by Anthony Hyde
When the lock popped open, I lifted the lid. Two paintings, neatly wrapped, lay inside. I smiled. “Well, well,” I said.
“Yes,” said Crowder. “And I’ve paid for them.”
“So you have. The Wilfredo Lam... and the two hummingbirds?”
“Yes, damn you. Give that case to me.”
I held it out to him—but kept hold of the handle. “One thing more, Mr. Crowder. Do you know what discretion means? Do you know how to be discreet?”
“I suppose I do.”
I’m a nice guy, don’t you think? But the look I gave Crowder wasn’t so nice. “Keep your mouth shut. Don’t call Victor. Don’t. That way, you’ll have no trouble from me.”
He nodded and took the case. Down the hall, two old ladies were hurrying along. “Come on, Ethel, come on! We’ll miss our train.” I watched Thomas Crowder pass through the crowd. He was going home to his “residence,” where his maid, Maria, would probably bring him a drink. When he was gone, I walked out of the station and found a taxi to take me to Victor’s hotel.
Chapter Nine
Victor Talks
Victor wasn’t in his room.
I should have guessed.
At the front desk, I asked, “Is there a coffee house near the hotel? Not a Starbucks, something special. Maybe an older place...”
The clerk frowned but then broke into a smile. “You must mean the Last Drop!”
I found the Last Drop two blocks away. Victor was sitting at a table by himself, newspapers spread all around him. He frowned as I came over.
“It’s okay,” I said, sitting down. “Mr. Crowder has his paintings.”
His expression was blank, then furious. “I see.”
“No, Victor, I see.”
He grunted. “You’re such a bright boy, Paul.”
“We came to Los Angeles because this is where Crowder lives. You never intended to do a deal with the insurance company, did you?”
“No, no. That would have been much too dangerous. We certainly would have been caught.”
“Besides,” I said, “you’re a dealer. You bring buyer and seller together. There was something to sell. You knew who wanted to buy.”
“Exactly.” He brightened. “And like all dealers, I try to create satisfaction, good feeling. True, Harold Green has lost his paintings. But he will receive $3,000,000 from the insurance company. Thomas Crowder has long wanted paintings by those great artists. Now he has them, and at a very cheap price. As for us, well, $200,000 each is a reasonable fee, don’t you think? So, you see—something for everyone.”
I rested my hand on my chin and stared at him, slowly shaking my head. “Victor, I made Crowder open the suitcase. Two paintings. You sold him only two paintings. You kept the third one, the Tom Thomson, for yourself. I suppose you’ve lined up a buyer? Back in Toronto?”
When people smile, they show their teeth. But a dog shows its teeth when it snarls. Victor’s smile was a snarl. “What if I have?”
“How much is he willing to pay?”
“$50,000.”
“Victor, do you really expect me to believe that? The Tom Thomson is a great painting and has to be worth—”
“All right, all right,” he interrupted. “$300,000. Cash.”
“Good. You keep that for yourself. Zena and I will split the $600,000 from Crowder. Equal shares.”
“That is hardly fair. For one thing, I advanced each of you $10,000.”
I waved my hand. “Okay, we’ll pay you back.”
Now his smile was really a smile. “Do you think you can speak for your beautiful lady friend?”
His tone was mocking, making fun of me. “What do you mean, Victor?”
“You think you’re so smart, Paul.”
“I’m smart enough. Smart enough to figure out your little scam.”
“Yes, but have you figured out the beautiful Zena’s? Haven’t you felt, all along, that our mysterious lady was up to something, playing a game of her own?”
I didn’t say anything. Of course, he was right. From the very first time I’d seen her, I’d guessed that something was going on that I didn’t understand. Who was she? What was she doing? How had she become involved with Victor Mellish? Why had she become a thief? Why did she hate Harold Green? With Zena, I’d only ever had questions... and adored those wonderful eyes.
Just then, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out.
“Paul? This is Zena. Everything is all right. No one followed me.”
She believed Victor, she was still playing his game. But I knew Victor was right. She was playing a game of her own.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“So what should I do? You will give them the paintings?”
“Sure,” I said, “don’t worry.”
I think she heard something in my voice because now she was silent. Then she said, “Is everything all right?”
“Yes. Just go back to your hotel.”
Another silence. Then, “You’re sure, Paul?”
“Yes.” And then, before she could break off, I added, “Zena, I know about Lisbon. I know you’re leaving.”
“But that’s not until later tonight. I’ll see you at my hotel.”
I ended the call. Victor grunted. “Lisbon? Tonight? We’ll have to hurry.” He laughed. “You’ve had a surprise for me, now maybe I’ll have one for you.” He quickly drained his coffee cup. Victor never forgot his coffee. “Come along, dear boy. My car is outside.”
Chapter Ten
The Truth about Zena
Zena’s hotel was in Santa Monica, a pretty part of Los Angeles. Palm trees line the streets, and beautiful girls walk on the beach as the Pacific surf rolls in. In the summer, the breeze is cool and the sky is blue—but you’ve seen it on TV.
The hotel was old. The elevator was tiny. Going up to Zena’s room, I was jammed tight against Victor. Something hard dug into my leg. “What’s that?” I said.
The door opened and we stepped out. “This?” said Victor, reaching into his pocket. “This is a pistol. As you see, I am now pointing it at you. Please. The lovely Zena’s room is that way.”
He motioned with the gun. And one look at his face told me that he might use it. This was a new Victor, one I’d never seen before.
I went up to Zena’s door and knocked. Victor was right behind me. As the door opened, he pushed hard against my back and I staggered in. By the time I found my balance, he had closed the door and was leaning back against it, the gun still in his hand.
Zena had backed up against the bed. Three suitcases were piled on top of it. The red one, from Crowder. And two others—packed and closed. “What’s going on?” Zena said.
Victor waved the gun, motioning me to move away. He looked at Zena. “You know perfectly well what’s going on.” He smiled. “Are you going somewhere? Lisbon? I’ll just relieve you of some of your luggage.”
“I brought the money,” she said. “There it is!”
“Well, we might as well start with that,” Victor said. “Open it.”
“But there’s a lock, a combination.”
I said, “Victor will tell you what is, won’t you, Victor?”
“So I will. Twenty-six. Fourteen. Three. You line the numbers up with the white mark.” Zena looked at me, and I nodded. She turned to the suitcase. As she worked the lock, Victor kept talking. “I won’t bore you with all the details, Paul. I was always suspicious. She calls herself Zena da Silva, a perfectly good Portuguese name, but I was curious. She speaks Farsi, the language of Persia... Iran, as it is today. I have a friend, a dreadful man who picks pockets and steals purses. I told him I wanted to know what was in this young lady’s purse. But he must on no account steal it. What he found was a passport, Portuguese, in the name of Zena Jafari. That is a name from Iran, and I recognized it.” He stopped himself. Zena had opened the suitcase. “Let us see,” Victor said. “Let us see.”
Zena emptied the contents of the suitcase onto the bed—bundles of hundred dollar
bills.
Victor turned to me. “I think, if you count it, you’ll find $600,000. As I told you. I’ve kept my end of the bargain. You can take your shares.”
“So why the gun?”
He smiled at me, but his eyes flicked back to Zena. “You’ve been so suspicious of me, Paul. What about her? Did you have no suspicions at all?”
I was watching him carefully. And I was certainly watching the gun. “I had questions,” I said.
“Questions. A more polite word. And let me answer your question about the gun. As I said, I’m going to be taking some of this lady’s luggage. Not one of the suitcases, I think. What I want is very small.” He smiled at Zena. “You’d want to keep them with you, so where is your carry-on bag?”
Zena’s eyes gave her away. She darted a glance toward a large purse, beside the bed. “Ah,” said Victor, seeing it. He turned to me. “What we took from Harold Green was worth a few hundred thousand to us. What’s in that purse is worth millions. Zena, you see, was planning her own little robbery. We helped her get into the house and we gave her cover, but she wanted something else. Four tiny Persian paintings, miniatures, perfect works of art. These are especially rare, by the great master, Reza Abbasi.”
Now Zena cried out, “They are mine! They belong to my family! Green made us sell them for nothing, in return for papers to get out of Iran!”
Victor looked at me, “She’s telling the truth, for once. Jafari. I told you I recognized the name. Her father. He had a great collection of Persian art, and these were his prize pieces. They were so valuable and so well known that Green didn’t dare show them. If he did, people would know that he had stolen them. But you knew where they were, didn’t you, Zena?”
So that was why Zena had run back into Green’s house.
“Yes,” Zena said. “I saw him hide them once, in a hidden place in the wall.” She looked at me. “He’s right, I needed you to help me break into the house. If they were taken as part of a bigger robbery, he wouldn’t think of me, or at least not right away.” Then, gripping the handle of her purse, she turned to Victor. “These are mine. They are my birthright. They are my father’s soul, and they are the soul of my family.”
“Are they, dear? That may all be true—but this is a gun.”
Victor stepped toward Zena, but with a flick of her wrist she threw the bag at him. The gun went off. I dove, low and hard, at Victor’s legs. We both went down. I saw the gun by my foot and kicked it toward the bed. I sprang to my feet.
Victor got up slowly, and I turned around. Zena had her purse in one hand—and the gun in the other. She smiled. “Now,” she said, “I have the gun.”
She levelled it. Her hand was perfectly steady.
Victor looked at me. “You think you’re so smart. You think she’s going to shoot me. But I’m afraid she’s going to shoot both of us and then take off for Lisbon.”
I smiled at Zena. “But you bought two tickets,” I said.
“You knew? Well, I was going to ask if you’d like to come with me.”
I nodded at Victor. “What are we going to do about him?”
Zena shrugged. “You decide.”
“Okay,” I said. I gave Victor a smile as I drew back my arm. My knuckles hurt for a week.
Chapter Eleven
The Persian Miniatures
I told you in the beginning, all this had nothing to do with the money. Actually, we left most of it with Victor, and of course he also had the Tom Thomson painting to sell. No, Zena had what she wanted, the miniatures, and I had what I wanted—her.
So we flew off to Lisbon, wondering if the police would come looking for us. But they didn’t.
As for the miniatures, they were beautiful. They were delicate, graceful, haunting. Ancient princes and their ladies, magical landscapes, flowering trees, strange birds. I’m a painter, and let me tell you—that Abbasi guy was good.
In Portugal, Zena and I went down to the sea and rented a cottage. One morning, I set the miniatures up on the windowsill, where they caught the sunlight. They looked like pictures of heaven.
Maybe that was the morning we started thinking, who did they really belong to?
Harold Green would have said they were his, and maybe a court would have agreed. Zena’s father was dead. Though she’d promised, on his deathbed, to get them back, now she wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing. She had the miniatures, but they didn’t bring her father back.
We looked at them, sitting on the windowsill. “Only we can see them,” she said, “that’s the trouble. They belong to everyone, all over the world.”
A week later, I wiped the miniatures very carefully to get rid of any fingerprints and wrapped them up. Then Zena took them to the post office and sent them to a great art gallery. I hope you won’t mind if I’m discreet once again and don’t mention its name. Two weeks later, a little item appeared in the Times of London.
An unknown person has given the museum four Persian miniatures by Reza Abbasi, the greatest artist of his time. The works had once belonged to the famous collector Hamid Jafari. For many years, they were believed to be lost. John Morton, the museum’s Persian art specialist, said that finding them is a “miracle.” Asked how much they are worth, Mr. Morton shook his head. “I can’t guess at their value,” he said. “They are priceless.”
When I read this to Zena, she asked me, “What do you think? Are they truly priceless? Can any work of art be priceless?”
“Come over here,” I said.
She came over and stood beside me. I drew her to me and kissed her softly.
“Whatever the miniatures are worth,” I said, “that was worth a lot more.”
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Home Invasion
By Joy Fielding
Kathy Brown suddenly wakes up. Was that a noise in the house, or part of her dream?
In her dream, Kathy was about to kiss Michael, her high school boyfriend. Her husband, Jack, lies beside her, snoring. Michael is exciting. Jack is boring.
When Kathy hears the noise again, she gets up. Then she hears whispers. Then she feels a gun at her head. Two men are in the house. Kathy and her husband face a living nightmare. Kathy must also face her real feelings about her husband.
The outcome surprises everyone, most of all Kathy herself.
About the Author
Anthony Hyde is best known for The Red Fox, the first of his spy novels. His father, Laurence Hyde, was an important artist. So, writing a story like Picture This came naturally to Anthony. Anthony was
born in Ottawa, where he still lives.
Also by Anthony Hyde:
Promises, Promises
Double Helix
A Private House
SPY NOVELS:
The Red Fox
Formosa Straits
China Lake
