“Still do. And I’m thinking there’s a new leader in town now, a guy who knows where Orsini’s art is hidden, a guy who wants to step into Orsini’s shoes and take over the show. He’d have to be well connected to diplomats, global businessmen, government leaders …”
“As most Yale graduates are. So, Yale is one more common thread.”
“So are you, Doc. Oh, yeah, I’d appreciate anything Alexander Karas could tell me about his good old Yalie days. You never know what seemingly innocent information will break a case.”
“I’ll call him, set it up.”
“Okay, then. Now it’s time to tell me why you asked me here.”
She looked into Sugarman’s eyes. Yes, Michael was right. Simon was one of the good guys. “Let me show you something. I think I might be able to help you.”
She stood and led him across the room to the small alcove, stopping in front of the glimmering oil painting of a woman playing the cello.
Sugarman followed her, stopping just behind her shoulder to whistle. “Damn, but that’s beautiful. Hits you right in the gut, doesn’t it? If I didn’t know better I’d swear it was a Matisse, but …” His eyes widened as he saw the expression on her face. “No! Giulietta Donati has an original Matisse?”
“It’s called Dark Rhapsody.”
Sugarman spun in a slow circle. “Those gorgeous dancers, the charcoal … Holy Mama. Of course. You are telling me that all of these are effing originals?”
She laughed. “Gigi says they are. All the other pieces are part of her husband’s collection. But this piece is hers. At least, it has been in her care. But the artist is not the real reason I asked you here. This is.” She gestured at the Matisse. “Help me lift this down.”
Sugarman looked over his shoulder as if expecting to be arrested. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Dead serious. Gigi Donati wants you to see this.”
With a shrug of muscled shoulders, he lifted the heavy frame off the wall as if it weighed no more than a child’s drawing and set it carefully on the floor.
Maggie tilted the canvas toward her and pointed to the faint writing on the back, close to the bottom of the frame. “It’s easy to miss.”
Once more Sugarman bent closer, then uttered a shocked oath. “Florence!”
“Proprieta di Felix Hoffman Galleria, Firenze, 1943,” she read. “This painting appears to have come from an art gallery in Florence during the war. Gigi Donati wants to return it to the rightful heirs. She’s hoping you will help her.”
“Dead guys sure cast a long shadow, don’t they?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
NEW YORK CITY
TUESDAY
“HARP.”
In the light-filled penthouse, Simon Sugarman stood quietly for a long time, gazing at Matisse’s extraordinary Dark Rhapsody.
“Harp?” Maggie stared at him. “That’s a cello you’re looking at, Simon. I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
He grinned at her. “HARP, as in H. A. R. P. The Holocaust Art Restitution Project. It’s based in DC. I have a pal who works there. Their focus is on the historical research needed to verify art believed to be looted by the Nazis, in conjunction with HARP-Europe, for identification and restitution. Another Matisse, an Odalisque, was returned to a French family, the Rosenbergs, not too long ago. You’ve probably heard of Paul Rosenberg? Wealthy as King Croesus. Hundreds of artworks were looted from their Paris home during the war.”
She nodded slowly. “Do you think HARP could help us with this Matisse?”
“I know they can. You did the right thing, calling me, Doc.”
“It was 1945 when Gigi took this canvas from an SS truck in Austria, Simon, so it can’t have any connection to the art stolen in 1943 by Orsini.”
“Sure it can. If this Matisse came from Hoffman’s gallery in Florence, Maggie, then there is some connection to the art looted by Victor Orsini’s father. So start talking, Doc. I want to hear the whole of Gigi Donati’s story. From the beginning.”
“I will tell you myself, Agent Sugarman,” said Gigi Donati from the gilt-edged doorway. She walked slowly toward Maggie, her silver cane tapping silently on the Aubusson carpet, and handed her an 8 x 10 manila envelope. “I have been to my deposit box. Here is the information Johann Vogl sent me.” Turning back to Sugarman, she smiled, her eyes shining as she held out a jeweled hand. “And now perhaps this handsome gentleman will escort me to lunch?”
* * *
Maggie sat at the grand piano in her friend’s Upper West Side town house, playing the last lingering notes of Rachmaninoff’s Variation 9. As her fingers and breathing stilled, she realized that almost two hours had flown by.
Sugarman was probably still with Gigi Donati. The tall black agent and the gracious aging pianist had hit it off right away, and had gone off to have a fashionably late lunch together at Le Bernardin.
Maggie shook her head, wishing she could have joined them. But the Rachmaninoff rehearsals would not wait—as Gigi had taken great pleasure in reminding her.
She stood and stretched, arms high above her head, opening and closing her cramped fingers. The first Variations were coming together, slowly but surely. God, it felt good. Not transcendent yet—she smiled—but good.
And now she could turn her thoughts without guilt to the Felix Hoffman Gallery in Florence during World War II and any descendants he might have had. Her eyes went to the manila envelope Gigi had given her, still unopened on the coffee table where she’d left it. She had found only a brief mention of a Felix Hoffman on the Internet. Hoffman was an Austrian Jew who brought his wife and young daughter, Rebekah, to Florence just before the war started. He had opened an art gallery that specialized in 19th- and early 20th-century art and rare music on the edge of the city. He and his family had disappeared in 1943, the gallery looted so completely that nothing remained.
Curling into the corner of the sofa, Maggie kicked off her Nikes and lifted the envelope. It was postmarked Vienna, Austria. She shook it, then opened it carefully and withdrew two performance programs. The first, smaller booklet was a program for a performance of Tosca at the Staatsoper in Vienna. The Vienna State Opera … Her husband had surprised her once with box seats in that beautiful theater for her favorite opera, La Bohéme.
Maggie shook her head and focused on the second program. Featuring a beautiful white stallion on the cover, it was for a performance of the Lipizzaner Stallions at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. A telephone number was scribbled across the bottom, beginning with the international dialing code.
On impulse, she reached for her cell and dialed.
Four rings, five. Six.
“Stallburg.” A man’s voice, low and gutteral. “Spanische Hofreitschule.”
Stallburg? “English, bitte,” said Maggie. “Who is this?”
“The stables,” said the heavily accented voice, louder. A rush of German words. Then, in English, “The Spanish Riding School.”
Stables? “This is Magdalena O’Shea. I am calling on behalf of Gigi Donati about a man named—”
“We are closed.” A sharp disconnect, a buzzing dial tone in her ear.
The Austrian Spanish Riding School. “All roads lead to Vienna,” murmured Maggie.
Something else was in the envelope. She slipped out a glossy 5 x 7 photograph, lifting it to catch the light from the window.
Maggie gazed down into the face of a woman in her early- to mid-forties, with deep cobalt-blue eyes and a mass of thick black curls. It was a biblical face, a face of ageless beauty that could have been found in the old Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, some two thousand years ago. She was standing in front of a beautiful Renaissance building. A theater? It was so familiar. The Vienna State Opera.
She turned the photo over, squinting down at the faint, spidery words written across the bottom. Hannah.
Reaching for her cell phone, Maggie pressed a series of buttons. “Simon? Maggie. Have you finished lunch? I have something to show you.” She listened, smiled.
“Where are you now? Sixty-eighth and Fifth? Do you know Literary Walk in Central Park? Good, meet me there, beneath the statue of Sir Walter Scott. Thirty minutes. I’ll bring coffee.”
Disconnecting, she gazed once more at the arresting face.
“Who are you?” she asked softly.
* * *
“This place is like a cathedral,” murmured Simon Sugarman.
He stood next to Maggie, gazing up at the canopy of giant American Elms, their leaves glowing deep amber in the shifting afternoon light.
She handed him a Starbucks.
“I figured you for a double espresso, no sugar, kind of guy,” she told him. “Not this ‘tall pumpkin-latte-extra-whipped’ stuff.”
He laughed and drank deeply from the Starbuck’s container and wiped cream from his upper lip as he gestured at the huge elm trees surrounding them. “I love Literary Walk. All these busts of poets … I used to come here sometimes, after school.”
“You grew up in New York?” She gazed at him thoughtfully. “I guess we’ve never really had time to share our early lives.”
“Too busy dodging the bad guys. But I grew up in a housing project in Harlem.” He grinned. “Another world in those days.” Glancing at his watch, he shook his head with reluctance and took her elbow, drawing her along the wide, leaf-strewn pathway past a bust of Robert Burns. “Tick tock, tick tock,” he said. “What do you have for me?”
“Gigi gave me these.” She handed him the envelope with the theater programs and photograph.
He stopped on the path, extracted the contents, and raised a dark eyebrow.
“I called the number written on the Lipizzaner program,” said Maggie. “It was for the stables.”
“At the Spanish Riding School in Vienna? I’m intrigued.” He reached for the photograph. Gazing down at the woman’s face, he gave a low whistle. “Whoa. Who is she?”
“Check the back, her name is written there. Hannah. Now look at the State Opera program, the second page, where it lists all the musicians in the orchestra. There is a cellist named Hannah Hoffman. I’m wondering if she could be the granddaughter of Felix Hoffman. And if she is Hoffman’s granddaughter, Gigi’s Matisse could belong to her.”
“A cellist …” Sugarman was gazing down at the beautiful face in the photograph.
“You have to find her, Simon.”
Sugarman grinned. “We have to find her. Can’t wait to see Beckett’s face when I tell him that you and I are going to Austria together.”
“Me?” She stopped on the path to stare up at him. “Oh, no. No, no, no. I have a rhapsody to prepare. I can’t just run off and—”
“Sure you can. They have pianos in Vienna, Doc. And Gigi wants you to be part of this search, told me so herself. Not sure she trusts me quite yet, even though I turned up the old Sugar charm.” He looked down at her face. “I’ve got business in Europe this week, I could meet you. You could check out the Spanish Riding School stables, and I could try to find this cellist. And then—”
“Don’t even think about it, Simon! I let you talk me into going to France last summer. I was stalked, attacked, I almost drowned. I wouldn’t go to the corner grocery store with you now.” She turned away. “The last place I want to be is Vienna,” she muttered.
“We’ve got a race on our hands, Doc. I want the art, Dane wants the art, somebody else out there knows where it is and wants to keep it away from the rest of us.”
He touched her shoulder. “There’s the exit to Fifth Avenue. Duty calls, gotta blow. Just think about it. What do a stable of classical dressage horses, the Vienna State Opera, and a beautiful cellist have in common? C’mon, you want to know as much as I do. Let’s see if we can find out who this Hannah is, and go from there.”
“I don’t want to go to Vienna.”
“Why not?”
The words of her father’s obituary flew into her head. Died in a hospital in Vienna. She locked eyes with Sugarman and repeated, “I am not going to Vienna.”
“It’s the city of music, Doc. Of course you are.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NEW YORK CITY
TUESDAY NIGHT
MAGGIE LIT A candle in a small red glass in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin and sat down in the first row pew to wait. It was almost eight p.m., and the small chapel was in deep shadow, lit only by the candles, the glowing altar light, and a graceful, swaying chandelier high above the nave. She was alone.
She gazed around the chapel where her old friend Robbie had suggested they meet. St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church was known affectionately to New Yorkers as The Actor’s Chapel. A small, narrow church set back between prewar apartment buildings on West 49th, between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, the chapel had a unique history. Even for Manhattan.
She gazed at the beautiful white altarpiece, backed by high stained-glass windows. She’d read that St. Malachy’s had once been a traditional church. But then, in the 1920s, the New York theater district had taken over Times Square, and suddenly actors, musicians, and dancers were filling the pews.
The neighborhood had been very dangerous for a time. But now … still edgy, maybe, but revitalized. And safer. Thanks to Robbie.
She glanced at her watch and saw that it was after eight. Well, Robbie was never on time. But the next Mass was not until eleven p.m. when the post-theater performers would arrive. So there would be time to talk. To confess?
She closed her eyes and concentrated on steady breathing. Too much had happened over the last few days. Robbie’s calm presence, his thoughts, always gave her perspective.
The sound of a door opening, the swish of heavy robes. Robbie—His Eminence, Robert Cardinal Brennan, the new Archbishop of New York City—walked toward her.
Maggie shook her head at him. Standing in the flickering candle-light, he was tall and slender, with long, tapered fingers. He always reminded her of the actor Richard Chamberlin with his medieval, Medici face, silvery gray eyes, and hair that was long and wispy as wheat. Tonight he wore a priest’s simple black cassock.
Maggie rose and held out her hands. Robbie grasped her fingers, pulling her close to enfold her against his chest. His heavy jeweled crucifix pressed sharply against her breast. For a heartbeat, they stayed that way. Then he pulled back, strong hands still gripping her shoulders, to gaze down at her.
She saw the question in the light eyes but ignored it. “Look at you,” she said fondly. “His Eminence.”
“But still an unholy man.” He smiled. “Still Robbie, from the Lower East Side. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.”
Robbie Brennan grinned as he gestured around the chapel. “Welcome to St. Malachy’s. Graced over the years by Spencer Tracy, Roz Russell, Bob Hope, Irene Dunne. The greats. Douglas Fairbanks married Joan Crawford right on that altar. On Broadway opening nights this chapel is lit by thousands of candles.”
“It’s wonderful. Now I know why you suggested that we meet here.”
His eyes swept the small flickering chapel. “New York’s cathedrals are soaring, magnificent. My official residence is a three-story, fifteen-thousand-square-foot neo-Gothic mansion on Madison Avenue, worth somewhere upwards of thirty million. Gilt and red carpets, tapestries and priceless antiques. Lifestyles of the rich and religious.”
He laughed softly. “And yet—I prefer to spend my private time in the carriage house on the mansion grounds, reading my books and listening to Schubert and Bach. I say Mass here whenever I can. I like to think I am like St. Francis, a revolutionary who rejected material wealth. I am most at home in a simple place.”
“There always has been a bit of the actor in you, Robbie.”
He fingered the heavy jewel-encrusted cross on his chest. “Enough to fool the Roman Catholic hierarchy, it appears.” He chuckled. “But you did not come here to talk about me,” he murmured. “You’ve had a grandson since I last saw you. I am so happy for you, but I cannot believe you are a grandmother, Maggs.”
She smiled. �
�Ben is bright-eyed, funny, smart, and sweet-natured, like my son. They’re all spending the month in California. I miss them, of course, but I’m grateful.”
“And your godson in France. He is doing well now?”
“He’s a remarkable child. But I’m concerned for his safety. I thought everything was behind us, but …” She pictured Dane’s face, the single rose left on her pillow. “I’m afraid it’s not over.”
Shock flashed in the gray eyes. “A child should never be in danger. That explains why you are so pale. You looked beautiful the other night, as always. But not at peace. You lost your husband in such a cruel and terrible way. You lost your father not long ago. You almost lost your life in France. And now you fear for your godson. That’s a lot to deal with. It’s no wonder you are not okay.”
Okay? Not even close, Robbie.
“I’m so damned angry at God,” she whispered.
“God can take it, Maggie.”
He leaned toward her. “But it’s something more, isn’t it? I could see it in your eyes at the Morgan. Sit. Talk to me.”
“I didn’t come here to confess my sins, Robbie. Nothing so liturgical.”
“It’s me, Maggs. Talk.”
She sank to the wooden bench, gazed into the shifting shadows. “So many things,” she said honestly. “I’m not sure where to begin.”
“Plato said that ‘the beginning is the most important part of the work.’”
“Talk about pressure,” she muttered. Her eyes fastened on the flickering red candles and she shook her head. “Last summer a brutal terrorist held a six-inch silver dagger to my heart and tried to kill me—a man who looks like a wolf, whose eyes haunt my dreams. He threatened to break my fingers one by one, Robbie!” She shuddered. “I don’t scare easily, but that … And now he may be back in my life. So, yes, I’m having nightmares. Flashbacks. I don’t feel safe, can’t seem to catch my breath. I’m not hungry, not sleeping, don’t want to close my eyes at night. I’m a grown woman, Robbie, who is afraid to sleep without the lights on.”
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