Relic of Time

by Ralph McInerny

  “That makes his denial look plausible. If he wasn’t behind the theft of the picture, he can’t be held responsible for those deaths.” Traeger sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

  Hannan got to his feet. “Come on. Boris will be awaiting us.”

  There was turtle soup. There was Cornish game hen. There were haricots verts that seemed dropped from heaven rather than plucked from earth. There was a soufflé. White wine, red wine, a flute of champagne. Nate drank water, as usual. And, oh, the sauces. The salad followed the entree, of course, à la mode française. Lise, Boris’s bitty but bossy wife, shooed him back to the kitchen whenever he appeared at the doorway, like a figure in a clock, anxious to watch his handiwork disappear. Laura drove thoughts of the spartan diet she was supposedly on from her mind. She smiled at Ray, deciding that she liked him better with a little weight on him. Before they left the table, Nate asked Lise to bring in Boris.

  He came in and waved dismissively as they applauded him. His roseate complexion suggested that he had tried each of the wines, for approval, of course. Lise led him back to the kitchen.

  John and Traeger would spend the night in Nate’s residence. On the way home, Ray said, “He hasn’t a clue where that picture is.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  He waited.

  “You heard the remark he said Arroyo made when he visited Don Ibanez: ‘Where would you hide a book? In a library.’”

  “That picture is a helluva lot larger than a book.”

  “Well, there are large libraries.”

  III

  “Come, there is something I want to show you.”

  Traeger would have liked to sit up next to the pilot, Jack Smiley, but that would have meant sitting on the lap of Brenda Steltz, the copilot, so he napped in the cabin for the first hour of the flight west, then had a beer, settled at the desk in Hannan’s airborne office, and got out his computer. Being relieved had been a bit of a downer, but visiting Dortmund had had its usual effect and now, working again for Ignatius Hannan, Traeger felt his first enthusiasm for the project return. He let his fingers do the thinking as they moved over the keyboard of his laptop.

  The premise of his recollections was that Boswell had both said the mission was accomplished, meaning that the image had been recovered, presumably in Pocatello, and yet allowed Grady to deny he had ever had the picture. The two of them, Boswell and Grady, could stand for the island in the liar’s paradox, the island whose standard was “Here everybody is lying.” But was that statement a lie, too? On the other hand, maybe the Pontiac had not belonged to the agency. But then who had sent in that Chinook?

  It had now been three weeks since the theft of the Virgin of Guadalupe from the basilica in Mexico City. Traeger read what he had on the event, news reports, notes on conversations. He was determined to start from scratch and look for things he hadn’t thought important before. Maybe they still weren’t. But he found himself dwelling on the American who had been gunned down during the theft. Lloyd Kaiser. What had he been doing in the basilica? Why had he tried to stop the thieves? The answers seemed obvious. He had been a pilgrim and had been in the back of the basilica, waiting to go to confession, when all hell broke out. Wouldn’t any pilgrim do what Lloyd Kaiser had done? Apparently not. He was the only one who had risen to the occasion.

  Googling Lloyd Kaiser told him that the man had been the author of books for young adults. Citizen of Indianapolis, native of Minneapolis. It sounded like a Roger Miller song. He called up the website of the Indianapolis Star and found an obit that must have been written by one of the family. But there was also a news story on Kaiser, citing him as one of the many in the great pantheon of Hoosier authors. Traeger thought he recognized Booth Tarkington and Kurt Vonnegut, but the accomplishments of the others seemed as modest as Kaiser’s.

  After that blind alley, Traeger got back to relevant facts.

  Theophilus Grady called a press conference in El Paso, claiming to have stolen the painting as a way to stop the invasion of the country by undocumented aliens. Grady was whisked away and soon it was learned that all the Rough Rider camps along the border were gone, leaving the subsequent uproar to Paul Pulaski and his Minutemen.

  All the events in the guerrilla war aside, along with the ful-minations of congressmen and senators and the odd silence from the White House, the next significant item was the emergence of Miguel Arroyo as spokesman for his fellow Latinos. The head of Justicia y Paz had issued a call to arms, but like Grady he seemed to shy away from any personal involvement.

  Next was the deal with Morgan and the arrangements made for the exchange in the long-term parking lot of the San Francisco airport. What a fiasco. Morgan dead, whatever he had brought missing, and then Hannan’s million-dollar ransom almost missing but for Laura’s shrewdness. From cover, Traeger and Crosby had seen the package carried from the house to the Pontiac with tinted windows.

  Meanwhile, Crosby had gone back to his own business. Traeger put through a call but Crosby was not available. Traeger left his number.

  The one good thing that had come out of the fiasco in the parking lot had been Crosby’s tailing of the Hummer. That had brought him, and eventually Traeger, to Grady’s hideout near Pocatello, Idaho. And then the big Chinook landed and Grady was taken into custody by former colleagues of Traeger and Crosby. And then the package had been put into the Pontiac with tinted windows.

  Apart from the recent assassination attempt on Miguel Arroyo, that seemed to be it. But Lowry had urged Traeger to go see Arroyo, as he would have done if he hadn’t been summoned back to Washington.

  That was about where he was, and it was pretty much nowhere. His first thought was to direct the plane to L.A. and follow Lowry’s suggestion. As it was, they were headed for Oakland. Hannan had insisted that Traeger must first consult with Don Ibanez. Because Hannan had liked the report on the old man’s behavior in that parking lot? In any case, the insistence had seemed whimsical. But he had put the obvious question. If Grady didn’t have the miraculous portrait, had Morgan brought it to the San Francisco airport and then been killed while at the wheel of his car? Whatever had been in the trunk of his car was missing.

  “Which is why Grady didn’t have it,” Ray Whipple said. “If Morgan could deliver it, that meant Grady no longer had it. He wouldn’t have wanted to admit that, so when he saw the charges he might be facing he took back his whole story.”

  Traeger decided not to correct the assumptions of that declaration.

  Hannan had been insistent. “Talk to Don Ibanez.”

  “Okay.”

  “Traeger, the stolen image was life-size. How could it fit into the trunk of a car?”

  Lots of ways, if you didn’t mind making a smaller package of it. Rolling it up maybe. But Traeger remembered Don Ibanez in that parking lot. His reaction to that empty trunk was odd. In fact, every time Traeger had talked with the old man, Don Ibanez had not seemed overly anxious about the missing Virgin of Guadalupe.

  More than merely puzzling, that was beginning to look significant.

  The San Francisco Giants were at home and Smiley and Steltz were looking forward to a few games while they awaited word from Traeger. Alerted by Hannan, Don Ibanez was waiting for him with a car. So up the Napa Valley they drove, with Don Ibanez narrating a history of the area. Traeger listened, looking at the passing scenery, keeping his eye out for other wild geese he might chase.

  Clare opened the door of the hacienda and greeted Traeger warmly. He went inside while Don Ibanez went off to make a visit to the basilica. On a patio in front of the house, George Worth was seated, a glass of wine in his hand. He lifted it in greeting. There was another glass on a glass-top table. Clare’s.

  “Won’t you join us?”

  He would. Clare poured Traeger a glass of wine. “I had a long talk with Lowry.”

  The reminder of the Catholic Worker house in Palo Alto made Worth uncomfortable. Lowry had told Traeger of the star-crossed romance—his phrase�
��between George Worth and Clare Ibanez. Was Worth wavering in his dedication to the poor devils who showed up at the house? Looking around, at the grounds, at the hacienda, at Clare when she handed him his wine, Traeger couldn’t say that he blamed George Worth if he was finding this setting more attractive than the one in Palo Alto.

  Later Don Ibanez joined them and soon they were called to the table. The fare seemed modest after the feast Traeger had had at Empedocles. Afterward, they left the young people to themselves and adjourned to Don Ibanez’s study. The old man lit a huge cigar after offering one to Traeger, which he refused. He got out his cigarettes, and for a moment they smoked in silence.

  “So, have you figured it out, Mr. Traeger?”

  “No.”

  “The portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe would not have fit into the trunk of that car we saw a week ago in San Francisco.”

  “It could have been rolled up.”

  “That would have done irreparable damage.”

  “Morgan wouldn’t have cared about that.”

  “He would if he expected to receive the money that Mr. Hannan so generously put up.”

  “If he didn’t have it, what did he expect to turn over?”

  “A portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

  “Which he didn’t have.”

  Don Ibanez was smiling. He was enjoying this.

  “Oh, he must have had what was stolen from the shrine in Mexico City.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Because I am being deliberately mystifying. The original painting had been removed from the basilica earlier, before the theft, when rumors circulated that some such deed was planned. It was replaced by a copy.”

  “Are you telling me that all this commotion has been over a copy? That all those monks down there in charge of the shrine would have had to do was announce it and everything would have subsided?”

  “Traeger, you will think me naive, but I never imagined the effect the theft from the basilica would have. I flew there, as you may remember, creating the false interpretation that I had been kidnapped. I put it to them just as you did.”

  “They refused.”

  “Would you have believed such an announcement?”

  Traeger thought about it. “Running that risk would be better than letting all this violence continue.”

  “You must remember that the basilica no longer seemed to them a safe place to keep what was entrusted to them. Finally they have given their permission.”

  “Permission?”

  Don Ibanez rose. “Come, there is something I want to show you.”

  They went outside through French doors and Don Ibanez led him across the lawn to the basilica. He turned on the lights, some of which illumined the portrait of the Virgin behind the altar. Don Ibanez drifted toward it, went around the altar, and stopped. He looked up at the portrait. Traeger was beside him.

  “That is the original, Mr. Traeger. It was brought here for safekeeping.”

  Where would you hide a book? In a library. Where would you hide the original painting if not in an exact replica of the basilica in Mexico City? Traeger looked up at the Virgin, at her unreadable eyes. He felt more anger than relief.

  “Who else knows of this?”

  “You.” Don Ibanez frowned. “And Miguel Arroyo.”

  “You have to make this known.”

  “First we must return it, Vincent. Then an announcement can be made.”

  When Don Ibanez said that only he himself, Arroyo, and now Traeger knew that the supposedly stolen original was safely stowed in a miniature basilica on an estate in Napa Valley, he was obviously not thinking of the many supernumeraries who had been involved in the secret transfer.

  How many of the monks in charge of the basilica had known what was taking place? Don Ibanez had no idea, nor did he seem to think it mattered. Obviously any or all of them were trustworthy. “Their lives are dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe.” This was clearly a self-evident truth for the pious old man.

  Once Don Ibanez had agreed to give a temporary home to the original, the question had arisen as to how to make the transfer. The monks had suggested Miguel Arroyo, who was a frequent visitor to the shrine. Don Ibanez had overcome his reluctance to rely on the young firebrand. Why not fly it to his estate by private plane? It was Arroyo who had pointed out the risks. Air traffic was far more closely monitored than those who crossed the border in vehicles or on foot. A detailed rationale for the flight would have to be given, and then the secret would be out.

  Arroyo’s plan was to truck the image from Mexico City to Napa Valley. Just drive it across from Tijuana? Arroyo had calmed Don Ibanez. Arroyo had contacts, men he could trust. His plan had been adopted and it had been successful.

  “How many men in the truck?” Traeger asked.

  Don Ibanez seemed surprised by the question. “Two. No, three. And Arroyo of course.”

  “Arroyo was in the truck?”

  “At his insistence. He would be armed and if his trustworthy companions proved otherwise . . .” Don Ibanez frowned.

  “And who installed the image in your basilica?”

  “Carlos, Arroyo, and myself. Not that I was much help. I directed the installation.”

  “Carlos?”

  “My gardener.”

  “That’s an awful lot of people to keep a secret.”

  “But they have, haven’t they?”

  “So far.”

  “That is why we must return it as soon as possible. Once it is back where it belongs, you can tell the press the whole story. And then all this trouble will be over.”

  “And how will I return it?”

  “You have command of one of Mr. Hannan’s planes. I have spoken to him in utter confidence.” And then, as if anticipating the obvious objection, he added, “Mr. Hannan does business with the Mexican government.”

  “I was thinking of our own.”

  “Ah.”

  It was Smiley who, the following day, came up with the solution. He would file a flight plan to Catalina Island. They would fly there with the original in the plane, land, then file another flight plan to Miami. He would enter Mexico over Baja, touch down at Mexico City, and unload Traeger and his precious cargo. He would be on his way within an hour and report the mechanical difficulty that had necessitated the unscheduled stop in Mexico City. Traeger considered it from every angle he could think of. It looked workable.

  “A week from today,” Don Ibanez said.

  “A week!”

  “I will fly to Mexico City and make all the arrangements there.”

  “What about Arroyo?”

  “There is no need to bring him into this. He can rejoice with us when the deed is done.”

  The delay still bothered Traeger. His only consolation was that this time, there would be fewer people in the know as to what was happening than there had been when the image had been brought to Don Ibanez’s basilica. Smiley was used to doing hush-hush things for Hannan and was told that the stop in Mexico City had something to do with Empedocles.

  “Getting it down and ready to go will be a problem.”

  “George Worth can help us.”

  And so it seemed settled, except for that week’s delay. George Worth seemed happy enough with the thought that he could put off his return to Palo Alto with a clear conscience.

  It was the following day that Neal Admirari came up the driveway to the hacienda.

  IV

  “Wait, there’s more.”

  Neal Admirari had had occasions before to think that it is a small world. How often someone who should have been a thousand miles away had come upon him in, if not a compromising position, one that was difficult to explain. Of course things were different now that he had finally married Lulu. Lulu who was a continent away. Lulu who had become the monitor of his habits, regulating the amount he drank, asking if his insurance was paid up whenever he lit a cigarette. Women like to organize men. It was that simple. He liked it, more or less; it was diff
erent. Still, he was enjoying this little respite from wedded bliss, pursuing the spoor of Lloyd Kaiser.

  Lulu thought he was nuts. She could be right; after all, he had married her. Joke. He didn’t mean that. He loved Lulu. He had loved her for years. But he had grown used to having his passion unrequited and the three weeks of marriage had provided an animal contentment he had never imagined. Lulu was quite a girl. Well, no longer a girl, but Neal knew what he meant. So it was that, driving up the Napa Valley, he was torn between homesickness and the sense that he had, however fleet-ingly, regained the freedom he had lost when he married Lulu.

  How easily the concierge in the Whitehall might not have dropped the remark that put Lloyd Kaiser in a new light. The simple pilgrim who had been gunned down in the basilica in Mexico City was now revealed as a man who had cavorted with a woman not his wife for three days in a Chicago hotel. Of course Kaiser was a widower, but even so it was difficult to put together the pilgrim and the swinger. Neal would cast him in the role of penitent.

  And Catherine Dolan was another surprise. Former academic, holder of several lucrative patents, divorced, she and Lloyd had known each other as teenagers. The Chicago interlude might have been a sentimental reunion that moved on into something else. Neal had not known what to expect when he showed up at Catherine’s apartment building overlooking Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. To learn she was off in California and using Jason Phelps as her forwarding address added more tang to the mixture. Phelps had made a name for himself as the tireless debunker of religious phenomena. The only thing he hadn’t taken a shot at was the appearance of the Virgin to Juan Diego. But somehow Neal felt that several more unrelated items were gathering into a unified explanation.

  He had been about to turn into Phelps’s drive, when he thought of Don Ibanez just up the road. First he would see if Don Ibanez knew what was going on at his neighbor’s. So it was into Don Ibanez’s drive that he turned and there was Traeger. Neal hopped out of the car and reminded Traeger who he was. “Rome, North American College . . .”