Etruscan Chimera

by Lyn Hamilton

  "Rosati," he said, slowly. "Yes, I think I recall him. How nice to meet you. I hope you like the apartment."

  "It's lovely," I said. "You must hate to part with it."

  "I'm finding it a bit cramped," he said. "I'm looking for something a little larger." So Palladini was moving up, not down.

  "But Signora McClintoch and her husband are looking for a small pied-a-terre, are you not?" she said, clearly worried her client was talking her out of a sale.

  "I am a little concerned about the size," I said. Most of us could have managed to squeeze ourselves into it, given that it was well over two thousand square feet. "But it is really attractive."

  "And the location," Laura said. "You could not do better."

  "Do you let it out on a short-term lease at all? Rent it for a week or two, for example?" I said.

  "No," he said. "I have too many treasures here. You can't see them with the sheets over everything, but I collect. No, I'm only interested in selling it outright."

  Well, somebody got to use it, somehow, I thought, looking from Palladini to Laura Ferrari and wondering. "You live outside Rome now, do you?" I asked him.

  "No. I rent an apartment not far from here that I plan to buy, once this is sold."

  "Ah. Then, I'll let you know," I said. "And now I must run. I'll tell my husband I ran into you."

  "Please do that," he said. "Give him my regards."

  I went to the little hotel I'd booked myself into the evening before, a very disappointed and confused person. Disappointed, but not defeated. I didn't know what Palladini and Rosati had to do with it, although I'd certainly eliminated the possibility that Palladini and Lake were one and the same. There was no denying that the same names kept cropping up in my life. Regardless, I knew Crawford Lake was responsible, whether knowingly or not, and in some way I couldn't yet define, for Antonio's death and Lola's incarceration, and perhaps even—and this was the first time it had occurred to me—for the death of Robert Godard in Vichy. I didn't care how much money the creep had, I was going to find some way to make him pay. There had to be someone who knew where he was.

  TEN

  INISHMORE

  I MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN WHERE LAKE was, but I certainly knew what he was up to, as did anyone who read the financial pages of any of the major newspapers. Lake was on the move, it seemed, inexorably swallowing up his rivals. Right now he had two opponents in his sights, a small Internet trading company that had started out as a sort of electronic-age version of the family business, two brothers in their early twenties who'd had a good idea and had, with some fanfare, gone public a few months earlier. Now the young men were pictured on the front page of the business section of the International Herald Tribune, both of them with deer-caught-in-headlights expressions on their faces, as they recommended to shareholders not to accept the offer of Marzocco Financial Online. I figured it was hopeless.

  Hank Mariani, the Texas businessman who had outbid Lake for the Etruscan bronze statue of Apollo, was also in trouble. His photo showed a man in his early fifties, I'd say, and rather than the startled expression of the two brothers, he had a world-weary look to him as he sat, his company's logo behind him, his elbow on the desk and his hand over his mouth, as if holding back a scream. He'd tried to find another buyer for his company when Lake tried to take control. The courts had ruled in Lake's favor, and Mariani was about to be looking for another job. In neither case, of course, was there a picture of Lake, but it was clear he was making good on the pledge he'd made to me when I'd met him: to deal with Mariani.

  Neither of these stories was going to get me in to see Lake, however, so I kept on looking. It took me the better part of the next day to find a link, however tenuous, to Lake. I started with the only person I had any connection with who was associated with Lake in some way, an English art consultant and dealer by the name of Alfred Mondragon, who, as I'd indicated to Lake in Rome, I knew often handled Lake's art purchases.

  I'd only met Mondragon once, but that didn't stop me from calling him. Although we were rivals, I suppose, for Lake's business, I was counting on a guarded collegiality among those of us in the same trade to carry the day.

  "I don't suppose you remember me," I said to him. "We met at an auction at Burlington House a couple of years ago." I certainly remembered him. He was a large man who wore velvet smoking jackets any time of day and any place, and who favored expensive and particularly malodorous cigars.

  "Did you buy anything?" he said.

  "Yes, I did. Two large David Roberts drawings. I have a client who collects Roberts."

  "I seem to recall it," he said. "One was Kom Ombo and the other . . ."

  "Edfu," I said.

  "Edfu," he agreed. "Yes, I remember you now. I'm not good at names, but I do recall objects rather well, and then sometimes the people who come with them. Reddish blond hair, reasonably attractive woman of about forty? Am I correct?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "You were with a set of bone-handled steak knives. He paid too much for them."

  "My business partner, Clive Swain," I said. "He did pay too much. That's why I do most of the buying for the store. You purchased a Carlevaris," I said, not to be outdone. "Architectural drawing. Venice, of course. It was gorgeous, and way, way, beyond my means. I was quite envious."

  "Quite right," he said.

  "You were with Derby biscuit porcelain," I added. "He overpaid for it, too."

  "My life partner, Ryan. I adore him. He can buy whatever he likes," he chuckled. "Now that we've established beyond any reasonable doubt that we are birds of a feather, what can I do for you?"

  "I need to get in touch with Crawford Lake."

  "You and everybody else," he said. "I can't help you."

  "I really need to get in touch with him. A friend of mine is in an Italian jail. You can imagine how awful that is. It is not her fault. The only person who can get her out is Crawford Lake."

  "That is most unfortunate, but I really can't help you."

  "Can't or won't?"

  "Can't. That's not the way it works with Lake, you see. He calls you, not the other way around. He wants something, he tells you. You go and get it. I have no idea how to get in touch with him."

  "But what if you found something that he didn't ask you to get, but you knew he'd want?"

  "Doesn't matter. Right now, for example, I have a rather handsome piece of Egyptian statuary I know he'd like, but I have no way of doing anything about it."

  "Have you ever met him?"

  "Once."

  "And?"

  "Pleasant enough chap."

  "Good-looking?"

  "I suppose so, but not my way inclined, if you catch my drift."

  "Where did you meet him?"

  "Here in London. Look, I'd help you if I could, but I really can't. If he happens to call me in the next while, I'll tell him you're looking for him. Give me a number where you can be reached. I'm afraid that's the best I can do."

  "Thanks," I said. "You can't think of any other connection I could pursue?"

  "I'm afraid not. I'm sorry I can't help your friend."

  "Me, too." He had no idea how sorry I was.

  Next I combed the Internet, checking newspaper archives where I could, and anything else that came up when I keyed Lake's name in. There was a lot of stuff about him.

  The bare facts were these: Lake was born in 1945 in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Jack, some kind of industrialist with links to the diamond trade, and Frances O'Reilly, an Irish model and socialite, who was better known as Fairy, if you can believe it. Crawford had an older brother, Rhys, and a younger sister Barbara. Carrying on the family's naming tradition, Barbara was always called Brandy. If Jack, Rhys, or Crawford had pet names, they were mercifully not mentioned.

  Both parents and Rhys were killed in a plane crash when Crawford was about twenty-five and Brandy, sixteen. The two of them inherited fair amounts of cash. Even though Rhys had clearly been the designated heir where the family business wa
s concerned, Lake proved himself adept at it, using it to build an even larger fortune and ultimately to become the billionaire that he was.

  Brandy, on the other hand, spent lavishly. By the time she was eighteen, she was already a fixture on the social scene in Europe and in the U.S. I say "the social scene," but really it was the club milieu where she regularly had her picture taken with what I took to be signature items. She always had a white rose in her lapel or pinned to her clothing, and she always wore sunglasses, even though it was dark. Unlike the rest of the set she ran with, she was never photographed skiing in Gstaad or aboard somebody's yacht. She was obviously a person of the night, the last to leave the party. I learned a surprising amount about her. She was, at one time, the kind of person who gets in all the gossip columns. Her favorite drink was a mimosa, her favorite flower the white rose she always wore.

  If her brother had an opinion of this lifestyle, he said nothing publicly about it, not, that is, until she took up with a young man by the name of Anastasios Karagiannis, a Greek playboy, there is no other word for it. Brandy and Taso, as he was generally referred to— perhaps in those circles it's de rigueur to have a nickname; I wouldn't know—were pictured together dancing at Regine's, or enjoying some revelry in Paris, and so on.

  The trouble with Taso, in addition to the fact that he had no visible means of support, was that he was seriously into the drug scene, and he drank way too much. It was at that point that Crawford came on the scene, and there was one archival photo in which someone, with head averted, was pulling Brandy out the door of a hotel somewhere. The caption said the person doing the dragging was Crawford Lake, although it could have been anyone.

  Undeterred, Brandy and Taso announced their engagement and set the date for the wedding. Two days before the event, which was to take place somewhere tacky, one of those clubs with bare-breasted dancers, Taso died, killed in an absolutely horrendous car crash. The car, a snazzy little sports job that Brandy had given him as a wedding present, had spun out of control on a hilly road, and Taso had plunged to his death in a fiery tumble down the side of the hill. The car was checked over, what was left of it, and nothing mechanical was found that would explain the crash. Taso's blood-alcohol reading, however, was over the top. The medical report also said he'd burned to death, which must be a truly horrible way to go.

  Brandy placed dozens and dozens of white roses on Taso's casket, and then, like her brother, disappeared from public view. Unlike her brother, however, her whereabouts were known to anyone who was prepared to do some digging: her mother's family home on Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast. I tried calling, but there was no listed number for Brandy Lake, nor for the O'Reilly family, at least not the one I wanted. I booked a flight for Shannon.

  Before I went, though, I called Salvatore Vitali, Lola's lawyer friend. "How's she doing?" I said.

  "Not well," he replied. "She's refusing to eat. She's such a tiny woman. . . ."

  "I'm working on this," I said. "Try to get her to eat."

  According to the timetable I picked up at the airport, I'd missed the last ferry from Dolin. In yet another rental car, I headed up the coast for Galway, stopping only once, at a florist shop, and then on to Rossaveal. I caught the last ferry with only minutes to spare. The sea was rough and the air chilly as the boat plowed doggedly toward the island, about six or seven miles offshore.

  At Kilronan, where the ferry berthed, I got a horse-drawn carriage and asked the driver to take me to a nice bed-and-breakfast inn. There was a light drizzle falling, and storm clouds hung low to the horizon. The island was rather bleak, small patches of grass surrounded by low stone walls the most prominent feature. Some might find it romantic, a windswept and rocky island, but in my present state of mind, I found it merely depressing.

  The climate may have been unpleasant, but the welcome wasn't. The driver dropped me at a pleasant inn, and I was ushered to a cheerful spot by a warm fire, where I enjoyed a very nice glass of wine or two, a surprisingly fine dinner, and a very comfortable bed.

  The next morning, the sun was shining brightly, and I felt I was in a different place and that I was a new person. I asked directions to the O'Reilly house and was delighted to find it was close enough to get there on foot. "Funny one, that," the innkeeper said. "Brandy Lake. Never goes out. She has help, of course. A maid she brought with her. Name's Maire. But herself hasn't been out in years. Too bad. I remember when she was young. She came here summers with her family, the grandparents, the O'Reillys. Lovely little thing. Always laughing and running about. Can't bear to think what happened to her to make her such a recluse now."

  "Do people visit her?"

  "People came a lot when she was first here, but not anymore. In the early days, those reporter types showed up, but we always said we didn't know anybody by that name. You're not a reporter, are you?" she said, suddenly suspicious.

  "Absolutely not," I said. "I have a message from her brother."

  "Crawford? He's not been seen around here since she first came. A serious young lad, he was. Doing rather well for himself, I'm told. It will be nice for her to hear from him, even if he won't come in person."

  The road rose and fell gently, and there was a wonderful view across the water to the mountains of Connemara on the mainland, purple against the bright sky, and up ahead on a high promontory, the ruins of the fort of Dun Aengus. I found myself feeling much more optimistic, that I'd found a real link to Lake, that I was about to learn something that would make my path clear. Surely, if I could persuade her to get in touch with her brother, he'd have to listen.

  The Lake—or rather I should say the O'Reilly— house was one of the largest on the island, but not in any way palatial. It was stone, two stories, with a large front yard. For some distance before I got there, a border collie ran alongside me in the fields, taking the stone fences easily, and barking in a not unfriendly fashion. He followed me right into the yard and up the stone walk to the door, his barking getting more intense the closer we got. I rang the doorbell.

  I heard footsteps inside, and a voice called through the door. "Just leave it on the step."

  "Hello?" I said.

  The door opened a crack, and the dog, all excited now, started jumping up and down and putting dirty paws on my coat. "Who are you?" the voice inside said.

  "My name is Lara McClintoch. I'd like to talk to Ms. Lake," I said over the din created by the dog.

  "Hush, Sandy," the voice said. "Down. Don't bother the lady." Sandy ignored her. Finally, the door opened wider. "You'd better come in or you'll be a mess from that dog," the woman said.

  "Many thanks," I said, brushing doggie prints off my coat and pant legs.

  "She doesn't have many visitors here," the woman said. "Not many come to visit. I was expecting a delivery of some milk."

  "Are you Maire?" The woman, a rather solid woman in her forties, I'd say, who'd worked hard all her life, nodded. "Would you ask Ms. Lake if she would talk to me?"

  "She won't," the woman said. "Why are you here?"

  I'd thought a lot about this question, given that it was an inevitable one. I'd thought I could say I was a friend of her brother's, or that I knew someone she did, although who that would be I couldn't imagine. In the end, standing there, I opted for the truth.

  "I have a friend who is in an Italian jail for something she didn't do. The only person who can help her is Crawford Lake, but he won't see me, so I'm trying to find a connection to him, some way of getting in touch with him, so that I can help my friend."

  "I'm sorry," Maire said. "But she still won't talk to you."

  "But won't you ask her?"

  "It won't do any good."

  "Please. I'm throwing myself on your mercy, here. I'm getting pretty desperate. I mean, an Italian jail!"

  "It won't do any good, I tell you. No."

  I decided retreat, at least for the moment, was the only option. "Will you at least give her these?" I said, handing over a package that I'd bab
ied all the way from Galway. The woman peered in the top.

  "White roses," she said, wistfully. "She'll like these. I'm sorry we can't help you."

  "Me, too," I said. "I'm staying at the inn outside Kilmurvey," I said, "in case she changes her mind." I walked away from the house. The dog was nowhere to be seen. At the gate, I turned back. In the upstairs window, a lace curtain moved slightly, and I caught a glimpse of a face, probably Maire's. I trudged back to the inn.

  I was sitting in front of the fireplace, feeling sorry for myself, and for Lola, when the phone rang at the desk. "Miss McClintoch," the innkeeper called to me. "Maire just called. You can go back to the Lake house."

  Maire was waiting for me, the front door slightly ajar. The house was still rather dark, with heavy blue velvet curtains pulled against the light. The house was center-hall plan, with two pleasant rooms on either side of the entranceway, one filled with books, a desk, and sofa and chairs, the other with leather furniture and a television set. It was, however, all very gloomy.