Michelangelo_s Notebook fr-1

by Paul Christopher

  Taschen himself was slim, well-dressed in a white-on-white open-collared silk shirt and tailored jeans, his feet pushed into a pair of expensive loafers, no socks. The watch on his wrist was plain stainless steel; he wore no other jewelry. The man appeared to be in his fifties, dark-haired with a smear of gray at each temple. He was clean shaven, his face unlined. When he met Valentine at the door he was wearing red-framed reading glasses and holding a section of the New York Times. He led Valentine into the living room, sat him down on a butter-leather, not quite new sofa and dropped into a matching armchair with a glass-topped coffee table between them.

  “You collect sixties and seventies,” said Valentine, looking over Taschen’s shoulder at the huge Lichtenstein. The canvas showed a sofa and a chair not unlike the one the man was sitting in. Some kind of small joke; an art collector’s pun. Taschen shrugged, then cleared his throat.

  “She left the web, she left the loom,

  She made three paces thro’ the room,

  She saw the water-lily bloom,

  She saw the helmet and the plume,

  She look’d down to Camelot.

  Out flew the web and floated wide;

  The mirror crack’d from side to side;

  ‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried

  The Lady of Shalott.”

  He grinned. “You live with William Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones and all the rest for the better part of ten years, you want to put anything else but on the walls.”

  You still work as a curator?”

  “Still?” said Taschen. “Is that some reference to the Parker-Hale?”

  “Peter called you?”

  “I wouldn’t have seen you otherwise. I’ve dealt with the Newman Gallery for a long time. He told me you were interested in stolen art-war plunder.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what?”

  “George Gatty.”

  “It amounts to the same thing. Gatty bought and sold stolen art; everyone knew that.”

  “What’s the relationship to the Parker-Hale, or is there one?”

  “Sandy bought and sold from Gatty.”

  “Sandy-meaning Alexander Crawley?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were colleagues.”

  “Contemporaries, yes.”

  “As I understand it you were in line for Cornwall’s post, but Crawley finessed you.”

  “Finesse isn’t a word I’d use. Slander is more like it.”

  “You resigned.”

  “It was the classic case of resign before you’re fired.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “None. Fabricated. According to Sandy my relationship with James Cornwall was… unsavory.”

  “So he was slandering Cornwall as well?”

  “Something like that. Most people knew James was gay but no one really cared. On the other hand, having a sexual relationship with the director was seen as too delicate, for public relations reasons.”

  “This was Crawley’s reasoning?”

  “The reasoning he used with the board of directors.”

  “Was it true?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me, but as the lawyers say, It goes to motive.”

  “Whose?”

  “Whoever killed him.” Valentine paused. “I assume the police saw you as a suspect.”

  “Sure.” Taschen smiled. He got up and went to a small, black-lacquered, Art Deco-style wet bar at the far end of the room. “Get you something?”

  “No, thanks,” answered Valentine. Taschen mixed himself a Scotch on the rocks and came back to his seat. He sipped the drink slowly, not speaking, looking out through the large window that faced the park. The set of his jaw was tense and Valentine could see the strain showing around his eyes. A lot of restrained anger.

  “I had an alibi,” said the man. He smiled tightly. “I was in Prague on a buying trip.”

  “Buying trip?”

  “I work as a private consultant for collectors, corporations, foundations, that sort of thing. There’s a lot of interest now in eastern European avant-garde art from between the wars. Alois Bilek, Karel Teige, Capek’s set designs-he’s the man who invented the term ‘robot’-people like that. Collectible but not prohibitively expensive.”

  “A long way from Burne-Jones and the Lady of Shalott.”

  “People change. So do tastes.”

  “And circumstances.”

  “Peter Newman told me who you are, Mr. Valentine, or should I call you Doctor? You’ve got more than one PhD, as I understand it. You know that the art on my walls is outside the means of most people, as is this apartment. I didn’t need the job at the Parker-Hale but I wanted it, and I deserved it. Being born wealthy doesn’t make you ineligible for academic scholarship.” Taschen frowned. “I’m no trust-fund dilettante.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that you were.”

  “Then what were you suggesting?”

  “Nothing. But I would like to know the reason for Crawley’s evident dislike of you.”

  “It wasn’t personal. There was no reason for it to be. Sandy was part of a ring; James Cornwall knew it and wouldn’t have suggested Sandy for the job of director for all the tea in China.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why he went after you like that.”

  “Sandy was making money from deaccessioning particular works from the permanent collection and giving particular dealers first crack at them. Kickbacks. A lot of galleries do it, but they’re usually more discreet. I had proof of what Sandy was up to. By discrediting me he discredited anything I had to say against him.”

  “As I understand the timeline of events, Cornwall appointed Crawley while you were still at the gallery. Why?”

  Taschen shrugged simply. “Because Sandy was blackmailing him.”

  “You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

  “I am. James told me. He showed me a letter Sandy had sent him stating the situation. He was left without any choice.”

  “So who do you think killed Crawley?”

  “I have no idea. He had some unsavory friends. I know that much.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “Deiter Trost at the Hoffman Gallery for one. Mark Taggart at the Grange Foundation for another. You’ve already mentioned George Gatty-a man James Cornwall loathed, by the way.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not entirely sure other than the fact that the colonel is a particularly odious human being without a shred of morality. I think there was some connection to the war.”

  “Gatty worked for G2 in Switzerland. Intelligence.”

  “So did James Cornwall. Not in Switzerland, but he was in the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives division of the OSS. The art-looting people.”

  “A tangled web,” said Valentine. “But it still doesn’t explain why Cornwall appointed Crawley to succeed him. You said you saw a letter.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Saying that Sandy was aware of James’s involvement in some sort of secret club and if he wasn’t appointed to the director’s position he’d have no choice but to go to the press.”

  “And you assumed it had something to do with Cornwall’s sexual history?”

  “It must have. What else could it have been?”

  “Cornwall didn’t tell you?”

  “No. And I didn’t ask.”

  “Did this club have a name?”

  “Yes. The Carduss Club.”

  Valentine frowned. “Latin for thistle.”

  “I know,” said Taschen. “Strange name for a gay sex club. Sounded more like a college frat.”

  “Did he tell you anything about the group?”

  “Not a word,” Taschen answered, shaking his head. “Not a single word.”

  A telephone purred somewhere in the back of the apartment. Taschen took a last swallow from his drink, put the glass down on the coffee table and rose to his feet. He left the room, not in any hurry, and
disappeared. The ringing stopped and Valentine was vaguely aware of the sound of the art consultant’s muffled voice.

  Valentine stood up and went to examine the crusty Schnabel on the wall. It showed a vaguely Ethiopian figure against a mountain background with a skull off to one side. The bottom half of the painting was full of broken crockery. He’d never much liked Schnabel’s work and this piece wasn’t changing his opinion very much. The broken plates always reminded him of Zorba the Greek. On the other hand, the artist had made his reputation on the basis of the idiotic potsherds. Obscurity as art.

  He turned as Taschen came back into the room. “That was Peter Newman.”

  “Yes?”

  “He knew you were coming here. He thought you should know. He just heard it on the news.”

  “Heard what?”

  Taschen let out a long breath. “George Gatty. He’s been murdered. Someone ran him through with a Nazi ceremonial sword.”

  35

  Lieutenant Vincent Delaney of the chief’s Special Action Squad stood in the middle of Colonel George Gatty’s living room staring at the body, spitted like a side of beef on the brown leather couch. Whoever’d done the ugly old man in had really outdone himself. According to Assistant M.E. Bandar Singh, twenty-three inches of cold steel had been shoved down the old man’s throat, the point poking through his perineum, which meant it had come out somewhere between his withered old nuts and his puckered asshole.

  Putkin the criminalist said that accounted for the smell; on the way through the razor sharp sword had sliced through half a dozen major organs, the stomach wall and both intestines. They knew it was a Nazi sword because of the big swastika between the talons of the silver eagle that made up the hilt. The worst part of it was that everything was there to see. Gatty had been murdered in his dressing gown and every inch of his old wizened body was splayed out in public. Flashbulbs popped as Putkin and his cronies measured and tested. A fucking Hollywood premiere for the dead.

  Billy Boyd came rolling up to him, notebook clutched in his beefy hand. “So I guess this fits with the other one?”

  “And the call we got from Deputy Dawg in Alabama.” Delaney shook his head. “I never knew Alabama even had a coastline.”

  “Me neither,” said Boyd. “I thought it was, you know, landlocked.”

  “Not that it has anything to do with the dead guy.”

  “This one?”

  “The one in Alabama.”

  “But there’s got to be a connection, right?” Boyd didn’t seem too sure.

  “Art creep gets a knife shoved down his throat on Fifth Avenue, the guy in Alabama is some kind of big-time art collector and gets stabbed with an Absolut bottle and the colonel here gets taken out by some kind of Nazi Vlad the Impaler? Yeah, Billy, I’d say there’s just the tiniest chance of a connection.”

  “Who’s Vlad the Impaler?”

  “A guy on Wide World of Wrestling.” Delaney sighed. “Go talk to Singh, Billy. Get me a time of death if you can.”

  “Sure, Loo.”

  Delaney didn’t really need the confirmation. From the way he was dressed it was obvious he’d been in bed or on his way when he’d been killed, which made the TOD sometime last night. The man’s butler, a man named Bertram Throens had an apartment in the basement with his wife, the colonel’s cook, and neither one of them had heard anything out of line.

  Like with Crawley, the guy from the museum, there were going to be lots of suspects. In the museum guy’s case there were about five hundred of them at the reception being held on the main floor and by the looks of things here the colonel’s late-night caller had probably come with the supposed intention of selling the old man the sword that was used to kill him.

  They’d already found the leather-bound, silk-lined presentation case in the front hall. Delaney knew about as much German as he did Gaelic but the names Rommel and Adolf Hitler had jumped out at him. At a guess, the detective assumed there would have been real money involved, and real interest on the part of the colonel. By the look of the house he was a serious collector, so maybe seeing people late at night in his bathrobe wouldn’t have been that much out of the ordinary. Interviewing the Swiss butler had led him to the same conclusion: the colonel often had late-night visitors.

  Delaney sighed and tried not to breathe too deeply as the meat wagon boys lifted the body onto a snap-down morgue gurney. The real question nibbling away at the edge of his thoughts was the strange connection between all of this and the beautiful redhead that seemed to be at the center of events. And that led to the even bigger question-Just what had happened to Fiona Ryan, and where exactly was she?

  36

  They began moving out of the camp with the last of the night. The moon had set long ago and tattered clouds shifted from the north, fading the dim light from the stars. Most of the men except Reid and the sergeant were city boys; the depth of the darkness still spooked them. That velvet night was like something otherworldly, too close to the shadow of death that always hung looming in the back of their thoughts each and every moment of each and every day.

  They moved through the woods quietly, keeping to the paths, pausing at the small depressed clearing that marked the fork of the trails. The men split into two groups there. Winetka, Bosnic, Biearsto and Terhune, armed with the bazooka and the two-inch mortar, took the south path leading to the road by the sniper’s tower. The rest, with the sergeant bird dogging the artsy officer types, headed for the burnt-out old tank at the top of the rise.

  The plan the sergeant had put to Cornwall was a simple one. Their raggedy little group was made from the remains of a 2nd Ranger Battalion from the Normandy invasion. They’d inherited most of a company’s worth of ordnance. Terhune and Biearsto would take out the sniper and his tower with the bazooka while Winetka and Bosnic would use the two-inch mortar to lay down covering fire over the main entrance. When the sergeant heard the first bazooka round being laid down he’d open up with the twin 7.92mm machine guns, softening the flank for the squad made up of Patterson, Dorm, Teitelbaum and Pixie Mortimer, led by Reid and followed by the three officers. If necessary, the sergeant could also provide covering fire if they had to retreat, which he doubted would happen. As well as the bazooka and the two-inch mortar, Teitelbaum and Dorm made up gunner and assistant for the Browning Automatic Rifle. The others carried an assortment of relatively heavy weapons including a couple of Thompsons, a Johnson light machine gun, an M3 grease gun and Patterson’s beloved Pah-pah-shah 71-round Russian machine gun: more ordnance by far than the Krauts in the farmhouse were likely to have.

  The sergeant led his group north through the thinning trees, stopping finally within sight of the ditch. Taking Reid with him again, he scrabbled out to the old Panzer for a final reconnaissance of the farm. It was false dawn, a bare sheen of dull lightness on the eastern horizon. There was no light at all from the farmhouse or any of the outbuildings. Swinging his binoculars around to the abbey tower he looked for the slightest flicker from the sniper’s position. The sergeant gauged the distance between the tower and his own position. A good five football fields, but nothing for a talented rifleman with one of those zs4 scopes on a Krag or even a 43. He figured it would take them the better part of two minutes for his bunch to get down to the side wall of the farmhouse with no real cover in between except a few depressions and one big boulder. Jeez, the sniper could take them all out with ease.

  “You better take the cocksucker like I told you,” muttered the sergeant.

  “You say something?” Reid asked.

  “No. What about Cornwall and his pals?”

  “They know enough to stay back until we open things up.”

  “Good. I figure two minutes to get down to the wall. See the boulder?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Keep everybody left of that on the way down. I won’t traverse the guns on the tank any farther than that.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “I’ll stop firing when you reach the wall. Hit it with a couple
of those potato mashers you took off that Jerry a few days ago. Open up a hole.”

  “We take the place?”

  “Not unless Terhune and the others have softened them up, and not until you’re sure the sniper’s out of it. He’s the key. He manages to get out of the tower and find some other spot we are uckfayed. Understand?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right. I’m going to load the belts into the gun now. At six on the dot-that’s ten minutes-we should hear Terhune and Winetka opening up. When you go in send Teitelbaum and Dorm on point with the BAR, maybe get them in one of those depressions. Then Patterson with that Russian gun of his, then you and the rest. The loos still got their Thompsons?”

  “Cornwall’s got a great gun.”

  “Probably blow you all away the first time they fire. Christ. Who came up with the idea of giving officers weapons?”

  “Not me.”

  “Get going.”

  “Right.”

  Reid slipped away into the darkness and the sergeant snaked his way up to the open turret of the abandoned German tank and slithered inside. Trying to be as quiet as possible, he began feeding the long belts of ammunition into the twin machine guns. The rounds had different colored tips, so they were probably a mixture of tracer, ball and incendiary, just like their American counterparts, but it would have been nice to know which was which. It took him less than two minutes to load both guns with 250-round belts. He peeked out through the gradually brightening slot in the turret. He glanced at his watch; all hell was going to break loose out there in about five minutes. He grinned. The sergeant could hardly wait.