Paul Christopher - Michelangelo_s Notebook

She turned to the left and looked at the bookcase beside her. Konstructive theoritsche und experimentelle Beitrag zu dem Probleme der Flussigkeitsrakete: W. Von Braun-1934. The title had been hand-typed and then glued onto the spine. A university dissertation maybe? She reached out to pull it from the bookcase for a closer look. A voice stopped her.

“Don’t touch the material, please. We don’t want to disturb Enkel. He’s very possessive about the material.”

“Enkel?” she said into the gloom.

“Enkel Shmolkin. My archivist. I’m not sure where he is right now-somewhere in the stacks. Maybe you’ll run into him.”

Finn looked for a camera lens but this time she couldn’t find it. “Where are you?”

“Straight ahead until you reach the end of the row. Then turn left. You’ll come to a door eventually.”

Feeling a little bit like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Finn went forward, her feet ringing dully on the metal floor. The cases left and right seemed evenly divided between library-width bookcases eight or nine feet high and equally high file-drawer stacks. The file drawers each appeared to be fitted with a sturdy-looking steel Yale lock. The whole place was like the Fort Knox of libraries.

She reached the far end of the passage, turned left and kept walking. Eventually she reached a plain white door with no knob or lock. She put up one fist, preparing to knock, and there was a small clicking noise. The door slid open. It was metal, about three inches thick and had a piano hinge running all the way down one side, like the door to a bank vault.

The room beyond looked like something out of Dickens. It was a sitting room fitted out with several comfortable-looking club chairs, a table cluttered with several newspapers and a narrow, coal-burning fireplace. On the mantel of the fireplace there was a coal scuttle with a leather pouch in it, a violin standing on end and an old-fashioned-looking meerschaum pipe. Over the mantel, drilled into the pale striped wallpaper were the initials V.R. Finn smiled. It wasn’t out of Dickens, it was out of Arthur Conan Doyle. The only thing out of place was a coffeemaker, cups and cream and sugar on a side table along with a plate piled high with what appeared to be freshly made Toll House cookies. “Enkel makes them,” he said, noticing her glance. “Oatmeal and peanut butter too. We’ve both got a bit of a sweet tooth.”

The man seated at the table smiled. He looked like a cross between John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe: high forehead, chiseled cheekbones, broad chin and big sexy mouth. His eyes were black, deep-set and intense. He looked to be in his mid-forties with just enough gray in his hair to make him look a little less dangerous than a younger version of the same man would have been.

“Finn Ryan,” he said. “You don’t look anything like your old man except for the hair.”

Finn didn’t know how to answer that so she looked around the room instead. “Sherlock Holmes’s study,” she said finally.

“Very good,” said Valentine.

“Was it a test?”

“Not at all,” he said. “I just like it when people are literate enough to know what they’re seeing. I just did it for fun. Next time I do something with it, I thought I might try Nero Wolfe.”

“You’re not fat.”

“I’d be Archie Goodwin.”

“That might work.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“Murder, funnily enough.”

“Did you do it?” said Valentine, waving her toward one of the club chairs.

“No,” said Finn.

“Then there’s no problem,” said Valentine. “There’s just a situation that has to be resolved.”

“I think it’s a bit more than that,” said Finn.

“Explain.”

So she did.

Half an hour later, while munching on cookies and drinking coffee, her legs drawn up under her in one of the big club chairs, she had brought Valentine up to speed.

“So what do you think?” he asked.

“I think Peter got in the way and died because of it. I think Crawley died because I saw the Michelangelo and I think I’m next.”

“Interesting.”

“It’s more than interesting. It’s my life, Mr. Valentine.”

“Michael, please. I didn’t mean that part of it was interesting. I meant the part about someone dying just because they saw a particular work of art. It doesn’t have any logical basis… yet.”

“I don’t think it has a logical basis period. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“It makes sense to whoever killed your friend and the director of the Parker-Hale.”

“Why do I get the feeling we’re going around in circles?”

“Because we are,” said Valentine. “The circles get smaller and smaller, and finally you come to the little point of truth right in the center.”

“Way too Zen for me,” answered Finn. “My mother gave me your number if I ever got into real trouble, which is what I think I’m in right now. Aren’t you supposed to do something? We’ve been sitting around drinking coffee and eating cookies and we’re not getting anywhere.”

“Depends on your point of view,” said Valentine. “I know a lot of things I didn’t before. I know what you look like, I know where you live, I know that among other things you’re a nude model, a teacher of English as a second language, a recently fired intern at a prestigious art museum and you’ve been involved in two violent deaths. Any one of those facts could be vitally important to the situation at hand.”

“Why does everyone harp on the nude model part?”

“Because it forces people to imagine you with no clothes on. For some people that’s probably very uncomfortable, for other people it’s probably a delight. It’s a lot different than saying you work as a waitress at IHOP, you’ve got to admit.” Valentine sighed. “My dear Finn, it’s my job to look at details, very small details. When I’m doing a valuation of a rare book for someone, the shape of a letter can mean the difference between the work being authentic or a forgery. If I’m advising somebody on a piece of crucial information, that information has to be exactly right. If you look closely at things you see the details, you see the flaws and sometimes you see the absolute perfection. They can be equally important.”

“You mean the Michelangelo?”

“As an example, sure. That may be the problem right there-it might not be a Michelangelo at all. It wouldn’t be the first time someone was killed over a forgery.”

“It was the real thing. I’m sure of it.”

Valentine smiled. “No offense, kiddo, but you hardly qualify as an expert.”

“And you do?”

“You told me you had a digital image of the drawing.”

Finn nodded. She dug around in her pack, which was leaning by the chair, found her camera and handed it over to Valentine. He opened the flap at the camera’s bottom, withdrew the firewire connector and plugged it into the black, flat-screened IBM on his desk. Finn got up and came around to stand behind him as he worked the keyboard. She looked around but she couldn’t actually see the computer itself.

“It’s a server down in the basement,” said Valentine without looking up from what he was doing, as though reading her mind. “It’s cooler down there.”

“What do you have?” Finn asked. “A supercomputer or something?”

“Not quite,” he answered. “But close. I do a lot of work for some people in California. They pay me in computer technology.” He sat back in his chair. “There we go.” On the screen was the Michelangelo drawing, full size. The detail on the screen was flawless.

“Well?” Finn asked.

“I’ve got to admit it looks pretty good. Authentic at first glance, anyway.” He tapped some more keys and the drawing vanished.