Treasure of Saint-Lazare (22 page)

As Eddie closed the call from Philippe, a uniformed policewoman knocked on the frame of Thom’s open door and said, “The lawyer for Sonny Perry has arrived, Detective. He’d like to see you along with his client.”

“Is it a white-shoe guy from Sommers’s law firm?” Thom asked her.

“No. That’s what I expected, too. It’s a young guy we’ve seen around the courts a lot for a couple of years, Ted Sorenson, the public defender.”

Thom made a face. “He beat the shit out of me on cross a year ago. We got a conviction but it might have gone the other way. Ted knew his guy was guilty as sin but he’s what you’d call a forceful advocate.”

Eddie responded, “You have a lot of evidence, though. If this guy is smart and can keep his client from a murder charge here, he may let him talk. Meanwhile I’m going back to the hotel now and you can call me if you need me. I’d appreciate your seeing if there is any possible connection between these guys and my father’s death in 2001. It’s a remote chance. My wife and son were killed the same year by somebody who also burned the apartment, but it would be a lightning bolt if these guys were connected in any way with that. Still, if there’s anything there I’d like to know and so would Philippe. Otherwise I’m planning to go home in a couple of days and try to forget that I ever heard of Raphael and his damned painting.”

Eddie let himself into his room at the Hyatt and found that the maid had already been there. A note on the bedside table said, “Call me when you’re back. I have a meeting with the contractor and then I’ll be at the gallery. J.”

He sat exhausted on the edge of the bed and puzzled through what he knew so far. Jen was in legal trouble, and might already be answering the FBI’s questions. She did sponsor Erich Kraft for citizenship under her own name, falsely claiming he was her brother, but he couldn’t recall that she’d ever said a positive word about him. She’d thought he was nothing but trouble when he was a teen.

So what had happened six or seven years before to make her commit immigration fraud for someone so unpleasant? It was after her marriage to the surgeon had ended. He supposed her gallery was well established, but there could have been financial problems at the time. No small business is very far from bankruptcy, and a recession could sweep in at any time, like a summer thu
nderstorm. A recession had begun in 1997. Was that it? He would just have to ask her, but not now. Sleep was what he needed. He took off his clothes and crawled under the cover.

And then he sat straight up, wide awake. Of course! In 2000 Erich Kraft was writing threatening letters to Roy about the painting. That had to be the connection. If he was as rough as he seemed — and the knife attack on the hotel clerk left little doubt about that — he would have threatened Roy or Jen. Perhaps she bought him off with citizenship. It wouldn’t be easy to assemble all the documents he would have needed, but it could be done, with help.

Sleep. He had to get some sleep. He remembered nothing from the instant his head hit the pillow until the chime of his phone waked him four hours later.

“Eddie, it’s Thom. Are you awake?”

Momentarily confused, Eddie mumbled, “wait just a minute,” then went to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water. He sat naked on the edge of the bed and pulled the bedspread over him for warmth against the blast of the air conditioning.

“OK, now I’m conscious. What’s up?”

Thom said, “First, we got the warrant for Sonny’s house in Naples. I’m on the way there now so if the call drops out I’ll call you back in a couple minutes. AT&T has some dead spots. Actually a lot of dead spots.

“Second, we got some movement from Sonny. I talked to the prosecutor and he’d appreciate it if you’d pass it on to your friend in the French police so they’ll have it quicker, and he’ll follow up in writing soon. He also gave me
carte blanche
to keep you updated on the case, both ours and the Feds’, but don’t tell them that.”

“I appreciate that a lot.”

“Sonny was really pissed that Sommers wouldn’t pay for his lawyer. He thinks he’s being thrown overboard, which of course he is. My own view is that Sommers is running out of money and that’s the reason, but I kept that to myself. I think your instinct that this is a case entirely about money is probably right.”

Sonny had heard Sommers tell Dmitri to follow Eddie, so Dmitri had waited near Towles Court in his Buick and watched Eddie meet Thom, then followed him to Arturo’s house and on to his meeting with Deus.

“I saw a big white car pass behind me right after I let Deus out at the grocery store. That could have been him.”

“Good chance,” Thom said. “Because at the time you were interviewing Sommers at his house, Dmitri was working Deus over really hard in a park not far from the grocery store. He got all the details Deus gave you, plus I’d guess some more, because when it was finished Dmitri cut his throat and left him there dead — he knew too much. We found his blood in the Buick.”

Eddie said, “He probably didn’t go after Arturo because you already had him as a witness. I guess Sommers sent him back the next day to finish the job. What else?”

Thom was silent for a minute. “I don’t know where this goes, but something has been in the air for a while. Two days before Mr. Castor’s death, Sonny was delegated to pick up a group of Germans at a hotel on the Interstate and take them to the caretakers’ bungalow next to Sommers’s house. One of them looks a lot like the picture from the surveillance camera at the airport. We did a photo lineup and he picked him out. He took all three to an airport hotel in Miami the day after Mr. Castor’s death. And then a week later he flew to Paris himself. He tried to lie about it, but we have his passport with the entrance date and the date he returned to Tampa airport. We think he was there to question Ms. Wetzmuller after the Germans kidnapped her.”

Eddie said, “That’s not really a surprise, except that it ties Sommers tightly to Roy’s death.”

“Yes, but what he told us next is. He remembers seeing the same guy before, he thinks in 2001. He’s sure because the guy has a big notch out of his right ear.”

“Then it’s Erich Kraft. He was writing threatening letters to Roy the year before. I bet he came here to put on more pressure, and somehow persuaded Jen to help him get citizenship, which would make it much easier to get in and out of the country.”

  “That would make sense. He says Ms. Wetzmuller brought Kraft to see Sommers during that first visit, on a Saturday, when Sommers wasn’t at his office. Sonny was there for part of the meeting and got the impression Kraft was an art buyer from Germany. Anyway, she left and Kraft and Sommers talked for a couple of hours, although Sonny didn’t hear all the conversation.”

“Wait. He said Jen introduced them? Personally?”

“That’s what he says.”

“Most likely he was looking to buy some of the loot. Sonny would have been a better seller,” Eddie said.

“Yes,” Thom said, “But remember Kraft was already chasing Mr. Castor for the Raphael and whatever’s with it. Sommers’s and Sonny’s own loot would have been peanuts next to that. No, I think he wanted Sommers to help him find the big trove. He was just doing the same sort of detective work I do every day.

“And if that’s not enough, I went through the recent calls on Sommers’s cellphone. It seems that just a few minutes before Mr. Castor was killed he placed a call to a French cell phone registered to Erich Kraft — but the phone was roaming in Sarasota. He must have been tipping off Kraft that Roy was on the way. That call by itself will earn him a life sentence.”

“Wow,” Eddie said. “Good thinking on your part. Did you hear anything about Woody? He was pretty beat up. Will he be OK?”

“He was tougher than you’d think. The hospital released him a couple of hours ago. He’s to come in tomorrow and give us a statement.”

“How did they know I’d talked to him?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. He said he didn’t tell anyone, and Sonny said no one was following you that day. I don’t know if I believe either of them.”

“Did they threaten Lindy as well?”

“I don’t think so,” Thom replied. “I called her and she said not. At least they didn’t kidnap her, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d talked to them. Does it matter?”

“I don’t think so, no. You haven’t asked me if I told Jen.”

“No, I haven’t, and I don’t plan to.”

“I didn’t. I can’t say why, but something kept me from it.”

“That may be the best thing you’ve done for her.”

When the call ended, Eddie looked at the iPhone clock — one o’clock. “Merde,” he muttered. “If I hurry maybe I can find Woody.”

In 20 minutes he had showered and shaved and 10 minutes after that he parked across the street from Hemingway’s, just as Woody walked out next to a short man who looked like an F. Scott Fitzgerald impersonator, down to the center part in his blond hair. The man waved his arms around in agitation, and it appeared to Eddie that he was trying to convince Woody of something.

Woody’s left eye was black, with a thick bandage above it. Another bandage on his right cheek came precariously close to his mouth. His right arm was in a sling but there was no cast on it. Eddie remembered he’d landed on that shoulder when he was thrown down the stairs. He looked profoundly unhappy, and he was having none of what the slim man was trying to sell him. Twice he shook his head defiantly and when the blond left him at the next corner, after he’d tried one last time to make his case, Woody refused to shake his hand.

Eddie followed on foot as Woody turned south. Lindy had said he lived alone in a one-be
droom apartment he’d bought after his divorce 20 years before, but hadn’t said it was on Lido Key, the barrier island adjacent to St. Armand’s, although that explained his fondness for Hemingway’s — he could drink all day and then walk home. The property must have appreciated enormously, Eddie thought. Maybe he won’t be so bad off when this all blows up, as it seems to be doing.

As Woody turned onto the sidewalk of a three-story green apartment building Eddie caught up with him. “I’m glad to see you’re not in the hospital, Woody. I was afraid you were hurt bad when they took you off in that ambulance last night.”

Woody turned his head to look at Eddie and took his hand out of his pocket to wave Eddie away. “Stay the fuck away from me, man,” he said, obviously frightened. “I’m already in enough trouble for talking to you.”

“Woody, like I told you last night, I didn’t tell anybody I’d seen you. Why would I do that? I’m not here to cause problems like that.”

He paused. Then he asked, “Who was that you came out of Hemingway’s with? He looked like he was trying to sell you a used car from the 20s.”

“You may as well know. That was Perry Andrews. He’s the money partner in Lindy’s newspaper.  He’s the son of a bitch who told Sommers I talked to you. He tried to tell me Al didn’t have me roughed up, that it was all Dmitri and that snake Sonny, but I know better and I told him so. He also said I shouldn’t testify against any of them, if I knew what was good for me. I told him what he could do with that.”

“He’s the one who’s Sommers’s friend? Lindy told me about him.”

“Yeah. She told him. The bitch.”

“Really? That must be how they knew I’d be at the airport. But she struck me as pretty nice when I met her.”

“Don’t kid yourself. She’s made more people unhappy here than hurricanes. And the one she hates most of all is your girl Jen, who she’s convinced stole her husband. I think she’s right about that. Jen was flittin’ about in public with that hifalutin’ doctor while Lindy was still married to him and living with him, and everybody in their circuit knew it. And I guarantee you that the minute you left she called that partner to tell him all about your meeting. She probably told him about your trip to Washington, too.”

Eddie knew Jen was self-centered and not discriminating about her sexual partners but was surprised to hear Woody’s take on Lindy because it was so different from the image she’d displayed during his long conversation with her.

“That’s sure not the woman I saw,” he said.

“Don’t kid yourself. Right after Lindy’s fancy doctor left her there was a big poison-pen campaign against Jen around town. I was never completely sure Lindy started it, but Jen was, and she fought back. She told the story to all the society advertisers and Lindy’s advertising dried up. She was about to lose the paper when she found that investor asshole you just saw, and he bailed her out. That’s also when she started getting fat.”

“That’s something to keep in mind,” Eddie replied. “Here’s another question. You mentioned last time that Dmitri told you Sommers knew someone like Roy who knew about the missing painting. Did he tell you more about who that was?”

“Nah. He said it was an old geezer, older than Roy even. He lived in France.”

“Paris?”

“Maybe. But I think it was somewhere else. I got the feeling Dmitri wasn’t too strong on the geography of France. He wasn’t an intellectual, you know.”

“Could it have been Rennes?”

“Cudda been. It sounded something like that, but most of those French words sound the same to me anyway. Anyway, I’m going in. My head hurts and I need to take a pill and get rested up for when that young detective gives me the third degree tomorrow.”