Highbinders

by Ross Thomas

  “You seem to have its history down cold,” I said.

  “That I do, lad. It’s our business to. Well, there was a Frenchman in Moscow who somehow either recognized the sword for what it was or just took a liking to it. At least they say he was a Frenchman. It was there in a church and he stole it and headed back for Paris. He got as far as Cologne where he was murdered and nothing more was heard of the Sword of St. Louis until it turned up in a shop on Shaftesbury Avenue where it went for twelve and six to our client’s old dad. In 1939, that was.”

  Luisa, the Portuguese maid, came in and said something that sounded like, “Luncheon is served, sir.”

  “Well, let’s have at it before it gets cold,” Ned Nitry said. “Bert can go on with it while we eat.”

  We started filing out of the red room and down the hall and into a formal dining room filled with heavy furniture that seemed to be just as Victorian as everything in the house. But before we left the red room I went over and took a good look at the painting that hung above the mantel. It was the portrait of a man with a Van Dyke beard who was dressed in the style of the late 1890s.

  Ned Nitry waited for me. “Caught your eye, did it?”

  “It’s an Eakins or I’ll eat it,” I said.

  “You’ll eat it then, lad. Not too many Eakins in England, you know. That’s a copy.”

  “If it’s a copy, I’ll eat it.”

  Ned Nitry smiled at me. “You’ve got a fair eye, don’t you?”

  “I had to handle an Eakins once,” I said.

  “You mean be a go-between to get one back?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How much did they want? The thieves, I mean.” He seemed interested.

  “Not enough really. Only fifty thousand dollars.”

  Ned Nitry nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Not near enough.”

  Lunch was grilled lamb chops with too much fat on them; Brussels sprouts, which I hate; something that resembled paella, which I took to be the Portuguese contribution; thin red wine, and more of the tale of the Sword of St. Louis from Uncle Norbert who told it with his mouth full most of the time.

  “Now, you might well ask how did the sword get from Cologne to a shop on Shaftesbury. And that we don’t know. It may be that a member of the BEF brought it back in eighteen or nineteen, but we don’t know that, do we?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t suppose we do.”

  “Well, the old dad of our client collected the odd sword now and again, but mostly sword canes and rapiers and épées and that lot. And before he could do more than clean up the Sword of St. Louis a bit he went off to war and got himself killed later at Tobruk. In Africa. So for nearly thirty years the Sword of St. Louis just lay about collecting dust. Well, our client was only two or three when his dad got himself killed and he didn’t pay much attention to the sword collection until he came down from Oxford in sixty-one. Then he got a little interested and started collecting a few of his own, but it wasn’t until about three months ago that he paid much attention to the Sword of St. Louis.”

  “He was a bit hard up, he was,” Ned Nitry said.

  “That’s right,” his brother said. “He’s a gambling man, sad to say, and he owed a little money and he thought that maybe the old sword might be worth a bob or two. Well, it was a mess, from what I understand. The blade was all black with scale, but it wasn’t rusted because the scale somehow had helped preserve it. The crosspiece, the hilt, and the pommel were all black with scale or paint or both. Well, he worked on it careful-like, mostly on the blade until he got that in damn fine shape. Then he started in on the hilt and crosspiece. Well, the hilt turned out to be gold. Solid gold. And as you know, gold won’t rust. The crosspiece was steel, of course, but stuck into each end were two round red stones about the size of peas. Rubies, they are, real rubies.”

  “They should be worth something, even if he couldn’t prove it was a Sword of St. Louis,” I said.

  “Worth a bit,” Uncle Norbert said. “Worth a bit. But finally, our lad got to the pommel. You know what the pommel is?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It’s that piece at the end of the hilt that keeps your hand from slipping off. Well, like I said, it was about the size of a big Brazil nut or a small egg and it was painted black. So he starts cleaning that off, working careful-like again, you know, and underneath the dirt and paint and enamel and God knows what all, what do you think he found?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Rock crystal. The pommel was made out of rock crystal. Some of them were back then. Not many, but some. But then he takes another look and it’s not rock crystal at all-Uncle Norbert paused in his story and looked around, smiling because apparently he enjoyed the way he had told it.

  “All right,” I said, “if it wasn’t rock crystal, what was it?”

  He leaned across the table toward me, his mouth full of lamb. “A diamond as big as an egg, that’s what it was. A perfect, uncut diamond as big as an egg and weighing 146.34 metric carats, that’s what it was that Louis had stuck on the end of his hilt and what do you think of that, Mr. St. Ives?”

  “I think Eddie’s right,” I said. “I think it would be a real bargain at three million pounds.”

  Chapter Eight

  THE PORTUGUESE MAID SERVED the sweet, which turned out to be some kind of yellow pudding with dark things stuck in it. Raisins, probably. I chose to pass. The rest of them ate theirs and seemed to like it. When Ceil Apex asked if I would like coffee, I declined. There are some things that it is better not to risk in England.

  After dessert they seemed to be waiting for me to say something so I said, “Why me?”

  “Why you as go-between?” Ned Nitry said.

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s a fair question.”

  “I’ve got a few more.”

  “I’d think so. Well, to be plain about it, Mr. St. Ives, you weren’t our first choice. Eddie here was.”

  “They wouldn’t go for it, though,” Apex said.

  “The thieves?”

  “That’s right,” Apex said. “They seemed to be all too familiar with my past exploits.”

  “So we drew up a short list,” Ned Nitry said, “and read it to ’em over the phone. After a couple of hours they called back and said you’d do.”

  “How’d you know I was into the go-between thing, Eddie?”

  He smiled. “I’d heard it around.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” I said.

  “Okay. Remember that pearl necklace you handled a couple of years ago back in Chicago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that was a friend of mine, I suppose you could say. Or at least an acquaintance. He worked the states for a couple of years. When the insurance company called you in on the pearls, he was a little suspicious, so he checked you out. You’ve got an impressive reputation, my friend thinks. So when the thieves asked us about you, Ned told them to talk to this friend of mine. He must have given you a glowing report. He also told me that we should get in touch with you through your Mr. Greene, so I did.”

  “All right,” I said. “When was it stolen?”

  “Five days ago,” Uncle Bert said.

  “From where?”

  “From here.”

  “A safe?”

  “No. No, not a safe, but a damn stout room, it is.”

  “Wired?”

  “Course it is. Electric eyes and all that. The best. But it didn’t bother them none.”

  “They’re pros, they are,” Ned Nitry said.

  “Is that what the police think?” I said.

  “No police, Phil,” Eddie Apex said in a flat tone.

  “No police,” I said, making it a statement rather than a question.

  “No,” Uncle Norbert said. “No police.”

  I leaned back in my chair and looked at them. “You said that the man who owns the sword is your client. I may not be going about this in the right way, but I’m going t
o have to ask you just what the hell kind of business are you in?”

  It was Ned Nitry who decided to answer my question, after using an almost imperceptible glance to check it out with his brother. “We specialize in fine works of art,” he said. “We sell them on consignment for a modest fee.”

  “So does Sotheby’s,” I said, “but they advertise in The Times.”

  “So they do,” Uncle Norbert said. “We’re more discreet.”

  “I bet you are,” I said. “I bet you’re so discreet that the Inland Revenue people don’t even know you exist.”

  Ned Nitry smiled slightly. “I think you’re getting the picture, Mr. St. Ives. I think you are indeed. It’s a terrible tax burden that the average man must bear up under these days, especially here in England.”

  “Suppose I had a Thomas Eakins painting,” I said.

  “You’d be a fortunate man,” Ned Nitry said. “Most fortunate.”

  “Uh-huh. But suppose I was a little short of cash and I wanted to sell it. Of course, I’d have it insured since it was an Eakins.”

  “I’d hope so, lad, I’d certainly hope so,” Ned Nitry said.

  “And suppose I wanted to evade paying taxes on the proceeds of the sale. In the states there’s a fine line between tax avoidance and tax evasion.”

  “Is there now?” Uncle Norbert said.

  “Tax avoidance is legal; tax evasion isn’t.”

  “Well, I’d say that’s wise, wouldn’t you, Ned?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And suppose I came to you with this problem of mine?”

  “Well, sir, I think we could be of some assistance,” Ned Nitry said. “I do indeed think we could.”

  “You want to tell me how?”

  “Well, I don’t think we need go into the details,” he said.

  “If you don’t go into the details, I catch the plane back tonight.”

  “It’s like that, is it?”

  “It’s like that.”

  “Tell him, for God’s sake, Ned,” Eddie Apex said. “He’s not stupid.”

  Ned Nitry nodded a couple of times. “Well, lad, if you had an Eakins like you say, and you were hard pressed for a bit of cash, and you wanted to sell it discreet like, well, here’s what we could do for you. First of all, there’s the insurance company to bother about. You’ve got to keep them happy. They’re a gossipy lot and if you just canceled your policy, well, they’d want to know why. And if you kept on paying the premiums on a painting that you’d sold on the sly, so to speak, well, they have those investigators of theirs, you know. But suppose you had a fair likeness of the painting that you wanted to sell?”

  “Like the one that’s hanging above the mantel in the red room?”

  “Like that exactly, sir.”

  “That’s better than a fair likeness,” I said. “That’s perfect.”

  Ned Nitry nodded judiciously this time. “It’s good enough to satisfy any insurance company I know of.”

  “And most museums,” Eddie Apex said.

  “I think you’re getting the idea now, aren’t you, Mr. St. Ives?” Ceil Apex said.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Don’t you think Dad and Uncle Norbert are terribly wicked?

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Terribly.” I looked at Uncle Norbert. “Okay. We’ve got a phony painting in place to satisfy the insurance company. What next?”

  “Well, next is finding you a discreet buyer who’ll pay a fair price. That’s next.”

  “And you can do this?”

  “We can.”

  “A cash deal?”

  “Of course. And in a Swiss bank, too, if you’d like—or Panama or Beirut, whatever’s your pleasure.”

  “And you charge a commission?”

  “A fair commission.”

  “How much?”

  “Thirty percent.”

  “That’s a little more than fair, isn’t it?”

  “We have terrible expenses, lad,” Uncle Norbert said. “We have to spirit the painting out of the country usually and get it into another one. We have to commission the fair likeness and, well, you know what dealing with artists is like. They’re a bad lot mostly. Drink too much. Get temperamental.”

  “But they don’t talk?”

  “We get them in a little too deep to talk. We get them in a little too deep and make them a little too fat. They don’t talk.”

  “Whoever did that Eakins in there is a genius,” I said.

  “At copying, he is. He’s that. But he can’t paint an apple on his own without making it look like an orange.”

  “Let’s get back to the sword. You’re not going to duplicate that, are you?”

  Ned Nitry shook his head. “No need. And nobody even knows it exists except us and our client.”

  “And the thieves.”

  “Them, too.”

  “How’d they find out about it?”

  “That’s something we’d like to know,” Ned Nitry said.

  “Any ideas?”

  “None.”

  “Had you already started negotiations for its sale?”

  “Only the most delicate kind. A hint or two dropped in the right ear, you might say.”

  “Whose ear?”

  “A representative of the French government.”

  “You’re going to sell it in France?”

  “It’s a national treasure, lad. It’s the Sword of St. Louis and no mistake. Suppose your original Declaration of Independence had been lost for a couple of hundred years and suddenly turned up—in 1976, say—d’you think your government wouldn’t spend a few dollars, no questions asked, to get it back?”

  “My government?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m not too sure. If it were the original Bill of Rights, you might not get a dime.”

  “Well, the French are a bit more practical.”

  “So I’ve heard.” I looked at my watch. “How much are you asking for it?”

  “Three million pounds,” Uncle Norbert said.

  “Jesus.”

  “They didn’t blink an eye.”

  “But they will,” Ned Nitry said. “Those Frenchies like to haggle.”

  “How much will you come down?” I said.

  “Not more’n fifty thousand quid. We might’ve come down a bit more but this hundred thousand ransom’s going to eat into everybody’s pocket.”

  “Are you paying it—or is your client?”

  “It was in our possession so we are,” Uncle Norbert said. “And it cuts our profit by a tenth, let me tell you.”

  “Has your client got a name?” I said.

  “He does,” Ned Nitry said. “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to have to talk to him.”

  “That isn’t really necessary, Phil,” Eddie Apex said.

  “It isn’t?”

  “No.”

  I sighed. “Eddie, I’m thinking of going in on a deal that you’re in on. And although I think you’re a real nice guy and are probably sweet to your lovely wife, I’m not going into any deal that you’re in on until I check it out. Do you really blame me?”

  Eddie Apex gave me his best grin, the one that was so charmingly honest that it made you want to do something nice for him, such as buying his entire stock of gold bricks. “No,” he said. “I don’t blame you. If I were dealing with me, I’d do the same thing. His name’s Robin Styles. Styles with a y.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “During the day he moves around a lot. After ten or eleven at night you can always find him at Shields.”

  “What’s Shields?”

  “One of our newer gambling hells. It’s on Curzon. All the cabbies know it.”

  “Can I get in?”

  Apex nodded. “I’ll fix it.”

  “If you’re satisfied after talking to our client, Mr. Styles, does that mean you’re in?” Uncle Norbert asked.

  “I’m in,” I said.

  “Not too rich for you, eh?
”

  “As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be helping to restore a national treasure to France. What you do with your money is your concern. I’ll pay taxes on mine.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful. Isn’t that wonderful, Ned?”

  “Wonderful,” Ned Nitry said.

  “I might need that hundred thousand ransom in a hurry,” I said.

  “We’ve got it,” Uncle Norbert said.

  “Have you got any pictures of the sword?”

  Ned Nitry reached into a jacket pocket and handed me an envelope. I took out several color prints that had been taken with a Polaroid. One of them showed Eddie Apex holding the sword out as if he were about to lead the next charge on the Saracens. The others were close-ups of the sword, or at least as close up as the Polaroid could get and still focus. I could see the big diamond in the pommel and the Nitry brothers were right. It was as big as an egg laid by a healthy hen. It didn’t look like a diamond to me, but then I’m not too familiar with what rough diamonds look like.

  “How do I identify the thing?” I said.

  “Identify it?” Uncle Norbert said. He looked puzzled.

  “That’s right. These pictures are okay, but suppose the thieves found themselves an old swordsmith around who could run them up a fake.”

  “Not likely,” Ned Nitry said.

  “I like to be sure.”

  The Nitry brothers looked at each other. Then Uncle Norbert got up and came around the table to where I sat. He pointed to the photo that was the best one of the hilt and pommel. “You see right here?” he said, pointing to the hilt just below the pommel.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, get yourself a little magnifying glass. And use it to look right there. You’ll see a tiny NN scratched into the gold. But get the glass because you can’t see it with the naked eye.”

  “That sounds as if you’d been expecting something.”

  Norbert shook his head. “No, lad. It’s just habit. We always put our initials on the paintings that we substitute for the real ones so we won’t have a mix-up. They just look like scratches on the frames.”