Painted Ladies (16 page)

“Several of the policemen we’ve talked with said there was nothing you could have done, given the setup.”

“I could have prevented him from walking into the setup,” I said.

Richards nodded and smiled.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

“Have you ever had any requests to sell
Lady with a Finch
?”

“Recently?” he said.

“Ever?” I said.

“Oh, of course. There are private collectors who are quite passionate in their desire for one or another piece of art.”

“Do you have a record of the offers,” I said.

“We probably have a file somewhere,” Richards said. “I can’t really say.”

“Is there someone who could say?”

“We preserve and display art,” Richards said. “We’re not in the business of selling it.”

I nodded.

“Anybody named Herzberg?” I said.

Richards frowned.

“I’m not really comfortable,” he said, “talking to you without our attorney.”

I shook my head.

“Look, Mr. Richards,” I said. “I am not a cop. I am self-employed. You can lie to me with impunity. I’m used to it.”

“I don’t wish to lie to you,” he said.

“Whether you do or don’t,” I said, “talking with me doesn’t require a lawyer.”

Richards nodded. He shifted a little in his chair and stared for a moment out the window. Behind the museum, the snow was still clean and looked relatively fresh.

“Herzberg is the name of a former owner of
Lady with a Finch,
” he said. “A wealthy Dutch Jew who died in one of the Nazi death camps during the Second World War.
Lady with a Finch
was confiscated by the Nazis.”

“Where did you get it?” I said.

“It was donated to the museum, in his will, by a long-time patron of the museum named Wendell Forbes,” Richards said.

“Where did he get it?” I said.

“He told us that it was purchased from a dealer in Brussels,” Richards said.

“Is there a way to trace it back?” I said.

“You mean past ownership?”

“Yeah.”

“You’d have to talk with the Forbes estate about that,” Richards said.

“That’s an exciting prospect,” I said. “Is any of the family around?”

“All of this is before my time,” Richards said. “I don’t really know. Apparently, Wendell Forbes was the only one interested in art.”

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me a little about Morton Lloyd.”

“Morton Lloyd?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m interested in everything.”

“He’s our attorney,” Richards said. “I believe you met him earlier.”

“I did,” I said. “How did he come to represent you?”

“He’s a member of our board,” Richards said.

“So he works pro bono?” I said.

Richards smiled faintly.

“We pay him a retainer for general consultation,” Richards said. “And if there’s billable work to be done, he does it at cost.”

“He says.”

Richards smiled but didn’t comment.

“And it was he who suggested you use Ashton Prince in regard to the stolen painting,” I said.

“Yes,” Richards said.

“Did he say how he knew Prince?”

“I don’t recall that he did,” Richards said.

“And no one has consulted you about the painting in any way since Prince’s death?”

Richards looked genuinely startled.

“I am under the impression that the painting no longer exists,” he said.

“And you have no reason to doubt that?” I said.

“I wish I did,” Richards said. “Do you think it is not destroyed?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “But I’d bet it wasn’t.”

“That would be wonderful news,” Richards said. “Art is always one of a kind. If it’s gone, it cannot be replaced.”

“So no one has contacted you in any way about the painting?”

“No.”

“I find out something,” I said, “I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you,” Richards said. “Have I been of any help?”

“Not much,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Richards said.

“Don’t feel bad,” I said. “Nobody else has been much help, either.”

M
orton Lloyd did business out of an old gray stone building on Batterymarch. His office itself was aggressively colonial, right down to the receptionist, who looked a bit like Molly Pitcher. There were prints of American militia companies on the paneled walls. And a big painting of Cornwallis’s surrender. The painting looked amateurish to me.

“My name is Spenser,” I said to the receptionist. “I need to consult with Mr. Lloyd.”

“Mr. Lloyd is with a client,” she said. “Do you have an appointment.”

“I can wait,” I said.

“You didn’t say if you had an appointment, sir.”

“Everyone has an appointment, ma’am, sooner, or later, in Samarra.”

“What?” Molly Pitcher said.

“I don’t have an appointment,” I said. “But I have nothing else to do today. And I may as well do it here. Tell Mr. Lloyd it is in regard to
Lady with a Finch.
”

“Lady what?” Molly said.

“He’ll understand,” I said. “
Lady with a Finch.”

She wrote it down on a small pad of paper. I smiled. She looked at me without smiling.

“Come on,” I said. “My smile is infectious. Everyone says so. No one can resist smiling back.”

She looked at me as if I were a talking baboon and flashed me an entirely mechanical smile, and turned back to her computer. I sat down in a black captain’s chair with an eagle in flight stenciled in gold on the back. It was very quiet in the reception area. A couple of times Molly Pitcher looked half surreptitiously up from her computer, and each time I gave her my most winsome smile. And each time she had no reaction beyond going back to her computer. She must have been a woman of iron self-control.

The door to the inner office opened, and Mort the Tort ushered out a middle-aged couple.

“So just sit tight,” he was saying. “I’m sure we can settle this without going to court.”

He walked them past me to the outer door, opened it for them, and closed it after they’d left. Then he turned quite deliberately and looked at me.

“What the hell do you want?” he said.

I stood.

“Thanks, Mort,” I said. “I would like to come in and chat.”

Molly Pitcher piped up.

“He says it’s about”—she looked at her note—“a lady and a finch.”

I smiled at Lloyd.

“Close enough,” I said.

Lloyd jerked his head at me and went into his office. I followed him. He closed the door behind me and went around and sat at his big Ipswich maple desk.

“Okay,” he said. “What is it?”

The inner office had a fireplace with a big wooden sign over it that read
Paul Revere, Silversmith.
It looked as if it had been manufactured in China in 2008. A harpoon leaned in one corner.

I sat down.

“I need what you can tell me about you and Ashton Prince and the Herzberg Foundation,” I said.

“You come here and bother me about that?” Lloyd said. “I am busy. I have another client in five minutes. I have others after him. I don’t have time for your cockamamie ideas.”

“You’re a lot deeper into a mess than you want to be,” I said. “This has turned into two murders, two attempted murders, a bomb, and, of course, the priceless painting.”

Lloyd stared at me.

“I know you offered to represent Prince against Walford University,” I said. “I know you suggested him to broker the deal to get the painting back. I know you represent the Herzberg Foundation, and that you allow them to drive at least one car registered to you. I know that you represent them pro bono, which is not your style.”

“I’m Jewish,” Lloyd said.

“So?”

“It’s a Jewish organization, for God’s sake,” Lloyd said. “I have several cars. I donated one to them.”

“In what way is it a Jewish organization?” I said.

“It is concerned with the Holocaust.”

“How?” I said.

“Restoring the historical record,” he said. “If you’re not Jewish, you cannot understand the full meaning of the Holocaust.”

“Probably not,” I said. “Did you know that Ashton Prince’s real name was Ascher Prinz, and that his father, Amos, was in Auschwitz with Judah and Isaac Herzberg?”

“No.”

“Do you think the Herzberg Foundation is related to Judah and Isaac?” I said.

“How would I know,” he said.

“Are they interested in maybe recovering
Lady with a Finch
?”

“That is privileged information,” Lloyd said.

“We’ll put this all together sooner or later,” I said. “And if there’s bad news about you, it’ll go easier if we got it from you.”

“You’re not a cop,” he said.

“True,” I said. “But I know one.”

His hands were resting on his expensive desk. He looked down at them. Then he cleared his throat and shook his head.

“I have nothing further to say.”

I nodded and took one of my business cards out of my shirt pocket.

“This whole thing is going to go right out from underneath you pretty soon. And if you’re still hanging on, it’ll take you down with it.”

He was still looking at the backs of his hands.

“We have nothing left to discuss,” he said.

I stood.

“I’ll let myself out,” I said, and walked to the door.

As I opened it, I looked back and nodded at my card on his desk.

“Don’t lose the card,” I said.

B
righton is mostly middle-class residential, and the house on Market Street fit in nicely. It had white aluminum siding and a porch across the front enclosed with jalousie windows. The concrete sidewalk was neatly shoveled, and ice melt had been scattered on it, and on the two steps to the porch door. A white signpost stood beside the door, with a white wooden sign hanging from it that read in black letters:

I opened the porch door and went in. On the inside front door was a small brass sign that said
Office.
I opened that door and I was in what must have once been a living room but was now a reception area with a desk and several chairs, in case you needed to wait. At the desk was the guy I had seen with Missy at the Walford library.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

“You are?” I said.

“Ariel Herzberg,” he said. “And you?”

“Call me Ishmael,” I said. “Your father was Isaac Herzberg.”

Herzberg pushed his swivel chair away from the desk and leaned as far back in the chair as the spring would allow and stared at me.

“Your grandfather was Judah Herzberg,” I said. “He died in Auschwitz. Isaac, your father, survived Auschwitz and was liberated by the Russians with his friend Amos Prinz in 1945. He was about fourteen at the time. Amos was about eighteen.”

“He would have pronounced it ‘Ah-mose,’ ” Ariel said.

“They went together to Amsterdam,” I said. “Recovered a painting from a secret room in the now-abandoned Herzberg home, took it to Rotterdam and sold it to an art dealer for much less than it was worth but enough to feed them for a while.”

“So?” Ariel said after a bit.

“The painting was
Lady with a Finch,
” I said. “It was stolen a little while back, from the Hammond Museum.”

“I read about that,” Ariel said.

“I think you stole it,” I said.

“And of course you have evidence.”

“I think you blew up Ashton Prince,” I said.

“Evidence?”

“I think you tried twice to kill me, and succeeded in killing a guy named Francisco,” I said.

“Evidence?” Ariel said again.

“Ah,” I said. “There’s the rub.”

“It is a big rub,” Ariel said. “Don’t you think?”

“It is,” I said. “But I’m working on it. Did you know that Ashton Prince is the son of Amos Prinz?”

“I know nothing except what I have read in the papers.”

“Do you know—”

I stopped. I was going to ask if he knew Missy Minor, and if he knew Morton Lloyd, and what relationship he had with either. But if he’d tried twice to kill me for investigating, what might he do with a potential witness?

“You had a question?” Ariel said.

“I decided not to ask it,” I said.

“America is a great country,” he said. “We are free to do what we will.”

I had already baited him as much as I needed to. He knew what I knew. If it was as dangerous to him as I thought it was, maybe he’d make a run at me, and I could catch him at it. I took a business card from my shirt pocket. On the back I wrote his grandfather’s death camp number, and handed him the card.

“What is this number?” he said.

“Judah Herzberg’s Auschwitz ID number,” I said. “You probably have it tattooed on your arm.”

“You appear a good investigator,” Ariel said.

“Stalwart, too,” I said.

“No doubt,” Ariel said. “No doubt.”

He must have pressed a button someplace, because a door opened behind him and a big muscular blond guy came in wearing a tight T-shirt and looking scary. He paused beside Ariel’s desk and looked at him. I could see that there were numbers tattooed on his forearm.

“Throw Mr. Spenser out, Kurt,” Ariel said to him. “Not gently.”

K
urt studied me for a moment. We were about the same size, but he didn’t seem daunted. I speculated that they were trying to get me to draw my gun so they could shoot me and claim self-defense. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to draw my gun. My frustration content was saturating. I needed to hit somebody, and Kurt looked good for it.

Kurt shuffled toward me with his left foot forward and his hands held loosely up on either side of his head. So he had some idea what he was doing. On the other hand, I did, too, and I’d been doing it longer. He swung his right leg up and across in a martial arts-type kick. I stepped inside it, close to him, so not much of the kick got me, and hit him in the throat with the crotch between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. The guy who taught me the punch called it “the tiger’s claw.” Kurt grunted and spun away from me, and settled back into his stance. Some people fell down when I hit them that way. I slid toward him with a left jab, which landed well, and a right cross, which landed even better. Kurt bobbed and wove a little and hit me on the chin with the heel of his right hand. It backed me up a couple of steps, and he came after me. I blocked a left and then a right, and feinted a straight left to his face. He brought his right arm across to block it, and I looped a big left hook over the block and nailed him on the right cheekbone. He staggered. That was encouraging. But he didn’t go down.