Michelangelo's Notebook

by Paul Christopher

  “Call it what you want, but there’s something running all through this information like a thread you can’t quite see, that even MAGIC can’t cut through, and that’s saying something, believe me.”

  “Give me your best guess.”

  “I don’t have one. There’s not enough to go on except for this strange kind of itch, the kind you can’t quite get at. Something else going on, something underneath all the other stuff.”

  “It’s the killer,” said Finn, suddenly seeing it all. The whys and the wherefores could sort themselves out later, but beyond a shadow of a doubt she knew that Kornitzer’s itch, the thread running through everything they’d uncovered was the identity of the killer.

  “Explain that,” said Valentine.

  “I can’t, not really. But I’ll bet if you looked hard enough, looked at the names of all these people, you’d find more deaths, killings. Somehow he knew about the Michelangelo, knew about Crawley firing me, knew that it might start a chain of events that would lead to his being discovered, and that’s why Peter died. It was supposed to be me.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Kornitzer. “He kills your boyfriend, but he hires someone to kill you—that Asian kid on the bicycle you mentioned?”

  “It would make sense if there was more than one killer,” Valentine said slowly.

  “I deal in hard-line mathematics. That just doesn’t compute.”

  “Of course it doesn’t, not mathematically, but I’ve seen enough killing to know that like attracts like,” said Valentine. “What if Finn is right? What if Killer Number One has been murdering people long before Crawley. We’ve had four deaths so far, four murders—Crawley, Finn’s boyfriend, Peter, Gatty, and Kressman in Alabama, all connected by art—looted art. The death of Finn’s boyfriend is like shooting up a flare, a signal that something’s out of kilter, the killer making himself known. That brings on Killer Number Two, who tries to cover things up by dealing with Gatty and Kressman, probably to shut them up. If this all goes back to that shipment, or maybe something even worse, there’s a lot at stake. Certainly enough motive to kill for.”

  “Nice hypothesis but I’m not buying it,” said Kornitzer, shaking his head. “Too much coincidence.”

  “Is there any way we can find out if other people on that list of names died unnaturally?” Finn asked.

  Kornitzer lifted his shoulders. “I could probably figure out a way to do it. Take me more than half an hour though.”

  “Start figuring it out,” said Valentine. “We’re running out of time.”

  43

  Woodside, still occasionally called Suicide’s Paradise for its wealth of third rails and speeding subway trains, is a New York neighborhood wedged between two cemeteries in northern Queens—St. Michael’s to the north and Calvary Cemetery to the south. La Guardia Airport is only a mile from the neighborhood’s northern edge and the entire area is crisscrossed by elevated commuter and subway lines. Once predominantly Irish Catholic, it now has an astoundingly diverse population of Koreans, South Asians, Mexicans, Dominicans and Ecuadorians. There are pubs everywhere, the majority still selling quantities of Cork Dry Gin, Jameson’s, Guinness and Harp in the broad flat accents of Derry, Dublin and Donegal.

  The priest drove his rental car into Queens and eventually found St. Sebastian’s, a huge, windowless tomb of yellowing brick in the dour basilica style of County Cork churches. The deacon there, a man named Wibberley who’d volunteered there for so long he thought he owned the place, took the man from Rome through the old records. Neither they nor his own memory could recall anything of Frederico Botte or his adoptive parents, Sergeant and Mrs. Thorpe. Young Freddie had not been an altar boy, communicant or even a member of the church’s famous basketball team. The only place Wibberley could think of that might know more was the funeral home a few blocks south along 58th Street, a Woodside institution since the early 1900s, when the area was still virtually rural.

  The funeral home had indeed buried a Mr. Brian Thorpe on March 18, 1963. A few questions and lunch in an Irish greasy spoon called the Stop Inn Diner by the Long Island Rail Road elevated tracks on Roosevelt Avenue sent him to Sunnyside and the archives of the Woodside Herald, a Queens community newspaper that had been in operation since the second world war. According to the microfilmed copies of the paper for the week of March 20, 1963, Brian Thorpe, a member of the American Legion, a decorated veteran and the owner of the D and D hardware store, was accosted and killed on his way home from a late night at Donovan’s on Roosevelt Avenue. The police report stated that he was stabbed repeatedly. No weapon was found at the scene. He was survived by his wife Annalise and his son Frederick. An address for his wife was listed on Woodside Avenue.

  He checked the Queens phone book but there was nothing for Anna or Annalise Thorpe. With no alternative he drove back into the neighborhood and discovered that the address in the Woodside Herald was for an apartment above the Chez Diamond Styling Hair Salon. The name on the scarred, grimy door was for A. Kurovsky. Finally, the circle closed: Annalise Kurovsky, the woman who had taken Frederico Botte out of Germany and to the United States on the Batory, married a man who had been murdered—stabbed, like all the others. He rang the doorbell. Almost immediately there was an answering buzz, as though he had been expected. He pushed his way through the door and went up the long, dark flight of stairs to the apartment above.

  Whatever she had been before, Annalise Kurovsky had become a very dry stick. In her eighties her flesh had shrunk in on itself until it was no more than a wrinkled parchment shroud for ancient bone and sinew. Her face was sagged and wattled, marked in places by sun blotches and reddened areas. Out of it all burned a pair of dark, angry eyes, glaring with intelligence and some deep bitterness. The road she had traveled to find herself above a hair salon in Queens had clearly been a long and very difficult one.

  The woman’s living room was dark and cluttered. A row of mismatched bookcases stood against one wall, crammed with knickknacks and photographs. More photos hung on the stippled plaster walls along with decorative plates and several official-looking plaques. In the middle of it all, bizarrely, was an oil painting over the mantel of a gas fireplace. The painting, large and ornately framed, showed a young Mary stooping over a cradle holding the infant Christ while several angels watched from the upper left corner. The painting, and the artist who painted it, were instantly recognizable.

  “Do you know what that is?” the priest asked.

  “Certainly,” the woman snapped, her voice as dry as her thin skin. “It is a Rembrandt. A study for the Holy Family, painted in 1645. The fully realized painting hangs in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “My husband gave it to me.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  “I can’t see that it is any of your business.”

  “No, perhaps not.”

  “You didn’t come to speak to me of paintings anyway. You came to ask me about my son Frederico, yes?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Don’t be coy.” The old woman smiled. She sat down on a worn couch under the window. The priest chose a seat where he could see the startling presence of the Rembrandt.

  “Yes, I came about the boy.”

  “I have been expecting you for a long time.”

  “Expecting me?”

  “Of course. With all this talk of making Pacelli a saint.”

  “You know a great deal.”

  “I know everything,” said the woman. “The whole story. It is a story that must be told, and I am the one to tell it.”

  “The priest smiled. “Not you, and not now.”

  “Who will stop me?” she asked, her voice snapping like twigs. “I have a duty to my son!”

  “I will stop you,” said the priest quietly. “And your duty is done.”

  The man from Rome had thought about using his gun but instead he rose to his feet, went around the cluttered coffee table that separated
them, then leaned down, driving the palm of his hand under her chin, snapping her head back and breaking her withered neck. He let her fall face forward, breaking her nose on the coffee table. He checked her carotid pulse, found nothing and began to search the apartment.

  44

  Finn Ryan sat on the bench directly across from 11 St. Luke’s Place in Greenwich Village and decided that Michael had been right: knocking on the Grange Foundation’s door to get a better idea of what they were dealing with was really stupid. Not only that, it was potentially dangerous, maybe even fatally so. On the other hand, Barrie Kornitzer’s MAGIC program could take them only so far. In fact it was MAGIC’s limitations that made places like Ex Libris so important: in the end, the Internet was nothing more than a seething, almost infinite cauldron of half truths, opinions, outright lies and lunacy. It wasn’t the Wild West of communications and information gathering; it was the twilight zone. Sometimes—and, in fact, more often than not—you had to go to the source.

  And there it was, right next to the Huxtable house of the Cosby Show, one of a score of three-story brownstones on a pleasant tree-lined street that looked into Hudson Park. A block west was Hudson Street and 421, once a warehouse, now a renovated yellow brick condo building. Beside it another red brick industrial building, this one with a forest of huge satellite dishes on the roof. There was a restaurant on the corner of Hudson and St. Luke’s but other than that the street was residential. Two blocks south she could hear the sounds of Houston Street. She was willing to bet there were fifty places within spitting distance where you could buy a five-dollar cup of coffee.

  Eleven St. Luke’s Place was much like its neighbors: black-edged windows, black wrought iron fence around the well leading to the basement floor, an outside central air unit and a brass knocker beneath the classic stone pediment over the front door. In the case of number 11 there was also a small brass plaque, blindingly polished. Even from here she could see the iron grilles over the basement window. The cars in front of the building included a dark green Lexus, a silver Mercedes and a black Jag coupe.

  She’d been sitting there for half an hour now, staring at the house and second-guessing herself. Too much longer and someone was going to look out the window and spot her there. She took a deep breath, let it out and stood up. She straightened her short black skirt, tucked her plain white blouse in at the back and adjusted the leather bag on her shoulder. She felt as though she was wearing a parochial school uniform. She spent a few seconds putting her hair back with a covered elastic, stuffed the unruly ponytail through the back of a blue-and-gray LA Dodgers cap and crossed St. Luke’s Place. She swallowed, cleared her throat and headed up the steep flight of steps and paused. The brass plaque said:

  The Grange Foundation

  McSkimming Art Trust

  PRIVATE

  Despite the unmistakable notice, Finn ignored the knocker on the door and turned the knob. Nothing happened. She noticed a large flat plate screwed to the door, painted black to blend with the wood. Up in the corner by the pediment she spotted a small closed-circuit camera. It appeared that entering without knocking was not an option. She lifted the black iron ring clamped in the mouth of the black iron lion and hammered it down three times. There was a ten-second pause and then a crackling voice came out of nowhere and asked her business.

  “On Time.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “On Time. Courier. I’m supposed to make a pickup.” This was the plan she and Valentine had concocted the night before. It didn’t seem to be working too well. There was a long pause, then the voice buzzed out of the ozone again.

  “We don’t have anything for you.”

  This was the clincher. “Topping, Halliwell & Whiting.” The firm of lawyers in Chicago that had provided the original shell for the Grange Foundation.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s the name they gave me.”

  “Who gave you?”

  “Dispatch.” She let out a long-suffering sigh. “Look, I just go where they tell me to—there’s no pickup, it’s no skin off my whatever. I’ll see you.” She waggled the fingers of one hand up at the video camera. “Bye now.” She turned to leave, holding her breath as she turned. She had her foot down one step when the electronic voice came again.

  “Wait.”

  Bingo.

  “I’ll have to check. Wait.”

  “I’m not going to stand around out here.”

  Another pause and finally a sharp click from behind the plate on the door.

  “Come in.”

  “Thanks a bunch.” Finn turned the knob and pushed in through the heavy door, trying to keep the bored, faintly annoyed look on her face.

  Once inside she found herself in a plain, narrow foyer with a second door directly in front of her. As the first door clicked shut behind her there was a faint sound from the second door and it popped open slightly. A second closed-circuit camera looked down on her from the doorframe. The foyer was an airlock, trapping anyone they considered a risk.

  Finn went through the second door and stepped into a large reception room furnished in Arts and Crafts-style with what appeared to be a genuine Stickley desk and office chair set, a pair of armchairs and a long wooden “settle” complete with leather-covered pillows. The floors were dark cherry. On the cream-colored wall behind the middle-aged male receptionist’s head there was a framed oil that looked a lot like one of Monet’s Garden at Giverny series. If it was genuine, it was probably worth in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars.

  Nice neighborhood.

  The receptionist had dark thinning hair, broad shoulders, a white shirt with a blue-on-blue silk tie and what appeared to be a Hugo Boss suit that didn’t quite disguise the heavy-looking bulge under his left shoulder or the broad, pale leather rig that held it in place. A gun. Which made sense if the Monet was real. Finn was in too deep to back out now: the bluff was on.

  “Wait here,” said Hugo Boss with the obvious shoulder holster.

  Finn did as she was told, slowly turning in a full circle, taking in the entire room. Beyond the expensive furniture and the Monet it could have been the office of any tasteful professional in Manhattan—lawyer, accountant, upscale consultant. There were two doors at the end of the room, one folding, a closet, the other leading deeper into the building. Somewhere behind it Finn could hear the flat thumping of a photocopier and the whirr-click-hum of an office-sized laser printer. She looked carefully. The phone on the receptionist’s desk had half a dozen lines, four of which were lit. Once again, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Hugo Boss returned. “There’s nothing here for you. And we don’t use any courier company called On Time. When we use couriers we use Citywide.”

  “That’s right,” said Finn, trying to go with it. “Only when Citywide is overbooked they give the slush to us.”

  “Slush?”

  “Overflow. And like I said, I just pick up and deliver. You say there’s nothing here, then there’s nothing here. No problem.” She pulled the Dodgers hat more firmly down on her head and turned to go. At the last second she paused and gave Hugo her brightest eager-beaver “I’m just a shy country girl in the big city” look. “Uh, can I ask you a favor?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve really got to pee.” Which was true enough; Hugo and the gun he was wearing were scaring the hell out of her.

  “We don’t have a public toilet.”

  “I’ll only be a second, promise. You can check out that pickup for me again.”

  Hugo Boss paused and then frowned. Finn turned up the wattage on her pleading look, the same one she’d used in high school when she hadn’t done her homework.

  “All right,” said Hugo. “Through there. First door on the right.” He pointed. Finn trotted down to the far end of the room, watching from the corner of her eye as Hugo picked up the phone on his desk. She went through the door and shut it behind her. She was in a short hall between the front and rear of the house. To the left
was a copy room, the source of the photocopier noise. To her right was a plain door with a sign that said WASHROOM. Straight ahead was an archway leading into an inner office. Two women and a man were sitting at computer work stations in a brightly lit windowless room. A flight of narrow stairs led up to the second floor. Yet another door led even farther back into the building, probably into what had once been the kitchen. No one was paying attention, so Finn ignored the toilet for the moment and ducked into the copy room. There was a big floor-standing Canon digital copier, an office fax machine and an industrial-sized scanner as well as a shelf full of coffee-making equipment and a row of coat hooks. Someone had left a bunch of keys beside the photocopier and without thinking Finn scooped them up and slipped them into her shoulder bag. She left the room, slipped into the bathroom and sat down, breathing hard. She gave herself a few seconds to calm down, flushed the toilet, ran the water and then hurried out to the front office again.