I rented a small apartment in Astoria and tried to revive my business. I had limited success because the aftermath of the accident still clung to me. Once innuendo stakes out its territory, it isn’t readily vanquished by facts. Commissions dribbled in, but not fast enough. So much of the business is social. Hosting gatherings, lunches at good restaurants, dressing the part. My career looked unsalvageable unless I could magically produce some cash.
One incident gave me a ray of hope. Among my large backlog of mail was a letter I’d received from a London solicitor at a prestigious Lincoln’s Inn Fields address. It came in a plain manila envelope; curious, I tore it open. Out fell an auction house catalog and a letter addressed to me on crisp white bond from the solicitor—Arthur S. Newhouse. He’d written at the behest of his client, who wanted me to represent him at a Sherrod’s auction on October 13 to bid on a seventeenth-century manuscript. When I saw the commission— 25 percent of a purchase price estimated to reach at least a hundred and fifty thousand pounds—my jaw dropped. And an advance would be given to cover expenses.
But there was a hitch. There always was with good things coming my way it seemed. Once I’d successfully bid on the manuscript, I was on no account to attempt to read it. “Apparently the document has a repellent history,” Newhouse wrote. “This requirement is for your own protection.”
The commission would put me back on my feet, no question, but I’d learned not to trust offers until I actually saw some green. Just as I was picking up my phone to contact the London office, a call came through. Corinne on the other end. And what she had to tell me drove all thoughts about strange seventeenth-century manuscripts from my mind.
Thirty-nine
The new information Corinne had gathered sent me into a frenzy of activity. All the time not spent getting my life up and running again I devoted to this new pursuit.
My endeavors bore fruit and reached their zenith on the evening of Wednesday, September 10. I walked through the doors at 8:30 P.M., a little early for the meeting I’d arranged. The gallery was empty, but I heard a rustling sound from the office adjacent to the showroom. Soon enough Phillip Anthony emerged, shutting the door behind him.
It amused me to see his shocked expression after he set eyes on me. His mouth flapped open and shut like a barn door in a spring storm. It took him a minute to find his voice.
“Why, John,” he finally got out, “how charming to see you. This is unexpected.” He snapped out of his momentary nervousness and peered at me through his thick glasses. “What’s happened to your face? It looks like you’ve been losing at boxing matches, you poor fellow.”
“I’ve been traveling a lot, Phillip, over some rough terrain.”
“Pick up any goodies? I’m always in the market, as you know.”
“Nothing that would interest you.”
He feigned disappointment. “The rumor mill suggests you’ve met with some hard times. This business can be flighty, like women. You think you have things in hand and they end up deserting you.” He paused to give me time to fully appreciate his wit.
“I’ll manage. Thanks for your sympathy anyway.”
“I know this is a delicate matter, but if you’re inclined to dispose of anything from Samuel’s collection, I’d like to be helpful.”
Translation, you’ll get a quarter of its real worth.
“Actually I’m doing everything possible to keep his collection intact. That’s what Samuel would have wanted.”
He mistook my words. “Ah, the entire body of work. Well, we’d have to consider a lower sum for that kind of volume.”
“Phillip, I have no intention of selling it.”
With an exaggerated flourish he stretched out his thin arm to look at his watch. His shirt cuff rode up, exposing liver spots and gray hairs sprouting on fish belly–white skin. “I’d love to have a good long chat, but I’m expecting a client. He’ll be arriving any minute.”
“I’m your client, Phillip.”
A frown creased his brows and high, shiny forehead. “I thought you just turned me down.”
“What I meant was, I arranged the meeting. The name was Bernard White, I believe.”
“He’s supposed to authenticate an object for a buyer. How do you know that? Are you representing the buyer?”
“There is no Bernard White. A bit of witchcraft on my part. I made the whole thing up.”
He dropped the phony patter. “You bastard. I delayed two other bidders because I thought your phantom client would give us a better price. You’ve wasted my valuable time. Get out of here.” I suppose that was the moment my impression of the man underwent a permanent change. A kind of instant shift, the way the sun at dawn will suddenly pop over the horizon, revealing the landscape as it really is. The dilettante disappeared; inside lurked another personality. I recognized him in a few of the wealthiest collectors who’d crossed my path. Men, always. A ruthlessness at their core.
I started walking toward his office. “Why don’t we go into your office for that long chat?”
“I see no need for that.” With undignified haste he hurried toward the door and stood in front of me, arms folded, like a bull terrier guarding its bone.
“I know she’s in there, Phillip. I’ve been waiting across the street for over an hour. I saw her come in.”
“That’s none of your business, John.”
The door creaked open. Phillip glanced anxiously behind him then stepped aside. Laurel entered the room. “Don’t be silly, Phillip. He obviously knows.” There was a hint of tension around her eyes, but that was the only sign of stress. She’d dropped her hippie look and now resembled an Upper East Side matron—expensive fitted jacket, pencil skirt that stopped just short of her knees, Christian Louboutin pumps. A choker of opals and small rose-cut diamonds hugged her throat.
A burst of rage at seeing her nearly got the best of me, but I held it in and tried to concentrate on my end goal.
“Who would have thought, Laurel, your new career choice would be major crime?”
Phillip, ever the gallant, jumped in to defend her. “I don’t think sarcasm is called for. You can leave now.”
“I’ll go when our business is concluded.”
Laurel patted his arm. “Nothing will be achieved by quarreling. There’s no point ending up with bad feelings.” Bad feelings? After all the deaths she’s caused, what version of reality is she working with?
Phillip opened his mouth to object but thought better of it. He went to the front door and punched a code into the locking mechanism on the wall. A lattice-like grid of brass dropped down over the front window. He ushered us into his spacious office, a plush affair. Furniture designed by Gehry, a Bakhshaish rug covering most of the floor, and a Tintoretto resting on an easel in a corner of the room. A flat-screen TV mounted on the wall opposite his desk was probably a marketing aid for his sales.
“Nice bling,” I said to Laurel.
She fingered the necklace. “An heirloom from Mina. Frankly, I think it suits me better.”
An heirloom she never wanted you to have.
Phillip closed the door and went to his desk. He got out a bottle of Rabelais cognac and poured snifters for the three of us.
“So,” I said, “a lot of this is guesswork, but I’ll bet I’m pretty close to the mark. Hal hung around on the fringes of the alchemy group but never made it as a central player. I suspect he didn’t know everyone’s identities. Ward was Saturn; Eris, Venus; and Lazarus, Mars. Shim was too damaged to become a full member. You, Phillip, were Mercury. I’d thought Jupiter at first, but you don’t have the creativity to run the whole show. Mina, the witch, was originally Jupiter. When she died you saw an opportunity, Laurel, and took over.”
She fiddled with her necklace again. “Guess I’ll have to take compliments wherever I can find them. How did you figure it out?”
“Eris had a Venus tattoo, and then in the Baghdad hotel room Ward rolled up his sleeves, revealing a tattoo on his arm too, a lowercase h with a c
ross on the vertical. The symbol for Saturn. You’d told me Hal was Saturn. In his letter to me Hal indicated five opponents. If he was Saturn, that meant he’d have to be including himself as one of them. A little too obtuse. Knowing Mina well, even if your relationship was conflicted, you were in an ideal position to control events. You were living in her house for Christ’s sake! Gip told me Hal had never planned to get back with you. He just agreed to let you stay at the Sheridan Square location temporarily, that’s all. Staff know every move the residents make. That’s how they keep their jobs.
“Once I got back to New York, a friend of mine broke the barriers hiding your identities and confirmed everything. So you had the connection with Ward, not Tomas. How did Ward fit in?”
“That preposterous man,” Phillip snorted. “Fancied himself some sort of grandee when he was no more than a cook and bottle washer for us. I’d occasionally broker some of his sales, that’s how I got to know him. He took all that alchemy business seriously, as did his band of criminals. Can you imagine? Shim, the monster Eris traveled with, actually blew himself up trying to make gold from lead. Did Ward show off his private ‘museum’? A mixed bag, the stuff in there. Several of the manuscripts were rare and he had a few nice Near Eastern objects, but in the main, it was pretty low grade, a good portion of it counterfeit.”
Flattery always worked with Phillip. “Smart of you, then, pitching Ward’s group first against Samuel, then Hal, and finally me, while you two hid behind them. And Tomas’s talented plan to annihilate them in Iraq took them permanently out of the picture. On home ground Tomas had a much better chance of defeating them. Once they were dead, nothing could be traced back to you. Quite impressive.”
“That is conjecture, Madison,” Phillip said. “You have nothing to base it on.”
I sipped my cognac and savored the subtle flavours. “Hanna Jaffrey, who I learned was much closer to Ward than he let on, failed to steal the engraving after Samuel discovered it. Lazarus and Shim eventually dealt with her. Lazarus tried to steal the engraving from the Baghdad museum during the looting, but Samuel had anticipated that so you missed out a second time. It must have been tremendously frustrating not to get it after so much effort.
“When my brother died and I was incapacitated in the hospital, you conscripted Hal to search our condo. That’s when everything really spun out of control. Hal lied. He said he’d found nothing, intending to sell the engraving and keep the proceeds for himself. Did he know what he really had?”
“He’d picked up on the idea that it had something to do with transforming base metals into gold. He knew the engraving was the Book of Nahum and realized how much money it would be worth.”
“So you used Ward and his people to keep the maximum pressure on me, harassing me, making me think I was running for my life. And they’d always known where I was because of the tracking device. You removed it to gain my trust, Laurel. By then I was confiding in you, so it wasn’t necessary anymore. All those crocodile tears you shed over Hal. What a shock it must have been when you found out he was peddling the thing.
“Eris confronted him. He lied again, only the second time he threw me into the mix. His game came at you out of left field.”
Laurel had been listening intently. “Latching onto you was our only option once we realized you genuinely did not know where the engraving was. Hal included some elements that only you would recognize, and we had no way of solving the game ourselves. Certainly not in a short time, anyway. It was easier to get you to do the work. Phillip thought you’d chase the engraving just so you could sell it, but I wasn’t so sure.”
I searched for any sign of guilt, a slight flush perhaps in her cheeks to suggest a hint of shame, but could find none.
“I must admit,” Phillip said, “it was rather fun watching you getting battered.”
“And yet here I am. I succeeded and you two failed. Were you actually going to go through the farce of an exchange at High Bridge Park?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Laurel said.
Phillip peeked over his glasses at Laurel like an impatient schoolteacher. “What’s the point of going on about this? We don’t owe him any explanations. We beat you at the game in the end, Madison. It’s your sour luck.”
“Humor me, Phillip. I’ve earned some answers, and unless you want a really nasty scene when you try to throw me out, I’ll get them.”
I turned back to Laurel. “You and Phillip set up a double sting, keeping Ward and his people occupied with stalking me. Unbeknownst to us you two also kept a check on Tomas. When he did an end run on me and picked up the engraving, you got lucky. How did you get it from him? Did you have a weapon?”
“Could you honestly picture me waving a gun around?” Laurel giggled. “Only a weapon of the monetary variety. Phillip had the connections, so we could get a much better price for the engraving. Tomas saw to reason quite rapidly. And we let him shoot a photo of it. That’s all he really needed. This was your own fault.”
“How’s that?”
Laurel tapped the rim of her glass. “You didn’t bother to tell us, John, about your plans to leave town. When you went to the Port Authority and Ward found out about it he freaked, thinking we’d pushed you too far and you were going to bolt. So we had to put the kidnapping into play. Tomas, on the other hand, actually believed you’d take the engraving to the FBI. If it weren’t for that, he might not have given in to Phillip and me.”
“While you kept Ward and Eris preoccupied with me, Tomas headed back to Iraq.”
“Hal wasn’t the only one who could stage a good trap.”
“I can see how Tomas gained, but what was in it for Ari?”
“Ari was never involved. Ward and his people were chasing a dream. Finding the treasure was also what Tomas most wanted. Both saw the engraving as primarily a means to an end.”
I threw back the rest of my drink and stood up. “After all the hardship I’ve gone through, the least you can do is show it to me.”
“Dear boy,” Phillip interjected, “we’re under no obligation to do anything.”
“Maybe you won’t have any choice.” He might be haughty but I hadn’t come empty handed. I had my finger on a trigger and it was still waiting to be squeezed.
Laurel patted his hand. Phillip actually blushed with pleasure. “There’s no point playing hardball, is there?” she said.
Phillip took a remote out of his desk and pressed a key. The TV screen slid silently to one side. Nahum’s engraving sat in a shelved recess beside a Michelangelo drawing and what looked like a Vermeer.
The engraving had the typical greenish hue of olivine basalt, its color deepening from exposure to oxygen over the ages. It hadn’t yet been cleaned. I could see reddish dust lodged in the impressions. That made sense. They wouldn’t clean it because the dust could be analyzed to confirm the tablet’s age and legitimacy.
I ran my hand over the eight-pointed stars Tomas had referred to. The piece had an air of majesty, as if Nahum’s passion had somehow given life and spirit to the rock. I felt a moment of sadness for the prophet whose grand plan had come to nothing. After thousands of years, the riches he’d intended for the Kingdom of Judah would remain in Assyrian hands. “When you sell it, I suppose Tomas gets a cut?”
“Of course. The proceeds from Samuel’s estate would never have been enough to finance all the restoration work on the temple and its objects.” Phillip pressed the remote again to move the TV screen back into place.
“Well, for my end of things, I’ll take the Vermeer.”
Phillip let out a cynical laugh and held up the bottle of Rabelais, raising his eyebrows. I shook my head. Neither he nor Laurel had touched their drinks.
“I’m a bit surprised at your willingness to forgo the treasure cache. The engraving’s worth twenty million, but the value of Midas’s hoard is incalculable.”
“Bird in hand, my friend, bird in hand,” Phillip said.
“I’m not your friend.”
I’d o
bviously succeeded in stirring Phillip up because he snapped back at me. “I thought we were having a civilized conversation. Let me finish. Ward deluded himself about how easy the hoard would be to move. Realistically, how could he get control of the temple treasures and transport them back here, even if he’d won his battle with Tomas?”
“He had a lot of muscle, private contractors.”
“Not enough under the circumstances. The museum looting turned out to be too great an embarrassment. After the FBI sent out alerts, getting caught even with a small item would land you in serious trouble. Not to mention local citizens. You don’t think they’d know what was going on? You could hire a whole battalion of thieves without a prayer of getting past them. And the temple is on the property of the Chaldean Church. They’d just look the other way while Ward loaded up the trucks? Catholics don’t part easily with their valuables. I predict the find will never be made public. Laurel and I are content with our paltry share.”
“The Chaldean Church is doing its best to protect antiquities in the middle of a war. They’re facing threats daily and still trying to restore Nahum’s tomb and the synagogue. You don’t have a decent bone in your body, Phillip.”
He smiled and let my insult float away. “You’ll be getting no cut, John, least of all that Vermeer. Good Lord, it’s worth as much as Nahum’s engraving.”
“The engraving’s stolen. You can’t peddle it safely.”
“There’s no evidence to suggest that. No museum records, no identifying marks.”
I supposed now was as good a time as any to turn the tables. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and held it up. “I made a call on this before I walked in here. The line has been open the entire time. On the other end, a friend has taped every single word.”
This didn’t produce the desired effect. Laurel let out a little grunt of amusement, and Phillip laughed outright. “That old trick. Did you really think I’d fall for it? I’m not brain dead. My office is for private conversations. I have clients for whom discretion is a necessity; you never know who may be trying to listen in. There are a lot of useful technologies these days, and I like to employ them. Wireless won’t work in here.”
The Witch of Babylon Page 33