Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  Count Orofino Desini had visited Elizabeth at Greenwich and at Windsor and had described both in diaries, including “many strange and wondrous objects.” There were no diaries available in Britain, but the descendants still lived in Bologna and were generally friendly to anyone wishing to promote the Desini name. But the best news was that the count fancied himself an artist and sketched many things, particularly the unusual.

  “You stay there. You’ve done beautifully. I’ll phone the family,” said Claire. “Wonderful.”

  “And if they don’t speak English?” asked the researcher.

  “I’ll work out something. Thanks,” said Claire.

  She waited until morning to dial Bologna, and with a translator she had hired for the occasion, she made a search by phone for the Desini residences. She did not need the translator when she reached a niece of the Contessa Desini. Yes, as one of the most important families on the Continent, said the niece, the Desinis most certainly did archive their history.

  The niece knew of the Count Orofino Desini’s diaries.

  “He was, madame, possibly a consort of the queen herself, although being a gentleman he did not mention that in his diaries.”

  “I am interested in any mention of a large gold piece. It could be referred to as a saltcellar. It was heavily jeweled. Gold.”

  “A relic?”

  “No. An English piece. Big. Gold. A ruby. A sapphire. Diamonds. Jade. Lapis lazuli. Topaz chips and such.”

  “The Count Orofino?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you with a magazine?”

  “No. I am researching a big gold piece.”

  “For a book? You will include us in a book?”

  “I may write a book, yes,” said Claire, which was not altogether a lie, but not altogether the truth either. Because she also might become a professional golfer, and so far she didn’t really care for the game.

  “I will look,” said the niece.

  “He would have seen it at Windsor. It was called the Tilbury Cellar, though I am not sure it would have been called that then.”

  “Good. I will phone you back. The Count Orofino was greatly responsible for the development of Bologna. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t. I’m sure that’s important.”

  “To us, yes. Cheers.”

  “Ciao,” said Claire. Why was the woman using a British form of farewell? Why did Claire use Italian?

  Before 10:00 A.M., Claire found out that there was another record of the cellar made at Tilbury, viewed and sketched by Count Orofino Desini. But regrettably, the family did not allow copies to be made. These were private papers, and if Claire Andrews wished to read them, the Desinis would be more than happy to provide her a room in one of their residences for such. But a picture, no. And photocopy, definitely not. Photocopying cooked delicate old parchment with its harsh light, reverting it back to the unstretched shape of its original sheepskin.

  And unfortunately, there were few words to read over the telephone. The count had decided to leave the world and posterity not words, but a physical sketch of the cellar.

  “I’ll be right over,” said Claire to the lady in Bologna, Italy. When Artie asked what she wanted to do this weekend, she said she already had it planned for both of them.

  XXI

  And indeed, it is true, as the story of the Holy Grail testifies, that none ever saw him weary from the labors of his calling.

  —WALTER MAP

  Queste del Saint Graal, 1225

  Just before he left for Italy with Claire, Artie got the strangest phone call from Feldman. The first strange thing was that he phoned at all. Artie had been trying unsuccessfully to reach him for weeks. The second was that he gave a direct warning.

  “Watch yourself. You have no idea where you’re going or what you’re doing.”

  “Get your ruby yet, old man?” asked Artie.

  “Artie, do you know who everyone is?”

  “By everyone you mean who?”

  “You don’t know who. You don’t know what. You go running after your cock like it’s the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.”

  Artie signaled that he wanted the call traced and simultaneously pressed the switch that taped the conversation. He was in Frauds/Jewels.

  “You said we’d never find those gems. Well, we found them in New York. We found them in Paris. You know Paris, don’t you?”

  “I know you have no idea why that dead man even got the sapphire. I’m trying to tell you, schmuck. This is different and dangerous. All I can do is warn you.”

  “What are you warning me about, old man?”

  “Lady Jennings got the sapphire at a good price.”

  “You know her? She speaks to you?” asked Artie.

  “Young man, she does. She does not speak to Werner Gruenwald, and she does not speak to Dr. Peter Martins.”

  “What’s this with Dr. Peter Martins?” asked Artie. Dr. Martins had been one of the prizes longed for by Frauds/Jewels for years. It wasn’t the protection of his society friends that saved him; this former surgeon was always just slick enough to be beyond even being charged with anything. Yet Artie knew the man was a fence, even if his customers were in some kind of blue book. Since the first day of chasing the cellar, this was the only name he had recognized.

  “Dr. Martins is one of your people. He’s a gonif, Artie, and he was one of those buying the cellar from your girlie’s daddy, selling inside a bank vault. All those gems inside a damned bank vault.”

  “Her father was a businessman. He wasn’t a thief. No,” said Artie.

  “What’s this ‘no.’ He was selling the cellar from a bank vault to anyone for fast cash.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I love you, asshole,” said Feldman and hung up. Love? Artie was still trying to figure that out when he was told that the trace had Feldman in his office, but when Artie went up to Feldman’s business place, Feldman was not there, and no one had seen him there for weeks. Which, of course, was wrong. Feldman did move in mysterious ways, ways outside of Artie’s knowledge. Was Harry Rawson right about the blow into the head? Was it something that special? Dr. Martins, a surgeon, could have delivered that blow. And what did Feldman mean about love? Artie liked him. He knew he was possibly the only one who liked him. But they would go years without talking. Perhaps, thought Artie, in a life so bereft of human contact, Feldman mistook friendship for love. A cracker could look like a banquet to the starving. The more he knew about Feldman, the less Artie realized he had ever known him. Was he lying? Why bother to lie about that?

  And the killings?

  And there was Claire’s father.

  Artie went direct to the International Bank branch on Madison Avenue, where Claire had said her father had stored the cellar in New York. He had the access sign-in card pulled for evidence and dusted for fingerprints, along with comparisons of handwriting, specifically for Dr. Peter Martins. But Artie didn’t need prints or handwriting analysis to tell him what he really didn’t want to know about Vern Andrews. There were fifteen names. Vern Andrews had been selling the cellar from the vault. And ten of the fifteen names were James Smith, of which one checked out absolutely to Dr. Peter Martins, a known dealer in stolen gems on whom somebody someday was going to make a good first-time collar.

  Vern Andrews had gotten this large safety deposit box on short notice because his lawyer was a director of the Carney National Bank, which did business with International. The lawyer was named Comstock, and he acted very lawyerly over the phone, until Artie told him bluntly there was no way he was ever going to charge a dead man with selling hot goods. This was for the benefit of Vern’s daughter Claire.

  “Claire will not believe her father was anything but a saint. Now, of course, I would never admit to assisting someone selling hot goods. I didn’t know what the safety deposit box was for,” said Comstock.

  “I’m not looking for you either,” said Artie. “Look, you wouldn’t just happen to have anything tha
t might prove his ownership?”

  There was laughter from Carney, Ohio. Of course not. Every James Smith on that access card knew it was stolen. And so did Artie before he asked the question. And so, of course, did the man who wouldn’t trust the police or jewelry establishments for protection, Vern Andrews.

  Comstock went on: “I’ve known Vern and his family for years, and I respected Vern. But Vern would cut any corner he could. Just about everyone in Carney knows this except Claire. Is she all right?”

  “Yeah. She’s okay.”

  “Why are you calling now?”

  “Just checking out some names.”

  “Anything new happen regarding that cellar?” asked the lawyer.

  “No,” said Artie. So the story hadn’t gotten to Carney, interestingly enough. But then why should the guilty plea of a rabbi’s son and the torture death of a cutter over diamonds be important to Carney, Ohio, any more than a murder in Geneva would be news in New York City. The fact was, none of the newspapers had yet to connect them all.

  “Let me know if anything turns up, and whatever you do for Claire Andrews will be appreciated here, and let me tell you we know how to express our appreciation concretely.”

  For a flash of a moment, Artie wondered whether Carney, Ohio, might be more like Mordechai Baluzzian’s Tehran than New York. But only for a flash.

  So Artie knew what Claire didn’t want to believe was so, and not for one moment did he consider telling her about her father. In fact, he even resented the lawyer revealing that Andrews cut corners. Was Claire right when she contended that now that this once powerful man was dead, the envy came out in little slices of venom? The lawyer didn’t have to tell him about Vern Andrews and corners. Of course, it was Claire who was the only one who didn’t know, Claire the rational, Claire the conqueror of infinity and the wearing years of history, Claire the indomitable, Claire the lovely, Claire the sweet, Claire of the Cherry Cokes and frozen dinners and laughter, sweet and honest Claire. Your daddy was a crook.

  On the plane over to Italy, Claire sensed something was wrong and when she asked, and Artie answered that he loved her, she took it as an admission. And of course pressed on until she got an answer. So Artie came up with one.

  “I was worried about Feldman. He phoned a couple of days before we left,” said Artie. They were going to spend a weekend in Bologna and he was going to enjoy it, although the tourist class seats in the back of the plane were already pinching and they weren’t twenty minutes out of Kennedy. “He said because Lady Jennings got a good price on the sapphire, something was wrong with the people who sold it. I didn’t quite follow.”

  Claire put down her notes on her plaid skirt. She didn’t even have to think about it.

  “What he means by Lady Jennings getting a good price is that anyone she bought it from had to be selling it at the wrong price, and the one who sold it originally, the Swiss businessman, had to have sold it for the worst price of all. Which meant he wasn’t part of that business.”

  “So what’s wrong with that?” asked Artie.

  “For us, nothing. Although it could mean strange people were dealing in it. Crooks. Killers. People like that,” said Claire.

  “Oh,” said Artie. She was so sharp and she didn’t make the connection with her father.

  “Arthur, when we get back, could you reach Captain Rawson for me?”

  “Can I stay out of it?”

  “What do youmean by that?” asked Claire.

  “I’m in this too much. You know, it’s your search and Homicide’s problem, and you have a claim and Harry has a claim, and that’s for lawyers. I love you, Claire, and I don’t mix love well with work.”

  “I still don’t follow, Arthur. Is something else wrong?”

  “No,” said Artie and scrunched himself into a comfortable position in the tight seat and then went comfortably asleep to the droning rhythm of the jet engines crossing the Atlantic.

  Claire hated that in him. It was not that he could leave a problem by feigning sleep. She knew he really was asleep. He had done this before. She had awakened him before. It was like starting an argument with someone just getting out of bed. On the other hand, Claire would wrench every straw and fiber of a problem into orderly rows if it took till dawn. They were so different, she thought, loving his dark beautiful face asleep against the window, his arms folded over his chest, his mouth open, snoring. She got a blanket from the overhead bin and covered him. She would get him on this later.

  Artie awoke over the Atlantic for dinner.

  Claire, who had been trying to establish the British situation in 1588 for some explanation of the strange security procedures regarding that strangely jeweled cellar, said, “Why are you denying me help in my search?”

  “What?” asked Artie.

  “For some reason, you want out now. I asked you to phone someone you have access to, Captain Rawson. I want to set up a meeting with him. I have some very interesting questions.”

  “All right. I’ll phone when we get back,” said Artie, arranging his tray, noting they did not serve champagne on this economy flight as they did on the Concorde. “Do you want salt?”

  “I have it on my tray. You know what I mean,” said Claire.

  “We’re going to enjoy ourselves in Italy, aren’t we?”

  “As much as we can, of course. You know what I mean.”

  “The Concorde had great champagne.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Claire. She knew he could not sleep while he ate.

  “You want me to be as committed to this thing of yours as you are, and I’m not. I’m sorry.”

  “Committed, but not as committed, of course,” said Claire.

  “I’m committed to you, Claire Andrews,” said Artie. He wore an open-necked shirt that hinted at the large dark-haired chest he knew Claire liked to feel she owned. He kissed her on the cheek. The cheek did not move. The fork in Claire Andrews’s hand did not move. Nor did the very rigid spine.

  Artie went back to his appetizer, a warm creamy shrimp dish. He ate for a while, until Claire’s fork landed on his plate quite sharply.

  “No,” he said. “I am along for the ride because you’re taking it. I’m sorry. That’s who I am.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” said Claire.

  “Does that mean something?” asked Artie.

  “It means I’m sorry, but I’ll have to work out the rest. You know I have to think things through. But I suspect it just means I’m sorry, that’s all. I would have thought that by now you would have shared some of my enthusiasm.”

  “I am more in love with you than with anyone or anything in my life. Ever,” said Artie, and fixed his stare on her eyes. They refused to meet his.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Not all right,” he said angrily.

  “Wonderful,” she said, and turned to see him waiting for her and they kissed long and hard on the plane, and then they laughed together and ate their meal.

  It was a night flight to Bologna, and while Artie slept through it, Claire worked. He didn’t even awake for the landing and only when Claire nudged him did he look around for where he was.

  Claire was fresh as a white sunrise beach.

  “How do you do it?” asked Artie, when they were waiting for their luggage, and he had unsuccessfully tried to fall asleep while leaning against a post.

  “The trick is you don’t go to sleep. That’s how you get tired. Sleep makes you tired. That’s how I studied for exams. I’d stay up all night and go right in while I was fresh.”

  Claire, the sleepless. Even her plaid skirt remained pressed, and her light blue silk blouse, with the sweater tied around her neck, made it seem as though she was just up for the day, instead of having worked through the night into another time zone.

  Artie had kept his sports jacket in the luggage just to make sure it stayed fresh. He got a cab for them, and instead of going to their hotel, as he wished with the fervor of the sleep deprived, they met the Contessa i
n her home for breakfast.

  Signora Desini wore black, with an elegant strand of white pearls, and served them little cakes with sharp bitter coffee on her stone veranda. A butler was there to bring things. It was an intimate, pleasant little repast with a magnificent city laid out before them from this old villa that had once been a castle. Claire, so recently of Carney, Ohio, supposedly the wallflower, looked as though she had been born to breakfast with the nobility. Artie nodded politely, then dozed. Claire talked politics, four hundred-year-old politics.

  Signora Desini stressed that during Count Orofino’s time there were problems in England, deep religious problems, where politics and faith were one, and leaving the Church of Rome was only a small, small part spiritual. This all was to prepare them for viewing the diary of the count.

  It was kept in a room of its own in an air-controlled case, which had to be unlocked by inserting a brass key into a stainless steel tube at the side. There was a slight hiss with the air rushing in as Signora Desini turned the key. She lifted the heavy glass lid over the case and removed a leather-bound volume a good foot thick, its wavy yellow parchment pages pressed down by centuries.

  “Moisture is the enemy of parchment,” said Signora Desini and put the book onto a black wood table, on which light from tall, thin leaded glass windows shone pale and white in the cold stone room of the Desini archives.

  She opened the book for Claire, proudly, like a hostess showing off her favorite room and letting the guest enter first to get the full impact of its beauty.

  Claire touched the yellowed page tentatively. Signora Desini beamed. Artie sat down on a chair, excusing himself for sitting while the ladies stood.

  “I’m almost afraid to look,” said Claire.

  “The truth can be wonderful, too, sometimes,” said Signora Desini.

  Claire turned the pages very carefully, seeing the count’s sketches and writing, in the fine black ink of an artist’s pen. The soft stretch of old parchment in leather binding played against the silence encapsuled underneath the dark vaulted ceiling. The odor of old candle wax wafted into the walls over centuries came back again on this warm breezeless day among the silent stones.