The Hours of the Virgin (8 page)

Strangeways had posed for his latest picture last summer, on the occasion of his second wedding. The bride, the former Laurel Triste, originally of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was a blur of double-exposed colorplate in the “Milestones” section of
Time
. Her general configuration, leaning devotedly over the groom's wheelchair in a tailored ivory suit, could have belonged to the brunette whose cigarette I'd lit in the Tomcat just before my own flame flickered. If so, her hair was longer last summer. It was impossible to tell the color of her eyes from the photograph. Coming from Louisiana, her speech would put one in mind of honey poured over grits.

The empire builder himself, turned out in a tux that fit him as well as can be managed when the customer can't rise to be measured, looked patient and dissipated. The blade-straight, silver-haired entrepreneur to the American male libido had lost weight and the loose skin of his cheeks matched his starched dress collar.

There wasn't much on the new Mrs. Strangeways. She was eighteen at the time of the troth, one-third her husband's age, and had modeled lingerie for an agency in Baton Rouge. They had met when she came north to shoot tests for a spread in
After Six
. It was plain from the tenor of the brief piece in
Time
and one-paragraph items appearing elsewhere that the reporters had grown bored with the subject after the sensation of Little Rock. Now that graphic sex had moved into the jurisdiction of political pundits, it had lost most of its old salt. Gordon Strangeways had become as respectable as a Norelco.

I left the material for the librarians to return to the shelves, the way they like it, and used the pay telephone to try Harold Boyette once more. When I hung up on the dial tone and turned to face the glass doors, I was looking at the DIA directly across the street.

Waiting in the icy rain for a break in the traffic on Woodward I didn't even know why I'd come this far, except I was still living on Boyette's five hundred dollars. That and Earl North.

Never tangle yourself in the case, kid. The client's all twisted around when he comes to you or he wouldn't come to you. You won't be any good to you or him if you get twisted around too
. Words to go on Dale Leopold's tombstone, if he had a tombstone. Last I heard he was still staking out his sister's living room in a jar on the mantel, next to the Pekingese she'd had skinned and stuffed when it died. He'd hated that dog.

The Goya exhibit was still pulling them in. A kid in a Wayne State sweatshirt was sitting cross-legged on the floor sketching
The Clothed Maja
on a big pad in his lap.
The Naked Maja
had been too inhibited to make the crossing. I found a security guard who rubbed his nose when I asked him if Harold Boyette had been in lately. As noses go it was a keeper, as big around as bratwurst and shot through with red and blue veins. It belonged behind a zipper.

“Boyette? I think that's in another wing.”

“He's a man, not an exhibit. I met him here day before yesterday.”

“I just watch the paintings. You better talk to Mr. Ruddy, he runs things. He's in the gift shop this time of day.”

“What's he look like?”

“You won't miss him. He won't be no more than an arm's length from the cash drawer.”

The gift shop was doing better business than the rest of the establishment; there are people who shop those places weekly who have never gone to see the exhibits. A mixed-race couple couldn't decide whether the poster from the Empire Period tour or the photographic mural of the British Crown Jewels would go better with the Care Bears wallpaper in the nursery, and a gang of kids in eight-ball jackets were trying to imitate the facial expressions of the souls in torment in Bosch's
Garden of Earthly Delights
on a set of coffee mugs. The cashier, a busy young thing just tall enough to reach the keys, rang up a purchase directly under the thin pale nose of Mr. Ruddy.

I figured the name on the tag pinned to the lapel of his navy blazer was a celestial joke. He was six-two and looked taller because you can only get a hundred and thirty pounds to go so far, and he appeared to be completely bald at first glance. On closer inspection, his fine smoothed-back hair was the same bled-out color as his scalp and face. He hadn't much face, but he had a lot of angular chin and a broad forehead the shape and color of a plastic bleach bottle. At the moment I spotted him, he turned away from the register and the fluorescent light seemed to shine right through his skin and clothes, showing the shadowy outlines of the bones beneath. He was a walking Visible Man.

“Mr. Ruddy?”

A frosty blue eye fixed and card-catalogued me from his inch and a quarter of superior height. “Yes?”

I showed him the ID. “I'm handling a little matter for Harold Boyette. Is he around?”

He reached up and adjusted his name tag with a finger. It wasn't crooked. “Mr. Boyette is no longer associated with this institution.”

“He quit? When?”

“This institution doesn't discuss matters of personnel with the outside.”

“That means he got canned.”

“I repeat—”

“I heard. Thing is, Boyette seems to have dropped out of sight. From here I go to Thirteen hundred, that's Detroit police headquarters, and file a missing persons complaint. There's extortion involved and maybe kidnapping. You won't mind cops coming around asking questions, strictly on the whisper. Open cases are public record, but unless it's a slow news day I wouldn't worry too much about the press. This has Section B written all over it.”

“Please join me in the stock room.”

I considered it a breakthrough; he'd stopped referring to himself as “this institution.”

The room was smaller than the one where I'd spoken with Boyette, considerably neater, and a whole lot less interesting. Shrink-wrapped picture books were stacked horizontally on built-in shelves and there were boxes marked
FRAGILE
on the floor and packing material and a postage meter on a worktable. Ruddy drew the door shut and stood with his back to it, in case I tried to make a run for the cophouse.

“If you're working for Mr. Boyette's attorney, I advise you to inform him that legal action is unwise. We allowed him to resign without prejudice rather than take the matter to the police. I'm afraid there is no smoking allowed,” he added.

I lit up anyway. Smoke kills viruses and clears muddled thinking. “What'd he do, fondle the Venus de Milo?”

This time he used both eyes, turning his head this way and that to focus one of them on me at a time, like a bird. “If you were employed by his attorney, you'd know the answer to that question.”

“Probably. If I were working for Frankie Lymon I'd know why fools fall in love, but like I said I'm working for Boyette and right now I don't even know where the hell he is. A situation which if it goes on long enough and if I get tired enough of these here verbal gymnastics I will take to the cops. Hell, I'm tired enough now. Stand aside.”

He took in air through his thin pale nose. When it came back out it made a noise like a teakettle.

“This institution contracted with Mr. Boyette for his services as a consultant on historical manuscripts,” he said. “It came to our attention that he had authenticated certain items which he knew to be forgeries. The inference was that he had conspired with the forgers to defraud the museum.”

“Came to your attention how?”

“Mr. Boyette was not the only expert we consulted. The number of counterfeit manuscripts was too great to be a coincidence. In two cases particularly they were too obvious—crude, really—not to have been identified as false by a scholar of his experience. The conclusion, that he was an accomplice in the fraud, was no less obvious.”

“Was the Hours of the Virgin one of the fakes?”

A crease appeared in the bleach-bottle forehead. “Which one? There are many books of hours.”

“Plymouth. The duke's wedding present.”

The crease went away. “Balderdash.”

“Did you say balderdash?”

“I did. Poppycock.”

“Balderdash is plenty rich enough for me. What's wrong with Plymouth?”

“This institution has never been in possession of the Plymouth Virgin. If anyone were to offer it to us we should certainly denounce it and them. That manuscript was destroyed during the Reformation.”

“Not the Blitz?”

“It hasn't existed for four hundred years.”

“What I saw looked real.”

“How much do you know about illuminated manuscripts?”

“My recent education has improved more than a hundred percent. Two days ago I didn't know one from Billy Graham.” I told him about the crab louse stuck in the ink.

“That would be a matter for an entomologist to determine. As a layman I'd guess the species hasn't changed much in four centuries.” He glowered at his wristwatch. He'd been away from the cash register ten minutes. “Is there anything else?”

“Just one thing. When did you can Boyette, yesterday or today?”

“Neither. He hasn't worked here for well over six months.”

9

I smoked my cigarette down to the filter, regarding Mr. Ruddy's long pallid exterior. He was wearing one of those toy ties that are supposed to make wearing them fun, all primary colors and whimsical patterns. This one had Egyptian pyramids. I ground out the butt against the side of a steel wastebasket and dropped it inside. It hadn't done anything for my congestion.

“Harold Boyette,” I said. “Thirty, middle height, about twenty pounds over. Receding hair. Kissable lips.”

“That's an adequate description. I couldn't say about the lips.”

“I met him here in one of the galleries forty-eight hours ago. He said his office was being renovated and let us into a storeroom in the south wing. He had a key.”

The institutional mouth bent down at the corners. It was as kissable as a paper cut. “That's distressing. He was forced to surrender his keys before he left. He must have made copies. Dr. Angelo has his office now, his area is Chinese porcelains. I believe he had the lock changed when he moved in. That office has not been renovated in years.”

“Of course not. It was a dodge.” I recited the telephone number Merlin Gilly had given me, and that I'd used to call Boyette.

“That's not a DIA line,” he said. “It isn't even the right exchange. I should think a professional detective would have confirmed that.”

“It's not the kind of thing clients generally lie about. I'm surprised security didn't throw him down the front steps the minute he showed his face.”

“Guards come and go. I don't know half of them myself. In any case, he's at liberty to pay his admission and wander the areas that are open to the public like anyone else.”

“Can you think of any reason why he'd pretend to be employed here?”

“Not unless he hoped to persuade you to invest in one of his forgeries.” He took in my suit and overcoat with one eye, then with the other. “I'd say it's unlikely.”

The walls were getting close and my head wanted to float free of my neck. It wasn't Saturday night, so the flu had to be gaining ground. I kept my sweat glands in check by sheer effort of will. “Was a man named Earl North fired from Accounts Payable last Christmas?”

He stiffened. That made him as brittle as a breadstick. “Yes. Is he involved?”

“Boyette said he was bounced for embezzling.”

“He was dismissed, but not for embezzling. He was caught in my office rifling the files of wealthy DIA patrons. Only the board of directors and I are allowed access to that information.”

“You're sure that was the reason?”

“I'm the one who caught him. I shouldn't be surprised he and Mr. Boyette knew each other. They were cut from the same crooked bolt.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ruddy. You've been most adequate.”

Heading out, I got a new angle on what it was I didn't like about museums. Every time I left one I knew less about the world than I had going in.

The freezing rain had glazed over my car and I had to get the horses out to tug open the door. That broke the dam; when I climbed under the wheel I was sweating freely and my head was taking on water. I hadn't the energy to get out and scrape the ice off the windshield. I started the engine, and while I was waiting for the defroster to kick in I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel. When I woke up ten minutes later the car was full of heat. I turned off the blower, mopped my face, and eased out into the glassy right lane.

Woodward was entertaining. I saw more spinouts by the time I got to Grand Circus Park than any three Grand Prix. I managed to avoid them because I was crawling along at fifteen miles per hour. By that time I was feeling good, too good. I was in a cocoon of shimmering euphoria spun by a fever that distorted the senses. It's a cheap drunk, but it wears off twice as fast. By the time I found a space across from the Erin Go Bar on Porter it had worn off. My headache was back and I was starting to shiver.

The Erin Go Bar, located a few doors down from Most Holy Trinity Church, is just about all that's left of Corktown. When the Irish ran Detroit, it was the seat of government, and if you wanted to fix a ticket or submit a bid to build something for the city, you passed up the Old City Hall entirely, ordered a drink at the Erin, and waited at the bar until you were called—if you were called. If you were in good, you got to go upstairs to the Shamrock Club, where good cigars were available and corned beef was served around the clock and the Bushmill's flowed until well past closing. If you weren't, you finished your drink downstairs and went home and either packed your things or put a bullet through your head, because your chances of ever doing business in this town were worse than the liquor they sold you at the bar.

In those days the place was filled with chattering patrons and Irish music, sung around the piano and performed by live bands with national reputations. The St. Patrick's Day parade stopped there to wet its collective whistles before continuing uptown, and no locally prominent Irish-American citizen went to his reward without a wake in the Shamrock Club and one drink to his memory served downstairs on the house. When George M. Cohan stopped there on his way through town, the entire building had closed its doors for a private celebration that lasted three days.