1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1

by Frederick Ramsay

  “My, this is a cheerful beginning for our first date, Sheriff. You got any more thoughts on the state of the world you’d like to share?”

  “Later, maybe.…It’s not a date.”

  “Right…and I’m not done with this gun business.”

  ***

  Harry stared at the two sleeping forms in the half-light. Even though the girl and boy were handcuffed to the bedstead and the phones removed or deactivated, Donati had insisted they be watched round the clock. He assigned the duty to Angelo and Harry. Red, over his protest, was not involved.

  “You got a thing, Red, about young helpless girls and you hit too hard. I don’t need that on top of the screw-up with the cop, so you stay away.” Donati’s voice was always velvet smooth, but there was no mistaking the menace behind it. Red stayed away.

  Harry looked forward to his watches. It got him away from the other three, the smoke, and the uncomfortable closeness to people who were and would forever be strangers to him.

  The girl stirred and opened her eyes. “I was hoping it would be you.”

  Harry grunted, thought a moment, and responded, “Why’s that?”

  She stretched and took a few quick breaths. Her eyes focused, and with the resiliency the young and innocent seem to have, she was at once awake and alert.

  “Because you let me go to the bathroom alone. The other one won’t. He doesn’t look, but, I don’t know, I just can’t get used to sitting on the john with a chaperone.”

  Harry walked to the bed and unlocked the girl’s handcuffs. She rubbed her wrist and sighed. “When will this be over? Harry? Is that your real name? That’s what they call you.”

  “Yes…a couple more days, then it’s over. The Dillons come through, we get paid, and we all go our separate ways.”

  “Except me and Jack, we know too much. You can’t let us go, can you?”

  She was right. He did not want to think about it, but she could identify all of them. The boy, Jack, presented a lesser threat. Red had rung his bell the night of the robbery and he was still out of it. He might or might not remember, someday, but not anytime soon. Harry wondered why Donati had not eliminated them sooner. But Harry knew his employer never acted without a reason. Donati must have something in mind.

  “Everything’s going to be all right, I promise. You and your boyfriend will be fine.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s an oversexed jock whom I met for the first time the night you found us, and if I hadn’t listened to that honey-mouthed, social-climbing, airhead roommate of mine, I’d be back at the dorm in my own bed right now.”

  The girl was a complete stranger to him and half his age, but Harry felt a sense of relief that the boy was only a date. Strange.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Harry said, “I went in town today to pick up food and I bought you these. I hope they’ll do.”

  Harry handed her a paper bag and watched while she opened it. She took the items out one at a time and laid them on the bed—a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, two sets of underwear, a flannel shirt, and a pair of jeans. Her face lit up.

  “Oh, my God, I know this sounds crazy, I mean, here I am, about to be murdered—it’s true, I know it, you’ll have to, sooner or later—and all I can think about is a shower and clean clothes. Underwear. Do you know how it feels to be naked under your clothes? I mean—to be that way and know that everyone around you knows it? You feel so…defenseless. Thanks, Harry.”

  “I just thought you could use—”

  “I mean it, Harry…can I call you Harry? I mean if you aren’t on a first-name basis with the man who buys your underwear, you’re in trouble, right?”

  Harry grinned. “Go clean up and make it quick. I’m done here in forty-five minutes, and then the other guy takes over.”

  “Call me Jennifer, and you are a nice man, Harry. I don’t know why you’re here or how you got into this business, but you’re not like the others. You just aren’t.”

  Jennifer rushed into the bathroom, shedding her dress as she went. Harry caught a glimpse of her naked backside as she turned the corner and shut the door.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ruth studied Ike out of the corner of her eye. They drove in silence, through town, east to the interstate. He turned north toward Lexington. Ruth settled back in her seat and closed her eyes. They took the exit to Buena Vista and headed up toward the mountains. A mile or two out, Ike turned left and the car bounced up into the mountains.

  “Sheriff,” Ruth said between potholes, “it’s your party, but for the record, where in the name of all that’s holy are you taking me? You said dinner and it is almost eight. I could eat a horse.”

  “Just a little farther,” Ike replied, his eyes fixed on the dirt road. The car lurched. Tree branches scraped its windows and doors. Just when Ruth had decided that she was the victim of a diabolical double-cross, that he was taking her out into the woods to get rid of her once and for all, the car careened to the right and pulled to a stop in a clearing. There were seven or eight other cars parked in front of a log building. Soft light streamed from its windows. Ruth could make out tables and diners inside.

  “Where on earth…what is this place?” she asked, turning to him.

  “Le Chateau—best-kept secret in the state. It’s the only restaurant west of Richmond worth dining in,” he replied, grinning.

  “But there’s no sign and the road is a joke. How do they survive?”

  “Well, they’re usually busy, especially on weekends,” Ike said. He got out of the car, walked around to the passenger side and opened the door. “It’s all word-of-mouth, no pun intended. Rumor has it an orthopedic surgeon in need of a tax write-off owns it. I’m not sure. My guess it’s Mafia owned and operated to launder money. Who knows, it might be just what it appears to be. All I know is, they have a menu you’re not going to believe, a wine cellar as good as any I’ve seen, and a chef who’s fantastic.”

  They stepped through the rough-hewn door into the warmth and the aroma of good cooking. A short, dark maitre d’ greeted Ike by name and escorted them to a table in the corner. A dozen tables, twos and fours, two stations and a small bar filled the small room. Candles in pewter holders, a bud vase with a single rose, Limoges china, and linen napery set up each table. Artfully placed indirect lighting and candles in pewter sconces lighted the room.

  “Well, I’m impressed, Sheriff. You are a man of many parts, it seems,” she said, shifting her inspection of the room and its occupants to the man who could debate with some force and knew food.

  They ordered drinks and waited in silence until they were brought to the table. Ruth felt herself relax. She decided that in spite of their ideological differences, Schwartz might not be so bad after all. In fact, something about him intrigued her. Life in academia and earlier flings at the fringes of the radical movement had given her the opportunity to meet and know many men. But she found only a handful interesting—none like this one.

  “Sheriff, with all due respect, you are a puzzle. I can’t picture you as the pride and joy of Picketsville and certainly not as a small-town cop. I’d like to know who you are, and why I keep thinking I know you from somewhere.”

  “I’d prefer you call me Ike, if that doesn’t tread on your sensibilities. Well, believe it or not, I spent the first eighteen years of my life in Picketsville. My daddy, as we say down in these parts, is Abe Schwartz. He was, and in his retirement still is, a political wheeler-dealer. His last office was comptroller. When he was younger, my age, he wanted to be governor. He made a very successful run from minor county posts to the state legislature. He was elected speaker of the house and stood in line for statewide office. But back then, thirty or forty years ago, things were not all that favorable to someone of his, ah, persuasion. And he was told, by those who could make it happen, that ‘there wasn’t going to be no Jew g
overnor of Virginia as long as they were alive.’ Abe, my father, decided then and there that his son Isaac was going to realize that goal for him.”

  “So you’re going to run for governor? Excuse me for saying it, Sheriff—Ike—but being the top cop in Picketsville does not strike me as much of a political base to launch a gubernatorial campaign. Your father, the wheeler-dealer, does not expect you to go upward from there. He must be very put out with you.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, he is, but not the way you think. I said he wanted me to run. I went away to college and then went to work for the government and never came home…until three years ago. It’s too late now to think about that anymore, even if I wanted it.”

  “Children do that, don’t they,” Ruth said. “They rebel against their parents’ plans for them. They go off and do their own thing and then end up as carbon copies of the parent they thought they rejected.”

  “Like you, Dr. Harris? You and your father, the dean?”

  “If I am to call you Ike, you must call me Ruth. How do you know about my father?”

  “Ruth? Not Sydney?”

  “No one’s called me Sydney for years. How did you—?”

  “You said a while back you thought you knew me. We did meet, a long time ago.”

  “We did? Where?”

  “At your house. A group of us were there one evening and you breezed through. You were in your grunge phase then, black baggy jeans, bare feet, lots and lots of black makeup, fringed jacket, and long, very black hair. As I recall, you had a young man in tow dressed the same, except his hair was spiked up and dyed an amazing shade of red. He looked like a rooster.”

  “You. So that’s it. Now it makes some sense. You were one of Daddy’s young men. Mother always called you people ‘your father’s young men.’ She never knew about his connection with the CIA, but I did. She thought he was just the dean of the law school who had these nice young men over for tea and conversation. She didn’t know he was screening and recruiting for the Agency. You were one of them. The government job you had, it was with the CIA, am I right? You were one of his recruits.”

  “Yes. You still want to have dinner with me?”

  “What? Oh, well, I’ll be. In all those years I never knew any of you—not one. It drove Daddy crazy. He’d keep urging me to go out with solid people, you guys, and stop hanging around with weird types.”

  “But you never did?”

  “Nope, never, until tonight. Well, I’ll be.” She beamed at him, inspected him with renewed interest. He squirmed under her scrutiny.

  “Whatever happened to the one you were with that night?” he asked.

  “Bobby? I haven’t thought about him in ages. The last I heard, he was in the construction business with his uncle in Providence.”

  Ruth sipped her drink lost in thought, her eyes out of focus. She returned to the present and fixed Ike with a no-nonsense look.

  “No fair, Sheriff. You have me doing all the talking. What about you? What’s a college graduate—what college, anyway?”

  “Harvard.”

  “Holy smokes. What is a Harvard graduate, Yale Law School graduate and former spook doing playing sheriff in Picketsville, Virginia? There has got to be something more to you than you are willing to share. You married?”

  “Once.”

  “What happened?”

  “She died. An accident.”

  “Oh,” Ruth said, subdued. “I’m sorry.”

  Their waiter appeared to take their dinner orders. The cuisine was French, the menu English, an unbelievable menu. When the waiter left, she pressed on.

  “So what about you?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. You know all the important parts, born and raised in Picketsville, sent by my father to Harvard, supposed to come home for law school, Virginia or Washington and Lee, but I went to Yale instead. I met your father, and the rest is, as they say, history. I worked for a dozen years for the Agency, in Europe, and when my wife was ki…died, I quit and came home, to get out of it.”

  “What did you start to say about your wife, Ike, just now?”

  “Nothing. It’s all past now.”

  Ruth wondered again what she was doing here. Her college faced an economic crisis, there were police, press, and curiosity seekers trampling all over the college’s lawn, and the guy who declared he would sort it out had her in the middle of the boondocks for dinner. The whole thing struck her as a bit from Alice in Wonderland.

  She studied him. Questions begged to be asked…about his wife—When my wife was ki…killed? And why sheriff, of all things? She saw the evasion in his eyes and something else—pain and anger. He covered it well, but no mistaking the look. Ike Schwartz perched on a personal volcano. She decided to let it go and try later, maybe…but not now.

  “Wine,” she said, changing the subject. “We need wine, Ike.”

  Ike scrutinized the wine list.

  “White or red?”

  “White or pink, please.”

  “White, it is.” Ike beckoned the waiter back and pointed to a Macon-Blanc. The waiter beamed. Ike asked for the wine straight away. The waiter disappeared, to return a moment later with the bottle resting on his arm. Ike inspected the label, nodded, and watched the waiter uncork. Ike felt the cork, sniffed it, and nodded again. He sniffed the splash poured into his glass, sipped, chewed, and rolled it around in his mouth.

  “Very nice,” Ike said.

  The waiter poured a glass for Ruth, filled Ike’s, and disappeared again.

  “Tell me something,” Ruth said, her chin in her palm, “Do you know what the hell all that’s about, the cork, the sniffing, the wine-tasting ritual? Be honest, now.”

  Ike grinned. “I haven’t the foggiest, Ruth, but waiters always seem disappointed when you don’t do it.”

  “Aha,” she crowed, “at last, an honest man. I do not know how many people I have asked that, and they all give me some bogus story about bouquet and texture and the most incredible bullshit, and none of them could tell you there was a fire if their pants were in flames. But you do it because you don’t want the waiter to be disappointed. That is terrific. I am beginning to like you, Ike. You’ve got possibilities.”

  He smiled. His face relaxed.

  The waiter brought their food and hovered over them, checking and rechecking, swooping in to pour sauce on the duck, on the beef, to grind fresh pepper on the salad. Finally, satisfied they could manage the rest of their meal without him, he left them to dine alone.

  ***

  They busied themselves with their meal, filling in the silences with small talk, about the town, the college, speculations on the robbery, Parker’s whereabouts. He told her about Loyal Parker. Parker, the local redneck bully, was the kind of kid who would throw cats out of speeding cars, make lewd remarks to Callend girls, and if he and his oafish friends could, beat up their dates. He and his pals went to Roanoke to harass gays. As far as Ike was concerned, Parker had not changed much in twenty years. That was one reason he had decided to run for sheriff.

  Ruth shifted in her chair as she crossed her legs. Ike heard the whisper of nylon. He thought, not for the first time, about the erotica of ordinary sounds and smells, of sensory stimulation, the sound of nylon against nylon for example, and where that took his thoughts.

  “Ike? Problem?”

  Just in the nick of time, Ike was jerked back from the images that were beginning to form in his mind.

  “No, nothing. My mind just wandered off for a minute. Must be the backlash from a busy day,” he lied.

  Ruth’s eyes scanned the other diners. “You know any of these people?”

  “Well, yes I do, as a matter of fact. You see the silver-haired man sitting with the short fat guy in the corner?”

  “The two men with the two young women?�
�

  “Yes. Well, the distinguished older man is Senator Rutledge and the man with him is the attorney general.”

  “So that’s Senator Rutledge. He’s on some of my boards but I’ve never met him. He never attends meetings but always sends a nice note. Is it too much of a stretch to hope the woman with him is his daughter?”

  “Way too much. They are, or one of them is—not to put too fine a point on it—bait.”

  “Bait?”

  “The attorney general, Bob Croft, wants to be senator. Rutledge has hinted he might step down, but everybody knows in the end he won’t. So Croft has brought the good senator to dinner and, I’m guessing now, set him up with one of those bimbos—excuse me, professional women, in the hopes of putting the good senator in a compromising situation, thus advancing the time the said senator declares his retirement.”

  “And will he?”

  “Senator Rutledge did not get to Washington by being stupid. He will see through this and will report it to his friends, and the attorney general’s career will end before the next general election.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Wow. Life must be tough in the fast lane.”

  “You’re having me on. Now look over in the corner. Do you see those three men and the woman together? Well, that’s Gloria Barnes, Clint Davis, William Danzinger, and Mordichai Blum. You know who they are?”

  “Only by reputation. I think Ms. Barnes attended my inauguration. The others run Fortune five hundred companies and she owns a chain of newspapers or something.”

  “Newspapers, television stations, cable TV, and major stockholder in more big companies than you can imagine. If Daddy Warbucks had a female rival, she would be it. What do you suppose those four are cooking up tonight?”

  “I’m afraid to ask. Do you have an idea?”

  “No, but I do know that they all have two things in common: one, they all have bought development rights to vast tracts of land south of Washington, adjoining the Manassas battlefield, and two, they are the honorary chairpersons of the Roanoke College capital campaign. You choose what they’re up to tonight.”