Murder and Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  But Doris is no fool. No doubt she already has some of that part of me figured. She was smart enough to ask about the cops at my door.

  I slide her hand from my chin, give her a smile. “Cops don’t like me, that’s all. They want to arrest me just for doing this,” I say, and kiss her on the knuckles.

  That earns me a sassy laugh and another cup of coffee, “On the house! Enjoy your breakfast, Cantor. And try not to get arrested. You’re the best tipper I’ve got.”

  • • •

  The ancient Sumerians knew a thing or two about hedging their bets. In their rocky desert world where the nights were very dark, the silence pierced only by the distant roar of lions or the nearby hiss of snakes, praying to the gods seemed like a good idea if you hoped to wake up alive in the morning. But a body’s got to sleep and eat and work and can’t be praying all the time, which is where my little votive statue earned his place in the affections of his human tribe. His eyes wide in eternal wakefulness, the little fella and his similarly carved sisters and brothers stood in constant prayer on your behalf while you and your family were otherwise engaged in the business of living.

  I wrap him in batting and cloth for his trip downtown, but linger for a while in the vault in the basement of my office, enjoy some of the treasures temporarily in my care. I’m rather fond of the little gold-trimmed alabaster box Howard Carter brought up among the goodies he discovered in Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. The Cairo Museum is still looking for it. The curators at the Louvre in Paris are still scratching their heads about the strange disappearance of a pair of silver Rococo candlesticks that once belonged to a handsome courtier in service to King Louis XVI. The overly fussy candlesticks, full of flowery vines and animal head gewgaws, aren’t to my taste, but I have to admit the silverwork is first rate.

  The priciest thing on my shelves right now is a spectacular little French Gothic illuminated manuscript, a prayer book with illustrations possibly attributed to Master Honoré. To my eye, the illustrations are certainly skillful enough to be Honoré’s, with their zesty use of color, confident handling of line, and bold rule-breaking of space and frame. It’s a book of hours, inscribed with prayers to be recited by the Christian faithful at appointed hours of the day and evening. The client who hired me to lift it from the collection of an aristocratic family in France and smuggle it to New York made a bad bet on Wall Street and couldn’t come up with the rest of the dough to deliver the book to his Fifth Avenue apartment. He swears he’s good for the money. I told him, “Sure, just let me know when you’re ready to fork over.” I’m not holding my breath. I’ve already made arrangements to offer it to another interested party when she returns from her country place in time for the holidays.

  Look, I run a business, not a cultural charity. I even make museums pay.

  It’s nearly eight-thirty. Time to take my little Sumerian upstairs.

  Judson’s on the phone at his desk when I walk into the office, the receiver tucked under his chin as he writes notes on a slip of paper in his neat handwriting. His pack of Lucky Strikes is folded into the sleeve of his white T-shirt. Seeing me, he raises a finger to indicate he’ll be off the phone any second and I should hang around for information.

  He hangs up after a “Toodle-oo” to whoever’s at the other end of the line, then says to me, “I’ve got something on Lorraine Quinn,” and hands me the slip of paper. “It’s not much, but it’s a start. I’ll keep digging.”

  Judson’s right. It’s not much, just a start, but it’s a damn good start.

  It seems Lorraine came to New York nine years ago from a beach town on the South Jersey shore, and after the usual succession of waitressing jobs while pursuing a career as an actress she gave up on her Broadway dreams two years ago. She took a course to be a legal secretary, which landed her a job at a shady law firm near City Hall, the office of Otis Hollander, Attorney at Law. Hollander specializes in divorce cases involving cheating spouses, what’s known on the street as a Tail-and-Snap outfit: tail the spouse to a hideaway love nest, kick down the door or peer through the window, and snap their picture in the arms of someone other than their wife or husband. Big alimony for the spurned wife of the can’t-keep-it-in-his-pants husband, or save the cuckolded husband from paying his no-good cheatin’ wife a dime in the divorce.

  And Lorraine called me a creep.

  “Good work, Judson,” I say.

  Never one for showy emotion, he just shrugs, pulls a ledger from his desk drawer, and starts to work on our business records. They’re written in a dense code only Judson and I can untangle.

  I’m on my way into my private office when I hear, “Good morning, Cantor,” in Rosie’s soft, lilting voice.

  She’s in her cabbie’s duds: gray-brown chinos, blue work shirt, unzipped brown leather jacket, and a dark green eight-point cabbie’s cap, the shiny black brim pulled low, barely revealing her sweet blue eyes. Her misty blond hair spills out from under her cap, accenting a complexion creamy as a rich dessert. Rosie’s just as tasty from the neck down, filling her cabbie’s duds with plenty of curves. I’m always happy when I roam those curves. And as far as I know, Rosie is happy when I’m roaming, though I know there’s a part of her that wouldn’t mind if I dropped dead. That’s the hurt part, the part that once loved me but didn’t get my love back. But she didn’t abandon me. She just changed the game to one we both could live with. We play with others, but now and then share a night of first-aid sex that soothes life’s wounds.

  “I’ll just get my coat,” I say, put the wrapped little Sumerian on Judson’s desk and walk into my private office.

  This room is my haven, sometimes my home-away-from-home when I need to spend a few nights here, lie low for a while until a situation cools down. I’ve furnished the place with first-rate stuff because I like good design and my racket brings in the cash to afford it. My oxblood leather couch is comfortable enough to sleep on. The leather of my pale green club chair is so supple that sitting in it is like sitting in a woman’s embrace.

  But the furnishings are also practical. The wall safe behind my big walnut desk is stashed with plenty of cash, spare guns, and ammo. I’ve got a stall shower, a wardrobe with fresh clothes, a small refrigerator and hot plate so I don’t go hungry. There’s a radio and good supply of Chivas scotch so I don’t go nuts.

  The cops have no idea about this place. Besides me, only Judson, Rosie, Red Drogan, and my lawyer know who this joint belongs to. And my lawyer buried the ownership information so deep in a mountain of paperwork, even a pickaxe wouldn’t uncover my name because it isn’t there.

  I grab my coat and cap, go back to the outer office, pick up the little Sumerian, and leave with Rosie.

  Her cab’s parked in the back alley. She gets into the driver’s seat. I get into the backseat, just another passenger chauffeured around by a New York cabbie, of no interest to anyone, not even cops.

  Chapter Three

  Rosie threads us through the tangle of traffic in the Garment District a few blocks east of my office. Shouting guys pushing wheeled racks of dresses or handcarts piled with bolts of fabric compete for space with delivery trucks double-parked on both sides of the street. Mixed in with the muscle of truckers and rag trade labor are delicate beauties in elegant clothes, models on their way to and from the lofts and showrooms of the clothing manufacturers and fashion photographers in the skyscrapers towering over the streets. As Rosie finagles the cab through the throng, I light up a smoke to accompany my satisfying eyeful of pretty faces, shapely legs, and bodies swaying inside the current style of swing-y coats that ripple with every movement of hip and torso. These beautiful sights take a little off the edge of how crummy I feel about the murder of Lorraine Quinn and the lousy way I treated her.

  “One of these days,” Rosie says, breaking into my sightseeing reverie, “the city is gonna do something about all this double-parking around here. It’s hell on the cab business.”

  “Not until the Mob lets go of the rag trade and the truc
kers,” I say.

  “Yeah, and that’s never. Driving through here knots up my muscles.”

  I feel a carnal smile spread across my lips. “You know I’m always good for a massage, Rosie,” I say.

  “And I’m happy to take you up on it.”

  I park my cigarette at the corner of my mouth, lean forward in the cab, press my fingers against her shoulders, and start to gently rub. “How about tonight?”

  “I’ll let you know,” she says. “I might have plans.” She rolls my fingers off her shoulders.

  There it is, the occasional slap in my face from the part of Rosie that still hurts because I couldn’t return her affections. It’s not a big part, just a little bit of chilled blood deep in her veins.

  I rest again into the backseat, my carnal smile reduced to a defeated pucker. I keep quiet with my smoke while Rosie drives us through the city.

  Below Thirty-Fourth Street, Park Avenue becomes Fourth Avenue, and fancy apartment buildings and hotels give way to slightly less fancy residences and eventually to office buildings. Rosie makes a left turn at East Twentieth Street, which here, along the small, verdant, private enclave that gives the neighborhood its name, is called Gramercy Park South.

  At the far end of the park, she lets a woman walking a poodle, a guy in a lumber jacket and beat-up cap, a bored-looking guy in a tweed coat and gray fedora, and a kid on a bicycle cross the street before she makes another left turn onto Gramercy Park East. I tell her to pull up in front of the place on the corner, an ornate brownstone townhouse with lots of tall, well-tended shrubbery around the front and side. The house is two stories chockablock with neoclassical exterior. Never mind that Ionic columns and classical scrollwork look peculiar in New York brown. Enough money can buy you any century you want to drape on your shoulders. If you want your front door to greet you as if you’re a Greek hero or a Roman emperor, all you have to do is tell your architect to throw in some columns and statuary.

  This particular imperial residence is the home of my client, Eve Garraway, the thirty-two-year-old only child of the late John Garraway, known as Boss Garraway, at one time the most powerful politician in the state of New York. As the Speaker of the State Assembly, he handed out committee assignments and chairmanships, which meant if a politician wanted any influence they had to go through Garraway. He could get your neighborhood streets paved or neglected, could get a railroad station for your new suburban town, or have your upstate village bypassed. He could raise up your political career or make sure you were never elected to anything more than dogcatcher. And of course, he made sure you, your town, your village, or your city paid for it. The guy made a fortune in graft.

  His daughter is the beneficiary of all that cash slipped into daddy’s pockets. The old man invested it wisely, turned thousands into millions, and gave his wife and daughter the imperial life befitting his extravagant house, which he stole from the bankrupt robber baron who’d had it built for his own imperial dreams.

  Eve Garraway lives here alone now, except for a butler. Eve’s mother, the famous beauty Mary O’Neill Garraway, outlived her husband but passed on three years ago after a losing battle with pneumonia. Eve, no slouch in the looks department herself, is the last of the Garraway line. She’s determined to maintain the family name and influence as long as she’s alive and beyond, which is where my smuggling job to bring her the little Sumerian comes in. Since her mother’s death, Eve’s been aggressively assembling a collection of the world’s art treasures, everything from ancient artifacts to medieval icons to paintings by Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo masters, dangling them in front of curators and directors of major museums across the country. Every art bigwig from New York to California wants the Garraway hoard. All it will take is obeisance to Eve and building a museum wing for her collection. The Garraway Wing.

  I get out of Rosie’s cab, walk up the half dozen steps to the portico of the house and with a smile on my face ring the bell at the side of the brass-handled door. Thirty thousand dollars is waiting for me on the other side of that door, which puts me in a very sociable mood.

  The door’s opened by Desmond, the longtime Garraway butler, a gray-haired, gray-faced stick of a guy who looks like he’d turn to dust any minute. He smiles at me. He likes me. And why shouldn’t he? Before his respectable spot as a butler, Desmond Mallory pulled off some of the smoothest bank heists in the annals of old New York crime. But illness after a rough stint in Sing Sing prison dulled his senses and slowed his hands. His crime spree was over. Boss John Garraway, a fan of Desmond’s thieving career, took him on as the household butler, trusting him not to lift the family silver. Desmond’s been loyal to the Garraways ever since. I bet he’d die, or maybe even kill, for Eve.

  I greet him with an extended hand. “How’s everything, Desmond?”

  “I cannot complain,” he says, his thin, breathy voice melodious as reeds in a breeze. He returns my handshake, takes my coat and cap and leads me through the vestibule and into the main hall.

  I hold the wrapped Sumerian close as we walk through the hallway, a baronial stretch paneled in dark walnut. The stained-glass window over the entry door throws colored light onto the walls, the carved Victorian side tables, and me. A thick Persian carpet silences my footsteps. The whole place could pass as a dream.

  “Eve must’ve had a swell time growing up in this make-believe castle,” I joke.

  Desmond gets a kick out of the memory, gives it a smile. “Oh yes,” he says. “She especially liked playing hide-and-seek. Lots of places for a little girl to hide in this house.”

  “And for Boss Garraway to hide his cash,” I say.

  “Actually, it was Mr. Aloysius Sloan, the original owner, who hid things here. They did that in those days.” We’ve reached the broad stairway. “Miss Garraway is waiting for you upstairs in her office, Cantor.”

  Eve’s office is along the second floor’s open mezzanine at the top of the stairway. After a knock on the door, I hear, “Come in,” in Eve’s deep but easygoing voice, a voice comfortable in its owner’s power over people.

  She smiles when I walk in as she gets up from behind her desk, a sleek oak piece of furniture in an equally sleek room of warm pale gray walls lined with contemporary and classic paintings. A few of the classic pieces were supplied by me. But it’s not me Eve’s smiling at. She’s smiling at the bundle in my hands. Her shoulder-length honey blond hair shines, softly framing a porcelain-delicate face whose blue eyes twinkle with acquisitive pleasure. “Ah,” she sighs as she walks around to the front of the desk, her white silk blouse and beige pencil-thin skirt hugging her body the way a body should be hugged. “Show me.”

  I push the desk clock aside to make room for the bundle. The clock’s luminous dial throws a green tinge on the wrapping. “Eve, how about if you do the honors?” I say. “You’re certainly paying for it.”

  “Yes.” The word passes through her lips in a whisper.

  I watch in fascination as each perfectly manicured finger carefully unwraps the cloth and peels back the batting. Luminous green from the clock tints Eve’s fingers while light from a window glints off the sapphire-and-gold ring on her right hand and the ruby-and-gold ring on her left. The jewels sparkle their colors as her fingers move. As the statue is revealed, Eve’s breathing slows. “He’s magnificent,” she says so softly I barely hear it as she takes the statue in hand, runs her fingers along the grooves of his beard and rippling hair, then down the smooth sides of his simple garments. Finally turning to me, she says, “How did you ever get it out of Baghdad?”

  “You’re paying me to do it, Eve,” I say with a smile, “not to tell you how.”

  She gives that a shrewd laugh and a “Touché.” The look on her face is just as canny, but curious, as if seeing me for the first time. “You know, Cantor, when you smile, those scars on your face almost seem to dance.”

  “Thirty thousand dollars can make anything dance.”

  “Indeed,” she says, shrugging with the amusement of some
one for whom thirty thousand dollars is nothing but palm grease. “Follow me. It’s time I showed you something.”

  Frankly, all I want to see is her thirty grand greasing my palm. But Eve’s the client, and it’s not my policy to argue with clients, especially rich ones who make regular use of my services. And besides, Eve Garraway has never stiffed me before. I trust she won’t now, so I just follow her across the office to another door.

  She opens the door. We walk through into a small vestibule. There’s a door on my right to what I assume is a closet. In front of us is a vault door nearly as big as the door to the vault in the basement of my office.

  Eve looks back over her shoulder at me, her hair sliding smoothly along her cheek. “Stand back from me,” she says with a cunning smile.

  Sure, she’s afraid I’ll see her dial the combination and memorize it.

  I do as I’m told, take a few steps back, adding a short, playful bow.

  “Well, you are a thief, Cantor. Why should I make it easy for you?”

  “Afraid I’ll steal your money?” I say with a laugh.

  “In a way.”

  She dials the combination, turns the wheel to unlock the safe. When Eve opens the door it’s not cash that confronts us. It’s treasure. Shelf after shelf of paintings, jewelry, statuettes, religious artifacts, decorative objects in precious metals encrusted with jewels. It’s the history of art from all the cultures of the world. It’s the famed Garraway Collection.

  “People ask me why I haven’t married,” she says, apropos of a question I didn’t ask but have often wondered about. “I haven’t married because it wouldn’t matter if I did. The Garraway name ends with me. A husband’s name would supersede it. I won’t allow that. I don’t want the Garraway name buried by another. All of this,” she says, sweeping her arm around the vault, “ensures that the Garraway name lives on. Go ahead, Cantor. Go inside and look around. You’ve certainly contributed your share to this enterprise.”