Collar Robber (8 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Jay Davidovich

Rachel always scolds me about ethnic stereotypes but, excuse me, Germans make
really
good cops. German Germans, Swiss Germans, and Austrian Germans. By the fourth hour of my interrogation—excuse me, my
interview
—by Hauptman-Inspector Schumacher and a buddy of his whose name I didn't bother to remember, the Vienna constabulary had really moved the ball on the Ertel homicide. It had established that Ertel had walked alive and well into the happy room at that sleazy dive sometime between eight and eight-thirty last night. Even better, they had established through independent witnesses where Nesselrode and I were literally every minute of the time between then and when our merry little group found the body—including the time we were on the subway.

So it followed that neither Nesselrode nor I had killed the little weasel. Going to see him that night made us interesting people, but we weren't killers. Aiders and abettors, co-conspirators, material witnesses—maybe. Killers—no.

“Don't worry, we don't use water-boarding here.” Schumacher used that knee-slapper to begin the interview that he insisted wasn't an interrogation.

I did
not
come back with a smart-ass crack or a little snappy banter. Didn't come back with anything at all. Just sat there in a ladder-back chair at a metal table in a small room that looked like the set designer for
Law and Order SVU
had decorated it. Hardest thing in the world to teach people about being questioned: if you're being
questioned
, wait for a question; if you wait long enough, sooner or later the interviewer/interrogator/asshole will ask a question.

Schumacher asked plenty and I answered them all with the unvarnished truth except for the ones where I lied through my teeth. The whole forgery claim/real painting claim/possible deal to finesse insurance exposure thing—I'd put that on the table without an ounce of spin.

“And you believed this story Herr Nesselrode told you?”

“Not without checking it out I didn't.”

“And that's why you went to the cat house—to ‘check it out'?”

“Yes.”

“Are you an art expert?”

“No.”

“Then how did you intend to ‘check it out'?”

“One step at a time. First, meet the source. Second, see the supposed original. Third, report. Fourth, wait for instructions.”

This went on for quite awhile, until about three in the afternoon, when someone in a uniform knocked on the door and handed Schumacher's buddy a piece of paper, which the buddy passed on to Schumacher. My guess? The message reported on my movements the night before, and matched up with what I'd already told him. When he got back to business with me he suddenly seemed a little bored, like a cardiologist does five minutes into a stress test if only normal numbers turn up. He started running down a list of names and asking me if I recognized any of them. That's generally the last thing you cover in a squeal room.

I answered “No” over a dozen times as he threw out names I'd never heard. I sensed from the finality in his tone that we were approaching the end of the list.

“Frau Alma von Leuthen.”

“No.”

“Father Herman Utica.”

I glanced up sharply.

“What?”

“Father Herman Utica. Catholic priest. Do you know him?”

“Yes. He's the rector at a seminary in the United States. I talked with him on an unrelated case that I was working on before I was called into the
Eros Rising
matter.”

“Where in the United States?”

“Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

“Which is it, U.S. or Mexico?”

“U.S. New Mexico is a U.S. state. Part of the territory we got from Mexico in the 1840s as part of our Manifest Destiny policy.”

“‘Manifest Destiny?' What policy is that?”

“‘We'll buy it if we can, and take it if we have to.'”

“And why do you say it is unrelated?”

“I don't know of any connection. That was a computer hacking case. Three decades of old data destroyed. It'll take over a year to reconstruct. Very expensive, and my employer will be paying the bills.”

“Ah. Thank you.” Schumacher made a fussy little note on an unlined leaf in the vinyl-bound notebook he'd been using during our chat.

“What does that have to do with Ertel?” I asked.

Stupid question, but give me credit for trying. For the first time since his opening salvo about water-boarding, Schumacher smiled at me. A condescending, bureaucratic smile. Then he stood up and held out his hand.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Davidovich. You have been very helpful.” As we shook hands, he glanced over his shoulder at his colleague. “Return Mr. Davidovich's passport.”

Chapter Nineteen

Cynthia Jakubek

“Hunnert-forty-five, huh? Whadda you figure the ceiling is?”

“I'm guessing one-sixty.” I drew a small, three-dimensional sketch of a house in the margin of the legal pad on my desk. “She expects us to come back at one-seventy-five. She'll move to one-fifty. We'll both posture a bit, then she'll go to one-sixty like she's doing us this tremendous favor.”

“Prob'ly right. See if you can get it done at one-sixty-five. That'll be one-fifty net of what we've already got in the bank.”

“Will do. When are you back in the states?”

“Tonight, but jet-lagged and horny—tough combination. I'll probably be worth something sometime tomorrow morning. Now, what about the cigars?”

“Bottom line, it's against the law. Best case if they catch you, they confiscate the cigars. Next best, they confiscate the cigars plus fine you four times their value. Worst case, they threaten you with a criminal prosecution to try to squeeze some dope out of you on someone they really care about.”

“Worst case would be bad. How about if I put the cohibas into a box of Upmanns from a duty-free shop?”

“I'm the wrong one to come to for advice on smuggling tobacco, Willy. I couldn't even smuggle cigarettes past my mom. By the way, did anything major go down in Vienna yesterday? I'm wondering what spooked Transoxana into fast-tracking the negotiations all of a sudden.”

“Probably just got sick of drilling dry holes looking for what I'm trying to sell 'em. Gotta go. Catch you stateside in a coupla days.”

As I hung up I started parsing the sentence that preceded Willy's brushoff. I kept on parsing it while I whipped out my quick reply to Shifcos:

Your counter-offer is a substantial and constructive step in our negotiations and we appreciate it. Instead of taking baby steps, my client has authorized me to go to $180,000 in the hope that we can get this done without wasting time. Let's get to YES.

Regards,

Jakubek

My analysis of Willy's answer reached its climax as I sent that missive into cyber-space. I'd asked whether something big had happened in Vienna, and Willy had told me a lot. That he had indeed been in Vienna. That he'd known Transoxana was up to something there. That what it was up to had something to do with Willy hustling an old bill of sale. What he hadn't told me was
No
.

Chapter Twenty

Jay Davidovich

“They returned my passport and then showed me the door.”

I gave Proxy that report by phone about five seconds after reaching the sidewalk outside the Vienna
Politzei Unterprefaktur Zwei
. I figured she'd want the news in a hurry. I was right. She'd answered on the first note of her ringtone.

“So far, so good then,” she said. “Anything about enjoying Vienna's attractions for a few more days in case they'd like some more help with their inquiries?”

“Just the opposite.” I looked up and down the street for a cab without seeing one. “More like, ‘Here's your hat, the door's right there.'”

“Maybe we should take the hint. I'm back at the hotel, but there's still time for me to get someone working on a flight sometime tonight.”

“Before they change their mind, you mean.”

“That's what I mean.”

“Negative, if I have a vote.” I was beginning to think I'd walk all the way back to the hotel before I spotted a cab or stumbled over a subway station. “A name came up at the tail end of our chat. It ties this circus into the computer-hacking thing I was looking into in New Mexico.”

“I don't want to sound flippant,” Proxy said, as if that would have set some kind of precedent, “but so what?”

“I'm the common denominator. Seems to call for some follow-up.”

“How do you plan to follow that up in Vienna?”

“By tracking down Nesselrode.” Still not a cab in sight.

“Easily done. He's sitting right here, and he's as anxious to talk to you as you are to him.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm not kidding.”

“She's not kidding.” Nesselrode's voice. “How fast can you get back to the hotel?”

“Hell if I know. Apparently every cabbie in Vienna is on vacation.”

“Kittens, drunks, and Americans,” Nesselrode muttered. “God looks out for you—and you make it a full-time job for him. Listen. At the end of the block across the street from the police station you should see a café kind of place, little basement thing. See it?”

“Let's see…Esterhazy something?”

“Yes.”

“Got it.”

“I'll meet you there in twenty minutes.” He was off the phone before I could say okay.

He made it with two minutes to spare. He looked like hell: hair hastily finger-combed, day-old growth of beard, bloodshot eyes, and a suit that looked like he'd slept in it, except not long enough. I probably didn't look much better, but at least I'd gotten a couple of hours of shuteye before my appointment with the cops. I let him sit down with a mug of nutmeg-scented coffee before I opened up on him.

“I'm working on my bachelor's degree in Abba Ertel. Educate me.”

“A hood.” Nesselrode shrugged. “Palestinian. Made his chops running errands for Hamas but he liked money even more than he hated Jews so he started doing freelance computer penetration against soft targets.”

“He apparently branched out from there.”

“They usually do.”

“Who was his partner?” I shot that question out without warning, hoping to surprise him.

“What makes you think he had a partner?”

“Wild guess.”

“You're right, he must have.” Nesselrode took a big gulp of what I figured to be throat-scalding coffee. “It's not like he spent six years at the Sorbonne studying twentieth-century European art, is it? Had to be just an intermediary.”

“But you don't know who he was working with or for?”

“No.”

“Nuts.”

My turn to sip coffee.
Damn this stuff is good.

“So,” Nesselrode said, “where does Transoxana go from here?”

“That's Proxy's department, but I'm betting that the whole painting swap finesse is dead now that it has a corpse's fingerprints on it. Company policy is to look for an exit when the body-count hits one.”

“Sort of like your President Obama and Afghanistan.”

“I'd say we did our bit in Afghanistan.” I flared a little at his crack and didn't bother to hide it.

“Sorry, shouldn't have said that.” He turned his profile to me, then swung back around, slapped his palms on the table, and looked me in the eye. “Who do you think killed him?”

“Don't know. Not you and not me. I smelled cigarette smoke in the room, so we can probably rule Proxy out. Not Osama bin Laden because my President Obama greased him a few years ago. After that I'd say it's wide open.”

“A falling-out among thieves, possibly.” Nesselrode muttered this as if he were just thinking out loud. “Or maybe he hacked the wrong target and it caught up with him.”

Yeah. Or maybe he annoyed a stateside hustler with his eyes on a nice payday and learned about the New Jersey version of alternative dispute resolution.

“Let's go.” Nesselrode stood up abruptly. “I'll drive you back to the hotel. Pay the bill.”

By the time I'd crammed myself into the cream-colored VW he'd parked a block away from the café, Nesselrode had already taken a hit from a brandy flask stashed there. The way he drove on our way to the hotel would make the average New York cab-driver look like a pussy with a PhD in Driver Education.

“Hitler won.” He said this to the windshield, one mile and two more brandy hits into our trip. “He didn't kill all the Jews. But he destroyed European Jewry. The most dynamic engine of culture and civilization that ever existed. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment were Rotary Club cocktail parties compared to the Jews in
Mittel
Europa
. And that bastard wiped them out. Either killed them, or drove them to America or to Israel—neither of which, and I mean no offense, many people would mention in the same breath as culture.”

“No offense taken. Except for HBO I only have basic cable, so my idea of culture is
Duck Dynasty
.”

“You know what?” Red-faced, Nesselrode turned his head and half his body to glare at me as he repeated the slightly slurred words. “You know what? Fuck you.”

“If that's an apology, it's accepted. If it's a proposition, the answer is no.”

He started laughing. A little manic, a lot scary. He tossed the bottle to me. I caught it barely in time to keep brandy from slopping all over my lap. I let things sit right there until he started to pull to a jolting, tire-squealing stop in front of the hotel.

“I just remembered something,” I said as I clambered out of the car. “A briefing I got said you'd never lived in Israel. I may suggest that they double-check that.”

He leaned way over and strained his neck to look up at me with saucer-wide, red-rimmed eyes. His diction suddenly got crisp and clear.

“Dany Nesselrode has never lived in Israel.”