Carnal Curiosity (19 page)

Alistair was opening the portfolio and taking out a print. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

“John Singer Sargent, 1910,” Anita said. “In excellent condition.”

“Can we have the wrapper off?” Stone asked, and Alistair took a craft knife and removed the clear plastic.

“A magnifying glass, Alistair?”

Stone took the glass and went over the picture, corner to corner, paying particular attention to the signature. “Mmm, it’s all right,” he said noncommittally. “What are you asking?”

“Eighteen hundred,” Anita replied.

“Mmmm. The next one?”

Alistair removed the Sargent, lifted the oil from the portfolio, and set it on the easel.

Stone knew the painting intimately, but he made a show of examining it closely. The beautiful frame, for which he had paid $1,500, was missing. He turned it over and found, written in a childish hand,
Stone
. He had signed it when he was nine. “Mmmm. How much?”

“Twelve thousand,” Anita replied with assurance. “Cheap at the price.”

Stone agreed. He wondered if she knew how cheap. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll give you twelve thousand for the two of them. Cash. Right now.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Thirteen,” she said.

Stone turned and offered her his hand. She shook it. “Done,” he said, “with a good provenance, of course.” He held on to her hand and looked her in the eye.

“Jim,” she said, “I have a small shop. People come in and sell me things. I don’t inquire.” She removed her hand from his. “Thirteen thousand. As you see them.”

“Who’d you buy the oil from?”

“A fella who comes in now and then.”

“Do you think he might have anything else by the same artist?”

“Could be,” she said.

Stone went to his briefcase, got $13,000, and returned. “A bill of sale, please?”

She took a sheet of paper from the portfolio, wrote out the document, and handed it to him. “There you are.”

Stone handed her the money and glanced at her letterhead: “Anita’s Artfest, Barrow Street.” “I’d like to visit your shop and see what else you’ve got,” he said. “I’m always in the market.”

“Sure.” She was closing up the folio.

“You open weekends?”

“By appointment.”

“How about noon on Saturday? Find me some more like the oil, and I’ll throw in a good lunch.”

“You’re on,” she said. “Phone?”

Stone gave her his cell number and she wrote it down.

“And your number?” He jotted it down. “I’ll bring cash,” he said.

“See you noon Saturday,” she said. “I’ll give the guy a call.”

And then she was out, on the bike and gone.

“Well,” Alistair said, “that was interesting. And I think I’m owed a commission on the sale. Say, twenty-five hundred?”

Stone returned to his briefcase and picked up a banded bunch of bills. “Here’s ten thousand,” he said, handing the man the money. “Help me get the rest of my pictures back, and there’ll be more. A lot more.”

Alistair grinned. “Always happy to be of service,” he said, wrapping the two pictures.

Stone shook his hand and left the gallery, the pictures under his arm. “One down, ten to go,” he said.

—

B
ack in his office, Joan came in. “Did you spend all that money?”

“Thirteen thousand,” Stone replied, “but I got a two-million-dollar painting for it.” He opened his parcel and showed her.

“Beautiful,” she said. “And this is nice, too.” She fingered the Sargent.

“Get that framed, will you? Something gilt, simple—you know what I like.”

“Will do.”

“And get me another quarter-million in cash from the bank. Used hundreds and fifties, banded.”

“My, you’re in an art-shopping mood, aren’t you?”

“You bet your sweet ass I am.”

41

S
tone had still not heard from either Dino or Jim Connor, and he called Dino on his cell.

“Bacchetti.”

“Hi, can you talk?”

“Sure, I’m walking back to my office.”

“I got lucky today. The dealer who sold me one of my mother’s paintings several years ago called me and said someone had offered it to him. He got the seller back into his shop, and I bought it from her, along with a Sargent print she had, for thirteen grand.”

“A bargain. Where’d she get it?”

“I’m working on that. She has a shop in Barrow Street, in the Village, and she says the guy she bought it from may have others. I’ve made a date to go down there Saturday at noon.”

“Mind if I come along?”

“I was hoping you would. I’m going to take a lot of cash with me, just in case.”

“Should I set up a bust?”

“No, I don’t want the neighborhood swarming with cops. I have a better idea. At least, I hope I do.”

“Okay, we’ll do it your way.”

“Meet me here at eleven. We’ll have Fred drive us.”

“You’re taking the Bentley to the Village?”

“We’ll get out a couple of blocks away and walk. I’m taking a lot of cash, so come armed.”

“Okay.”

“Listen, I need a favor.”

“Shoot.”

“I want to get Fred Flicker a carry license. Can you manage that?”

“Let me see if I can think of a way of doing it without my fingerprints all over it. You can download the application online. Have him list his job as personal assistant and security guard.”

“Got it.” They hung up. His phone rang; Joan was gone for the day, so he picked it up. “Stone Barrington.”

“Hi, it’s Ann.”

“Hi, there.”

“You good for dinner on short notice?”

“As short as you like. We talking about tonight?”

“We’re talking about in an hour.”

“Bring your toothbrush?”

“See you in an hour.”

Ann looked freshly showered when she arrived; her hair was still wet. She gave him a big kiss. “Sorry for the short notice, but I found myself without half a dozen people wanting something from me. I thought we could order a pizza and watch the debate.”

“God, I forgot about the debate. What time?”

“Seven on PBS.”

Stone phoned for a pizza, then hung up. “Let’s have a drink while we’re waiting for it.”

“Good thinking. Have you had a good week?”

“No, but it’s getting better.” He told her about the theft of his paintings and his effort to recover them.

“This sounds like an art-theft-caper movie,” she said.

“I hope it has a happy ending.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Because I can’t control what happens—all I can do is react, and hope nobody gets hurt.”

“Why do you think somebody might get hurt?”

“The total value of the paintings is probably at least twenty million dollars.”

“Holy shit!”

“I didn’t pay that for them. They’ve appreciated markedly over the years. Anyway, with that at stake, anything can happen.”

“Obviously the woman you bought the one painting from didn’t have any idea of its value.”

“And the person she bought it from doesn’t, either. If he did, we’d be in a very different ball game.”

“Do you think he’s the guy who stole them from you?”

“No. Whoever did that knew who I was, where I live, and where the pictures were. And the pictures were all that was taken.”

“Do you have any idea who was behind it?”

“Yes, but I can’t prove it.”

Shortly, the pizza arrived, and Stone met the deliveryman at
the door and paid him. They took the pizza and a bottle of wine upstairs, put the electric beds up, and settled in to watch the debate. Jim Lehrer introduced the vice president, Martin Stanton, Kate Lee, Senator Mark Willingham, of Virginia, and the governor of New Mexico, Peter Ortega, and each of them had a two-minute opening statement.

“Thank you,” Lehrer said, then began the questioning.

“Vice President Stanton, you were recently involved in an incident at your La Jolla, California, home that has received a great deal of coverage in the press. Do you have anything new to add to what you’ve already said?”

Stanton looked unperturbed. “I think that’s been fully addressed elsewhere,” he replied. “I have nothing whatever to add.”

“Director Lee, any comment?”

“Jim, as Johnny Carson used to say, ‘I wouldn’t touch that one with a fork,’” she replied.

“Good one,” Stone said.

“Well planned,” Ann said.

“Both of them.”

The senator and the governor declined the opportunity, as well, and the questioning moved on to more mundane subjects, such as foreign and domestic policy.

“This is turning out to be a yawner,” Stone said.

“That’s how we’d like it. Kate sounds smart and knowledgeable, and that’s all we need to convey at this point.”

The pizza and the wine were half gone.

“Have you ever made love to the sounds of a political debate?”

“No, I think I would remember.”

Stone set down their wineglasses, put the pizza box on the
floor, and came for her. They finished about the same time as the debate did.

“I think we did better than the debaters,” Ann said.

“Oh, we did a
lot
better than the debaters. We touched on every available point.”

They awoke early and skipped around the morning shows for comments on the debate.

“Perfect,” Ann said. “This weekend, things change.”

“What happens this weekend?” Stone asked.

“There is a very large piece on Stanton’s personal history coming in the
Times
, with particular attention to his conduct in La Jolla. It should be fun.”

“Spend the weekend with me.”

“I’d like that, but I’ll be on the phone a lot.”

“I’ll entertain you while you’re talking.”

“Oh, no, I have to sound serious, and I can’t do that while being ‘entertained,’ as you put it.”

“I’ll save myself for the evenings,” Stone said. “I’ll be out in the afternoon, anyway, Dino and I.”

“Then I’ll hold the fort here.”

42

A
fter Ann had left the house, Stone called Bob Cantor. Bob, in addition to being his go-to guy for tech work, was a PI, and a good one.

“Get your security system fixed?” Bob asked.

“Yes, and with new backups and a new monitoring service.”

“Something wrong with the monitoring service?”

“Yes, it’s now owned by the wrong guy, and when the alarm went off, everything stopped at their office—never got to the police.”

“I’ve got a dozen or more clients using that service,” Bob said.

“You might want to rethink that.”

“Right.”

“Bob, I’ve got something else for you, if you have some time today.”

“I’ll make time for you, Stone.”

“Thank you. After the paintings were stolen I got word that someone was trying to sell one of them. Her name is Anita Mays, and she has some sort of shop or gallery on Barrow Street,
in the Village. I’ve got a noon date with her tomorrow to look at other things, and I hope she might come up with some more of my pictures.”

“Okay, got that.”

“Before tomorrow, I want to know everything I can about her. I Googled her, but there wasn’t much. I get the impression that she flies under the radar.”

“Okay, I’ll make a run at her, starting this morning.”

“Be careful, if you visit her neighborhood. I don’t want the neighbors warning her that someone is asking questions.”

“Okay.”

“If you visit her shop, you might buy something, just to seem genuine.”

“Who knows, maybe I’ll see something I like.”

“If you do, it’s on me.”

“I’ll get back to you late this afternoon and let you know what I’ve found out.”

“I’ll look forward to hearing from you.” The two men hung up.

—

B
ob Cantor equipped himself with a notebook and a pen and some cash, then, since he lived not too far from Barrow Street, got out his bicycle and rode down there. He turned into the street and rode slowly past Anita Mays’s shop, then farther down the block. Finally, he stopped and locked his bike to a utility pole, using a heavy chain as padlock. It was all too easy to lose an expensive bicycle in New York.

He started at the opposite end of the street from Mays’s shop and did some window-shopping, then went into a gallery and
bought an old watercolor of Barrow Street, probably from the thirties. The picture was wrapped and put into a shopping bag from Barneys, which served as camouflage for Bob as he wandered among the other shops.

He made stops in two others and in each, after he had bought something, asked for recommendations of other neighborhood places.

“You might try Anita’s shop, down the end of the street,” a woman told him. “She gets interesting things.” She paused. “If you’re not too choosy about where they come from. She’s got a boyfriend who comes home with a lot of stuff on a regular basis.”

Bob nodded sagely. “Thanks a lot.” He continued up the street, not missing a shop, until he came to Anita’s Artfest. The shop was at stoop level, and he climbed the steps to get a better look in the window. It was crammed with tchotchkes, clocks, pictures, small statuary, old wristwatches, and jewelry. Then, down at the end of the window, Bob spotted something familiar. He went to the door and found a card hung on the knob.
Back in a minute
, it read. He sat down on the steps and waited.

Five minutes later he saw her coming down the street with a bag of groceries: fairly tall, slim, dark hair, wearing tight leather trousers and filling out a sweater very nicely. She started up the stairs.

“Morning,” he said.

“Hi. Something on your mind?” She seemed wary.

“There’s a Rolex in your window I’d like to see.” He got up and pointed at the watch. “Oh, and could I have a look at that picture on the far right?”

“Okay,” she said. She unlocked the door, set down her groceries, and let him in. “Let me get the key to the window.” She
disappeared into the rear of the shop, and Bob followed her for a few feet, taking in the place. It was crowded but orderly and seemed to be filled with the fruits of many auctions.