Fallen Idols (39 page)
Callie sucked in air. “Oh, my God!” Her head was shaking like she was a rag doll being pummeled. “You can't say that. You can't even think it. That your father and Diane would concoct such a monstrous plan? That's crazy, that's insane!” She started crying. “It can't be that. It can't. Not your father. He couldn't have. Whatever his faults or problems were, he loved your mother.”
Clancy put his arm around her and pulled her to him. She was shaking.
“I don't believe that he did anything like that,” he said, stroking her hair, holding her tight. “But I've thought it. We've all thought it. It's impossible not to. Not after what's happened.” He turned her face to his. “Mom was killed down there, and ever since, our world's been turned upside-down. Anything's possible.” He paused. “And nothing is impossible.”
S
ecurity at O'Hare was tight as a drum. Tom stood in a line that snaked a couple of hundred yards down the corridor for over half an hour until he was able to pass through the metal detectors. Once on board the airplane, he sat in cramped discomfort with his fellow travelers for an hour past departure time, stuck behind dozens of other planes until it was their turn for takeoff. By the time his flight got to La Guardia and taxied into their landing dock (another forty-five-minute delay, waiting for the dock to clear), he had been in airports or on an airplane for almost six hours, for a flight that took less than an hour and forty-five minutes. I could have driven here almost as fast, he thought sourly, as he made his way through the jammed-up terminal and out to the taxicab stand.
A cold, sleetlike rain was falling; the sunless sky, at four-thirty in the afternoon, was a dull charcoal ceiling of thunderheads and gloomy, London-like fog. Tom, carry-on garment bag slung over his shoulder, raincoat pulled up over his head in a futile attempt to keep dry, inched his way along the taxi line. When it was finally his turn, the dispatcher yanked open the door of a dull orange Chevrolet Impala, driven by a turbaned Sikh with a full black beard.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked, in a thick New York accent.
Tom climbed in. “Thirty-first and Madison.” The hotel he'd booked had recently completed a major renovation and was offering cut-rate prices to entice customers, a deal he'd found on the Internet. Clancy and Will had fronted the money for the trip—he needed to spend it frugally.
The cabbie immediately tore out into the heavy traffic, ignoring a battery of blaring horns as he cut across three lanes. Tom was jolted back against the seat.
“I'm not in a hurry,” he called out, as the taxi braked suddenly, then plunged forward again.
“No problem,” the driver barked, leaning on his horn and cutting in front of a UPS truck. “I'll get you there safe and sound.”
Let's hope so, Tom thought, as he pulled his seat belt down and buckled it firmly. That's all I need, an accident. Like I don't have enough problems already.
As he had arrived in New York at rush hour, the drive into Manhattan was slow and tedious, but true to his word, the cabbie got him to his destination without incident. Tom paid him, left a decent tip, and went inside under the shelter of the doorman's umbrella.
The first thing he'd do after he checked in was buy an umbrella from a street vendor. The forecast was for intermittent rain for the next several days, and he hadn't brought one. After that, dinner somewhere, maybe a movie, then early to bed. He wanted to get going first thing in the morning. He had reserved a room for two nights. He hoped that would be enough.
Waking up to the sun shining through the venetian blinds, Tom got out of bed and looked out the window. Not a cloud in sight. He could feel the brittle, cold morning air on the windowpane as he touched it with the tips of his fingers. Flipping on the television, he channel-surfed until he found a local weather station. The amended forecast was for a bright, cold day, but no rain. A good sign, hopefully.
He shaved, showered, dressed. Clean white shirt, tie, a pair of black dress loafers he'd bought at a high-class men's shoe store on Michigan Avenue, and his one good suit, a dark blue pinstripe he'd picked up at a Brooks Brothers outlet store outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, a couple years before. He'd hardly ever worn it, but he'd felt, at the time, that he should own one good suit, so he could look like a grown-up, in case the occasion arose. This trip to New York was such an occasion.
The reason he had come, rather than using Garcia or a local detective, was that this was a family affair. It was up to them, personally, to find out what had happened. There had been no debate over who would go—Tom was the only one who could take off on a moment's notice. He was still the fifth wheel, but at least now his life had a genuine purpose.
The room service menu was too expensive for his budget, so Tom had coffee and a toasted bagel at a nearby lunch-sonette and then headed north, crossing at 42
nd
Street by the Public Library and then turning up Fifth Avenue. His first appointment was with a specialist in art and antiquities thefts. Laurel Johnstone had arranged the meeting. The man's office was on 58
th
Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.
Thanksgiving was still three weeks away, but Christmas had already arrived in the shop window displays and the colorful red and green banners that hung from the streetlight posts. In his spare time, of which there was plenty, Tom had been reading Melville,
Moby-Dick.
One of the great descriptive paragraphs from the first chapter came to mind:
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.
Melville was writing about Ishmael, a man about to embark on a mission. Tom, walking along the streets of New York as Ishmael had, more than a hundred and fifty years ago (
circumambulating,
a fine way to describe it), was also on a mission. One, hopefully, of discovery.
This is the perfect time to be here, he thought, before it's too cold and the streets are filled with winter slush. Sometime in the future, when he could afford it, he'd come with a woman and spend a week or so, see some plays, go to museums, concerts, eat fine meals, Christmas shop.
He thought, for the thousandth or ten thousandth time of Emma, now Diane. Who had she worked for, who had she sold art to, what kind of art did she deal in? Dozens of questions. For himself he wanted to find out who she was as a woman. What kind of life had she lived? Who had she been involved with? Reluctantly, he had come to the painful belief that Diane, the übergoddess of his dreams, was a woman lacking in any moral center, who did whatever she felt was necessary to get what she wanted, whether that meant having an affair with a renowned archaeologist to get access to stolen artifacts or screwing his son because she wanted a younger man is that particular time, or simply because she could, or because she thought she might need the son as an all. Would she even—this was his biggest fear—arrange to have a woman murdered, if that woman had gotten in the way of her plans?
Over the next couple of days, if he was lucky (or unlucky, depending on how things played out), he would find the answers to these questions.
The expert Laurel Johnstone had referred Tom to was named Alvin Whiting. His office, in a nondescript building, was one of several small spaces on an upper floor that fed out into a long common hallway. Among the signs stenciled on the opaque glass doors, besides Whiting's which listed his name but not his occupation, were those of a bail bondsman, a talent agency, a bill collection agency, and an obscure literary magazine.
Whiting appeared to be in his middle sixties, a few years past his father's age, Tom guessed, although he looked a decade older. Recently retired, he had been employed by Sotheby's for several years as their in-house specialist in art thefts and forgeries; before that, he'd been a senior director with the U.S. Customs Department.
Whiting's office was one room; there was no secretary. Most of the space was taken up by old metal filing cabinets an ancient refrigerator, and a microwave oven.
“Diane Montrose.” Whiting pronounced the name slowly, as if tasting it, tilting back in his wooden office chair and gazing at the ceiling above Tom's head. “A piece of work, that one. So you know her.”
“Yes,” Tom answered. The heat was turned up. He took off his raincoat and draped it on the back of his chair.
Whiting rocked forward, his hands splayed out on his thighs. “I haven't seen or heard of her in a couple of years. Where is she now?”
“I'd rather not tell you, unless you won't help me otherwise.”
Whiting shook his head. “It doesn't matter to me, I'm out of that game, thankfully. So what do you want to know about her? That's why you're here, am I correct?”
Tom nodded. “I'm trying to find out what galleries and clients she worked for, what she did for them, and how I can find people who will give me information about her.”
Whiting rocked back again. He had small hands and feet, no larger than a child's. “The first two parts of your question are easy. She advised her clients—galleries and private buyers—on pieces of art they were interested in acquiring. She was quite good at coming up with things that aren't usually found on the open market.”
“Works of art that were stolen.”
“Sometimes.”
“She's an art thief?”
Whiting shook his head from side to side. “It's not that clear-cut. She's never stolen anything herself—not directly. She's too clever to nakedly expose herself. She's the classic middleman, for the modern age.”
He leaned forward. “Here's how a gray-market transaction would work. A client would approach her, usually through an intermediary, so the authorities can't trace them back to the real buyer or seller. ‘I'm interested in acquiring whatever.’ They would agree on a price, and so forth. Then she would try to get it, if she could.” He swiveled in his chair, his feet barely touching the floor. “Or more commonly, someone who had a piece of stolen art in his possession would approach her and ask her to find a buyer. She was well connected, and completely discreet.”
“Would pre-Columbian artifacts be one of the areas of interest she dealt in?” Tom asked.
Whiting nodded. “Diane follows the money, wherever it leads her. I assume that's what you're trying to find out about her. If she was selling stolen items from Central American archaeological sites.”
“Yes,” Tom replied.
Whiting leaned forward and tapped a small, freshly manicured finger on Tom's knee. “It's a ruthless business. Millions of dollars of priceless artifacts and church icons, altarpieces, statues, are being stolen from those countries every year, even though importing and exporting them has been illegal since 1983.” He shifted in his chair again. “The problem is in knowing whether or not the article in question was in this country before then. If it was, then it's not against the law to buy it. There's no enforceable legislation requiring proof of date. Immoral and unethical, but not illegal. Do you understand the distinction?”
Tom nodded. “If I buy something that I don't know was stolen, I can't be prosecuted later if it turns out that it was.”
Whiting nodded. “That's correct. The art trade has to police itself, and they do a miserable job. Last year, to give you one example, Sotheby's held an auction for over a hundred and fifty pre-Columbian works of art, and they didn't provide a find-spot for one of them—
not one.
” He scowled. “Although there have been some notable exceptions to that. Last year an antiquities dealer here in the city was convicted of selling stolen artifacts from Egypt. He was caught because what he did was so blatant it was impossible to ignore. So there has been some cutting back. No one wants to go to jail. Still, it happens. More than anyone in the art community is willing to acknowledge There are many Diane Montroses out there trafficking in stolen artifacts, Including,” he added with anger, “government officials from the very countries that profess to be leading the struggle to stop it. It's a sieve, a corrupt system from top to bottom.”
Tom took the list of names Detective Garcia had given them from his pocket. “What can you tell me about these people?” he asked, handing it over. “Do you know if any of them dealt in stolen art, and used Diane?”
Whiting looked at it. “I don't know all these names, but the ones I do know are important dealers or collectors. Whether or not any of them sold or bought artifacts that had been stolen, from Diane or anyone else, I can't say from firsthand experience.”
He handed the list back to Tom. “What I can tell you is that these are people with buckets of money. They think their wealth gives them license to break the law when it suits their purpose.” He sighed. “What are you trying to find out, specifically?”
“I'm hoping someone will talk to me about Diane. About art she might have been trying to sell that came from La Chimenea.”
“Oooh.” Whiting rocked in his chair. “That's certainly not going to be easy, because that's clearly post-1983.”
“I know.” Tom looked imploringly at the older man. “Any ideas how I might do it anyway?”
Whiting thought for a moment. “You're going to have to play your cards close to the vest, because these people don't know you, and they're going to be very cautious about talking to someone they don't know.” He thought for a moment. “Coming in cold, as you're doing, a total unknown, could be the best way to broach that. It would be so out of left field that you might find what you're looking for.” He paused again. “But you might not. I wouldn't get my hopes up for a positive result if I were you.”
Tom got up and put on his raincoat. “Thanks for the help,” he said, shaking Whiting's hand. “I've given up hoping for anything good about this. I just want to try to find some truth—if there is any.”
Leaving Whiting's office, Tom headed north, cutting through Central Park. The first dealer Whiting had recommended he try was on the Upper East Side, a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He ambled through the park, checking out the joggers and bike-riders, the dog-walkers and baby-carriage-pushers, the old ladies in furs, the kids on Rollerblades.