by Thomas Swan
“If Kalem and Stiehl have left the country, what does that suggest our friend Waters may have done?”
“I say he’s in New York,” Deats replied.
“Under what name?” Heston tossed a thick file onto the desk. “There’s a dozen aliases in that file and you know damned well he isn’t traveling under any one of them.”
“I wonder if he’d have the balls to use his real name in New York.”
“Not likely. You said he’s become a rabbi, and God knows he might have.”
“What do you suppose his relationship is to Kalem? He’s not under hire to put in air conditioners.”
Heston nodded but did not respond. He lifted his phone and asked for a connection to the chief of detectives’ office in the New York City Police Department. A line cleared in less than a minute and he heard the phone ring on the other side of the Atlantic. He glanced at his watch: it was 3:30—10:30 in the morning in New York.
“Chief Tobias, please. This is Elliot Heston, Metropolitan Police in London. If he’s not there, please tell me how I can reach—Tobey, it’s Elliot Heston, you old scoundrel. . . . I understand you were in London last month and I never heard a peep from you....I’ll excuse you this time . . . when will you join us fishing up north? . . . Just keep me posted. . . . Tobey, I need your help. I just lost a young special agent—we think a homicide. . . .We’ve got a suspect, only we don’t know what name he’s using and I can’t give you an accurate ID on him but we’ve some things to go on.... He may have used the name Anthony Waters when he was in New York....We think he was employed by a Jonas Kalem....I’ll fax over everything we’ve got on him and the Kalem chap. . . .There’s a third person—name of Curtis Stiehl. . . . Don’t bother about the spelling now. . . .Yes, there’s a rush....The press is beginning to put all their bizarre twists on the case. . . . It was a young woman, quite pretty, and she had a daughter we didn’t know about, so the department is getting flak.... Good . . . you understand . . . thanks, Tobey . . . I’ll get the information started. Cheerio.”
For the balance of the afternoon the old friends pored over Waters’s files hoping to uncover a clue to the way he handled himself on previous occasions when he changed identities.
“There’s no clear pattern to the way he operated,” Deats concluded, twirling the glasses he had not worn while reading the files.
Heston leaned back, his head cradled in his hands. “If Greg Hewlitt is really Anthony Waters and he sent Sarah to her death, then we’re dealing with someone completely different from what we’re reading about in these reports. Waters was a confidence man, a professional ripper-offer. When he was threatened, he responded with force, but there’s no record of violence, not yet. I have a feeling he won’t surface in the suburbs selling bogus cemetery plots.”
Deats fidgeted with his glasses then folded them and tucked them into his shirt pocket. “Gregory Hewlitt killed Sarah Evans. But there is no Gregory Hewlitt. There is an Anthony Waters who is tied up with a very large man named Jonas Kalem. Add Curtis Stiehl to the stew. They stayed in the Dukes Hotel, where they moved many big cartons in and out. Stir it all up and you have everything but a motive. I’m going to New York.”
“You can’t do that, Wally. Your department won’t send you.”
“I didn’t think they would. But you can.”
“Now you are out of your mind.”
“Not at all. A deputy assistant commissioner knows where the strings are. Pull one of them.”
Heston rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I’d like to go myself”—he shook his head—“but I can’t. I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter 15
Morning came painfully for Jonas. His head throbbed as if it had been pummeled by a hot iron bar, and his eyes were little more than red slits. His memory of the previous evening was all too vivid up to the point when Madame Sun placed a note with the terms of her offer next to the astrological chart she had prepared. Then the glasses of whiskey that contained more than his favorite scotch. After that his memory was blank until he wakened to find himself sprawled on the floor of his bedroom. Even the sight of the huge tray of food in the sitting room could not evoke a memory of what had transpired after leaving the Berkeley Hotel. He bathed in water as hot as he could tolerate, then stood under a cold shower. Slowly he rallied and was able to pack and be at Heathrow in time for his flight to Milan.
He alerted Ellie to his arrival and was gladdened by her cheerfulness. Nothing had dimmed his appetite and on the train to Florence he found the dining car, where he remained for the entire trip.
Jonas had been in Florence on two previous tours, but had stayed briefly each time. He was familiar with that part of the city radiating out from the Piazza Goldoni, site of the Excelsior and the recently revived Grand Hotel. There, too, is the Church of Ognissanti containing the crypt of Botticelli. From the hotel it was a five-minute walk to the American consulate, less than that to the British. Around the corner was the Palazzo Corsini with its rarely seen treasure of early Italian art.
He had made swift visits to the historical heart of the city and the great Duomo, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore with its baptistry and Giotto’s bell tower, gleaming in white, pink, and green marble. Once he walked to the Pitti Palace on a day that had been insufferably hot only to quickly retreat to the relative comfort of the Uffizi Gallery. In spite of the great city’s rank among the world’s art capitals, Jonas had done very badly. He had actually seen a small portion of the treasures about which he had so avidly read and routinely included in lectures delivered with the fervor of a native Florentine.
If Jonas was a relative stranger to the city, he was not so considered by the manager and chief concierge in the Excelsior. He had phoned personally, asking for the Belvedere suite, a magnificently appointed penthouse complete with a secluded terrace and commanding view of the city. He uncorked a bottle of Freisa d’Asti, a sparkling red wine with the distinctively unique aftertaste of raspberries. He downed a tumblerful.
The late afternoon sun cast its orange aura over the city. Jonas stood on the terrace gazing past the Duomo to the slopes that rose in the east, where, tucked into the hills, was the ancient town of Fiesole. Somewhere in the scope of his vision was Ellie’s villa. He returned to the sitting room and his briefcase. He took out the two vials of ink samples Stiehl had extracted from the Windsor drawing. A third contained the sliver of paper sliced from the same sheet. Jonas was impressed with the ordinariness of the treasure; the vials appeared empty and the slender strip of paper would surely be discarded by a zealous charwoman. They told a different story to Jonas—millions of dollars and a slain policewoman.
He planned to spend the weekend, stretching his stay until Tuesday. He would monopolize Ellie’s attention to gain her unquestioned loyalty and also observe her progress in finding or making the materials Stiehl would use in the final execution of the manuscripts. To this point, she had no reason to suspect the role she was actually playing. At all cost, Jonas had to keep it that way.
A sound of bells from surrounding churches announced the hour of six. He lifted the phone.
Ellie welcomed the challenge of guiding Jonas through the galleries, the museums, the piazzas and palazzos. She displayed her growing Italian vocabulary and took near-childish delight in taking him to the sanctified Print Room in the Uffizi and stunned him when he was introduced to the complete staff in the rarely visited restoration laboratories in both the Uffizi and the Laurenziana Library. There Jonas held sheets of centuries-old paper and priceless manuscripts. Through the influence of the Gambarellis, doors were opened to private collections and specially conducted tours by direttores of the Pitti Palace and Medici Museum. Ellie planned the daily itineraries and, like a conscientious Girl Scout leader, followed a tight timetable that left Jonas in a state of exhaustion at day’s end.
On Sunday a hot September sun shot the temperature above ninety, and by midafternoon Jonas complained that his feet had become too pained to walk
another step. They stopped for a sweet at the Trattoria Cantinetta in the Palazzo Antinori. He breathed heavily and wiped perspiration from his reddened brow.
“Tomorrow we’ll be in the country,” Ellie said. “It’s cooler there and we are prepared to show you how much progress has been made on the paper and inks.” She smiled, anticipating how proudly she would show Jonas her mezzo villa.
“We? Have you been working with some others?” Jonas asked, alarm in his voice.
“I have an assistant, a student from the university whom I turned loose on researching the chalks.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“It didn’t seem worth bothering you about.”
“This is wrong, Eleanor. Your work is highly confidential.”
“But Patzi’s just a college girl. In Florence there are many art historians and college people doing research and they all hire young people to run errands or help with the language.”
He forced a weak smile to mask his anger. “You may continue using this Patzi person for another week, then you must dismiss her. Under no circumstance may she spend time in your studio. We cannot have her suspicions aroused.”
“What’s to suspect?”
He leaned forward and said in a near whisper, “There’s been a critically important change in the nature of our work. The Royal Library has commissioned us to create precise duplicates of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings.” Barely a shred of the statement was true, but Jonas uttered it with the sincerity of an angel.
“Why would they want duplicates? They can make reproductions by the thousands.”
“They want to match the drawings as authentically as possible. That’s why you are searching for old paper . . . and inks. Several attempts have been made to steal the original drawings when they’ve been loaned for exhibition. Now the drawings never leave the library.”
“Sounds a little crazy. Next the French will display a copy of the Mona Lisa.”
“It hasn’t come to that, but great art has become so valuable that drastic steps are being taken. Now you can see that our work must continue in total secrecy.”
Ellie tilted her head and stared through the thick lenses to his squinting eyes. “I’m pretty good at keeping a secret as long as everything is on the up-and-up. I’m not very good on shady deals.”
Jonas’s lips formed a small “O” and he said with forced humor, “We’re making too much of this. Let’s enjoy our day and tomorrow I will see all of your accomplishments.”
Ellie had been surprised by the news that her papers and inks would be used to make copies of Leonardo’s drawings. She could not sleep, worried that her ink formulations would be detected if subjected to any modern technique for testing the age of a painting or the page from a manuscript. Yet she put on her happy face when Jonas arrived, and proudly showed him her mezzo villa. The tour ended in her studio and Ellie was in turn amused, then concerned that Jonas was struggling for breath after climbing two flights of stairs.
He sat at the long table and took the vials from his pocket. “We were permitted to take one of the anatomical drawings from the library and that allowed us to scratch ink samples from each side of the page. We also snipped out a sliver of the paper. You can match your inks and paper to these.”
Ellie held the tiny bottles up to the light. “There’s barely enough in each for a mass spectrometry evaluation and with luck we’ll get a chromatography reading as well.” She frowned. “I think we can match the inks exactly, but I’m not sure I can put the ink on paper, dry it, and pass it off as original to Leonardo’s time.”
“Why is that?” Jonas asked.
“When ink dries, it is absorbed into the paper. The chemicals in the ink migrate into the paper . . . into the tiny vegetable fibers that make up the paper. That migration forms a pattern that requires many years to become established.”
“I read something about that,” Jonas said. “Can we solve the problem?”
Ellie shrugged. “I didn’t think it would be a problem. Why would the Royal Library care, as long as the drawings look exactly like the originals?”
“Can you solve the problem?” Jonas repeated.
“I’m not sure. I’ll see if we can accelerate the aging process.” She sat on her stool and ran her hands through her hair. “Damn, it’ll take time. And money.”
“You’ll have the money,” Jonas assured her.
“I’ll see what my new friends at the University of Pisa can do.”
“You must tell them it is a research project . . .”
“Shush! I will be very discreet.” She placed a finger on Jonas’s lips and smiled.
Jonas smiled back. He seemed mollified and clapped his hands and said jovially, “Show me what else you’ve been up to.”
Ellie described her work area. “You can see where I’ve spent your money, but I promise I haven’t been frivolous. I’ll have inks tests made at the University of Pisa.”
“Be sure to include a test for a paint sample, anything to draw attention from the inks.”
“I can do that,” she replied. Jonas’s concern for security was obsessing him, she thought, but perhaps it was all part of the assignment.
“The test will tell me exactly what ingredients were used in making the inks used on the original manuscript. After formulating matching inks, I’ll apply them to the papers, dry them, then scratch off samples just as you did with the original drawing. Then I’ll run new mass spectrometry tests and compare the new to the old. I can’t predict how the inks will be absorbed by the paper, but I’m aware of the problem and will find a solution.”
“Won’t that depend on the paper itself? What tests will you run on the paper?”
“There are several to test the fiber content, but I won’t have to ageproof it. After all, every sheet is dated to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Some have beautiful watermarks verifiable to a period from about 1460 to 1510. No one knows exactly when the marks were first or last used. Each sheet is a minimum of thirty-by-twenty centimeters . . . just as you specified.”
Jonas leafed through the assorted sheets. “Nothing more than pieces of paper,” he said with mild amazement. He brought each close to his squinting eyes. “Yet they are exquisite.”
“This was a gift.” Ellie held up an old piece of paper. “And I paid four hundred dollars for this one,” she said, pointing to another. “That’s almost three quarters of a million lire! But look at the watermark.” She held it in front of a strong light. Then she held others to the light.
Jonas leaned close to see the distinctive thin lines running in one direction, more widely spaced and thicker lines running in the opposite. Near the center of the sheets was the outline of an animal or flower. The designs were crude, but identifiable, whether of a turtle, a bull’s head, or a religious symbol.
“Watermarks on the paper of fifteenth-century drawings in the Uffizi are similar to these,” Ellie said in a scholarly tone.
“What luck with the chalks?” Jonas asked.
“Not good news. I have red but no black.”
“Strange. Why not black?”
“Black chalk used during the Renaissance was quarried somewhere in Italy, but no one seems to know where. Naturally black chalk hasn’t been available for three hundred years. We can’t compound it either, not so it couldn’t be detected.”
“That is bad news. You feel that black chalk could be detected as something made in the last three hundred years?”
“There would be that risk.”
Jonas heard the word “risk” and shuddered. Would the skeptics be suspicious if none of the drawings contained black chalk? That would be a problem for Giorgio.
Neither he nor Ellie had seen Patzi enter the studio from the patio. She stood by her desk waiting to be acknowledged by Ellie. She wore jeans and a cotton blouse. She stepped noiselessly in her white Nikes. Her brown hair was cut short, the whites of her eyes contrasted with a deeply tanned and rather pretty face. Ellie looked past Jonas a
nd saw her.
“Patzi, salve!”
Jonas turned, surprised they were not alone. He stared at the girl, who had quietly returned Ellie’s greeting.
“How long have you been standing there?” he demanded.
“A minute, signore,” Patzi responded, intimidated by the huge man’s thunderous question.
Ellie stepped between them. “Patzi, this is Mr. Kalem. You’ve heard me speak of him. He has paid us a visit and wanted to see my studio and the work I’ve been doing. I thought you would be in classes today.”
“I forgot some books, Ellie. I . . . I did not know I would disturb anyone.” She gathered the books and dashed for the door. “Scusi, I am sorry.”
Ellie watched Patzi scurry down the terrace to her car and laughed nervously. “You scared the hell out of her.”
“What did she overhear?”
“Nothing she and I haven’t discussed before.”
“You talked to her about making black chalk and five-hundred-year-old inks?”
Ellie smiled. “In the scheme of things, chalk really isn’t very important to Patzi. Her biggest concern these days is a young man named Amedeo.”
Jonas returned to the Excelsior. His mood was mixed; Ellie was making excellent progress in spite of the problem with the black chalk. But she had brought an outsider into her confidence. Perhaps he made too much of it but a curious student could talk to friends, and however innocently spoken, her words would be remembered at a later time when news of the newly discovered Leonardos would be on the lips of everyone in Florence. Ellie must tell Patzi she was no longer needed. A week was too long to wait.
It was nearly seven o’clock. Stiehl had had several days to study Giorgio’s drawings. Jonas placed a call to New York and was greeted by Stiehl’s angry voice demanding to know why he had been “dealt a stack of Xerox copies.”
“They’re crisp and clean, all right. That’s the damned trouble,” Stiehl continued. “I have no feel for the original material . . . there’s no depth or character to the shadowed areas.
