Thomas Perry - Blood Money

“Bernie bought art?”

“Afraid so,” said Ziegler. “Paintings. Mostly it was in the forties and fifties. It was expensive stuff then, so I shudder to think what it’s worth now.”

Jane frowned. “I can’t see Bernie buying paintings.”

“He went through art dealers in Europe—used them as brokers. It’s been done a lot. You can get one canvas that’s two feet wide, one foot high, and one inch thick, and you’ve stored five or six million. And finding an art dealer who doesn’t mind that the money is dirty is not exactly a head scratcher. If you say ‘tax dodge’ above a whisper, we’ll have six or seven of them lined up at the door, and two of them will know where you can get a Vermeer or a Titian that hasn’t been seen since the Allies bombed Dresden.”

“Where are the paintings?”

“In a vault. I can’t see us showing up at Sotheby’s to sell them off.”

Jane remembered the trips Bernie had made to meet Francesca Ogliaro in New York. “Is the vault in New York?”

“Yes,” said Ziegler. “And some of the paintings are stolen. When a painting by a major artist that’s been sitting in a vault for two generations hits the auction block, there are going to be TV cameras. Big players from all over the world will show up to bid. We’ve got about twenty of those. What we ought to do is burn them.”

“Do we know for sure that some are stolen?”

“Bernie thinks seven or eight, so it’s probably more.”

“Good,” said Jane. “We might be able to use that. Are there papers somewhere to show that different people bought them?”

“No,” said Ziegler. “He called himself Andrew Hewitt, set himself up with a few dealers, so the name had clout. They brought the deals to him. The dealers are all gone now—mostly dead.”

“Forget the dealers,” said Jane. “Even if they were alive, they wouldn’t come forward to say they sold stolen paintings.”

“It doesn’t get rid of the merchandise. There’s no way to avoid the publicity.”

“So let’s decide what we want it to be,” said Jane. “The fact that he bought all of them under the name Andrew Hewitt gives us a chance.”

“People are going to want to know all about Andrew Hewitt—where he got his money, where he lived, what he was like,” Henry said. “We can’t invent a person like him on short notice and expect he’ll stand up to the kind of scrutiny he’ll get. They’ll know it’s an alias.”

“Then what we need is a real person to put behind the alias. Can you get probate records on your computer?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Good. Find a person—man or woman—who left an art collection to a museum.”

“There must be hundreds,” he said. “Thousands.”

“Then be picky. We want one who doesn’t mention any other heirs in the papers. And look for signs that there was a lot of money. If possible, the person died some time ago, so the air will be clear.”

“I don’t see how this helps.”

“Andrew Hewitt was an alias this real art collector used to buy paintings. Who can quarrel with that? It’s true. When the collector died—which the collector we find did—the museums were supposed to get all the paintings, including the ones in the vault. Only he waited too long to tell anybody about them, because some were stolen.”

“But how do we spring the news? Who tells them?”

“Here’s the best we can do. As long as one of the paintings is stolen, there’s a reason for anyone who knew of it to want to be anonymous. The art collector had a friend who knew. The friend will write an anonymous letter to the museum today, explaining everything. He’s old now, and for umpteen years the secret has been weighing on him. He wants to get it off his chest. The museum will notify the authorities in New York, who will get a warrant to open the vault. The seven or eight will go back where they belong. The ones Bernie bought legitimately will go to the museum. The whole process might take years, but it will get sorted out.”

Ziegler gazed at her appreciatively. “It’s not bad. We don’t have to worry about faking an old document, because it’s just this old person writing an anonymous letter now—like he happened to have the missing codicil to his friend’s will.”

“Right,” said Jane. “But don’t you think we should hold off on the assets that have a bizarre side until we’ve gotten rid of the easy stuff? Why fool around with this when we still have stocks and bonds and things?”

Ziegler nodded as he typed some codes into his computer. “I agree.” He stopped and smiled at her. “I think we’re going to hit that point at about eight tonight.” He waited. “You hear what I said? We’ve written checks for fourteen point three billion dollars.”

“That’s why you were checking all those accounts when I came in?” said Jane. Her eyes had a glazed, faraway look. “It’s almost over?”

Ziegler nodded. “Bernie ran dry last night.”

16

Jane drove to Albuquerque the next morning and bought a Polaroid camera and four large soft-sided duffel bags with wheels on the bottoms. Then she stopped at a mailing service to buy thirty collapsed cardboard mailing cartons, labels, and tape. When she returned to Santa Fe she put Rita to work sorting envelopes by the zip codes of their return addresses, and bundling them. Bernie assembled and taped the mailing cartons. When they took a break, Jane posed each of them against the one remaining white wall that was bare, and took their pictures.

Rita watched hers slowly developing and becoming brighter. “That’s so ugly,” she said.

“It’s for spare identity papers—licenses and things,” said Jane. “If they’re not unflattering they don’t look real.” But she relented and took three more.

Jane spent much of the rest of the day at pay telephones making reservations. By the time she was back at the house, the living room walls were lined with tall stacks of boxes. All evening she and Rita filled the boxes, taped, and labeled them. At eleven, Jane made her way down an empty aisle she had left and settled onto the couch to sleep.

For the first time in weeks, Jane didn’t awaken when Henry Ziegler began to work. It was dawn when she walked into the dining room to find him at his computer, scrolling down a long list of numbers and names. He looked up.

Jane asked, “How is it going?”

“Great,” he said. “It’s going great. Bernie is amazing. Not one account I transferred money to has problems. I’ve been through every transfer once, and I’m just checking one more time. He didn’t memorize balances—why should he? But he had a pretty good idea what was where. The signatures he put on the withdrawals all got through. We’re not going to have any rubber checks.”

“You wanted to know how he did it,” said Jane. “That’s how. He’s not remembering numbers. He’s looking at the image of a piece of paper he once saw. He just copies it.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, one more thing. You did the Weinstein papers?”

“Transfers for the insurance premium were done last night. All he has to do is sign.” He looked toward the living room, where the boxes were piled. “Have you figured out how we get all these letters in the mail?”

“We start in two days,” she said. “Want to see your itinerary?”

“Sure.”

Jane found her notes at the other end of the table. “You fly from Albuquerque to Houston. You’ll have two big rolling duffel bags full of letters, which is what one person can handle by himself. You’ll check them at the airport. No letters go into your carry-on bag. We don’t want the security people going through anything and seeing them. When you get to Houston, mail the first pack of letters. Then you fly to St. Louis and mail the second set. The third is Miami. In Miami I rented you a car. You drive north: Atlanta, Charleston, Raleigh, Richmond, Washington. There will be a second shipment of letters waiting at your hotel in Washington, so you can refill your duffel bags. You rest up, or whatever it is that you do, overnight, then keep heading north. Stop in Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, a couple of stops in New Jersey, a couple of stops north of New York City. You turn east and make some stops in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and end in Boston. That’s your home base, isn’t it?”