Painted Ladies

by Robert B. Parker

  The sergeant looked at me.

  “You carry a gun,” he said. “I seen you take it out when you went in the house.”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said.

  “You ain’t a cop,” he said.

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  “He’s a private license,” Belson said. “He’s been working on this case longer than I have.”

  The sergeant nodded.

  “Just asking,” he said.

  When he was gone, I said, “Alert to any transgression.”

  Belson nodded.

  “Probably make lieutenant before I do,” Belson said.

  “Might help,” I said, “if you take the lieutenant’s exam.”

  “Fuck the lieutenant’s exam,” Belson said.

  “Your position remains consistent,” I said.

  “Ain’t gonna change,” Belson said. “I’ve been a cop a long time. I don’t need to prove myself in some fucking exam.”

  “You do if you want to make lieutenant,” I said.

  “Fuck lieutenant, too,” Belson said.

  I grinned.

  “No wonder we get along,” I said.

  Belson looked at me without expression.

  “Who says we get along?” Belson said.

  63

  If you didn’t know you were Jewish,” I said, “would you know you were Jewish?”

  Susan looked at me carefully.

  “Is this a trick question?” she said.

  We were in bed. Having completed the more rambunctious part of our evening together, we had invited Pearl into the bedroom. She had tried to settle in between Susan and me, but I outmuscled her, and she settled for the foot of the bed. Dogs are adaptive.

  “No,” I said. “I know you’re not religious. And your ancestors came from Germany. But . . .”

  “But I’m Jewish,” Susan said. “I’m a Jew in the same way I’m a woman. It is who and what I am.”

  “And if you didn’t know?” I said.

  “I don’t believe in magic,” Susan said. “Although there are moments in a therapy session . . . No. No more so than I can speak Hebrew. The irony about Jewishness, I’ve always thought, is that it has been intensified by repression.”

  “Containment enhances the power of explosion,” I said.

  “Something like that,” Susan said.

  Our earlier rambunctiousness had pretty well done away with the bedcovers. Susan made a weak effort at modesty by pulling one edge of the comforter over her thighs. She had been doing power yoga for some time now, and was pleased with her strength and flexibility. As she talked, she raised one naked leg and pointed it toward the ceiling, which pretty well took care of the modesty issue.

  “Flexible,” I said.

  “And strong,” she said.

  “Good traits in a woman,” I said.

  She smiled and raised the other leg. Pearl eyed the space that had been created but stayed put. I eyed her both legs pointing at the ceiling.

  “Also comely,” I said.

  “Jewesses are frequently comely,” Susan said.

  “None as comely as you,” I said.

  Susan flexed her elevated ankles.

  “Doubtless,” she said.

  “This thing with the paintings has been the most Jewish thing I’ve ever dealt with.”

  “Except me,” Susan said.

  “As always,” I said. “There’s you, and there’s everybody else.”

  “All the bad guys appear to be Jewish,” Susan said.

  “I’m beginning to feel like an anti-Semite,” I said.

  Susan, with both legs still sticking up in the air, turned from admiring them to look at me.

  “You’re not,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “Now, if I could just find Ariel Herzberg.”

  Susan put her legs down, which was good news and bad news. The good news was I could think of something else. It was also the bad news.

  “What is he like?” Susan said.

  “I don’t know. I have no handle on him. I thought I could lure him into trying to kill me, and instead I lured him into disappearing.”

  “Disappearing may be a bit solipsistic,” Susan said. “He’s not disappeared. He’s someplace. You just don’t know where.”

  “My God,” I said. “I’m in bed with Noah Webster.”

  “Think about it,” Susan said. “Worst case. He’s on the run. He’s alone. He has to go somewhere. If you were at the end of your rope and in his situation, where would you go?”

  “To you,” I said.

  Susan nodded.

  “Does he have a me?”

  “No one does,” I said.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “There’s an ex-wife. There’s a daughter.”

  “Ex-wife doesn’t hold him in high esteem,” I said.

  “ ‘Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,’ ” Susan said.

  “It’s not Noah Webster,” I said. “It’s Robert Frost.”

  “When people run,” Susan said, “they run home.”

  “And the daughter thinks he’s heroic,” I said.

  “It’ll be the wife,” Susan said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Shrink, woman, and comely Jewess,” Susan said.

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s how.”

  64

  Bright and early, while the coffee was brewing in my office pot, I called Crosby at Walford.

  “Can you see if you can locate Missy Minor?” I said.

  “You want me to hold her?”

  “I don’t even want her to know you located her. Just let me know.”

  “I’ll be surreptitious,” he said.

  “You don’t sound like a cop,” I said. “You got to stop hanging around the faculty lounge.”

  “Oh, okay,” Crosby said. “I’ll be fucking surreptitious.”

  “Better,” I said.

  I hung up and dialed Shawmut Insurance and asked for Winifred Minor. She was not in today. I asked if she was ill. That information was not available. Of course it wasn’t. I hung up and checked the coffee. It was ready, so I poured some and added milk and sugar and sat down with it. I was on my second cup when Crosby called back.

  “She don’t answer the bell at her dorm,” he said when I picked up the phone. “And she isn’t at the gym or anywhere like that.”

  “And what were you going to say if she did answer the door?” I said.

  “I told my guy to say, ‘There’s been a burglary in one of the dorms and we’re just warning all the members of the Walford community.’”

  “Slick,” I said. “Might she be in class?”

  “Only class today is twelve to three,” he said. “We’ll check when the time comes, let you know.”

  “You know any of her friends?” I said.

  “Don’t know any,” Crosby said. “Can find out. But I’d have to start asking around, and that’s not surreptitious.”

  “True,” I said.

  “Something cooking?” he said.

  “If only I knew,” I said.

  “Happy to help,” he said. “If I can. It’s almost like police work.”

  “Thanks, Crosby,” I said.

  “No problem, pal.”

  “Anyone ever call you Bing?”

  “No,” he said.

  After we hung up, I sat and drank coffee and thought. Several doughnuts would have helped that process, but Susan had convinced me they were not nourishing, and I was trying to be loyal to her. Love is not always a simple thing.

  He was there. I was convinced of that. What I was thinking about was what to do about it. I didn’t know if he was there holding them hostage, or if he was there being clasped to the bosom of his family. I didn’t want the cops, at least until I knew what the arrangement was. Once the cops are in, you no longer control anything. I wanted to keep Winifred and Missy out of it, if I could.

  I finished my coffee and stood up.

>   Time to reconnoiter.

  65

  Winifred Minor’s address was one of the palisade of condos that had gone up in the old navy yard after the navy moved mostly out. There was still a small presence fenced off at the city square end of the yard, but the rest was residential. There were some small shops to service the residents, but most of the effort and money had been expended on the waterfront, where you could look out your window at harbor traffic, and across the harbor at Boston.

  Winifred lived in a gray clapboard town house at the end of a long corridor of gray clapboard town houses, all of which were elevated a level to permit parking underneath. This meant climbing a significant stairway and walking along a deck in front of the town houses until you found the number you wanted.

  On the way over from my office I had carefully thought out the options for gaining entry, once I had scoped the place out a little. I reviewed my options as I climbed the stairs and moved down the deck. Winifred was located three from the water end of the row. The option I chose was breathtaking in its simplicity.

  I rang the bell.

  In an appropriate amount of time, Winifred opened the door. She opened it only a little, enough to see out. And when she saw me she stood and stared, with one hand on the open edge of the door.

  “May I come in?” I said.

  She blinked a couple of times, as if the question was too hard for her.

  Then she said, “No, no, I don’t think so. We’re busy now.”

  “How about I wait?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “We’ll be busy all day.”

  I nodded. Her face was stiff. But as I looked at her, she glanced down at the door lock where her hand rested, and as I looked down with her, she pushed in the little button that kept the door from locking automatically when it was closed.

  “Perhaps I could come back tomorrow,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” Winifred said, and closed the door.

  I pressed my ear against it and heard her steps receding up the stairs. I stayed where I was for a moment and then gently tried the thumb latch on the door. It was open. I went in very quietly and eased the door shut behind me. I was in a small hallway that led to a sitting room with a big window that looked out on the harbor. The room was furnished as an office. To the left, a stairway led up to what I assumed were the living quarters.

  Vertical architecture.

  I had a Smith & Wesson .40-caliber on my hip, and a short-barreled .38 in an ankle holster. But if there was shooting in the kind of space I seemed to be in, then Winifred and Missy were at risk. Me, too, but I had signed on for it. I was wearing jeans and sneakers, a black T-shirt, and a leather jacket. The T-shirt had a little pocket on the chest. I took off the leather jacket and put it on the floor. I took the S&W off my hip and cocked it, and held it a little behind my right thigh and started quietly up the steps.

  And there he was. Sitting in an armchair, drinking a glass of orange juice. His daughter sat in a straight chair near him. And his ex-wife sat on the couch with her hands clasped tightly and resting on her knees.

  “Ariel Herzberg,” I said. “As I live and breathe.”

  His reaction time was excellent. He dropped the orange juice, came to his feet in one graceful movement, stepped behind Missy’s chair, and produced a semiautomatic pistol.

  Missy said, “Daddy?”

  He made a push-away gesture at her.

  I said, “Why don’t you go over beside your mother, Missy.”

  “No,” Ariel said. “Stay put.”

  Missy looked at her mother. Her mother put her hand up, palm out, in a stay-put gesture.

  “You know why he wants you to stay?” I said.

  “So I won’t be caught in a crossfire,” she said.

  She was trying for defiance, but her voice was a little shaky.

  “Pretty to think so,” I said. “But he knows I will hesitate to shoot if you are there.”

  She looked at Ariel.

  “Stay where you are,” he said, without looking at her.

  “For God’s sake, Ariel,” Winifred said. “She’s your daughter. You can’t use her as a shield. Even you.”

  “I do what needs to be done,” he said. “I have always done what needed to be done.”

  Winifred stood.

  “Where are you going?” Ariel said.

  “If I can’t protect my daughter, at least I can protect myself,” she said, and walked across the living room and up the stairs.

  “Remember,” Ariel said, “I have the girl.”

  Winifred made no answer as she disappeared up the stairs.

  “You have the girl?” Missy said.

  “Shut up,” Ariel said to her.

  He was looking a little beleaguered, and as best I could see, he hadn’t cocked the pistol.

  “I’ve tried to kill you at least twice,” he said. “You are both skillful and lucky, and you have by and large destroyed my operation here.”

  “No need to thank me,” I said.

  Ariel shook his head slightly, as if there was something in his ear.

  “But now I have you,” he said.

  “Somebody has somebody,” I said. “And you haven’t cocked your weapon.”

  Ariel smiled and thumbed back the hammer.

  “You won’t shoot,” he said. “You won’t risk hurting the girl.”

  He was right, and I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. I focused on his gun hand. As soon as it tightened I would dive, and maybe the girl could get out of the way before he killed me.

  “Daddy,” Missy said.

  Her voice scraped out as if her throat was nearly shut.

  “Be still,” he said.

  “You are hiding behind me,” she rasped.

  “I’ll kill him,” he said. “Then you and I will leave.”

  “You are going to hide behind me and shoot a man.”

  “I am,” Ariel said, and raised the pistol.

  I watched his hand. Missy stood up quite suddenly and lunged in front of me. I grabbed her and pushed her sprawling down behind the couch, and joined her. When we hit the floor, I shoved her away and rolled onto my stomach with my gun out ahead of me. The sound of a big flat shot filled the room, and Ariel stepped backward calmly and fell over on his back. I came to my feet and stepped around the couch to where Ariel lay on his back, his eyes open, seeing nothing. I crouched down and felt for his pulse, but I knew that there’d be no pulse. And there wasn’t. I stood and looked up. Winifred was at the top of the stairs, holding a long-barreled rifle. She was crying. Behind the couch, Missy was crying and yelling, “Momma.” She was struggling with her crying. “Momma.” Still carrying the rifle, Winifred half ran, half fell down the stairs and dropped to her knees beside her daughter. She put the rifle down on the rug beside her and put her arms around Missy, and they rocked back and forth together on the floor behind the couch. I took my gun off cock and put it back on my hip. I went to the kitchen and found a bottle of scotch and a water glass. I got ice from the refrigerator, put the ice in the glass, and poured some scotch over it. Then I walked back into the living room. A big container ship went dreamily past the picture window, heading for the Mystic River. The women cried and rocked.

  I found a big hassock and sat on it and sipped my scotch and was quiet.

  66

  They stopped crying and sat together on the floor behind the couch.

  “We need to talk a little before the cops come,” I said.

  “Do they have to come?” Winifred said.

  “Yes.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Winifred stood and put the rifle carefully on the long coffee table. Then she turned and put her hand out to Missy, and pulled her to her feet. Neither one looked at the dead man lying on the floor.

  “Where did I hit him?” Winifred said.

  “Middle of the mass,” I said.

  “I was the best shot in the Chicago office,” she said. “He was going to
take her.”

  “You shot him,” Missy said.

  Winifred nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Is he dead?” Missy said.

  “Yes.”

  “Will they arrest you?” Missy said.

  “I don’t think so,” Winifred said.

  “No,” I said. “They won’t.”

  “I don’t want to talk in here,” Winifred said.

  “Kitchen?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  We sat at the kitchen table with the scotch bottle in front of us. Winifred got glasses and ice, and poured a drink for Missy and a drink for herself.

  “Okay,” I said. “The rifle legal?”

  “Yes,” Winifred said.

  Missy sipped some scotch.

  “He didn’t love me,” she said.

  “He didn’t have much in the way of feelings,” Winifred said. “He might have cared more about you than anyone else.”

  “I thought he was a hero,” Missy said. “Restoring not only things but honor to his people, helping to erase some of the stain of the Holocaust, all this time later.”

  “You’re quoting him,” Winifred said. “He used to say the same thing to me.”

  “What was he really doing?” I said.

  “Stealing paintings and selling them.”

  “Tell me what you know,” I said.

  “Hell,” Winifred said. “I know everything.”

  “He was stealing paintings?” Missy said.

  “His father had been in the death camp. The offspring of Holocaust survivors often feel a need to atone for not having been part of it.”

  “Not being in the Holocaust?” Missy said.

  “I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject,” Winifred said. ”And I think, in the beginning, the Herzberg Foundation was authentic. He was really trying to even up for the Holocaust. Take some risk to liberate objets d’art and restore them to their rightful owners.”

  “So if someone wouldn’t sell him the work of art, he’d steal it,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And money became an issue, given the cost of buying such pictures.”

  “And he felt it was wrong that he should have to pay,” Winifred said.

  She poured a little more scotch into her glass.

  “So he began to steal all of them,” she said. “It was his right. And he began to sell a few of them to finance the foundation, which needed it.”