“I’m glad you’re here.” She gulped breath.
“I can tell. Grammatical errors must really turn you on. I’ll file that for future reference.”
“I’m just trying to help them with their work.” Her eyes danced with light and life as she smiled.
“You understand that they can’t hear you, right?”
“That’s just a rumor spread by the government to suppress dissent. A writer named Bill Vaughan said that in the newspaper once, so it must be true.”
I pulled her hard against my body, intoxicated by the scent of shampoo in her hair and of fresh soap on her face, basking in the gentle pressure of her blond head on my right shoulder and the needy grip of her fingers digging desperately into my ribs. God I love this woman. All the shit, all the mishigas, even the occasional impulsive slap—I don’t care. Doesn’t make any difference. I love her. I love her so much.
“So,” she said, stepping back from me but keeping her hands on my shoulders. “We’re in New York. Maybe not the greatest city in the world anymore, but one hell of a lot better than Alexandria, Virginia. What would you like to do?”
Now, a rookie husband would probably have blown that question. He would have suggested some New Yorkish adventure or (even worse) said something like, “Whatever you want to do, beloved.”
I’m no rookie. I fielded it cleanly. Got my butt down, eyes level with the screaming one-hopper, and snagged the ball back-handed in the webbing of my glove just before it would have gone skittering down the left field line. I picked Rachel up, left arm under her shoulders, right arm under her knees, and carried her giggling and squealing to the bed. While getting my shirt off I might have mentioned something about it being a silly question, but I really don’t remember.
***
A little over two hours later, I stood in the darkened room in front of a window looking over Broadway. Rachel slept contentedly, emitting occasional little lady-like snores that reminded me of an agile cat purring. I had the room phone on speaker as I poured a blow-by-blow account of my suite adventures into Proxie’s voice-mail. I kept my hands free so that I could use both of them to hold a towel dampened with hot water against my back. Eight distinct scratches there, each an inch or so long. Nice passion trophy, but about twenty minutes ago they’d started to sting.
“No doubt after tonight,” I told the phone. “Suspicion confirmed. Eros Rising is the target of a carefully planned theft that hinges on lending the thing to a museum in Vienna. Most likely scenario is a flush-and-switch. They get the thing into the open by arranging for the transfer, then somewhere on the way to Vienna they substitute a forgery for the real painting. They can probably count on weeks before someone suspects the forgery, but even if it’s caught while the painting is being readied for display, the thieves will be okay. The catch is that Nesselrode wants to turn the painting over to heirs of the original owner as some kind of vigilante Holocaust reparation gesture, and Halkani wants to turn it into five million dollars or so—probably by selling it back to us so we can cut our loss, if we’re stupid enough to insure it. Assuming I can reach Szulz’s lawyer tomorrow about turning over the letter, next stop will probably be Pittsburgh. Stand by for updates, you know the number if we have to talk further.”
I slung the towel over the shower-curtain rod in the bathroom, then came back out and just stood beside the bed, gazing at Rachel. In the subdued light she radiated a loveliness that took my breath away. Radiated a lot of other stuff too, of course: need, guilt, anxiety, insecurity, nauseating panic that I won’t find her desirable any more once her belly gets really big. Stuff that had played at least as big a role as lust in her come-on a couple of hours ago. But that was okay. Marriage is a package deal.
Kicking aside trousers and underpants along the way, I walked back over to the desk where the phone sat. I picked up the letter Nesselrode had given me. I’d promised to put the thing in Szulz’s hands, and I intended to do exactly that. But I hadn’t said anything about the envelope. No promise about not reading the letter before I turned it over.
Except, of course, that I don’t read German. It was addressed to “Alma.” Penmanship okay, like a guy’s, instead of exquisite, like a chick’s. Dated something like twenty-five years ago. Signed “Tabby.”
The room phone rang. What the hell? I hurried to answer before the polite burring could awaken Rachel.
“What does the letter say?” Proxy’s voice.
“It says a lot of stuff in German. Proxy, are you seriously still at your desk after ten-fifteen on a Tuesday night?”
“No, I’m at LAX before seven-thirty local time. I’m waiting for a flight home, checking my iPad for a PDF of a letter in German, and not finding one.”
“No wonder you didn’t get my fax.”
“Fax? I thought the Berlin Wall fell on the last fax machine left in the world. Don’t they have scanning capacity in the business center at whatever hotel Quindel found for you?”
“They barely have a business center. The next option after fax was Pony Express.”
An exasperated little squeal told me how frustrated Proxy was. Her next words confirmed it.
“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens!” (This is Proxy-speak for Shit!) “There’s a rush meeting in Hartford tomorrow night, because the window is closing on the Pitt MCM opportunity.”
“Please tell me I’m not invited.” Please please PLEASE! I haven’t prayed for anything so hard since my third date with Rachel.
“You’re the guest of honor. Command performance.”
“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.”
“Try to say something constructive, Davidovich. Quindel’s last memo called this a five million-dollar decision. That would be one of the emails sitting in the in-box that I’m guessing you haven’t checked in the last twelve hours.”
“Okay, steady soldier.” I covered my eyes with the heels of my hands and ran my fingers through hair that, frankly, could have used some Head ’n Shoulders. “There has to be an all-night Federal Express/Kinkos somewhere in midtown. I’ll get the thing copied, scanned, and emailed to you in the next ninety minutes or so. If you don’t get it before your flight takes off, you can sleep on the plane and read it while the limo is taking you from La Guardia to Hartford.”
“Maybe…” Proxy’s voice trailed off in grudging displeasure.
“Tell me something.” The new voice startled me. I glanced over to see Rachel out of bed and slipping into a white, Millennium Hotel robe. “Why do people just assume that all Jews can read German?”
“I don’t think anyone assumes that, Rache.”
“Who’s that?” Proxy demanded.
“My wife, Rachel.”
“It’s like assuming that all white people have natural rhythm.”
“I don’t think you’ll get much buy-in on that one, either.”
“WHO?” Proxy again. “Are you sure?”
“Give me the letter,” Rachel said.
“Okay, Proxy, I’m gonna put you on speaker. Unless I’m mistaken, my beloved wife—not a call girl, not a hooker, not a spicy little bundle of expense-account padding but my wife, Rachel Davidovich—is proposing to favor us with a sight-translation of this little missive.”
“Go ahead.” Proxy’s audible sigh chilled three thousand miles’ worth of electrons.
I gave the letter to Rachel, who gazed at it dubiously while she flipped the room lights on.
“Okay. ‘My Dearest and Most Tender Alma.’ We begin badly, with a cliché from Young Werther’s copybook, but no matter. We heroically continue. ‘I approach the glorious day when I can rid myself of the final constraint and think of joining you again. You have never left my thoughts, true heart. I know you don’t believe me. You thought me bound by a chain I could never break. I have proven you wrong.’ Proven! Underlined with an exclamation point, if you please. ‘I enclose
a copy of my Acta Formalis Defectionis.’ That last part was phonetic. The words aren’t German. They look like Latin, and I don’t know what they mean. ‘I submitted it to my’ something-something, can’t tell, superior, maybe, ‘to my superior yesterday morning. Now you know! Now there is no going back for me, dearest heart! For me, or for you either! I count the minutes until I can lay my poor eyes on you again. Ever, ever, ever yours, Tabby.’ I hope that was helpful. If you will both excuse me, I am now going to go vomit.”
“Thanks,” Proxy said as Rachel returned the letter to me.
“Proxy, before you ask me whether the envelope Nesselrode gave me had any enclosure with the letter, which it didn’t, I have to know who the hell ‘Young Werther’ is. Or was.”
“Title character in a lushly romantic novel by Goethe.” Proxy said this as if it were something even guys whose only degrees were in civil engineering should know. “I’d love to see what ‘Tabby’ enclosed with the letter, because I’ll bet that was what Szulz spent the cost of a round-trip ticket to Vienna to get his hands on.”
“Well whatever it is, I don’t think it’s a game plan for an art heist twenty-five years in the future. I’ll sound out Szulz when I give it to him.”
“You’re going to have to hustle to get that thing to a guy in Pittsburgh and still make it to Hartford, Connecticut, in time for a meeting at six tomorrow night.”
“If it was worth a trip to Vienna for him, it ought to be worth a trip to New York. I’m planning on hopping a limo for Hartford at La Guardia at, say, three tomorrow afternoon. If Szulz wants the thing that badly, he can get to La Guardia by then. Twelve-to-five he shows.”
“No bet,” Proxy said. “Sleep well, and spend Quindel’s money wisely.”
The Third Wednesday in April
Chapter Thirty-nine
Cynthia Jakubek
“Seriously? You’re telling me at seven forty-five in the morning that if my client can drop everything he’s doing and get from Pittsburgh to New York by three this afternoon you’ll give him a document that he’ll otherwise receive whenever you get around to it?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Davidovich said.
“That’s the most high-handed thing I’ve heard since the last time I was in court.”
“Yeah, I’ve been working on my self-esteem.”
“All right, I’ll pass it on.”
“Have him try to let me know either way, okay?”
“Sure, Davidovich.” I couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of my voice, maybe because I didn’t try very hard. “We always strive for courtesy.”
Exasperation undoubtedly showed as I punched END CALL. How in the hell was I going to present this to Willy? He deeply appreciates chutzpah, but only on his side of a deal.
I dialed his number and got Amber, whispering—which probably meant that Willy was still snoring blissfully a few feet from her. Before I could tell her that she’d better wake him up for this one, I heard his groggy voice in the background.
“That’s okay, I can take it. And how about some coffee?” Then, much more clearly, “What’s up?”
I told him. I’ll say one thing: the news sure woke him up. The last time I saw that fast a transition from grumpy to giddy, controlled substances were involved.
“Really? You serious? Holy shit…What time is it?”
“Seven-forty-nine.”
“Almost eight…Shit. Lemme get my computer on. This is the big Jew, right?”
“Yeah, Willy, the tall dude.”
“Let’s see…Eleven-ten, gets in by twelve-thirty…Little tight at this end but, maybe, let’s see, no luggage…I can do this! Made in the shade! No sweat! C.J., you’re a genius!”
“Right now I feel more like a messenger girl, but I’ll take it. You have a pen handy? I want to give you the big guy’s mobile phone number so you can call him and confirm the hook-up.”
“Do me a favor, C.J., text it, can you? I gotta fly. I don’t even have my boxers on yet.”
TMI, Willy, TMI. I smiled anyway. Couldn’t help it.
“Can do on the text thing, Willy. Have a safe trip. And, if you think about it, sometime maybe you could tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Monday for sure, Counselor, like I said. Take it to the bank. Gotta go.”
I shrugged, remembering one of my mom’s old lines: You can laugh or you can cry, so you might as well laugh. I checked my watch: seven fifty-one. One-tenth of a billable hour—on the nose.
Chapter Forty
Jay Davidovich
“This legit?”
Szulz looked at the letter to von Leuthen that he was holding in his left hand, and then at the envelope in his right. We’d just completed the hand-off: two-twelve p.m. at LaGuardia International Airport’s livery service area.
“No idea. I’m just the messenger.”
“This envelope was already open when you gave it to me.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t read the letter while it was still in the envelope.”
“So you know what this says?”
“Yep.”
“And you kept a copy of it?”
“No, Willy, I memorized it. Of course I kept a copy of it.”
Szulz gave me a long, searching look. Not a hard look. No anger in his eyes, no twitching in his facial muscles, no teeth-clenching. Just appraisal. Was I dumb or did I have the best poker-face east of Vegas? That’s the question I read in his expression. In Szulz’s opinion, apparently, that letter should have made me smack my forehead with the heel of my hand and blurt out that it explains everything. Well, whatever it was I sure hadn’t figured it out yet. So I guess I’d have to go with dumb.
If you have to get from LaGuardia to Hartford, Connecticut, an air-conditioned Chrysler Imperial driven by someone else is the least unpleasant way I know of to do it. Plenty of room to stretch out my long legs. Cold MGD to take the edge off parting with Rachel earlier than I’d planned. Some old horse opera on TCM, muted so that I could enjoy one of Sirius XM’s jazz channels while I watched guys in white hats and guys in black hats blaze away at each other with smoking, soundless six-shooters. At times like this, loss prevention ain’t a bad gig.
I reached the Transoxana campus in Hartford around five-twenty. Not the beehive of activity that you’d see on a weekday morning, of course, but not just a corporal’s guard standing watch either. Transoxana has local offices and billions of dollars at risk in every time-zone on the planet. It manages all of them from Hartford. Transoxana HQ doesn’t completely close for Christmas and New Year’s, much less for weekday evenings.
After the usual badge-flashing and log-signing, I found myself alone in a conference room heavy on mahogany and set up with real and decaf coffee, four varieties of soda, and bottled water. I figured Proxy would have called if she’d wanted a pre-meeting. She hadn’t, so I grabbed some real coffee, found a side seat toward what I assumed would be the foot of the table, and booted up my laptop to check emails. I had twenty-seven, but only one of them mattered much:
Where are we on interviewing von Leuthen? Advise ASAP.—Quindel
I stared at the thing for seven seconds, not quite gaping but with my mouth slightly open. I couldn’t believe it. Could not believe it—because it couldn’t possibly be true.
Could Quindel have not bothered to read the memo Proxy had undoubtedly sent him reporting my von Leuthen scoop? Not likely, but not beyond the realm of human possibility. Could he have read it and completely forgotten it? I wouldn’t bet much on that one, either, but I suppose it could have happened.
But no way Quindel would have sent an intra-corporate communication outside channels. No way he would have contacted me directly, circumventing Proxy. We’ll find a loophole in the Second Law of Thermodynamics before that happens. Quindel is a lot of things, some of them unprintable, but dumb and lazy are two things he ain’t.
Jay Davidovich
I was still going over the Sent From data on Quindel’s email to see if I could spot anything that seemed off about it when Proxy came in and started briskly setting up for the meeting: laptop booted up, mobile phone off and out of sight, mini-legal pad beside the laptop. That reminded me to update my voice-mail prompt and then turn my own mobile phone off—ironclad protocol for a Quindel meeting. Then I showed Proxy the message.
“Holy…” She choked off the vulgarity—habit, I guess. “Thousand-to-one Quindel didn’t send this.”
“Agreed—and I wouldn’t give you a thousand-to-one on the outcome of a North Korean election.”
“So apparently someone has hacked into Transoxana’s computer network.”
“Or at least into the marginal ganglion of the network that connects to my laptop.”
“They’d have to get past fourteen firewalls to do any real damage to the system.” Proxy’s lips pursed fetchingly in concentration. “Forward this to Tech Support—no, wait. Do you mind if I just jump on your machine and do it myself?”
Not really a question but for form’s sake I said, “Be my guest.” I had to admire the Proxygram she tapped out for the benefit of whichever techie had the short straw tonight:
Analyze message below and report to pvs@transoxusa only. Do not, say again NOT, reply to forwarder or original sender. Implement standard security protocols but take no action, say again NO ACTION, transparent to original sender.
She almost hit SEND without asking me but remembered just in time. I nodded. CLICK!
The table had now started to fill. Andy Schuetz, our ex-FBI guy. Some gray-hair from Legal with that I’m-a-lawyer-and-you’re-not look all over him. A Quindel flunky in a khakis-and-polo-shirt outfit. And a senior secretary whose presence meant that we’d have official minutes for this meeting—in other words, All right, Ms. Shifcos, let’s see how you perform under pressure. Finally Quindel strolled in, trailed by another flunky in charge of carrying his briefcase. Quindel was wearing blue jeans and a dress shirt with French cuffs. I’m serious. True, they were designer blue jeans that probably cost about four hundred bucks, but even so. We all seated ourselves and—no other word for it—came to order.
Collar Robber: A Crime Story Featuring Jay Davidovich and Cynthia Jakubek Page 16
