City of War (14 page)

“Fuckin’ Bonifacio Executioner,” said Benny Joe matter-of-factly. “A deformed one, but I’d know it anywhere.”

“What?”

“The fuckin’ spider, man. Think black widow on acid. Venom’ll eat the fuckin’ lungs out of a German shepherd.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

He lifted his right pant leg, revealing an ugly red scar running halfway up his shin. “What the fuck do you think?” he said. “They wheel you in, and nobody even fuckin’ asks. They just cut you open and drain the fucker before they have to take off your leg.”

“Bonifacio? As in Corsica?”

“Fuckin’ A. Took a ferry over from Nice on my fuckin’ honeymoon. Good views and great food, somebody said. But I didn’t give a fuck cause I was followin’ a tip about a Marseilles shooter in the JFK hit.”

I rolled my eyes. “How’d that work out?”

“Don’t ask. Guy I went to see washed up onshore with his tongue cut out a couple a days before I got there. All I got was this fuckin’ scar. I’ll tell you one thing, though. The next time one of those Corsican motherfuckers smiles, it’ll be the first.”

After a moment, I asked him, “You got a safe in the house?”

“Better. A fuckin’ underground vault out in the yard.”

I thought about that and came up with a mental picture of Tino getting his face eaten off by the dogs. I liked it. “Okay, anything happens to me, you take all of this out to LAX and give it to a guy named Mitchell Adams. He’s a skycap at Delta. And you do it personally. Got it?”

“Jesus, you know I’m fuckin’ afraid to fly. Airports give me the fuckin’ willies.”

“Take a pill. And remember. Personally. Give me your word.”

“Fuck.”

“Good enough.”

12

A Fortress on a Hill and A.A.

By the time I got back to Dove Way, I was close to passing out. Mallory helped me into bed while giving me a lecture. Fortunately, I was asleep before he finished.

The next morning, fortified with French toast and more Vicodin, I toured the Internet looking for anything called City of War. The first hit I got was War, West Virginia, and even though a 700-person burg in the Appalachians didn’t seem a likely connection for a kidnapping and murder in L.A., I scanned the business listings, then used my good hand to dial Rixie and Dixie Quantrill’s Beauty Parlor and Bridal Shop, figuring that between those two disciplines there wouldn’t be much in War they didn’t know.

I couldn’t have been more right. The charming and effervescent Quantrill sisters got on separate extensions and chatted away nonstop for twenty minutes. They even invited me to a home-cooked dinner if I ever wandered through the Mountain State. When we finished, I knew which War citizens could use a few more Sundays in church and the number of kittens born behind the gas station the night before. Unfortunately, nothing they’d said even remotely coalesced with my problem, and I thanked them and promised
I wouldn’t forget the dinner. And I wouldn’t. Small-town America. It’s why we’re a great nation.

After an hour of drawing zero with Google, I went back to the phone. Art dealers, auctioneers, book collectors, horse breeders, even a couple of historians, but no one had ever heard of anything with that name. The same with three university librarians and an archivist at the Smithsonian.

I even persuaded Jake Praxis’s secretary, Stella, to use the firm’s databases to check ship registries, copyright filings and trademark applications. But after my third call to her with more suggestions, I could tell by her tone that it wouldn’t be long before she complained to Jake that a raving lunatic was harassing her.

Toward noon, to avoid Mallory, I went upstairs and used the private elevator to the garage. Not that he wouldn’t eventually notice I was gone, but I wanted to forgo the disapproving look. This time, I took the Rolls, and on my way west, I called Jake again.

“What now?” he asked in a long-suffering tone. “I can’t get even get a letter out because Stella’s too busy working for you.”

“I need a pass into the executive parking lot at the Getty.”

“You feeling culturally deprived?”

“I want to talk to Kim’s boss.”

“What’s wrong with riding the tram up the hill like everybody else?”

When I didn’t answer, he sighed and said, “Okay, what day are you going?”

“If traffic holds, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” he said, but I think I heard some love in there too.

“Thanks,” I said. “How you doing locating a will?”

“So far nothing. Tell you what, though. I find something out, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, don’t ever fucking ask me for a progress report again.”

I smiled. “That’s the kind of attitude that keeps you from being able to hang with Benny Joe Willis.”

“Christ, is that jackass a friend of yours? I’ll let you know tomorrow if I can continue to represent a guy with such shit taste.” The phone went dead.

The Getty Museum sits on the most visible piece of real estate on the Westside, a promontory capped by a marble monolith that would have awed Ramses. More than one architecture critic has suggested that its grandeur is the modern equivalent of a European Castle Hill, also designed to send a shiver up peasants’ spines should they get restless. A second museum, the Getty Villa in Malibu, only adds to the metaphor.

J. Paul Getty wasn’t much of a human being, but he sure knew how to turn a buck. And in the end, he was more generous to the arts than any other man in history. J. P. Morgan runs a distant second. Maybe it’s in the initials.

Unfortunately, the museum built with Getty’s fortune came late to the acquisitions party. After centuries of plunder and shady transactions, most countries now have laws protecting their national treasures and have even begun unwinding some of the past’s larceny.

So when the Getty arrived on the scene, it was in the odd position of having more money than God and nothing to buy. Terrified that this new museum would drive prices into the stratosphere for the few important pieces that might come on the market, or that the Getty would begin offering large sums for works owned by financially strapped institutions and screw up their cozy little world, the major museums called a sit-down with the Getty trustees and coerced them into becoming “a good member of the community.” This was like letting the United Nations set American foreign policy. In other words, if you promise not to create an open market, we’ll like you. We really will.

The result was the Getty got the privilege of remaining a second-tier museum while coughing up money to help financially strapped places like the Louvre. In return, they were given a spot on the traveling exhibit circuit and a heartfelt thanks in small print on the last page of catalogues. Oh, the
big guys throw the Getty a bone every now and then. Let them buy something the others would have to sell off holdings to afford, but it’s rarely something incredibly important. Meanwhile, in Paris and Rome, they laugh. But that’s socialists for you. They’d skip the Super Bowl to take a tour of the post office.

A lot of people think the Getty should have just taken their chips and gone for it. Started a bidding war only they could have won. That in a generation, they would have built the finest museum ever—one the others would have come on bended knee to
borrow from
instead of reluctantly
lending to
. This strategy would have also raised the value of everyone else’s collections, not to mention what it would have done for the private market.

That’s what old J. Paul, the capitalist, would have done. He didn’t build the largest fortune of his time asking what he could do for others. But once you become an appeaser, you might still have your weapons, but you never get your nerve back. As a result, what’s left is one of the world’s truly magnificent buildings where you can get in out of the sun and have a pretty good salade Niçoise.

A security guard at the museum’s private entrance questioned me with the same attitude he would have used on an Al-Qaeda suspect, then made copies of my driver’s license and registration while his partner went through my car with a metal detector and some kind of wand I presumed registered chemical signatures. Neither man was openly rude, but they weren’t friendly either. It was the same mentality as the TSA people at the airport. Show Joe Citizen who’s in charge by keeping everything humorless and curt.

The experts will tell you that a smile gets you a lot farther, because unless somebody shows up shirtless with a bomb strapped to his chest, the best chance you have of nailing a bad guy is when his demeanor is out of step with everyone else’s. And if you’re a badge-heavy asshole, you make everyone tense, so there’s no differentiation.

The tough-guy attitude also intimidates people who might otherwise come forward with information you desperately need or who could rat out somebody with mayhem on his mind. It’s why cops with good dispositions almost always rise faster and go farther in their departments than hard-asses. But that memo hadn’t gotten down to my interrogators, so when they finished, and I wished them a nice morning, they didn’t answer. Big surprise.

On my way up the tree-lined drive, I was suddenly seized by searing pain through my patchwork lung and where my missing rib should have been. It was so intense that sweat burst from every pore, and I had to stop the car to get my breath and gulp some Vicodin. After a few moments, the pain receded, and I was able to continue.

Kim’s boss, Dr. A. A. Abernathy, the executive vice president of the museum, kept me waiting only a few minutes. We recognized each other from the funeral. He was a long, lean, tweedy Londoner in his sixties, with a David Niven moustache and the yellowed teeth of a confirmed smoker, who projected that distinctly British academic manner that can’t be imitated, except badly. It wasn’t difficult to picture him in a well-worn Cambridge pub puffing Rothmans, sipping Guinness and holding court among adoring students.

He also had only one arm, his left, and wore no prosthesis, tucking his empty sleeve into the pocket of his suit jacket. We shook cross-handed and went into his office.

“Call me A.A.,” he said as we took seats.

We were surrounded by tiny soldiers—hundreds of them on every available surface. They were Wellington-era miniatures in perfect regimental regalia, exquisitely painted, and arranged in what I had to assume were correct battle groups.

A.A. chuckled. “A damned addiction, I’m afraid. And as with all fine addictions, what’s the point if it’s not overdone.”

My eyes wandered to his empty right sleeve.

“Bit hard to believe, isn’t it?” he asked good-naturedly. “But actually, the only impediment is getting the tops off those blasted little jars of paint.”

“I have a friend in the prosthesis business who’d be broke if there were a lot like you. Accident?”

“No, I was born with one good arm and a withered one. About half-length and only two fingers. Today, nobody’d blink, and you’d go on about your business. But the doctor told my parents I’d be marked a freak and tormented unmercifully. Suggested amputation. Said people’d take note of a single arm then forget it, but if they left me with a flipper it’d be like wearing a curse every day of my life.”

“How do you feel about that?”

He looked thoughtful. “Hard to hold people accountable for making tough choices.”

I nodded and told him a little bit about my background, which immediately put us on comrade footing.

“So they took my arm and your accent. I think I got the better deal.”

We both laughed.

“May I offer you something to drink?” he asked.

“Water would be terrific.”

He reached behind his desk and opened a small refrigerator, coming out with two bottles of Fiji water. It was ice cold and felt very, very good going down.

Nodding at the bandage on my hand, he said, “I take it you’re the gentleman who was with Dr. York when she was murdered.”

“I am.”

“Had you been seeing each other for some time?”

I listened for any nuance in his voice, but it seemed to be a straightforward question. “Actually, we’d only recently met.”

“A genuinely nice lady with a wonderful sense of humor. Had I been a bit younger, I might have tried for something more than a professional relationship myself. A terrible trag
edy. I must say, I was quite surprised when the police didn’t call me or come around.”

“They’ve closed the case,” I answered, but I was surprised too. I thought Sergeant Manarca might have wanted to cover all the bases—if only out of habit.

A.A. said, “I take it you’re not so easily fooled.”

“Why do you say that?”

He leaned forward slightly. “I live just around the corner from Tacitus, and it’s one of my few extravagances. Pricy, but wonderful. If one simply needed a dead body to join a gang, why in the world would he go through those creaky, hard-to-open iron gates, chance being stopped by the maitre d’, then thread his way through a maze of closely set tables when all he had to do was just stand outside and shoot someone getting into his car? Heaven knows, the valet wouldn’t have stopped him. No, in my opinion, the young man who shot you and Dr. York did exactly what he’d been sent to do. And he was damned good, and, if you’ll forgive me, damned ballsy too.”

I sat without saying anything. This ivory-tower type had reasoned it out the same way I had. Why hadn’t the cops? “You obviously read a lot of Doyle,” I said, only half-joking.

He enjoyed the compliment. “I came up through the authentication side of the house, where art can be as much the product of good detective work as it is beauty. Value and provenance often rest on one’s ability to reason things through from incomplete evidence—then convince others we’re right. It’s the same process a talented police officer uses. Part science, part logic and part intuition. And generally speaking, in both disciplines, the more complicated or illogical the explanation, the less likely it is to have occurred.”

I nodded, and Abernathy continued. “In this case, to agree with the police, one is asked to believe that a Hispanic street kid carrying a gun traveled seventeen miles from East L.A. into Beverly Hills, where the constabulary are so aggres
sive they check the IDs of residents out walking their Labradoodles.