A Paradise for Fools

by Nicholas Kilmer

Chapter Fifty-five

  Fred’s appointment with Constantino Zeldas was not until four o’clock. The lawyer’s office was in a new semi-brick, semi-colonial, totally incongruous building perched at the edge of yet another mall west of town. Across the hall was a dentist’s office. As instructed, Zeldas had found a way to get hold of Mary Zagoriski. She was already in the waiting room. She looked up, alarmed and expectant. “What…?”

  “I’ll hold off until we’re in the presence of your attorney,” Fred said. “Nothing bad. I like to know you have attorney-client privilege.”

  “There’s something happening,” Mary said. “I can’t believe. Constantino told me there’s an idea—Kenzo—that he—that Zag…”

  “Let’s wait,” Fred said. “As long as we’re waiting, let’s wait. How did it go yesterday?”

  “Purely awful,” Mary said. “Then after, I had to sleep in his house. It’s his house now. Not mine. He found a way to burn me out of there. Everything we ever—then that girl upstairs. But it’s true, what she said. In her note. She was upstairs. I will never understand…”

  They’d been put in an alcove off the entrance where a middle-aged woman dodged telephone calls while acting as receptionist for nobody more than Fred and Mary Zagoriski. In response to a buzz on her desk she motioned them to go past her into the office.

  Constantino Zeldas was a little round man about as tall when he rose to greet them as he had been when seated behind his desk. He beamed dangerously. “I might not say much,” he told Fred. “I am Mrs. Zagoriski’s attorney. Beyond that—you have something you’d like to say?”

  Arid little office with generic sailboat paintings on the walls, grimly haunted by motel cubism inspired by Marin and Feininger.

  Fred said, “I have a couple people in Boston I can talk to. They tell me I should be glad that Mary lucked into you. I’m Fred. What do I call you?”

  “Tino is good. Or counselor.”

  “We’ll start with Tino. If I begin to piss you off I’ll switch to counselor. I’m here thinking Mary’s team can use some help, which may include some legal elasticity. I want to talk in front of you, Tino, so that attorney-client privilege can apply if you can stretch it. But I’m guessing that doesn’t extend to what Mary might say to me, which doesn’t matter. It’s not me I’m protecting. More important, she needs a witness.

  “Mary had a thousand things to deal with yesterday, and more coming up. I’ll talk to you. Tino. If Mary overhears, what can I do?

  “Even with everything else going on, maybe Mary mentioned a painting yesterday. Wedding present from an uncle of Zagoriski’s. The painting got out of the house when the divorce was pending. Zag’s motto, ‘Whoever walks out, all bets are off,’ I’m guessing has weak legal standing. I don’t know law. I don’t even know what’s right. What I do know is what the situation is.

  “That painting. A pirate in New York, hoping to do much better, told Mary he’d give her twenty thousand dollars for if he liked it. By then she couldn’t put her hands on it. The murder in Cambridge that you’ve heard about, which I think involved Kenzo Petersen, killing a man who had worked with him—you know all this? Then I won’t repeat it. I know where the painting is.

  “Sorry. Better than that, I have it.”

  “Here?!!” Mary exclaimed.

  “Not on your life,” Fred said.

  Constantino stood and lowered. “You want to explain what you’re here for?”

  Fred said, “I have the painting safe. I’ll do whatever you want with it. That’s why I’m here. I have to tell you, Tino, this looks to me like an important picture. Really important. But I am no expert. Mary has already been jerked around and this has to sound like a continuation of the jerk-around. I can’t help it. The art business is worse than law or finance, because fewer people understand it and the ones who do don’t talk turkey.

  “Now I want to go carefully, and I want four ears to be listening. If I am right, the painting is by Hieronymus Bosch, and done five hundred years back. If I am right, if Mary wants to sell it some day, I have no doubt it’s worth between half a million and, I don’t know, maybe five million dollars. Money’s not what I’m good at. You don’t want my opinion on value.”

  Mary’s face had turned white. Tino’s was a complementary crimson.

  “What I want to do,” Fred said, “is give you a receipt for it so there’s a paper trail in Mary’s file. I came by it honestly, even, you could say, lucked into it. With your permission I’d like to move it from where it is to the place where I work, where it can disappear among some other paintings or, better, if he agrees, into the vault of my employer, who is a collector of paintings. Still, with whatever receipts you want.

  “My thinking being that, until these present disturbances are worked out and the fallout from Zagoriski’s death has settled—not my business, but did Zagoriski get around to changing his will?—until such time as the coast is clear, a year or two down the road maybe. Unless she’s lucky there will be trials, conflicting claims, conflicting witnesses…”

  “Mary and I will discuss this,” Tino said, “and let you know. Continue.”

  Fred said, “You don’t want to have your sheep cared for by wolves. So the choice isn’t easy.”

  “God!” Mary said. “Half a million? I can’t afford that! How do I insure…”

  “Insure it the same way you did before, is my advice,” Fred said. “I didn’t put the painting in my car, for one reason because I’m being interviewed simultaneously by the police in both Cambridge and Nashua. Also I don’t like to park on the street with that thing in my trunk. All this heat. Rattling around. Not that anybody’s going to steal my car. Still…And second, I don’t think you want it in Nashua while all this other stuff is pending. Certainly not in that house. That house is going to be empty, it’s going to be put up for sale…”

  “But I never liked that picture,” Mary Zagoriski protested. “The one thing I know, it’s not going to Orono. That’s for damned sure.”

  Tino reminded her, “We’ll discuss this, Mary. Fred makes some good points. Our own conversation is protected only between us. Fred, is there something else we should know?”

  “The art world is full of pirates,” Fred said. “You don’t know me, but talk with the people I talked with about you.” He handed Tino a sheet with names and addresses. “I haven’t cleared this with the man I work for. He’s out of the country. What I’m suggesting, counselor…”

  “I’m going to talk with my client,” Tino said. “And it’s still Tino.”

  Fred cooled his heels in the alcove waiting room. He might have napped but for the interesting display made by the receptionist. He had seldom seen, in a person with so little to do, anyone keep so busy. She managed to do it without getting up from her chair. She did her nails twice. She rearranged the papers on her desk. Three times. She wrote a memorandum on a Post-it note and adhered it to the outside of an envelope, considered its placement, and changed it. She answered the telephone, accomplished another Post-it-note memorandum, and adhered that to something else. She was like an entire colony of ants rolled into a single ant.

  The telephone rang again. She picked up the receiver and listened. “I’ll put you through,” she said. “Please hold. A Detective Hamada,” she said in a more deferential manner into the phone. “For Mrs. Zagoriski, but he’ll speak with you.” She hung up, looked in Fred’s direction and began doing her nails.

  “I’m stepping out for a burger,” Fred told her.

  “I wouldn’t,” she said. “That is to say, I suggest you wait here. You go for a burger next door, in my experience, you’ll be going the next thirty-six hours at least.”

  The phone rang on her desk. “Go on in,” she told Fred.

  Tino spoke. “Mary likes your suggestion. I don’t. Mary’s spent time with you. I haven’t. I called these two people. Th
ey say you’re OK. I still don’t like your suggestion. Mary still does. The decision is Mary’s.”

  Mary smiled across the room.

  “We’ll write a receipt for the painting,” Tino said. “The wording will be tricky. I don’t want to see the thing. From my point of view, it’s hearsay, and nothing more. You’ll dictate the specifics since I’m in the dark. I do not know from art. You will send me a good photograph for my files. Later we’ll talk about getting an appraisal done. If we go that route. You will do nothing more without Mary’s written agreement.”

  “Except what you said,” Mary added. “Put it where you work, or in the vault. And later…”

  “The next item of business, I’ll mention before we get to the receipt. The Nashua police have tentatively confirmed an alibi for Kenzo Petersen, for the night of the hit and run. He was at a rally in Wolfboro, he and Stephanie both, the girl who works in the shop. They’re going to have to prove it, but that’s what Hamada believes. He’s confident enough it’s going to turn out that way, he called to tell us.”

  “Thank God,” Mary said. “I couldn’t see Kenzo…well, maybe I could, but I didn’t want to.”

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Fred was halfway to Boston before he whacked his forehead with the heel of his hand and muttered, “Shocks and struts!!”

  That throwaway line, in Kim’s equally throwaway voice.

  ***

  Shortly, standing in the building’s vestibule, Fred found the buzzer next to Ernest Weiner’s name, and pressed it. The day’s heat still reflected from the street and sidewalk, and roiled against the coolness from the surface of the river. Rumblings to the east suggested the possibility of rain later. A determined silence was the only response to the buzzer. He buzzed again, looking through the interior door’s plate glass into the lobby and stairwell until Kim showed up, descending the stairs in her chosen most casual summer outfit, next to nothing.

  “We didn’t want to take a chance.” She opened the door. “But all it is is you.” She called upstairs, “It’s only Fred,” and added, “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m coming up,” Fred said.

  “I’ll talk here.”

  “I spent most of the day in Nashua,” Fred said. “Want to make sure our stories match.” He started up. Kim, her choices limited, followed. “Did you ever get hold of Eva?” Fred asked.

  The question answered itself. Eva, with Arthur, stood in the doorway of Ernest Weiner’s apartment. Eva held a brown bottle of beer. Her dress was a loose T-shirt, black running shorts, and white sneakers. The crackling forces zipping around among the three of them, Arthur, Eva, and Kim, suggested recess during the negotiations over the fate of Jerusalem.

  “A reunion,” Fred said, pushing between them into the apartment. He looked around the living area, making not too much of a big deal about it. “Funny. I was sure I was going to see that painting finally. If you can manage, if you’ve got one to spare, I sure could use one of those beers.” He sprawled on the couch.

  Arthur said, “I can’t work. I can’t work here. I’ll have one too, Kim. They won’t let me have my tools. They won’t even let me in my own apartment. I should never of told the cops.”

  “You should never of been an asshole,” Kim said. “But as soon as you were born, Arthur, it was too late.” She strode into the kitchen. Eva took a seat at the other end of the couch. Arthur, too nervous to sit, shuffled around the room fiddling with fixtures.

  “I’m itching all over,” Eva complained.

  “Give it a couple more days. I might as well drink. The old guys, Kenzo, Flash, and them, they always say it doesn’t hurt, they can drink and drive at the same time. But you can see it, their work. Flash, he’d hold out his hands, ‘Look how steady they are,’ and they were. But steady is not what you want. Even and easy and moving steady, in control, always moving, in control of the line. That’s what you want.”

  “And Flash is dead. They’re steady now all right,” Eva said. “Neighborhood like that…”

  Kim came in with three bottles, saying, “I’m not washing glasses.”

  Whatever the beer was—Fred didn’t look—it was better than Old Brown Dog. Hoppier. Fred said, “I imagine you’ve been asking each other about the painting.” He let them exchange glares of mistrust. “That’s what it feels like to me. I don’t know if Eva ever had an interest before, but by now—Eva, I never heard your last name.”

  “You don’t need to,” Eva pointed out.

  “I put that wrong,” Fred said. “Eva, I take it you have a last name…no, that won’t work either. What I’m saying to myself, and it doesn’t matter, is, knowing how human beings are, or how they can be, what the present situation could be is, since I don’t see it here, and you’re all falling out—Eva, who might never have given any thought to the painting before, since there’s been so much excitement, and a couple people killed adds emphasis—Eva has the painting, and she won’t tell anyone else except we assume Beth, maybe. Where’s Beth? That’s one possibility.

  “Or Eva’s got something going with Arthur, and the both of them won’t tell Kim. Or Eva’s got something going with Kim, though it doesn’t feel like it.

  “Or Kim’s got the thing stashed and won’t tell Arthur. Or Arthur’s got it stashed away and won’t tell Kim or Eva…”

  “That fucking Oreo already flew to Paris,” Kim said. “According to the desk when I asked at the Charles Hotel. Which is a lie. They gave me his number, a hotel, you call it, turns out the name of the hotel is the Athenian Plaza, which is obviously in Greece, so forget that. So there’s no point calling. What is Oreo gonna say? How he did it I can’t figure out. I never saw that painting, he’ll say. Painting? What painting? I’m in Paris, all I want is vacation, climb the Arc of Eiffel. For the snails. But the whole time he’s in Greece. He got the painting, maybe found it in Arthur’s place while Arthur was out.”

  Fred took another drink. The theory of it was even better than the beer itself. “Another possibility,” Fred said. “But speculating that one of you sold it to Orono, or if two of you sold it to Orono, because it’s obvious all three didn’t: where’s the money?”

  “And how much did they get?” Eva said.

  “And what are you, here looking for your cut?” Kim demanded. “Too fucking bad.”

  Arthur put his hands over his ears. The right hand still held the beer bottle.

  “Money. Arthur gets like this,” Eva said.

  “Or it was Sammy Flash,” Kim said. “Always hanging around. Flash could of taken it, stashed it in that refrigerator, then when Oreo came to buy it from him, Oreo killed him instead. Cheaper.”

  “Yeah,” Eva said. “What was Flash doing there? How long had he been dead? Did they say? How did he get there? Or Flash sold it to Kenzo.”

  “I can’t,” Arthur moaned, his hands over his ears.

  “Next thing I do, I’m talking to Kenzo,” Kim said. “Kenzo’s in it. We know he called Arthur about it. Which had to be Flash telling Kenzo how to find Arthur.”

  “I can’t do it,” Arthur said.

  A buzzer sounded. Eva and Arthur and Kim looked at each other. Kim shook her head. The buzzer sounded again. “I’ll get it,” Fred said. He pushed past the protesting group, found the contraption in the hallway and pressed the release while telling the receiver, “Top floor.” He cracked the door open.

  Heavy steps on the stairs. A general scramble behind him while he held the company back. Gamble appeared in the stairwell with two men.

  “We’re having a beer,” Fred said. “Come on in. I reckon I can’t offer you any since you’re on duty. Or is that an urban myth?”

  “It took us a while,” Gamble said. “After your call, Fred. Thanks for holding the fort. Since it’s registered in New Hampshire like you said, the registry’s closed, you have to wake somebody up, conv
ince her it’s important, then roam the streets of Cambridge until…”

  Kim caught on first. It wasn’t clear that Eva did at all. Arthur was hopeless. Kim stood still as stone but her beer bottle clattered against the TV console until she put it down. The tattoos on her legs and belly reflected from the TV screen. It was a truly inefficient way to study a painting.

  “You want to sit a minute?” Fred offered Gamble. “This isn’t what I do.”

  “They’re sending folks down from Nashua,” Gamble said.

  “Maybe a glass of ice water,” one of his backup suggested.

  Gamble glared him down. “We wait here or we wait at the Green Street station. To answer your question that you are not asking, Fred. Because like everything else this is not your business. Not what you do. You happen to be here. Yes. We found a car registered to Kim, in the name of Ruth Hardin of Nashua, New Hampshire. Parked six blocks away. And yes, its hood is well dinged. And yes, we had a warrant. And yes, we had it towed to where we could give it a quick once over. And, yes, the damage to the hood and undercarriage is consistent with involvement in the hit-and-run and yes, there’s organic matter underneath that will be collected and analyzed in the morning when the techies wake up. And we’ll try for a match.

  “Anything you want to say, kids? Kim I know. Arthur I know. Who’s the redhead? Do we know anything about the redhead?” To Eva, “Who are you?”

  “You’re not going to want to say anything,” Fred advised the three clowns. “Beyond your names. Let’s step into the hallway,” he suggested to Gamble. He carried his beer with him. With any luck he wouldn’t go into Weiner’s apartment again.

  “These people don’t talk to each other,” Gamble instructed his officers. “Anything they say out loud, whatever it is, take it down. Got that? And no, nobody gets ice water. Nobody leaves this room. You got that? Nobody goes to the bathroom. Nobody gets on the phone. They can finish their beer, that’s it. It might be the last one they have for a long time.” He joined Fred in the hall.