“Would you be so kind as to leave us, Sister?” She spoke English with just enough of an accent to sound charming.
“Certainly.”
Sister Bettina stepped outside. I gently closed the door. Miss von Leuthen and I sat in the only two chairs the room offered.
“So, Ms. Jakubek, you are Willy Szulz’s avocat.”
“Yes. He and I have worked together on various things for almost a year.”
“I require a favor from him. He is making inquiries about me, trying to track me down. I must ask him to stop this. That kind of attention could cause people to think I have something to do with the dispute over Eros Rising. When you are talking about expensive art, wrong impressions can be dangerous.”
“Fatal, in the case of a guy named Ertel in Vienna.”
“Excellent example.”
She leaned forward, smiling. If my reference to a recent homicide jolted her, she didn’t show it. Without making any effort that I could see, she drew me in, giving me the feeling that she found me absolutely fascinating—a warm, pleasant feeling that I wanted to go on having. Instant and total empathy. It was as if, for her at that moment, I was the most important human being in the world.
“I have no idea how he thinks you could help him on the painting thing,” I said, “but perhaps if you talked to him you could satisfy him that you can’t.”
“Oh, he knows that. He wants to talk to me about a matter that has nothing to do with the painting.”
“Namely?”
“As his lawyer, perhaps you should ask him. All I am asking you to do is to take a message to him: I know what he wants. I do not know whether I can get it for him. If I can, and I decide that I should, I will get in touch with him. In the meantime, I must ask him to stop pushing. His persistence could get me killed.”
As I bathed in the melancholy smile that continued to brighten von Leuthen’s luminous face I abruptly realized something. She’s truly beautiful. Not hot or sexy, necessarily—I’m the wrong demographic to poll about that. But stunningly, classically beautiful in a way that defies age and time.
“I must be sounding melodramatic, and I regret that,” she said then. “But I am perfectly serious. Avrim Halkani is a very dangerous man. He won’t hesitate to kill. He’s done it before.”
“Who is Avrim Halkani?”
“He’s the partner of Ertel, the dead schlager you just referred to. Was the partner.”
I have zero German, but I could figure out schlager from the context: thug or gangster or something like that. Halkani, though, baffled me.
“Halkani sounds Lebanese. I thought Ertel and his partner were Palestinian.”
“Ertel was Palestinian. Halkani is Israeli.”
“Odd couple.” I said that because saying something seemed like an improvement over sitting there with my mouth open.
“I’m no expert, but I’ve been told that cross-border partnerships aren’t unheard of in the Israeli underworld. For someone with no conscience, you can see the advantages. So. Will you take my message to Szulz?”
“I will, but I’m not sure it will do any good.” I had to make a tactical decision. Surprise is generally a good tactic, so I decided to tell the truth. “Look, cards on the table. Whatever Willy wants your help with, I have no idea what it is. But I don’t think he’s the one behind the skip-trace you’re talking about.”
“Skip-trace?”
“Legal slang. It means trying to get contact information for someone who has left town.”
“I see. But someone is behind it.”
“Yes, and I think I know who.” Actually, I was certain I knew who, but why overplay my hand? “It does involve Eros Rising, and I’ll be happy to tell you all about it. But first I need to know what’s going on with Willy and you, because I can’t take a chance on undermining my own client.”
She picked up her purse the way women do when they’re about to get up and leave in a huff, but then I guess she thought better of it. A little snap colored her tone when her next words came out.
“All right. Very well. I suppose there is no other way.”
Keep your mouth shut. I bit my tongue and waited in silence. It’s one of the most effective interrogation techniques in the world—but hard to do. It worked.
“To begin with, I assume you have been briefed on me.”
“I have.”
“Well, don’t believe everything you heard. If I’d slept with all the men those stories claim I have, I wouldn’t have had time to piss.”
The casual vulgarity startled me, the way seeing a nun smoking would have. Nothing all that shocking about it, but it just didn’t go with the polished manners and continental style. I continued my silence. Why change a hit?
“There’s an old European saying: “I’ve never cheated on my husband—kings don’t count.’ My variation on that has been, ‘Genius doesn’t count.’ I have had affairs with men of genius—geniuses of power, mostly.”
“Okay.” I shrugged. No way I’d be lecturing anyone on unchastity.
“So I have committed many sins. But in my entire life, I have only done one thing that I consider truly wicked, one sin that I am still deeply ashamed of.”
“And that is—” I made little circular gestures with the fingers of my right hand to prompt her to continue.
“It was more than twenty-five years ago. I met a boy in Vienna. An American. Early to mid-twenties. I don’t know why I went after him. He was no kind of genius. I suppose I was just showing off.”
I thought I saw real remorse in her eyes just before she looked down for a moment at her lap.
“This doesn’t sound like the kind of thing where your penance would involve flogging, even before Vatican Two. I’m having trouble finding ‘wicked’ in there.”
Her smile this time combined indulgence with condescension. I gathered that my American naiveté was showing. Shaking her head, she looked back up at me.
“I’m not a collar robber.”
Huh? Never heard that one before. I must have looked blank, because she immediately explained.
“He was a seminarian. A collar robber is a woman who causes a candidate for the priesthood to realize that he has not been called to a celibate life, as the Church puts it. He didn’t want a fling, an afternoon dalliance now and then for a couple of months. He wanted a passionate affair that would cross oceans and span continents and go on forever. He left the seminary. Such a child. Such a precious little child. Even now, after all these years, thinking about it breaks my heart.”
I let it sit there for close to a minute. Even mediocre lawyers can generally tell when someone is lying. That’s easy: they’re almost always lying. The hard part is knowing when someone is telling the truth. And on the soul of my sainted mother, I knew at that moment that Alma von Leuthen was doing exactly that.
“Well,” I said, “I can’t imagine any way Willy could hustle that into enough money to justify a trip to Vienna, but I guess I should ask him about that.”
“You will have to. I simply have no idea. I know what he wants, but I don’t know why he wants it.”
“Okay. A deal is a deal. The guy who is trying to track you down is a loss-prevention specialist with Transoxana Insurance Company. I don’t have his number with me, but in an hour or so I can email it to you.”
“No!” Alarm washed over her face. “Nothing with computers! Hacking into computers is child’s play for Halkani.”
“All right, then. Would you prefer that I talk to the Transoxana guy for you?”
“Yes. That would be very kind.”
“Fair enough.”
I opened the reconciliation room’s door. Sister Bettina jumped up from a nearby pew and hustled over to join us.
“Back to St. Scholastica, Ms. von Leuthen?” she asked.
“Thank you, but no. If it would not be t
oo much trouble, please take me to the airport.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Jay Davidovich
“Do you think Jakubek is right about von Leuthen telling the truth?”
Proxy asked this as I shifted the phone to my left ear. I’d gotten off the phone with Jakubek less than two minutes before I’d called Proxy to tell her what Jakubek had told me. By now, both ears were sore.
“I do think she’s right, but it doesn’t really make any difference.”
“Why not?”
“Because what Jakubek told me is a hundred percent of what we’re going to get from von Leuthen. My plan smoked her out, she got her story together, and she told it—except to Jakubek instead of me. Ain’t gonna change. If I managed to surprise her in the sack with the French prime minister in a hotel room in Strasbourg and interrogated her, I’d get the same stuff she just fed Jakubek.”
“The Catholic Church must not hold grudges over corrupting seminarians,” Proxy said. “Why do you think she rates the shelter and chauffeur service?”
“I’ve been giving that some thought. Trying to come up with some link to the seminary in New Mexico getting hacked. Don’t see it. Jakubek said that giving shelter to people who need it is one of the things Benedictine monks and nuns have been doing for, like, fifteen-hundred years. It’s at the core of their tradition—von Leuthen contacts a Benedictine abbot in Austria, he calls a mother superior near Pittsburgh or whatever, bingo. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.”
“Maybe. I can barely tell a rosary from a pyx, but I’m thinking the abbot would need a better reason than pious tradition to make that call.”
“Proxy, what in the hell is a ‘pyx’?”
“One of the greatest Scrabble words ever. Now, focus: better reason.”
“How about that her life really is in danger? There’s probably a rule about that somewhere in all those books the Church has.”
“Fair point.” She sounded surprised. “We know independently that she was plugged in with some important people. That theory even adds credibility to her story, because it means that someone else who probably isn’t an idiot believed her.”
“Damn. I’m even smarter than I thought I was.”
“Look, Davidovich, I’m sorry, but I missed lunch. I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to nibble on some rabbit food while we talk.”
“Go ahead. It’s the kind of thing I’d do, except with real food.”
While Proxy worked on her celery stalk or whatever, I wondered whether ‘plugged in with’ was an intentional double entendre. I hadn’t decided by the time she spoke again.
“So what do I tell Quindel about selling the policy?”
“If it’s up to me, tell him if he even thinks about selling that policy he’s a fucking idiot, because there’s at least one chance in five of some major shit going down between the time Eros Rising leaves the Pitt MCM and its return.”
“Right.” Nibble nibble. “You mean, of course, that in your judgment there is a material prospect of an insured event taking place, resulting in a risk-quotient that, even after discounting optimistically for likelihood of occurrence, would substantially exceed any plausible premium.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“I’m trying to imagine Quindel reading that in a memo and then walking away from three hundred thousand dollars a year for three years.”
“Not likely, huh?”
“Hard to say. He’s a smart guy, and he knows how to run numbers. But nine hundred thousand dollars is real, and your qualitative judgment is—well, not so much.”
That sounded right to me. To a numbers guy, anything you say after “in my opinion” is just making stuff up.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Nesselrode is in New York, I assume on some fund-raising boondoggle. He wants to see me tomorrow so he can talk me into leaving von Leuthen alone. Why don’t I go ahead with the meeting, tell him that I’ve called off the dogs, and feel him out about some of this stuff? Not exactly a regression analysis, but at least we’d have one more piece of solid data for Quindel.”
“Are you confirmed for that meeting? When and where is it supposed to happen?”
I picked up the most expensive two and a half by six and a half-inch piece of stiff paper I’ve ever held in my life and ran my thumb greedily over its slick surface. A Post-It on the thing read “B4BP.”
“I got a FedEx package this morning from the organization that I assume he’s coming to see. The only thing in it was a ticket for Tuesday night’s game between the Yankees and the Orioles. Luxury suite three twenty-eight. I think he plans on seeing me there just before batting practice.”
“Not bad.” Proxy whistled. “Luxury suite tickets at Yankee Stadium cost more than Kim Kardashian spends on shoes in a month. No guarantee you get any real information, but it might be worth a shot.”
“Not only that, you could probably put the plane ticket and hotel room on Quindel’s budget.”
“I love this plan. Take no prisoners.”
She hung up. I sat there at the kitchen table that passes for my home office. I rehashed our conversation. Yep. Proxy’s double entendre was definitely intentional.
Chapter Thirty-six
Cynthia Jakubek
I was polishing off a discovery request in Clarence Washington’s case—all City of Pittsburgh Police Department loitering-or-prowling arrest records in the last three years—when Willy finally returned my call. I gave him the von Leuthen rundown.
“No kidding. Wow. Sonofagun. Maybe you coulda called me on your way to see her, huh?”
“I didn’t know where we were going until we were almost there. Plus, I didn’t think of it. Sorry. Probably would have just scared her off if I had, though.”
“Yeah, you’re prob’ly right.”
“Besides, I’m betting you haven’t been in church too often since your baptism. You probably don’t even know what a reconciliation room is. Might have taken you all afternoon just to find it.”
“You got that right. Speaking of that, what is a reconciliation room, anyway—basically a squeal room with nicer furniture?”
“Close enough. Bottom line, whatever you want from von Leuthen, my guess is that the only way to get it is not to go after it any more. The stunt Transoxana pulled has the lady seriously spooked, and for all I know she may still be blaming you for it.”
That’s when it happened. The little hesitation, the moment of calculation. I’d done it myself a dozen times with mom. Normal pre-dinner conversation, then just a hint of a pause: Casually work the detention into our chat, or let it go and hope for the best? Who knows, maybe my getting home an hour later than usual won’t come up.
“Hey, I’m not the CIA,” Willy said. “I can’t track this round-heeled broad down if she doesn’t wanna be found.” Short but clearly perceptible pause. “By the way, where is that reconciliation whatever at St. Ben’s?”
“If you’re facing the altar, it’s along the wall to your left, directly opposite the ends of the last six or seven pews. Why? You thinking of going to confession?”
“Who knows? Never can tell about me. When do they hear confessions these days?”
I am NOT buying this. Not for a second. But what was I going to do? Threaten to drop him as a client unless he stopped bullshitting me? Yeah, sure. This is Pittsburgh, not Hollywood. I played along.
“Saturday mornings right after eight o’clock Mass. And Monday through Friday at various times. I don’t know what they are, but you could find them in the bulletin.”
“So, basically, every day except Sunday.”
“Yep. They lock the church up right after everyone clears out following ten-fifteen Mass.”
“Okay.” Note of finality. “I think you’re right about not pushing her anymore. If she decides to come across for me, she’ll prob’ly do
it through you.”
“And then I’ll know what this is all about. That’s a hint, by the way.”
“Tell ya what,” he said. “Next Monday. Week from today. How about that?”
“Is that a promise?”
“More like a hope, but I’d call it a pretty good bet. See ya.”
Click. Why would Willy want to know when confessions were heard at St. Ben’s? Of course, he didn’t want to know that. What he wanted to know was when they weren’t being heard. I should have seen that. Thigh-high fastball on the inside corner—a pitch like that shouldn’t have gotten by me. But it did. I didn’t see the obvious until it was damn near too late.
The Third Tuesday in April
Chapter Thirty-seven
Jay Davidovich
I hate to sound like my dad, but why would anyone watch a baseball game from a luxury suite? Swordfights to the death in the arena—yeah, I could see that. Hey, nifty throat-slash—which reminds me: how about some of that steak tartare from the warming pan? To enjoy baseball, though, you have to concentrate—and a luxury suite is basically a thousand cubic yards of distraction.
I got to Suite 328 about the time the grounds crew was hauling a portable batting cage into place behind and looming over home plate, signaling the official start of batting practice. The handful of souls in the stands ninety minutes before game time seemed lost in the stadium’s vastness. Yankee-blue canvas hung slackly from the cage’s framework of aluminum fence poles, to stop any batted ball that wasn’t headed for the field of play. I love watching BP. It reminds me of getting to Red Sox games way early with dad so that we could catch the last ten or fifteen minutes. But nostalgia had nothing to do with tonight.
“How do you like it?”
Looking over my shoulder at the sound of the voice, I saw Nesselrode striding into the suite. He spread his arms expansively, as if the thing had been in his family for six generations.
“Magnificent.”
Nesselrode had already squatted in front of a mini-fridge to dig out two Guiness ales. He tossed one to me.
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