Spotted Cats (12 page)

I lay there, cradling my head in my hands, staring at the ceiling. I thought about making love to Lily. I couldn’t remember when we stopped and when I had gone to sleep. Then I remembered Jeff and the stolen jaguars, and how those two men had come into my bedroom and pricked my throat and sliced my collarbone with their knife and taped my hands to the bed and slapped that big band of tape across my mouth and frightened the piss out of me before they gratuitously smashed the side of my head.

And all the anger and indignation that had been simmering in me for two days bubbled over.

You see things with particular clarity in the very early morning when you first wake up after having made love to a beautiful woman.

Jeff was going to die.

Tondo and Ngwenya, nasty animals that they were, didn’t deserve to be murdered.

Maroney and the Orleans police and perhaps the state police would all go through their motions. When Jeff died, they’d approach it differently, but that would probably take a while. By then it would be too late. The trail would be too fuzzy to follow. Crimes like this, I knew, were rarely solved, except by luck.

And Lily—maybe Maroney was right. Maybe she had set up the burglary. Maybe she had left the gate unlocked, and maybe it was she who advised the two intruders to shoot Tondo and Ngwenya and slit their throats and then tape me up and scare me with a knife and hit me on the head. And, if necessary, to hit Jeff hard enough that he’d never be able to tell what he had seen.

Maybe she thought if she came to me in the night I would not pursue it. If she could make me love her, I would not suspect her.

The longer I lay there thinking about it, the angrier I became. I wanted to pursue it. Not for Jeff. For me. Somehow, it had become personal.

I recognized it as a decision, and that recognition allowed the anger to metamorphose into its mature form—something like stubbornness, or commitment, or resolution. I still visualized holding a knife at a man’s throat until he wet his pants. That was the anger in its immature stage. But it was a vision I wanted to hang on to. I didn’t think that would be a problem.

I would find out all I could about Lily.

Finally I padded into the bathroom and took a long hot shower. Then I shut off the hot faucet and forced myself to stay under the water for a full count of sixty, going one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two… This was my daily—and, on a good day, my only—exercise of willpower.

I shaved and dressed. Then I packed up my stuff and lugged it out into the kitchen. It was twenty minutes after five. I switched on the coffee machine. I found a piece of paper and a pencil and sat at the table.

‘Lily,’ I wrote. ‘I’m going to practise doing it one-handed. I’m heading back. Keep me posted on the Hunter. I’m borrowing a coffee mug. You get to eat both trout. Be well. Brady.’

I put the note in the middle of the table. The coffee machine had finished chugging. I poured a mugful and, balancing it carefully in one hand, gathered up my fishing gear and overnight bag in the other and left the house.

The paddles and cushions were still on the porch where we had left them in the dark. I put my stuff down and gathered up the boating gear. I could save Lily one chore, anyway.

I took them around back to the shed. When I opened the door, I could see more clearly than I had the previous night. I wedged myself between the lawn mower and the wheelbarrow and leaned over the motorcycle to return the paddles and cushions to their places.

Out of curiosity I folded the canvas off the motorcycle. It was a big Harley. Powerful and fast. Just like Jeff, I thought. He’d want a big hog between his legs.

As I tugged the canvas back down over the rear of the bike, I noticed the licence plate. Montana.

C
OLLECT PHONE CALLS FROM
Montana. Now Jeff’s motorcycle. It probably had no bearing on what had happened to Jeff and his jaguars. But it made me realize I knew less about my old client than I had thought.

I headed out on 6A. The traffic wasn’t bad on the way back to the city. I listened to Beethoven and tried to ponder the questions of wills and estates I would face at the office. The more miles I put between myself and Quashnet Lane, the easier it became.

I pulled into the parking garage under my apartment a little before seven-thirty. I changed my clothes and made it to the office by eight-thirty.

Monday morning. Another week.

I was on my second mug of coffee when Julie came in. Nine o’clock on the button, as usual. She glowered at me. Her morning face. I poured coffee for her, stirred in one sugar, no cream, and placed it on her desk. She sat down, wrapped both hands around her mug, lifted it about an inch off her desktop, and lowered her face to it. She alternated blowing and sipping for several minutes. When she looked up at me she was no longer glowering. But she did frown. There’s a difference, at least when Julie does it.

‘What happened to you?’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Your mirror must’ve been all steamed up this morning. You nicked yourself.’

I touched my throat. ‘Oh, that’s a knife wound.’

‘Always the joker. Even first thing in the morning.’ She grinned. ‘You got a nasty shaving rash, too.’

‘I was bound and gagged. Tape across my face.’

She cocked her head at me, nodded once, and dipped back to her coffee.

‘I got a big bump where I got slugged, too,’ I volunteered. ‘Also a worse gash here on my collarbone.’

‘Right.’ Julie smiled into her mug. Then she looked up at me. ‘So,’ she said ‘Truthfully. How was the big weekend on the Cape?’

I wiggled my hand back and forth.

‘Boring, huh? Well, I never promised you excitement. I just said you had to go and sit with Mr Newton.’ She slurped, then looked up again. ‘Come on, Brady. Something worth reporting must’ve happened. I thirst for gossip. How’s Mr Newton, anyway?’

‘He’s in the hospital,’ I said.

She peered at me over the rim of her mug. ‘Poor man,’ she said. ‘He’s been sick for a long time.’

‘And,’ I continued, ‘really, nothing much happened. We were burglarized. A million and a half dollars’ worth of pre-Columbian artifacts were stolen. The cops think I might have masterminded it. I was pistol-whipped, sliced with a knife, and tied up in bed. Two security personnel were shot and had their throats slashed. I caught seventeen rainbow trout on dry flies. The housekeeper seduced me. Your basic boring weekend.’

She arched her eyebrows. Her head still hovered over her coffee mug. She grinned. ‘Sure,’ she said.

‘OK, so maybe it was only twelve trout.’

‘Twelve?’

‘At least twelve. We kept two. I caught them on Royal Wulffs.’

‘That’s more like it.’ She swivelled around and whisked the dust cover off her word processor. I was dismissed.

I went into my office. My desktop was clean, the way I like to see it. I tapped out the number for my friend Dan LaBreque over at the Museum of Fine Arts. Two or three times every summer Dan took me and Charlie McDevitt out on his boat to catch bluefish. It was Dan who had appraised Jeff Newton’s seven gold jaguars when he brought them home from Mexico.

Dan answered the phone himself.

‘It’s Brady,’ I said.

‘Oh, hi. To answer your question, yes, the blues are running, and sure, anytime. They were hitting Rapalas the other night, but I imagine those fancy poppers you throw with your fly rod would work. Actually, I was going to call you this week. So when?’

‘I’d love to go fishing. But that’s not why I called.’ I hesitated. He waited. ‘You remember Jeff Newton?’

‘The guy with those gorgeous Mayan jaguars? I don’t remember him particularly well, but I sure remember the artifacts. Gorgeous. Also unquestionably imported illegally.’

‘The jaguars were stolen Friday night.’

‘Yeah? Really?’

‘Yeah. Really. And Jeff had his skull smashed in.’

‘Was he…?’

‘He’s alive. Irreversible coma, it looks like.’

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘So tell me about it, for Christ sake.’

I told Dan what had happened over the weekend. I included the part about the trout fishing. Dan liked fishing stories. I used the figure seventeen with him, pausing to give him a chance to express his doubts. Bless him, he didn’t. I left out the part about Lily, even though Dan didn’t mind that sort of story, either. He didn’t seem to notice anything was missing from my recitation.

He listened without interrupting. When I was done, he said, ‘I’ll be damned.’

‘What’s the market for pre-Columbian artifacts?’ I said.

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Whether they’re authentic, with papers to prove it. Whether they were brought in legally before 1971, and there are papers to show that, too.’ He paused. ‘Look, Brady. The truth is, any museum would pay top dollar for those seven jaguars, provided the seller’s got the papers.’

‘Even if they had been stolen?’

‘Not if they knew they were stolen, of course. But frankly, there are some museum purchasers who wouldn’t look real close at bills of sale. What they’d really scrutinize is the original import papers.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because without them, the Mexican government could reclaim the pieces and the museum’d be out a million or so bucks.’

‘None of the papers on the jaguars were taken,’ I said.

‘Wouldn’t matter,’ said Dan.

‘Why not?’

‘Because Newton’s papers, as I seem to recall, were phony.’

‘You weren’t particularly sure of that at the time.’

‘I suspected it. I don’t know enough about those kinds of papers. But I’d bet anything your friend smuggled in those pieces.’

‘Those papers passed muster with the insurance agency.’

‘They wouldn’t pass muster with a museum purchaser. Not if they were fake.’

‘Here’s my question, then,’ I said.

‘Who’d steal them? Who’d buy them from the thief? Right?’

‘Right.’

I heard him clear his throat. ‘You want me to name names, I can’t. There are collectors in this country who would buy those jaguars, no questions asked, if the price was right, and some who might even set up a theft. They have the money to pay cash. They have the resources to hang on to the pieces for a long time, let the hubbub die down, let them appreciate. They have the contacts to assemble papers that would be hard to prove were fake. Lots of these collectors just really love the stuff. They like to own it, look at it. They’re genuine art lovers. They just happen to be crooks.’

‘But you can’t name names.’

‘No.’

‘Who could?’

He hesitated for a minute. ‘Maria Conway,’ he said. ‘She might be able to. Probably wouldn’t. But she could.’

‘Why wouldn’t she?’

‘Hell, Brady. There’s confidentiality in our business just like there is in yours.’

‘What if she knew one of these so-called art lovers stole the pieces, or bought them from whoever did?’

‘I can’t speak for Maria. But, yeah, that would make a difference.’

‘Does Maria still work there with you?’

‘No. She’s curator for a museum in Phoenix. Has been for five or six years. I still talk to her now and then.’

‘How do I reach her?’

‘I’ll give you her number. Hang on a minute.’

I waited. He came back on the line and gave me the phone number of Maria Conway’s museum in Phoenix.

‘Listen, Brady,’ he said. ‘The way these things usually work, whoever whacked Newton and took those gorgeous pieces had a purchaser all lined up. The crooks probably got fifty, maybe a hundred grand for their night’s work. They probably dumped them the next day. In quick, out quick. From what you said, they were pros.’

‘I don’t know about that. They were unpleasant fellows.’

‘Most crooks are.’

‘Not necessarily,’ I said.

‘It’s possible,’ he said, ‘that they’ll try to ransom them.’

‘Like kidnapping, you mean.’

‘Yeah. It’s pretty common with art theft. They try to hold up the owner, or sometimes his insurance company.’

‘There’d be no sense in holding up Jeff,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t got much money, and anyway, he’s in a coma.’

‘The insurance company, maybe,’ said Dan.

‘It’s Lloyd’s.’

‘Just a thought,’ he said. ‘The ransom thing is most common with really valuable stuff, one-of-a-kind things. Paintings by famous masters that the entire world knows about. These cats, there are probably others around. If they were recovered, it’d be hard to prove they were Newton’s anyway. Hell, your thieves might just take out the emerald eyes and melt ’em down for the gold. Over a hundred pounds of gold, right? Fourteen big fat emeralds? Plenty of value right there.’

‘Yeah, I thought of that,’ I said. ‘If they do that, we’re sunk. Let’s go back to these collectors, these unscrupulous rich guys.’

‘I told you, I don’t know any names.’

‘New York?’

‘Some, sure. For stuff like that, Mayan, Aztec, more of ’em are in the West, Southwest, though. Houston, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, San Diego, L.A. You should talk to Maria. That’s her territory. She specializes in that Indian stuff. That’s why she’s out there. Look. You want to go catch some bluefish, or what?’

‘I do. But listen. What’re the odds of those jaguars being recovered?’

‘Zilch,’ he said promptly. ‘Unless they try to ransom them, in which case chances are they still won’t be recovered, or if they are they’ll be damaged. If they melt ’em down, of course, that’s sayonara. But my bet is some collector’s got them stashed away. They won’t see the light of day for many years. If he tried to resell them through legitimate channels, he’d get nailed. Mexico would take them back.’

‘What about illegitimate channels? Do these collectors buy and sell among themselves?’

‘Probably. We never hear about it, of course.’

‘What do the police do?’

‘The police do what they do with any theft. Which, as far as I know, is diddley squat. The insurance company does a few things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Who’d you say insured Newton? Lloyd’s?’

‘I think so. He dealt with an agency in Hyannis. I’ve got to call them.’

‘Lloyd’s probably underwrote the policy. They’ll send an adjuster. He’ll talk to you.’