William Rabkin - A Fatal Frame of Mind

“What about the deal with the painting?” Henry asked. “That sure sounds funny to me.”

“It sounded funny to everyone here,” Ralston admitted. “But some things are too good to question too closely. Clay insisted it was legitimate, and his word was sacred around here. So we took the deal, even with the strict rules about anonymity.”

“I’m sure you can see how those rules can’t stand anymore,” Lassiter said. “Your donor’s instructions matter much less than a human life.”

“I agree entirely,” Ralston said. “I’d break the confidentiality in a second if I could.”

“If you could?” Henry said, his face reddening. “My son is being hunted by the police because he’s trying to clear Langston Kitteredge’s name. If you have information that can help him, I won’t leave you alone for a second until you hand it over.”

Ralston threw up his hands defensively. “I’m sorry; I said that badly,” he said. “I mean I would give you any information I had. I just don’t have any. I went into Clay’s office, I broke into his private files, and I dug out everything he had on this picture. This is it.”

Ralston picked up a file and handed it across his desk. Henry flipped it open. It was empty. “Somebody stole his files?”

“Or he never kept any paperwork at all,” Ralston said. “Or he hid it at his home. I have no answers. I have nothing.”

“Come on,” Henry said. “There must be some other way of tracking down this donor.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Ralston said, his voice close to cracking. “I have nothing. All I’ve ever wanted was for this museum to thrive. Because it’s so much bigger than I am. I couldn’t even make my ex-wife happy, but this institution can touch the lives of generations. And look what I’ve done for it. Thanks to my brilliant financial skills, we’ve lost two-thirds of our endowment in the markets. Now one of the best people who ever worked here has been murdered in one of our galleries, and the painting he spent his last months acquiring for us has been stolen. Could I have done a worse job?”

If there was one thing that Henry-and every cop Henry had ever known-hated, it was whining. When you saw as many terrible things as a rookie saw in his first year, it was just too hard to listen to anyone moaning about how tough he had it. Henry would never tolerate it from Shawn, and he hated when he heard it in an interview. He glanced over at Lassiter to confirm that the detective shared his disgust. But to his shock, Lassiter seemed to be listening sympathetically. And there was something bright and shiny in the corner of his eye, which-if Henry hadn’t known better-he would have sworn was a tear.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world,” Lassiter said, “to love a job, to love an institution, and to know you’ve let her down.”

“Yes!” Ralston said in a voice that was perilously close to sobs.

“When you’d do anything in the world for that place and those people, and all you bring them is shame,” Lassiter said.

“Oh, God, yes,” Ralston said.

“And you think there’s nothing you can ever do to wipe that stain away,” Lassiter said, his voice taking on a dreamy, distant quality. “Sure, for a while you want to crawl into a hole. You want to disappear and never show your face to the people whose trust you’ve violated. But you keep on going. Do you know why?”

“Why?” Ralston choked out.

“Yes, Carlton,” Henry said. “Tell us all.”

“Because that’s what a man does,” Lassiter said. “He takes the beating, he makes his mistakes, but then he gets up and keeps working. Because if he’s a real man, he knows it’s not about him. It’s about the institution he’s sworn to protect. And if he’s failed her once, then it’s up to him to work twice as hard to make sure he never lets her down again. And to be proud he’s been given a chance to serve.”

Ralston looked at him, tears streaming down his face. “Do you really think so?”

Lassiter reached across the desk and gave his hand a firm squeeze. “I know so,” he said. “It’s what we do.”

“Thank you,” Ralston said. “Thank you.”

For a moment, the three of them sat in silence. Then Henry got to his feet. “If you come across anything you think might be useful in the interrogation, you be sure to let the police know.”

Ralston nodded wordlessly. Henry walked to the door, Lassiter right behind him. Neither man spoke until they were out of the museum.

“That was a waste of time,” Henry said as they walked down the steps to the street.

“Really?” Lassiter said. “I thought it was tremendously useful.”

“He had no information,” Henry said incredulously. “We didn’t learn a thing.”

“I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot from this experience,” Lassiter said. “And now if you’ll excuse me, we need to take up this investigation some other time.”

“Some other time?” Henry sputtered. “What about right now?”

“I can’t right now,” Lassiter said. “I have an appointment with a kindergarten teacher. And I think I just learned how to tie my shoes.”

Gus pulled against the ropes that bound his hands behind his chair. He’d seen so many movies in which the hero was able to stretch them just enough to slip his wrists through. But all that was happening to Gus was that the rough cord was scraping the flesh off his bones.

“Keep it up,” Shawn whispered. “If you keep bleeding, maybe you’ll make the ropes slick enough you can slip them off.”

If Gus could have twisted his head around to shoot a killing look at Shawn, he would have. But Shawn was behind him in the stable, tied to his own chair. Gus had seen two more masked men, less well dressed in workers’ coveralls, tie him there while the suited man held the gun on him. Then it was his turn.

“We’ve got to save Professor Kitteredge,” Gus said, hoping that this was indeed still the case. After they’d been captured, they’d heard noises from another stall that sounded like unspeakable things being done to human flesh, accompanied by screams from the professor. In the past few minutes, though, the sounds had stopped.

“Save him from what?” Shawn said. “I thought you said all this conspiracy stuff was insane.”

“You said that,” Gus said, feeling an additional surge of outrage. “You essentially said I was an idiot for ever taking him seriously.”

There was a long silence from behind Gus.

“Oh, right,” Shawn said. “I knew it was one of us. But just because I said something, that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to listen to me.”

Gus knew that was as close to an apology as he was ever going to get from Shawn, so he chose to accept it.

“Besides,” Shawn said, “we have no idea who these guys are. Just because some thugs in black masks take us hostage when we step off the plane, that doesn’t mean they’re part of a centuries-old global conspiracy.”

“It seems like a pretty good sign to me,” Gus said.

“Think it through,” Shawn said. “This might not even have anything to do with the professor, or with the painting, or with us.”

“Mighty big coincidence if it doesn’t,” Gus said.

“Really?” Shawn said. “The plane belongs to the world’s biggest smugglers of looted artworks.”

“Now Low’s the world’s biggest?” Gus said. “Where do you get that from?”

“His henchman has a union contract,” Shawn said. “Do you have any idea how much that must cost over standard hunchback myrmidon pay scales? And that’s not even including benefits.”

Gus filed that away with a million other things he meant to argue about later. Right now there was something more important to discuss.