The Case of the Purloined Painting

by Carl Brookins

“Hello, Mr. Sean,” she said back.

  “How is it that we meet here, today?”

  “Mr. Gottlieb told me about this painting. He said it was of a scene near his home. In Poland.”

  “Did he tell you anything else about it?”

  Ursula shook her head. “No. I just started coming here to see it after he died and the house burned. He was like a grandfather to me, you know? I miss him.”

  I nodded. I decided not to tell her of my suspicions that the painting might be the reason Mr. Gottlieb had been murdered. I got up to leave and smiled at her. “I have to go now, but I expect to come back to see the painting again. Take care.”

  She smiled sadly and nodded. Then she turned to look at the painting of the Bug River. I went to find a telephone.

  Pay phones were becoming a rare breed in this town. It looked like I was destined to pop for a cell phone sometime soon. Eventually I located a phone in the lobby of a small motel across the street from the museum and reached out to my friends down the hall from my office. The thing rang twice in my ear and Belinda picked up. “Yeah?”

  “Is this hacker heaven?” I enquired. “Establishment of the beauteous Revulons, Betsy, and Belinda?”

  “Knock it off, Sean, or I’ll put you on hold. Whaddyouwant?”

  “Research request, my pet. Last year, a man named Albert Murchison donated a painting to MIA. The painting is a landscape, attributed to a Polish artist named Abraham Neumann. It purports to be a scene along the Bug River in Poland, naturally.”

  “Okay. What am I looking for?”

  “Dunno, exactly, so that must mean everything. Especially provenance.”

  “You got anything else?”

  “I suspect it was painted in the 1920s. No later than 1935. Oh, and it was probably collateral in a bank loan Al Murchison took out around 1945 to finance the purchase of a machine shop in north Minneapolis.”

  “Intriguing. Haven’t we been over this ground?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll jump right on it,” she said.

  Belinda, being a large well-endowed woman, with copious waves of bright blond hair, the vision that came to mind of jumping on anything was not one I cared to share. I hung up the receiver.

  More library research seemed appropriate. I wanted to acquire more background about the Murchison family. Facing Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis was a nice new central library. On my way to the library, I ruminated about meeting Ursula at MIA. What were the chances of that? I’m always suspicious of coincidence, even while recognizing that it does happen. Frequently. Had she been following me? Was she really so attached to the dead Gottlieb that she had a psychological need to visit the painting more than once? My gut told me to pay attention but not to worry unduly. I continued to the library.

  There, with help from the staff, I acquired notes on the Murchisons. The information was illuminating. I started with some census information from 1900. No Murchisons. They showed up in 1910, a man and a wife. Laborer, it said. I knew if I widened the search, I might learn where Mr. Albert Murchison had emigrated from but at the moment I didn’t care.

  On I went until by 1920 there were several family members. The family had a disturbing tendency to name male children Albert. I lost the generational thread a few times. But eventually, I was able to pinpoint one Albert Malcolm Murchison who joined the army of these United States in 1939. He was eighteen at the time. Seven years later, one year before the end of his second hitch, in 1946, Mr. Albert Malcolm Murchison, having attained the enlisted rank of master sergeant, was mustered out and returned to the bosom of his family. Along the way he’d acquired a wife and two sons.

  Then he and his father went to a bank in northeast Minneapolis and floated a loan, a sufficiently large enough loan to allow them to purchase a smallish machine shop, which they renamed Murchison Manufacturing.

  I was looking at a locally produced neighborhood history a kindly librarian had located for me. The entry was short and not terribly informative.

  It was at that moment I realized that my growing itch was real. Somebody was watching me. I closed the book and rose, leaving my coat over the chair and wandered casually to a nearby water fountain. I drank, peering beneath my arm. Then I stood and pivoted so I could sweep the whole room. It was large and there were a half-dozen people scattered about. My radar continued to itch, but I couldn’t detect anyone who seemed interested in myself. I went back to my table, put on my coat and went down the escalator to the street level, where I exited toward the parking lot. I wondered if my friendly hacker had been successful. A tall man in a bulky and long dark overcoat wearing an old-fashioned black fedora pulled low over his forehead followed me out of the library and into the parking lot.

  Chapter 30

  Back in my cozy little office in northeastern Minneapolis, I was pleased to be reminded that the owner of the building was generous with winter heat, if not electric lighting in the halls. Every so often I would wonder how much potential business I and the other tenants lost because the hall lighting was so dim. On the other hand…

  The light on my recently acquired answering machine was blinking. There was a single call and a lot of static or white noise. The calls from Ann/Anne and Mr. Gehrz were no longer in evidence. The single call had been recorded an hour ago while I was at MIA contemplating the Bug River banks as interpreted by Mr. Neumann, and conversing with Ms. Skransland.

  I crawled around my office and examined the locks and the outer door. I could see no evidence of the lock being forced. There wasn’t enough dust on the floor to leave traces so whoever had cleaned up had been careful. For that I was grateful. One of the private investigator’s expenses is the repair of office equipment and doors, due to forcible entries from time to time.

  I considered my files which had not been removed although there was some evidence the copy machine may have been used. I didn’t get the point. Removing voice evidence might derail a poorly put together court case, but surely the Market/Gehrz operatives calculated that I must have copies of crucial information stashed somewhere else. Or, maybe I didn’t.

  The single telephone message was from Belinda Revulon, informing me she had some interesting material for me. I replaced the receiver in its cradle and went down the hall. The lights were on but nobody answered my knock. I considered my options for a moment when Betsy Revulon appeared from the direction of the bathrooms.

  “Hang on,” she called. “Belinda had to go see a client in St. Louis Park so she gave me your stuff.”

  We went into the two-room suite crowded with electronic equipment. The equipment had uses I couldn’t discern or even imagine. There were a couple of open metal racks loaded with gear that sported lights and wires and connectors and displayed brand names like Motorola, IBM, Apple, and so on.

  Betsy snagged a file folder from a table and turned to me. “Everything we found so far is in here. We think you should go over this and then maybe we can narrow the search, if you need us to. Turns out there are a ton of Murchisons all over the country. I suspect you’ll be most interested in what we’ve turned up on one Alvin M. Murchison whose son Clem is the Murchison you talked to the day of your attempted assassination.” She gave me a small smirk.

  “I can take this material back to my office?”

  “Most definitely. We printed everything out. The data is stored elsewhere. I do want to call your attention to a PDF photograph we collected.” She riffled through the pages and fished out a single sheet. The picture was a blurry copy of a newspaper photo and story about the good things in the community being done by a local bank. The line at the top of the clipping said it was from a northeast neighborhood newspaper, probably a weekly. The date was April something, 1955. The accompanying picture showed a smiling, young and portly gentleman sitting in a high-backed chair behind an impressive desk. The caption said the picture showed th
e civic-minded president of the bank, one Charles Carter.

  “Look at the wall behind the guy,” Betsy said.

  “Ah, yes,” I said. There was a painting hanging on the wall. The picture had been cropped so we couldn’t see the whole painting but I recognized it right off. “There’s the Neumann painting. No way there could be two so similar paintings in Minneapolis.” I smiled at Belinda. “Great. And thanks.”

  “Yep,” she nodded. “I recognized it from your description.”

  I took myself and my new evidence linking the parties together to my office.

  I nipped down to the store in the corner of our building. I believe in a bygone era it was called a sundry store. I almost never patronized the place. The owner carried a limited variety of pre-packaged sandwiches. This day I felt pressed for time so I grabbed what was labeled a cheese on rye and a can of diet cola from the cooler. Then I beat it back upstairs to my office.

  My case, I realized had essentially disappeared. Ann/Anne, who was really Tiffany Market, had been found. Therefore, Mr. Gehrz was out of the picture, since my mandate from him was to find the woman and assure myself that she was in good health. I’d done that.

  Her entreaty to me was being followed in that I supplied all I knew about the murder to the cops. If they wanted to interview her, it was up to them to locate her. Or it was up to her to come forward, an action I’d suggested to her more than once. That she’d so far refused wasn’t my problem either.

  I had no dog in the hunt for the killer of Manny Gottlieb. Aaron hadn’t hired me, nor had Derrol Madison. They were both involved, but I wasn’t sure to what level. I could close the files on this business except for a couple of things.

  Murchison. A possibly purloined painting. Somebody wanted my head. That somebody had tried for me twice. I didn’t believe for a New York minute that the guy I’d had to kill outside the Murchison Manufacturing plant was acting on his own. Nor did I believe his removal from the scene had ended the threat. No, there was something else going on here.

  Having satisfied my own belief that I couldn’t yet close the book, I decided on my next step.

  I would talk to a certain ex-banker in Nordeast.

  The research my lovelies down the hall had supplied me with not only provided the name of the bank, Northeastern State Bank of Minneapolis, and its street address, but also the name of the current president. There was also a few lines indicating that the most recent former president, although retired, still maintained a small office in the building.

  He was my next target. I was going into Northeast Minneapolis to talk with a banker.

  His name was Carter, Charles Carter, I was informed by the petite receptionist in the neat lobby. Of course I already knew that.

  I could have called to make an appointment, but I often find that showing up unexpectedly can elicit the kind of information I really want. That assumes one’s target is available. Chuck Carter could have been in Florida or on a warm beach in the South Seas. He wasn’t. He was in his office in Minneapolis and if I’d take a seat, she was sure Mr. Carter would be able to spare a few minutes to talk with a graduate student in banking from an obscure Western college she’d never heard of. That would be me.

  I smiled, sat and perused a business magazine of some sort. Ten minutes later, a slender, white-haired, nicely set up gentleman in an extremely well-tailored pinstripe suit met me at the door to his office. His smile displayed a mouthful of very white and straight teeth. His face was seamed and darkly tanned, as if he spent a lot of time these days on a golf course, and if his age had stooped him a little, his handshake was firm. He appeared truly glad to see me.

  For the first few minutes we danced around the little fibs I’d told to get into Charles Carter’s office. About being a graduate student from out of town researching influential community banks. About not knowing much of anything about Nordeast Minneapolis. After a few minutes, Carter began to suspect I had other motives because he held up one arthritic hand and said, “Mr. Sean, just what is it you think I can do for you?”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You can search your memory for the circumstances surrounding a loan you approved back in 1946, a loan made to a local man named Albert Murchison.”

  Carter raised his eyebrows. There seemed to be a good deal of that going around, these days.

  “In those days, we still had loan committees,” he said

  “True, sir, but applications started with employees of the bank, correct? And in this particular case, because the loan was, I imagine, fairly substantial, I’m betting Murchison came directly to you, the president of his local bank.”

  “Albert Murchison. I remember him. A veteran of the war, recently back from Europe and looking to make something of himself.”

  “That’s the man. Now, while you recollect, I want to tell you what I know about that meeting. I don’t expect you to reveal private matters, but it would help me enormously if you’d indicate where I might have false information.” Carter nodded and seemed to relax. He wasn’t going to be grilled about something questionable. I didn’t actually have any questionable information. He wouldn’t know that, of course, unless he’d made a few questionable deals.

  So I related Murchison’s war record and his immediate job seeking actions after he was discharged.

  “And then he showed up in your office asking about a loan. He wanted to buy or buy into a small manufacturing shop just a few blocks away from us, as it happens. He wanted a fairly sizeable loan, several tens of thousands, I expect and you must have been doubtful at first. But then he produced a surprise. He had somehow acquired a painting, a landscape by a man named Abraham Neumann. When you saw it, you allowed as how you could approve the loan with the painting as part of the collateral. And apparently, Mr. Murchison agreed to let you hold the painting. I see by your expression, Mr. Carter, you are with me here.

  “But then, after the loan went through and you took possession of the painting, you did something a little unusual.”

  I slid a photograph out of my slender briefcase, the one I held on my lap, and laid it on the desk between us. It was a copy of the eight-by-ten black and white newspaper picture from a celebration in Northeast Minneapolis. I didn’t much care what the occasion was, but there were a couple of people in the picture with Mr. Carter, in his office at the time. Nineteen sixty or around then. And on the wall behind them was the Neumann landscape. It was only partially in the photo’s frame, but enough to clearly identify it as the same picture now hanging in state at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

  “Instead of just storing the painting, you had it framed and hung on the wall of your office.”

  I slid the photograph closer to Mr. Carter. He looked at it and a big smile creased his wrinkles.

  “Oh, yes, I remember that day well. The bank was participating in a neighborhood holiday.”

  “Now, it gets less exact,” I went on while he looked at the photo. “Some years later, Mr. Murchison came to you and paid off the loan, and took possession of the painting. His collateral, correct? And sometime after that, maybe a few years later, you began to think about that painting. Maybe you read a story about how the Nazis had plundered many art collections all over Europe and how some members of liberating armies did similar things. GIs and others were collecting the odd bits to bring home as souvenirs.

  “But that painting was too fine to just be a casual souvenir wasn’t it? Even though it wasn’t highly valued, your bank had loaned a substantial piece of change for that painting hadn’t you? You even liked the painting well enough to hang it in your office and allow it to be photographed, right?

  “But then a sour note or two was raised. I think you talked to Al Murchison, now an influential member of the community with a successful manufacturing company. You talked to him about the painting and between you, decided the better part of valor was to get rid of it
. Due to some changes in attitudes here and there, that painting was beginning to look like a liability, am I right?”

  I smiled at Charles Carter. My teeth were showing. He was still looking down at the photograph.

  “You wanted him to get rid of the painting quietly, right? But he went against your wishes, right? Making a donation to MIA was a public splash. I suppose Mr. Murchison decided a donation of the work would give him a nice extra benefit in the form of public approbation and a tax write-off. Then MIA decided they’d better test the provenance of the thing because they sure didn’t want a stolen painting in their collection, did they? No more did you. Especially a painting that probably had been feloniously liberated in eastern Poland.”

  My voice was rising a little as my anger grew. I knew Carter wasn’t responsible for the theft, his crime was passivity. What he knew or thought wasn’t important to him. As soon as he began to suspect that Murchison hadn’t come by the painting legitimately, he should have spoken up, persuaded Murchison to take the piece to the authorities. Had they done that, Manny Gottlieb might still be alive. A stretch? Perhaps.

  I didn’t think Chuckie Carter, former bank president, had ordered Gottlieb killed, nor had he tried to have me gunned down. But he was partially responsible for two untimely deaths.

  I stopped talking abruptly and sat there wishing I had a glass of cool water. Carter said nothing for a long silent moment. Then he sighed noisily.

  “It was all a long time ago,” he muttered.

  “Well, that’s not quite true,” I said. “I think you know or suspect that some member of the Murchison clan is responsible for Mr. Gottlieb’s death. What’s more, I won’t be the least bit surprised if we discover you know about the two attempts on my life. You’re a smart man, Mr. Carter. You can put two and two together, just as I can.”

  Carter’s reaction was unexpected. He hadn’t made the connections or he didn’t know about the shoot-out in the intersection three blocks away. I was hoping he’d make some waves with one of the Murchison’s which would quite possibly provoke a revealing response. His mouth fell open and he stared at me, white-faced. For a moment, I thought he was having a heart attack, but then he recovered and shook his head. I watched his face close up and I knew the interview was over.