by Howard Fast
I guess others did too, because now the whispers died away and every head in the room was turned toward Oshun. Stanley Curtis, you may recall, was one of the Democratic candidates for the presidency. To many people, especially the young, he was the only candidate. Fran, who feared that the world would end very soon in an atomic holocaust unless something was done to halt the proliferation of atomic weapons, considered Curtis to be a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For myself, I had been a cop too long to believe in good men in politics, yet I must admit that the simple, straightforward decency of Stanley Curtis was somewhat wonderful in our times. It was only ten days since he had died of a stroke while eating dinner one evening at Restaurant La Siene on 51st Street.
“That’s a serious charge, Mr. Oshun,” I said. “That’s a very serious charge. As far as the news reports were concerned, Stanley Curtis died of a stroke. His family doctor was in attendance and concurred with that. I can understand the kind of feeling you would have for Curtis, but what good does it do to claim that he was murdered?”
The boy started to speak—then shook his head, stood for a moment, and dropped back into his seat.
Wisely, Oscar put an end to the questions at that point. Anything now would have been an anticlimax to Oshun’s wild charge. The students trickled out of the hall.
Oscar congratulated me. “Absolutely professional, Harry. You’d make a damn good teacher.”
I felt exhausted. “If I had to do this kind of thing every day all day, I’d be an invalid in a year. I’ll stay a cop.”
“You’d get used to it,” Fran said, coming up to reward me with a kiss. “Anyway, you were super.”
“Harry, you amazed me,” Shelly said.
Fran looked at me and shook her head hopelessly, and Oscar said, “Coats on. Time for the payoff. I intend to buy you both a superb dinner. How about the La Siene?”
Fran shivered. “Oh, no. No. I couldn’t.”
“Come on, Fran,” I said, “you’re not going to pay attention to that wild charge the kid made. If Oscar wants to buy us a fifty-dollar dinner, we should jump at the chance. He’ll never loosen up like that again.”
“No. Please.”
“I can understand that,” Oscar said. “It gets spooky. Suppose we do the Four Seasons.”
In the restaurant, dinner ordered, sipping our drinks, Fran said, “I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m one of those crazy conspiracy buffs. It’s just that Stanley Curtis meant something very special to me. Harry here can be as cynical as he pleases about politicians, but there are good men in politics as well as anywhere else. I just couldn’t face the thought of eating in the place where Stanley Curtis died.”
“Right on,” Shelly said. “I’m with you, Fran. I am sick and tired of those truth-about-the-Kennedy-assassination books that come out every month. I wasn’t as crazy as you about Stanley Curtis, but I’m sorry he’s dead. Still, people die of strokes. It happens all the time.”
“Can’t we talk about something else?” Fran asked.
I was looking at my watch.
“Plenty of time,” Oscar said. “When do you have to be at the museum?”
“Nine-thirty.”
“It wouldn’t do any good to ask you what’s going to happen there?”
“None.”
“Come on, Harry, I’m your brother. I’m buying you food and drink. I love you. I’m nourishing you. This Vermeer thing could be the biggest conversation piece that ever dropped into my lap, and you’re being as closemouthed as some CIA lunkhead. Come on—have you found it?”
“Lunkhead,” Fran said. “Really, Oscar, I’ve never known you to be that flippant with a heavy piece of the establishment.”
My brother grinned and pointed out that he had tenure now.
“You had it twenty years ago,” Shelly said apropos of nothing that made sense. But this was Shelly. Oscar slept around, but it was Fran’s opinion that a man married to a Shelly had to sleep around. Otherwise, he’d strangle his wife. However, I had a feeling that Oscar was fond of Shelly, who was very pretty if not very bright.
“I wish I could, but I can’t,” I told Oscar.
“Keeping his mouth shut is an integral part of Harry’s religion,” Fran told Oscar. “You lose a conversation piece, but I am driven absolutely crazy. I live with the man. I’ve had to learn to read his face and be content with that.”
“Read about the Vermeer, then,” Shelly said.
“All right. Either he knows who took it or he knows where it is or he found it or something like that.”
“Bravo!” from Oscar. “But you know, Harry,” he went on, “Vermeer is something special in man’s history. When the whole European world still wallowed in ignorance, prejudice, and hatred, those thrifty burghers of Holland had created a civilization of tolerance and cleanliness and proper beauty. When you look at a Vermeer, you see it, everything proper, clean, quiet, orderly. Now, according to the New York Post—”
“Really, Oscar,” Fran interrupted. “You read the Post?”
“It’s yet another side of this throbbing city. After all, I am a sociologist, my dear Fran. And as I was saying, according to the New York Post, the Vermeer was stolen by some criminal-minded collector so that he might lock it in a room where he alone could savor its pleasure and beauty. Do you buy that, Harry?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. And do you know why? Because if such an art-collecting psychopath existed, he’d have his minions steal something truly overwhelming, as for example ‘Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.’”
“I believe the museum paid less than two million for that.”
“That was preinflation, Harry. Anyway, the point is that I simply don’t believe a quiet little gem like the Vermeer would suit a loony collector.”
I nodded.
“No more than that? Harry, Harry, you disappoint me.”
Riding uptown in a cab, Fran said, “It was such a good dinner. You could have given Oscar a hint about the Vermeer.”
“How do you know I had a hint to give him?”
“Going to the museum at nine-thirty—of course you have a hint, and a lot more.”
“I’ll drop you off at the apartment.”
“You will not. If you think I’m going to miss the fun of whatever you have scheduled to happen tonight, you are absolutely out of your mind, Harry. And I heard you telling Mr. Lawrence in your most arrogant manner that he was to have the director and the president there and that you might even turn up the painting.”
“You don’t really believe that?”
“I think I do.”
“All right, then come along.” And as a matter of fact, I was quite pleased that she had insisted. I would have suggested it in any case. Nothing a man likes better than to be a hero in front of his wife.
“You’re a dear. You really are,” Fran said. “I just can’t imagine how spooky and strange a museum is at this hour. When you retire, ten years from now, we’re going to England—first shot, aren’t we?”
“So you say. Absolutely.”
“You know why I thought about that, Harry? Spooky stuff, empty museums, and Madame Tissaud’s Waxworks—it is Madame Tissaud, isn’t it?”
“Something like that, I think.”
We were at the museum now, and I paid the driver. Fran and I walked to the lower-level entrance, where a guard was waiting.
“Are you Lieutenant Golding?” he asked me. I nodded, and then he pointed to Fran and asked, “Who’s she?”
“She’s my wife.”
“Could you show me your identification?” He looked at my badge, and then informed me that he had instructions to allow me to enter, but no one else.
“Then suppose you go inside and get new instructions.”
“Yes, I suppose I can. What did you say her name was?”
“Golding,” Fran said. “Fran Golding, Mrs. Lieutenant Golding, the lieutenant’s wife.”
He nodded without m
oving a muscle in his face, and then he went inside. I waited with Fran for about five minutes until he returned and said that we could follow him. We went into the museum through the coatroom to the elevator, and then back past the Greek votaries and vases to the great central gallery. They were waiting for me, Lawrence, and with him Willard Stevens, the director, and Joseph Lubbler, the president.
“I told you my wife would be with me,” I said to Lawrence, not kindly. “Why all that nonsense at the door?”
Fran looked at me strangely. Lawrence sighed and cast a glance at the guard, as if to indicate that the guard’s stupidity was to blame. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”
“I suppose you have a good reason for calling us here tonight, Lieutenant. I don’t know why we agreed to it. Neither you nor the New York City police appear to comprehend what is at stake.” This from Lubbler, not one to accept arguments or instructions from an underling. “I spoke to the police commissioner today, and he promised a whole new approach to the theft. Also, both Stevens and I left dinner parties this evening. So suppose you get right down to whatever you have in mind.”
“And explain why it had to be this evening, like some ridiculous charade,” Stevens added.
“I don’t want the guard with us,” I said. “I want us to be alone.”
For a moment, this took them aback. Then Stevens said to the guard, “Go downstairs to the door, Maguire, and stay there until we all have gone. It shouldn’t be too long.” Then, when the guard had left, Stevens turned to me. “Now what, Lieutenant?”
“Let me explain,” I said, as gently as I could manage, considering my irritation. “When Mr. Lawrence told me about the ransom note, with instructions to make the drop tomorrow, I realized that I had to see you all tonight. I was scheduled to address a group of students at New York University, and I felt that was an important obligation. In any case, we would have met here after the museum closed. By the way, did the instructions for the drop arrive?”
“Just before the museum closed,” Lawrence said. “I turned them over to Captain Courtny at your precinct. I have a Xerox copy with me.”
Stevens rustled around in his pocket. “Do you want to see it now?”
“Later. By the way,” I said to Lubbler, “are you thinking of paying out five million dollars?”
“It’s worth twice that.”
“A child is worth more than any price, and a small painting is easier to get rid of than a child’s body.”
Later, Fran asked me why I’d said that. I suppose it was sheer petulance. There is a peculiar thing in New York City, an upper class as real as anything that may exist in Europe; it consists of the rich, the political, and the people who run the artistic institutions, the theaters, the concert halls, the museums, not the working actors and writers and painters, but the managers. And these three men were completely of that upper class. All of them were in evening clothes, and all of them exhibited contempt for the intelligence of a cop. This, I admit, provoked me to the point where my own behavior was rather childish.
“Then you would not pay the ransom, Lieutenant?”
“Can we discuss that later? I want to go to the gallery now.”
With nods and shrugs that indicated their willingness to go along with me and get it over with, whatever it was, they led the way up the broad staircase to the galleries. There were over thirty large rooms that housed the work of the masters, room after room of paintings whose worth was beyond calculation, wealth that ran to billions of dollars, protected with every modern burglar alarm and device imaginable, yet not worth stealing. Thievery is a practical business. What you can’t fence is not worth taking. That was my immediate reaction when I’d heard that one of the most valuable paintings in the world had been taken from the museum.
The rooms were lit. There were five rooms that housed the Dutch masters. The Vermeer had been taken from the last room, taken out of the frame, which had been subsequently removed. Nevertheless, there was a shadow on the wall where the painting had been.
“Here we are, gentlemen,” I said. “Now I would like to see the ransom note.”
Lawrence handed me the bit of paper. It read: If you want the Vermeer back, put five million in a knapsack and wait on the platform seventy-second station centrel pk west one to three tomoro. no cops or no pikshure.
“You see,” Lawrence said, “he spelled four words wrong.”
“Indicating what?” I asked. The words were made out of letters cut from magazines. “He also spelled knapsack and station correctly. He decided that we should think of him as an ignorant man. How ignorant he is, I don’t know, but he’s very stupid. His plan for the drop indicates an IQ of one hundred or so.”
“Is that why you brought us here?” Stevens asked with considerable irritation. “To give us a psychological profile of the thief? You can spare us that.”
“No, gentlemen. I brought you here because you received that ridiculous note. I wanted us alone here because this was an inside job, and I did not want to be overheard. The painting is here.”
“What?”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
Even Fran was regarding me with doubt and a little bit of alarm.
“Listen now,” I said. “It’s a small painting but it’s in a large, ornate frame. Four bolts had to be unscrewed before the painting could be removed from its frame. The thief would have to know about the bolts. He would have to have a small pliers, and he might have to return several times before he had them all unscrewed. That suggests an inside job, but let’s put that on the shelf for the moment and stick to the problem of the painting. I’m a cop and maybe not the brightest, but I got a lot of years on the force and in all that time I never heard of one of those loony collectors who steal valuable objects and sit and look at them in some secret room. I don’t believe it. A thief steals to sell what he steals and there’s no way he could sell that Vermeer. I heard that it’s worth ten million dollars. That information came from Mr. Lawrence—”
“It certainly is worth that,” Lubbler said.
“Possibly, but I like a second opinion. So I spoke to a dealer friend of mine on Madison Avenue, and he said that it might bring ten million at auction, or five million, or two million, depending on who attended the auction and who was bidding. But the crook who pasted up that ransom note must have heard the ten million figure to make his own figure so preposterous. And a knapsack. Can you imagine getting five million in bills into a knapsack?”
“Damn it, Lieutenant!” Stevens snapped. “Is the painting here or isn’t it?”
“I knew it was here the day of the robbery. Wouldn’t the thief have been a total horse’s ass to try to get it out of the museum? The only intelligence he displayed was to leave it here.”
“Where, for heaven’s sake?”
I pointed to a large, stuffed leather bench in the center of the room. “Taped under that bench.”
After a properly long moment of astonishment, the three men leapt at the bench. It fell to Lawrence to get down on his stomach, for the bench was quite low, and then to wriggle under it. By all rights, they should have instructed me to crawl under the bench, but they were so excited at the thought of retrieving the Vermeer that for a moment they forgot I existed. Then Lawrence remembered and called out, “Please pull me out, Lieutenant!”
I grabbed his ankles and pulled him out, dusty but triumphant, the stolen Vermeer in his hands, long strips of adhesive tape still attached to the back of the painting. At least the thief had shown enough sense to tape it with the paint side up. Lawrence sat on the floor, holding the painting as if it were an adored child, his two colleagues crowding close to look at it. I had not realized that three grown, intelligent men could adore a small picture painted hundreds of years ago, to a point where they were practically drooling over it. Lawrence even took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and dusted the face of the painting gently. I went to Fran and kissed her cheek. It was reward for being very silent and never telling me to stop
before they took me away to the booby hatch.
Stevens finally tore himself away from the painting and asked me, “When did you discover that the painting was there?”
“The day you discovered the theft.”
“And you kept the information to yourself? How did you dare to? I think it the most presumptuous act on the part of a city employee that I have ever encountered, not to mention that it made fools of all of us.”
Now he hit me where it hurt, and Fran recognized my anger and reached out and squeezed my arm in a manner which said, “Take it easy, Harry, nice and easy. These are very powerful people, and this museum is the most important part of your precinct and maybe the most important museum in the world, so please darling take it easy.” I know she was telling me that because I was thinking exactly the same thing, and I controlled myself enough to say, “I’ve recovered your damn painting, and I let it sit there until the ransom note came, because if I told any one of you where it was, you would have blabbed, and since I’m pretty damn sure the thief works here, I had to leave it where it was until now, because that’s our only chance of picking up the crook. And believe me, it was a lot safer under the bench than on your wall!” I kept my voice down, so what I said was not quite as nasty as it looks in print. With proper police procedure, I should have taken the stolen property over to the station house with me, but I knew that if I even suggested such a thing, these three men would have fought me like tigers before they’d have let the Vermeer out of the building.
Instead, I sort of apologized and said to them, “I’m sorry we had some words, but you have the painting and that’s what matters.”
“Yes, that’s what matters,” Stevens agreed.
“I’ll make arrangements about the pickup tomorrow morning. Good night.”
As I walked through the galleries with Fran, Lawrence called after me, “Thank you, Lieutenant. We’re really very grateful.”
Chapter 2
WE WALKED BACK to our apartment, and all the way Fran never said a word. It was only ten-thirty. When we got into the apartment, Fran said, “I’ll make some tea.” She was looking at me very strangely. I sat down in the kitchen and smiled at her.