City of Ghosts (A Miranda Corbie Mystery) (7 page)

She felt something crawl down her back and glanced to her right, catching eyes with a slick-haired man in a tuxedo standing underneath a small colorful panel of two women racing down a beach. He looked about forty and showed a lot of teeth. His companion, a much younger brunette in summer white with a white fox stole, gave her the flickering up-and-down dismissal society girls learn in the cradle, then hone and sharpen with the bones of uglier, poorer classmates.

Miranda stared at her until the brunette flounced off to another painting, pulling the toothy beau in her wake. She smoothed the green silk of her dress, glad she’d kept on the velveteen wrap instead of checking it. Her evening clothes weren’t exactly inconspicuous.

Society column habitués jockeyed for position against the most flattering painted backdrop, searching continually for a photographer from the
Chronicle
or
Call-Bulletin,
Picasso as set designer for the Sun Valley set. Rick stood off to one side, interviewing a middle-aged woman with a frightening overbite and a sapphire-and-ruby necklace rope around a chicken-wattle neck. Miranda grinned until she remembered Mrs. Hart and the jade in her safe. She half expected the Bitch of Burlingame to show up, if only for a few minutes. Appearances are so important, especially when your son’s a thief and a hophead, and you’re fucking a state senator on the side.

Miranda moved toward the opposite end of the long wall, where the high-toned, high-class patrons of the Museum of Art were dressed in top hat and tails and floor-length mink coats, congratulating each other on their taste, on bringing Art to the Common Man, accepting homage and genuflections from the curators before finding better amusement in a Chinatown gambling den or an offshore ship with a deluxe wheel and a free hand of keno.

Art was always a fashionable cause, even if the artist is a Communist, makes philanthropy more exciting, more like the Derby or the latest Louis fight. Rice Bowl Parties come and go, but art lingers, neither marble nor the gilded monuments of princes, boasted Shakespeare, but he never met Mrs. Hart and the Junior League.

Art historians rubbed elbow patches in a far corner, debating artistic merits and the ism of the day. Surrealism, Cubism, Fauvism, Impressionism, so much more important than Communism and Fascism, though most of them agreed that Hitler and the Nazis defined kitsch, and trembled at the thought of jackboots in the Louvre, swastikas hanging next to Leonardo da Vinci.

Too fucking little, too fucking late, thought Miranda. She unrolled two Butter Rum Life Savers, looked to her right, and almost choked. “Fingers” Molloy was standing in front of
Woman with a Mandolin.
Two security guards stood against the walls and tried to look tough, but they were private cops from the museum, not the boys in blue.

He was a short, pudgy little man with wrinkled ears and skin and a smooth way of picking pockets.

She walked up next to him. Spoke softly. “Never knew you liked Picasso, Fingers.”

The little man jumped. He spun around and his face relaxed a little when he saw Miranda. Hoisted his gray flannel trousers a little higher. Licked his lips.

“I got a right to see art, ain’t I? I ain’t doin’ nothing.”

She nodded, studying the painting. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get you copped. I appreciated the information about the jade.”

He preened a little, stuck out his belly, coarse face a leer. “’Preciate it enough to lay some more dough on me, sister?”

She stared at him until his red-rimmed eyes finally fell. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got a job for you. If you’re flat again, lay off the juice.” She nodded toward the painting. “What’s your play?”

His eyebrows climbed into his oiled, curly hair. “Whaddya mean? I told ya, I like art. Though I can’t see no titties. Big Joe over at Pago Pago told me this guy Picasso paints a lot of titties.”

Miranda’s lips twitched. Big Joe was a lumbering six-foot-five mountain of flesh that ran a clip joint in the Settlement, the kind of place where the B-girls lasted maybe six months before they were too bruised or broken to be of any use.

“Pay two bits and go to Sally’s. You should be on the Gayway, Fingers, plenty more action at the Fair.”

The small watery eyes met hers again stubbornly before he shoved a crumpled derby on his head and grunted.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. I ain’t doin’ myself no favors standin’ here jawin’ with you.”

He looked around nervously, seemed to catch eyes with a stout man dressed in black. She couldn’t make out his face. Fingers gave a faint nod, glanced sideways at Miranda, and melted into the crowd, the laughter of a large woman in gold velvet and a stone marten scarf chasing him toward the stairway. The stout man waited ten seconds and followed. While Miranda watched, her skin prickled again, and she turned her head to the left.

Her eyes met cold gray ones, wreathed in a matching hood and cape of filmy gray gauze. The gray eyes looked away quickly, and the woman slid toward the exit, a tall, well-built man with a dark mustache trailing behind her.

So Mrs. Hart had shown up, and with a paid escort. Miranda checked her watch. Nearly ten. She’d meet the woman in an hour, return the jade, collect the money, and close the case. Not much time left to wait for Jasper.

She looked around the room again. Rick was speaking to a tuxedoed man with silver hair and a well-groomed mustache. Her view toward the entrance cleared, and she spotted the registration table, what she’d been looking for and what she’d missed on arrival. Best to make sure Jasper hadn’t come and gone.

She threaded her way through the crowd and stood in line behind a youngish couple in gaudy evening clothes. The thirtyish blond was tight, and the girl’s eyes were bright and feverish. They finally finished, the girl signing with a flourish and then loudly demanding to be taken to the Mark or the Peacock Room, dark hair arranged like Brenda Frazier, boyfriend nodding like Charlie McCarthy.

Miranda threw a bright smile at the severe-looking woman in black behind the counter and picked up the pen.

“Such a marvelous exhibit! I just adore Picasso. You know, I thought I saw a friend of mine earlier, but I’d hate to embarrass myself if it’s not really he … would you mind terribly if I just check to see if he’s signed?”

The woman raised a long single eyebrow, then nodded brusquely before turning to answer a question from a thin man stroking a sandy-colored goatee.

Miranda bent over the book, flipping back to the beginning, her finger running down the names. She’d almost finished when a voice behind her cleared its throat in disapproval. Miranda looked up, smiled again at the counter woman and her eyebrow.

No professor.

She scrawled her name in the book. It could have been Miranda or Mary, Corbie or Carp.

“Thank you again.”

Miranda shut the book with a thump, brushing roughly by and almost knocking over the brunette in white, who’d been waiting in line behind her, making disapproving noises. Miranda posed for a moment, shifted her weight and turned on the electricity. The brunette’s slick-haired date opened his mouth and kept it open, while a few other men stared, lips parted and eyes wet. Her lips curved upward in a smile, and she stared into the pale blue, furious eyes of the brunette.

“So sorry, my dear—I didn’t see you. White fades so, doesn’t it?”

Miranda glided through the crowd toward Rick, green dress shimmering in the muted light.

*   *   *

“So why exactly did you want to come tonight, Miri? I’ve never heard you mention art, much less the modern stuff.”

Miranda popped two more Life Savers in her mouth, keeping her eyes on the door.

“You get a good education at Mills.”

He pushed the fedora back off his forehead and grinned down at her. “Yeah. And I studied ballet. C’mon, Miranda … maybe you know your way around an art gallery, but that’s not why you’re here. You’re looking for somebody. Who is it?”

She threw him an irritated glance and refocused on the entrance. They were standing in a corner with a few of Picasso’s earlier drawings and studies. The crowd congregated toward the better-known paintings, and the view gave her an angle on the entire gallery.

“Ever hear of client confidentiality, Sanders? I can’t tell you anything even if I wanted to. So drop it.”

He covered a yawn with his fist. “OK, so maybe I’ll go home. I got my story, such as it is, we’ve been here over an hour, and Mrs. Sanders’s little boy needs his sleep. But while you’re waiting for your mark—whoever he is—I figure I’d better spill my idea. About”—he dropped his voice—“your mother.”

Miranda’s voice was sharp. “You got something? What is it?”

He threw a hand up. “Wait, Miri. I don’t have anything, but I need your permission before I go forward.”

She glanced at her watch: 10:18. Mrs. Hart, she of the gray eyes and gray snood and green bills and jade would be punctual and arrive at eleven, the pitter-patter of handmade Corsican leather pumps echoing down the hallway of the Monadnock, sound as hollow as the woman’s soul. Miranda wanted the goddamn jade out of her safe and her life. She looked up at Rick expectantly. His voice was soft.

“I know—at least I think I know—what this is doing to you inside, Miranda. But I’m worried you’re not catching all the angles. We don’t know if the postcard is from your mother—it could be someone posing as your mother. It could be some kind of trap, a grift, even revenge.”

Her eyes swung back to the entrance. A large florid man in tails was panting up the stairs.

“Nothing new. I realize the risks. What’s your idea?”

He sighed. “OK. I’ve looked at ship arrivals and departures, morgue and hospital records. All for 1910 and ’11, since you figure you don’t remember her after you were three or four years old. I checked for Corbie with an
ie
or
y,
Katherine with a
K,
Katy, and everything else. Nothing. So here’s my idea: I want to search the criminal records.”

Catherine Corbie.

Mother and fugitive, mother and criminal, lost woman, giving birth to a bastard and then abandoned by one. Pantomime memories, early and faded, like old photographs and scratchy Victrolas, and after three or four years … nothing.

Miranda spoke slowly. “I should have thought of that myself.”

He gazed down at her, wide mouth twisted. “Just make sure you’re ready for whatever we find, Miranda.”

She shook her shoulders. Gave him half a smile and placed a gloved hand against his cheek.

“You’re a good friend. Thank you, Rick.”

He covered her hand with his for a moment, then turned to pick his way through a group of five or six giggling art students. Miranda’s eyes followed him before they caught at an older man, tall and thin with sloping shoulders in a rounded hunch. He wore a white glove on his left hand.

Dr. Jasper.

Six

He was dressed in a brown worsted vest and coat and buttoned trousers, buff-colored shirt and pale gold paisley tie, all a few years out of date. A watch chain hung from a vest pocket.

Quintessential costume for the conservative academic.

She wove her way between patrons. The crowds were thinning; her watch read 10:27. Not much time.

Jasper quickly positioned himself in front of two of Picasso’s most recent works, the
Girl with Dark Hair
and the
Girl with Light Hair.
He stood at a distance, tilting his head and gazing back and forth between the paintings.

She moved in close, stooping to read the information cards. Oil on wood, they’d been painted a day apart, on March 28th and 29th of last year. The blond version was lent by Rosenberg and Helft, Ltd., the companion piece from an unspecified private collection. Jasper focused on the latter, walking to within a few inches of the painting, peering over thick glasses at the brushstrokes, then backing up again.

The man with the sandy goatee she’d noticed at the registration desk made a noise of recognition, clapped his hands, and glided toward Jasper. Miranda turned her back, pretending to study a larger oil,
Portrait of a Lady
from 1937.

The light glinted off the bearded man’s spectacles. He clapped his hands again before grabbing Jasper’s right and pumping it up and down.

“Dr. Jasper, I’m delighted to see you again! It’s been far too long since you’ve honored my … little shop. Tell me, are you still in the market for”—he dropped his voice to a playfully conspiratorial stage whisper, eyes dancing with the excitement of a sales pitch—“‘
Entartete Kunst’
? As you can see, Rosenberg has managed to weather the storm quite well. You know what Jews are. But he is far from the only source, my dear Doctor, and—”

Jasper interrupted him brusquely. Miranda froze, not daring to turn around.

“Not here, Wardon, and certainly not tonight. As you know, I am in the market, but only for very specific pieces…”

The voices were receding. She glanced to her left. The two men were bunched together near a large canvas she didn’t recognize and whose title she couldn’t make out. The bearded dealer was stiff, clearly uncomfortable. Jasper’s hand was on his wrist. Jasper was bent over the smaller man, and the dealer, growing more uncomfortable, withdrew his display handkerchief and mopped his face. Miranda thought she heard “Kirchner” and “Warsaw,” words rising high from Jasper’s throat before he subdued his voice again.

The dealer finally smoothed his thin sandy hair against his bony skull and bowed briefly, trying to smile. Jasper’s white-gloved hand was still clutching the other man’s arm as if he’d forgotten it was there. He nodded dismissively, dropped his hand to his waist. The dealer backed away, smile still plastered, and beat a path to the exit.

The gallery was finally quiet and almost deserted. She circled Jasper in a wide arc and headed for the exit, passing the registration desk and the heavyset woman in black, who raised her one thick eyebrow in farewell.

Miranda peered once more through the wrought-iron railings of the staircase. Jasper was staring at
The Acrobat,
narrow head moving back and forth as if he were listening to a symphony.