by John Pearce
“She moved here when she was 13 years old. She doesn’t use it much but you don’t forget your mother tongue.”
“That’s interesting. She’s a very well-known businesswoman in Sarasota, so much so that my chief asked me to keep him up to date. I haven’t had much to tell him yet, but he was very interested in the Paris connection.
“How did they attack you, and how did you get away?”
Eddie told him about the two men waiting in the museum’s front door, then how he had fought them off and escaped through the hotel, where the police had arrested the Germans.
“That’s impressive. Where did you learn close combat like that?”
“Special Forces. I hadn’t even thought about it in years, but it really came in handy.”
Thom said, “That’s what I wanted to do in the Army, but there was nothing going on while I was in and I couldn’t find a slot.”
“You must have been a few years behind me,” Eddie told him. “I was in Kuwait and Iraq, and mustered out shortly after that, then moved back to Paris.”
“Paris is without a doubt my favorite place in the world. My wife and I went there on our honeymoon, traveling on a dime, but we loved it. Have you lived there long?”
“I was born there and have lived there my entire life except for college, when my American father wanted me to come back to the States, and my time in the military. I wouldn’t live anywhere else now, although your town is pretty nice. I know Jen loves it here.”
Thom steered the Crown Victoria behind a nondescript beige steel building that could have been in any industrial park, then opened the door with a passcard. The gloom of the interior was relieved by pools of bright light cast by fluorescent fixtures hanging on chains from the high ceiling. A row of fans turned quietly high in the opposite wall, reducing a strong smell of gasoline and chemicals.
In one of the circles of light stood a large black Lincoln Navigator, its front grill pushed in. The heavy bumper was undamaged.
“The technical types have been over it carefully,” Thom said. “We think they ran it through a gas-station car wash to get off any obvious signs, but they didn’t get the blood behind the grill.”
Eddie asked if Thom could send the DNA and fingerprint information from the interior to the French police for comparison. “If they match, we’ll know we’re dealing with something international and even if the French have to release them you can ask for extradition.”
“I’ve already asked the state’s attorney for permission and it’s under way,” Thom replied. “It can’t hurt us and it might really help, because otherwise I don’t have any real clues to go on.”
Thom drove Eddie back to Jen’s house and pointed out the restaurant across the street where Arturo Ruiz worked. “Most restaurants are closed on Monday, so he’s probably not working today,” Thom told him. “He lives on the edge of Newtown. It’s safe so long as you don’t go there at two in the morning looking for drugs.”
Eddie nodded as he wrote Arturo Ruiz’s name and address in the thin black Moleskine notebook he always carried. “And the one who was in the Wednesday group?”
“Sommers,” Thom replied. “Al Sommers. He lives on five acres outside of town to the east. He’s pretty prominent. He used to be in local politics and he owned part of a bank, which is a big deal here.”
As he walked back to Jen’s house his iPhone beeped and he found a text from Aurélie asking him to call. She answered immediately with “Édouard, mon cher. I am glad you called, because my friends and I have solved a big part of the problem.”
“Dis-moi.”
“We know from the two men who tried to attack us that they’re looking for a painting, and we know from Roy’s note to your father that it was associated with Hans Frank. I put those two facts to a friend down the hall, and he’s pretty certain it can only be one thing — a very famous old-master painting by Raphael called “Portrait of a Young Man,” which may be a self-portrait.
“It was stolen from one of the major Polish museums, the Czartoryski, right after the Nazis invaded. They earmarked it for the big museum Hitler planned to build in Austria after the war. Several Nazi bigwigs fought over who should have custody in the meantime, but it spent most of the war on Hans Frank’s wall in Cracow. As the Russians closed in near the end of the war he supposedly sent it to his home in southern Germany, near Munich, along with two other famous paintings he had looted and a bunch of smaller stuff. The other two arrived and were recovered by American soldiers, probably including your father. The Raphael hasn’t been seen since. I can see why those two Germans want it, because it would be an incredibly valuable piece of art today. More then ten years ago its value was estimated at perhaps a hundred million dollars.”
“Wow. That has to be the connection between the painting and Roy, and maybe my father as well. They handled the other two paintings, and someone thinks they know where the Raphael is hidden. Or thinks they stole it themselves.”
“Maybe, but Frank’s son wrote a bitter memoir after the war and said Frank had one of his assistants steal it. That might agree with Roy’s letter about the painting going to Paris, but it’s impossible to be certain. My colleague is talking to some of his contacts right now. The big problem is that all the principal actors are either dead or very old.”
“It’s a good start,” Eddie responded. “I’ve spent the morning with the police detective, and he’s now certain Roy was murdered. He’s given me the name of the only witness, and I’ll try to interview him this afternoon.”
“So both of us are making progress. Maybe you can come back soon. I’ll send you more information by e-mail as I receive it. And how are you getting along with your old friend Jen?”
Damn, he thought. Margaux told her. There was an edge hidden in her question, but he decided to ignore it. “She’s fine. She’s at her gallery and I’m about to search her house. Then I’m going to see the witness.”
“My father wants me to stay with your mother tonight, which is probably a good idea, although I have no idea why he doesn’t do it himself. Call me anytime before midnight or so. I’ll probably be on the terrace looking at the tower and enjoying some of Margaux’s Chablis.”
Eddie put the phone slowly back into his pocket as he replayed the call in his mind. The relationship between her family and his went back before either of them had been born. Their ten-year age difference had meant they were never childhood buddies, but they had clicked in 2003 and lived together for a few months before Eddie realized he still could not commit to another woman. Desperately unhappy, she had left him for a fellow Sorbonne professor only to learn a year after their marriage that he was a gambler who had lost all of his money and a great deal of hers. She had been divorced more than a year and they had run into each other several times since but he’d never sensed any rekindling of her romantic feelings for him. At least until today, when he’d heard a definite warmth under the factual presentation about the painting. It was a mystery to him, but a welcome one.
Eddie went further into the house to look for places Roy might have hidden more information about his search for the painting. He was certain Roy had more documents than just the letter Jen had found — he had spent more than 50 years chasing his evanescent dream, so his records might be bulky.
He looked first for hidden compartments inside closets or above the ceiling. More than once Artie and Roy had located them behind wall panels or above loose boards in the ceiling of old German houses. But after an hour of knocking on walls he came up empty and concluded that Roy must have hidden the files as he had hidden the letter to Artie, somewhere safe that he knew Jen could, with work, discover. The most likely choice was a bank vault, where the papers would be protected from fire as well as theft, and he suspected the Germans had come to the same conclusion so had tried to kidnap Roy rather than burgle his house. Or maybe after burgling his house and coming up empty.
He looked for an entrance to the basement before he realized that almost no Florida h
omes have basements. The water table is too high and they would be wet all the time. “Dumb of me,” he muttered.
When in doubt go for the simplest explanation, he thought, and papers are usually kept in offices. He returned to look closely at the bedroom Roy had turned into a study and office, with a simple wooden desk and an easy chair with a reading light next to it. A table on the other side held an old Macintosh computer and a small laser printer. He’d look into the computer later but he didn’t expect to find anything there, it would be too obvious. If anything came through the computer he would have printed it and kept it somewhere safe. Jen had told him Roy was an old-fashioned man who considered the computer a fancy electric typewriter, nothing more.
A bookcase was built solidly into the entire 15-foot wall behind Roy’s desk. The shelves were permanent, not adjustable, and made of inch-thick oak. One shelf at a time, Eddie removed each book, flipped through it for secret cavities, examined the wall behind it, and replaced it. After an hour he was almost half finished. As he replaced the second volume of the Oxford English Dictionary on the lowest shelf it caught briefly on something. Puzzled, he removed it again and under the shelf above it he felt a small flat object firmly attached with tape. He worried a corner of the tape loose, then pulled the entire piece off and held in his hand a large round-headed brass key marked “Do Not Duplicate.” It was unmistakably the key to a bank safety-deposit box.
As he finished replacing the other books he heard Jen’s key turn in the lock. When she appeared in the study door as he held the key out to her.
“Did Roy have a bank box?” he asked.
“Just the one that contained his will. Its key didn’t look like that one, though. It was shorter, and the head was a different shape.”
“Then this may be where his files are hidden. All we have to do is match it to a bank. That could be like finding a needle in a haystack — I’ve never seen a town this size with so many banks.”
“It might not even be in Sarasota. He liked to drive out to different small towns from time to time, and I’d go with him when I could. We would usually stop for lunch, and sometimes he’d leave me waiting in the restaurant while he ran an errand or took a walk. I learned after the first time to take a book whenever we made one of these excursions.”
“Did he have a favorite?”
“Not really. Victor Coulson might know. He has clients in a lot of the little towns around Sarasota, and he did all of Roy’s legal work. Mine, too. He did the paperwork when I bought the gallery and he helps me out from time to time.”
“Then he’ll be our first stop tomorrow. Meanwhile I have a lot of ground to cover today. See you tonight. Think of a nice place for dinner.”
Eddie walked across the street to verify that the restaurant was closed, then walked back to his rented Ford and set a GPS course through downtown and out North Washington to a short street not far from Martin Luther King.
The number of small wooden churches surprised him. Most of them represented Pentecostal denominations he had never seen in France, much less Paris, where the churches were built long ago in massive cut stone and many are no longer used for their original purpose. The vacant lots and convenience stores seemed full of idle black men, the young ones standing in small groups, the older sitting around tables playing cards and dominoes.
These are working churches, he told himself, whereas ours are tourist destinations. But these unemployed boys and men don’t look particularly dangerous, just dispirited and poor.
He passed his turn and continued another dozen blocks to explore the neighborhood. He made a U-turn through the parking lot of a grocery store, then backtracked and turned right onto the narrow street where Thom said Arturo’s home would be found, passing the warehouse of an air conditioning company, the razor wire atop its fence glittering in the sun. A block further, almost at the entrance of a chocolate-colored concrete-block apartment complex, he spotted Arturo’s house number to his right. Behind a sagging and rusted chain-link fence stood a neat white cottage with blue shutters, painted during the last couple of years. Most of the houses on the block were neatly kept, although one across the street stood abandoned and boarded up. The plywood covering a window was pulled half off, which meant it was now a refuge for the homeless or a drug house. Lawns were beginning to green as the June rains broke the drought that settled in every winter.
He parked the car and pushed open the gates. A dog barked as he knocked on the door, and in a minute a young woman came to the door carrying a baby girl.
“Excuse me for disturbing you, madam,” Eddie said, “but I’m looking for Arturo Ruiz. He was a witness to an auto accident a couple of weeks ago where a friend of mine was killed, and the police said it would be OK if I talk to him.”
“He’s at work now, mister,” she replied after a few seconds of thought. Eddie heard a Caribbean accent.
“His restaurant is closed today, so I thought I might find him at home,” Eddie replied, keeping his voice level and friendly.
“Mondays he works for Labor Force. With a new baby we need everything we can get, and the restaurant doesn’t pay that much.”
“When do you expect him to be home?”
“Pretty soon,” she said. “He gets off at 3 and it’s almost that now. You can wait if you want, but I’m not supposed to let anybody in the house.”
“I’ll just sit out here if that’s OK.”
Eddie went to his car for a Sarasota guidebook he had bought at the Tampa airport. Then he found an old and deteriorating garden bench in a little shade on the side of the house and sat down to read.
He looked up as he heard the gate open. “My wife called and told me you wanted to talk about poor Mr. Castor,” said a slim young man as he came through and closed it behind him. “I’ve already told the police everything I know.” The sound of the Caribbean was there, too, but less pronounced. Eddie suspected they had been in the United States since they were children.
“That’s what Detective Anderson told me, but Roy Castor was a very old friend of my father’s and I thought I should do everything I can to help his daughter find out exactly what happened. Can you take a few minutes to talk to me?”
“Sure. Come inside and let me wash up, then we can talk.” Eddie offered his hand and Arturo shook it.
Arturo introduced him to Lil — “Her real name is something long and very Jamaican, so here she goes by Lil” — and their daughter Sophie, a bright-eyed one-year-old with pigtails and pink ribbons who sat in a playpen happily fitting together colored alphabet blocks. A small black-and-white dog sat contentedly at Lil’s feet, licking its chops. It put its head on its forepaws and closed its eyes.
In a few minutes Arturo came back into the living room wearing different clothes and a blue baseball cap instead of the yellow one he’d worn when he arrived. Eddie explained his father’s long relationship with Roy Castor and how Jen had found the letter and brought it to him.
He added, “It’s possible that there is some pretty valuable stuff involved — a very old painting and maybe some gold. But frankly I’m not interested in those. I’m just interested in knowing about my father and wrapping up the loose ends, mainly for the sake of Roy’s daughter Jen, who lives here, and my mother.”
Arturo nodded and looked at Lil, who smiled. “Family’s the most important thing,” she said.
Eddie then asked Arturo to recount all the events that he saw or heard. “I know it’s boring for you, but going through a story from start to finish sometimes helps find facts that weren’t obvious the first time.”
“Sure,” he told Eddie, “I was walking back to the restaurant after I’d been to the bank when I heard a shout behind me. I turned around just in time to see that car hit Mr. Castor. I knew he was dead when his head hit the curb.”
“Did you hear him say anything?” Eddie asked.
“Not after he was hit, but just before. I didn’t know what to make of it at first. But as I think about it, I’m sure somebody shouted �
��You!’”
“’You!’ That doesn’t sound quite right. That sounds more like he recognized someone he didn’t expect to see.”
“That’s what I think now. Do you think I should call the detective?”
“Not quite yet. Would you mind going over the whole sequence once again?”
“Sure. I walked to the bank on Main Street on my break. I usually go after work because it’s a pretty long walk to make in a 15-minute break, but we needed the money and my boss said I could have a few extra minutes if I needed them. Lil had to pay a couple of bills.”
Lil had moved across the room to an armchair, covered with an old blue blanket that either Sophie or the dog had been abusing. She looked up and said, “Yeah. The phone was about to get cut off.”
“Anyway, I was moving as fast as I could. I must have passed Mr. Castor just before I crossed Ringling. I was moving pretty fast, so by the time the car hit him I was more than halfway down the block. I heard the shout, then I turned around.”
“How fast was the car moving, do you think?”
“Pretty slow. I guess he had just turned the corner and hadn’t speeded up much because he wasn’t moving fast at all when he hit the old man. When he passed me he really speeded up.”
“Can you describe the man who was driving?”
The tinted passenger window was rolled up so the view wasn’t good, but Arturo had the impression that the driver was around 40 years old, with light hair, wearing a brown jacket. “I thought the jacket was weird because it was almost 90 degrees out, but maybe he was cold in the air conditioning. And he was short. He could barely see over the steering wheel.”
“Did you see anyone else other than Mr. Castor? I’m trying to figure out who shouted. For instance, was there anyone nearby on the sidewalk?”
