The phone was ringing and Julie let his question hang for the time being. She’d have a lot of trouble explaining why she hadn’t gone to them sooner.
It was Alberto. “Mr. Romano wants to know how soon you can come. You don’t have to go back to the library. We have information.”
“A half-hour?”
“Shall I send Michael?”
“No thanks. I’ll run.”
Alberto laughed, a nice sound.
To Orlie she said, “I’ve got to go out now. I’ll decide later about the police.”
Orlie hauled his tools out the front door. “I don’t tell if you don’t tell,” he said, “and I fix the window real good.” He pointed upstairs. “The señora, she don’t like it when the police come.”
“I’ll bet. I’ll need the knife, Orlie.”
He surrendered it reluctantly, but no more reluctantly than Julie took it from him.
“It’s clean. No shit.” He grinned at her.
Julie wrapped it in a paper towel and put it into a drawer. She brought her pen and a ten-dollar American Express check from her purse. “Okay if I write your name on one of these and you can cash it?”
He was still grinning. “I don’t leave home without it.”
“My dear Miss Julie, I do believe things are falling into place.”
“They sure are,” she said. They certainly were falling into place at Forty-fourth Street.
“Yes?” Romano was very alert. He looked scrubbed and polished and wore pale blue slacks and a matching shirt. “Has something more happened? I’ve just awakened from a nap. I was up at three. Too early, it turned out, for the French. I had to wait an hour. We are fortunate it’s not yet August. I’d have had to wait a month. What’s your news?”
“I told you last night about the note from Mrs. Ryan—O’Grady’s pocketknife?”
“That gentleman seems to be going to pieces,” Romano said when he had heard the rest of it. “We may as well start with him. Shall we have some orange juice first? Come along.”
They went through the foyer and the dining room into the kitchen, at the sight of which Julie could not repress an “Oh, boy.” There was an island in the middle of the room with a six-burner stove, two ovens, and a grill. A variety of skillets hung overhead and the polished copper pots gleamed on a wide stretch of white wall. A chef in costume except for his hat, which hung on a peg between a string of onions and a mesh bag of shallots, was chopping vegetables.
“May I present Monsieur André, Mrs. Hayes?”
The man was tall and skinny and looked more like a dentist than a cook. He bowed formally and showed no sign whatever of being glad to meet her. He probably wasn’t. She didn’t look like an eater.
“We won’t disturb you,” Romano said as he took a surreptitious look at what was in preparation. He padded across to the refrigerator and took out a half-dozen oranges. He put them through an electric juicer and then started to take the washable components to the sink.
“Leave them, monsieur. Please.”
Romano raised his hands—a plea for peace—and he and Julie, taking their glasses, went out of the kitchen—not on tiptoe, but softly. They settled in operational headquarters, the office.
“Let us now consider Mr. O’Grady,” Romano said. “I do want to say it sounds as though you handled Ginni beautifully.”
“That’s how she thinks she handled me.”
“Exactly as it should be. She would seem to have arrived and taken over at once. I find that reassuring. But would you believe, she has brought with her two Italian members of the circus, two acrobats?”
It took Julie only a beat. “The ones who broke into the gallery in Venice?”
“Isn’t it marvelous, the sheer bravura of it? She has housed them with O’Grady, and last night those three gentlemen cut quite a caper on Mulberry Street. You may wonder how I know…”
Julie was away ahead of him, but it would have been impolite to say so.
“You will remember in our concern over Peter Mallory I was aware of your conversation with a brash young comic at The Guardian Angel?”
Julie nodded.
“Another of my interests is a restaurant, Piccolo Paradiso.”
“I know.”
“Ah, of course you do. I’d forgotten. But what I want you to understand about my curiosity, Miss Julie: I do not violate people’s privacy. I merely share in it.”
All right. Julie didn’t say anything. This was the Romano she had first come to see. In trepidation.
“Each night Michael makes the rounds of the establishments where I have interests, and brings back such information as my people think warrant my attention. I shall play part of a tape for you in a moment and you will be astonished at how interwoven our paths are with those of the conspirators we are conspiring against.
“There is a festival in Little Italy at which the two young acrobats from Italy volunteered their talent. I have a man named Tony Gatto who coordinates certain of my enterprises. Entirely without my knowledge, he proposed last night to book these young men into The Guardian Angel for a week. Needless to say, he will change his mind today. But last night he took them to Piccolo Paradiso…” Romano started the machine. “I shall translate where necessary.”
Julie listened hard, for there was the clatter of dishes and a murmur of peripheral conversation throughout. About all she heard in English for a while was the repeated, “Beautiful boys.” Romano watched her face, smiling at the mention of Ginni. Then: “Mr. Gatto, would you do me a favor and tell me what this is all about?”
“That’s O’Grady!” Julie cried.
The tape played on. Julie shook her head in sad sympathy with O’Grady when he said, “I’ve a good voice. I sing a song and read a bit of verse now and then.”
Romano played the segment of tape through, cutting it off when O’Grady left the restaurant to wait for his companions in the street.
“Now, we’ve spent enough time on that unhappy Irishman—unless we have use for him.”
“That’s what I was wondering,” Julie said. “If we need him, it might be possible to convert him.”
“He’s anticipating a considerable amount of money for his part in their undertaking.”
“Acquiring money isn’t exactly an Irish thing, Mr. Romano.”
The Little King raised his eyebrows. “That is folklore, my dear. It isn’t an Italian thing either. Some of us simply happen to be good at it.”
“Right,” Julie said and knew she was blushing. “Nevertheless, most of them aren’t good at it.”
“He is a member of the I.R.A.?”
“According to Mrs. Ryan. I imagine that’s what he’d want the money for.”
“Then I don’t see how he could be diverted. That’s my point.”
“It would have to be a conversion. We’d have to put it to him in some patriotic disguise—you know, like saying what if somebody stole the Book of Kells? That might work.”
“But think if it didn’t work.” Romano remained doubtful. “And then there’s the Irish antipathy toward informing. It seems to me their whole dramatic literature dwells on the informer.”
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be that way if there weren’t any informers,” Julie said.
“Impeccable logic.”
Julie smiled broadly. That certainly had never been attributed to her before.
Alberto had come in with an armful of books, auction catalogues. He said they had to be returned by afternoon.
Romano said: “There’s something at the back of my mind about the theft of a painting from the National Gallery in London some years ago. Or it might have been the National Portrait Gallery. The thief was an Irishman—I think an I.R.A. man—but the reason I remember: there was a great outcry over the painting’s having been first stolen—in effect, not actually—from the Irish National Gallery in Dublin, a gallery wanting in so many areas while the British were storing things they hadn’t room to show.”
“We’ve got to find that st
ory,” Julie said. “I think I know how to use it. And I’d like to have O’Grady on our side—on account of Mrs. Ryan. I know it’s sentimental, but I would. She’s very fond of him.”
Romano nodded sympathetically. “Do you suppose he has the usual Irish bonhomie with members of the police force?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
THIRTY-THREE
“PLEASE JOIN US, ALBERTO.” We need all three heads to put to this business. Now: Concerning the paintings which were allowed to leave France: the Picasso went to a British collector; where the alleged Degas went is not known. It seems probable that Rubinoff kept it. At the time, at least. Which is in itself interesting, since he disposed of the other four he had purchased from Dufayard almost at once.
“But here is the treasure, my dears: Seurat’s Musicians was the most valuable of the lot, and to whom did it go? A Zurich dealer by the name of Edmund Schoen.”
“Neat,” Julie said.
“Provocative, not yet neat, I’m afraid. Schoen sold it almost at once, along with two other paintings, to a collector named Peyton Wade in Dallas.”
“Dallas, Texas?”
“All is not lost. Forgive me if I ask that neither of you interrupt for a few minutes. I want to put this together as quickly and accurately as I can.”
Alberto had not said a word.
“We know something about Peyton Wade: he collects works of art concerning music and musicians. One thing that is immediately apparent is that if our Leonardo nude is a musician he is well disguised. No, I feel sure we can assume Peyton Wade is not our collector. But the fact that Schoen sold him three paintings, including Rubinoff’s Seurat, is significant. There are collectors who simply will not buy single paintings. The famous Hirshhorn was one. Schoen may have bankrolled Rubinoff’s purchase from Dufayard. He was probably waiting for the Seurat to complete his sale to Wade. In which case, Rubinoff did him a great favor in obtaining it and passing it along.
“I have a peculiar hunch—which may turn out to be as suspect as your comment on the Irish and money, Miss Julie—but I think this business of collecting on themes smacks of new money; it suggests ignorance and laziness. Yes! How much thought or study goes into it? Why not collect beer cans or license plates?
“Alberto, have Eloise bring us in Who’s Who.” To Julie: “Eloise is my secretary. She has an office in that part of the house.” He motioned to wherever that was.
Romano went on while Alberto spoke softly into the phone. “I want to remind you that although we’ve thought of seven categories into which the Leonardo might fit, and because we are certain that it was stolen on consignment, this does not necessarily say that our collector follows a theme. We simply don’t know enough about him yet.
“For the time, let us set aside all consideration of the two paintings from Dufayard which stayed in France. We can also eliminate the Picasso, for it remains in the cabinet of the Englishman who bought it from Rubinoff.
“And that brings us to the alleged Degas—and our little dream, Miss Julie, of its authentication. I have consulted at length with a curator who knows a great deal about Degas. Nothing with the Dufayard name in its provenance is in the catalogue of Degas’s works, and there has been an addition to the catalogue within the year. So it is possible even today to come on something the artist never intended to leave to posterity. My curator friend raised a pertinent question: Why in the world would a collector of any stature buy a possible fake Degas or an inferior one when there are numerous authentic and excellent works coming up for sale regularly? The answer that seems most logical to me is that he had complete faith in his dealer, and possibly but not necessarily, a limited trust in his own judgment.
“An interesting aside—Degas spent many months on several occasions in Naples. His father had been a Neapolitan and he had family there. Furthermore, The Young Spartans dates from that period and it is known from his journals that he made many sketches. Wouldn’t it be curious…” He interrupted himself and shook his head. “I must not take us any further afield with speculations that are too remote. For the time being we must assume that the alleged Degas sketch remains with Rubinoff.”
“That doesn’t sound right, Mr. Romano.”
“I agree, but it is the safest place for us to leave it for now.”
Romano looked at his watch. “I regret to say I have a business and luncheon meeting of my own Board here at eleven-thirty.”
Julie said: “I think I should take Scarlet Night home with me, don’t you? I mean suppose Ginni gets jittery and does come by to make sure…?”
There was an instant chill in the room, a complete change in atmosphere.
“If you think so,” he said distantly.
“No, it’s a matter of us all thinking so. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting jittery in case she does come.”
“It is ready to go now. It had to be put together again right away to be sure that every nail was accurate, everything an exact fit. I am sure Miss Bordonelli has a microscopic eye. It may well have been photographed. Will you bring it, Alberto?” The chill was unmistakable.
Alberto went into the studio and returned with the painting neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with a strong white cord. His eyes refused to meet Julie’s. She felt she had broken a code, but she didn’t know what to do about it. It wasn’t as though she wanted the picture home at all. But she knew, getting up from Romano’s desk, that no matter how she protested, nothing would prevent the picture’s leaving with her now.
A middle-aged woman, well dressed and competent, came in with a volume of Who’s Who in America. “Leave it on the desk, Eloise.”
No introduction.
The woman asked: “Do you want me to take minutes during the meeting, Mr. Romano?”
“I think not. There may be language.”
“I know how to spell those words, Mr. Romano.”
“Thank you, but we’ll use the tape.” To Alberto he said: “See that Miss Julie gets into a cab—a reliable cab company.”
“What time am I to come back?” Julie said. “If ever.”
Romano looked at her carefully, as though wondering whether he had made a mistake. He decided in his own favor. “I shall be available at three.”
On the way down in the elevator, Alberto carrying the picture for her, Julie said: “What have I done wrong? It’s not as though I want the responsibility of the picture again.”
Alberto glanced at her and away. His eyes were sad again. “Mr. Romano is very sensitive.”
“So am I!”
Alberto smiled wistfully.
There hadn’t been any suggestion of using the limousine this time and Julie was about to tote that up on the negative side when, just as she was getting into the cab, she saw the big car pulling up to the building. She glanced back, her cab stopped on the corner for a light. The passengers were piling out, Michael holding the door. They waited and then went indoors in a body. Like pallbearers. Then, out of the corner of her eye, as the cab moved forward, she saw Alberto get into another cab. She could be only reasonably sure that he followed her until, from behind the curtain in the vestibule door on Sixteenth Street, she watched and saw him pass. His face was drawn back out of sight, but the checked shirt he was wearing was not to be concealed.
If he was following to protect her—or to protect the picture—why not say so? It had to be that Romano was making sure she hadn’t gone to the F.B.I. with it. It was something to remember about him: the habit of mistrust ran deep.
THIRTY-FOUR
JULIE KNEW SHE HAD to call Mrs. Ryan about her note, whether or not she admitted to her that the pocketknife had turned up at the shop. She decided against that. After all, the knife could have lain harmless at the bottom of the catch basin or whatever, at least so far as O’Grady would know—for some time.
“I’ll look around again just to be sure,” Julie said.
“The man is beside himself with some kind of worry,” Mrs. Ryan said. “I suppose it’s the
politics over there. I often meet him at McGowan’s, and I was thinking if I seen him today I might invite him to come to supper and fix him a bit of steak. He needs cheering up.”
Oh, boy. Mrs. Ryan didn’t have any kitchen—just an electric plate on a board over the tub in the bathroom. She cooked potatoes in an electric coffeepot.
“It’s very comfortable now with the air conditioner and the blower clears the smoke in no time. You wouldn’t be free yourself, would you, Julie?”
“I’m not sure, Mrs. Ryan. I won’t know until about five-thirty. Is that too late to call you?”
“Just come if you can and we’ll make do. I might be out with Fritzie when you called. I’ve been saving that fan I promised you and Johnny could carry it over for you afterward. He’s as strong as a horse.”
THIRTY-FIVE
“I HUNG IT IN the dining alcove. It’s not exactly the right place for it, but it’s on the wall at least.”
“And you do think she may turn up?” Romano wanted to know.
“Yes! I do think it’s possible—after she’s talked with Rubinoff and O’Grady maybe. And if she did come—where would I say it was? They know it’s not at Forty-fourth Street.”
“I understand your anxiety. And if she brings Rubinoff with her? And if he suggests taking it with him? That must not happen until we’re ready.”
“Mr. Romano, why didn’t you say that when I first made the suggestion?”
“Because, frankly, I thought you were using it as a pretext to confide the whole disposal to the F.B.I.”
“That’s crazy.”
Romano leaned back and laughed. “Alberto, have you ever heard anyone say that to Romano before?”
“No, sir.”
“If he did insist, I’d say, ‘No way. Now if you want it, go ahead and sue me.’ I’ll bet he’d back off then.”
“I’m sorry if it offends you that I mistrusted you, Miss Julie. I suspect it was a variety of transference, to use psychiatric patois. I was distracted from our issue by issues to be discussed with my associates who were about to arrive. They are not always in agreement with my methods of doing business. I apologize.”
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