Nicola Griffith - The Blue Place

“In his seventies? Lives off Ponce? I know Charming Charlie. And the other one?”

“A banker with Massut Vere, Michael Honeycutt.”

“Hmmn.” A long drawn-out contemplation as he tick-ticked at his keyboard. “Ah. Hmmn. There’s a fair amount here. And some of the information on Charming Charlie isn’t in the electronic archive, so perhaps you should come down and take a look. I’ll be here until seven tonight.”

“I’d like to come now if it’s convenient.”

“Of course.”

I found my way around the big AJC building on Marietta Street and to Eddie’s cubbyhole with the ease of long practice.

“Aud, lovely to see you!” There was no way to describe Eddie’s voice except to call it lugubrious. He was almost six feet tall, built like a dancer, with tight nappy hair and mournful brown eyes that could light up with bright, clean joy at the slightest provocation. We hugged. “You look…” he tilted his head to one side, “engaged.”

I lifted my eyebrows.

“As in engaged with life, rather than engaged to be married.”

“I’m trying to find out who burned someone to a crisp in Inman Park last week.”

“A crusader at last.”

“At last?”

“Don’t tell me it’s for the money, or for the thrills and spills that you’re taking on a drug case.”

“It’s not a drug case.”

“The police found cocaine.”

“Yes.”

“But it was a white boy art historian who died and not some crack dealer.”

“Eddie…”

“Sorry. It’s a habit I get into around here, pointing out the obvious. So, you think Charming Charlie, and Honeycutt, patron of all the most boring Big Culture groups in the city and darling of the downtown gallery owners, are involved in this nondrug drug murder?”

“Darling of downtown galleries?”

“Oh, indubitably. Take a seat.” Click. “Top bidder for this jade piece in November.” Click. “Purchaser for an undisclosed price of not one but two Fabergé eggs.” Click. “This rather indifferent sculpture by a local artist.” Click. “Owner of these recently discovered Roman coins. Hmmn.”

“What?”

“Remarkably catholic, don’t you think?”

“Explain.”

“Most collectors have a specialty, a burning passion: silver snuffboxes of the seventeenth century, British Commonwealth stamps pre-World War II, that kind of thing. These items don’t seem to have anything in common.”

“Are there more?”

“Many.” He clicked through the rest: a ten-inch jewel-encrusted icon; a rare stamp; a pair of Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (“There are at least six pairs of those floating around that I know of,” Eddie said); a messy explosion of an oil painting by someone I’d never heard of…. “He has bought these over a period of just two years.”

“How much has he spent?”

“Some of the prices were not officially disclosed, but at a conservative guess I’d say somewhere between twelve and fifteen million. That’s all of them. You want to see them again?”

I nodded. Fifteen million. Fifteen million on such a wild collection that was part odd, like the painting and sculpture, but mostly precious. “What else?”

“He goes to dozens of fund-raising balls, dinners and speeches. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and two or three other professional organizations. Gives parties. He’s not married but often photographed in the presence of beautiful young women from Atlanta and from out of town.”

“Gay?”

“Don’t think so. There was a rumour last year that some old girlfriend was threatening to sue him for battery and emotional abuse but that the case was settled before it got to court. He’s forty-two—”

His photographs showed a lean, tanned, smiling man with short dark hair and wire-framed glasses. “Older than he looks.”

“Indeed. Previously employed by California Mutual Holdings and, before that, Bay Banking. No arrests here or in California. Not even a parking ticket. House in Marietta, one on Lake Lanier.”

“Tell me about his job.”

“Vice president, but I don’t know what of. Several articles mention meetings with foreign business managers, and I think he was involved in helping North Carolina get that BMW plant. Travels to various offshore tax havens such as the Bahamas, Bermuda, and—three times last year—the Seychelles. Also flies to Mexico and Los Angeles fairly regularly.”

“Give me the names of the galleries he patronizes most.”

“Easy. Cess Silverman at Hye Galleries.”

I frowned. Cess Silverman. “Isn’t she one of Georgia’s Democratic Party movers and shakers?”

“The same.”

I thought for a while but could not make any of it hang together. “How about Sweeting?”

“Ah,” he said with approval, “at least he knows how to collect.” He handed me a one-page printout.

“This is his obituary.”

“Yes. As a précis of his life so far, it’s hard to beat. We have them on file for all prominent Georgia citizens, updated every four months.” I wondered if they had one on me.

I ran through it quickly. S. Charles Sweeting III. Born in Covington, Georgia, in 1922. Son of congressional representative S. Charles Sweeting, Jr. Purple Heart in World War II. Married Jonetta Marie Sturton in 1947. Three children…. Worked in radio. Inherited. Bought radio station. Bought second. Bought TV station. Divorced. Remarried. Patron of High Museum of Art, Atlanta Ballet, the zoo…“It all looks very straightforward. What’s not on here that I should know about?”

“He’s said to have been a real son-of-a-bitch to his first wife. None of his children can bear to live in the same state as him. The closest is in Virginia, I think. He’s on the board of the TV station still, but can’t influence programming.”

“Reputation?”

“Straight shooter: worked hard for what he’s got, doesn’t take shit from anybody, gets what he wants when he wants it, no matter who he has to run down. And he’s run down quite a few. Earns a lot, gives a lot. What’s not on there are contributions, the very hefty contributions I’m pretty sure he makes anonymously to the Atlanta Society for the Deaf.”

“If they’re anonymous, what makes you think he gives?”

“One of his mistresses gave birth to a son after she caught measles while pregnant. The son was deaf; retarded, too, as I recall. I talked to one of the ASD’s finance assistants last year—you remember that piece the paper did on Southern noblesse oblige?—and he told me that every July for the last seventeen years they get a cheque for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They’ve come to rely on that money, but because they don’t know who gives it, they worry about the golden goose just…flying away one day. So they did some research on past beneficiaries of their services, looking for rich relatives, and my friend discovered that Sweeting’s son was born in July seventeen years ago. A big coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

I nodded. “You said he was a real collector?”

“He buys publicly and in a big way, always makes sure everyone knows what he paid. Representational art: landscapes and portraits. Nothing more modern than the 1920s. He displays the art on his own walls—no bank vaults for Charlie Sweeting. He takes the same kind of pride in owning beautiful things as being a man of his word.”

“Have you met him?”

“Once. Briefly.”

“Would you trust him?”

He thought about that. “Sixty years ago he and his buddies would probably have spent their summers setting their hunting dogs on folks like me, but, yes, I’d trust him to do what he said he would do. Or to not do what he said he would not. His honour is who he is.”