Michelangelo_s Notebook fr-1

by Paul Christopher

  The whole thing was ridiculous to the point of fetish, but she knew it was almost certainly accurate down to the plastic laminated cowgirl placemats and the bright yellow “Mornin’ Ma’am” cowboy coffee mugs. She felt herself remembering their time in his bed the night before. She stretched in her seat, a shiver running through her from the back of her neck to the pit of her stomach. There was no doubt that Valentine was a perfectionist in everything he did.

  “You always show your women a good time like this?” She grinned.

  He turned and smiled, looking at her, the expression on his face taking ten hard years off his face.

  “There aren’t that many to show a good time to,” he answered. Finn almost said something but stopped herself. She had a pretty good idea that Valentine was a lot like the guys she’d yearned after in high school. They didn’t have the slightest idea they were attractive, which in itself made them even more so. On the other hand, his love-making had been smooth, practiced and knowledgeable. Could you know a lot about women without knowing a lot of women? She stopped herself from thinking about it at all. They’d made love for hours and it had been wonderful. That was all she needed-or wanted-to know right now, certainly not his reasons for doing it, or hers. Maybe she’d been in school for too long; this was the real world. And she didn’t want to think about that too much either.

  Valentine took two plates out of the warming oven, slid a mound of scrambled eggs onto each then went back for the toast and bacon. He picked up both plates and fitted them into his right hand, then snagged the ketchup off the counter with his left. He brought the meal expertly across the room, put everything down on the breakfast nook table and slid onto the blue vinyl seat. He slid the plates onto the placemats, and they began to eat, talking easily between bites with no obvious discomfort at their situation. To Finn it felt as though they’d been lovers forever, which was a little scary.

  “What’s with the retro stuff?” she asked.

  “It’s the easiest way to decorate a room,” he said. “Pick an era and then pick up things from the period. It’s fun. You get to look for things without it being serious. I can get as excited about a 1954 first edition of the Betty Crocker’s Good and Easy Cook Book as I can about finding a Vermeer stolen from an Irish country house.”

  “I heard about that when we were doing a Dutch masters class,” said Finn, her eyes widening a little. “Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid. They even wrote a book about it. That was you?”

  “It was the second time the painting had been stolen. There was a drug connection. I helped track it down from this end.” He shook his head and took a sip of coffee from his cowboy mug. “Once upon a time art theft was something you saw in the movies starring David Niven or Cary Grant. Now it’s usually got some kind of other link-usually with drugs, sometimes with guns.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Finn. “They don’t have anything to do with each other.”

  “Sure they do,” responded Valentine.

  “Explain.”

  “Most criminal activity deals in large volumes of cash. Cash is hard to keep and hard to spend. Stealing art helps both problems.”

  “How?”

  “It’s currency. Most works of art, valuable ones, have a well-established value. A painting or drawing can be sold for X amount. Instead of doing deals for money, big drug dealers and weapons dealers-especially the ones in the terrorist market-trade in art. It’s portable, it’s easy to move across borders and it’s usually insured in one way or another. I can name you half a dozen galleries in Europe that knowingly traffic in stolen art and twice that many just in New York. It’s a very big business.”

  Finn shifted on the seat across from Valentine, tucking one leg up underneath herself, thinking. “Is that what we’re dealing with here?”

  “I’m not sure. If it’s drugs it’s very sophisticated, beyond anything I’ve ever seen. On first glance I’d say no. It’s something else, and it’s been going on for some time.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Crawley was pretty high up the ladder. You said the provenance for the Michelangelo had his initials on it?”

  “No, the inventory line.”

  “What about the Hoffman Gallery receipt. Who was it sent to? Crawley or somebody else?”

  “It’s all on computer. One of the founders of the Parker-Hale bought it from the Hoffman Gallery in 1939, I think. Before Crawley’s time.”

  “But he inventoried it?”

  “Yes. As an Urbino, a few years back.”

  “Too many coincidences and not enough answers,” murmured Valentine. He finished his eggs and chewed on a piece of bacon. Finn refilled his coffee cup and her own. A silence fell across the pleasantly anachronistic kitchen. Somewhere far away she could hear the morning traffic sounds on Broadway, and closer, the whine and thunder of the garbage trucks behind Lispenard.

  “Okay, let’s put together what we have,” said Valentine. “This all starts when you accidentally trip over a Michelangelo drawing and Alex Crawley catches you.”

  “You make it sound as though I was stealing something.”

  “That’s the point,” said Valentine. “You weren’t doing anything wrong, so why was Crawley so upset? All he really had to do was say that you were mistaken, and it was only after you insisted it was a Michelangelo that he fired you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Either he didn’t want you or anyone else knowing the gallery was in possession of that particular drawing, or it’s a fake. More likely the former rather than the latter because it’s obvious there was already a cover-up in motion since it was identified in the inventory as the work of another artist. The question, of course, is Why?” He tapped his fingers rapidly on the Formica surface of the table. “I’d love to see the original paperwork. It’s got to be somewhere and it would be easier to trace than computer files, harder to fake.”

  “It’s a company called U.S. Docugraphics Service. I’ve seen their trucks in the parking area behind the museum.”

  “All right. That makes things easier,” he said. He thought for a moment, picking up a toast crust and dabbing it with a knifeful of E. Waldo Ward Rhubarb Conserve. Even that simple act made the muscles in his arms and shoulders stand out and she remembered being in his arms last night; he’d been enormously strong and had a tough, hard body that came from more than three times a week at the gym. Definitely not the abs of a librarian. They were lovers now but he still hadn’t told her everything.

  “Penny for your thoughts.” He grinned in that slightly savage, predatory way, his perfect teeth gleaming, the intelligent eyes focused on hers.

  “Not a chance,” she said, laughing. “So what do we do now? Run away to a desert island and wait until things die down?”

  “I know just the place.” He smiled. “But I don’t think it’s a possibility yet.”

  “Then where do we go from here? Crawley’s murder is being investigated by the cops and so is Peter’s. We’ve established some kind of relationship between Gatty, Crawley and Greyfriars Academy through the missing knife and the Juan Gris, and that creep-the headmaster, Wharton-is probably involved. We know Gatty’s involved in stolen art, at least as a buyer, because he’s got that Renoir. None of it fits together.”

  “Sure it does. We just don’t know how yet.”

  “So how do we find out?”

  “I want to talk to a dealer I know. Then maybe go to the Parker-Hale and ask a few questions.”

  “Under what pretext?”

  “I’ll tell them I’m your godfather and that you’re missing. Your boyfriend was murdered and obviously I’m concerned.”

  “I don’t know if I like you referring to yourself as my godfather. It makes me feel as though I was in a cradle that was just robbed.” She grinned.

  “Think of it in the Marlon Brando sense, then.” He grinned back. He stuck out his foot under the table and let his big toe slide down her calf. She shivered. He gave her a strange look.r />
  “What’s that?”

  “My best Christopher Walken leer.”

  “Can you back it up?”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “What am I supposed to do… afterward?”

  “Get on the computer and find out how all the pieces are connected.”

  “Okay.”

  “You finished?” He glanced down at her plate.

  “Yup.” She slid out of the breakfast nook and started undoing the buttons of her shirt. “Gentlemen, prepare to defend your aprons.”

  27

  Without being asked or ordered, the sergeant went out an hour or so after dawn broke, leaving everybody else behind this time except Reid. He was part fucking Cherokee or something and he looked like the front of an old nickel. Quiet enough to stand in front of a cigar store and yet he could pick off most anything with his M1 from a couple hundred yards.

  “Where we going, Sarge?” Reid asked.

  “Same as before. Maybe somebody’s up and around. Maybe do a head count or something.”

  “Sure, Sarge,” and that was it. Reid unslung the M1 and followed him into the woods.

  This time the sergeant kept his eyes on the forest floor. There seemed to be three well-worn paths, one going straight through, one moving to the left and one to the right. They all came together in roughly the center of the woodlot at a small clearing. Rabbits maybe, more likely deer.

  There were chewed-off branches about five feet up, which would be right for a deer, or maybe a young moose. He wondered if there were moose in Europe. He put the thought out of his mind; waste of time to think about anything except the here and now. The sergeant gestured to the left and Reid nodded. The sergeant headed along the left-hand path with the other man a few yards behind him. Reid didn’t make a sound, which was more than you could say for most of the others.

  When they reached the edge of the woods, the sergeant made a “get low” gesture. Sitting on his haunches, he had a brief conference with Reid.

  “There’s a ditch and then the road. There’s an old Panzer, burned out, catercorner. The hatch is open. We should be able to get a pretty good look down into the farm. The tank’s at the top of the hill.”

  “The sniper?” Reid asked.

  “If we come up low the tank will be between us and that tower. Unless he’s looking for us it should be okay.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Watch my back.”

  “Okay.”

  They waited just inside the screening woods, trading puffs from one of the sergeant’s Luckies. The sniper might not be looking for them, but a sharp eye might see cigarette smoke wafting up in the still, early-morning air. The overcast sky wouldn’t help either. No smoking, drinking or screwing while you were fighting a war. He field-stripped the smoke, grinding the hot ash under his combat boot. Didn’t quite seem right; you should be able to have one last bit of pleasure before you were snuffed with a bullet from some invisible Kraut’s Steyr 95.

  The sergeant slid out through an opening between the trees and dropped down into the ditch that ran beside the road. He crawled forward until he was in the shadow of the old tank. Coming at it low, from the rear, he saw that it wasn’t as badly damaged as he’d first thought. He could see the exposed rear differential blown to shit and one of the treads had been blown off the right rear assembly but that was about it. From the way the road was chewed up behind it the tank looked as though it might have been strafed by a fighter. American, Brit, Russkie, who knew? The Panzer 1 had been designed originally as a practice tank. It had thin 8mm armor and only a couple of machine guns with no cannon. Good against infantry but no better than a tin can if it ran into another tank, even a crappy old M1 or a guy with a bazooka. On the pro side-if you were a Kraut-was the fact that there were thousands of them and they used only a two-man crew: The driver and a combination commander, observer and machine gunner.

  The sergeant left Reid down on the ground behind the left-hand tread. He climbed up the side of the tank, avoiding the sharp, sheet-metal mud flaps and the cheese grater-pierced metal of the muffler cover. He pulled himself up to the turret, using the big eyebolts used to hold a spare length of winch cable, then slithered through the hatchway and into the gunner’s chair. There were foot pedals to swing the turret and each of the twin guns was on a swivel, able to move up and down independently. Between the guns was a long metal telescopic sight. The sergeant peered through the eyepiece but the far magnifying lens had shattered during whatever firefight had stopped the tank.

  The inside of the tank was the usual sandy beige color and there didn’t seem to be any blood, so maybe the crew had gotten away clean. The fact that the tank was still here meant the road wasn’t used very often, which almost certainly meant that the trucks down on the farm had come from the east. That was something to chew on, since that’s where Hitler’s place was supposed to be-Berchtesgaden or whatever it was called.

  He tried to imagine coming face-to-face with King Kraut and couldn’t imagine it. For the past four years when he thought about Hitler it always came out like Charlie Chaplin. You couldn’t really take the guy seriously with that mustache, could you? On the other hand, you could take a bunch of guys with those big fucking helmets seriously, that was for sure.

  The sergeant eased himself out of the gunner’s seat and slid down into the bottom of the tank. All the ports were open so he squeezed into the driver’s seat. He eased the binoculars out of their case and looked down at the farm. He could immediately see a great deal of activity.

  Several men in shirtsleeves were sponging off the trucks’ windshields and more men were hanging out laundry on a makeshift line that ran from the side mirror of one of the trucks to a post beside a well opening on the other side of the cobbled courtyard. Two men in civilian clothes-lightweight crumpled suits, one brown, one blue-were smoking cigarettes beside one of the small outbuildings. Both men had eyeglasses on.

  A woman in a blue dress and brown shoes with fat Cuban heels walked casually about, chatting and smoking. A second woman, dressed in the flat brown uniform of the Wehrmacht women’s auxiliary was sitting on the edge of the well casing, her head tilted back into the sun. The only man in full uniform was a youngish-looking officer in a black SS uniform.

  The shirtsleeved soldiers cleaning the windshields carried no weapons. Nobody except the SS officer had a sidearm. The sergeant turned his attention to the abbey tower. The small opening at the top of the tower looked dark and empty, but that didn’t mean anything. Snipers were good at keeping in the shadows.

  The sergeant turned and spoke quietly out through one of the rear observation ports. “You catching any of this, Reid?”

  “Yeah” came the faint response from outside the tank.

  “Whadya think?”

  “Not army, not military. I dunno who they are,” said the disembodied voice.

  “Take a guess.”

  “Civvies.”

  “What do you think of the women?”

  “They’re women. What am I supposed to think?”

  “Why would they have women along?”

  “Why does anyone have women along.”

  “Gotta be more than that.”

  “Why?”

  “Something pretty strange going on, you ask me.”

  “Is anyone asking you?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.” The sergeant was silent again. He looked back through the front port. “What’s east of here?”

  “Mountains, bunch of castles.”

  “West?”

  “Lake Constance. The Krauts call it something else. Switzerland’s on the other end.”

  “South?”

  “Austria.”

  “Who’s there now, any idea?”

  “Forty-fourth. The Russkies, I think.”

  “Germans don’t like Russkies-am I right?”

  “How the fuck do I know, Sarge? Why are you asking me all these questions? I’m just a redskin off the reservation, remem
ber? ‘Ugh, How, Kemosabe, ’ like that.”

  “Hey, Reid, how come your name isn’t Running Bear, or Moon Blanket or something?”

  “My father was a garage mechanic in Kansas who like fucking squaws when he got drunk, okay?” He almost laughed. “Where you come from it was ‘Nigger in the woodpile.’ Where I’m from it was ‘Choctaw in the cornfield.’ ”

  “You know what? You’re okay, Reid.” The sergeant shifted gears. “They had to come from the east, or else they would have had to get those trucks around the tank and there’s no sign of that. They’re not going north, ’cause that’s where the war is, and the Russkies and us are in Austria, so they’re not going there.”

  “So they’re going to Lake Constance.”

  “Yeah. The Bodensee or something, that’s what the Krauts call it. I wonder if they got some kind of ferry service or something that would handle six trucks like that.”

  “Probably.” There was silence from Reid for a moment. The sergeant turned his glasses on the courtyard again. If the sniper was up in the tower he was their only line of defense. If the machine guns in the tank still had ammo he could probably do pretty much of a clean sweep. He reached down and opened the big ammo bin and saw enough belts to keep the guns going steady for ten or fifteen minutes. The only problem was you’d have to have the engine going to power the turret; with the sight gone it would be dead reckoning. Still…

  “You cooking up some kind of plan, Sarge? It feels like you’re cooking up some kind of plan.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure. Hey, Reid, how many real Krauts you see down there? Soldiers.”