Moonspender

by Jonathan Gash

  "Give him the bill, Winstanley," somebody said.

  My vision cranked reluctantly back. I hadn't noticed the little wart perched behind that lovely desk. Nor had I seen Winstanley, the nervous accountant now treading—not, note, walking or striding, but treading as acolytes fetch ritual unguents—toward me bearing a paper. Baffled, I stood there feeling a right daffodil. It was a telephone receipt, solving the mystery. So this was the nerk who'd paid my bill.

  "It cost me that to contact you, Lovejoy," the voice said.

  His head was just about visible. Lacquered black hair ironed down on his pate. Specs, a thin face, and a one-piece tie. I hated that one-piece tie. If you're going to wear a tie, then wear the proper bloody thing, not a cardboard monstrosity a machine makes for you. Much worse, or better, was the mind-bending fact that virtually every antique in sight was thrillingly genuine. Except one. Here was the man. Power, wealth, authority exuded from his expression; a bloke at war with anybody and everything.

  "I'm waiting, Lovejoy."

  Like I say, faces fascinate me, maybe because that's where stares come from. Oblong stares, elliptical stares, stares so straight and rectangular they hit you like the end of a plank. Women mostly have curved slow-worming stares, quite warm for the most part. Children have soft magnolia-colored stares that swarm all over your front and push you about. Henry's is like that; takes your breath away. This gaffer's stare slammed me like a piece of four-by-two.

  "Waiting? What for?"

  "My money." His fingers drummed, like a noisy arthropod creeping from his sleeve.

  "Money? I've not got any of yours." Nor, I nearly added, of my own either.

  "Explain, Winstanley."

  The serf read from a note pad like a courtroom clerk giving the charge before merciless magistrates. "Nine attempts to phone you, two visits to your cottage, petrol, capital depreciation on the Rolls, chauffeur's wages, time, the motorphone."

  Winstanley's voice was shaking. He knew what was going to happen. I had the benefit of his wobbly aspen-leaf stare, and he had the full benefit of mine. I nudged him aside.

  "I'm impressed," I said. I really was. This behavior proved that idiocy flourishes everywhere. "Comrade, your chances of getting that gelt are nil. Stuff the bloody telephone."

  "Read on, Winstanley."

  Winstanley flapped his notes. "You owe council rates, water rates, electricity, the Bungalow Stores in your village. You owe Mrs. Margaret Dainty four loans and a Lowestoft porcelain jug. You owe Elizabeth Sandwell of Dragonsdale for a personal loan made after you and she went to Birmingham—"

  "Here," I said indignantly. "That's private."

  "And the police, Lovejoy," said Sir John. "You've been arrested nineteen times. The murder charges we needn't detail, since you were never convicted."

  We all thought a bit, but Ledger had admitted I was momentarily in the clear. My confidence resurged. "Stuff the police."

  "I will deduct the amount, with compound interest at two percent over the bank rate, from you salary."

  Salary? I cheered up. Sykie's mark, definitely. "It's a deal," I said. "And in return I won't tell you which of your antiques here is phony. What's the job?" I maneuvered past Winstanley in as few strides as possible. That lovely carpet. And now this exquisite farthingale chair, taking the wind out of my sails. Find a simple chair with boxlike struts and a slightly raked back, chamfered square legs, and tapestry of blinding sweetness, and you've made your first fortune. They did lovely oak work in 1620. Of course, chairs were only for gentry. . . .

  "Eh?" I said, touching the tapestry reverently to feel that chime thrill through my middle. I looked up to find Sir John in a towering rage.

  "Did you say phony?" He whispered the word through ashen lips.

  "Dud. Forged. Faked. Reproduction. naughty."

  "Impossible, sir," Winstanley added.

  "Look," I said. "This job."

  "Sit down, Lovejoy." Both Sir John's hands were fibrillating now, tap-dancing spiders. "Out, Winstanley."

  A waft and the serf was gone. My new boss's gaze was a rapier, flicking around me before inflicting the wound. He'd got what he wanted, hired a defenseless adversary, an armless sparring partner.

  "All right. Sir John," I said. "So we hate each other. I'm poor. You're not. You've gone to a lot of trouble to find me. So you need what I can do. What is it?"

  He nodded, that curt head-jerk of the boxer at the opening bell. Part of the wall behind him slid away, would you believe the slice with a Gainsborough landscape, black and white chalk and a gray wash. I already hated him. Moving wall indeed. The revealed space glowed.

  A map of Suffolk appeared on the screen. A click, a whine, and it enlarged. I recognized the ordnance survey, saw the rim of Dogpits Farm, Manor Farm adjoining, and Roman Brook, St. Botolph's little river line, the woods, the Blackwater estuary, the red A134 road running to St. Edmundsbury. Naturally, my eyes were drawn to where my cottage stood.

  "Recognize anything, Lovejoy?" Camforth asked quietly.

  There was a small red dot in one space, the sort galleries put on paintings that have been sold. It should have been a cross, because it was where George Prentiss had died. For the first time it all came together. I knew what Sykie was playing at, and whose side I was on.

  "No," I said innocently. "Should I?"

  7

  Later I was sitting on a less august piece of furniture—a plank bench in the spit-and-sawdust Ship Tavern on East Hill. It's not bad as pubs go. Like, there are worse sinbins, but not many. On auction days you'll find most of the town's antique dealers in for their lunch hour, which extends from 11:20 a.m. to chuck-out time at three. Tinker was on his fifth pint. The gelt I'd received from Sykie stretched to render Tinker semicomatose on Greene King ale, his staple diet.

  "Gawd, I'm glad ter see yer, Lovejoy," he croaked, climbing back on the bench and mopping his streaming old eyes. He'd just had a beautiful racking cough that had shaken him off the form. Just in time I held up a warning finger. He spat phlegm politely into a finished tankard, froth. I looked away, queasy. He gave a rugose grin. "thought Sykes had done for you, mate."

  "Oh, that. His lads did me over a bit."

  "We got a few jobs on, Lovejoy?"

  "One in particular."

  "For Sykes?" Tinker swigged his ale, eyes trundling in nervous nystagmus through the glass. He's scared of big rollers like Sykes. Irritably I shoved him a bigger note.

  "Tell her to keep them coming."

  He obeyed, shoving his way through the fug and mob. Absently I watched his shabby form. He had a lot to do, now I'd taken Sir John's metaphorical shilling (he'd given me nowt). A barker's main asset is that he is a lowlife—and nobody lower than Tinker, who kips in church porches, dosshouses. He can go where even impoverished antique dealers—me—fear to tread.

  "Lovejoy." Big Frank from Suffolk arrived, soulful and lorn. It's all an act with him. You're supposed to feel a wave of sympathy and give him antique silver to cheer him up. Margaret Dainty was with him: plump, honest, loving. She loves me, but with a kind of cunning mistrust that does our relationship no harm at all.

  "A delegation, eh?"

  "About Raymond," Big Frank said.

  "Who? Oh, aye." Our hopeless hero of the dud con trick. "Leave it to me," I said calmly, smiling. "It's all in hand."

  "You sure, Lovejoy?" Margaret sounds mellifluous.

  "I'll have Raymond sorted out by eleven tomorrow." Nothing reassures people like a number uttered with conviction. Statisticians live on that deception. "You can take over Raymond's aftercare," I offered, which caused them to vanish back into the swirling carcinogenic fug. I shelved the problem of Raymond, silly burke, and started to think.

  Swiftly I ran over Sir John's account. What would be safe to tell Tinker? Allies are all right until the question of trust arises. From there you're on your own. This job needed caution. Poor George Prentiss had learned that. Of course he'd been killed, but the word "kill" says very little. Manslaughter by
a bull? Execution? Accidental death?

  Which raises the question of Roman bronze.

  "No," I'd said innocently at Sir John's map. "Should I?"

  "You fail to recognize where you live, Lovejoy?"

  "All right." I was offhand, the superdeceiver. "So it's a map of the Eastern Hundreds. Modem," I added nastily. "A quid from the Hythe paper shop. Next problem?"

  "Next problem? rumors, Lovejoy." He put his hands together in a child's pat-a-cake. "Of ancient bronze figures."

  "Oh, aye." Remembering Ben Cox, I didn't know whether to laugh or yawn. "Any in particular?"

  His chair swiveled with that grating noise made by all electronics from videos to dishwashers. An arrow light pointed on the glowing map. "Site?" he said.

  "Colchester Castle."

  The arrow flew, alighted on a luminescent estuary. "Site?"

  "Sutton Hoo, the Viking burial ship."

  The arrow tipped that ominous red dot. "Site?"

  "Nowhere?"

  He touched secret controls. The screen departed as the Gainsborough slid back like a benevolence. I couldn't help wondering what this bloke had been like as a child. He looked like he'd terrified his way to the top.

  "You are a crook, Lovejoy. Probably a killer. There isn't an antique dealer in the Eastern Hundreds who doesn't know of you. You sponge off" women. You're filthy—"

  "Watch your tongue. I'm a bit shop-soiled, that's all." I bath every dawn, and at least a bum-balls-armpits wash if I'm on the hoof somewhere. I'm always spotless underneath, even if the heating's off and I have to scrub in the chill.

  "My conclusion, Lovejoy, is this: Your particular position means you can find out why, even when others can't, anywhere in the eastlands."

  "Find out why what where?" Don't say this bloke was another Ben Cox. When I was little we nigged in to the pictures through the lavatory. We considered it the bounden duty of our contemporaries already in the audience to update us on the film's story thus far. I now felt like nobody would even tell me the story's beginning. Poor George knew it, too late.

  "Why rumors have reached me of an important find in the Eastern Hundreds. Some say Roman, others ancient British, Anglo-Saxon, early English, the Great Civil War."

  "Quite a spread," I said drily.

  "No impertinence." He spoke without rancor. 'The point is that all the rumors say bronze." He reached for a file. "You will trace the rumors and discover their substance."

  "Why me?"

  "Because you're a divvie. There is no other in East Anglia." His face contorted a little about the mouth. Fascinated, I realized his facial muscles were trying to indicate mirth. Had they ever known how? "I investigated six false claimants, Lovejoy. Your television display finally convinced me."

  "What if I don't take the job?"

  "You will." His face did its inward crumple, a horrible sight. "This file contains details of the cottage you now inhabit, and your four mortgages—I include the fraudulent ones you concocted when your lady cohabitee lent you the title deeds."

  "Those transactions are private," I said, hoarse.

  "And illegal. I have great experience in handling louts, Lovejoy." Crumple, crumple. He passed me an envelope.

  "Right." I cheered up, money at last. Then I sobered as I opened the flap. A single page of typescript. The notes on the circulating rumors he'd mentioned. "What about the gelt?"

  "Two weeks' work will cancel your debts, Lovejoy." He passed a contract over. I scanned the terms. On paper they were lucrative, which only meant it was a tax dodge.

  The phrase is "stick and carrot." I'd get two sticks, namely him and Sykes, but no carrot. Narked, I signed with a flourish. "It's a deal. And thank you for letting me see so many valuables close to." I nodded at the cacophony of antiques all around.

  "Wait!" No crumpling now. I got the stone gaze instead. A lot was happening in that brachycephalic skull of his at my smile. "Why the smirk?"

  "Two things, Sir John. Go to the Pitti Palace in Florence. They too've collected everything they could lay hands on, and jammed it all together. Old mixes with new, good with bad. The arrangement's Randolph Hearst's cellar, poshed up. Same," I added happily, ready for the explosion, "as yours."

  "And second?"

  I kept moving. "The fake. Cheers."

  Winstanley, embarrassed, was standing behind the hanging tapestry when I swished it aside. "A cautious man. Sir John," I said to him, opening the outer door. "But not antiques smart."

  " Which?" Sir John and his serf spoke together, eyes all round the office.

  It was worth a pause. "It'll cost you."

  "Pay a wastrel like you?" His voice was like an underwater cartoon talks, in bubbles. "Never!"

  "Then make a fool of yourself." I closed the door on their twin apoplexy, and beamed into Miss Minter's lovely eyes.

  "Silly sods never learn," I said, to unglue her cherished illusions. "When he cools down tell him I said ta for the contract."

  • • •

  "What's the job, Lovejoy?" Tinker asked, opposite. I realized he had been staring at me for two pints' duration, three minutes flat.

  "Look out an antique for a restaurant launch, Dogpits Farm. Then see if a Mrs. Ray of Dedham is an antique dealer on the sly. Then put the word round we're in the market for a genuine Roman bronze figurine."

  "Jesus, Lovejoy! Where'd we get that kind of gelt?"

  "Dunno," I said irritably. "That's tomorrow's problem. Then find who's buying erotica locally."

  "Like George Prentiss, that book?"

  "Exactly. Then find me Boothie the poacher. I want a word. Then find if Ben Cox is clean, in the Suffolk something trust St. Edmunds-bury way. Then anything to do with local finds, treasure trove, wrecks, tumuli, any damned thing. Then—"

  "Then these lists, Lovejoy," said this lovely woman, sliding in beside me.

  "Eh?" She had sheets of paper. Names, cars, florists, vicars. "You doing a survey, love? You've interrupted Lovejoy Antiques, Inc.'s board meeting—"

  "Marriage. Saturday. Saint Mary the Virgin."

  Obviously a loony. Tinker quickly sensed woman trouble and disappeared. "Well, thanks, love. I'm spoken for. I’ll try and make it but—"

  "You haven't forgotten?" Her limpid eyes filled. "You're our best man, Lovejoy."

  A million gazes gleefully observed my appalled realization that here was Big Frank's intended. Hellfire, I'd clean forgotten. I patted her hand. "Oh, you're, erm, Jane!" I said brightly.

  "Rowena."

  "Of course! Rowena!" Where'd I heard that name lately? "Well, it's all in hand." I pretended relief. "Good heavens, Rowena! You did give me a start!"

  "It is?"

  I racked my brains for a wedding ceremonial's trappings. "Flowers, church, cars, everything. However," I added darkly, because a furrow of disbelief marked her pretty brow, "I'm a bit concerned about . . ."

  "The photographer?" she breathed, going all anxious.

  "Exactly," I said, taking on the frown. "It's just that you can't be too careful."

  "Oh, that's so right, Lovejoy!" she cried. "But who?"

  "Eh?" How the bloody hell should I know which photographer? "You just leave that side to me. You've plenty on your plate."

  "Oh, I have, Lovejoy," she sighed. "Thank you for being so understanding. You're so sweet."

  How true. I liked her for seeing through to my pure inner core. "Just don't you worry, love. If I get in difficulties I’ll phone. Bye, er, Rowena."

  And she was gone, leaving a trace of Gonfalon struggling in the thick beer stench and me with a smile but a headache. I needed Fixer Pete. I felt worn out.

  "Tinker," I bleated wearily. "Help, Tinker."

  Funerals are lonely. Crowds can't make up for the one notable absentee, whose almost-presence compels mighty attention. Worse, there's no way to answer those unspoken questions coming your way from that coffin.

  In our villages we walk to the churchyard. In town it's cars, motors, quite a cavalcade. For George Prentiss it didn
't matter much. There weren't many people. Ledger came, like a tidy schoolmaster. Mrs. York, pale, interesting, comely in black; well, it had happened on her farm. Major Bentham didn't ride his horse; he wore tailored blacks, grays. A couple of blokes; I knew neither. The oldest scrutinized a wreath shaped like an electric bulb, probably an elderly workmate seeing the flowers had been sent right. That was it. No Mrs. Prentiss, widow of this parish. Mrs. York spoke with courteous brevity to the younger stranger; I guessed a remote cousin.

  The priest was a portly mechanical toy. Word-perfect. His choir wasn't a patch on our village's, only four or five aged trillsters and a batty old organist squinting through impossible bottle glasses and misusing the middle flutes, as if anyone ever could. The grave was on the slope below St. Peter's. A minuscule acolyte held a gigantic brass crucifix in the wind. We all kept clear in case. Have you ever noticed, but prayers for the departed are the least convincing of all extant? Latin at least would obscure the grief, but times and sense have changed. You have just not to think of it.

  Afterward, I hung back. The old man said yes, he knew George. He'd apprenticed him as a lad. Ledger was watching as we left the churchyard, heads canted against the wind.

  "What was he like at work?"

  "Same as most." He had the level stare of the skilled artisan. "You a friend?"

  "Lovejoy. Antique dealer."

  He half-smiled, nodded. "One of them, eh? I'm Smethurst. George was a good chap, but always doing foreigners. God rest him."

  "Amen," I said. A foreigner is a piece of sly work, using the firm's resources. "Did his mate work there?" A Lovejoy flying header.

  "Mate? Never knew he had one." Thud.

  Slow in saying so-long to Smethurst, I was trapped by the major. He clapped my shoulder. I hate heartiness because it does the opposite of what's intended. Mind you, love sometimes does that. And death. And money. Everything?

  "Ah, Lovejoy! There you are!" As if we'd happened across each other on an ice floe. He did a heel-rock or two. "Just a word. That, eh, episode. No hard feelings, hey? Misunderstanding."

  Now friendliness. He was still repellent. I'd never seen a major more like a major. What age was he, thirty-four, thirty-six? "Maybe."