“‘I’d rather be the first man here than the second man in Rome.’”
“Julius Caesar, right?”
“Yep.”
“Who ended up catching a shiv from his fifteen closest friends.”
“But you can’t say he didn’t get the point.”
Settling back a little on my fanny, I dabbed cheese from the left corner of my mouth, where it had dribbled while I was laughing at Phil’s line. I felt a happy, comfortable warmth flowing through me. How many months had passed since I’d just had fun like this? Not professional satisfaction, not winning a negotiation or a motion. Pure fun.
Too many.
I got a kick out of being pursued, having a good-looking guy with wispy, straw-colored hair and perpetually curious Alice-blue eyes compare me to a rose. A guy who could bat around allusions from ancient history. In New York, recreational sex is easier than smoking but real intimacy is as rare as a feminist rapper. And once I’d opened my own shop in Pittsburgh—forget it. By now I was as hungry as hell, and not for pizza. Our lips began moving toward each other.
The phone rang. Burred, actually, in a politely insistent way. Phil looked toward it.
“Should you get that?”
“Not a chance.”
He didn’t need any more than that. Shoving the pizza box across the rug, he reached me in one heroic knee scoot. Supporting my back with his right arm, he gave me a kiss like I hadn’t had since the last presidential election. I kissed him right back. Clutched his shoulder and back with the arm I’d used to keep Willy from the cop. Let him know I meant it. We kissed through four rings and past the voice-mail beep.
He could have had me right then and there, rug burns and all. Off the pill for well over a year, no condom, I didn’t care. I could tell he knew it. But he didn’t take me. He pulled back from the kiss, breath coming in brief pants, eyes alive with fierce desire.
“I don’t want to cheap this out. The first time we make love, I want us to do it right. I want you to feel as wonderful about it as I will.”
What I wanted was to slap him and tell him not to do me any favors. He was probably right and I hated that. I didn’t slap him.
“You’re a gentleman,” I whispered instead. “I’ll take the thorns with the rose.”
He smiled—and it’s a good thing for him that he did.
Ten minutes later, after another deep kiss and an exchange of fanny pats, I closed my office door behind him, returned to my desk, and retrieved the voice-mail message.
“Hi, this is Abbey Northanger. Tally bit.”
The Second Tuesday in April
Chapter Twenty-eight
Jay Davidovich
“Look at that.” I’d finished scanning the headlines so I clicked off my iPad. “Putin hasn’t massed troops on Ukraine’s border for two whole days now.”
“It’s great having a foreign policy expert in the family.” Rachel murmured this without looking up from her own iPad. “But if they make you secretary of state and we have to move to Washington, I’ll need a new dress.”
“I only know three things about foreign policy: Israel has a right to exist, don’t go to war by mistake, and Russians are assholes.”
“Jews should know better than to traffic in ethnic stereotypes.”
“Maybe—but don’t pick a fight in an Irish bar.”
“What’s with the blood-is-thicker-than-water stuff all of a sudden?”
“Not sure, to tell you the truth.”
Actually, I knew exactly where it was coming from. It was coming from Dany Nesselrode. Keeping a magnificent painting out of the hands of the Jewish family it rightfully belonged to (maybe) was a cultural tragedy, gnawing at his guts. For me it was business as usual, interfering with my enjoyment of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. That’s why he’d cussed me out. That bothered me. So I chalked it up to displacement, or whatever the shrinks are calling it these days.
I put my left hand on Rachel’s belly. I knew I didn’t have much chance of feeling anything yet, but it just seemed right, somehow. Sitting here in the Ob/Gyn’s waiting room like some regular guy who worked in an office and didn’t encounter thugs and Tasers on the job. What would that be like, having a real office job? Ten-fifteen, time to grab some more coffee! Ooh, quarterly budget report due in three days—pressure-city, baby! No whiffs of electrically burned human flesh. No wondering whether I’d get iced before the tyke in Rachel’s womb had his first Little League game or her first Suzuki recital.
A woman in nurse duds appeared at an internal doorway on the other side of the waiting room. She called Rachel’s name. Planting an affectionate peck on my forehead as she rose, Rache strode off in response to the summons.
Just in time, because my mobile phone started to vibrate. Pittsburgh number. Shysterette? Yep. I stepped out into the elevator lobby to take the call.
“What’s up?”
“You guys can’t close your Eros Rising file until the Museum decides for sure that it won’t return the thing, right?”
“Not my call, but that makes sense. Why?”
“I have a name you might want to check out. Alma Von Leuthen. She could have something to do with the excitement in Vienna just before we closed the deal.”
I couldn’t see playing dumb. After all, unless I missed my bet, her client had been there. I decided to ask a pertinent question instead.
“What can you tell me about Alma whoever?”
“Not much. Spent most of her life in Vienna. Probably late fifties, early sixties by now. Not clear where she is at the moment, except probably not Vienna.”
“And what do you think she might contribute?”
“Maybe nothing. But if some kind of wheels-within-wheels thing is going on with that painting, the way her name came up makes me think she probably has her fingerprints on it somewhere.”
“And just how did her name come up?”
“Can’t tell you.”
I mulled that over. Some kind of wheels-within-wheels thing? Yeah, that thought had crossed my mind, for sure. The snatch attempt on the elevator meant that Ertel’s surviving chum, or Nesselrode, or Szulz, or somebody else wasn’t going to give up just because we signed some papers. Plus, Nesselrode was Transoxana’s collaborator and Szulz was shysterette’s client, so we both still had skin in the game. Shysterette not telling me where she’d gotten this Alma character’s name probably meant she’d gotten it from Szulz—and Szulz was a walking red flag.
“I’m guessing that you’re calling me with this,” I said, once my mull had run its course, “because you and Szulz don’t have the wallet to do a proper work-up on Miss Alma, so you’d like Transoxana to do it for you.”
“Pretty much.”
“What’s in it for us?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe after your adventure in the elevator there are some things you’d like to learn from people who value my good opinion.”
Boy, that was subtle. No way around it, I liked the shysterette. Couldn’t help it. Just did.
“Can you guarantee delivery on that?”
“Don’t know yet. By the time you have the work-up done, though, I will.”
“Okay, I’ll run this up to the next level.”
“All I ask. You have my number.”
I called Proxy with the pitch.
“I’ll have to give that some thought,” she said.
Translation: Only if it’s on someone else’s budget. So twelve to five the answer was no. I shrugged.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Cynthia Jakubek
“He said he got the idea from you, Cindy.” Abbey said this to Sean and me in Sean’s personal office, which is only a little smaller than the floor space for my entire suite. “A hundred thousand up front and guaranteed, with the remainder vesting on the day Sean and I are married.”
“Wel
l, at least we know what he is.” Sean favored us with an impish, tight-lipped smile. “Now we’re just negotiating.”
“No doubt about it.” Abbey nodded. “He’s a whore.”
“He’s not just a whore,” I said. “He’s a whore in a hurry.”
That got me Sean’s full attention.
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s scarily close to proposing an explicit quid pro quo. He could be putting his license at risk—not to mention his job. He wouldn’t be doing that this early unless he suddenly decided that time wasn’t his friend anymore.”
“Isn’t that what we wanted?” Sean said. “Hasn’t he fallen into our trap?”
“He’s either fallen into our trap—or he’s called our bluff.” Looking from Sean to Abbey and back, I could tell that they both knew exactly what I meant.
“You’re right.” Sean’s tone suggested more reluctance than I like to hear when I’m right. “So what are our options—other than just, uh—”
“Bending over and enjoying it,” Abbey suggested, completing her prim lover’s thought. “Yes, other than that one, because I don’t like it very much.”
“Option two,” I said, “is I come on like Sister Mary Hardnose with a ruler. Send him a nastygram about how I have a duty to file a complaint with the bar unless he tells me that, on reflection, he realizes how inappropriate his proposal was. Best case, he responds with a pro forma denial but feels that he has to back the denial up by cooperating truthfully with the annulment process.”
“What’s worst case?” Sean’s question.
“Worst case, he says that Abbey fabricated the whole thing, dares me to go to the bar with a complaint, and backs it up by turning his back on the annulment procedure for good.”
“High risk/high reward.” Sean’s expression took on a sudden calmness as I imagined him absorbed in mental mini-max exercise. “How about Option 3?”
“We bluff right back.”
“Love the sizzle.” Abbey grinned. “What’s the steak?”
“Give him an appointment to make his presentation about how he’s worth four hundred thousand dollars. Suggest sometime late next week and see if he pushes hard to do it earlier. If he does, agree. Have him submit his CV. Hear him out, with a couple of colleagues who aren’t tone-deaf.”
“Get to the bluff part.” That was Sean in no-nonsense mode, but I could tell from the gleam in his eyes that I had him hooked.
“Make some encouraging noises after he’s finished. Tell him you’ll get back to him promptly. Then, as things are breaking up, take him aside privately. Tell him you liked what you heard, but there’s someone offering the same services for fifty thousand instead of four hundred. Suggest that he think things over and get back to you. You—not Abbey.”
“Yes!” Sean’s eyes lit up like a batter’s when he spots a hanging curve. “Odds are he panics, comes back to Abbey with an explicit proposal, and we’ll have him right by the, uh—”
“Throat,” Abbey said sweetly.
The Second Wednesday in April
Chapter Thirty
Jay Davidovich
“Who just joined?” Proxy’s question, right after a mellow tone sounded on the conference call line.
“Andy Schuetz.” Andy and I get along fine. He joined Transoxana after mandatory retirement from the FBI. Still has some friends at the Bureau, and knows guys in Brooklyn who’d like to get off with community service if the subject ever comes up. Gets his calls returned, so it doesn’t take him long to put together a dossier.
“Is that everybody?” I asked, ready to click off ESPN.com on the computer on my kitchen table.
“It’ll have to do.” I visualized Proxy glancing at the clock in the lower right corner of her computer screen at her office. “I have another meeting in twenty minutes.”
“Okay. Alma von Leuthen.” Andy cleared his throat. “Sixty-two years old. Austrian family that goes back to before the Thirty Years War. Had the ‘von’ from birth, but by the time she came on stage it didn’t have much money attached to it anymore. Fine arts degree from Salzburg University. Married twice, widowed once, divorced once. Husbands were a concert pianist and a banker, in that order. Bounced around Europe a bit, but Vienna has always been home.”
“She apparently started bouncing around again recently, according to Willy Szulz’s lawyer,” I said.
“Specifically, on the day this Ertel dude passed away.” I distinctly heard pages in Andy’s old-school spiral steno notebook riffling over the line. “Caught a flight for Geneva around three o’clock that afternoon.”
“Suggestive,” Proxy said.
“Suggests she didn’t kill the guy.” Andy sounded like a cop on a roll.
“But maybe knew about it before it happened.” I threw that in just for luck.
“Because why?”
“Because otherwise it’s a damned funny coincidence.”
“I think you’re ahead of the data curve, Jay,” Proxy said. “But it’s a provocative thought.”
“So where is she now?” I asked.
“Don’t know, except not Vienna and not Geneva. And wherever it is, I’m betting she didn’t get there on a passport issued to Alma von Leuthen, because it’s not showing up, and it should be.”
Dong!
“Who just joined?” You had to have a delicately tuned ear to pick up Proxy’s impatience at the late entry.
“Dan Quindel. Sorry I’m late.”
“You get a pass since your department is footing the bill for Andy’s work.” Every piece of internal work at Transoxana gets charged to somebody’s budget, and Proxy gets a real thrill when it’s not hers.
“What have I missed?”
“I’m emailing you a recap right now,” Proxy said. “We’re just getting to the good part—I hope.”
“Guess I have the floor again.” Andy cleared his throat. “Frau von Leuthen has a bit of a rep. Known in certain circles as a notch-cutter.”
“Meaning what? She’s a slut?” That came from Quindel, so I relaxed while the inevitable Quindel/Andy “mine is bigger than yours” thing ran its course.
Andy:“More like a power groupie. A Pamela Harriman. Back in the early days of the space program, when the original seven astronauts were training at Cape Canaveral, this bevy of hotties would run around at cocktail parties, saying ‘three’ or ‘four’ or something to tell how many of the guys each one had gotten into the sack with. Same idea here, except without the advertising.”
Quindel:“I didn’t know they had astronauts in Vienna.”
Andy:“In von Leuthen’s league it was more like royalty, prime ministers, ambassadors, generals, some of the senior UN types that Vienna is crawling with, and the occasional cultural superstar when things got slow. Sometimes actual affairs and sometimes one-night stands. She never nailed anyone who helped elect a pope, but not because she didn’t try.”
Quindel:“Too bad they didn’t have G-Eight summits when she was in her prime.”
Andy:“At least one guy from last year’s G-Eight summit would say she’s still in her prime.”
I started paying attention again because I figured the back-and-forth had finally reached Proxy’s choke-point. It had.
“Very entertaining.” She didn’t sound entertained. “But what does all that have to do with Eros Rising?” It says a lot about Proxy that none of the males on the call came close to chuckling at that question.
“Not certain,” Andy said, absolutely dead-pan, “but anytime you put a little black dress and a little black book together, you’ve got a chance for pillow talk, blackmail, and back-door influence. That stuff might come in handy if you’re working some kind of international scam involving a pricey pic.”
Time for me to chime in.
“That same stuff could come in handy if you were trying to rig bids on a gas pi
peline or subvert a central Asian government. I’m the one who brought von Leuthen into the conversation, so I feel a little responsibility here. Do we have anything except a Pittsburgh lawyer’s intuition and a Vienna cop’s question to me to make us think that Alma von Leuthen has something to do with the painting we insured?”
Absolute silence for five seconds. Seriously, you could have heard crickets chirp. Then Andy spoke up.
“Well…yeah.”
“Well yeah, what?” Proxy asked.
“I mentioned that she has a fine arts degree and she’s an arty type. She’s a painter. She paints.”
“Oh,” I said.
“She paints,” Proxy said.
“Shit,” Quindel said.
“Yeah, she paints,” Andy said. “You know, like Hitler.”
“Oooo-KAY.” I imagined Proxy block-deleting the emails she’d undoubtedly been reviewing while we chatted. “Thanks to all of you for your helpful input. Jay, I’ll call you right back.”
Click! Eight seconds later my phone buzzed. Proxy. I answered.
“Jay, I think you need to track von Leuthen down and have a talk with her.”
“Got it.” I said that as if I had some idea of how I was going to find a foreign national Andy hadn’t managed to locate. “By the way, how did you manage to dump the budget hit for Andy’s work on Quindel?”
“That’s right, I haven’t told you yet, have I? The Museum wants a quote for insuring Eros Rising against loss, theft, or damage while it’s on loan to a museum in Vienna and traveling back and forth. Quindel’s department has to rate the risk.”
“On loan to a museum in Vienna. Sounds like the deal Nesselrode floated when we were there.”
“Yeah, it sounds a lot like that.”
Oh.
Chapter Thirty-one
Jay Davidovich
How do you find a needle in a haystack? You get a big magnet and make the needle come to you. Or if you don’t have a big magnet, a lot of small magents.
Collar Robber: A Crime Story Featuring Jay Davidovich and Cynthia Jakubek Page 11
