Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “I never met national characters. We have mean characters.”

  “Of course. One shouldn’t generalize about people. I imagine at Balaclava there were those who reasoned why.”

  “Is that the Charge of the Light Brigade where everyone got themselves killed and Tennyson wrote a poem about it?”

  “Exactly, and that was considered noble and laudatory, whereas today it would be grounds for some government investigation. Even the quality of goodness changes from age to age, like what is stolen in America and what is stolen here in Europe.”

  “I have a headache,” said Artie.

  “I can’t believe you don’t have thoughts about goodness.”

  “I do, but it requires talking,” said Artie. Rawson laughed. In a little while, Artie said that perceptions of goodness might change but goodness never changed, and Rawson wanted to walk down the ages of the Platonic ideal, the absolute goodness of the laws of God among the Jews, and God being above goodness or evil among the Muslims, and God being goodness Himself among the Christians, and the Hindus not believing in any of it. Good or evil. Things were what they were.

  “I’m sorry I said anything,” said Artie. And Rawson laughed again. He had big teeth, thought Artie.

  The assistant to the director general finally saw Rawson and Modelstein and informed them that purchases by customers were never discussed with anyone without the customer’s consent.

  “You had to keep us waiting an hour and a half for that?”

  The assistant to the director general apologized with a smile. He also regretted that he could not tell them who had purchased it either. Artie was about to tell the smug little man in the smug dark suit, and the very small office, that they already knew, but he caught Rawson’s eyes, and something told him to mention nothing.

  Outside, Rawson explained why he didn’t want Artie to press on back in Jardines.

  “We just might have an opportunity to force Jardines to reveal who sold the sapphire to them, if you’re willing to go a bit beyond police bounds. I know how these people operate.”

  “Tally ho,” said Artie in the elegant square with pedimented façades of glamorous perfumers and bankers and jewelry stores, Van Cleef and Arpels, Boucheron, Schiaparelli, Guerlain, Rothschild, and Jardines. “No’s on the right of us, no’s on the left of us, charged the two.”

  “You would have made a splendid fighting general.”

  “I hate bodies,” said Artie.

  “You’d get used to them.”

  “I never want to get used to them.”

  “But you do. Everyone does,” said Rawson, swinging his umbrella before them like a gonfalon high, “especially someone who agrees to do something before he even knows what it is.”

  “I sort of got carried away with everything,” said Artie.

  XVII

  He must outshine all other knights in virtue even as the sun’s light pales the stars.

  —WALTER MAP

  Queste del Saint Graal, 1225

  “I’m not leaving,” said Artie, banging loudly on the brass knocker of the French townhouse. “I’m an American policeman and I am not leaving.”

  The butler opened the door again.

  “Lady Jennings will not see you, sir, so I would most strongly suggest that you leave.”

  “I’m not leaving. You want to arrest me, go do it. Right now. Let’s have this thing out in court now. I want that bitch in court now. I want everyone to know you’re dealing in dead men’s jewels. There’s blood on that stone. I’m a New York cop.”

  Artie yelled until his own ears hurt. He saw the butler blink and back into the safety of the large house. Artie followed into a large reception room, yelling even louder: “I got two dead bodies stinking up New York, and you assholes are hiding behind your money. I want to see that bitch.”

  The butler attempted physically to move Artie back toward the door, and when he felt the force of just one hand resisting his entire body, he gave up and ran for help.

  In the meantime, Artie continued to yell: “I want to see Lady Jennings. I want that bitch down here now. I want to look at her face. I want her to tell me she’s not going to help. I want her to tell me murder is all right. I want her here. I want to know how she can wear Chat damned stone with blood on it. Let her tell me. Let her tell me. Now! Now! Where the hell are you?”

  The butler came running back with a large gardener, a chauffeur, two curious maids, and a prim woman in her early thirties wearing a heavy suit fit for a matron.

  The woman warned Artie that if he did not leave now, they were going to have to use force.

  Artie dared them to kill him like the two people in New York.

  The gardener, who fancied himself skilled at karate, grabbed Artie’s right hand and using his own body for leverage, tried to hurl Artie’s bulk over his shoulder. He ended up looking as though he passionately wanted to make love to Artie’s muscled arm. Artie shook him off like loose relish on a sleeve. The stuffy younger woman took over.

  “We’re going to have to phone the constabulary.”

  “Phone,” yelled Artie. “I want you to phone. I want Lady Jennings in court. I want her in court every day and every way. I got two dead bodies in New York, and that bitch sits here like she’s above it all. She’s part of this thing, and she’s gonna get some of this all over her too. That’s it. She’s in it. She’s in it, like death.”

  “Do you have to shout?” asked the woman.

  “I’m mad. I’m mad as hell. You’re not getting away with this.”

  “With what? Please don’t shout.”

  “Am I shouting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m shouting. We got two bodies in New York City and that bitch won’t even make a phone call. She’s not out of this thing.”

  “Please stop. I can hear you. Perhaps I can help.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “I am Lady Jennings’s secretary. If you want something from Lady Jennings, you must go through me.”

  “I want to get her in court,” yelled Artie.

  “May I ask why?”

  “All she’s got to do is phone Jardines and tell them to tell us where they bought that sapphire, and I can get on after the killers. But she’s hiding that.”

  “It’s not that Lady Jennings wishes murderers to go free. Lady Jennings is a very private person—everyone knows that.”

  “Death is private. We got dead bodies,” yelled Artie. “Who the hell is Lady Jennings to be private? She’s coming into court. I’m gonna have every New York City newspaper on her doorstep for life. For fucking life.”

  Artie waved his hands, looming over the secretary. But she refused to move back even though her eyes were tearing from his volume and menace.

  “I will speak to Lady Jennings if you refrain from your language and shouting.”

  Artie nodded agreement, but did not want to appear too docile; and he did not want to let any of them know how truly embarrassed he felt to be doing this. He faked anger as he waited. It had seemed almost harmless when Rawson had suggested it, definitely noble, two searchers against the jaded justice of Europe.

  Unfortunately, once he was inside the house, he was in this thing, and there was no way to get out of it.

  The secretary returned with an agreement. If Detective Modelstein would absolutely promise not to drag in the name of Lady Jennings or pursue Lady Jennings in any way or manner, but leave this house once and for all, Lady Jennings would authorize Jardines to reveal the name of its source for the Jennings sapphire, as it was now called.

  “Okay,” said Artie gruffly, when he really wanted to say thank you, when he really wanted to apologize.

  “Now, may we ask you to leave,” said the secretary.

  Back at the elegant Hotel Crillon, Rawson was practically dancing. He had chilled Dom Perignon already waiting, and a snack of Scottish smoked salmon, caviar, and crackers Artie thought were too small.

  “I knew you could do it,” said Raw
son.

  “Yeah, it worked.”

  “Why so glum?” said Rawson, engineering a full glass of the fine champagne over to Artie, who sniffed it and put it down with a shudder, remembering his poor mouth of the morning.

  “They only wanted to be left alone.”

  “That’s why it worked.”

  “Yeah, but what did they do? What crime did Lady Jennings do?”

  “I can’t believe a New York City policeman hasn’t leaned on people, so to speak, who were never guilty of a crime.”

  “That’s different. I don’t ever remember roughing anyone up, and that’s what I did even though I never hit anyone, someone who only wanted to be left alone. I mean she was an old lady and she stayed in her room, and I never saw her and here I was like an animal bellowing.”

  “That’s what worked, Artie,” said Rawson. “It’s all shit, Artie. Nations just wrap flags around it. Ever smell a body that’s been dead a week?”

  “Yeah. And I will never get used to it, and I don’t want to get used to it, and I don’t want to get used to seeing decent women afraid of me.”

  “To Sir Arthur of the pure heart.”

  “What’s pure?” asked Artie, and he ate some crackers and wondered how Rawson knew Lady Jennings would break.

  Jardines phoned and asked that they come to the store. Rawson advised Artie not to look triumphant when they got the information, but to let the British handle it.

  “Thank you ever so much,” Harry told the assistant to the director general of Jardines as they received the name of Werner Gruenwald, a Geneva businessman. This time they had not been kept waiting.

  Outside the white-framed windows of Jardines, with the diamond jewelry and the diamond-encrusted watches and an emerald necklace lolling off a dark velvet stand, Rawson distracted Artie from his glancing at the windows by announcing: “Touché. We have been revenged. I got him.”

  “What revenge? What did we get?”

  “I insulted him to the core, and he was fuming,” said Rawson, twirling his tightly rolled black umbrella like a batonist.

  “What insult?”

  “You must understand the French. He was fuming. Our very politeness, our civility, cut him to the bone.”

  “You really like that, Harry? Are you serious?”

  “Of course,” said Rawson.

  “You’re crazy, you know.”

  “Mad as hatters, all of us.”

  “There’s no all to anybody,” said Artie.

  “Did they teach you that in your Bronx schools so a polyglot nation could get along with itself?”

  “How did you know I went to Bronx schools?”

  “May I safely assume you did not go to Harrow or Eton?”

  “Do they teach that stuff in Harrow and Eton?”

  “They don’t teach it, we breathe it. The French are the French.”

  A flock of white-hatted nuns guided children across a street.

  “Do you think those nuns are the same as those thousand-dollar whores you talked about?”

  “The nuns are French nuns. The whores are French whores. They forever in their souls are French: saints, chevaliers, and pleasers of the body.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Not quite,” said Rawson, breathing in the Paris winter and exhaling in a large puff of white mist, “but often enough it’s true. Don’t tell me you would think of a black coming at you in an alley the same way you would think of a white?”

  “How did you know I went to Bronx schools?”

  “You said so last night, along with recounting your first experience with sex.”

  “And how was that?”

  “If I remember correctly, you said it was an acquired taste but an inherent need. I thought that was most profound.”

  Artie nodded. His first time had been not so much a disappointment, but he had wondered if this was what everyone was so excited about. Afterward, it became both pleasure and necessity.

  “How did you know Lady Jennings would break?”

  “She is English, Artie. We’re all mad underneath, and the nobility the maddest of them all. Communists, fascists, butterfly chasers in the Amazon, breeders of shrimp and shrew, horse racers, pederasts, and Lady Jennings, recluse, notorious for a thirty-year-old slight by the Crown. I didn’t know it would work, Artie. As I said, I thought it had a good chance.”

  “It worked,” said Artie with sadness that seemed at home in the gray French street with the leafless trees, and dark buildings, and wide boulevards and desperate little cars that seemed as though they would run over any living thing.

  Werner Gruenwald spoke English with a German accent, repeated too often that he was a businessman of varied interests, and incessantly fussed with his eyes. He was either giving himself drops, or cleaning his pink glasses, or commenting on the importance of sight. He was fond of little health lectures in that regard. Gruenwald was Swiss.

  Artie sat back and let Harry carry the ball. He would flash his badge if necessary. This would have no more legal force than it did in Paris, but might add some psychological note of authority to the proceedings.

  It was a messy, small office with one telephone, no secretary, and a small window so high in the wall one got a view of the sky and not the streets of Geneva. It had been a shorter hop from Paris to Geneva than the flight from New York to Cleveland, and this gave Artie a sense of how small Europe was, how small the countries were. Harry had pointed out that the Continent, as Europe was called, as though it was the only continent in the world, was still terribly tribal, although no one wanted to admit it, and that many of the little square patches underneath them had once been kingdoms, with the lords little more than gang leaders.

  “I would love to help you, gentlemen, but I am a businessman. And what sort of businessman would reveal a confidence?”

  “Was it a confidence?” asked Harry. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh, yes, yes.”

  “Jardines didn’t know that; they gave us your name. I am sure they wouldn’t have done that if they knew this was all confidential,” said Rawson.

  “Everything is confidential that is not public. Of course, that is how business is done. I am a businessman. I have varied interests.”

  “Being a businessman, you sell things,” said Rawson.

  “Of course,” said Gruenwald. He took off his pink eyeglasses and squinted.

  “I’d like to buy the identity of the person who sold you the Jennings sapphire,” Harry said. Artie was surprised at how easily Rawson called it the “Jennings,” acknowledging perhaps morally in some small way that the woman had absolute right and title to it. It was the second most valuable gem on the cellar. Artie wondered if all the major gems got their names this way, by someone along the way announcing title. Maybe it had happened many times. And maybe it would happen many more times.

  Gruenwald did not answer the question right away. He was putting drops in his eyes again. He wiped the liquid off his puffy cheeks with a tissue and left the tissue on the desk. He returned the pink glasses to his stubby nose and responded.

  “One hundred thousand pounds,” he said.

  “Preposterous,” said Rawson. “I want his name, not his family estate.”

  “How funny. Humor in business is always a good thing. A good thing. Next to health it is the most important thing in life, yes?”

  Gruenwald rested his chubby hands in front of him, on the small unoccupied triangle of his plastic-covered desk. If this was the wonderful world of major gems that Artie was not supposed to understand, he was disappointed with Feldman. He would bet the man was a petty crook, and yet look at Feldman’s office. It was so bare it looked abandoned. So who knew?

  Gruenwald made a counteroffer of fifty thousand pounds and refused to budge from it, but promised to get back to Rawson within a day. Rawson gave him the number of the Hotel Crillon and their room. As a special treat, Rawson announced that he had arranged for Artie to experience a thousand-dollar-a-night cour
tesan, under the theory that just because they were doing business on the Continent did not mean they had to suffer under the worst campaign conditions. Artie could understand that philosophy.

  “Well, what do you think of Mr. Gruenwald?” This from Rawson on the short flight back to Paris.

  “He’d sell anything. Right now, he’s conducting an auction on that seller’s identity. Too bad everybody is so damned blasé about stolen merchandise here or we could get a tap on his phone.”

  “Do you think he’s phoning the seller right away?”

  “As soon as he made sure we weren’t listening in at the office door,” said Artie.

  “I think so, too,” said Rawson.

  “So what are you after, Harry? You’re not after the diamonds, because you were ready to trade rights to them away, according to Miss Andrews. You’re not after the sapphire, I suspect, because you acknowledged it as the Jennings, so what are you after? I mean pieces of this thing are coming off, and you let ’em go. So the cellar doesn’t exist anymore, we know that. You’re not getting the gold because it’s more liquid than a dollar bill—I mean I can spend that gold anywhere in the world—so what are you after, Harry?”

  “Very good question, and quite astute.”

  “Not astute. Jesus, it’s obvious. You gonna kill the guy who stole it or something?”

  “Not at all, Artie. I am after whatever I can get of it, from the great ruby to the poorish bowl.”

  “And what if you get nothing?”

  “A thousand-dollar lady of the night and the Hotel Crillon along the way is not nothing. This is not hard duty.”

  “You could do that sitting in London,” said Artie.

  “I suppose. But I’m not, Artie. I am of that mad British race, shrew and shrimp breeders, butterfly chasers, mountain climbers, and the glorious ninnies who gave us Balaclava.”

  Harry arranged the thousand-dollar ladies of the night through the concierge of the hotel, who welcomed him back, leading Artie to believe Harry had been here before. What puzzled him was why a man so suave, so well-tailored, so good-looking, would use a hooker.