybe Vern wanted it for you, Hagen. Maybe you even sent him to get it.”

  Seems like an odd time for Hagen to enjoy a laugh, even a small one, but he’s laughing all right, a rolling chuckle lathered in ridicule. “Preposterous! I’d never send Vern on such an errand. He wouldn’t know the difference between a Dürer and a picture in a coloring book.”

  “He wouldn’t have to,” I say. “He’d just—”

  An incensed Vern cuts me off. “How do you know I wouldn’t know the difference?” The veil’s up again on Vern’s hat, revealing his face. There’s enough pain in it to bring even a stony brute to tears. “Why do you always think I’m stupid, Max?”

  Hagen extends a hand to Vern as he walks over to him, tries to soothe him, says, “No, I don’t think any—”

  “Sure you do, Max! You treat me like a toy, a dumb toy you like to pet and play with. And you don’t like it if I don’t always play along, when sometimes I’m even more…more…” He bleats a rough laugh, plants his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, thug-like, says, “When I’m more manly than you. That’s right, like when we’re out hunting, and I’m the better shot.”

  Hagen, pale and gray faced, sees his world falling apart before his eyes. He opens his mouth, tries to speak, tries to say the words that will put his fairy-tale world back together again, but Vern’s not done demolishing it. “Look at you, Max, you who usually have so many words, all the right words, smooth and elegant words you use with your snobby clients when you push me out of sight. Well, I’ve got some words of my own. Here, I’ll toss them at you.” He throws his arm back like a baseball pitcher, a bizarre sight in his cocktail dress and gloves, then flings his arm forward as he tosses out each word in a frenzy. “I! Love! You! You hear that? I love you, Max. I’d do anything for you.”

  I jump at my moment, grab hold of Vern’s blind hysteria and squeeze it. “Even kill?”

  Hagen shouts, “Don’t answer that, Vern. Don’t say anything else until we contact my attorney, understand?”

  But Vern’s anger and pain have spiraled out of Hagen’s reach. “Still telling me what to do, Max? Still trying to silence me? Well, that’s over. From now on, you’ll show a little appreciation for the things I do, things like trying to get that Dürer picture for you. You wanted it so much,” he says, his last grip on rationality giving way to convulsive tears that shake him all the way down to his high-heeled pumps. “I—I saw how much you wanted it, my love. You nearly swooned whenever you talked about it, and you know how much I hate it when you’re frustrated or upset, so I decided to get it for you. Because I adore you, Max. But that old lady wouldn’t give it up. She kept lying, kept saying she didn’t have it. Her lies drove me wild, so I shut her up, slashed her mouth. And when she tried to fight me, I cut the rest of her.”

  All Hagen can do is beg, “Vern, stop, please.”

  “What’s the matter, Max? Don’t you want to know how much I love you? Don’t you want to know how hard I tried to get that picture from that old bat and then from her brother? But he was stubborn, too. So the next day, I went to his sister’s funeral. I figured I’d scare him into giving it up. I was going to show him the rifle I’d brought along, flash it around for him, maybe shoot a bird or a squirrel to show him I mean business, you know, just for a little theatrical incentive.” The memory makes him laugh. His shrill, mad giggle makes me cringe, and it makes Hagen cry silent, tormented tears, which Vern doesn’t even notice. He just races on. “But I never got the chance to talk to him, because I saw him go off with someone, and now I know it was with you, Gold. You spoiled everything! I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let you team up with Stern and get your hands on that Dürer picture. If my Max couldn’t have it, no one would.” Vern wipes his runny nose on his arm with all the grace of a stevedore, the delicate fabric of his elbow-length glove forgotten. “So I followed your car—it’s a beauty, all shiny and new, easy to spot—and then pulled over when the traffic in your lane got thick. Lucky break for me. With traffic crawling to a standstill, and your pretty car shining in the sun, all I had to do was wait for my moment, and blam!” His arms are raised, shooting his imaginary rifle. “I always was the better shot, Max,” he says with a cheery smile that chills me.

  Hagen hasn’t said a word. He probably can’t. He’d probably choke on whatever words came out of his mouth. His tears are doing his talking for him.

  Vivienne says, “You could use a drink, Max,” and gets up from the couch. She pours him a stiff gin, hands it to him, and t
hen walks to the other end of the room, tossing me a sly smile along the way. She’s officially off the hook now, and she’s not about to let me forget it.

  It’s time to end this thing. It’s time for me to thrust the real killer into Lieutenant Huber’s bony, vicious face.

  “Listen, Vern,” I say, friendly as a barroom buddy, “why don’t you come along with me? You can tell me all about your little victory on the drive back to the city.” I extend a hand, a courtly gesture to lure the mad diva.

  Vern, caught up in the fantasy, reaches to take my hand, but Hagen interferes, slaps my hand away and thrusts his arm across Vern’s chest, blocking him. “No. Vern’s not going anywhere. Not until I contact my attorney.”

  “Sorry, Hagen,” I say, “you can call a lawyer later, but right now I need to get the cops off my back, and the only way I can do that is to feed them raw meat, the real killer of Hannah Jacobson and Marcus Stern.”

  “I won’t let you take him, Gold.”

  “I’m not giving you a choice, Hagen.” I pull my gun.

  Hagen, to my surprise, finds his courage and blocks my way. Well, maybe I’m not so surprised. He’s doing what you’re supposed to do when you love someone down to their marrow: protect them. It’s what I failed to do for Sophie. “What are you going to do, Gold?” Hagen says. “Shoot me?”

  “If I have to.”

  Now it’s Vern who shouts, “No!” He has a pistol in his hand. He must’ve grabbed it from the rack while I was chit-chatting with Hagen. He’s pointing the gun past Hagen’s head, directly at me, and at this close range, he doesn’t have to be a crack shot. All he has to do is pull the trigger to blow my brains out.

  A loud bang slams across the room, a whine zings past my ear. Blood gushes from Vern’s forehead, spattering across Hagen’s shocked face, dripping onto his starched white shirt and the shiny lapels of his tuxedo as Vern goes down.

  When I turn around, I see an empty spot in the gun rack behind Vivienne and a rifle, aimed across the room, in her grip. Her head is still cocked, her eye still primed along the gun sight. She slowly lowers the rifle.

  But she raises it up again when Hagen grabs Vern’s gun and aims it at her, his bloody face ugly with rage.

  Vivienne is calm as a sunny day in winter. All she says is, “Don’t Max. Just don’t.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the game of life, New York crooks the wheel. It gives a few people everything, a lot of people nothing, and everyone else gets squeezed between the boot at the top and the snapping jaws at the bottom. But it’s that grinding friction, that live-or-die danger, which sparks our air and ignites the great talents, and even greater dreams, of the city’s striving hordes. It’s what gives us the best of everything, and beats us up with the worst.

  A bit of the best, a cup of Doris’s coffee at the counter of Pete’s luncheonette, helps revive me after a crummy, sleepless night. I’m tired and punchy and find myself idly staring at the ripples my breath makes across the surface of the coffee. Gets me thinking, yeah, the city is like that, its breath rippling across the whole damn state, inflating the lungs of the greedy, the needy, and the upstate Law. That’s why Vivienne will get away with, well, maybe not murder, but a killing, no questions asked.

  I’m sure I’ll need a second cup of coffee, maybe even a third, and just as sure I’ll spike the cup with another hefty drop of scotch from the flask in my jacket pocket. The coffee keeps me awake, but the scotch makes the events of my no-sleep night bearable, though I’ll probably never get comfortable with the memory of Max Hagen on his knees, wailing over the body of his beloved Vern. Hagen’s cry, raw and guttural, like the suffering of something primeval, is still drilling through my ears.

  And Hagen’s misery wasn’t the worst of it. The rest of the goings-on at his country house may not have been as dramatic, but in the honor department, it was a whole lot shabbier. At Vivienne’s direction, which actually was more forceful than shabby, Hagen’s mortified party guests made themselves scarce, throwing coats over tuxedos and gowns and leaving the house so fast you’d think someone yelled fire. I can’t blame ’em, really. The Law, when it finally arrived, would’ve taken their statements and then tossed them in the clink or the psycho ward, stuff I’ve been dodging since I put on my first suit.

  After the party guests were gone, Vivienne made a couple of long distance calls back to the city, and after twenty minutes or so, during which time Vivienne and I said nothing, but drank a lot, the local cops arrived. They were accompanied by the mayor of whatever little town has jurisdiction over Hagen’s rural property. The mayor, a short, ruddy guy in a pinstriped brown suit with lapels that hadn’t been cut that wide since 1935, had a few words with Vivienne, and another few words with the lead cop. Hannah Jacobson’s name was thrown around, and Marcus Stern’s, too, and mine, and two others I didn’t recognize, but they weren’t the sort of names I would’ve heard in my old Coney Island neighborhood. They were more in line with Vivienne’s crowd. The little mayor then declared Vern’s killing justifiable. I was hardly in a position to argue.

  Ten minutes after that, the boys from a funeral parlor arrived, carted Vern away, and except for the last milling around of the mayor and the cops, and Hagen collapsing on the couch, that was that. Vivienne was never seriously questioned. She’ll never be questioned at all. There will be no inquest. Vivienne Parkhurst Trent, and whoever she phoned, whoever’s fancy names she tossed into the hayseed mayor’s ear, rule the world.

  But I suppose Vern got what he deserved; justice done, another killer meeting his own violent end. Same story, I tell myself, about Jimmy Shea. And now Lieutenant Huber’s off my back, too. Seems he got a phone call from the precinct captain who got a call from the police commissioner who got a call from New York’s mayor who got a call from I don’t know who, but Vivienne probably does. Evidently everyone along the chain is happy to let the upstate cops take credit for closing the book on a big-city double homicide. Everyone except Huber, who I have no doubt will keep shadowing me like a bad dream.

  So justice, if not the Law, got its pound of flesh. Hell, the Law would’ve fried Vern anyway. Jimmy Shea, too, if it ever got the goods on him.

  But it’s tainted justice. Too cunning. Too hidden. Sure, I don’t trust the Law, but solid citizens do, and they have the right to make sure justice is done in daylight.

  Fat chance. The idea’s so funny, I gotta laugh, nearly spit up my coffee.

  I pour another dollop of Chivas into my cup. I doubt the whiskey will quiet Hagen’s keening cry in my bones or sort out my feelings about Vivienne’s jeweled hand on New York’s rigged wheel, but the booze might help me figure out what to do about the Dürer watercolor still hidden in my office vault. I’ve got five choices, none of them sweet. The first one involves Vivienne. If I give it to Vivienne’s museum, I won’t learn anything about the freighter that took Sophie, but a lot of people will see the Dürer, maybe be as captivated as I am by its beauty. After all the ugliness that’s followed that picture around, all the blood spilled over it, it might be a graceful ending to its story. The spirit of Hannah Jacobson might even approve.

  Or I could give it to Francine and Katherine Stern, who are Mrs. Jacobson’s family after all. That would satisfy the legal angle, but the idea of sending it into that witches’ brew turns my stomach.

  I could make a deal with Hagen. He may be grieving, but I bet he’d still be receptive to a big-money deal. I’ve never been queasy about lining my pockets with the help of the bereaved.

  And then there’s Sig Loreale. I could hand it over to Sig, who may be a monster but he’s a monster who’s as good as his word. He’d use his considerable resources to find the freighter that stole Sophie from me. But giving the Dürer to Sig feels like blood money for having Jimmy Shea killed on my behalf, a killing he’s made me complicit in. On the other hand, if I don’t give Sig the Dürer, chances are good he’ll have me killed, too.

  Or I could do nothing at all. No one knows I have it. I could
just hold on to it, enjoy it for myself, or maybe sell it to an out-of-town or out-of-the-country buyer on the sly, cut Hagen out altogether. The idea has a lot of appeal; big money is just a phone call away.

  “Now what’s the matter, Cantor?” It’s the cigarette voice of Doris, who’s ready with another pour of coffee. “Yesterday you sat here lookin’ like someone just killed your dog. Today you look like the dog that got killed. What’s up with you?”

  I give her a shrug, say, “I’m trying to figure life out, Doris.”

  She pours the coffee, then looks me straight in the eye. “What’s to figure? I already told you. Everything in this life is about love or money. Cantor, what’s goin’ on? You look like you just seen a ghost.”

  I get up from my stool at the counter, head to the back of the luncheonette.

  I drop a nickel into the pay phone on the wall, dial a number. When the other end picks up, I say, “Hello, Sig.”

  About the Author

  Ann Aptaker has earned a reputation as respected curator and exhibition designer during her career in museums and galleries. She has curated and organized exhibitions across the cultural spectrum, from fine art to popular culture. Her work has garnered favorable reviews in the New York Times, Art in America, American Art Review, and other publications. In addition to her curatorial assignments, Ann is an art writer and Adjunct Professor of Art and Art History at New York Institute of Technology.

  Ann’s debut novel, Criminal Gold, Book One in the Cantor Gold crime series, received outstanding reviews and was honored as a Goldie Award finalist in the Debut Author category.