“Maybe Jimmy Page will be here,” I said. “I should have brought along my copy of Led Zep IV.”
“Jimmy who?” said Phil. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.
“Led Zeppelin. A popular beat combo, Your Honor.”
We took a seat at the back. I kept my head down and looked through Phil’s copy of the catalog. Most of the lots were books, some of them very old. There was an old facsimile of the Ars Moriendi, a kind of how-to guide for those hoping to avoid damnation after death, printed by the Englishman Caxton sometime after 1490, consisting of eleven block-book woodcuts depicting the deathbed temptation of a dying man. Claudia Stern clearly knew how to put together an impressive and enlightening sales package: from the couple of paragraphs describing the lot, I learned that the term “shriven” meant to be absolved of one’s sins; that, therefore, to be given “short shrift” meant being allowed little time to confess before death; and that a “good death” did not necessarily preclude a violent end. I also learned from a book of saints that Saint Denis, the apostle of Gaul and patron of France, was decapitated by his tormentors, but subsequently picked up his head and went for a walk with it, which said a lot for Saint Denis’s willingness to be a good sport and put on a show for the crowd.
Some of the lots appeared to be linked to one another. Lot 12 was a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches, that dated from the early sixteenth century and was said to have belonged to one Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg, a fire-and-brimstone cathedral preacher in Strasbourg, while a copy of his sermons from 1516 was Lot 13. Geiler’s sermons were illustrated by a witch engraving by Hans Baldung, who studied under Dürer, and Lot 14 consisted of a series of erotic prints by Baldung, featuring an old man — representing Death — fondling a young woman, apparently a theme to which Baldung returned repeatedly in his career.
There were also statues, icons, paintings — including the piece that I had witnessed being restored in the workshop, now listed only as “Kutná Hora, 15th century, artist unknown” — and a number of bone sculptures. Most of them were on display, but they bore no resemblance to those that I had seen in Stuckler’s book or in Garcia’s apartment. They were cruder, and less finely crafted. I was becoming quite the connoisseur of bone work.
People began to take their seats as one o’clock approached. I saw no sign of Stuckler or Murnos, but eight women were seated at a table by the auctioneer’s podium, each with a telephone now pressed to her ear.
“It’s unlikely that any serious bids will come from the floor for the more esoteric items,” said Phil. “The buyers won’t want their identities to become known, partly because of the value of some, but mostly because such interests still remain open to misinterpretation.”
“You mean people will think they’re freaks?”
“Yes.”
“But they are freaks.”
“Yes.”
“As long as we’re agreed on that.”
Still, I guessed that Stuckler had someone on the floor watching the other bidders. He would not want to be entirely cut off from what happened during the auction. There would be others too. Somewhere among the crowd were those who called themselves Believers. I had warned Phil about them, although I believed that he at least was in no danger from them.
Claudia Stern appeared from a side door, accompanied by an older man in a dandruff-flecked black suit. She took her place at the podium, and the man stood beside her at a high table, a huge ledger open before him in which to take down the details of the successful bidders and their bids. Ms. Stern rapped the podium with her gavel to quiet the crowd, then welcomed us to the auction. There was some preamble about payment and collection, and then the auction began. The first lot was an item familiar to me by reputation: an 1821 copy of Richard Laurence’s translation of the Book of Enoch, twinned with a copy of Byron’s verse drama Heaven and Earth: A Mystery dating from the same year. It aroused some mildly competitive bidding, and went to an anonymous telephone bidder. Geiler’s copy of the Malleus Maleficarum went to a tiny elderly woman in a pink suit, who looked grimly satisfied with her purchase.
“I guess the rest of the coven should be pleased,” said Phil.
“Know thine enemy.”
“Exactly.”
After five or six more items, none of which created any great stir, the twin brother of the door ape emerged from the office. He was wearing white gloves, and holding a silver box adorned with a cross. It was almost identical to the ones I had seen in Stuckler’s treasury, but appeared in marginally better condition once its image was displayed on a screen beside Ms. Stern. There were fewer dents that I could see, and the soft metal was barely scratched.
“Now,” said Ms. Stern. “We come to what I feel will be, for many, the prize lot of this auction. Lot Twenty, a fifteenth-century box in Bohemian silver, cross inlay, containing a fragment of vellum. Those of you with a particular interest in this lot were given ample opportunity to examine a small section of the fragment, and to obtain independent verification of its age where necessary. No further questions or objections will be entertained, and the sale is final.”
A casual visitor might have wondered what all the fuss was about, given the relatively low-key introduction, but there was a definite heightening of tension in the room, and a brief flurry of whispers. I saw the women at the phones poised, pens in hand.
“I will open the bidding at five thousand dollars,” said Ms. Stern.
There were no takers. She smiled indulgently.
“I know that there is interest in this room, and money to go with it. Nevertheless, I’ll permit a slow start. Who will give me two thousand dollars?”
The satanist with the long nails raised his paddle, and we were off. The bids quickly climbed in increments of $500, passing the original $5,000 starting point and moving up to $10,000, then $16,000. Eventually, around the $20,000 mark, the bids from the floor dried up, and Ms. Stern turned most of her attention to the telephones, where, in a series of nods, the bidding rose to $50,000, then $75,000, and eventually reached the $100,000 mark. The bids continued to climb, finally passing $200,000, until, at $235,000, there was a pause.
“Any further bids?” asked Ms. Stern.
Nobody moved.
“I’m holding at two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars.”
She waited, then rapped the gavel sharply.
“Sold for two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars.”
The silence was broken, and the buzz of conversation resumed. Already people were drifting toward the door, now that the main business of the afternoon was concluded. Ms. Stern, sensing the same, handed the gavel over to one of her assistants, and the sale resumed with considerably less excitement than before. Ms. Stern exchanged a few words with the young woman who had taken the telephone bid, then moved quickly toward the door of her office. Phil and I stood to leave, and she glanced down as we did so, her face briefly wrinkling in puzzlement as though she were trying to remember where she had seen me before. Her gaze moved on. She nodded at Phil, and he smiled in return.
“She likes you,” I said.
“I have that white-bearded charm that disarms women.”
“Maybe they just don’t see you as threatening.”
“Which makes me all the more dangerous.”
“You have a rich inner life, Phil. That’s the polite way of putting it.”
We were at the first landing when Ms. Stern appeared from a doorway below. She waited for us to descend to her.
“Philip, it’s good to see you again.”
She turned a pale cheek for him to kiss, then extended a hand toward me.
“Mr. Parker. I wasn’t aware that you were on the list. I feared that your presence at this auction might make bidders uneasy, were they to become aware of the nature of your profession.”
“I just came to keep an eye on Phil, in case he got carried away by the excitement and bid on a skull.”
She invited us to join her for a drink. We foll
owed her through a door marked “Private” and into a room cozily furnished with overstuffed couches and leather chairs. Catalogs for past and forthcoming auctions were piled neatly on two sideboards and fanned across an ornate coffee table. Ms. Stern opened a lavishly stocked bar cabinet and invited us to make our selection. I had an alcohol-free Beck’s just to be polite. Phil opted for red wine.
“Actually, I was rather surprised you didn’t make a bid yourself, Mr. Parker,” she said. “After all, you were the one who came to me with that interesting bone sculpture.”
“I’m not a collector, Ms. Stern.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would be. In fact, you appear to be a rather harsh judge of collectors, as testified to by the late Mr. Garcia’s end. Have you discovered anything more about him?”
“A little.”
“Anything you’d like to share?”
Her expression was one of vague superiority, capped with a wry grin. Whatever I had to tell her about Garcia, she figured she knew already.
“He kept videos of dead and dying women. I think he played an active role in their creation.”
A ripple passed across Ms. Stern’s face, and the angle of her grin was reduced slightly.
“And you believe that his presence in New York was linked to the Sedlec box auctioned today,” she said. “Otherwise, why would you be here?”
“I’d like to know who bought it,” I said.
“A lot of people would like to know that.”
She readjusted her sights and aimed her charm at Phil. Its veneer was thin. I got the impression that she was displeased both by his presence and by the fact that he had not come alone. Phil, I think, sensed it too.
“All of this is, of course, off the record,” she said.
“I’m not here in my journalistic capacity,” said Phil.
“You know you’re always welcome here, in any capacity,” she replied, but she made it sound like a lie. “It’s just that in this case, discretion was, and is, required.”
She sipped her wine. A thin trickle dripped down the glass. It stained her chin slightly, but she didn’t appear to notice.
“This was a very delicate sale, Mr. Parker. The value of the lot was directly proportionate to the degree of secrecy surrounding its contents. If the contents of the fragment were revealed before the sale — if, for example, we had permitted potential bidders to examine the entire vellum in detail, instead of just a portion — then it would have sold for far less than it did today. The majority of bidders in the room were merely curiosity seekers, faintly hoping to gain for themselves a link to an obscure occult myth. The real money was far from here. A total of six individuals went to the trouble of lodging deposits with us in order to be permitted to examine a cutting from the vellum, none of whom were in the auction room today. Not one person was allowed to view even one of the symbols or drawings depicted upon it.”
“Apart from you.”
“I looked at it, as did two of my staff, but frankly it was meaningless to me. Even were I able to interpret it, I would still have required the other fragments to place it in context. Our concern was that someone already in possession of additional drawings might view our fragment and add its contents to what he or she knew.”
“Are you aware of its provenance?” I said. “I understand that it was in dispute.”
“You’re referring to the fact that it was believed to have been stolen from Sedlec itself? There is no proof that this was the same box. The item came to us from a trusted European source. We believed that it was real, and so too did those who bid upon it today.”
“And you’ll keep the winning bid secret?”
“As best we can. Such things have a habit of filtering out eventually, but we have no wish to make the buyer a target for unscrupulous men. Our reputation rests upon preserving the anonymity of our clients, particularly given the nature of some of the items that pass through this house.”
“So you’re aware that the buyer may be at risk?”
“Or it may be that others are now at risk from the buyer,” she replied.
She was watching me carefully.
“Was the buyer a Believer? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Ms. Stern laughed, exposing her slightly stained teeth.
“I’m telling you nothing, Mr. Parker, merely pointing out that there is more than one conclusion to be drawn. All I can say for certain is that I will be a great deal happier once the box has left my possession. Thankfully, it is small enough to be passed to the buyer without attracting undue attention. We will be done with it by close of business.”
“What about you, Ms. Stern?” I said. “Do you think you might be at risk? After all, you’ve seen it.”
She drained a little more of her wine, then stood. We rose with her. Our time here was at an end.
“I have been in this profession for a long time,” she said. “In truth, I have seen some very strange items in the course of my dealings, and I have met some equally strange individuals. None of them has ever threatened me, and none ever will. I am well protected.”
I wasn’t about to doubt her. Everything about the House of Stern made me uneasy. It was like a trading post at the junction of two worlds.
“Are you a Believer, Ms. Stern?”
She put her glass down, then slowly rolled up each sleeve of her blouse in turn. Her arms were unmarked. All trace of good humor left her during the performance of the act.
“I believe in a great many things, Mr. Parker, some with very good reason. One of those things is good manners, of which you appear to have none. In future, Philip, I’d be grateful if you would check with me before you bring guests to my auctions. I can only hope that your taste in companions is the only faculty that appears to have deserted you since last we met, or else your newspaper will have to look elsewhere for its art criticism.”
Ms. Stern opened the door and waited for us to leave. Phil looked embarrassed. When he said goodbye to her she didn’t reply, but she spoke to me as I followed Phil from the room.
“You should have stayed in Maine, Mr. Parker,” she said quietly. “You should have kept your head down and lived a quiet life, then you would not have come to anyone’s attention.”
“You’ll forgive me for not trembling,” I said. “I’ve met people like the Believers before.”
“No,” she replied, “you have not.”
Then she closed the door in my face.
I walked Phil to his car.
“Sorry if I made life awkward for you,” I said as he closed his door and rolled down the window.
“I never liked her anyway,” he said, “and her wine was corked. Tell me, though: does everybody react as badly to you as she did?”
I reflected on the question.
“Actually,” I said, as I left him, “that was pretty good for me.”
Angel and Louis were waiting for me nearby. They were eating oversized wraps and drinking bottled water in Louis’s Lexus. Angel, I noticed, had half the world’s napkin production laid over his legs, his feet, the parts of the seat not covered by his body, and the floor itself. It was a slight case of overkill, although some stray bean sprouts and a couple of blobs of sauce had hit the napkins already, so it paid to be cautious.
“He must really love you if he’s letting you eat in his car,” I said, as I climbed in the back to talk to them. Louis acknowledged me with a nod, but there was still something unspoken between us. I was not about to broach the subject. He would do so, in his own time.
“Yeah, it’s only taken, like, a decade,” said Angel. “For the first five years, he wouldn’t even let me sit in his car. We’ve come a long way.”
Louis was carefully wiping his fingers and face.
“You got sauce on your tie,” I said.
He froze, then lifted the silk in his fingers.
“Mother — ,” he began, before turning on Angel. “That’s your damn fault. You wanted to eat, so you made me want to eat. Damn.”
“I think you should shoot him,” I said, helpfully.
“I got some spare napkins, you want them,” said Angel.
Louis snatched some from Angel’s lap, sprinkled water on them, and tried to work on the stain, swearing all the time.
“If his enemies found out about his Achilles’ heel, we could be in real trouble,” I said to Angel.
“Yeah, they wouldn’t even need guns, just soy sauce. Maybe satay if they were really playing rough.”
Louis continued to swear at both of us and at the stain, all at once. It was quite a trick. It was also good to see a flash of his old self.
“It sold,” I said, getting down to business. “Two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars.”
“What’s the house’s cut?” asked Angel.
“Phil reckoned fifteen percent of the purchase price.”
Angel looked impressed. “Not bad. Did she tell you who the buyer was?”
“She wouldn’t even tell me the identity of the seller. Reid figures the box was stolen from Sedlec just hours after the discovery of the damage to the church, then made its way to the auction house through a series of intermediaries. It’s possible that the House of Stern itself was the final purchaser, in which case Ms. Stern made quite a killing today. As for the buyer, Stuckler wanted it badly. He’s obsessed, and he almost certainly had the money to fund his obsession. He told me that he was prepared to pay whatever it took. Under the circumstances, he probably regarded two thirty-five as a bargain.”
“So now what happens?”
“Stuckler gets his fragment delivered to him and tries to combine it with whatever material he already has, in an effort to locate the Angel. I don’t think he’s one of the Believers, so they’ll make a move on him once he reveals himself as the purchaser. Maybe they’ll offer to buy the information, in which case they’ll be rebuffed, or he’ll try to strike a deal with them. It could be that they’ll simply take the direct approach. Stuckler’s house is pretty secure, though, and he has men with him. Murnos is probably good at his job, but I still think they’re underestimating the people with whom they’re dealing.”
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