“What are they after?”
Artie shrugged. He did not want to think about Claire’s research at this time. He did not want to think about many things. He found himself telling Marino and McKiernan he was all right. He was telling them he was all right and then wondering what he was doing with that awful dull light all around him, and they were telling him he was in a squad car, not in the office, and that he had passed out, and that they had caught him, and Artie saw several people looking in the windows of the squad car and he realized he had indeed passed out.
They took him to a place where they could get him a drink in private. It was a dark restaurant, and Artie downed the shot like medicine and McKiernan nursed a beer while Marino had a light Scotch, and they both told him what concerned them.
“We couldn’t keep a tail on Feldman, and this guy who killed him, not only killed him but did it at his leisure. If Feldman was out of our league, this guy is way out. He’s the Great White shark. And we’re tellin’ ya, if you’re in the water in some way, get out of it, Artie.”
“In what way?” asked Artie.
“The girl’s apartment. We’re thinking now maybe she wasn’t bugged because you were living there. Maybe you were bugged at Frauds/Jewels because you were living with her. Same bugs we found on Feldman’s place. Top-notch work. We thought it was our own CIA for a while, but you can’t get shit out of them.”
“So what are you saying?” asked Artie. He refused another drink.
“Leave that crazy lady from Ohio,” said Marino.
“Can’t do that,” said Artie.
“You in love with her?” McKiernan asked, as though Artie had committed some irrational act.
Artie nodded.
“You can fall in love again,” said McKiernan.
“C’mon, Denny,” said Marino.
“Well, you can,” said McKiernan.
“Spoken like someone who’s never been in love,” said Artie.
And then, after McKiernan had finished his beer, and Marino his Scotch and water, when they were outside on the street amidst plenty of New York City noise, Artie suggested they both investigate Captain Harry Rawson of the Queen’s Argyle Sutherlanders. The suspicion was murder. Many of them.
“He’s at the Sherry Netherland when he’s in town,” said Artie.
“We know where he stays,” said Marino. “You got anyone else in mind? Someone we can arrest?”
XXIV
So then when the Holy Grail was brought before thee, He found in thee no fruit, nor good thought, nor good will.
—SIR THOMAS MALORY
Morte d’Arthur, ca. 1470
Norman Feldman was buried from a Jewish funeral chapel by a rabbi who had never met him and who spoke for twenty minutes about virtues as alien to Feldman as the inside of a synagogue. Attending were a few curators, his ex-wife, a son he never spoke to but had left a multimillionaire, Claire, and Artie.
Artie’s was the only face in the almost empty funeral chapel with a tear on it.
That he shrugged off when Claire squeezed his hand.
As they headed for the cemetery, the ex-Mrs. Feldman and the son looked angrily at Claire. She had filed a suit against the estate for ownership of the ruby.
It was an even better claim, considering American laws, than the one she had quietly and routinely filed in France for the sapphire. Under European law, she didn’t have a case, and a lawyer she had hired in Paris told her that, deriding her instructions.
Dad would have gotten mad at that point. But then Dad was not quite as calculating. He thought of business as a vindication of himself, a battle whereby he won himself. For Claire business was business and thrift was thrift, and perhaps because he had assured her she would always come from money, even in a collapsed financial empire, she never felt she had to do anything or spend anything to make someone else believe she was rich. She didn’t have to win.
She did business, and understanding through Arthur that Lady Jennings disliked publicity, she knew Lady Jennings just might settle to avoid any notoriety. And she did. It was worth twenty thousand dollars to her for Claire to drop that suit, twenty thousand dollars better in Claire’s pocket than Lady Jennings’s. She had not told Arthur, who had felt guilty enough already about his part in wresting information from Lady Jennings. He would have gotten emotional about it, and it wasn’t that important either way. It was simply business. Quietly done, and quietly concluded.
Interestingly enough, her Paris lawyer told her, Captain Rawson had filed no such claim. Nor, to her knowledge, had he filed claim yet in New York City.
At Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, the funeral cortege was joined by television cameramen, reporters, and photographers. With the last death, the media had finally linked them all for a major story. One of the television reporters tried to interview the ex-Mrs. Feldman about what they were calling “the death cellar” and got only a murky explanation about how her former husband was the most respected man in the gem industry and would never be involved in anything illegal.
She was told that police had said the ruby was part of a cellar stolen from an Ohio heiress and that everyone connected with every jewel from it had suffered horrible death or disgrace.
“It was Norman’s ruby,” said the widow.
Claire, too, was interviewed.
“I don’t know why people are dying. If I knew, I would tell you. You might want to speak to Harry Rawson, of London, who was staying at the Sherry Netherland and for some reason claims the cellar and all the gems are his. He’s a very mysterious gentleman, I would say as mysterious as the Queen of England, and probably just as trustworthy,” said Claire, the wind catching strands of hair. She knew Arthur would have preferred her to say nothing. But this seemed like such a little thing to do, considering the great big fraud over the Tilbury Cellar, considering Arthur’s real grief over his friend’s death. It was out in the open now and that was good. As for what they would think in Carney about the cellar and Dad, she realized they would think this Mr. Rawson was the real owner. They would have thought anyone else was the real owner. And did it matter? Probably.
She looked right into the camera when she spoke and did not blink; nor did she fix her hair, which tended to blow too freely at times in the wind. She smiled into the camera and then worried that people might think she was gleeful at a funeral. Of course, she didn’t want to seem beaten either. Facing the cameras, she realized now was not the time to think, which of course she was doing all over the place.
A few reporters recognized Artie as the Frauds/Jewels Squad detective who was assigned to assist detectives Marino and McKiernan.
“Do you think your life’s endangered?”
“No.”
“What do you think is behind this series of horror deaths?”
“See McKiernan and Marino.”
“Do you think the jewels are cursed? Are they living out an ancient pharaoh’s curse?”
“Pharaoh? What has a pharaoh to do with this?”
“Weren’t the jewels robbed from a pyramid?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Where were they robbed from?”
“The case is still under investigation, and I am afraid at this time I cannot comment.”
“Are you planning a wedding? Will you give her an uncursed diamond?”
Artie smiled. He knew that the reporters were not asking stupid questions, even though it sounded like it. What they wanted were the silly answers, and they would leave their questions from the stories, so that if he were foolish enough to answer the last question honestly, they would have a story on him searching for uncursed stones for the wedding ring, hoping the marriage wouldn’t be as duly cursed.
He looked over at Claire. Apparently her fresh good looks were going to be a commodity on the television screen. She was trapped by television reporters, a blond head poking through a swarm of cameras. He rescued her by simply taking her arm and leading her away to one of the two black cars in the funeral cortege
. The first was reserved for the family Norman Feldman never spoke to.
Inside the car was safe talking. They only had so much time and so many places they could feel free of the surveillance.
“I am certain Harry Rawson is doing the killings,” said Claire. She had waited for this stretch of time they would have returning to Manhattan in the limousine.
“You don’t know that. Could be lots of people. Could be this guy who’s a surgeon. Lots of guys.”
“I’ve tracked this thing, Arthur. I think Norman Feldman was selling it, which was why it was near him and out of a vault, near his good north light. And I think his killer knew it. And I think under torture Norman Feldman would have told him where the ruby was.”
“So?” said Artie, who did not tell her how right she was, did not tell her he had found the proof in the ruby being discarded in the white paper clip box, something only the killer would do.
“So, obviously we are not dealing with some gem thief, which leaves out your surgeon, whom you mentioned was a form of society fence for jewels, am I correct? I mean, the ruby was found somewhere in Feldman’s office, wasn’t it?”
“So maybe it’s not them. So? Why do we have to talk about this?”
“Because, Arthur, we can talk freely here without being overheard, something we can’t do in our apartment. And more importantly we are already in this thing. Denial of reality is not a form of precaution.”
She folded her white gloves over her little black bag. Artie looked down at his hands. She continued.
“Only someone working for a government, someone highly motivated by the highest integrity, would pass up that ruby knowing where it was. I vote Rawson.”
“You vote Rawson,” said Artie sarcastically. “Could you tell me why?”
“Who else is there?”
“Three billion people in this world,” said Artie. “You take away that ruby, there’s nothing left.”
“Good point, Arthur. If it is not the ruby, what is he after? That is what we really learned from this. It was never the gems, Arthur. And the gold is gone. It was the first thing to go, taking with it the shape of the old Tilbury. The Tilbury Cellar was the first thing not to exist after it was stolen from me.”
“Not the Tilbury again,” said Artie.
“I have been tracking this thing since Jerusalem.”
“We were never in Jerusalem.”
“It was. It was in Jerusalem, where it was a lesson for a Muslim, and in Seville, Spain, where it was not of God for a Jew, and in England, where it was worthy of a lie.”
“Yeah, what?”
“A poorish bowl. I do believe it. There’s nothing left, unless they’re looking for jade lions or topaz pieces, which I doubt.”
“Why not topaz pieces? If you’re going to murder for flatware, why not a piece of jade? C’mon Claire.”
“I do believe from the religious comments of others that the poorish bowl is a Christian thing, quite probably some relic.”
“That Great Britain is willing to kill for a relic, right? Hey, this ain’t the middle ages, Claire.”
“No. And that’s what puzzles me. But they certainly were willing to lie about the Tilbury in this modern age, weren’t they?”
Claire saw Arthur’s large hands go up to the roof and his face explode in red flush like a volcano.
“No,” screamed Arthur. “No. No Tilbury saltcellar, books, researchers, castles horseshit. No. I buried someone who thought I was his only friend. He had his heart cut into. There are people dying all over the place. Their eyes burned out. Their skin cut. Will you take down that damn wall out of our lives already?”
The driver, separated from the passengers by a thick soundproof glass, looked around to see where the sudden reverberations were coming from. He saw a big man flushed with anger and a calm lady in a black dress, who looked as level as a librarian. The driver turned back to the traffic under the Jerome Avenue elevated line.
“Arthur, we only have a brief time to talk about this. I think we are going to have to talk about it, no matter how unpleasant this is for you.”
“Then leave out the Claire Andrews in search of the Tilbury Cellar. Feldman had a knife walked into his heart. This is real. It’s a real coffin and a real grave and a real cemetery, and never again will I hear him insult me. Period. Let’s talk real. He’s dead. Lots of people are dead. And you don’t know why and I don’t know why. And neither of us knows who’s next.”
Artie turned angrily to the window to watch the passing of Jerome Avenue, the stores, the movie theaters, the people. This was the Bronx. A few blocks away, he had played stickball and drunk egg creams, and one strange day lost his virginity. Now, he was in love with someone who might get them both killed.
Claire waited until he subsided. She knew he was grieving, and this, in a way, was how he handled it, by trying to avoid what was all around them. It was the way he handled many things. But this was far too dangerous to let go its own way because unless they understood what was happening, they just might be in its way without knowing it. When she saw him turn slightly from the window, she put a hand on his.
“Arthur,” she said, “I think this all very much has to do with the Tilbury Cellar and what was in it.”
“Norman’s body stunk so bad, I could taste it for the day, and I had to use Marino and McKiernan’s special cleaners to get the death out of my clothes. Don’t talk to me of four-hundred-year-old saltcellars. They walked a knife into his heart.”
“All right, then let’s talk about torture, Arthur.” She felt bad forcing this. She could sense his despair and anger. His words came out with difficulty.
“I don’t want to talk about torture. And I don’t want to talk about it with you.”
“We’ve got to. This is our best chance. We’ve got to resolve things now.”
“Will you take down your wall?” His big, beautiful, dark eyes were pleading.
“It’s open to discussion, Arthur. I think we should know what we’re doing if I do take it down. I want to take it down for a reason.”
“I thought we buried one,” said Artie.
Claire nodded gravely to let Arthur know she understood the danger.
“Harry Rawson’s got diplomatic immunity, Claire. We can’t touch him,” Artie said finally, with all the draining futility that swirled around all this.
“How do you know?”
“You don’t think I mentioned him to Homicide?”
“And?”
“They said they were advised to back off him.”
“By whom?”
“What whom? A captain. A superintendent. A word here and there. There’s nothing we can do about Rawson, even if we know he did it. He’s got immunity. If he shoots someone in Times Square, our government can then ask Britain to remove him from the country afterward. That’s diplomatic immunity.”
“Of course that does limit things. I’m most glad now I mentioned him and his Queen at the funeral. It makes things public. That’s a little bit of protection, don’t you think?”
Artie looked as though she had shoved a burning stick into his face. He didn’t even bother to honor her question with an answer.
“Arthur, the fact is that only those who have had parts of the cellar were killed,” said Claire.
“We’re not snatching conversations in funeral processions because they haven’t bugged our bathroom,” said Artie, shaking his head. “We’re in it with those microphones up our ass back at the apartment.”
“Unnerving, yes, but possibly just to make sure I don’t find what they want first.”
“And you want to find it? You want to find it?” screamed Artie.
He dropped his head in his strong hands. He was not angry now. He stayed quiet that way for a few moments, with Claire watching him closely.
Then with more muted motions than she had ever seen in him, he told her, “I can’t leave you. I can’t protect you. I can’t protect us.”
“Because of Captain Rawson’s i
mmunity?”
“No. I don’t even know that he was the one, for sure.”
“It’s highly probable.”
“Yeah, well, probable,” said Artie. “The person or persons who’re doing this stuff move in ways that we don’t know. What I’m saying is, they’re beyond us. It could be this man, Dr. Peter Martins, too. He was a very successful gems dealer whom I couldn’t touch before and Feldman warned me about. Could be him or someone I don’t even know or Great Britain working with our government. I don’t know. I don’t know, Claire,” said Artie without even the force of a shrug, rather with the quiet of surrender.
“Would Martins leave a ruby, Arthur?”
“I don’t know who would leave anything, Claire. I know I love you more than anything in my life, and for once nothing I can do can make you safe. It haunts me. It horrifies me. I can’t protect you. Please, let these people pass us by. Let go of it all. Please. Let them do what they do away from us, out of our lives.”
“I’ll take down the materials on the wall, Arthur,” said Claire.
“Hell, I don’t even know if that’s it, but that will make me feel a lot better,” said Artie as they drove past Mosholu Parkway and a big square of a building to their right, which was DeWitt Clinton High School and behind it, the playing fields where Artie used to be a star linebacker in the high school leagues, before he got out into the world.
He felt her kiss his cheek and realized he was lucky to have found her, having been such a star, such a wise guy, in the very little world that he had grown up in. And lived in before she came.
“I think Norman Feldman understood your suspicion of him, darling. In fact, I am sure of it. And I am sure he forgave you.”
“I never knew what he understood,” said Artie.
She did not mention that her computer had been violated, and when they got to their apartment, she made Artie a cup of tea, opened a Cherry Coke for herself, and then, talking as she went, she began stacking the file folders on the table beneath the wall.
“I’d like to get storage for these folders. I want a living room again,” she said.
Quest Page 43
