City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery) (32 page)

*   *   *

Miranda paused in front of drawing room G, final door of Fisherman’s Wharf. The monitor—a woman with a pleasant smile and smart little hat in SP colors—had just disappeared through the connecting doors, loud whoosh of air and steel making a high-pitched whine as she pushed into the next compartment.

No sound from Jasper’s room.

Miranda waited, counting seconds in between the passing track lights, watching them slide out from under Jasper’s doorway and illuminate the darkened passage,
clackety-clack, clackety-clack,
throb and hum of the engine underneath her feet.

No interrupting shadows, no noise from within.

She took a breath, looked both ways down the corridor, and extracted two pieces of bent wire from her wallet.

Thank God for paper clips.

Stick it in carefully, she remembered Burnett grinning. Shouldn’t be too hard for a girl of your experience, and he laughed and slapped her on the back.

Fucking Burnett. Not just bait for out-of-town Elks and the goddamn Chamber of Commerce, he taught her how to pick locks and snap grainy photos and set traps at run-down hotels in Livermore. Why, isn’t this a photograph of you, Mr. Pearson? Redheads can be awfully expensive …

She frowned, tried to control her breathing. Wiggled the bent pin back and forth until she felt a small click in the mechanism.

A laugh from the club car almost made her drop the other piece of wire, and she swore, palms sweaty and fingertips uncertain. Drove it in. Left turn … no. Right turn …

Yes.

The lock gave two clicks and a final
clack.
She quickly removed the wires, dropping them in her jacket pocket. Looked again down the corridor and through the connecting door.

Voices coming from the front. Probably on the way from the club car.

Miranda opened the compartment door and squeezed inside, shutting it behind her quietly while the boisterous voices—male and female—carried down the corridor, finally drowned out by the car pass-through door and the roar of the train.

She was in Jasper’s room.

Twenty-eight

One Mississippi, two Mississippi …

She hugged herself, gulping for air, stomach knotted.

The bottom bed wasn’t pulled out yet and he’d kept the couch empty as if expecting company.

Miranda straightened up and moved to stand against the thick folding wall between this compartment and the next, eyes quickly scanning the room. Heavy black phone with silver decoration on a light green Formica table, armchair in Nantes blue with its back to the large window. Window shades up, track signals and electric poles splashing bars of colored light across her face.

Squeal of the train whistle, and her hand darted to the gold cigarette case before she dropped it in her pocket, legs trembling.

No fucking time to be scared, look at the luggage …

Two large suitcases sat in the upper berth, one casually open and half unpacked, with a few suits folded and two jackets hanging on wooden hangers. On the floor, propped against the table and chair, a large cardboard box, rectangular in shape and not too thick.

Painting shaped.

She glanced at her watch and swore, wishing for a pocket knife. Flung open the lighted vanity compartment on the wall.

Tooth powder, shaving brush, hair oil … straight razor.

Miranda carefully opened the blade, touching it gingerly with her index finger, and then ran it along the taped edge of the cardboard box.

Gave it a pull and heard the paper tape rip.

Another run with the razor—not too much violence to the box. Jasper would notice it, of course, and what he did afterward—and whom he called—Cheney? Wardon? Miguel?—would be crucial.

She folded the razor, heartbeat pounding in her ears, replaced it on the drawer behind the mirror. Gave the package another tug, enough to partially unhinge a side and give her a view of the box interior.

Clumsy wooden blocks, protecting corners. Dull glint of gold and carved wood.

She grunted, pulling back the cardboard more fully. She peered closer, taking in as much of the painting as she could.

Lush green landscape, trees, dark patina of age, fading into a lighter sky. Mercury with helmet and winged feet holding a weapon, putti hovering against the trees …

Miranda’s brow wrinkled. The iconography was familiar, probably French, early eighteenth century, but the individual painting even more so. Mercury slaying Argus … somewhere, sometime, she’d seen it before.

The train screamed again as it rounded a curve and started climbing,
clack-clack-clack,
light and shadow locked in a duel on Miranda’s face.

She turned too late at the brief
click,
drowned out by the shriek of the train.

Jasper stood in front of her … a Mauser C96 in his gloved fist.

*   *   *

One Mississippi, two Mississippi …

Miranda lifted her face slowly, defiantly, to Jasper’s.

“Last time I saw one of those was in Madrid. They usually come with jackboots.”

The tall, lanky man, shoulders still stooped, curled his thin lips in a smile, gestured with the gun. “Sit down, Miss Corbie. Oh, yes, I know who you are. My friends at the French consulate assured me they’d never heard of a ‘Marion Gouchard,’ and it didn’t take long for my other friends to find out to whom that rather unconvincing accent belonged. Still, I applaud your nerve. Go on … sit.”

She stepped backward and sidewise, sinking into the chair, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tremors in her legs.

“You’re obviously a man with many friends.”

Jasper moved forward toward the table and lowered the gun a few degrees.

“Quite. And you’re a woman with more courage than sense. A detective, are you? Your stupidity takes my breath away. I teach the chains that connect us to this earth, I study the most intimate particles of matter, the fundamental building blocks of life itself, and you really thought you could march into the observation car and observe me—unobserved? Go back to being a whore, Miss Corbie—I’m sure you’re much better at it.”

Her fingers closed around the gold cigarette case in her pocket, stomach tight.

You’re a good soldier, Miranda Corbie, a good soldier …

She gave an elaborate shrug of her shoulders. “And maybe you should quit slumming as a two-bit spy and go back to Berkeley. Tell me—what chemical secrets are you trading for the smuggled paintings? Or are the Nazis strictly cash-and-carry?”

Jasper’s eyes widened. He lowered himself on the couch across from her, head barely clearing the bottom of the upper berth. He passed a hand—trembling, Miranda noticed with surprise—across his forehead.

“I see. At least, I begin to see. I have been puzzled over your intrusion into my life, Miss Corbie, but now I take it you are here on behalf of your government … exactly the sort of idiotic idea I would expect from Roosevelt’s Washington.”

He braced himself on one arm, lines on his face weary and deep. Miranda’s eyes darted toward the lowered point of the Mauser.

“You pose a problem for me. But as you are not here representing a competing interest, perhaps we may reach a détente.”

“I don’t make deals. Not with murderers.”

Jasper’s eyebrows lifted in surprise until mirth twisted his features, and he chuckled. “You really are quite entertaining, in a penny matinee sort of way. You think I’m guilty of murder? Whom did I ‘do in,’ pray tell?”

She bent forward and he raised the point of the Mauser, voice a harder edge. “Come, Miss Corbie. Enlighten me.”

Door was bolted. Phone call to the service staff within reach but too slow.

No sign of anyone in the next compartment.

The gold cigarette case was slippery from the sweat on her palm.

“Mind if I smoke?”

He reached into his jacket pocket and threw a pack of Dunhills across the table. “Be my guest.”

Goddamn it.

She withdrew her hands and plucked out the Southern Pacific matchbook from the cellophane wrapper, lighting the cigarette with a shaking hand. Jasper’s mouth was still curled up at the ends.

“I’m waiting.”

She blew out a long stream of smoke, met his eyes.

“Edmund Whittaker.”

The tall man flinched at the name and blinked, thick eyebrows matted.

Miranda bent forward, pressing, voice sharp. “And my predecessor—the agent who was trailing you.”

Jasper took a long, shuddering breath, licking dry lips, suddenly older, eyes dark and fathomless and focused inward. He sat up straight in the bunk, the nose of the Mauser lowered toward the floor.

“I’ve killed no one. Harmed no one. I—I—at one time, I cared for Edmund.”

“You were lovers?”

“Yes—”

“Did he know you were a smuggler?”

“Collector,” Jasper corrected automatically. He looked up at her, gun still pointed downward.

“If I thought I could trust you—”

Miranda studied her cigarette. “I’m not official, Dr. Jasper. I don’t wear a badge, I’m not sanctioned by Hoover. I’ve got my own reasons for what I’m doing, and they’re mostly selfish reasons.”

She tapped ash in the crystal tray, bands of light and shadow still flickering across the table and her face.

“They want to know if you’re selling out and how. I want to know who killed Edmund.”

He raised his face to hers, eyes cautious. The Mauser was still in his hands, held loosely and pointing at her feet.

“I would like to know as well. Perhaps, Miss Corbie … you are not as unintelligent as I suspected.”

“You’re frightened.”

Jasper transferred the pistol to his right hand, pried off his glove, and wiped his forehead with the back of his scarred left hand. Transferred the gun again, scar glistening against taut skin.

“I’m a sane man. My position entails risks.”

“Your position smuggling art or secrets, Doctor? Or both?”

He stood up, Mauser still pointed in her direction, and walked toward the connecting wall, facing her, voice low and halting.

“Five years ago, they came to me—your employers. Would I become friendly with the National Socialists and, later on, the Soviets? Would I perhaps pass certain scientific information that was, in a word, inaccurate? I was bored at Berkeley, and war—the elements of war, the weapons of war—have always fascinated me. And then, too, the Germans are a cultured people, it was not difficult to get close to them.”

Face of a grown-up boy, charming smile, words of belief and testimony, you should be a detective, Miss Corbie, I’ll help with the fucking license, Miss Corbie, and one of these days I’ll come knocking on your door and ask for a goddamn favor and you might die, but it’s all for your favorite Uncle, Miss Corbie …

Goddamn it. James had lied to her. Though maybe in his world he’d just prevaricated, evaded and avoided, lying by omission alone. Maybe that’s what passes for truth in his business. Need to fucking know, and MacLeod had figured she wasn’t needy enough.

The words came slowly. “You’ve been working for our own government all along, then … since ’37.”

“Yes, Miss Corbie, I have been successfully communicating the wrong information to the Nazis for a long time now. Your taskmasters didn’t tell you the whole story—they never do. You and I—we’re expendable. You more so, perhaps, because as a well-known research chemist I have value. I’m counting on that now.”

She looked up at him and nodded. “Go on.”

“I became friends with the former consul, von Killinger, and after him, Fritz. I soon found that the friendliness offered certain rewards … paintings, art. I’d never been able to afford a Picasso or Braque, and here the Nazis were selling them for a pittance, all in the name of ‘degenerate art.’”

Miranda twisted the cigarette out in the ashtray. “So you started to … ‘collect.’ And the government got suspicious.”

He heaved a sigh, back against the wall. “Exactly. What if I turned? What if I slipped useful information instead of bad? What the fools don’t understand is that it’s in my best interest to prolong the war, so of course I have passed nothing of lasting importance. But that didn’t prevent them from assigning some young man to follow me—your predecessor. He was murdered three months ago in Chicago. I was there on a … to meet a contact.”

“And you don’t have any idea who killed him?”

The professor shook himself impatiently and began to pace in the small space in front of her, transferring the gun from his right hand to the left and back again.

“I wish I did. He was found on the shore of Lake Michigan outside the Drake Hotel, where I was staying. I knew someone was following me, I’d caught a glimpse of him in front of my house and on the train—this very train, in fact. Then I saw his photograph in the paper. Grant Tompkins, his name was. Left two young children.”

Jasper braced his arm on the edge of the upper berth, shoulders sagged, Mauser hung loose and slightly swinging.

“I’m talking to you now because I’m worried. Tompkins seemed more like bad luck, a random killing, especially with Chicago being what it is. But of late, I’ve … I’ve felt someone, Miss Corbie. Someone tracking me. That woman with the jade—”

“Lois Hart.”

“Yes—she was murdered after the Picasso exhibit. I was there that night, and I felt … something, someone. I’m afraid whoever it is may be trying to kill me. I thought perhaps I’d outgrown my use to the government—”

“They wouldn’t murder you, Jasper.”

He stared down at her, eyes amused for a moment, like a professor correcting a student.

“Wouldn’t they, Miss Corbie? But no, your presence here proves that our spymasters are as bumbling and foolish as they’ve always been.”

He looked through the dark window, black smudges of hills and trees and dotted ranch lights smearing past the glass. He spoke slowly.

“You see—Edmund’s death has shaken me badly. We—we had been lovers. It was over with him last year.”

It’s so awkward when you run into old lovers, especially at social functions …

“I knew Edmund, too, Jasper. And you think his murder has something to do with you—that you were the actual target?”

The professor ran trembling fingers through lank hair. “I don’t know what to think. But I don’t like coincidence. And if the police connect me to Edmund—”