Considering that the last art deal I got into because of Lipton had almost cost me my life, I needed to give this present one some real thought.
His being alive no longer fazed me. It was just one of the many unanswered questions in life—like dark matter in space, or what really happened to the dinosaurs, or had there been a gunman on the grassy knoll.
Living or dead, Lipton owed me big-time for getting me into a mess that cost me my job. I owed him, too, and would like to repay him for what he did to me in ways that only a medieval dungeon torturer would appreciate.
As I got out of the subway and headed for Bayard Street in Chinatown, my mind tried to get around a few simple phrases: Twenty thousand dollars. Cash. Up-front.
How could I lose?
I had to admit that Dubai sounded exotic and exciting: a desert town that some oil-rich Arab sheik had transformed into a playground for the rich and famous. With all that money hanging around such a small area, some of it might find its way to me. Lipton could well have an immensely rich clientele in the region. Since the American economy had been hijacked by Middle Eastern oil producers, much of the wealth of the world had poured out of Wall Street and into the Persian Gulf.
Too bad I didn’t speak Arabic—I’d have a better chance of getting back on my feet by setting up shop there than competing with astrologers in Manhattan.
The fact that Lipton had a wealthy collector hiring him wasn’t surprising. Art collectors as a whole were ruthless and relentless when it came to acquiring pieces for their collection—collecting was a passion bordering on an addiction and sometimes a fetish. It didn’t matter if it was baseball cards or million-dollar paintings, to get a piece for their collection, collectors would do things that in other aspects of their lives they would find unethical or immoral.
Just as drug addicts don’t question the source of their supply, collectors don’t worry about whether they’re buying a cultural treasure of some poor nation. Or how it got out of the ground and onto their shelf to be admired by their friends and envious collectors.
Despite all their money and the presumed rationality that came with having a ton of money, sometimes actually earned, most collectors suffered from the same sort of impulsive, uncontrollable mania to win that caused parents of school athletes to run onto the playing field and batter the referee who called their kid out.
There simply wasn’t any logic or reason to collecting, so it didn’t come as a surprise to me that Lipton had hooked a wealthy person who didn’t seem to care an iota about Lipton’s past problems. The fact that Lipton had access to what a collector passionately wanted was all they cared about.
I knew from dealing with superrich collectors that the only thing that counted was getting what they wanted—rare antiquities and paintings were as prized as trophy wives and winning racehorses. For Hiram Piedmont, owning a museum was the intellectual equivalent of having a sports team. It gave him bragging rights at the snobbish cocktail parties that he and his movie star—and trophy—wife threw.
Not only did endowing a museum carry with it a sense of philanthropy, the noblesse oblige to provide a little culture for the unwashed masses, it was a great tax write-off. And while Hiram didn’t have to work to get the money in the first place, it probably gave him great pleasure to think that he had rolled up his sleeves and sweated over a checkbook to create a museum.
I gave my forehead a slap with the palm of my hand. I had to stop hating Hiram. He wasn’t worth the effort. I had more important things to worry about. Things like food, fire, and shelter.
But I had this thing about taking a job when I was running hungry. The last time I took an assignment just because I was down and desperate, I ended up dealing with unsavory characters in a Southeast Asian country listed as one of the world’s most dangerous places—and Lipton wasn’t even involved.
I didn’t actually know what Dubai was like, although it looked pretty modern from what I’d seen on TV, but no city in the Middle East was safe in my mind, especially one in the Persian Gulf where everyone was fighting over a big pool of oil.
I got my ice-cream cone and walked around the corner and up the street to the foot massage place I went to when I was really down or just needed to think. It was just a tiny room with a leather lounge chair, a footstool, and a sink in the corner. Pretty basic, but it cost me less than what I used to leave as a tip for a full body massage on the Upper East Side.
After my feet had soaked for a couple of minutes in warm soapy water that smelled of lemon and ginger, an elderly Chinese masseuse went to work, humming away to herself. The woman appeared to be in her seventies, but only had a few strands of gray streaking her black hair. I was in my mid-thirties and already starting to worry about getting grays. If the adage was true that worrying caused gray hair, I’d have silver hair in no time.
I closed my eyes and tried to think rationally about Lipton’s offer.
“What do I have to lose?” I asked aloud.
The woman looked up briefly, still humming away, and smiled.
I smiled back, nodding my head. “Very good, feels good.”
She didn’t speak English but she gave a great foot rub. Seeing my approval, she went back to pulling and squeezing my toes and pushing and kneading the other parts of my feet.
After thirty minutes, I reluctantly got up and used my pampered feet to walk the four blocks to my apartment, repeating the question in mind about what I had to lose—and kept telling myself that my most valuable possession was life itself and if Lipton was involved, it would be on the firing line.
I kept thinking about my last entanglement with Lipton. Back then, I didn’t know he was a crook. At least not that big of a crook. Everybody in the trade had some larceny in their heart … it turned out that he just had more of it.
The good news was that Lipton didn’t lie when he said he knew how to make money. If he was involved, it meant something big. Before he crashed and burned—literally—his name was magic in the business.
I wondered how many museums and private collectors had been contacted by the authorities concerning what they had bought from Lipton. The curators were probably seeing some of those pieces on the “most wanted” art theft lists that the FBI and other art groups maintain on the Internet.
Museums would be most at risk because they displayed their purchases. Many collectors keep their pieces under wraps, like serial killers hoarding “trophies” cut off from their victims.
It occurred to me that Dubai was a perfect place for Lipton in his present embarrassing situation of having made the front pages and obituary pages on the same day. He couldn’t show his face in Europe or the United States, but the Middle East had so many problems with war and terrorism, a shady art dealer would hardly generate much excitement. And Lipton would know exactly how much baksheesh, the notorious Middle Eastern bribe, he would have to pay public officials to ensure he didn’t wear out his welcome.
Still, I doubted his explanation for wanting to hire me. I was good, one of the best in the business, but as I said, my field was Mediterranean and Mesopotamian antiquities—not religious art.
In one sense, the religious market wasn’t any different from the secular one: I had worked with some Christian religious pieces years ago when I was a young intern at the Met, and it was enough for me to learn that the field was as much a snake pit of fakes and looted relics as those of other types of antiquities.
But Christian religious artifacts inspired more than just the normal zeal of a collector for possession—they could also arouse a passion in the collector arising from a strong belief in the objects.
One thing was certain: Lipton had to know more qualified experts in the field than me. I really had little knowledge of what the market was for the pieces or even what was available.
That he hadn’t called me because of my inexhaustible knowledge of religious icons was a given. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that if the project involved travel to Europe or the United States, he
would need someone to do the legwork for him …
And who better to do it than someone whose life and career were already roadkill. Even the most cynical art experts wouldn’t want to be tainted by an association with a man wanted by the police.
Lipton’s motive for calling me had to do with the simple fact that I was broke. That meant that not only was I available, but I would ask fewer questions than other experts.
The real bottom line was that anyone who wasn’t broke and desperate would be insane to get involved with him.
My instincts were screaming that it wasn’t going to be easy, not just because Lipton was involved, but due to the nature of the piece: A relic buried with Christ wasn’t just priceless, it would generate enormous controversy and publicity.
It didn’t take any research to realize that even the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo would pale in significance—and value—beside a verified artifact from Christ’s tomb.
I wondered what he meant by “buried.” My biblical knowledge was rusty but my best recollection was that the New Testament said Jesus was placed in a tomb before his resurrection. I supposed that would be called being buried. However, I couldn’t recall if it mentioned anything was buried with him.
My cell phone rang just as I reached my apartment building. It was Lipton. Exactly an hour had passed since I’d hung up on him.
“Your plane ticket, itinerary, and payment are in your mailbox.”
“What? I—”
He hung up.
I stared at the phone for a moment, frustrated that he’d used my own trick to cut off any objections from me, before I hit the call-back button on the phone to try and get him back on the line. All I got was static that whined like a siren. I wanted to scream.
What a bastard! Did he really think he could buy me that easily? Did he really think that he could dump some money on me and that I’d let him lead me around as if I had a ring through my nose?
I had been making an honest attempt to clean up my language and act more like the classy woman I knew I was, but if that arrogant son of a bitch was here, I’d punch his lights out.
I opened the mailbox and took out a thick envelope. I waited until I started up the interior stairway of the building before I tore off the end of the envelope. Looking up and down the stairwell to make sure I was alone, I peeked inside, and caught my breath. I was staring at a thick wad of green bills. At least an inch thick. The biggest stack of cash I had ever had in my hands.
My heart quickened. I looked around again, acting as if I were some thief in the night.
Keeping the money concealed in the envelope, I fanned the wad with my thumb to see the denominations. All hundreds. Hundreds of hundreds. New, crisp, as if they were fresh off the printing press.
Knowing Lipton, freshly minted bills weren’t outside the realm of possibility.
I closed the end of the envelope and clamped my hand tightly around it.
My heart was hammering, my hands were sweaty, and my legs were shaking by the time I reached my fifth-floor closet of an apartment. Not from the climb. I was used to the stairs by now. It was my emotions that were racing—I was somewhere between being ecstatic and scared shitless.
I needed the money more than a hemophiliac needs a transfusion. More than a junkie needs a fix. I had a long list of wants—shamelessly materialistic despite my honest desire to be “green” for the environment, I wanted my penthouse back, a sports car, designer dresses from—
The list was endless.
Why is it that the devil always knocks when you’re hungry?
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A FAREWELL TO ARMS
5
As soon as I got inside my apartment, I locked, double-locked, and triple-locked my door. The locks were already on the door when I moved into the apartment. This was New York, after all.
One small room served as my living room, bedroom, entertainment room, and office; next was a tiny cubbyhole of a kitchen with just barely enough room to stand in, and a bathroom so small I could sit on the toilet, wash my hands in the sink and almost stick my feet in the shower.
That was my postage-stamp domain. In some high-end neighborhoods of Manhattan, this little studio could sell for a million or more. On the cusp of where SoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy butt together, a “million” merely described the cockroach count.
As humble as it was, my residency even in the mini-quarters was at issue each month as I struggled not to bounce another rent check. The first time that happened my lecherous landlord eyed me like a piece of meat he wanted for one of his sexual fantasies. And he was definitely not of the School of Foreplay.
I had actually grown to like the neighborhood, with its diverse ethnicity and shops that ranged from Chinese fish markets to Italian bakeries and street vendors selling hot dogs and hot CDs—hot as in pirated.
Within a few blocks, you could enjoy handmade dumplings in a Chinese restaurant where the only English spoken was pidgin; spaghetti on Mulberry Street where wiseguys supped and a small parking lot sign read MAFIA ONLY; or walk a few blocks into SoHo and eat at a trendy café where the chef had mushrooms, which cost more than their weight in gold, flown in daily from Provence.
Usually Morty, my cat, would saunter over to greet me when I came home, but I could see he was nice and comfy in his bed by the radiator. He opened one eye, gave me a languid look, then closed it again.
“Glad to see you, too, Morty.”
I sat on the couch and peeked into the open end of the envelope again before getting up the courage to rip it completely open. I stared at the butt end of the thick wad of green before I tore open the packet.
Besides the money, there were an itinerary and travel documents.
I counted out two hundred crisp $100 bills. I got out my calculator. Sure enough, that was twenty thousand dollars.
I carefully examined them to see if there were any telltale signs of counterfeiting. They smelled freshly printed, but it had been so long since I’d seen a hundred-dollar bill, I wasn’t sure how they were supposed to smell.
I gave up the counterfeited theory because I didn’t know what to look for and didn’t want to spoil my sheer ecstasy by finding out Lipton was putting one over on me again—besides whatever else he had in mind when I got to Dubai.
I counted the money again. Twenty thousand dollars. Cash up-front.
The travel documents were also impressive.
Round-trip limo service at the New York and Dubai airports.
Round-trip first-class tickets on Emirates Airlines.
An itinerary showing the flight information for the day after tomorrow and the hotel where I’d be staying in Dubai. I’d never heard of the hotel, the Burj al-Arab, but it sounded exotic. And since everything else was first class, I had to imagine that the hotel was, too.
I got up and made some hot tea to separate myself from the money, but was drawn back, a moth fluttering before a flame—only this time it was a fiery volcano I was circling.
I looked over the contents of the package again. Lipton had taken care of everything—including the resistance he knew he’d get from me. Dumping cash on me was inspired. So was the limo and first-class plane tickets.
The old gay bastard really knew how to get to a girl’s heart.
The money was beautiful.
Dubai … it wasn’t hard to imagine mysterious Arab sheiks in dark glasses, flowing robes, gold watches, and silver Mercedes, their pockets stuffed with money and jewels, just waiting to dump some of it on a blond bimbo …
I was a brunette, but I could dye my hair platinum, get my lips puffed up with collagen … unfortunately, twenty thousand dollars wouldn’t even be a down payment on what it would take to get the rest of my body int
o shape.
No way would I end up with a rich sheik, but better than chasing money, chasing after a priceless religious relic sounded like a romantic adventure à la Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones or Angelina Jolie fighting tomb raiders. Throw in Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code, too.
Not that any piece Lipton ended up with would be relinquished to a church or museum like Indiana Jones always insisted—unless they happened to be the highest bidder.
I wondered if the cash was dirty money. Lipton hadn’t been canonized by the church, that’s for sure. But it was the unnamed collector whose money I was holding, not Lipton’s. And short of it having visible blood on it, at the moment I didn’t care what the source was as long as it kept bill collectors at bay.
Morty leaped up to the couch and onto my lap.
“Finally decide to say hello to me? Or maybe it was the smell of money that brought you over here.” I waved the bills in front of him.
He played with the $100 bills, swatting them with his claws as I pondered the fact that once again I was being tempted by the devil because of my financial situation. And I was being rushed, really rushed. So I couldn’t think about other options. Not that I had any on the table. When it came to my services, I was down to competing against the art advice of astrologers.
“So what am I going to do with you, Morty?” I tried to pet him behind the ears, but he put up resistance. He was too busy with the money.
Living with Morty in a tiny, one-room apartment was no picnic—he had sharp claws and a bad temper and showed no remorse even when I threatened to toss him out onto a freeway. He also showed no gratitude for the fact that when his last master went off to prison, I saved him from cat hell.
He wasn’t always unfriendly; in fact he could be loving when he wanted to be, but he was temperamental. Sometimes he went into cat rage and ripped apart a newspaper with his claws until the whole paper was in shreds.
The Shroud Page 4