So had Adrian.
Get to go cheer for New Jersey.
Her phone vibrated on Bale’s nightstand. Quickly closing the gap in the curtains, Val sprang for the phone. It was Cleary. She tapped the button and listened to the cop handling Adrian’s case say, “A break-in, eh? Tell me what you found.” Suddenly her two glasses of that lovely Malbec shared with Bale had seeped into the most remote cells in her brain, fuzzing her enough to take the edge off her sadness. All she wanted was to sleep.
It became a fine goal, an expedition she could sign on to—and as she sank back and turned off the light, she told Cleary that she was safe at a friend’s for the night. That she’d meet Cleary at her apartment at eight a.m. to show her the evidence of the break-in. Since there was no urgency, Cleary agreed and hung up. Val turned into the pillow, wondering before sleep hit how she’d get into her place without the secure ID that Bale had mentioned, the faint smell of citrus lifting off the pillow and chasing the Malbec to the remote and lovely places of her troubled mind.
In the morning, Val discovered a text from Bale that had come in at 4:32 a.m. Check with front desk for secure ID. One problem solved. She pulled out the change of clothes she had flung into her Key West raffia tote and discovered the ivory-colored retro dress with the fitted bodice and full skirt. In her haste to get out of her invaded apartment, she had at least also tossed a black jacket with sequined trim into the bag too. Before leaving the room, she pulled the covers loosely up over the bed and looked around one last time. Unless the Carmelites were an order that managed to circumvent the vow of poverty, she couldn’t figure how Bale afforded this fine, tasteful room at the Iroquois. The woodwork gleamed, the white sheets were crisp and new, and the thick, soft blue carpeting gave nothing away in terms of Room 321’s history. Either before or during the stay of Antony Bale.
Val’s neck was stiff, she thought more from anxiety than anything else, despite the Malbec’s best efforts, and only a large cup of coffee would keep a headache from dominating the day. With a date to meet Greta at the Morgan Library at noon to chase down Saul Bensoussan’s conviction that one of the Mexican Inquisition holdings was a fake, she couldn’t afford to let the headache develop. With a strange sort of regret, Val softly drew shut the door to Bale’s hotel room and headed down three flights of stairs. The clerk at the front desk smiled and slid her a small, sealed manila mailer that Val tucked into her jacket pocket.
Back on the street, the morning was cool and overcast, as if it didn’t even have the strength for outright melancholy. At 44th Street, she took a quick look around to get re-oriented to a street that had felt quite unknown to her in her fears last evening. With a quick stop at the Food Court below Rock Center, where she grabbed a cup of dark roast coffee and a cheese Danish, she made it back to her apartment in twenty minutes. If she didn’t know better, Val could swear she was in a hurry to be back home. By her phone she was three minutes early for Cleary, so she waited in the shallow alcove, drawing her black jacket tighter around her. In the perfect rows of black plastic sequins, Val found something more cheerful than anything else, like perfect little black planets tucked closely behind each other. There was a fine, tight order to the rows that on that particular morning felt missing everywhere else.
An old woman with dyed red hair wearing brown suede boots ambled, weaving past Val. A young man in a cheap suit with a blue backpack and mirrored sunglasses skated recklessly toward Second Avenue on a rainbow-colored longboard. Deliverymen talked in the gutter, and she watched a near three-cab collision just past the intersection. Angry horns ensued. Still staring at tiny black spangles on her jacket pockets, Val felt herself smiling. Maybe she was wrong. The city was as reliable as cyclones across the prairies. All the shadows were under her skin, after all.
Two car doors slammed shut. “Ms. Cameron?” came the voice. Val looked up at Lieutenant Cleary, dressed that Monday morning in khaki ankle pants, a narrow striped white button-down shirt, the wings of the collar flipped up, and a jean jacket. The detective slid her sunglasses to the top of her laser-parted black hair, still clipped tight at the nape of her neck. They shook hands. “You okay?” Cleary leaned into Val, quickly scrutinizing her. A uniformed cop stood at ease, looking up and down the street.
“Never better,” Val told her. They both knew it was a lie.
Cleary nodded, grabbed Val’s arm, and walked her a few steps toward Second Avenue. “Listen,” she said, with a quick scratch to her pert nose, “I want to fill you in on that kosher bakery truck.” She went on to describe how the owner had reported the theft of one of their delivery trucks yesterday. Right off the street. Couldn’t believe his eyes. He and the driver had nearly finished loading up the back for the morning’s deliveries when bing bang boom it was gone, just like that. Oy, what a mystery, oy, what a mess—what with the two Men’s Club breakfasts they were catering plus three preschool Shabbats, uptown, downtown, you got the picture. Then, he went on, nothing less than a miracle, a minor miracle on a busy day, nothing on the level, say, of the parting of the Red Sea, baruch haShem, but…the bakery van turned up! Who would have believed it?
“A patrol car discovered it abandoned near Pier 90,” finished Cleary. “The owner inventoried the goods,” she said, “and there was one box of four dozen assorted bagels and one pound of rugelach missing.” Cleary gave Val a small smile. “Since he decided it was kids joyriding—although we didn’t point out that most kids are looking for something sexier than a bakery delivery van—we decided not to mention to him that his truck had transported a stolen plant, a murder weapon, and a cold-blooded killer.”
“Why not?”
Cleary shoved her hands into her pants pockets and gave Val a frank look. “Do we really want Channels 3, 5 and 8 to get hold of that piece of information? We’re thinking not, for as long as we can keep it under wraps.”
Val shook her head. “But it might bring someone out of the woodwork, right? Someone else who hears the story and realizes he saw something—”
“And how long do you think it would take our media outlets to get hold of your little pal Avital Korngold,” said Shay Cleary, leaning toward Val. “And how long—after that—before the killer knows he’s been made? And by a thirteen-year-old kid who walks five blocks alone to the train every day to get to school?” Val felt chilled. “Right now the only blowback we’ve got from the theft of the bakery van is from the poor owner, who’s talking about needing to scrub out the back of the van when he thought kids had stolen some bagels. Now,” she jerked her chin at Val, “let’s go upstairs and see what you’ve got.”
With that, Lieutenant Shay Cleary went ahead of her and told the uniformed cop to talk to the doorman about anything out of the ordinary in or around the building yesterday. Then she held open the door for Val, who walked past her into the building she had called home for about as long as she had worked at Schlesinger Publishing. At the prospect of returning to her apartment, her mouth went dry, and for the life of her, she didn’t know if she would ever get over the break-in. She walked toward the elevator on legs that felt spindly, with Cleary close behind her.
At least Tali Korngold was still unknown to the killer.
But Val herself was not. Whoever he was, he had moved around inside her home, fingered her things, bugged her space, and left—if Bale was correct—without a trace.
23
When Val and Greta met outside the Morgan Library, they stepped into the full-body hug they had perfected over thirty years. Val whispered, “How was dinner?”
Greta gave her three quick kisses, one right on top of the other, then pushed her. “Dinner, I’ll have you know, was one of my best. Well worth all the trouble.”
“Did your guest stay the night?”
Greta lowered her chin, and said primly, “As a matter of fact, he did. With these academic types, you never know.” She grabbed Val’s arm and headed toward the glass doors of the Morgan Library. �
�When it comes to the sack,” she explained, stepping to the side to let Val pass inside. “So it’s always a risk. Half the time you get the idea they’d just as soon be at home reading Proust. And I mean during.”
Even as Val laughed, and Greta linked arms with her, she hoped she wasn’t about to hear anything more in the way of details. But the details, when they came, were culinary. About ten feet into the soaring atrium, Greta turned to her niece. “The fact that my guest keeps kosher added a certain challenge to the meal.” She shrugged. “I bought a new pot, a new pan, plastic forks and knives, and paper plates. Kashrut,” she gave Val a little bow, “was observed.”
“Besides himself, what did he bring?”
“Actually,” Greta stifled a laugh, “a camp stove.”
“You cooked veal marsala on a camp stove?”
Greta raised her elegant shoulders. “It was delicious. Camp stove may become my preferred method.”
“What about the fifteen minutes in the oven?”
“There was really no sense in taking the time to kasher the oven. We discussed it all ahead of time, and he seemed satisfied.” She gave Val a wide, thin smile that Val could tell was only partly referring to their sincere attempts at making a kosher meal.
Val felt interested. “How long would it have taken to kasher the oven?”
“Really, darling, I have no idea, but you can ask him when he gets here.”
“When he gets here? Why is he coming here?” She was genuinely mystified.
“He thought it made more sense, what with trying to make the case that this article in the Library’s holdings of Inquisition documents and artifacts—”
Val’s jaw dropped. “Wait a minute,” she said, grabbing Greta’s arm. “Are you saying the Hunter College professor—”
“Saul Bensoussan, yes—”
The man had to be ten or twenty years younger than Greta. “You took him to bed?”
Greta looked amused. “He wasn’t a three-year-old with a sour tummy, Val.” Then she looked concerned. “Really, darling, sometimes you have such quaint speech.”
“How did it happen?” There was no other way to put it. “Last time I saw you, you were pushing me at him.”
Her aunt’s eyes widened. “And it was clear you weren’t interested, so I called him up.”
Val had a quick flash of a framed family photo on the professor’s desk. “Did his wife answer?” she said pointedly.
Greta’s laugh was merry. “Darling, nobody has landlines anymore. Besides, they’re divorced. I wish I could have offered you a bed, but—” At that she rattled off something worldly in French. “Where did you end up staying?”
“At Antony Bale’s.” Greta Bistritz stopped dead and could only stare at Val, wide-eyed. “Don’t get excited,” warned Val. “Bale wasn’t there.”
“Pity,” murmured Greta, pushing past her niece, who suddenly felt sacked. “Here’s our contact.” Heading right for them across the expanse of gray marble flooring was Alice Lorton, Community Liaison for the Morgan Library, one of those ageless, trim native New Yorkers with shorn white hair and red-framed Fendi eyeglasses, dressed in a black pantsuit. As she gestured to a vacant table in the atrium, her silver bangle bracelets clacked softly.
Greta, whose morning-after hair had a heightened gleam to it, beamed at Val, and they followed Alice Lorton, who led the way, soldiering mechanically against a morning stiffness that to Val looked pretty severe. Compared to her, Greta Bistritz glided with good health and swept into a white metal chair, where she perched with suppressed energy. Out of thin air she produced her Department of Commerce ID for Lorton’s brief inspection. One hand moved gracefully toward Val. “My deputy in this matter,” she said by way of introduction. “Valjean Cameron.”
“Thank you,” said Lorton, with a nod, handing back the ID. “How can I help you?”
Folding her arms casually on the café table, Greta explained the issue that had recently been brought to the attention of the Artifact Authentication Agency by a scholar in the field of Latin American Literature. Lorton listened carefully as Greta went on. “He has raised the question of authenticity of one of the library’s Mexican Inquisition holdings.”
“Specifically?”
“Item #JPML 17-203,” rattled off Greta from her iPhone, “Drawer 36.” She looked up. “The holding consists of an anonymous satire in Spanish, titled ‘The Entertainment of Spain,’ contained in a finely carved wooden box with an attached lid. It was turned into the Inquisition in 1595 in Veracruz by a priest who believed the work to be heretical.”
Val was impressed with how well her aunt described the challenged item. But she apparently had a refresher course last night from the scholarly accuser himself. Alice Lorton looked grave. “What’s prompted the scholar’s suspicion?” She opened her hands wide. “The attribution? The date? The source?”
Greta smiled softly. “The authenticity. Altogether.” She waved a hand. “More than that, I’ll let him tell you himself.” That, Val knew, meant her aunt didn’t have any more details than she did on the day they all met in Bensoussan’s office. The veal must have been particularly good.
Slowly, Lorton worked her way through what Greta Bistritz of the Artifact Authentication Agency was stating. “Then he doesn’t question the priest who delivered it back in 1595—”
“No.”
“Or the fact that this is the satire the priest turned in?”
“No.”
Alice Lorton drew a deep breath, her trim head tipping from side to side. “Or even that the year is accurate.”
“No. The professor allows for the authenticity of the original holding. His suspicion doesn’t lie in what happened over four hundred years ago in New Spain.”
Lorton raised her shoulders. “Then…what?”
Gently, Val’s aunt told the representative of the Morgan Library, “He’s been studying the satire for some time now, on and off, for a book on the literature of New Spain. He knows the document. And he knows the engraved wooden box.”
There was simply no comfortable way around the implication. “So you’re saying—”
“No, Ms. Lorton, he’s saying,” Greta clarified, as she pursed her beautiful lips and looked squarely at Alice Lorton, “the Morgan Library has been robbed.”
After a moment in which all three of them sat in silence, Lorton got with some difficulty to her feet. “Come with me,” she said, heading for what turned out to be the Rare Books and Manuscripts room, up a short flight of steps into what Val recalled was part of J.P. Morgan’s original townhouse. As they passed through the massive double doors, Val took in the fact that they didn’t have the room to themselves. Four researchers were huddled separately over an array of papers and file folders, and antique books stacked carefully nearby.
The soft flutters of excited keyboarding were the only sounds in the beautiful rotunda that constituted the documentary holdings in J.P. Morgan’s priceless collection. The smallest ornate mahogany reading table was empty, and Lorton motioned Val and Greta to be seated. She hastily filled out a Requested Materials slip, then met Greta’s eyes. “I’ll be right back,” she told her, handing the slip to a monitor wearing the pin of library employees. The two of them disappeared into the back, and Val leaned toward her aunt.
“We’ll take a look.” When Greta nodded, Val added, “And then what?”
Greta leaned back into her chair. “Then we’ll see. I’m hoping you can handle it from here.”
“Me?”
“Have you seen my workload, Val?”
“Have you seen mine?”
“You agreed.”
Val felt caught. “I’ve got a production schedule from Hell that’s looking like Bridgegate, Auntie.”
Greta said smoothly, “Then this little investigation should be a nice diversion for you.”
Val looked at her hands. “M
y apartment was broken into yesterday.” She went on: “Adrian was murdered and whoever killed her took her phone.” Here she stalled, undecided how much to confide. Already, it turned out, she had gone too far.
“What aren’t you telling me, darling?” said Greta quietly. So quietly none of the researchers at the neighboring tables blinked.
Val turned to face her aunt. “He broke into my home, searched through my desk, and installed a bug.”
Greta hissed.
Val continued, “He knows who I am and where I live and probably where I work. He may have followed me here, for all I know.” Val gazed at a section of books halfway up the book-lined wall where the spines glistened in old, burnished gold. Not much felt like gold to her that day, so she stared at them until she felt her eyes go soft. “He wants to find out what I know. And from that information—” Her voice trailed off.
“He’ll decide what to do about you,” finished Greta.
“That’s the thinking.”
Greta frowned. “Does Bale know? Beyond your needing a place to sleep?”
“Yes.” She gave her aunt a frank look. “It helps,” was all she said.
“And the cops, of course?”
Val nodded. Then her eyes slid to her aunt. “Not about the bug. Bale destroyed it.”
“I think,” said Greta finally, after wringing her hands for an unproductive minute, “you’ve got the best help you possibly can. Let me know if you can add me to the rest, dear heart, all right?”
Alice Lorton reappeared wearing thin latex gloves and holding a very old wooden Bible box. She spread a soft, clean chamois cloth on the table, then took the antique wooden box from the hands of the monitor. As Val watched her set it down with great care, she suddenly came to a decision. “I’d still like to act as your deputy. You might be right about a diversion.”
A Killer's Guide to Good Works Page 17