Madonna of the Apes (25 page)

Chapter Sixty-five

“No wonder the opposition is in such a commotion,” Fred said. “Running around seducing people. Lying out of every orifice. Killing people. They want the rest of the package. They took it apart to ship it; made a mongrel out of the chest so nobody would care about it in the container. With the plan, when they got here…but hold on. That’s not much, that appraisal, fifty thousand pounds. For Leonardo?”

“At the time the world was very different,” Clay said. “These things were not regarded as they are today. A lot has happened since thieves walked off with the Louvre’s
Mona Lisa
in 1911. Which they could do because nobody valued her enough at the time even to keep an eye on her.”

“A Leonardo
Annunciation.
So that’s the big thing Franklin was waiting for,” Fred said. “Waiting for, possibly dying for.”

Clay said, “Listen to me. I know it’s in my notes. On your desk. Blinded, I paid no attention to anything prior to 1490. I’ll find it again. Among the paintings from Leonardo’s hand, lost paintings, known but unaccounted for, but in the record: there were several
Madonnas
he had completed
before
he left Florence.

“An
Annunciation
! Because of the angels on the chest, I see it now. You know the one in the Uffizi. The angel on the left. An early work attributed to Ghirlandaio until the late 1800s. Nobody knew. Nothing was ever signed. In that painting, Leonardo included a background of the Florence landscape. In this one, there may be no more than a hint of architecture, since the function of the image is different. From the remainder of the chest’s decoration I can see it. Angels and lilies, the symbol the Virgin holds when the angel speaks to her. Gabriel. Or does the angel hold it? I am in such a tizzy. ‘Hail, full of grace.’ The angel kneels. Yes. There are two arches, in gold. In one, the left side, the angel bearing the lily. The virgin is in the other. Where is it? It’s the top of my chest. Has to be.”

“
School of Leonardo
it says, remember? On the appraisal,” Fred pointed out.

“Of course that’s what the
appraisal
says. An estate appraisal gives every advantage it can to the estate. I was blind. I must study the chest again,” Clay demanded. “I will not rest until I do. Find the
Annunciation.
I repeat, where is it?”

“We should probably ask Mitchell,” Fred said. “But given that nothing is what meets the eye, take it slow. I admit you’ve got me curious. Even if we can find it, and get past the intervening complications that multiply by the day, how many millions do they want for it? You ready to bid against Agnelli? Take it easy, stay out of sight. I’ll take another look at the chest.”

He left Clay scrambling like a terrier through the notes on his desk.

***

While Fred tapped Bernie’s secret code onto the buttons of his alarm pad, Suzette Shaughnessy stepped out of the shadows of a neighboring doorway. It had started to rain again. Dr. Mitchell, slightly behind her, held a blue umbrella over the pair of them. The umbrella Mitchell held in his left hand. It was with his right that he pressed the gun’s muzzle against the small of Suzette Shaughnessy’s back. He was still dressed as he had been on their first meeting, in the tired blue suit, the vintage fedora, the trench coat from a movie nobody had seen, not even on late night television, for thirty years.

Suzette, bareheaded, pouted apologies. Mitchell, nudging her from behind, told Fred, “We’re coming in.”

“Good,” Fred said. “I didn’t know where to find you.” He opened the entrance next to the big overhead door, then stepped back and let the two shove in, Suzette stumbling, Mitchell propelling her in front of him. Mitchell dropped the umbrella to the garage floor, keeping a wary eye on Fred until Fred closed them in.

“Sorry,” Suzette said. “He just suddenly got like this.”

“Upstairs,” Mitchell ordered.

“We’re working together,” Suzette protested, more or less to the space around them, as Fred, following Mitchell’s gestures, led the way upstairs into Bernie’s living space.

Suzette followed, Mitchell behind her, keeping the gun’s muzzle firmly in the small of Suzette’s back. She shivered in the black raincoat. Her face wavered with banners of pink and white, the fear taking her that way.

“What is it with you people?” Fred asked, letting his eyes flick back and forth from Mitchell to Suzette.

“On the couch,” Mitchell demanded. “Not you, Suzette. Him. Fred. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

“She’ll faint if she doesn’t sit down.” Fred advised. “She’ll flop down like a turd.”

Mitchell’s eyes darted around the room. “You,” he told Fred again. “On the couch.”

“We assume I care if the lady lives or dies,” Fred said, standing his ground.

“The chest,” Mitchell said.

“Downstairs.”

“I knew it,” Suzette said.

“She’ll faint,” Fred repeated.

Suzette winked, moaned, and dropped like a turd. Fred, lurching sideways to avoid getting tangled in her limbs, twisted and managed a decisive swipe at the side of Mitchell’s head. The gun’s report was almost absorbed by the room’s rugs, drapes, and Bernie’s couch and sound system.

“I’m all right,” Suzette called. Fred, standing over the twisting professor, kicked the gun out of his hand and then kicked him again, with precision, back of the ear, on the other side of the head.

“He won’t be out long,” Fred warned. “Find something to tie him with.” He flipped Mitchell onto his back while Suzette went prospecting in Bernie’s kitchen cupboards. “Quick,” Fred urged. Suzette came back with twine and a pair of kitchen scissors. “Get his shoes off,” he ordered. While Suzette worked at the black wingtips, he tied Mitchell’s thumbs together, and then his wrists, behind his back. “Socks too,” he said. The professor’s naked feet were nothing you’d want to find under your Christmas tree. Fred took more twine and tied the big toes together, then the ankles. Suzette had watched the procedure carefully, absorbing information in case she could use it later in her new life as an art dealer. She stood up then, twisting herself out of her wet coat and throwing it on the linoleum floor of Bernie’s kitchen area. She was wearing a blue dress under the coat. Blue linen, cotton, something like that. It didn’t look warm enough. Locating a mirror, she checked herself in that.

“It hit the couch,” Fred said. The bullet had disappeared into the Hurculon upholstery of the couch’s plaid back.

“What do you, sleep on the floor?” Suzette demanded. The sheets were still spread out there, as he and Mandy had left them.

“Don’t touch the gun,” Fred cautioned. Suzette was starting to wander. “Mitchell’s prints are on it. Leave it where it is.” Mitchell’s gun, formerly Franklin Tilley’s, was lying on the sheets where he’d kicked it.

Suzette said, “Downstairs. You had it the whole time. I knew it, Mitchell,” she said. “I told you…” She swerved away abruptly from the direction in which her words were heading, and gave Fred a tentative smile that, in a moment, lit the room before it was replaced by a look of dawning alarm. “It’s like I’m on fire,” she said. “God, Fred. That was close. Thanks for the graphic image. Me doing my famous impersonation of a flopping turd.”

Mitchell stirred.

Suzette stroked the bodice of the summery blue dress and straightened its sides. “I thought I was going to have to buy another dress,” she said. “That’s all I thought. Can you imagine?” She took a hesitant step in Fred’s direction.

Chapter Sixty-six

“The neighbors don’t care when someone fires a gun?” Suzette asked.

Fred shrugged. “It’s Beacon Hill. It wasn’t loud. If the neighbors hear it, and if they know what it is, they don’t want to make waves.”

“Maybe life sucks,” she said, taking another hesitant step in Fred’s direction. “But it’s better than the alternative. I’m going to sit down before I really do fall.” She sank into the couch.

“Now we talk,” Fred said.

“He would have killed me,” Suzette said. The observation sounded like an explanation more than an apology.

“Yes, but he didn’t,” Fred countered. “The way I took him, you were never in danger. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Gets lucky sometimes, but he’s an amateur. Meanwhile, your delayed reaction is only fear. Leftover fear. Don’t worry about it. Fear’s a good thing.
Fear is the prolongation of life.
Also, as the man said,
Fear springs to life more quickly than anything else.
”

Suzette heaved a long sigh and her face softened unmistakably. “Fred, have you noticed,” she reached a trembling hand out to touch his arm, “could maybe we put Mitchell out of sight? How, when you are almost killed, the only thing you can think about next is to make love with someone?”

“Sure,” Fred told her. “I have to tell you, mostly, in my experience, there isn’t a sensible way to act on those feelings. Mitchell didn’t walk you over at gunpoint.”

Suzette started to tremble. She did it well. “I’m still afraid,” she said.

Fred shifted Mitchell to one side and put a straight chair where he could sit and see her.

“Right,” he said. “Last night, about midnight, you were afraid of Carl. Any new word on Carl?”

“We do this together,” Suzette said. “It’s downstairs. Show me. We share, fifty-fifty.”

“We’re talking about Carl.”

“It would be awful if something had happened to Mitchell,” Suzette suggested. “Like in self-defense.”

“Too late,” Fred said. “The gun stays where it is. Nothing happens to Mitchell. Forensics would wonder about the marks on his hands and feet, where he was tied. We’re talking about Carl.”

“Mitchell killed him. It was awful,” she said. “Fifty-fifty.”

“That marble top, we took that off,” Fred said. “To be totally honest with you, that’s already on its way out of the country. Client who wants—you know how some people collect everything they can find with pigs? Calendars, dish towels, letter openers, soup tureens, cookie jars? This guy likes monkeys, and he’s got a weird streak. Saudi Arabian. Money to roll in? He doesn’t care. So I can’t sell the chest is the problem. It’s not all there.”

“Who gives a shit?” Suzette said. “You sold the top? We don’t need it. Forget it. As long as you have the rest. You have the box, I have the top. Well, Mitchell has it, but I know…The owner gets in today. Who in my opinion should have been here the whole time and we’d never have gotten into this trouble with Franklin and Mitchell and the rest of it. So. But Franklin’s out of it now.”

“Dead,” Fred said.

“Yikes! And Mitchell’s out obviously, since he killed Carl. I don’t care if he says it was self-defense. How did he have the gun, then? Like you say, his prints are on the gun. And I can provide Agnelli. I meet him tonight at the Ritz bar. We both do, I mean. Fifty-fifty. So we’re still Okay.”

“Right,” Fred said. “On the subject of Carl, between twelve o’clock last night and now, what are we, eight in the morning? Where were you? You and Mitchell?”

Mitchell groaned.

“Mitchell, you have something to say?” Fred suggested.

Suzette, not breaking stride, continued, “Mitchell’s still my partner, just in this one project. Don’t worry, Mitchell. I’m going to take care of you, make sure you get your share. Even for self defense, those lawyers are going to want thousands.”

“I want a lawyer,” Mitchell said, his voice deflated almost to non-existence.

“Right,” Suzette agreed. “Don’t say anything to anyone about anything. Stand mute, it’s called. Until you get a lawyer. He’ll say the same thing.”

Fred said, “Carl went out into the rain last night, no shoes. An observation I’m making.”

“The chest’s downstairs, Mitchell,” Suzette said. “Like I said. Fred, I haven’t exactly leveled with you up to now. Let’s have coffee.”

“No. A: You called me. D: Carl was killed. L: Mitchell turned up this morning, here, with a gun in your back. Fill me in. The missing letters. Unless Mitchell wants to.” He glanced in the direction of Mitchell, whose jaws remained clamped shut defiantly.

“He’s going to deny everything,” Suzette started. “His lawyer will make him. Since he can’t lie like everyone else in the art business. Anyway. You’re sure there’s no coffee? For your partner? Okay. The fast version. I decide to try Carl again. Put something together. I go over. The other guy, the lawyer, is already gone. You saw him. Big shot. Useless. Back to Atlanta. Carl invites me up, I go up. He’s alone. I take off my shoes, one thing leads to another.

“The funny thing,” Suzette said, “Carl’s big. And he scares the wee wee out of you, talking tough. And all. But Franklin Tilley had something I never saw, because he had Carl buffaloed. Walked around in the apartment in his socks. Plus, and two, he was done in three minutes. Guys that work out and act tough, I’ve noticed, it frequently goes like that. The whole thing, whereas the wimps and weaklings, like the academics, oftentimes it’s…what it comes down to, all that muscle doesn’t have anything to do with it at all. Exercise all you want, there isn’t a muscle in there. Then he pulled that gun…

“Listen, if I can’t get Agnelli in there tonight, it’s the last time I even get close to him. I didn’t level with you before, now I will. It’s worth as much as an aircraft carrier.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“I was running away,” Suzette said, panting, her eyes bright. “With him coming after, Carl, getting out of that place. How is he going to have time to put those sneakers on? Ten million at least. My commission’s ten percent. A million dollars.”

Mitchell glared.

“Which I divide fifty-fifty with Mitchell. But, here’s where you come in. We put the box back with the top, we sell it for more. Ask what you want, I get half.”

“Everyone lies,” Mitchell intoned from the floor. “Make him show you the chest. Don’t be a fool, Suzette.”

Fred looked over the situation: Mitchell laid out on the floor, well bound; Suzette unable to keep her eyes from flickering toward the gun. “I need a hand with it on these stairs,” he said. “Suzette?”

“Don’t play games,” Suzette said. “There’s no time. We have to suck up to the owner. That could take most of the day. If we don’t land Agnelli tonight, he’s gone. I promise we don’t have time to fool around. You’re in the big leagues now, Fred. We are talking Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Make him show it to us,” Mitchell demanded.