1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1

by Frederick Ramsay

  “What you did in the robbery, the alarm business, you did that before?”

  “Yes, only legally. But when you drink, you become unreliable. Well, they couldn’t risk it, and then I had a disagreement with the new administration about whether I would carry a gun and broaden my, um, area of responsibility. Anyway, I was let go.”

  They sat in silence. Harry felt tired, but at the same time better. Just talking about it helped ease the hurt, see himself better. He wished he had met a Jennifer two years, five years before. He looked at her. She sat cross-legged, lost in thought. She looked like someone who was about to buy a house, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of location, taxes, school districts, transportation, and mortgage payments. Then, without warning, she began to shake. Harry got up and went to her, uncertain what he should do.

  “Hey,” he said, “you okay?”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she fought back the sobs that wracked her.

  “I’m scared, Harry. I don’t want to die.”

  “No one’s going to die.”

  “We are. We all are.”

  Harry reached for her without thinking, cradled her in his arms. Her free arm circled his neck and she buried her face in the angle of his neck and shoulder and gave way to the tears. Harry stroked her hair and back. He murmured reassurances he really did not feel, and without realizing it, kissed her hair and forehead. After a few minutes, her sobbing slowed, stopped, and ended in hiccups.

  “I can’t face it, you know?”

  “It’s going to be okay, kid.”

  “Harry, if I get out of this alive—no, let me finish—I want to.…”

  She dissolved into tears again, this time not so body wracking. Through them, she murmured, “I’ll never see you again, will I?”

  “We’ll see each other, sure,” Harry said and hoped it was so.

  “But how will I find you?”

  “You won’t. I’ll find you. Art Institute, Chicago. Remember?”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Ike and Dillon watched Ruth and the two men leave.

  “She’s quite a woman, don’t you think?” Dillon said.

  “Yes, sir, she is that.”

  “Kenny able to play in this league? God, he looks like a teenager. Am I getting old or is everyone else getting younger?”

  Ike smiled. He was beginning to think the same thing. “He’ll be okay. I’m a little surprised they didn’t send someone with a little more experience. You’d think with the press and everything, the Bureau would send an agent with a little more pizzazz.”

  “It’s the new guy. I told the President he should hire a lawman, but he’s got a bug in his ear about MBAs from the Ivy League. Anyway the Bureau is in turmoil and that’s why we got the schoolboy, I guess.”

  Ike wasn’t so sure.

  “Now, Sheriff.” Dillon’s voice turned serious, the curmudgeon gone. “I think maybe you’re the one I need to talk to. I do not believe for a minute that you are what you pretend to be. I have dealt with small-town cops in practically every state in the nation and half the countries in the world. I do not know what you are, and I do not want to know, but you sure as hell aren’t a cop. So, you heard all this talk about ransom and operations and so on. What do you think I should do?”

  Ike stared at Dillon. He knew a little about him. Who didn’t? He appeared on the cover of Time, hobnobbed with Presidents and royalty. But beyond those surface things, Ike did not know very much. Money had a way of distorting people. He guessed this man, a second-generation industrial baron, could be as tough as he needed to be. Dillon could handle just about anything he or anyone else might dish out to him.

  “Mr. Dillon, I will not tell you what to do. You are far too smart to need that from me, and I am not dumb enough to try. I will tell you what I think, what I believe, and if I can, I will try to project odds. You will do the deciding.”

  Dillon lit another cigarette.

  “Okay, Sheriff. You do that. What do you think?”

  “Well, first, there is the ransom—to pay or not to pay. Whether you pay will depend on how much you value one of two things: the money and the paintings. If you value the money, you won’t pay, unless you think there’s a chance of recovering the diamonds or at least most of them. If, however, you value the paintings, you will pay, but only if you’re sure they will be returned to you. If they are already destroyed or will be irrespective of payment, you will not pay.”

  “The government and the state police think I should pay.”

  “Yes, I gather they do. Unless you agree to do it, they don’t have much to work with. Remember, this was a professional operation using very sophisticated talent. You know the security system in the bunker. I’m guessing they sailed through that in less than an hour. They will be hard to find, maybe impossible, they’re that good.”

  Dillon nibbled at the corner of a pastry, made a face, and dropped it into the trash basket behind him.

  “You talk like you know them.”

  “I guess I do, in a way. I worked with people like them…ah, in the past. They are good, Mr. Dillon, very good. If you pay the ransom, Scarlett and Kenny hope they can set up an intercept and catch one or two and through them, get the rest. If you don’t pay, they have nothing to do.”

  “If the bad guys are as good as you say, that might be tough, too?”

  “Bad odds, Mr. Dillon. The days of leaving a suitcase full of money somewhere in a hollow tree are over. These people are prepared to get away clean. Fifty million dollars buys a lot of equipment. They will ask for the exchange in a wide-open place they can watch, like a state park or a beach. The diamonds will be deposited in the open and left. They will wait until they’re sure no one can get to them, then come in fast with a helicopter, pick them up, fly nap of the earth to a second point, change to another transport and keep doing that until they’re clean and clear. They will have alternative contacts on every exchange and all the FBI or state police in Virginia will not be able to cover all the possibilities. I think it’s safe to say that if you pay the ransom you can kiss fifty million dollars goodbye.”

  “You don’t have much faith in your colleagues, do you? What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Ike.”

  “Ike, short for Isaac? Father’s name Abraham? You’d call a son Jacob, no doubt.”

  “Not a chance. Bill—he is going to be named Bill. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be Jewish in this part of the country, with a name like Ike?”

  “Ike the kike?”

  “You got it.”

  “How’d you like to be named Millhouse like the geek in The Simpsons, or Nixon? Millhouse Armand Dillon. I grew up believing that a natural part of living involved a fistfight on the playground every day. You can’t even come up with a decent nickname with Millhouse. At least you had Ike. I solved it by using my initials, M.A.D. Called myself Mad Dog. I got good enough at fighting by then to make it stick, and I was known as Mad Dog, Mad, or just plain Crazy until I made my first million. Count your blessings, Ike. Jacob is a nice name; a kid could do all right in this world as a Jake. Now, about the FBI, the state police—you don’t think they can cut it?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Dillon. They’re good enough, better than that, but it’s just that the deck is stacked against them.”

  “So you think the money’s gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I value it over the paintings, then I shouldn’t pay the ransom.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll tell you, Ike, I don’t care about the money one way or another, so tell me about the paintings. Do you think these professional thieves of yours will keep their end of the bargain if I pay?”

  “Well, that’s complicated. I believe we have two parties involved here: the people who stole the paintings
and the people who contracted the first group to do it for them. I told you the first are pros, but I do not know about the second. Terrorists are impossible to predict. They lash out at anything or anybody. They’re suicide bombers. They’ll kill their grandmothers to make a point.”

  Dillon pulled out another cigarette and the box of matches. He stared at them for a moment, and then replaced both.

  “Then you’re saying I may or may not get my pictures back if I pay?”

  “Yes, but not exactly. Let’s take some hypothetical cases. One, you pay, the group holding the pictures gets your money. When they’re away, they tell you where to pick up the stuff, or they notify their employers. If the latter, then you are dependent on their sense of fair play to tell you. Since they do not have such a sense, you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting your paintings back.

  “Two, you don’t pay, the first group pulls out. They have been paid part of their fee up front. My guess is that they will pack up and go.”

  “They won’t burn the paintings?”

  “They’re thieves, Mr. Dillon, not vandals. What would be the point? No, they won’t touch the paintings, but they may tell their employers where they are and you can bet they will burn them. And call the papers and television stations to watch them do it.”

  “The terrorists don’t have them now?”

  “I don’t think so. Those truckloads of paintings are the only asset in the game. The thieves need them to get their payday. If you refuse to pay, the pictures are converted from an asset to a liability.”

  Dillon stared at the ceiling, turning Ike’s words over.

  “The hard part of an operation this big is keeping track of all the players. Where are the paintings now, Ike? Who has them?”

  “I suspect they’re close by, in a truck stop somewhere on I-81, a warehouse in Roanoke or Harrisonburg, maybe in an abandoned barn.”

  “If I don’t pay and the terrorists don’t destroy them, I’ll get them back?”

  “Oh sure, sooner or later, they’ll turn up…next week, next year…eventually.”

  “Are you sure about all this?”

  “I think so, but as I said, this is only my take, my best guess.”

  “Ike, you’re not the bearer of the most cheerful news I’ve ever heard. Let me see if I’ve been following you—if I pay, there’s at best a fifty-fifty chance I’ll get the pictures, and no chance of recovering the money. If I don’t pay, there’s only a twenty-eighty chance I’ll get the pictures, but I keep the money. In both cases, we aren’t going to catch any of these people at all.”

  “I didn’t say that, Mr. Dillon. I said paying or not paying will not catch them. If we get them, it will be because we did our homework and got lucky, but it will also be independent of the payment of the ransom.”

  “Finding the pictures is also an independent event?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dillon stood and stretched. He walked to the window lost in thought. His back was to Ike. The chimes struck the hour, and when the last peal had finished resonating in the courtyard, he spoke as though addressing someone outside.

  “Funny thing about art. My father bought fifty, sixty percent of that stuff in Paris in the Thirties. He was a very young man with a little money with no talent for painting. But he knew people who had it, and when they couldn’t pay back the small loans he made them, they gave him a picture or two. He came home to the family business with a carload of impressionists. I have an undeserved reputation as a collector of classics. I am offered stuff all the time, Klees, Pollacks, Turners, at bargain rates. I doubt there is more than ten million tied up in the whole lot. It’s appraised at half a billion now. It would take me a decade to sell them if I wanted to. But either way, the price is a paper one, it’s not real.”

  Dillon was silent for a few moments, then, turning to Ike, said, “If you had fifty million dollars lying around loose, would you buy my collection, all of it? Any of it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Neither would I. What would you do with fifty million dollars, Ike?”

  “Mr. Dillon, there are a lot of underfed, underclothed, and undereducated children in this world. If I had that kind of money, I’d spend it on them, the kids who’ll someday paint new pictures, dream new dreams. I’d spend it on the future.”

  “Thank you, Ike. I knew you weren’t a cop. Now, let’s get those two hotshots back in here. I’ve made a decision.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Ike heard the squeal of brakes that announced the arrival of Billy Sutherlin.

  “For crying out loud,” Ike grumbled, “how many times do I have to tell him? He drives like a Baghdad taxi hack. Billy,” Ike yelled as he entered, “I’ve told you a hundred times not to drive like that.”

  “How do, Ike. Hi, beautiful. Got something for you-all.”

  Billy was the youngest of Ike’s deputies and the most unpredictable. He was bright, resourceful, and had a boyish charm that enabled him to find out things that were forever concealed from others on the force. He folded his blond, lanky frame into an old oak swivel chair and beamed, waiting for Ike to ask.

  “Okay, Billy,” Ike sighed, “what have you got?”

  “Well, first of all, Rosalie down at the Shop ‘n Save says she might have seen one of your guys on Saturday, the gray-haired one, buying clothes. I showed her the picture like you said.”

  “Clothes? What kind of clothes?” Ike asked.

  “Well now, that’s the funny part, Ike. Rosalie said he was buying women’s clothes, underwear, and stuff like that. Oh, and a pair of jeans. Said he didn’t seem too sure about sizes. She got the idea he was guessing—buying for someone he didn’t know too well.”

  “Women’s clothes. You’re sure of that?” Ike asked.

  “Don’t know too many guys around here go in for brassieres and panties.”

  “That’s good news, I think,” Ike said.

  “You think that means the hostages are still alive?” Essie broke in. “At least one of them?”

  “Yes, I hope so.”

  “It might mean that whoever got them cares about them some, too,” she added.

  There was that, too. An astute observation, not one he or Billy would make. The woman’s touch, he thought, and remembered Ruth’s lecture about hiring a woman.

  “What else?” Ike turned back to Billy.

  “What?”

  “You started this by saying, ‘first of all.’ When you do that, it means there’s a ‘second’ to follow.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Billy scratched his head and thought a moment. “I’m not sure this is as much help, but you can never tell. The county boys been checking the motels hereabouts and they didn’t get anything positive. But one of them heard from the girl at Burger King that the big guy might have been in for food—carry out. Enough for a dozen folks, she said. Figured you’d want to know he was close.”

  “Maybe. He could be anybody, in fact, so could the guy at the Shop ’n Save. We are supposing the two I saw at the diner are involved and that these two are the same ones. It’s kind of thin.”

  “Yeah, I expect so, but she did say when he paid, he emptied his pockets to get some change, and she noticed the keys. He had motel keys. You know, they got those plastic tags?”

  “Which motel?” Ike was alert.

  “Motels, Ike—different ones, she thought, because the shape and color of the plastic parts were different. She only saw the one good enough to tell. It was the Azalea, up near Lexington.”

  “Okay, Billy, get up there and check it out, and see what you can make on the other keys. Have her describe them, then check all of the motels around to see if you can find a match.”

  “Right, I’m on it.” Billy launched himself into motion toward the door, clapping his Stetson on his head.

&n
bsp; “Slowly,” Ike shouted at his retreating back, and then winced as the door’s slamming drowned out his words, winced again when he heard the roar of the car’s engine, and shook his head at the squeal of tires.

  He eased himself behind his desk and stared at the files and mail that had accumulated in the past three days, four if you count Sunday. He faced another Monday and thought how different this one felt compared to two weeks ago. That day he had met the formidable Dr. Ruth Harris. Now they were lovers. He guessed that would be what people would say about them. “I want you to meet ‘my friend.’ She’s on vacation with her ‘friend.’” What a culture. There were no boundaries. People moved in and out of relationships as easily as they changed socks. Commitment, if it ever came, ranked last on the list of things people wanted. He wondered how he felt about that. He guessed he did not like it very much, but he also guessed it would be the only arrangement Ruth would consider now, maybe ever. He decided he would think about that later. Right now, he wanted to savor the moment. He had spent most of the previous night at Ruth’s again, and the memory made him smile.

  Essie poked her head in the door. “Hate to break in on whatever thoughts are giving you that unnaturally nice expression this morning, but the phone is for you.”

  “Got it, thanks.”

  “You have the warrant?” Sam, the computer whiz.

  “I do. You ready to tell me something?”

  “Phone safe?”

  “Sam, this is Picketsville, not Washington.”