by Julie Smith
“Do you?”
“No. My turn again. Why the hell did you think that?”
“Because your name was found in the home of the previous owner— who we think sometimes used the name Sarah Williams.” I paused. “But who was strangled to death a few days ago.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
I shook my head, looking very grave.
“Who was she?”
“Beverly Alexander.”
“Who the hell’s that?” Good. He’d denied knowing her without my having to ask him about her— I’d saved a question.
“A flight attendant for a small airline called Trans-America.”
“Never heard of it. How the hell did she get my name?” He was shaking his head with every evidence of genuine wonderment.
“We were wondering that too.”
“It’s my turn,” said Sardis. “Do you know a Linda McCormick? At the Bancroft Library?”
“The Bancroft Library.” He was looking pensive, trying to remember. “Yeah. Sure. The Bancroft Library. She’s the gal I talked to.”
“About what?”
“My turn, remember? Listen, I’ll stop this whole stupid charade and tell you everything I know, if you’ll just answer one thing straight: Who the hell are you guys and what are you up to?”
Sardis spoke quickly. “I’m an artist. I mean, I paint.” She shrugged, and I knew the pain behind the simple gesture. “But one doesn’t make a living from that. So I work part-time for a manuscript dealer— a very important dealer in another state. What we’re doing here, frankly, is we’re looking for a manuscript we lost.”
“It was stolen?”
“I’m afraid so.” (At least that part was true.)
Wolf turned to Crusher. “What’s your story?”
“I work for Union American National.”
“Wait a minute! Donald Wilcox, right? You’re a vice-president.”
“Have we met somewhere?”
“No, but my brother works with you. Dan Wolf. Know him?”
Crusher nodded.
“He tells stories about you all the time. You’re a pilot, right?”
“I think we mentioned that.”
“How about you, Paul? Private dick, right?”
“Close.”
“Oh, hell, never mind. This is a pleasure. Donald Wilcox! Dan says you’d rather fly than eat or sleep.”
Crusher looked at me reproachfully.
“Well, all right, then! All right! Now that I know you’re legit, I’ve got a real treat in store for you— and I don’t mean the duck salad. But I almost forgot. Just one thing. Do any of you have an I.D.?” Crusher and I pulled out our driver’s licenses.
“Sarah,” I said, as if I were the hired dick speaking for the client, “wishes to remain incognito.” Wolf nodded absently— all he really wanted to know was whether Crusher’s first name was really Donald.
“Okay,” I said, assuming control now that I was officially the dick on the case, “let’s pool our information. Herb, you said you talked to Linda McCormick at the Bancroft Library. May I ask what about?”
“Mark Twain, of course. The Bancroft is the highest authority, and that’s where I always go— straight to the top. I wanted the Huck Finn manuscript, so I called them to find out where it was. Linda said part of it was lost, and the rest was in the Buffalo Library, which probably wouldn’t sell it no matter what I offered. I said everybody had their price, and I’d send her a case of champagne when I got it.”
“However,” I said, “they wouldn’t sell, I take it.”
“They got their price— everybody does. But they weren’t ready to negotiate. So I put the word out I wanted something really special— not anything ordinary— but something really hot in the Mark Twain line.”
“Put the word out to whom?”
“I got agents— lots of them. They work through dealers, I guess. Whoever.”
Suddenly I had a brainstorm. “How about Rick Debay?”
“Who’s he? A dealer?”
I nodded.
“Never heard of him. But if he’s big enough, somebody probably talked to him— I told ’em to make blanket inquiries.”
“What did you have in mind, exactly? I mean, after you couldn’t get Huck?”
“I didn’t know, to tell you the truth. But— you’re not going to believe this— I wasn’t surprised when that ‘lost’ manuscript turned up. Not at all.”
“You weren’t?”
“I’ll tell you something, Paul. You do what I do, you find out a lot of things— one of them’s that everyone’s got his price and another’s this: an awful lot of ‘lost’ things aren’t missing. They’re somewhere. And they turn up eventually, if you know how to ask. You know what I mean?”
“Not exactly. I don’t even know what you do. I thought you were a movie producer.”
“Oh, that. That’s like Sarah working for that dealer. Sure, I make movies— a man’s got to live, right? But that’s not what I do.”
“Do you mind if I ask what exactly it is that you do?”
“Not at all. I’m gonna show you. And I’ll tell you something you’re not gonna believe. You’re not ever going to be the same again.”
CHAPTER 14
Wolf grew ever more expansive under the influence of the wine, of which we had quite a bit before his wife had picked their daughter up from gymnastics. (All but Crusher, that is— he was driving.) When at last we staggered down the handsome stairway, he waxed positively sentimental: “You know, you’re probably three of the only people who’ve ever been in this house that can really appreciate it.”
“It’s wonderful,” said Sardis. “A Greene and Greene, isn’t it?”
“See? You know your stuff. I restored it from a junkpile.”
It looked like a museum and to my mind was about as comfortable. Some say the work of the brothers Greene is the ultimate expression of the American Craftsman movement in architecture, and Wolf’s house was a spectacular example— absolutely top of the line. The cavernous living room showed off a lot of handsome dark wood and what looked like the original stained-glass lanterns for which the Greenes were so highly renowned.
Along one wall were tiny-paned casement windows, the dark wood of the lattice pattern barely letting any light in. Underneath was a built-in window seat. On a far wall was a built-in sideboard. The walls were painted a color I could only call avocado.
“You shoulda seen this place,” cried Wolf. “The previous owners did it up French Provincial. Can you beat that? But the contractor must have been sick about it. He just covered the walls with canvas and papered over with some flowered stuff. So when we took the paper off, we could see the original colors.”
God! Had the brothers chosen the avocado? It blended beautifully with the dark wood— at night the room was probably sensational— but now it made me feel as if I were inside an uncommonly stifling closet. The fireplace, however, was spectacular (“the original Grueby tiles”). In front of it was an arrangement of Stickley furniture the very sight of which could send you howling to a chiropractor— what passed, in the Craftsman tradition, for an armchair (oh, well, it did have arms), a Morris chair, and facing the two chairs a settle boasting all the graceful abandon and hedonistic comfort of a church pew. Wolf could, of course, have filled it with deep pillows, but that wouldn’t have been traditional, and of course he hadn’t done it. The two pillows it did have, plus the rug and the long scarf on the library table behind the settle, had been painstakingly reproduced from a Stickley catalogue, Wolf told us.
The dining room, on the other hand, was a surprise, the table and chairs a good deal less severe, more graceful even, than the Stickley stuff. “Greene and Greene,” noted the proud owner. “Maybe you didn’t know they made furniture.”
“I’m starting to figure out,” said Crusher, “that if they did, you’d know where to find it.”
Wolf actually clapped him on the back. “Crusher! That’s my boy!”
Cynt
hia and Samantha were already seated. I’d half expected Cynthia to have a Mayflower pedigree, which would be recited to us, generation by generation, over the duck salad. She’d be blonde and sturdy, I thought, with the kind of foot-long face they grow in Massachusetts. Maiden name Cunningham. Rosy-cheeked and cheerful.
In fact, she looked like a nice girl from the Central Valley— sturdy, rosy, and cheerful, yes, but brown-haired and unmistakably middle class. Samantha’s hair was crinkly, almost wiry, like Wolf’s, and pulled back in a ponytail. She was thin and graceful, in a kidlike way, but a little awkward too. She must have been about eight, and seemed pleasant enough for a young person.
Wolf’s whole manner changed with his wife and child. The bombast disappeared, the seemingly constant need to dominate. He seemed relaxed— tender, Sardis said later, and it came close to being true.
For several courses, we heard quite a lot about Samantha’s gymnastics, Samantha’s ballet, Samantha’s French, Samantha’s summer camp, and Samantha’s very special private school. Wolf asked her a lot of questions about her progress (excellent, naturally), which she answered obediently and with a minimum of smugness. When he’d finally had his fill of the world’s chief wonder, he put a hand on the back of her head, squeezed as one would a melon, and told her she could be excused. She was out of there like a shot, off no doubt to pull the legs off some beetles or Cabbage Patch Kids. I figured a kid with a dad as pushy as this one had to release tension somehow.
“Isn’t she something, though?” asked Papa Dearest. Rhetorically, of course. “You know, I come from a good family. Perfectly good family.” Pinkie passed around Cuban cigars. “But we didn’t have class.” He looked at Crusher. “Oh, sure, Dan works over at Union American, but tell me something— has he got any class?”
Crusher looked mightily uncomfortable, but I couldn’t tell if he really thought Dan had no class, or was embarrassed for him on his brother’s account.
Wolf didn’t wait for an answer. “My daughter’s got more class in her little finger than the rest of her family put together. Except for Cynthia, I mean. When she was born, I said to myself, ‘I might not have class, but my daughter’s going to.’ She’s going to the best schools, eating the best food, staying at the best hotels, riding in the best cars if I have a goddam thing to say about it. And she’s going to be surrounded by class. And beauty. And literature. And things no kid her age ever saw before. Cultural stuff, you know what I mean? The best of everything. The greatest. And it’s not so she’ll grow up to be president or anything like that. I don’t care if she never lifts a finger in her life. I just want her to grow up to know she’s the greatest, that’s all. Look at this house— it’s like a museum. Do you see this in Malibu? Ha! And you don’t know the half of it.”
Cynthia smiled, a little tightly I thought. “Excuse me, will you?” I got the impression this stuff wasn’t exactly new to her.
“You know what’s upstairs?”
We shook our heads.
“Another museum. This house, it’s a museum in itself, but I got another one— a sweet little gem of a museum. Kind of a museum within a museum, you get me?”
Oh, no. Dear God, not another museum. I’d had enough wax tableaux for a decade.
“You want to know what I do? I’ll show you what I do. I’m gonna show you something fewer than a hundred people have ever seen— I’m gonna show you Herb Wolf’s Museum of the Greatest. You ready for this?”
It looked like a ballroom, and also a little like a rummage sale. Odd things were hung on the walls. Others were displayed on specially built pedestals. There were photographs, but no paintings. You couldn’t say there wasn’t art, though. Some of the objects were undoubtedly art— priceless art. And some were old clothes. Like a pair of shoes on a white pedestal.
Our host began the tour with these: “Know whose shoes those were? Ty Cobb’s.”
“Gosh,” said Sardis, obviously trying to figure out what the point was.
“I couldn’t get Black Betsy— or at least I haven’t got her yet. Know what that is, Miss Williams? That’s Babe Ruth’s bat, which is currently— temporarily, I like to think— in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But I, Herb Wolf, have Ty Cobb’s shoes. Ty Cobb, you see, was the greatest average hitter of all time.”
“But—”
“I’m getting to why the shoes. He was an ornery guy, you know what I mean? He used to sharpen his spikes, so they’d hurt when he slid into base and hit somebody. See that?” He turned over one of the shoes.
“Up there— look. That’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s cape.” Next to the cape was a picture of the architect wearing it.
“Here’s one of the best pieces I have— just look at it. Recognize it?” It was a stunning piece of Aztec jewelry. “Montezuma’s. Not any old Indian’s— Montezuma’s.”
I said: “May I examine it?”
“Sure.” He handed it over as casually as if it were a cufflink. I had the same feeling, holding it, that I’d had with the manuscript. Tom Sawyer was right— it was something electric. Or was I nuts? But I couldn’t help it, I felt it. “Recognize it?” asked Wolf.
“It certainly looks like something I’ve seen before.”
“Maybe you get the idea why I keep Pinkie. There’s a couple of governments want that thing— and they aren’t the only ones. Some of this other stuff’s the same— not as famous, maybe, passed from collector to collector, some of it absolutely unknown to the general public— but priceless. Beyond price. You gotta be real discreet buying this kind of stuff. Some of it you have to negotiate, maybe years, with people’s estates and heirs, and different museums and things. And sometimes servants, museum guards, people like that— do you get my drift? Everybody has a price.”
Crusher stared up at a crummy-looking old jacket. “What’s that? It looks like a flight jacket.”
“Yeah. It’s Amelia Earhart’s. See her picture? It’s the first one she ever had— made out of patent leather, of all things. It looked too new so she slept in it for three nights to bang it up. She paid twenty dollars for it. I’m not gonna mention what it cost me. See this here? It’s de Lesseps’s transit— the one he used on the Suez Canal. Do you believe that? You better, baby. It’s genuine. And that thing. Look at it.”
I picked it up and fondled it. “Very nice. It looks like a bit of scrimshaw.”
“It’s scrimshaw, all right. From Moby Dick.”
“But Moby Dick didn’t—”
“Didn’t exist. Sure. Right. But Melville based him on a real whale— the one this came from. He used to hold that scrimshaw while he wrote— used to fondle it just like you’re doing now, and think of him out there.”
“Gee.”
“I’ve got stuff you just won’t believe— look— George Washington’s wooden teeth, Sarah Bernhardt’s wooden leg, Lassie’s collar— look at that a minute. Kind of an anomaly, huh? You notice I don’t have one thing from movies in here. It doesn’t belong in a museum of the greatest; it’s not culture. But I got a weakness for dogs, and Lassie was the greatest. I named my own dog after her, didn’t I? The dog my only daughter plays with. Not Rin Tin Tin. Lassie. There’s more books about her. Look— Buffalo Bill’s rifle, Galileo’s telescope, Martin Luther King’s Bible. But you don’t see any paintings, do you? Know why? The Mona Lisa’s not for sale. Not yet, anyhow. And you don’t see a manuscript. Now, I’ve got something in the next room’s going to knock your eyes out, but it’s not a manuscript. I want the greatest, that’s why. Only the greatest. I want Huck Finn. The greatest American novel.”
“You don’t like Moby Dick?”
“It’s not available. I would kind of like something by Faulkner, though. Or Pamela Temby.”
“Pamela Temby?”
“Why not Pamela Temby? The best-selling author of all time? Yeah, Pamela Temby. This is no snob museum. This is a museum of greatness.”
“Gosh,” said Sardis again.
“When I get Huckleberry Finn, it’s going in a special room. It’s
only got three things in it. You ready?”
We went through a heavily secured door into a kind of vault. As advertised, it contained three things, each on its own pedestal. Very beautifully displayed were a small knife, a miniature statue, and a golf ball. The statue looked like a tiny replica of Michelangelo’s David.
“That’s right— that’s David. You got it. The original David. That, Miss Williams and Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Mcdonald— that is the model Michelangelo used for David.” He paused and said “David” again; kind of whispered it, as if he couldn’t say it enough.
“And the knife?”
“Shakespeare’s. Shakespeare’s quill knife. Shakespeare’s! Do you realize he literally couldn’t have written without that thing? I’m on the trail of a manuscript, too, but it has to be the right one. I’ll get it— these things take time. But for now I have the knife.”
“You’d put Huck in here?”
“Absolutely. I think it’s that important.”
I pointed to the golf ball. “Sam Snead’s?”
His expression, his posture, everything about him, positively personified smug. “Alan Shepard’s.”
“You can’t mean—”
“I do. The one he hit on the moon.”
“But— that’s impossible.”
“It isn’t. I won’t tell you how I got it, or what I had to go through to get it, or how much I had to pay to get it. But I will tell you it isn’t impossible. I’ve got it. Mr. Herb Wolf. Touch it if you like.”
I did, and, as with the scrimshaw, experienced no thrill of electricity. Perhaps you had to want to believe.
“Did you happen to notice,” asked Sardis on the way home, “that he didn’t name it Samantha Wolf’s Museum of the Greatest?”
“You could hardly miss it, could you? How much of that stuff do you think is genuine?”
“Hardly any. Why?”
“I think most of it is. The Aztec thing I’m pretty sure about— I think I saw it in a museum a few years ago. And I figure he’s a pretty canny guy with pretty good sources. Probably most of it comes with a pretty good provenance. But some of it’s such obvious hokum. I can’t believe the guy’s so vulnerable.”