Painted Ladies

by Robert B. Parker

  “Not much,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Richards said.

  “Don’t feel bad,” I said. “Nobody else has been much help, either.”

  48

  Morton Lloyd did business out of an old gray stone building on Batterymarch. His office itself was aggressively colonial, right down to the receptionist, who looked a bit like Molly Pitcher. There were prints of American militia companies on the paneled walls. And a big painting of Cornwallis’s surrender. The painting looked amateurish to me.

  “My name is Spenser,” I said to the receptionist. “I need to consult with Mr. Lloyd.”

  “Mr. Lloyd is with a client,” she said. “Do you have an appointment.”

  “I can wait,” I said.

  “You didn’t say if you had an appointment, sir.”

  “Everyone has an appointment, ma’am, sooner, or later, in Samarra.”

  “What?” Molly Pitcher said.

  “I don’t have an appointment,” I said. “But I have nothing else to do today. And I may as well do it here. Tell Mr. Lloyd it is in regard to Lady with a Finch.”

  “Lady what?” Molly said.

  “He’ll understand,” I said. “Lady with a Finch.”

  She wrote it down on a small pad of paper. I smiled. She looked at me without smiling.

  “Come on,” I said. “My smile is infectious. Everyone says so. No one can resist smiling back.”

  She looked at me as if I were a talking baboon and flashed me an entirely mechanical smile, and turned back to her computer. I sat down in a black captain’s chair with an eagle in flight stenciled in gold on the back. It was very quiet in the reception area. A couple of times Molly Pitcher looked half surreptitiously up from her computer, and each time I gave her my most winsome smile. And each time she had no reaction beyond going back to her computer. She must have been a woman of iron self-control.

  The door to the inner office opened, and Mort the Tort ushered out a middle-aged couple.

  “So just sit tight,” he was saying. “I’m sure we can settle this without going to court.”

  He walked them past me to the outer door, opened it for them, and closed it after they’d left. Then he turned quite deliberately and looked at me.

  “What the hell do you want?” he said.

  I stood.

  “Thanks, Mort,” I said. “I would like to come in and chat.”

  Molly Pitcher piped up.

  “He says it’s about”—she looked at her note—“a lady and a finch.”

  I smiled at Lloyd.

  “Close enough,” I said.

  Lloyd jerked his head at me and went into his office. I followed him. He closed the door behind me and went around and sat at his big Ipswich maple desk.

  “Okay,” he said. “What is it?”

  The inner office had a fireplace with a big wooden sign over it that read Paul Revere, Silversmith. It looked as if it had been manufactured in China in 2008. A harpoon leaned in one corner.

  I sat down.

  “I need what you can tell me about you and Ashton Prince and the Herzberg Foundation,” I said.

  “You come here and bother me about that?” Lloyd said. “I am busy. I have another client in five minutes. I have others after him. I don’t have time for your cockamamie ideas.”

  “You’re a lot deeper into a mess than you want to be,” I said. “This has turned into two murders, two attempted murders, a bomb, and, of course, the priceless painting.”

  Lloyd stared at me.

  “I know you offered to represent Prince against Walford University,” I said. “I know you suggested him to broker the deal to get the painting back. I know you represent the Herzberg Foundation, and that you allow them to drive at least one car registered to you. I know that you represent them pro bono, which is not your style.”

  “I’m Jewish,” Lloyd said.

  “So?”

  “It’s a Jewish organization, for God’s sake,” Lloyd said. “I have several cars. I donated one to them.”

  “In what way is it a Jewish organization?” I said.

  “It is concerned with the Holocaust.”

  “How?” I said.

  “Restoring the historical record,” he said. “If you’re not Jewish, you cannot understand the full meaning of the Holocaust.”

  “Probably not,” I said. “Did you know that Ashton Prince’s real name was Ascher Prinz, and that his father, Amos, was in Auschwitz with Judah and Isaac Herzberg?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think the Herzberg Foundation is related to Judah and Isaac?” I said.

  “How would I know,” he said.

  “Are they interested in maybe recovering Lady with a Finch?”

  “That is privileged information,” Lloyd said.

  “We’ll put this all together sooner or later,” I said. “And if there’s bad news about you, it’ll go easier if we got it from you.”

  “You’re not a cop,” he said.

  “True,” I said. “But I know one.”

  His hands were resting on his expensive desk. He looked down at them. Then he cleared his throat and shook his head.

  “I have nothing further to say.”

  I nodded and took one of my business cards out of my shirt pocket.

  “This whole thing is going to go right out from underneath you pretty soon. And if you’re still hanging on, it’ll take you down with it.”

  He was still looking at the backs of his hands.

  “We have nothing left to discuss,” he said.

  I stood.

  “I’ll let myself out,” I said, and walked to the door.

  As I opened it, I looked back and nodded at my card on his desk.

  “Don’t lose the card,” I said.

  49

  Brighton is mostly middle-class residential, and the house on Market Street fit in nicely. It had white aluminum siding and a porch across the front enclosed with jalousie windows. The concrete sidewalk was neatly shoveled, and ice melt had been scattered on it, and on the two steps to the porch door. A white signpost stood beside the door, with a white wooden sign hanging from it that read in black letters:HERZBERG FOUNDATION

  ART AND JUSTICE

  I opened the porch door and went in. On the inside front door was a small brass sign that said Office. I opened that door and I was in what must have once been a living room but was now a reception area with a desk and several chairs, in case you needed to wait. At the desk was the guy I had seen with Missy at the Walford library.

  “What can I do for you?” he said.

  “You are?” I said.

  “Ariel Herzberg,” he said. “And you?”

  “Call me Ishmael,” I said. “Your father was Isaac Herzberg.”

  Herzberg pushed his swivel chair away from the desk and leaned as far back in the chair as the spring would allow and stared at me.

  “Your grandfather was Judah Herzberg,” I said. “He died in Auschwitz. Isaac, your father, survived Auschwitz and was liberated by the Russians with his friend Amos Prinz in 1945. He was about fourteen at the time. Amos was about eighteen.”

  “He would have pronounced it ‘Ah-mose,’ ” Ariel said.

  “They went together to Amsterdam,” I said. “Recovered a painting from a secret room in the now-abandoned Herzberg home, took it to Rotterdam and sold it to an art dealer for much less than it was worth but enough to feed them for a while.”

  “So?” Ariel said after a bit.

  “The painting was Lady with a Finch,” I said. “It was stolen a little while back, from the Hammond Museum.”

  “I read about that,” Ariel said.

  “I think you stole it,” I said.

  “And of course you have evidence.”

  “I think you blew up Ashton Prince,” I said.

  “Evidence?”

  “I think you tried twice to kill me, and succeeded in killing a guy named Francisco,” I said.

  “Evidence?” Ariel said again.


  “Ah,” I said. “There’s the rub.”

  “It is a big rub,” Ariel said. “Don’t you think?”

  “It is,” I said. “But I’m working on it. Did you know that Ashton Prince is the son of Amos Prinz?”

  “I know nothing except what I have read in the papers.”

  “Do you know—”

  I stopped. I was going to ask if he knew Missy Minor, and if he knew Morton Lloyd, and what relationship he had with either. But if he’d tried twice to kill me for investigating, what might he do with a potential witness?

  “You had a question?” Ariel said.

  He would admit nothing, anyway. Why put them in jeopardy?

  “I decided not to ask it,” I said.

  “America is a great country,” he said. “We are free to do what we will.”

  I had already baited him as much as I needed to. He knew what I knew. If it was as dangerous to him as I thought it was, maybe he’d make a run at me, and I could catch him at it. I took a business card from my shirt pocket. On the back I wrote his grandfather’s death camp number, and handed him the card.

  “What is this number?” he said.

  “Judah Herzberg’s Auschwitz ID number,” I said. “You probably have it tattooed on your arm.”

  “You appear a good investigator,” Ariel said.

  “Stalwart, too,” I said.

  “No doubt,” Ariel said. “No doubt.”

  He must have pressed a button someplace, because a door opened behind him and a big muscular blond guy came in wearing a tight T-shirt and looking scary. He paused beside Ariel’s desk and looked at him. I could see that there were numbers tattooed on his forearm.

  “Throw Mr. Spenser out, Kurt,” Ariel said to him. “Not gently.”

  50

  Kurt studied me for a moment. We were about the same size, but he didn’t seem daunted. I speculated that they were trying to get me to draw my gun so they could shoot me and claim self-defense. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to draw my gun. My frustration content was saturating. I needed to hit somebody, and Kurt looked good for it.

  Kurt shuffled toward me with his left foot forward and his hands held loosely up on either side of his head. So he had some idea what he was doing. On the other hand, I did, too, and I’d been doing it longer. He swung his right leg up and across in a martial arts-type kick. I stepped inside it, close to him, so not much of the kick got me, and hit him in the throat with the crotch between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. The guy who taught me the punch called it “the tiger’s claw.” Kurt grunted and spun away from me, and settled back into his stance. Some people fell down when I hit them that way. I slid toward him with a left jab, which landed well, and a right cross, which landed even better. Kurt bobbed and wove a little and hit me on the chin with the heel of his right hand. It backed me up a couple of steps, and he came after me. I blocked a left and then a right, and feinted a straight left to his face. He brought his right arm across to block it, and I looped a big left hook over the block and nailed him on the right cheekbone. He staggered. That was encouraging. But he didn’t go down.

  I followed with a right uppercut, which would have ended it, but he leaned away from it and it missed. My right side was exposed, and Kurt hammered a solid left hook into my ribs. I turned with the punch so I was at right angles to him and came around with my right elbow and hit him in the temple. He staggered again, and I heard his breath exhale in a kind of snort. I had him if I was quick. I went with the flow and followed the right elbow with the left forearm, then a left back fist and a right cross. All in rhythm. Everything was loose now and warm and moving as it should. I hit him with a left hook to the body, right hook to the body. He stumbled backward. I stayed on him. Left to the body, right to the body. His hands dropped. Left hook to the head. Right hook to the head. His hands were hanging at his sides now. It was like hitting the heavy bag. I jabbed him again in the face, and then turned my hip and brought the right uppercut that had missed before. He was too far gone to slip it this time, and it caught him square. He took another step backward. His legs gave out. And he sat suddenly on the floor, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  My hands hurt.

  I looked at Ariel Herzberg.

  “You think they’ll put my statue outside the Museum of Fine Arts?” I said.

  “Kurt is good,” Ariel said. “Which means you’re very good.”

  “Keep it in mind,” I said.

  “It is a temporary triumph,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can.”

  I walked to his desk and took hold of his nose and sort of shook his head for him.

  “So far, I like my chances better than yours,” I said.

  And I left.

  51

  We hadn’t had a big, serious snowstorm all winter. It had snowed moderately, and often, and it was doing it again. The cumulative effect of moderate and often was pretty much the same as big, serious. The snow was steady but not dense, and the flakes were small. But it was enough to cover up the compacted dirty snow that had preceded it, and for a little while the city would look clean again.

  I walked up Berkeley Street wearing my plaid longshoreman’s cap and a fleece-lined leather jacket. Because I had the jacket zipped up, and people were seeking to do me ill, I had taken my gun off my belt and put it in my side pocket. I also looked around a lot. At Columbus I turned right and went in the big arched door of Shawmut Insurance Company and rode up in the black iron elevator to see Winifred Minor.

  She was in the same office I’d seen her in before. The door was open. I knocked on the outer edge of the door opening and stepped in. She looked up at me and saw who it was and stiffened and looked at me some more without speaking. I sat down.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She continued to look at me silently.

  “You never finished your lunch,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “How ’bout that snow?” I said.

  Silence.

  “If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute,” I said.

  She looked down at her desk.

  “Everybody talks about the weather,” I said. “But nobody does anything about it.”

  She looked up from her desk.

  “All right,” she said. “Enough. I’ll talk to you. What do you want?”

  “Thank God,” I said. “I was almost down to singing ‘Stormy Weather.’”

  She almost smiled.

  “At least I escaped that,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “Know a man named Ariel Herzberg?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Your daughter does,” I said.

  “So?”

  “I saw him visiting her at Walford last week,” I said.

  “So?”

  “He’s killed two people that I know of, and tried twice, so far, to kill me.”

  She kept looking at me, and her breathing became harder, as if she was short of breath.

  “If she’s involved with a man like that . . .” I said.

  “Who did he kill,” Winifred asked.

  Her voice was raspy.

  “He killed Ashton Prince,” I said. “And the superintendent in my building. Super’s name was Francisco Cabrera.”

  “Was that part of the attempt to kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the super interrupt them?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “They interrupted him. Apparently they rang the bell. When he answered, they put a gun on him and forced him to open my door. Then they took him to the cellar and shot him in the head.”

  “Did Ariel do this himself?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “He probably had people do it for him.”

  “And you’ve seen her with him?”

  “Missy,” I said. “Yes.”

  “And you assume they’re involved.”

  “They were people who knew each other,” I said.

  “Is there anything I could s
ay . . . or do . . . to make you leave this alone?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “You have an office just down the street,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go there to talk,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  52

  I’d given her some coffee, and she was sitting in a client chair with her legs crossed, sipping it. Her knees were good-looking. She looked past me for a time, out my window, where the small snowflakes fell. They were well spaced and in no great hurry. She didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry herself. That was okay. She hadn’t come here to drink coffee and look at the snow.

  I was behind my desk. In my Aeron chair. With the right-hand top drawer of my desk open, and a cup of fresh coffee in my hand. I drank some. And looked at her knees. And waited.

  After a little while she shifted her gaze from the snowfall to me.

  “When I was with the Bureau,” she said, “before Missy was born, I was young, single, and ferocious. I was going to prove something. I was going to be the best goddamned agent since Melvin Purvis.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “Seems kind of, what? Pathetic, now all this time later. What we know about the Bureau. What we know about the government. What we know about . . .” She shrugged. “What we know about everything.”

  “We all gotta forgive ourselves our youth,” I said.

  “But it was kind of pathetic,” she said. “Doesn’t it sound pathetic?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Some.”

  She looked relieved, as if I’d complimented her.

  “I was in Chicago,” she said. “And we were working on a case involving art theft from a private collector in Evanston.”

  “Where Northwestern is,” I said. Just to let her know I was alert.

  “Yuh. There were several of us on it; the guy they were stolen from was connected in D.C. I was the only female, and I outworked all of them. We always had a lot of money to pay for information. Local cops resented us for that.”

  “They never had enough,” I said.

  “No. I got a lead from a snitch, I don’t even remember the details. They may have tried to recruit him for something. He told me about a gang of art thieves that he said had something to do with the World War Two prisons or something, and how a lot of Jews got killed.”