Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  Where did Rawson hear about this? Why did he come now? What made Rawson think his family’s cellar was the same as the one reported stolen?

  “You know, it didn’t even make the New York newspapers; how is it gonna make the London ones?” Detective Modelstein had asked. He had the sort of body that could loom over one. And he had been looming.

  “Our family is in the trading business, and one of our local representatives picked it up and sent it on.”

  “From which paper?”

  “Really not sure altogether. But I’ll check it out for you if you wish, Detective Modelstein.”

  “That’s all right. Now about these gem prints on the diamonds. Prints didn’t come in till about the thirties, and to my knowledge diamonds stopped being polished in the seventeen hundreds. Do you want to explain that?”

  “Quite. We made the prints on the diamonds and took the dimensions and estimated karat weight on the other stones when we moved the cellar at the outbreak of the Second World War. A bit of hysteria then. Thought the Jerries were going to invade.”

  “Because you thought it might be stolen and you wanted to be able to claim it if it was, even after it had been broken down,” said the New York detective.

  Detective Modelstein obviously knew his job. He talked with an easy familiarity about stones, even though he didn’t show the proper, deference common from the Yard. But he knew his city and he knew his criminals, and he was the sort, Rawson estimated, who would have made a splendid noncommissioned officer. One might not get as many snappy salutes, but things would get done well.

  This office at One Police Plaza, despite its remorselessly barren rows of desks set around building pillars, had a sense of disorder, a sloppiness that would not have been tolerated in a British police station. Papers lay about on desks, notes were tacked up on walls, and there were no clear areas from which superiors could command. People came in and out freely. And yet Rawson’s practiced eye could tell when people were getting things done. This office functioned. And Detective Modelstein functioned well within it.

  The man had little doubt the cellar was not being sold in his area of the city. A good sign. He knew his beat. He knew the man who had stolen it, the nature of the man’s business, in relationship to crime, of course. The detective had almost no idea of art itself. In brief, he knew what he had to know, and Rawson understood it would be better to have this man as an ally than an enemy because he additionally suspected, but did not know for sure yet, that this detective had well learned to do pretty much what he wanted within the rules. He could hurt one’s cause. And he was angry about something concerning the other owner.

  “Please let me explain,” said Rawson. “I’m not here in competition with any other possible claimant. In fact, the other person might find me helpful, if nothing else.”

  The large shoulders shrugged.

  “You say you own it. She says she owns. I don’t know how it can’t be competition,” said Detective Modelstein.

  “This cellar has been in our family for generations. I have to go after it. It does not make the most business sense in the world. Honestly, in my opinion, it didn’t mean that much to the Rawsons when we had it, nor that much when we lost it. It just sat there. For centuries it sat there. If we get it back, it will sit again. But because we had it, because it was ours, I have to pursue this thing. Do you understand?”

  The large detective shook his head. The dark eyes were open, unabashed, questioning. But he said nothing. He let it all lie on Rawson, using the silence to work for him. Rawson had to continue.

  “If the other owner needs the money this would bring, I am not averse to making a financial settlement. This is not a strict business matter.”

  The detective thought a moment. Somehow there was something more here. The detective had large strong hands, and he moved them as though wrestling with an explanation. Rawson knew he had been judged as to how much he could be trusted. He gathered it was somewhat favorable but not too much.

  “There’s this lady. She is a basically decent person who’s lived kind of a protected life. She comes from a small town. It’s not like New York or London. It’s kind of a decent place. I don’t know if you’re aware of that sort of town?”

  “I gather, like our villages. Very close. Don’t like strangers particularly. Don’t change their ways.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. Maybe. I don’t know. But her father maybe created some jealousy or something, and she loved him. This girl and her father were close. You could feel the closeness—it was that strong. They did so much together.”

  “In what way close?” asked Rawson, in a way that opened all manner of doors.

  “Strictly father-daughter. If you ever met this lady, the one thing you might think is she is too nice, you know. I mean it. Well, he obviously didn’t know what he was doing in trying to sell this jeweled cellar through some art dealer, and when he died in this accidental stabbing, a mugging of sorts, she took it on herself to sell it. And it was stolen from her and it got into the newspapers near her hometown, where people, according to this woman, began to think her father might be a crook. So because they’re righteous people, she and her father, she takes it on herself now to prove absolutely and finally that he’s innocent.”

  “Why would they think he is selling hot goods?” asked Rawson.

  And here the detective paused, judging the man who was before him.

  “I give you my word, I will do anything, even up to the cost of many hundreds of thousands of pounds, not to hurt this woman,” Rawson added quickly.

  “Why? Why do that?” asked the detective.

  “Because I gather I would have you as an enemy if I hurt her, and I need you. Also, it is not in my self-interest to harm this woman in any way. I don’t need publicity, and if it would make you feel more comfortable I would make a promise now not to contact anyone from the media who might embarrass her.” It was a good promise, of course, because he wasn’t going to do it anyhow. Rawson wanted this search to be as quiet as possible, with, of course, as few questions about this cellar as possible, to protect the great secret of England and Her Royal Highness.

  Rawson had said the right thing. The detective opened up.

  “He didn’t have a receipt, and he kept it secret from everyone in that town but her that he ever owned it. And now, this,” said the detective, holding up the list of specifications even to the diamond prints and the interior framework with the funny English words of “poorish bowl.”

  “Well, we just won’t let this get out, will we? And I’ll speak to the woman very carefully.”

  “She’s very sensitive about this subject. Her father. The saltcellar. Outside of this one subject, she’s really a fine person. I don’t know her that well, but what I do know is fine. But you get her on this subject, and she gets strange. It’s a horrible thing to see. A beautiful, intelligent, fine screwball. Crazy.”

  “I’ll be very careful,” said Rawson. He saw the detective shudder a bit.

  “I’d like to be the one to tell her about this,” said Detective Modelstein, holding up the specifications sheet. “I’m not looking forward to it, but I know her.”

  “Good idea. Meantime, you will get a list of these jewels out to the appropriate markets?”

  “I’ll notify local jewelers, but don’t expect much on the stones. There hasn’t been boo here on them.”

  “I wouldn’t imagine the market would be with fences and such,” said Rawson.

  “You deal in stones?”

  “No,” said Rawson with a laugh. “But now you have their prints. And good luck. You know where to reach me in New York, and be assured there are many tens of thousands of pounds reward for any help my family might get. To police officers, too.”

  The detective shrugged. No bribe opening there.

  Rawson wondered if the man wanted to shake hands. He didn’t. But he did add as a good-bye: “Thanks for the thing on the lady. I appreciated it.” That was his price.
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br />   Walking along the massive shopping street of Fifth Avenue with everything set so monumentally in concrete, Rawson wondered if the thief might save the poorish bowl and shuddered at the thought of the cellar being broken down in this city in particular. Because if it were, the thief, the only one who knew what England’s Grail looked like since Elizabeth and her goldsmith, might have thrown it away.

  The Holy Grail might hide forever in the staggeringly massive garbage heaps of New York. How to get at it then would be a greater challenge than Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables. Fortunately, there was always the Queen’s purse, and the greed of the thief. Who knew that once tracked down trying to sell the gems, he wouldn’t be most helpful in finding the poorish bowl, or at least in describing what it looked like?

  Rawson settled into his suite at the Sherry Netherland, ordered himself a Scotch whiskey—one had to stress the word Scotch in America—and phoned the ruby dealer again. This time, Rawson did not introduce himself, but said: “Sultan Al Hadir.” He knew the Hadirs dealt in major gems, and just possibly theirs was a name that could open this sealed door. It was just a frail chance.

  “Yes,” said Feldman, the first positive word so far.

  “I had called before,” said Rawson.

  “I know the voice,” said the dealer. “Why would he send you?”

  “I was an aide to him for a while,” said Rawson. Interesting that this dealer would know Hadir, when Jews were legally not even allowed to set foot in Banai.

  Rawson could imagine a homeless Jew somewhere arriving in a land that proclaimed no Jews could live there and going right to the palace to make a deal, possibly even to arrange to live there.

  He had wondered at times what it would be like to be a Jew in the middle ages, the rules of conduct, of entry into strange places, of being part of a place, and of knowing one might have to leave quite shortly. He had assumed that to be a Jew might well be a full-time occupation, like being an officer in Her Majesty’s service, and that earning a living while in that state might have been some sort of second job.

  Of course he did not get that sense from the detective whose name sounded Jewish and was somewhat dark. There didn’t seem to be that inner strength to the man. Rather, it was all external in his bulk, in his official manner, like some tough sergeant in combat. Maybe even an officer who had been in service too long and had no real future but a pension. This, of course, in a somewhat crude American exterior. Maybe the detective felt at home in this country. After all, it was a nation of immigrants.

  Rawson waited for Feldman to answer.

  “I still don’t know who you are.”

  “Does one have to have a recommendation, like a gentleman’s club?”

  “Don’t bother me anymore with your silly lies. I know who sends whom on what,” said Feldman, and the line went dead again, and even though Rawson dialed three more times, no one answered the phone.

  Rawson drank his whiskey in the comfort of his suite and set the remnants of the British empire to finding a middle-aged homosexual art dealer who no longer apparently resided in New York City and could well be in Rio de Janeiro.

  But through many inquiries in Rio and dozens through America and around the world, often very unofficially from one intelligence agent to another, Harry Rawson found out over the ensuing days that Geoffrey Battissen, fifty-three, partial to men in their twenties, had closed his art gallery of twenty-two years almost two weeks before and had not turned up in Brazil. Or Paris, or Singapore, or London, or many other cities around the world where someone who often told his friends he would never live in a small town again might flee. Rawson got the reports, looked at them once, and then shredded them several times and scattered the shreds on the sidewalks of New York City, where they would pass into the largest garbage heaps in the history of man.

  When Artie got Claire’s 10:00 A.M. phone call the day after Rawson had appeared at the Frauds floor, he regretted trying to save her the coldness of a stranger. Unfortunately, hearing her voice, he realized what he should have known, indeed did know, the day before. He was going to have to show her something that might rudely cut off her big adventure, showing she was chasing someone else’s cellar and casting real questions on how her father came by it. It would get her home, of course. But Artie would be the one to have to share the despair and sadness. Still, he knew he could do it better than the Brit.

  So he found himself phrasing the information in a strange way.

  “Look, something has come up that I’d like to discuss with you sometime this week, maybe at the end of the month or something.”

  “Oh, I’d love to see you,” said Claire. Her voice was dewdrop bright.

  “Whenever it’s convenient. I don’t want to intrude on anything. Not a rush.”

  “Come on over now. I’d love to see you.”

  “Right now?”

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  “As soon as I get rid of some work,” he said.

  “Wonderful,” she said.

  And so Artie proceeded to do what he had learned to do best in life: delay. He dawdled around the Frauds squad, finding paperwork, doing paperwork, discussing paperwork, being asked several times if he had anything important he really wanted to talk about.

  A homicide detective came in and wanted to know if he had overpaid for his girlfriend’s engagement ring. Artie put the loupe to his eye and saw that the almost two-karat stone lacked tinges of yellow and the clarity was good, not good enough for a blue-white though, not pure enough. It was a good commercial white diamond with inclusions that did not diminish the clarity.

  “It’s a good quality, probably first pique, as they say, and commercial white. Whatdya pay?”

  “Two thousand.”

  “Was he a friend?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a very good price,” said Artie.

  “It’s not hot,” said Detective Sergeant Dennis McKiernan.

  “I don’t want to know where you got it,” said Artie.

  “A guy needed the money.”

  “You strip a stiff?”

  “Hey—” said McKiernan.

  “Anything under five for that stone is a nice price,” said Artie, annoyed that he would be asked to appraise something that might be shady.

  “Thanks,” said McKiernan with a snarl.

  The word got around Artie was in the office, and the jewelry started coming up for his appraisal. It was jewels of the middle class, small stones, baguettes, little things of very little value, set in gold or silver, and treasured by those who had them. The problem was telling them the dollar value of things they were emotionally attached to, the kind of jewelry most Americans bought, which wasn’t worth nearly what they paid for it.

  There was always the comment that he should have been a jeweler, and Artie answered that he often thought so himself. What he didn’t say was that he liked the secure paycheck of the department too much. He planned on doing something like that when he retired, he would say.

  It would be in that wonderful time never burdened with struggle and risk: the future. Unfortunately, he had trouble putting Claire in that wonderful time.

  Thinking about this got Artie mad. Who was this person to come into New York City, attempt to sell hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars worth of merchandise, and then make Artie feel guilty because he found out she was lying to herself, just like he told her? He had told her the sale was suspicious the first day.

  Therefore, he should not feel the slightest qualms in saying he had told her so.

  But he felt qualms. He had qualms in the armpits and under his eyelashes. He would rather go to the shooting range with the guns going off and the smell of powder and endure jerks happy with their substitute penises that could kill someone. That is what he would rather do than drive to Queens and tell Miss Andrews about the prior claim on the cellar that proved her father had bought stolen merchandise. He was loaded with qualms. He was qualm heavy. He was a qualm bomb
. But there came a time during the day when even the master procrastinator could not delay leaving the office.

  And so just at three in the afternoon, he finally found himself outside the door of her apartment, having been rung upstairs by her cheerful voice on the intercom. She was wearing a checkered shirt and blue jeans, and her hair for the first time was blown in loose strands that looked even more perfect. And worse, she was smiling, and she was glad to see him.

  “It’s furnished. I was going to invite you for dinner. I can cook. Some things. C’mon in.”

  “Yeah. Good,” said Artie.

  There was a dining-room set of wooden solidity, somehow a little too large and a little too fine for the clean, small apartment. The living room had a single couch, but everything else was devoted to office, including a personal computer and computer disk file nearby. The wall now looked like a museum display of history, with pictures of large trunks of gold clustered above the section of the historical line that read 1400 to 1600. There were also pictures of large colored stones cut out of books. None of them was engraved, so Artie knew they were not the ones in the cellar. He had the photocopies of the 1945 Scotland Yard report in his pocket.

  “Arthur, I am so glad you came. This is so exciting. I’ve made contact with a researcher in Britain. There is no question but that this cellar is British. No question. Even though they never put major gems on their cellars, this is the British form. The lions. The scrollwork. They had fine, fine goldsmiths. And I am going to find out why our cellar has got jewels. It’s so good to see you.”

  “Yeah. Good,” said Artie.

  She was so happy about what she was doing, Artie thought momentarily of not telling her at all. Let her run after this cellar that undoubtedly was in pieces now and the impossible proof that her father was innocent. She could have a very nice life chasing what wasn’t there. She had the money. She had the time. She enjoyed it, and maybe she would get tired after a while. Who was Arthur C. Modelstein to declare this an insanity?

  She talked ecstatically about her map of the world and her computer, which organized the colossal amount of data she was gathering. It made logic out of turmoil.