Twice Dead (65 page)

“Yeah, that's about the size of it. Is Lily better?”

“Lily is indeed better, and she wants to slug you. She said tomorrow is Monday, her stitches are out in the morning, and she's coming up to New York, no matter what kind of excuses you try to pawn off on her.”

“I'll have to think about that,” Simon said.

“All right, tell me what happened.”

After Simon had finished, Savich said, “Go to the hospital. Have a doctor check out your head.”

“Nah, it's nothing, Savich, the skin's barely split. Don't worry about that. Thing is my wallet was taken, and I really don't know what to make of it all.”

Savich said slowly, “You think some people know you're after my grandmother's paintings?”

“Could be. Thing is, when I got that phone call at your house, I wasn't exactly truthful with Lily. It wasn't an emergency with a client here in New York. It was from an art world weasel I do business with occasionally. I'd called him from your house earlier and he said he'd heard some things, too, and now he's put out some feelers for me on the Sarah Elliott paintings. He was expecting some solid results soon, would have something to show me, and he needed me up here in New York. I was supposed to meet him tonight, but he called earlier and said he didn't have everything together yet. So it's on for tomorrow night, at the Plaza Hotel, the Oak Room Bar, one of his favorite places. The guy's good, really knows what he's doing, so I'm hopeful.”

“All right, sounds promising. Now, in case you were wondering how good a liar you are, Lily didn't believe you for a minute. Your mugging, Simon, maybe it was just a mugging or maybe it was a warning. They didn't hurt you seriously, and they could have. I'll bet you a big one that your wallet is in a Dumpster somewhere near the gym. So take a look.”

Simon could picture Savich pacing up and down that beautiful living room with its magnificent skylights.

“How's Sean?”

“Asleep.”

“Is Lily asleep, too?”

“Nope. She's here, knows it's you on the phone, and wants to lay into you. I can't stop her from coming up, Simon.”

Simon said, “Okay, give her my address, tell her to take a shuttle up here. I'll meet her unless there's a problem. I wish you could keep her with you longer, Savich.”

“No can do.”

Simon said, “I changed my mind, Savich. It may be turning dangerous, real fast. I really don't want Lily involved in this. She's a civilian. She's your sister. I take it all back. Tie her to a chair; don't let her come up here.”

“Do you happen to have any suggestions about what I should do, other than tying her up?”

“Put her on the phone. I want to talk to her.”

“Sure. She's about to rip the phone away from me in any case. Good luck, Simon.”

A moment later, Lily said, “I'm here. I don't care what you have to say. Be quiet, go to the hospital, get a good night's sleep, and meet my plane tomorrow. I'll take the two-o'clock United shuttle to JFK. Then we can handle things. Good night, Simon.”

“But Lily—”

She was gone.

Then Savich's voice came on. “Simon?”

“Yeah, Savich. Well, I'd have to say it was a nonstarter.”

Savich laughed. “Lily's my sister. She's smart, and they are her paintings. Let her help with it, Simon, but keep her safe.”

Simon bowed to the inevitable. “I'll try.”

He took two aspirins and went back to his gym. There was a Dumpster half a block away. Lying on the top was his wallet, with only the cash gone. He looked up to see two young guys staring at him.

When one of them yelled an obscenity at him, Simon started forward. They didn't waste time and swaggered away, then turned when they figured they were far enough away from him and gave him the finger.

Simon smiled and waved.

 

HE was waiting for her, arms crossed, looking pissed.

Lily smiled, said even before she got to him, “I didn't want to carry much because of my missing spleen. I've got a bag down on carousel four.”

“I've decided you're going back to Washington to draw your cartoons.”

“While you find my paintings? Doesn't look like you started out very well, Mr. Russo. You don't look so hot. I think I did better on that bus than you did in your men's locker room last night. And I want to find my grandmother's paintings worse than you do.”

And she walked past him to follow the signs to Baggage Claim.

Simon didn't own a car, had never felt the need to, so they took a taxi to East Seventy-ninth, between First and Second. He assisted her out of the cab, took her purse and suitcase, grunted because it had to weigh seventy pounds, and said, “This is it. I've got a nice guest room with its own bath. You should be comfortable until you wise up and go back home. How are they doing on that cult case in Texas? They got him yet? Wilbur Wright?”

“Not yet. What Dillon does is feed all the pertinent information into protocols he developed for the CAU—Criminal Apprehension Unit. Put that eyebrow back down. So you already know what he does and how he does it.”

“I should have asked, has MAX got Wilbur yet?”

“MAX found out that Wilbur Wright is Canadian, that he attended McGill University, that he's a real whiz at cellular biology, and that his real name is Anthony Carpelli—ancestry, Sicily. Oh my, Simon, this is very lovely.”

Lily stepped into a beautifully marbled entryway, and felt like she'd stepped back into the 1930s. The feel was all Art Deco—rich dark wood paneling, lamps in geometric shapes, a rich Tabriz carpet on the floor, furniture right out of the Poirot series on PBS.

“I bought it four years ago, after I got a really healthy commission. I knew the old guy who'd owned it for well nigh on to fifty years, and he gave me a good deal. Most of the furnishings were his. I begged and he finally sold me most of them. Neat, huh?”

“Very,” she said, a vast understatement. “I want to see everything.”

There was even a small library, bookshelves to the ceiling with one of those special library ladders. Wainscoting, leather furniture, rich Persian carpets on the dark walnut floor. He didn't show her his bedroom, but guided her directly to a large bedroom at the end of the hall. All of the furniture was a rich Italian Art Deco, trimmed with glossy black lacquer. Posters from the 1930s covered the walls. He put her suitcase on the bed and turned. She said, shaking her head, “You are so modern, yet here you are in this museum of a place that actually looks lived in. This is a beautiful room.”

“Wait till you see the bathroom.”

He didn't tell her that he was leaving until he had the key in his hand that evening at 10:30.

“I'm meeting a guy with information. No, you're not coming with me.”

“All right.”

He distrusted her, she could see it, and she smiled. “Look, Simon, I'm not lying. I'm not going to sneak out after you and follow you like some sort of idiot. I'm really tired. You can go hear what your informant has to say. Be careful. When you get back, I'll still be awake. Tell me what you find out, okay?”

He nodded and was at the Plaza Hotel by ten minutes to eleven.

LouLou was there, pacing back and forth along the park side of the Plaza, beautifully dressed, looking like a Mafia don. The uniformed Plaza doormen paid him little attention.

He nodded to Simon, motioned to the entrance to the Plaza's Oak Room Bar. It was dark and rich, filled with people and conversation. They found a small table, ordered two beers. Simon leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “How's it going, LouLou?”

“Can't complain. Hey, this beer on you? Drinks aren't cheap here, you know?”

“Since we're in New York, I figured the Oak Room would be our venue. Yeah, I'm paying for the beer. Now, what have you got for me?”

“I found out that Abe Turkle did the Elliotts. Talk is he had a contract to do eight of them. Do you know anything about which eight?”

“Yeah, I do, but you don't need to know any more. I would have visited Abe Turkle second. You sure it's not Billy Gross?”

“He's sick—his lungs—probably cancer. He's always smoked way too much. Anyway, he took all his money and went off to Italy. He's down living on the Amalfi Coast, nearly dead. So it's Abe who's your guy.”

“And where can I find him?”

“In California, of all places.”

“Eureka, by any chance?”

“Don't know. He's in a little town called Hemlock Bay, on the ocean. Don't know where it is. Whoever's paying him wants him close by where he is.”

“You're good, LouLou. I don't suppose you'll tell me where you heard this?”

“You know better, Simon.” He drank the rest of his beer in one long pull, wiped his mouth gently on a napkin, then said, “Abe's a mean sucker, Simon, unlike most artists. When you hook up with him, you take care, okay?”

“Yeah, I'll be real careful. Any word at all on who our likely collectors are?”

LouLou fiddled with a cigarette he couldn't light, even here in a bar. “Word is that it might be Olaf Jorgenson.”

This was a surprise, a big surprise, to Simon. He wouldn't have put Olaf in the mix. “The richest Swede alive, huge in shipping. But I heard that he's nearly blind, nearly dead, that his collecting days are over.”

LouLou said, “Yeah, that's the word out. Why buy a painting if you're blind as a bat and can't even see it? But, hey, that's what I heard from my inside gal at the Met. She's one of the curators, has an ear that soaks up everything. She's been right before. I trust her information.”

“Olaf Jorgenson,” Simon said slowly, taking a pull on his Coors. “He's got to be well past eighty now. Been collecting mainly European art for the past fifty years, medieval up through the nineteenth century. After World War Two, I heard he got his hands on a couple of private collections of stolen art from France and Italy. Far as I know, he's never bought a piece of art legally in his life. The guy's certifiable about his art, has all his paintings in climate-controlled vaults, and he's the only one who's got the key. I didn't know he'd begun collecting modern painters, like Sarah Elliott. I never would have put him on my list.”

LouLou shrugged. “Like you said, Simon, the guy's a nut. Maybe nuts crack different ways when they get up near the century mark. His son seems to be just as crazy, always out on his yacht, lives there most of the time. His name's Ian—the old guy married a Scotswoman and that's how he got his name. Anyway, the son now runs all the shipping business. From the damned yacht.”

Simon gave a very slight shake of his head to a very pretty woman seated at the bar who'd been staring at him for the past couple of minutes. He moved closer to LouLou to show that he was in very heavy conversation and not interested. “LouLou, how sure are you that it's Olaf who bought the paintings?”

“Besides my gal at the Met, I went out of my way to get it verified. You know my little art world birdies that are always singing, Simon. I spread a little seed, and they sing louder and I heard three songs, all with the same words. One hundred percent? Nope, but it's a start. Cost me a cool thousand bucks to get them to sing to me.”

“Okay, you done good, LouLou.” Simon handed him an envelope that contained five thousand dollars. LouLou didn't count it, just slipped the fat envelope inside his cashmere jacket pocket. “Hey, you know what the name of Ian Jorgenson's yacht is?”

Simon shook his head.

Simon said slowly, “That's the name of a painting by Rembrandt. That particular painting is hanging in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I saw it there a couple of years ago.”

LouLou cocked his head to one side, his hairpiece not moving a bit because it was expensive and well made, and gave Simon a cynical smile. “Who knows? Just maybe
Night Watch
is hanging in Ian's stateroom, right over his bed. I've often wondered how many real paintings there are left in the museums and not beautifully executed fakes.”

“Actually, LouLou, I don't want to know the answer to that question.”

“Since Sarah Elliott died only some seven years ago, all her materials—the paints, the brushes—still exist. You take a superb talent with an inherent bent toward her sort of technique and visualization, and what you get is so close to the real thing, most people wouldn't even care if you told them.”

“I hate that.”

“I do, too,” LouLou said. “I need another beer.”

Simon ordered them another round, ate a couple of peanuts out of the bowl on their table, and said, “Remember that forger Eric Hebborn, who wrote that book telling would-be forgers exactly how to do it—what inks, papers, pens, colors, signatures, all of it? Then he up and dies in ninety-six. The cops said it was under mysterious circumstances. I heard it was a private collector who killed Hebborn because a dealer friend had sold him an original Rubens that turned out to be a fake that Hebborn himself had done. Supposedly the dealer died shortly thereafter in a car accident.”

LouLou said, “Yeah, I met old Eric back in the early eighties. Smart as a whip, that guy, and so talented it made you cry. You wondering if it was Olaf Jorgenson who popped him? Hey, Simon, there's a whole bunch of collectors who'd cut off hands to have a certain medal or stamp or train or painting. They've got to have it or life loses its meaning for them. Look, Simon, when you get down to it, they're the people who keep us in business.”

“I wonder if Olaf ordered all eight paintings. I wonder what he's paying for them.”