1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 (12 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Ike sat in his office and stared through the glass panel at the room that served as police headquarters. Six o’clock. Essie gone for the day. The press corps, reluctant to cover a story that seemed to be going nowhere, had decamped to Roanoke where a gruesome murder story took front and center. Ike had no illusions—they’d be back, but for the moment he had some peace.

Billy had the three to eleven shift and sat in front of the radio transmitter reading
Playboy
. Saturday night. Things would get busy in five or six hours when paychecks were converted into beer or shooters, when kids in pickup trucks began to miss turns in the road, when college students with more money than sense began to tear through town on their way to God only knew where. But now things were quiet.

Ike picked up the phone and dialed information.

“What state, please?”

“The District of Columbia.”

“What listing?”

“I want the number of a bar in Georgetown, O’Rourke’s.”

“Thank you, just a moment.”

Ike waited, picked up the pencil, jotted down the number, and hung up. Six-o-five. Charlie had said between six and seven. Ike decided to wait until six-thirty, twenty-five minutes away—time to have a quick beer, read the paper, work a crossword puzzle, or call Ruth. Instead, he sat and stared at the glass partition thinking.

For three years, he’d enjoyed the luxury of quiet anonymity, and a career as sheriff away from all of it. Now, the whole world beamed in on him. Television crews from the national networks set up at the college. Stringers from all the major dailies were ensconced in Picketsville’s only hotel. The curious, the morbid, and people seeking a peripheral role in history arrived hourly to this little backwash of a town, filling its motels, boosting its economy, and annoying its inhabitants. The town’s only prior claim to notoriety was a very messy lynching of an African-American man accused, but never tried or convicted, of raping the lieutenant governor’s daughter. That was seventy years ago. The lynching had been given wide publicity. The discovery two days later that the girl had not been raped, indeed medical evidence proclaimed her virginity intact, had been buried with the shipping news, and the whole incident had not created half the coverage the robbery had.

On the whole, he preferred the attention the town received now, but wished it had happened before, or later, or somewhere else to someone else. He had picked this hiding place so well. Who would have known he’d be found so quickly? Well, he couldn’t do anything about it now. Maybe, when it ended, the last picture taken, everyone would go away and leave him alone. Of course, if the case weren’t solved…my God, he thought, they might never let me go.

Work it out. What? How? Who—it had to be someone inside. The Board decided to move the collection eleven days before the robbery—a coincidence? Not likely. The best time to pull this kind of job would be July or August, the Fourth of July, when nobody was around, students gone for the summer, police distracted by traffic jams, fireworks, accidents, entire families off to the beach, backyard barbeques, people asleep, not watching. Why do it now? All wrong, students coming and going—parked in the lane, a Thursday night, the slowest night for police. Too many things could go wrong, so why now?

Because someone knew and they had to move the time up. What else?

The locksmithing job rated as a work of art. Only a group with access to tradecraft could have planned and executed a job like this one. The Agency, the Bureau, the Mafia, or maybe one or two of the other private groups he’d run into from time to time, groups operated by large corporations with financial interests and assets more widespread and substantial than the government itself.

They knew the collection was going to New York and it would be difficult if not impossible to steal it there. They knew, so someone told them. The board members and the people at the Dillon Foundation knew before the robbery. But they would be the last to engineer this, or would they? Why? Check the financial status of Dillon and the whole Dillon enterprise. Who else? Marge Tice? Ex-president Clough, the guy from New York? Maybe. Better check his background. And there was Ruth. Would she? Was some of that old radical, anti-authority dynamic still at play? What a mess. And where are the paintings now? If he could just recover them, it wouldn’t matter who stole them. Let the FBI track them down. If the paintings were back, he’d be left alone.

Six twenty-five. Ike dialed the number for O’Rourke’s. On the twelfth ring, a voice with a false shanty Irish brogue answered. Ike asked to speak to Elwood Farnham. Forty seconds later, he heard Charlie’s voice recite another number and say, “Gimme a minute,” then, click, the line went dead.

Ike hung up, waited sixty seconds, and dialed the new number. Charlie answered on the first ring.

“You’re very prompt, Ike. I’m glad you remembered.”

“Charlie, the whole business was schoolboy simple: you give me a name, a place, and a number. Six or seven days means today between six and seven—six or seven weeks means next week, same day same time and so on. Even if I had forgotten, I could have figured it out. And if I could, anyone could. Aren’t you worried someone will?”

“With my job, who’d want to?”

“You’ve got a point. Maybe a newspaper guy would like to catch you before a press conference or something. Why are we doing this, anyway?”

“Ike, trust me. I needed to keep this conversation off the phone log and away from any possible monitor. You remember the drill—all phones in the Agency are monitored from time to time, and I need to talk to you. It’s important and I couldn’t get to you before. But now you need me and I need you. We can deal. I have information and a name for you, but you will have to tell me things first. And speak up, I’m on a phone outside O’Rourke’s and you remember what Georgetown’s like on Saturday night.”

“Charlie, I will never understand you. It must be the copper absorbed into your system from your penny loafers that makes people like you go mad. What do you want me to tell you?”

“I need to know about Zurich, one step at a time, exactly as it happened.”

Ike paused and considered. It made no sense. Why would Charlie want to know or care what happened in Zurich?

“That’s the deal, Ike. I help you with your robbery, you give me the story. Don’t ask why, please. That comes later, if ever. Just talk to me.”

Could he? He’d managed to suppress the images and pain for years. Why open it up now? Ike drew a breath and began, slowly at first and then more rapidly. He concentrated on the details, the technology, the precise sequence of events. As the words flowed he carefully pushed back the images, the sweaty little man, the blood and Eloise…. Someday, he thought, I will tell the whole story, but not now. Now it’s just facts. He forced himself to remember sounds, who said what, and when. Charlie listened, interrupting only twice; once to ask him to repeat the part about Peter Hotchkiss’ phone call, and then to ask if he were sure about the number of shots.

“Two. You’re sure it was two?”

“I’m sure. An SKS or an old Kalishnikov, maybe an AK47. Charlie, no mistake. Two.”

When he finished, Charlie only said, “Thanks, that’s a help.”

Help for what, Ike wondered. By now enough time had passed for it to cease being a public relations problem.

“Okay, Charlie, your turn. What have you got for me?”

“Two shots and a clean hit, a perfect hit. That’s interesting; Hotchkiss calls and then—one, two.”

“Charlie, we have a deal. Tell me what you know about this robbery.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. I was just wondering. I will need to talk to you again, Ike. When you’re all done with your robbery, promise me something…you’ll meet me in Washington, and go through some of this again. I’ll send you an address and we’ll meet.”

“Sure, after the robbery is taken care of and if you don’t start talking to me about it, that could be sometime after I start drawing Social Security.”

“Right, but remember, you promised.” He paused. “The problem you put to me was: who was available to do some professional, very professional, locksmithing. There are, or to be accurate, were, three possibilities. In order of likelihood, George Smythe from Great Britain, Achmed Harreem from Syria, and a new one, a guy named Grafton, Harold Grafton. He’s local. Smythe was my first choice because he could enter the country and mix in almost unnoticed. Harreem, on the other hand, would stick out like a sore thumb. We are a little sensitive about Middle Eastern passengers on our airlines. But Smythe is out, he got picked up for, of all things, too many traffic violations, and an English magistrate decided to make an example of scofflaws. So Smythe, a movie starlet, and a member of parliament were all spending fifteen days in the slammer when the job was pulled.

“That leaves Harreem or Grafton. Grafton used to be one of ours, or, more exactly, the Bureau’s, a good one from what I hear. Things went sour for him a couple of years back, when his wife got that slow-to-kill cancer. Grafton ran out of money to pay medical bills, started to booze pretty bad. Then his work started to slip a little and he got into some kind of fight with his bosses. Anyway, four months ago he got sacked at the Bureau, and his kids were snatched by the wife’s parents and trucked off to Chicago, North Side somewhere. Two weeks ago his wife died and he disappeared, told his landlady he was going camping in the mountains. He paid his back rent in cash and took off. I think he could be your man.”

“Any description, Charlie? I got a make on a guy, maybe five ten, graying curly hair, blue eyes, and class ring with a green stone, right ring finger. He may go one seventy-five—no, closer to one sixty-five with one of those faces that looks like was living on coffee and cigarettes, but not bad-looking.”

“Sounds like our man, but I hope not. I hear he’s good even when he’s drunk, and the Agency could use someone like him. You know Crotty bought it in Istanbul?”

“No, I didn’t. Tough.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve been trying to get this Grafton guy to replace Crotty, but we can’t find him. The Adirondacks is a big place. We’re waiting for him to come out, unless, of course, he’s mixed up in this.”

“Yeah, sure, the Agency worries about that stuff. You guys would hire Jack the Ripper if you needed him and wouldn’t care a rat’s rear end what he’d done before or did after you’re done with him.”

“Now, Ike, you’re not serious. We sometimes contract with specialists but—”

“Like the Mafioso when we wanted to snuff Castro?”

“Now, you know nothing ever came of that. It was just an idea, a little conversation, which leads me to part two. They’re involved in this somehow.”

“Who? The Mafia or Castro?”

“I can’t be sure but it sounds like the guys doing this job are contract professionals, and that means the Mafia directly or indirectly. I can’t tell you for sure, but whoever is behind the job didn’t do it themselves. They bought talent from New Jersey.”

“Thanks, Charlie. Anything else?”

“Well, if you can get us Grafton.…”

“You want him that bad?”

“The boss wants him. Since Crotty died, we are pinched. Something must be cooking, something big—the director pulled out all the stops to find him.”

The new director was a man of unremitting honesty and surprising modesty, who possessed no political skills whatsoever. Given these characteristics, it was problematical how long he’d stay in office. Whatever negative feelings Ike had for the Agency, he liked and admired its director.

“Charlie, I don’t think I can do much, but I’ll try. Is that good enough?”

“It’ll have to be. I’ll send you some stuff to give him and tell him if he’s available. Thanks, and if anything else turns up, I’ll be in touch. By the way, how do I do that?”

“Pick up the phone and call.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, down here we just talk to each other—no codes or instructions to call out-of-the-way bars or use funny, made-up names. Just pick up the phone and say, ‘Ike, this is Charlie, I’ve got some information for you.’”

“I can’t do it, Ike. It would ruin the image I’ve been working on for almost twenty years. Tell you what, I’ll call and say I’m Elwood Farnum, which will mean it’s urgent. If you can’t talk, or you just get a message, you call O’Rourke’s. If I say, ‘It’s me, Charlie,’ then there’s no rush and you call me at the office. Okay?”

“Charlie, you are nuts. By the way, I need a picture. Can you send me a picture of Grafton?”

“Sure, I’ll e-mail it to you. You do get e-mail out there?”

“Sheriff,” Ike rattled off, “at Picketsville dot gov. By the way, who is Elwood Farnum anyway?”

“Can’t say, read it on a Christmas card my sister got last year. Liked the name. Has a nice nasal quality to it—Farnum, lovely. Be talking to you.” The phone went dead.

Ike wrote Essie instructions to make copies of the picture, but to remove any indication of its source or the person’s name, and give them to the team. Then, with time on his hands, Ike sat and took inventory: contract professionals, murder, possible kidnapping, possible Mafia, a rogue FBI man, and not a clue why the job was done. Who would steal five hundred million dollars in traceable, unsellable artwork? And for what? I am missing something, something important, but what? The phone’s ringing broke his train of thought.

“Ike, it’s Ruth, I think you’d better come out here now.”

Chapter Nineteen

Ike scanned the letter twice, an indistinguishable product of computer-generated word processing. The message, exclusive of its political rhetoric, was simple and straightforward: fifty million dollars in diamonds, none to exceed two carats in weight, were to be paid to the New Jihad as ransom for the stolen art work. A representative of the Dillon family, M. Armand Dillon himself, preferably, was to buy time on a specified local television station, agree to the terms and apologize for the role his company played in the oppression of the poor of the world. A second sheet of paper—this one was fuschia—bore a message from the New Jihad—a hate-filled anti-American, anti-Semitic tirade that ended in calling for the downfall of the “Great Satan of the West and its Jewish lackeys.”

The letter went on to say that they, the
New Jihad, would contact the Dillons to give instructions for the delivery of the diamonds and when they were away would inform them of the exact location of the paintings.

“Ruth, tell me again how you got this letter.”

“I don’t know. It appeared in my inbox sometime this evening. It was not there earlier because I would have noticed. I stayed in the office late because meetings I had all day kept me from clearing my desk and I wanted to get that done so I could at least have Sunday off. I hoped you and I might do something together. Sorry, maybe I am presuming. It’s just that last night…anyway, I stepped out of the office for a minute to use the restroom and when I got back, there it was.”

“You noticed it right away?”

“No. I had another letter I wanted to finish first and when I did, I put it in my outbox. That is when I noticed this envelope. It surprised me because I cleaned everything out, and except for the letter I just completed, I thought I was done for the night. I started to return your call and picked it up.

“I opened it, wondering how I could have missed it. It is addressed only to me so I thought it might be a note from Agnes or one of the other office staff. But it isn’t, is it? And when you answered, I told you to come. Not the message I had in mind for you, I’m afraid.”

“No. Are we the only two who have handled this?”

“Yes, except, I suppose, for the writer, assuming, of course, whoever put it in my box was the same person who wrote it.”

“We’ll want to check it for fingerprints. We won’t find any, except yours and mine, I’m sure, but you never know.”

Ike looked at the letter a third time. It took up more than three quarters of the page. The wording seemed strange, awkward. Some of the sentences ran on. Phrases were repeated and peculiar constructions were used. The message was clear enough but could have been stated in half the words.

“Odd bit of writing, don’t you think?”

Ruth inspected the letter again. “It looks like it was written by someone not very familiar with English, or maybe someone under the influence.”

“I wonder. Too bad we don’t use typewriters anymore. Typewriters, especially the old Selectrics, were traceable, if you knew how. The ribbons did not reverse, so you could read everything written on them. The Agency used to burn their ribbons inside the building and would never use them outside. But we live in the age of computers and word processors, and they are sterile and anonymous. Even the paper is indistinguishable. You don’t use watermarked paper, do you?”

“I don’t know, Ike. I have to delegate things or go mad. Paper, pencils, furniture all goes to someone who has the patience to deal with it.”

Ike tilted Ruth’s desk lamp up and inspected the paper. “We’re in luck. This paper has a Callend College watermark on it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, see for yourself.”

“I didn’t even know we had the stuff.” She grabbed a piece of paper from her desk drawer and held it up to the light as well. It had the mark. “So that means that the letter was written here.”

“Maybe. Or by someone who works here, or at least someone who has access to the buildings.”

“That doesn’t help you at all, does it?”

“Oh yes, but how much I can’t tell just yet. It depends on where this paper is used, everywhere, or just some places? And if only in the confines of the college, then maybe we can trace the computer it was written on. They tell me that there are ways of doing that. I’m not a computer person so I don’t know.”

“I could ask Sam.”

“Sam?”

“We got a big grant from the Dillon foundation right after I got here, an inauguration present from M. Armand himself, to be used to install a sophisticated information management system. Dillon makes those things—computers, chips, electronic things—and he wanted us to showcase the future or something like that. I would have settled for having the roads and parking lots repaved.”

“Yes, but who’s Sam?”

“Oh, well, the grant meant installing an elaborate computer system, software, hardware, cables—I don’t know—all the stuff that goes with it. And that, in turn, meant hiring an information management systems coordinator—Sam Ryder, our techno-geek. We can ask Sam about the computer stuff and the paper, too. If I can figure out how this new phone works in house…let me see.…” Ruth consulted a card taped to the glass top of her desk. “Pound and the number…no, call the home number first then.…”

Ike left her to her problem solving and paced around the room. The office was almost Spartan in its appointments—a few knick knacks and a handful of books. He glanced at the titles. Ruth, he noticed, had authored two of them. She failed to reach Sam at home and dialed an office number.

“Sam? Good, Ruth Harris, yes, fine thank you, could you come to my office? What? You are in the middle of a what? Oh, I see. Well yes, I think you might want to do that. Ten minutes? Good.”

She hung up with a puzzled look. “Sam said, ‘I will put the program on paws.’ Paws? Like little furry feet? Does that make any sense to you?”

“Pause, not paws, to stop temporarily, pause.”

“Oh. You have no idea what thirty-six hours without any real sleep does to my brain, Sheriff.”

***

Harry Grafton’s hands started shaking. He stared at the bottle of sour mash bourbon on the dresser and licked his lips. He needed a drink. One couldn’t hurt—just something to steady his hands. He tasted the bile in his throat. His eyes felt like they were filled with sand. His collar was damp even in the air-conditioning. He looked at a sleeping Red Burnham and wished with all his heart he had the courage to shoot him.

Red left the bottle out in plain view to torment him, he knew that. One drink, that’s all. He heard Red laugh. Harry looked up and saw he was awake, waiting.

“What’s the matter, Grafton, bottle singing a love song to you? Go ahead, have a drink. Have two. Take the whole bottle.” Red laughed again and sat up. “Go ahead and drink up some courage, Rummy.”

Harry left the room—walked out into the warm May night and wished he were dead.

***

“Tell me about Parker. All your man said was he was hit on the head. It must have been a very hard hit.”

“Or a lucky one.”

“Well, I’m sorry. Robbery is one thing, murder another. Terrible. Nobody deserves that.”

“Lots of folks in town would disagree with you about that. If anybody deserved it, they’d tell you Parker was at or near the top of their list.”

“Your list, too?”

“Mine, too.”

“Ike, nobody deserves to die. You’re not a capital punishment supporter.”

“No, I’m not, as a matter of fact. But deserve and warrant are different concepts. I don’t think the death penalty is warranted. But some people agree that if anyone deserved to die—”

“I don’t see the difference but I’m happy to discover that you and I do agree on something.”

“Yes, that’s a nice change, isn’t it? But I’m not sure we agree.”

“No arguments tonight, please,” she said. “Cruel and inhumane is enough—leave it.”

“Except cruel and inhumane punishment is a sliding scale, formulated when beheadings and torture and public hangings were in style. Joseph Guillotin invented his gadget as a humane way to behead people, a great leap forward in the humanitarian approach to death. The electric chair was thought to be a similar advancement over hanging, the gas chamber an improvement over it and so on to lethal injection. Now you will say all capital punishment is cruel and inhumane. It is a moveable target and, for me, not substantial enough to affix a moral code. So I prefer the sanctity of life.”

“If I weren’t so tired, I could start a major debate here.”

“You could, but I’ll bet you dinner and a movie that you’d get a draw at best.”

Ruth sat up, challenge in her eyes and about to reply, but she was interrupted by a knock at the door.