The Deceivers

by Harold Robbins

  I had to wonder about my luck with men. Did I automatically gravitate to nice bastards … or was the supply of available men in the world for my age so low that I had to scrape bottom? I wanted to think of it as just bad luck rather than a genetic defect or poor karma on my part.

  I had hopes of getting an outstanding fake on credit from Taksin that I could sell to a rich buyer who didn’t mind buying a fake, but he was all smiles and evasive commitments when I asked. I guess nearly getting murdered together was not enough for Taksin to trust my credit. I wished I had grabbed that museum piece on the table in the cell I shared with Taksin. Hopefully it would make its way back to the museum, but I seriously doubted it.

  During the flight, Taksin had taken out a packet of pictures and showed me his reproductions like a proud father showing off his children. I recognized a piece I’d seen in New York and it stunned me.

  Taksin had just given me the final piece to the puzzle. It was to end in New York, as I thought. And that weighed heavily on my mind and nerves as I waited for my flight because I had to wonder whether I would get home just to end up as a statistic as my body washed up on the shore of the East River.

  Kirk wasn’t the the blond foreigner who kidnapped Taksin and killed his friend. After we crossed the border, Taksin gave me an emphatic no—in Thai and shake of his head—when I asked if Kirk was the bad guy who kidnapped him and killed his friend.

  That left a few million other blond foreigners as potential candidates but I had one particularly in mind. When we reached the hotel in Saigon—aka Ho Chi Minh City—I sat down with the hotel concierge and had her guide me through an Internet search that brought up a picture of my prime suspect.

  I didn’t need an interpreter to translate what Taksin was saying when the picture popped up of the blond-haired man who had had him kidnapped in Bangkok and had his friend killed.

  Before we parted I had asked Kirk about the New York connection but he either knew nothing or refused to share the information with me. I wasn’t sure he was even involved in the museum scheme, anyway. He only fessed up to looting antiquity sites, or more accurately buying stolen pieces and smuggling them out of the country.

  I should have realized that a New York connection had been necessary for the sale of the Siva.

  That person wasn’t just part of a plot to sell the Siva in New York that Ranar had taken from the museum and replaced with Taksin’s fake. He was also a coconspirator for looting, forgery, theft, and murder in Thailand and Cambodia.

  Boarding my plane for Newark with a changeover in Tokyo, I hoped I was right about a lot of things.

  NEW YORK

  46

  Being back in a city of skyscrapers, cold rain, and organized chaos, I rather missed the warm tropical atmosphere, warm smiling people, and quaint disorder in Phnom Penh. I didn’t miss being on the hit list of the Cambodian mafia, but I had to admit that the country had an exotic charm that the steel and concrete jungles of New York lacked.

  I felt like I had been gone an eon rather than just days. Nothing had really changed. Except I had become harder. I always considered myself strong enough to compete with other women and men in a tough business, but I drew the line at being so ruthless that winning was everything. It was okay in this world for a man to be a bastard—it fit male biology, contact sports, machismo—but women were nurturers biologically and hardness wasn’t nurturing.

  Right now though I felt angry and betrayed.

  I was not a believer in redemption, rehabilitation, or even a little mercy toward violent offenders. My mentality ran more toward an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I wouldn’t condone cutting off a thief’s hand, but whacking a rapist’s dick was all right with me. And it was time for someone to pay.

  Time also for what the French called the denouement. Or as we would call it, the denouncement. The victims deserved closure even if I had to be their stand-in.

  That was why I had come back to Chelsea. In a way, it had started here. For certain, it had to end here.

  I stopped by the small sign that simply said “Bolger’s” and looked down to his basement apartment. I felt my courage melting, my resolve getting mushy. It was easier to think brave thoughts than act them out.

  The blinds were drawn for the two wrought-iron barred windows and only a hint of light showed on the blinds. His lights were off in the living room, which meant he was probably in his kitchen.

  I went down the steps slowly, feeling a little cold and numb in my stomach. A line from the lyrics of a sixties folk song played in my head: Where have all the flowers gone … I couldn’t remember the next line. Gone to graveyards everyone?

  I rang his doorbell and waited. Then rang it again. The light never went on in the living room-bookstore, but I saw a window blind move. There was enough light from the streetlights for him to see it was me.

  He opened the door. “Maddy. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Where did you come from?”

  “A cold day in hell.”

  I entered and deliberately hit the light switch next to the door.

  “I’ve been worried about you. You should have given me a call and told me you were back.”

  I picked up the linga, the phallic fertility piece from his shelf, and turned around to face him.

  “This is an interesting piece of art. You indicated it was Hindu, but this one was produced as a Khmer piece.”

  He shrugged. “Not really. It’s a fake.”

  “What’s interesting about it is that I’ve seen it before.”

  “Running around the antique stores in Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Phnom Penh, I’m sure you’ve seen many fakes.”

  “True, but this is a very unique fake. Taksin made it. I’m sure if I examined it with a magnifying glass, I’d find his trademark. I should have recognized the sandstone in the first place. It’s Angkor stuff.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What are saying? All those pieces on that wall are fakes. I couldn’t afford to own a museum-quality piece.”

  “No, you couldn’t. But I bet you thought you did. I imagine that the Thai smugglers represented this piece as real. I wouldn’t have known it was a fake if Taksin hadn’t showed me pictures of his work.”

  “And I just accepted that representation? I’m an expert on Southeast Asian art and I let smugglers unload a fake on me? Come on, Maddy.”

  “Oh, but Taksin’s work is so good not even experts can really tell the difference. You told me so yourself. I imagine you didn’t check this piece for his mark until after I told you I’d seen it on the Apsarases piece. You probably took it to be just a tool mark from an ancient craftsman, if you saw it at all. I was lucky I saw it on the piece Sammy gave me. You know, it was the Sammy connection that should have turned me onto your connection earlier.”

  “The Sammy connection? Are you now accusing me of being in league with your Thai deliveryman?”

  “Not personally, he’s just a delivery guy, but that Thai group he works for is Ranar’s smuggling source. And if you’re involved with Ranar, which I know you are, then you’re involved with them. Actually, I should have stumbled onto your connection to Sammy’s group before Ranar even came into the picture.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You called me. Here I was, in need of an expert to help me authenticate a Khmer piece and who calls out of the blue? You. An expert on the subject.”

  “Have you forgotten that you’d sent me your card?”

  “I sent you my card a couple months ago—you and everyone else I ever dealt with in the business. But I didn’t get your call until Sammy had been there.”

  “I had a referral for you.”

  “No, you didn’t. You said you had recommended me to someone else. That was convenient. That way I couldn’t check. And if no one ever called, that’s not your fault, right?”

  “I find it very interesting that a woman who was involved in the most egregious art scandal in history would accuse me of wrongdoing.”

  “That won’t work, Bo
lger. The Thai smugglers needed someone to authenticate pieces. Did they pay you cash or were you getting pieces like this one in exchange?”

  “My God, Maddy, have the tropics fried your brains? Do you realize what you’re accusing me of?”

  “Smuggling, fraud … murder.”

  He laughed. “And who exactly did I murder?”

  Seeing him joke about it sent my adrenaline and anger up a notch.

  “A young Thai named Phitsanu, a Cambodian museum curator named Rim Nol, and an Angkor guide named Bourey. There was also the attempt to kill me and Taksin.”

  “You are amazing, old girl. And delusional. You really think I’ve been racing around the world killing people?”

  “No, I suspect you only directly participated in Phitsanu’s murder. But you’re as guilty of the other killings as Ranar.”

  I looked down at the linga as I spoke. Sandstone was hard and heavy. I’d need this as a weapon if he decided to harm me.

  “It was the blond hair that tripped you up,” I said.

  “Really? Am I the only blond in the world?”

  “Actually, I ran into an overabundance of blonds—you, Kirk, even Michelangelo could pass for blond. But you were the blond who had Phitsanu killed.”

  “I suppose you have some proof for these wild accusations.”

  “How about an eyewitness? Will that do?”

  “Who? God?”

  “Taksin. He was there when his friend was killed. On our stopover in Saigon, I had the hotel concierge log onto the Website advertising your services as an art authenticator. Taksin recognized your picture.”

  “And you think the word of an admitted art forger who lives halfway around the world will be taken against mine? Are you really so naïve about the way the justice system works that you think I’ll be extradited to a third world country on the word of a criminal?”

  “You know what I find interesting about that statement, Bolger? It sounds too pat. I’ll bet you’ve already thought it out, haven’t you, just in case the law came knocking on your door. You probably thought about it before you allowed yourself to be seen in Bangkok by Taksin. Of course, you figured that didn’t matter, did you. Taksin would end up dead anyway. It’s only a fluke that he’s not.”

  He moved toward me, casually, not in a threatening manner, but I veered away anyway getting a table of books between us. When it came time to run, the place would be an obstacle course for both of us, especially for him with his cane.

  He held out his hand. “Please give me back my phallic symbol. If you’re planning on braining me with it as I attack you, I can assure you it won’t be necessary. The only aggression you’ll see from me is to try to get you medical help for your poor, sick mind. Perhaps a long vacation would help? Someplace in the tropics?”

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  Bastard.

  He kept a wide grin on his face as he edged toward me and I moved away. “There’s not a damn thing you can prove—and the unsupported word of a disgraced art curator and a foreign art forger aren’t going to mean anything. Now give me back my piece and get out of here.”

  I felt something against my leg. Morty was brushing up against me.

  “This is the key, isn’t it?” I said, holding up the linga. “The accusations aren’t unsupported. This piece has Taksin’s signature on it, his monk’s begging bowl symbol. You won’t be able to claim you bought it because there won’t be a record of the transaction. The only way you could have gotten it is if the smugglers gave it to you. Which puts you in league with them.”

  We both bolted at the same time, me for the door, him for me. Bolger cursed as he stumbled over Morty and the cat let out a screech.

  I went around a pile of books but spun into another pile as he reached for me and found myself stumbling over books underfoot.

  He moved faster than I thought he could, getting a hold of the back of my coat. He jerked me against him and his arm went around my throat. I dropped the linga and grabbed his arm with both hands, kicking back against his shins with my heels as he lifted me off the ground. I screamed and twisted and kicked, trying to break his hold.

  His hold tightened and I lost myself to panic, kicking and reaching blindly back with my hand, trying to claw his eyes. My eyes went blurry as I felt a crushing pressure against my windpipe—

  Suddenly he released his hold and went backward, with me going back with him.

  Strong hands pulled me off of him.

  “You all right?”

  I pushed Michelangelo away and fell back onto my knees, choking and coughing. “Bastard.”

  “It’s okay, we have him.”

  Two uniformed police officers had Bolger pinned to the floor.

  “Not him, you. What took you so long?”

  “I’m calling for an ambulance—”

  I shook my head. “Don’t do that, no medical insurance. You’ll cost me thousands I don’t have. I’m okay.”

  I picked up Morty on my way out the door. I needed air.

  I was sitting on the stoop of the building next door hugging Morty for dear life when Michelangelo came out. I had wiped the tears away but I’m sure he could see that I’d been crying.

  “I’ll take that wire off of you.”

  I held Morty off to the side while the detective removed the radio transmitter from inside my coat.

  “You waited long enough. You were supposed to come in when I got the linga and confirmed his ownership.”

  “We needed to let you run with it to see if he would incriminate himself more. We have enough for a conviction now.”

  “Oh, hell, you know it will drag around the courts forever and then some lazy prosecutor will plea bargain him down to a traffic ticket so he can get out and come back and murder me.”

  “I’ll see to it that—”

  “See to what? Thanks to you, another couple seconds and he would have choked the life out of me. Morty saved my life by delaying that maniac a second or two.”

  He reached out to comfort me with his hand and I pushed it aside and stood up, clutching Morty to me again. The cat had become my security blanket.

  “I know what you’ve been through. You were brave to go in there.”

  “No, you don’t. You won’t know until a killer has a grip on your neck and you’re seconds from death. I should never have let you talk me into going in there to record him. First you send me off to get murdered in Cambodia, then you send me in to get murdered here. What am I? Some sort of sacrificial lamb for the police?”

  “Maddy—”

  “No, I’m out of here.”

  I left, taking my only friend in the world with me.

  I had the worst luck with men.

  Except for Morty.

  The secret to life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

  —GROUCHO MARX

  47

  Rainy days and Mondays … It felt like both even though it was Wednesday and the Manhattan evening had clear skies and a cool breeze. Standing by my apartment window, staring down at the little piece of third world below, I felt melancholy … wondering about human nature … thinking about when I was rich and famous … or at least fairly well off and reasonably well known in my profession.

  Now I was more infamous than famous and, unfortunately, better known for being involved in the dark side of art despite the fact I was always struggling to do the right thing and it wasn’t my fault that the world was full of people whose driving force was greed.

  I felt like James Garner in those old Maverick and Rockford Files TV shows he did—the ones where he beat the bad guys but never got the money or the girl at the end.

  I was feeling sorry for myself, wondering how I was going to pay the rent, thinking about splurging on a Zen Butter cone from the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory and a foot rub when I got a call from the grave.

  “When I tell you who this is, you have to promise you won’t scream.”

  I didn’t recognize th
e voice.

  “Am I allowed to curse and hang up?”

  “I’m looking for something,” he said. “It’s two thousand years old and was buried with Jesus.”

  Okay. As soon as I found out who my caller was, my next question had to be … what’s in it for me?

  I heard a tapping at my door.

  It was either Poe’s Raven come to collect my soul or my landlord collecting the overdue rent.

  Life Imitating Fiction

  The government of China is as serious about protecting their antiquities as their food exports.

  The fact that the head of the equivalent of China’s Food and Drug Administration had been shot after tainted food exports made worldwide headlines is well known.

  What received less publicity is that the government also shot the head of security for a city’s museum.

  His crime: replacing museum pieces with reproductions and smuggling the bona fide antiquities out of the country to be sold.

  He was caught when authorities discovered that an antiquity that appeared to be at the museum was sold at auction.

  Prologue

  Venice, Italy

  See Venice and die.

  The old expression about another city swirled in my head as I hurried down a deserted cobblestoned passageway that ran beside a canal. Night and fog had settled into the narrow passage, firing my paranoia as shadows behind me took shape—like eerie Rorschach inkblots that take different forms as you stare at them, what horrors my eyes didn’t see, my mind imagined.

  For sure, someone had been following me earlier. Someone who wanted me dead. Stone-cold dead.

  Looking behind me as I hurried forward, I stumbled on the uneven stones and bumped against the iron railing along the canal. Getting back my footing, I kept going, careful to avoid a dip in the cold, dark canal. I didn’t know the chemical makeup of Venetian canals, but from the smell I was reasonably certain the water would burn the hide off of an alligator.