Paul Christopher - Michelangelo_s Notebook

“What’s with the retro stuff?” she asked.

“It’s the easiest way to decorate a room,” he said. “Pick an era and then pick up things from the period. It’s fun. You get to look for things without it being serious. I can get as excited about a 1954 first edition of the Betty Crocker’s Good and Easy Cook Book as I can about finding a Vermeer stolen from an Irish country house.”

“I heard about that when we were doing a Dutch masters class,” said Finn, her eyes widening a little. “Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid. They even wrote a book about it. That was you?”

“It was the second time the painting had been stolen. There was a drug connection. I helped track it down from this end.” He shook his head and took a sip of coffee from his cowboy mug. “Once upon a time art theft was something you saw in the movies starring David Niven or Cary Grant. Now it’s usually got some kind of other link-usually with drugs, sometimes with guns.”

“I don’t get it,” said Finn. “They don’t have anything to do with each other.”

“Sure they do,” responded Valentine.

“Explain.”

“Most criminal activity deals in large volumes of cash. Cash is hard to keep and hard to spend. Stealing art helps both problems.”

“How?”

“It’s currency. Most works of art, valuable ones, have a well-established value. A painting or drawing can be sold for X amount. Instead of doing deals for money, big drug dealers and weapons dealers-especially the ones in the terrorist market-trade in art. It’s portable, it’s easy to move across borders and it’s usually insured in one way or another. I can name you half a dozen galleries in Europe that knowingly traffic in stolen art and twice that many just in New York. It’s a very big business.”

Finn shifted on the seat across from Valentine, tucking one leg up underneath herself, thinking. “Is that what we’re dealing with here?”

“I’m not sure. If it’s drugs it’s very sophisticated, beyond anything I’ve ever seen. On first glance I’d say no. It’s something else, and it’s been going on for some time.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Crawley was pretty high up the ladder. You said the provenance for the Michelangelo had his initials on it?”

“No, the inventory line.”

“What about the Hoffman Gallery receipt. Who was it sent to? Crawley or somebody else?”

“It’s all on computer. One of the founders of the Parker-Hale bought it from the Hoffman Gallery in 1939, I think. Before Crawley’s time.”

“But he inventoried it?”

“Yes. As an Urbino, a few years back.”

“Too many coincidences and not enough answers,” murmured Valentine. He finished his eggs and chewed on a piece of bacon. Finn refilled his coffee cup and her own. A silence fell across the pleasantly anachronistic kitchen. Somewhere far away she could hear the morning traffic sounds on Broadway, and closer, the whine and thunder of the garbage trucks behind Lispenard.

“Okay, let’s put together what we have,” said Valentine. “This all starts when you accidentally trip over a Michelangelo drawing and Alex Crawley catches you.”

“You make it sound as though I was stealing something.”

“That’s the point,” said Valentine. “You weren’t doing anything wrong, so why was Crawley so upset? All he really had to do was say that you were mistaken, and it was only after you insisted it was a Michelangelo that he fired you.”

“What are you saying?”

“Either he didn’t want you or anyone else knowing the gallery was in possession of that particular drawing, or it’s a fake. More likely the former rather than the latter because it’s obvious there was already a cover-up in motion since it was identified in the inventory as the work of another artist. The question, of course, is Why?” He tapped his fingers rapidly on the Formica surface of the table. “I’d love to see the original paperwork. It’s got to be somewhere and it would be easier to trace than computer files, harder to fake.”

“It’s a company called U.S. Docugraphics Service. I’ve seen their trucks in the parking area behind the museum.”

“All right. That makes things easier,” he said. He thought for a moment, picking up a toast crust and dabbing it with a knifeful of E. Waldo Ward Rhubarb Conserve. Even that simple act made the muscles in his arms and shoulders stand out and she remembered being in his arms last night; he’d been enormously strong and had a tough, hard body that came from more than three times a week at the gym. Definitely not the abs of a librarian. They were lovers now but he still hadn’t told her everything.

“Penny for your thoughts.” He grinned in that slightly savage, predatory way, his perfect teeth gleaming, the intelligent eyes focused on hers.

“Not a chance,” she said, laughing. “So what do we do now? Run away to a desert island and wait until things die down?”

“I know just the place.” He smiled. “But I don’t think it’s a possibility yet.”

“Then where do we go from here? Crawley’s murder is being investigated by the cops and so is Peter’s. We’ve established some kind of relationship between Gatty, Crawley and Greyfriars Academy through the missing knife and the Juan Gris, and that creep-the headmaster, Wharton-is probably involved. We know Gatty’s involved in stolen art, at least as a buyer, because he’s got that Renoir. None of it fits together.”

“Sure it does. We just don’t know how yet.”

“So how do we find out?”

“I want to talk to a dealer I know. Then maybe go to the Parker-Hale and ask a few questions.”

“Under what pretext?”

“I’ll tell them I’m your godfather and that you’re missing. Your boyfriend was murdered and obviously I’m concerned.”

“I don’t know if I like you referring to yourself as my godfather. It makes me feel as though I was in a cradle that was just robbed.” She grinned.

“Think of it in the Marlon Brando sense, then.” He grinned back. He stuck out his foot under the table and let his big toe slide down her calf. She shivered. He gave her a strange look.

“What’s that?”

“My best Christopher Walken leer.”

“Can you back it up?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“What am I supposed to do… afterward?”

“Get on the computer and find out how all the pieces are connected.”

“Okay.”

“You finished?” He glanced down at her plate.

“Yup.” She slid out of the breakfast nook and started undoing the buttons of her shirt. “Gentlemen, prepare to defend your aprons.”

Without being asked or ordered, the sergeant went out an hour or so after dawn broke, leaving everybody else behind this time except Reid. He was part fucking Cherokee or something and he looked like the front of an old nickel. Quiet enough to stand in front of a cigar store and yet he could pick off most anything with his M1 from a couple hundred yards.

“Where we going, Sarge?” Reid asked.

“Same as before. Maybe somebody’s up and around. Maybe do a head count or something.”

“Sure, Sarge,” and that was it. Reid unslung the M1 and followed him into the woods.

This time the sergeant kept his eyes on the forest floor. There seemed to be three well-worn paths, one going straight through, one moving to the left and one to the right. They all came together in roughly the center of the woodlot at a small clearing. Rabbits maybe, more likely deer.

There were chewed-off branches about five feet up, which would be right for a deer, or maybe a young moose. He wondered if there were moose in Europe. He put the thought out of his mind; waste of time to think about anything except the here and now. The sergeant gestured to the left and Reid nodded. The sergeant headed along the left-hand path with the other man a few yards behind him. Reid didn’t make a sound, which was more than you could say for most of the others.