Tarnished Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  “You know the family?”

  I’m about to give him a story I hope will get me past his billy club when Francine appears at the front door. “It’s all right,” she says to the cop. He reluctantly lowers his stick.

  I tip my cap on my way past him and up the front stairs. “Officer.”

  As I walk into the vestibule, Francine says, “My mother’s waiting for us in the library.”

  Against my better judgment, but part of my nature, I catch that she’s adorable in her black flared skirt and a white blouse buttoned to the neck under a black button-down sweater left open, a sweet outfit I bet she’ll discard in favor of something more daring inside of a year. And when she does, heads will turn.

  Francine leads me through the stately living room where the rabbi and guests chatter in muted voices. I start to take my cap off out of respect but decide to leave it on, even pull it low. I’m not in the mood for stares at my battered face.

  We eventually arrive at the library’s highly polished double mahogany doors. As Francine opens the doors, she leans into me and whispers, “I hope you don’t terrify my mother. You look like someone’s used you for combat training.”

  Mrs. Stern, bleak in a black suit, her blond hair as obediently in place as when I first saw her yesterday, is seated in one of the room’s big brown leather chairs, looking out a window. She’s wearing a dark red shade of lipstick, her lips glistening with it, as if she’s recently refreshed it. If she’s been crying, there’s no sign of it—no red eyes, no smudged makeup, no streaked mascara. Maybe tears will come later, after the guests leave, when the house is unnaturally silent and she and her daughter are unnaturally alone. But the more I look at Katherine Stern, I doubt it. She’s hollowed out, either by grief or because there was nothing inside to begin with. I hope it’s the former and her emotions eventually come back after she’s come to grips with the reality of her husband’s death. I’d hate to think that the young Francine, alive with the spunk of youth, is stuck with a mother who’s dead inside, feeling nothing.

  Francine says, gently, “Mom, this is Cantor Gold.”

  I was wrong. The woman isn’t dead inside. She feels plenty, all of it focused on me, deciding I’m just plain rotten under my scars and bruises, worthy of nothing but her hate.

  I’m used to feeling people’s hate, but I’ve never had so much of it thrown at me at one time from one pair of eyes. The blue in Katherine Stern’s eyes is cold as a frozen lake. And there’s hate in her voice, too, each parched word scratching out so slowly I wonder if she’ll make it to the end: “You’ve…ruined…my…family.”

  “Mrs. Stern.” I say her name with all the respect I can muster, but I remember her chilly indifference at Hannah Jacobson’s funeral, and my respect frays like a ragged sleeve. And besides, it’s tough to stay polite to people who hate you and wouldn’t mind if you simply dropped dead, which Katherine Stern clearly wishes I’d do right now. But I give it my best shot; she’s a widow, after all, and I need this widow to open up to me. “Mrs. Stern, I’m here to help you figure out who took the lives of your sister-in-law and your husband.”

  “Isn’t that the job of the police? Why would I want a”—she stops and looks me over as if she’s smelled something rancid—“a sick person like you butting into our business?”

  “Think what you like about me, Mrs. Stern. But if you want to know who killed your husband, I’m a better bet than the police. The cops only know half the story, and they’ll use that half to close the case without caring a fig for justice.”

  I’m not getting anywhere with Mrs. Stern, whose face remains as hard as stone, until Francine says, “At least listen to Cantor, Mom, okay?”

  That seems to soften the hard line of Mrs. Stern’s mouth a little bit, and I figure I’d better keep talking before she thinks about it and cuts me off. “I’m pretty sure the same person killed your husband and Hannah Jacobson,” I say, “and I have a good guess about the reason why. Do you know anything about a watercolor by Albrecht Dürer?”

  “Who?” I didn’t think Katherine Stern’s hate could get any worse, but it has, made bitter by her annoyance at not knowing who or what the hell I’m talking about.

  “Albrecht Dürer,” I say. “He was an artist in Germany in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.”

  Francine says, “Isn’t he the guy who did those scary etchings of some knight and a devil or something?”

  “Yeah, or something, among other pictures,” I say, “not all of them scary.”

  Mrs. Stern gets up from her chair in a way that advertises that grace and elegance aren’t natural to her but she’s mastered enough over the years to pull them off, if stiffly. She goes to a small bar cart set up near a wall of books where she pours herself a tall stiff bourbon—no ice, no water, no soda—without asking me if I’d like one. “Is this Dürer picture valuable?”

  “Very,” I say. “So valuable your husband and his sister were likely murdered for it.”

  A hefty swallow of bourbon helps her soak up what I just said. The ease with which she swilled the straight liquor tells me she’s a good friend of the bottle. “Well, where is this picture now?” she says. “The police didn’t say anything about it when they spoke to us yesterday.” It’s not lost on me that the widow Stern hasn’t said one word about her husband or sister-in-law, or asked about their relation to the Dürer watercolor or why it led to their deaths. I don’t think I’ve ever met such a cold woman. I didn’t think there even was one.

  “I don’t know where the picture is,” I say.

  She still doesn’t offer me a drink, just swallows more of hers, her lipstick smearing the glass.

  Nodding toward the bar, I finally say, “Do you mind?”

  “Help yourself,” she says too quickly, as if caught with her socially aspiring panties down. Recovering with the help of another swallow, she says, “So you’re looking for this Dürer picture?”

  “I am,” I say and pour myself a Chivas.

  “And what happens when you find it?”

  “That depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “On what I decide to do with it.”

  Francine says, “But what does this have to do with Aunt Hannah and Daddy?” finally putting some humanity into this conversation.

  “Well, Miss Stern—”

  “Please, stop with this Miss Stern business,” she says. “It makes me feel like a file clerk. Just call me Francine.” Nice to see the kid’s sass coming back. I liked her spunk yesterday and I like it even better today.

  “Francine,” I say with a chivalrous nod, “your aunt Hannah hired me to retrieve the Dürer watercolor from Europe and bring it back to her here in New York. It was part of her husband’s collection of German art, a collection that was stolen by the Nazis.”

  “Yes, she told me about my uncle Theo’s art collection.” The girl’s youthful warmth is a welcome addition to the air in the room after the chill of her mother. “Aunt Hannah was sentimental about it, but she never said anything about trying to get it back.”

  “That’s because she couldn’t, at least not after she hired me.”

  The looks on the faces of Francine and her mother start out the same way: confused, slowly shifting to unsure. But as each of them arrives at the truth, their faces are as different as a sunny day and a rainy night. Francine gives me a mischievous smile; her mother looks like she just heard about a party she wasn’t invited to.

  Francine, with some delight, says, “You’re a smuggler, right? Aunt Hannah hired a smuggler? Good for her!”

  Her mother just swallows more of her drink. The lipstick smear on her glass gets thicker.

  I don’t bother to acknowledge Francine’s good guess, just say, “When I told you yesterday, Francine, that I wanted justice for your aunt, I wasn’t kidding. Hannah Jacobson was one of the greatest ladies I’ve ever met. Despite all the horror that life threw at her, she was loaded with grace and warmth. I had the pleasure of seeing her fa
ce when I gave her the Dürer. The picture worked its miracles. Great art always does. And the miracle it gave your aunt was the restoration of life, not a life of flesh but a cherished life remembered.”

  Francine’s eyes fill with tears, but they don’t spill. I guess she’s spilled too many tears in the last two days. She’s smart to hold some back, keep her spirit from completely drying out. “And somebody killed her to steal the picture? How cruel.”

  “I can’t be sure yet why they killed her,” I say, “but the Dürer watercolor’s definitely tied up in it.” I turn my attention to the widow, who’s pouring herself a second tall drink. “Mrs. Stern, after Hannah Jacobson’s death, I understand your husband was questioned by the police and brought to the station to look at mug shots.”

  “Yes,” is all she says.

  “When he came home, did he mention anything about a woman in a black veiled hat stopping him outside?”

  “It was quite late when he came home. I was already asleep.”

  Francine says, “Me, too.”

  I say, “And he said nothing about it the next day? Before all of you left for Mrs. Jacobson’s funeral?”

  Both women shake their heads. Mrs. Stern says, “Who is this woman? What did she want? You think she killed my husband?”

  “I’m not sure who she is. It’s possible she killed Mrs. Jacobson, and your husband, too, but I know she sure scared him plenty. He told me about it after the funeral. He said a veiled woman was waiting for him outside the house when he got home from the police station, and that she kept asking him if he had it, only she was hysterical and wouldn’t say what it was. Your husband told her he had no idea what she was talking about, though I’m pretty sure she was talking about the Dürer. But the Dürer was already gone when the police arrived at Mrs. Jacobson’s apartment, so neither the police nor your husband knew a thing about it.”

  The bourbon helps Katherine Stern understand the tale of high art and crime I’m spinning. After a deep swallow, she says, “Do the police know about it now?” There’s a slurry trace in her speech now, the bourbon finally thickening her tongue.

  “No, and it’s better that they don’t, understand?” I say it with my full criminal force. It might scare mother and daughter just enough to keep them from mouthing off to the police. The less Huber knows, the better.

  After I let my little threat sink in, I say, “This veiled woman didn’t believe your husband and threatened to kill him if he was lying to her. He saw her again yesterday, at his sister’s funeral. I’m sure she was there to scare him, remind him she can get to him anywhere, anytime, if she decides he’d lied to her.”

  Francine, exhausted by the double whammy of death, sits down in another of the big chairs. “Poor Daddy. Why didn’t he tell us? Why did he keep it to himself?”

  “He probably didn’t want to frighten you,” I say. “Look, Francine, Mrs. Stern: Marcus Stern was probably marked for death the minute that Dürer went missing.”

  Francine, puzzled, says, “Well, if that woman didn’t steal it from Aunt Hannah, then who did?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question.”

  “I don’t understand. If the woman didn’t get away with the picture, why did she kill my aunt?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure she did kill her,” I say, “or your father either, though it’s likely. Whoever killed Mrs. Jacobson must’ve really hated her. Cutting up her face was a way to obliterate her identity, erase her. Maybe the same for your father, by…um, shooting him the way they did.” I decide it’s better not to mention the man’s exploded head. Francine and her mother—well, Francine, at any rate—have had enough of that horror.

  Katherine Stern puts herself back into the conversation. “You say my sister-in-law hired you to retrieve this Dürer artwork that was stolen from her in Europe?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Then if you find it, I assume it would go to her family.”

  I don’t answer until I light a cigarette, let the tobacco calm me and restrain me from thrashing this cold and mercenary widow whose heart isn’t a bit warmed by the golden bourbon. After a long pull on the smoke, I drag things out further with a deep swallow of scotch. And then I answer her. “Like I said, it depends.”

  She gives me a stare so frigid her face might freeze and crack. “You have no right,” she says.

  “Maybe not. But I don’t live by what’s right and what isn’t. So now that we understand each other, I’ll be going. I hoped you’d have some information I could use, but I guess we can’t have everything we want, right?” After a last swallow of scotch, I say, “I’ll see myself out,” and walk out of the library as Francine puts her hands to her eyes, sad and exhausted, I guess. The widow Stern pours herself another drink.

  Fewer guests are in the living room. With fewer people to dodge, I make my way quickly through the house. But there’s a sudden tug on my arm when I’m in the vestibule, just about to open the front door.

  It’s Francine. She says, “Will you do something for me?”

  “If I can. What is it?”

  “Stay alive.” She gives me a quick kiss on my cheek, her lips making a direct hit on an old jagged scar, and I wish I was a lot younger.

  Chapter Twelve

  Judson’s on the phone when I walk into the office. His penny-loafered feet are propped up on the desk, his dungarees neatly cuffed, a pack of Luckies rolled into the sleeve of his white T-shirt. His end of the phone conversation consists of, “Uh-huh…I see…Well, can you—oh,” and similar bits of chatter. He motions me over while he talks, waving three slips of paper in his hand. The sight of those slips, Judson’s scrawl across each of them, sets my heart pounding.

  But when I grab the slips of paper, none of them have information about the freighter that took Sophie away. My heart slows down, one pounding beat at a time, like a fist getting in its last punches.

  One of the slips has a message from Max Hagen, says he got my phone number from Vivienne, wants me to call him at his office at Pauling-Barnett. Another message is from Vivienne. She wants me to call her at her office at the museum. But it’s the third message that grabs me by the lapels. It’s from Mom Sheinbaum. She wants me to come over around noon. That’s less than an hour from now.

  Judson gives a final instruction on the phone, “If you hear anything, anything at all, call me, you understand?” then hangs up, takes a smoke from the pack folded in his sleeve, and looks me over as he lights it. “What the hell happened to you? You look like you spent the night in a meat grinder.”

  “A meat grinder named Screwy Sweeney.”

  “Jimmy Shea’s muscle?”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t like me. And neither does Jimmy. Who knew?”

  Judson chuckles through exhaled smoke. “You’ll just have to change your social calendar.”

  “I may never live down the disgrace. Listen, you have anything yet on that freighter?”

  Judson leans back in his chair like all the air’s seeped out of his skinny frame. “So far, nothing,” he says. “It’s like that ship just evaporated in the mist.”

  “We can’t give up, Judson.”

  “Who said anything about giving up? But finding a ship two years later is tough, especially a ship that sailed on the quiet. But I’ll keep digging. I promise, I’ll keep digging.”

  I give him a nod on my way into my private office. I don’t have to say anything else. I know he’ll dig all the way to China if that’s what it takes.

  I light a smoke and spread the message slips across my desk. Two of them ask me to return a phone call, and one of the two is a call I can’t make. At least not now. I can’t call Vivienne now. My lust for Vivienne and my love for Sophie collided last night, and Vivienne came out the loser, pushed to the side of the road.

  So I call Hagen.

  “Good morning, Gold,” he says, smooth and cheerful. “Do you always get such a late start to your day?”

  “I had to attend a funeral this morning. Now, w
hat’s on your mind, Hagen?”

  “Oh yes, of course. I’d quite forgotten. The unfortunate Mr. Stern.” His contrition is slight and useless as a weak breeze. “Did you learn anything from Stern’s widow about the whereabouts of the Dürer?”

  “She never heard of it. Get to the point, Hagen.”

  “Certainly. Well then, we’re getting ready to leave for my country house upstate for the weekend—”

  “By we I assume you mean you and Vern?” I can’t resist pulling the weakest link in Hagen’s too carefully constructed chain.

  “As I told you last night,” he says, irritated, “Vern enjoys country sports, as do I, and the wild game on my acreage is plentiful this season. Now look, Gold, before I leave, it’s important for you to understand that I’m quite serious about pursuing that Dürer.”

  “Have you reconsidered my terms of a fifty-percent take?”

  My question’s met with silence, except for the sound of Hagen’s breathing, leaving me to imagine the hairs of his mustache twitching under his nostrils like nervous Nellies. He finally says, “I’m willing to entertain the idea of discussing it further.”

  “Yeah, well, discussing it further isn’t exactly boffo entertainment. When you’re ready to come through with the full fifty, maybe you’ll have a hit show. Good-bye, Hagen. You and Vern have fun with your country hunt,” I say and hang up. With any luck, Vern will mistake him for a bear and shoot him.

  Getting up from my desk, I stub out my smoke, crumple all three message slips and toss ’em in the trash.

  *

  Mom opens her front door wearing a housedress with pink and green diagonal stripes that threaten to give me eyestrain. She greets me with a rabbity smile that makes me distrust her more than I already do. The smile changes to mild surprise, then to not-so-mild disgust once she has a good look at the damage to my face. “Come in, Cantor,” she says, a sneery undertone in her Lower East Side singsong expressing her distaste for my decayed state.

  The aroma of honey cake wafts through the house, seeps into me like a memory I can’t get rid of.