The Big Score

by Kilian, Michael;

  “They had a meeting of the Park District board today,” Matthias said. “My car broke down and I got there too late to stop things. They voted Poe’s way—thanks to my father.”

  “There’s still time. He’s not putting up that building tomorrow.”

  “I caught up with Poe on the street, Zane. He made a threat. If I don’t drop this and give Franck’s statement to him and get out of town, he’ll have Diandra killed. He has her hidden away somewhere. I’m to meet with him tomorrow morning.”

  “His wife?”

  “That Mango woman made the threat. She talked about some other murders—O’Rourke, the people in the helicopter.”

  “This is playing kinda rough for a civic-minded businessman.”

  “I believe them, Zane. I don’t doubt this for a minute.”

  There was a long silence on the other end. “Son of a bitch,” Zany said finally.

  “I wasn’t to go to the police.”

  “Well, it’s sure as hell too late for that. I’ve already talked to my friends in burglary and some guys in homicide. Things are rolling.”

  “God.”

  “Maybe we can figure out a way to stall Poe.”

  “He’s going to kill her, Zane. Make it look like a drowning accident. That’s what that Mango woman said. ‘She’ll be with the fishes.’ Those were her words.”

  “That must mean they have her on a boat. Probably that big motor yacht of his. Ought to be easy enough to find.”

  “We have to do something. Quick.”

  “I’ll call the Coast Guard. It’ll be awhile before I can get out of here. They’re kicking this up to the top brass. I can’t just walk out on them.”

  “Zane, I said he threatened to kill her!”

  “I understand. You have until tomorrow morning, you said.”

  “I’m to go to his penthouse with what he wants and wait until after he gets back from meeting with the mayor.”

  “Are you at your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, sit tight until I get there. I’m doing everything I can.”

  “Zane, remember what you said about your wife? How you almost dropped this case because you were afraid for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how I feel about Diandra. Only if I’d been you, I would have dropped the case.”

  Matthias watched the minutes pass by on the mantel clock in his living room until they accumulated to an hour, then two. He accepted this ridiculous waste of time at first. Rawlings was a longtime policeman. He had to trust the man as Zane had trusted him. But the minute hand kept moving, well into the third hour. Matthias became worried, then frantic. Diandra could be dead.

  Annelise called to say his father was safe at her house. Matthias tried to reach Franck in Philadelphia, but the old man wouldn’t come to the phone. He left a message that he was not to be disturbed with the butler, who treated Matthias as if he were selling magazine subscriptions.

  He tried to reach Rawlings at Area Six burglary again, but was told Zany had gone downtown with two other detectives. Matthias started to phone Poe’s penthouse, with no clear sense of what he would say, then hung up. All Poe would want to hear from him was that he had Franck’s statement—and Rawlings had that. The Chicago police had that.

  At last he heard someone at his door, a rattling sound. What in hell was Rawlings doing, picking the lock?

  To his amazement, it was Christian. He staggered into the foyer, lurched against the doorway, then took a few unsteady steps into the living room. He stood swaying, his eyes wild. He was as drunk as Matthias had ever seen him. How had he accomplished this in so short a time? Had he been drinking all day again? Had he gone to the Park District meeting like this?

  There was a bottle of vodka in his hand—almost empty.

  “Goddamn you!” Matthias bellowed, all his fury boiling forth. “You sold us out! You used Father like a bloody puppet. I could kill you for what you’ve done.”

  “Probably should, big brother. Probably should. But it’s much too late for that.” He collapsed into a chair.

  “We know about the paintings, Christian. We talked to Herman Franck.”

  “So I’ve been informed. My smarter, older brother. Too smart for his own good. Ruined everything. Ruin, ruin, all is ruin.”

  “I know everything. And so do the police.”

  “My high-and-mighty brother. Always doing the right thing.”

  “You ought to rot in jail, Christian. But you can probably avoid that. If you get out of town now. Out of the country. And never come back. My God, you can barely walk. Did you drink all that vodka driving back down here?”

  Christian waved the bottle at him, then drank again. “Know everything, big brother? You don’t know everything.”

  He became oddly calm, glancing about the paintings on the walls of the room, then settling his unfocused eyes on Matthias, as best he could.

  “Do you want to know who murdered Jill, Matthias? Who shot her through the back and left her like a piece of garbage? Well, you should know. You loved her. She loved you. You have to know. You might as well, since everything’s finished. All gone. Alles kaput.”

  He sat up, then leaned forward, staring down at the floor, his dark hair falling over his face. “I killed her, Matt. I shot her. I listened to her screams. Right there in your boat, out in the middle of the goddamned lake.”

  Matthias went numb. He sat paralyzed, unable even to speak.

  Christian was weeping. He wiped his eyes, trying to regain control of himself. He pushed himself back erect in the chair. Another big swallow of vodka.

  Matthias sat and waited. He had to hear every word.

  “You’ll never understand, big brother, but it was all for the family. For the goddamned family. We were going broke fast, Matt. Headed for the junk heap. I started going out to Poe’s casino. Had to get some money somehow. Won a little, at first. A lot, actually—first few times. Then I started losing. Got terribly behind. Poe cut me off when my debt went over a hundred thousand. Didn’t know what to do. Bloody desperate. You’ve no idea. How could you, indulging yourself on the Côte d’Azur. Expatriate painter. Selfish bastard.”

  He closed his eyes, then opened them again. His face had become a macabre mask.

  “I had this brilliant idea. Way to get out of the hole. Take a painting from the vault. Make a copy. Put the copy in the vault. Sell the painting on the black market. You’d never look in the vault. In all those years we almost never went down there. Never disturbed anything. And if you did take a look, there’d be the copy. Damn fine copy. You’d never notice the difference. Smart fellow, I am. Almost as smart as you.”

  He put his hand to his eyes again. “I went to Larry Train. Poor old Larry. Totally unscrupulous, but a dear fellow in his way. I knew he’d traded under the table. Sold fakes. Sold stolen paintings. He liked my idea—thought I was quite clever.

  “But then I thought about it. I felt guilty. You don’t think I have a moral bone in my body, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Couldn’t sell the original. Grandfather’s legacy. All we have left. Grandfather’s hand on me, reaching from the grave. So I tried to back out. But Larry would have none of it. He came up with this scheme. Use the original to get a statement of authentication, then make a switch and send the buyer the copy. It was so good, you couldn’t tell the difference. But he wanted to use a third party to sell it, another collector, someone who’d been selling things under the table to avoid paying taxes.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, that someone turned out to be Peter Poe.”

  Christian looked up at Matthias wearily.

  “You killed Jill? This isn’t just drunken raving?”

  “I killed her.” The words came out like heavy, rolling stones.

  “How could you do that? I can’t believe it.”

  “Hear my mournful tale, big brother. I’m only going to tell it once.”

  “There’s a policeman on his way here. I want you to tell him.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, no. No policeman. Just family. Just you.”

  Christian seemed on the verge of passing out. Matthias fervently hoped he would. Then they could just take him away. Lock him up in a prison hospital ward—the mental ward. Christian had to have lost his mind. There was no other explanation.

  “Larry’s scheme worked brilliantly,” Christian said. “The buyer—Herman Franck—bought the fake and never questioned it. I’m that good, Matthias. That damned good. Master forger. He wanted more paintings. Poe found a couple of other buyers. I did a lot of copies. Poe made a lot of money. My fees were very generous. I paid off my gambling debts, the family’s debts—a lot of them, anyway. Gambling. That’s how I was paid. I’d give the copies to Train as fast as I could turn them out and then went out to Michigan City and won big at the tables. Every time. All wonderfully neat. No one ever questioned anything.”

  More vodka. The bottle had little left.

  “But Jill got suspicious. She was a very bright young lady, as you always said. I spent too much time at the museum. Went down too often to the vault. She began asking me about it. Followed me down there once. I had to get her out of the museum.

  “I couldn’t fire her. She’d just complain to you, and then you might come back. I told her you were still in love with her. Offered her money to go to you in France. At once. But she wrote you instead. And you refused her. Upset her terribly. She was terribly angry, terribly sad.

  “But that worked out. She became quite miserable, working there in the museum. Everything reminded her of you. I had Larry offer her this fabulous salary to come to work for him. She accepted.”

  Now the bottle was empty.

  “But it was a stupid idea, as Poe said. Larry came to the museum a lot. Packages arrived at the gallery from me. She became as suspicious of him as she was of me. I half wonder if she didn’t take the gallery job just to find out what was going on.”

  He looked down at his hands. “And, eventually, she did.”

  “And so you killed her?”

  “Poe’s secretary,” Christian said. “Mango. Ridiculous name. Extraordinary woman. She took a liking to me. It got to be more than that. I went to bed with her. I thought she could help me. Keep me out of trouble with Poe. But it became more than that. When Poe was away, we’d go to his boat. Pretending it was business, don’t you know. That’s where Train had the paintings delivered.

  “He had one in a crate with some others at the gallery, all marked and ready for Poe. Jill took it to the boat. She opened it for some reason. Maybe it came undone. Pandora’s box, yes? She opened it. She recognized the painting.

  “Jill didn’t know Mango and I were aboard. She went through the cabins—I guess looking for more paintings. I don’t know. She found us together. In bed. I threw on some clothes and went after her. Chased her across the docks. But she made it to your boat. Got away. Out into the lake. She had the painting. A copy of a Kirchner. It seemed like the end of the world to me. She knew about the painting scheme. She knew about Mango and me. It would all come out. I didn’t know what Poe might do. Kill us?

  “It was Mango’s idea to go after Jill in the big yacht. There was nothing else we could do. There was no crew aboard. Mango took it out herself. Amazing woman. I couldn’t pilot that big boat. You probably couldn’t either.

  “Took awhile to find her. Tried to get her to heave to. Mango tried to run her down, but Jill was too good a sailor. Finally, we got alongside her. Mango gave me this gun. I’d been drinking a lot. I only meant to frighten her. I didn’t know what we were going to do with her, but I didn’t want to kill her. But she began screaming at me. And Mango was screaming at me. There was a helicopter out there. Thought it was coming toward us. I panicked, Matt. I went crazy. Had to stop the screaming. Had to stop Jill. Had to stop everything that was happening.”

  He began sobbing, showing no sign of lapsing into unconsciousness. “And I never found the painting. I looked all over the boat. She had it under her blouse, didn’t she? Never thought to look there. Didn’t want to touch her body. She was, she was still alive.”

  More crying. Matthias stood up. He had to keep Christian there, but how? Hit him? He was so full of rage he probably would kill his brother if he picked up a weapon. The fireplace poker was close at hand.

  “You need another drink,” Matthias said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll bring a bottle.”

  “Please.”

  He hurried to the kitchen. The gin bottle on the counter had less than an inch in the bottom. There was a case of liquor in the pantry. Matthias went to it, retrieving a liter of vodka.

  When he returned to the living room, Christian was standing. He’d gone into the study and now had the revolver in his hand.

  “What are you doing?” Matthias asked.

  “Open the bottle for me.”

  Matthias did so.

  “Give it to me.”

  He did. Christian drank, almost losing his balance.

  “Larry Train’s dead,” he said. “Strangled. I did that, too, Matthias. Just a few minutes ago. Busy goddamn day, Matthias. Mango insisted. He knew everything—a lot about Poe. Mango thought he would talk if they gave him a reduced sentence or something. Poor bastard. I went to his house and he hopped into bed and lay there waiting for me and a minute later he was choking to death. I’m supposed to kill you, too.”

  Matthias blanched. He was across the room from the fireplace and the poker. Christian could barely stand, but he had a firm grip on the pistol. If Matthias moved, he might fire.

  “Don’t worry, big brother. Won’t do it. Couldn’t do that. Not family. Never family. Mango doesn’t understand that.”

  He turned and started toward the doorway.

  “Where are you going?” Matthias said.

  “Going to solve everything, Matt. Going to solve everything.”

  “Stay here!”

  Christian brought the gun to bear, aimed waveringly at Matthias’s chest. “Get back, Matt. Let me do what I have to do.”

  Christian backed across the room, knocking over a chair but remaining erect. At the front door, he paused.

  “Good-bye, big brother. I love you. It’s true.”

  Then he was gone.

  Matthias rushed to the phone to call the police, then stayed his hand. It would take forever to explain this to them, and another forever to persuade them to do something about it. Where was Rawlings?

  He went to the door, flinging himself outside. Christian was nowhere to be seen. Nothing moved in the street. Matthias turned right and ran to the corner. There was a couple walking hand in hand toward him. No one else.

  He went the other way down the block. Again no sign of Christian. Turning the corner, he ran along that street. Nothing at that intersection. Running again, he went east, then south, zigzagging through the neighborhood, ultimately to no point.

  At length he stopped and leaned back against a building wall, catching his breath. Where had Christian gone? To shoot Poe? The tycoon’s bodyguards would cut him down. How could someone go wandering the streets of Chicago with a gun in one hand and a bottle in the other? Wouldn’t the police stop him, pick him up? Would there be a gun fight? Would they shoot him down in the street?

  Christian might have gone to his car. It would amaze Matthias if his brother could drive one block without hitting something in his condition, but he’d heard nothing.

  Defeated, Matthias walked slowly back to his house. As he approached, he saw a police car double parked in the street. A man got out—Zane Rawlings—and the police car pulled away.

  Rawlings saw him. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I was looking for my brother.” Matthias stopped in front of the big bearded man. “I’ve very sad news. I’ve solved your sailboat murder for you. It was Christian. He just told me. He killed Jill.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Rawlings had his small suitcase with him. He picked it up. “Let’s go inside. I’d better use your phone.”

 
Rawlings hung up and gave Matthias an unhappy look. “They have a citywide out on your brother. Give them a man with a gun report and they get pretty excited.” He sighed. “There’s a meeting tomorrow morning with the state’s attorney about Poe and Train. They won’t issue a warrant until then.”

  “Train’s dead. If what my brother told me is true, and I’m afraid it is.”

  “I’d better report that, too.”

  “What about Diandra?”

  “I called the Coast Guard. They had a helicopter patrol out. Spotted Poe’s yacht on the south end of the lake, a few miles northeast of Gary. Hard to tell what state it’s in—maybe Indiana, maybe Michigan, maybe Illinois. They said it wasn’t moving. No wake.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all we have working for us—a location.”

  “No one’s going after her?”

  “Matt, this isn’t like the movies, where a hundred squad cars show up magically at the end. In real life, you need paperwork and justifiable cause. All Chicago P.D. has is a man with a gun report and the statement from Franck indicating a possible art swindle. No one’s even made out a complaint. They want Franck to do that. Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to jump up and fly out here. Even if he did, he couldn’t get here until tomorrow. I argued like hell, all the way up to the top, but that’s where it stands. A sheriff’s deputy from another state doesn’t have a lot of clout with the police superintendent, and that’s who made the draw.”

  “What about the Coast Guard? One of the other police departments? The FBI?”

  Rawlings shrugged. “If we had evidence of a kidnapping, but we don’t. I have a couple guys from my department coming out in a boat, but they’re just going to sit on what they figure is the state line and monitor the situation. That’s all they can do, Matt. They have no jurisdiction in Indiana. It’s not hot pursuit. They have a possible threat, relayed hearsay by me from you. No one’s about to go boarding that boat with drawn weapons on the basis of that. Not without a warrant. This is Peter Poe we’re talking about. This is the man’s wife. There’s no record of previous assaults on her. No complaints. Not even a domestic dispute. My pals up at Area Six just checked.”