by Neil Russell
I didn’t know yet if he’d had a well-thought-out plan to steal the last Tretiakov painting or if it was a spur of the moment decision, but I suspected a plan. Based on their previous relationship in Turkey, York would have been the one who introduced Bruzzi to Hood, and it had been a lucrative arrangement. But he’d almost certainly grown weary of being run by his former brother-in-law, and this was a way out—with a retirement bonus.
For his part, Hood wouldn’t have liked someone as reckless as Truman—and with as much personal baggage—having his fate in his hands. He’d gone to incredible lengths to monetize the City of War for his own benefit, and what had probably begun as a nest egg for the day his wife finally cut him off from the Wentworth fortune had turned into a multimillion dollar enterprise spanning three continents. He might have made a decision to eliminate the most obvious threat. A decision Truman had gotten wind of. Nehemiah Jacobs had died for a lot less.
As I saw it, Truman’s biggest problem was that there was no obvious market for the Orlov painting. To realize its value, he would either have had to publicize its history, which would lead to unwanted attention, or have a buyer waiting in the wings. Since the latter made the most sense, Bruzzi or Serbin had to have had prior knowledge.
I didn’t see an advantage for Serbin. All but one of the paintings had already been repatriated, so there was no reason to steal something you were about to get anyway. His people were presumably waiting in Cairo to take possession—or they were already aboard Flight 990. My bet was Cairo. If they had been on the plane, there would have been a hell of a commotion when Truman got off.
That left Bruzzi. The question was why. Perhaps it had just been a thieves’ day out, but I didn’t think so. Too many people had died to hide a simple grab.
A couple of other things nagged at me as well. That the deliveries had gone through Egypt rather than directly to Moscow, especially since the paintings’ return was being hailed as a national heritage repatriation. I learned a long time ago, that when it comes to Russians, there is rarely a straight line from A to B, but I couldn’t get past the fact that there had been twenty-two separate trips on a commercial airline instead of one military flight to a secure base. Perhaps there was some political issue that wasn’t obvious, or maybe it had taken time to get the museums in place, but those explanations seemed flimsy.
Archer suddenly sat up. “Rail, I’m really sorry I fell apart back there. I didn’t realize how much I hated him.”
I took her hand. “Archer, there is a secret place down deep in all of us that holds emotions beyond the scope of our imagination. You, of all people, have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’ve been sitting here reeling. Kim knew he was alive, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she was getting money to him. Whatever he’d received for stealing the painting had probably long since run out.”
I then told her about Brandi Sue Parsons, the Pasadena beauty queen, and the Kubicek watercolors. About Kim’s commenting on the value of things in my home like the Alençon lace and the Vettriano painting. And about her finding an inconspicuous room by comparing the outdoor dimensions of the house to the indoor ones.
Archer said, “Ordinarily, when I stay with someone, I just try not to get caught raiding the cake stash. So she was shopping.”
“I think so, but to give her the benefit of the doubt, let me make a call. Osiris, my phone isn’t set up for Egypt, may I borrow yours?”
“Certainly.”
After a moment, I remembered A. A. Abernathy’s cell number from his card and dialed. It only rang a couple of times before I heard the familiar voice and told him who it was. “Sorry to wake you, Doctor.”
“No problem. Need to be up anyway. I’ve got an early breakfast in Westwood, and I was just lying here planning my omelet.”
“Tell me, did anybody ever notice anything missing at the Getty?”
“From the collections? You must be kidding.” He sounded like I’d just called his mother a crack whore. I didn’t have time to brush sand from a fossil one grain at a time, so I had to take a different tack. One of the things they teach you at Interrogation School is that softening your voice and using a person’s first name immediately lowers the interviewee’s heart rate and brings down his blood sugar level. With someone looking for the chance to be compliant, it can be like hitting him with 20 mgs of Tranxene.
“Yes, A.A., from the collections. I know that’s something people in your line of work don’t like to think about, but we all know the frailties of human nature, especially when weak people find themselves near extraordinarily beautiful or exceptionally valuable things.”
He danced. “We’re a museum, Mr. Black. We have millions of objects in our care and people in and out all the time. Sometimes items get misplaced.”
Misplaced. We were getting there. “A.A., I’m thinking about anything Kim might have had access to.”
He hesitated too long. I was losing him. So I told him about Kiki Videz. When I finished, he said, “It’s a sad story, but I’m not sure why you’re telling it to me.”
“Think about it, Doctor. Kim’s killers didn’t need a fall guy or a gun for her. She was going in the ocean where she’d never be found. But they’d been following her. She lived alone and didn’t have any friends. There was only one other person she had regular contact with. Probably had lunch with from time to time. Somebody who may have even taken her out once or twice despite what he told me.”
I waited while my words sunk in.
Finally, he said, “There could have been a few items missing that I was concerned about. Not major pieces, but worthwhile.”
“Things that could be easily sold?”
“Perhaps.”
I took a breath. “A.A., is that the real reason you were letting Kim go?”
The silence went on so long that I thought we’d lost the connection. Finally, he said, “Much as I might like to, I really can’t comment on personnel matters.”
I didn’t need any more. “How good are those security people of yours?”
“Damn good, I would imagine,” he said.
“Then I suggest you send them over to Kim’s. There’s no one home and no alarm. Behind the living room bookshelves is a portfolio you might be interested in.”
“Care to tell me what’s going on?”
“Over dinner at Tacitus.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” he said. “By the way, I came up empty on City of War. Any luck on your end?”
“Tacitus,” I said and hung up.
Archer looked at me in disbelief. “She was stealing from the museum too? For that filthy son of a bitch? After what he did to her? It’s unfathomable.”
It wasn’t, and I told her the rest of the sordid story. When I finished, she sat in stunned silence, then turned and silently watched the brown desert pass. After a while, she whispered softly, “Like I’m one to talk. Two years with a guy who eventually cut out my fucking eye.”
Batterers and battered, abusers and abused. Researchers aren’t even close to understanding their codependency. In my opinion, after a while, there’s a chemical change in their brains, different from love, but just as powerful. But last time I checked, nobody was standing by waiting for me to weigh in.
Finally, Archer turned back to me. “But why the photographs? The article?”
“Two reasons. The first was self-protection. My guess is Hood, Serbin and Bruzzi all got copies. The second was money. Once she started running out of options, she tried to blackmail them.”
“So they had to kill her…but they needed the flash drive to close the loop.”
“Correct. And Bruzzi drew the contract. It’s what he does for a living anyway. Remember how Hood tried to distance himself from Kim’s murder? I also think Bruzzi and Truman had some kind of a side deal, and your stepfather, desperate and a fool, completely miscalculated. Bruzzi didn’t just want Kim dead, he wanted her to suffer.
“The Hyena was most likely the man in the private p
lane Tino and Dante showed her to that night, and Kim knew exactly who it was. She also knew that once they had her out to sea, Tino was going to go to work on her with his knife for the location of the flash drive before he fed her to the fish. If the 405 hadn’t stopped, she would have jumped out of that van even if it had meant dying.”
Archer shuddered. “So what do we do now?”
“We’re going to get you someplace safe, then I’m going visiting. There are some questions I want answers to. The photos at the Biltmore show Hood still in business with Bruzzi and Serbin years after Egypt Air went down. So what else have they been taking out? And was Dr. Cesarotti part of it, or just the girlfriend?”
Archer said, “But most of all, you want to know where Truman York is.”
“Not most of all, but yes, that’s part of it.”
She flashed, “I want to be there when—”
I held up my hand, and she stopped. A minute or so later, she turned back to me. “I didn’t ask you this before, but you slept with her, didn’t you?”
“I would have thought that by now, you would have realized I don’t answer questions like that.”
“Not even when it could help someone? Like me?”
“Never. And it wouldn’t help anything.”
“Then let me ask it this way. How could someone who had that happen to her over so many years still function…normally?”
“You mean, why didn’t Kim become psychotic or a drug addict or end her life?”
“Yes, in spite of everything, she stayed connected to him. Almost like she was able to accept what happened. I think if Truman York had laid his hands on me one more time, I would have gone down to the beach and just kept swimming out to sea.”
I looked at Osiris, who was driving smoothly, keeping his eyes on the road. “Osiris, you’ve heard this conversation. How do you think somebody could be brutalized her whole life yet appear to outsiders as if there were nothing wrong?”
“I think, sir, people find ways to adjust to even the most horrible things. I played a soccer game in Poland once, and the coach took us to Auschwitz. I couldn’t understand how anyone could live through that and ever laugh again. But at the end of Schindler’s List, there were all of these people who had not only gone on but lived productive lives. The only place it could have come from was inside. For some, it was being strong for a loved one. Others became living testaments. And I’m sure more than one made it on sheer hatred.”
A wise young man, indeed. “The world is filled with walking wounded,” I said. “It’s what civilized people do: carry on, regardless.”
Before I gave Osiris back his phone, I had one more call to make. Mallory answered on the first ring. I could hear seagulls in the background. “Let me guess, fishing,” I said.
“Please, I’d rather have my teeth pulled. We’re eating in some dreadful place built to look like a lighthouse. I think I was just poisoned.”
I heard Jannicke laugh, “For somebody who doesn’t like the food, you haven’t stopped shoveling it in since we sat down.”
I said, “I take it you’re tired of Palm Beach.”
“Palm Beach is fine. It’s my sister’s new boyfriend. He’s some kind of professional wrestler…about half her age. Calls himself The Bazooka. My God, the body piercings…and the level of conversation. Professional wrestling? Is that even grammatically correct?”
I laughed, “How about if I sweep you and Jannicke away.”
“Anything, please. I’d worship you.”
“I’ll hold you to it. I need a safe place on the Continent to put a friend. Something besides a hotel.”
“Anyone I know?”
“No, but you’ll understand when you meet her.”
“How soon?”
“Starting tonight.”
“I have just the place. Princess Veronique’s villa in Cannes. She’s just turned ninety, and you know how much she loves company.”
“Why don’t you make the arrangements, then get yourself and Jannicke to an airport.”
“Waiter, check please.”
Mallory wasn’t usually this funny. He must really have hit the breaking point.
“Oh, Mallory,” I said, “if you decide to go for a nose stud, make it tasteful—nothing larger than a carat.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
36
Tears and Beethoven
Princess Veronique didn’t look a day older than I remembered her, and that was almost two decades ago. She was still one of the most interesting women I knew, full of eccentricities, like her 1930s wardrobe.
Her terraced villa, Le Trésor, is set into the hillside above Cannes with a commanding view of the Mediterranean coast. Outside, it looks like the Parthenon, and inside, it’s filled with French chandeliers, Persian rugs and neo-Roman furniture.
There’s also the matter of the world’s most ill-tempered parrot, Bartholomew. Iron gates and tall hedges keep the curious away, but any fool breaking in would rather be arrested than have to deal with that bird. Bartholomew and I have a deal; he doesn’t peck out my eyes, and I don’t show him how the lawn mower works. To the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t have that agreement with anyone else, because he’s had some close calls.
When her husband, Roger, was alive, Veronique gave legendary parties attended by royalty, Hollywood stars and whomever she happened to run into on the street. Now, she lives with a scaled-down staff and relishes the occasional visitor, mostly writers whom she invites to stay as long as they like.
The current artist-in-residence was a guy named Pappy Meecham from New Orleans, who was writing about his blues singer father. Veronique said he hadn’t gotten much work done because the days seemed to slip away while they played old records and drank absinthe. Part of me was jealous.
Archer immediately fell in love with Veronique and vice versa. They began chattering away like college roommates. Then Pappy poured her a glass of green liquid, and everyone forgot about me.
I made my way to the kitchen and left a note for Mallory with Veronique’s cook, Brigitte. I asked him to spend as much time as possible with Archer and maybe get Jannicke on the case too. And I apologized for adding to his burden since the shooting and then almost getting him killed. Lastly, I thanked him for his friendship. Something I don’t do as often as I should.
As I walked back to the taxi where Eddie and Jody were waiting, Archer came running up behind me. I turned, and she came into my arms. We strolled hand in hand across the lush grounds of Le Trésor and stopped next to a statue of David standing watch over a swimming pool where Cary and Audrey had frolicked. Her voice quivered as she looked up at me. “Rail, darling, I need you to come back.”
I took her face in my hands and kissed her. “That’s my plan too.”
“No, you have to listen to me. I don’t think I could bear losing you.” She buried her head in my chest, and I felt her melt against me.
I stroked her hair while she cried. Women had clung to me before, but this time something stirred that I hadn’t felt in a long, long time. I’d had only one deep romantic relationship in my life, and when Sanrevelle died, I assumed my turn at bat was over. And frankly, I was okay with that. It gave me distance from untidy emotions. What I was feeling now wasn’t supposed to happen. But it also wasn’t the time to try to sort it out.
I took Archer’s hand and led her gently back to the house. Veronique, wise to unspoken cues, met us at the door. She looked at me with her legendary smile. “Don’t worry one minute, Rail, I’ll take perfect care of her.”
Some film festival was in town, but I tipped a greasy guy in a stained suit a year’s salary and managed to get Jody installed in a small hotel just off the Croisette. By the time he hit the room, he was already planning which parties to crash. Eddie and I found an Internet café and printed the photographs of the artist on Kim’s flash drive. Then I mailed the drive to myself in London, and we caught a taxi to Mont-pellier Airport.
Coming in, we’d had to land a
t Nice to clear customs. It wasn’t an ideal situation for people trying to be invisible, but Eddie told the hangar manager we were on our way to Monte Carlo to break the bank. Someone looking for us might not buy it, but considering the number of visitors to Monaco and the Principality’s penchant for secrecy, it would take them a while to make sure.
Eddie was exhausted and concerned about flying any more hours, so we rented a silver Cirrus SR22, which I’m qualified to fly. It also has enough seat adjust to handle me, as well as a parachute in case I mistook the fuel dump switch for the landing gear. I’m the first to admit I’m not much of a pilot, so I could only imagine how tired Eddie was if he was willing to risk death to get some sleep.
I got us up. It was shaky, but my passenger snored through the whole thing—even when I momentarily lost sight of the Air France commuter ahead of me and had to listen to a ration of shit in gutter French from a controller.
The night was clear, and the first order of business for any bad pilot is to program the autopilot then don’t fuck with it—no matter what. I put us on a course for Bastia, which is about as far as you can get from Bonifacio and still be on Corsica. Word might eventually reach Bruzzi that we were there, but maybe it wouldn’t get to him before we did.
So while Eddie slept, I flew. And thought about what I’d felt holding Archer.
Even though Amarante talked about it all the time, in my first eighteen years of life, I had never seen Brazil. So when I took my mother home to bury her, I didn’t know what to expect. Nobody could have prepared me for the two hundred “cousins” who showed up with their extended families and stood ten deep outside the church.
I was astonished at so much wailing and fainting until my Uncle Santos, Amarante’s youngest brother, explained that most of the crowd had never met her. “They just know she had lots of money, so they’re practicing the mantra of the favellas that maybe if you cry loud enough, some of it will fall on you.”