Henry Wood: Time and Again: (25 page)

“You make us sound like dogs.”

“To them, we are lower than dogs. You have their ‘Eye’ and they want it back.”

“I’m starting to rethink my decision to handle this piece.” Patrick was nervous, losing his game face, and turned to humor, feebly.

Katarina’s mind, working like a world class chess player, “As long as we offer the hope of recovery, they'll not risk losing the ‘Eye’, by killing us. If they believe there is a chance of delivering the ‘Eye’, it will keep us alive. It's not a priceless artifact to them; it is the center of their way of life. They've been searching for it for years. This may be the closest they've come to getting it back.”

Patrick felt inadequate for asking, “What is this thing? I thought it was just a really old, and priceless, watch.”

“If we live, I’ll tell you all about it. I'll need you to follow my lead.”

Patrick nodded and she leaned back, closing her eyes. He considered himself a master tactician, but couldn’t imagine how she planned to deliver it. If they lived, he wouldn’t wait around for the story, he was retired from the stolen art business.

***

Henry drove past his apartment, but decided to go to his house instead. Her smell would still be on his pillow, and that would just cloud his mind. He crossed the bridge and was home before he knew it. His brain was on autopilot. Henry knew he would need to confront her, he knew she had either killed Mickey or knew who did. He wasn’t sure which was worse, the thought of her sharing his bed, after having killed his mentor, or her going to the wake knowing who had.

She wasn’t the smart, funny, beautiful woman he knew from before, she was just a woman. He tried to figure a reason he could accept, but he knew why, greed. The conversation he would have with her, started to play in his mind. Henry grabbed a beer and sat down at his kitchen table. Henry could hear her excuses, her justifications, her blaming someone else, or her admitting it and begging for mercy. None of the stories had a happy ending.

Henry thought about what Mike had said and though he wanted to feel sorry for himself, he knew he couldn’t. Tomorrow, they would let the captain know everything. Henry needed to figure out how to bring down Patrick, stop the auction, keep Dr. Schaeffer out of it, and get Katarina to confess or give up the person who killed Mike. There were enough cops who loved Mickey that simply storming the auction would net everyone involved. He was sure that could be arranged. But how could he keep his client out of the fray? In fact, he needed Dr. Schaeffer to let him in on the location of the auction.

There was one thing which bothered him, still. It wasn’t just Mickey’s murder, someone had murdered the two Greek guys, and Mr. Brown in his brown suit. He got out his notebook and flipped through the pages. He found the page, Mr. Brown beaten to death in his home. He just couldn’t imagine Katarina beating someone to death. Obviously, it was someone from her organization. Henry didn’t have proof that she was the Falcon, just his gut telling him it was her. It was his same gut which said she didn’t kill Mr. Brown and those two drunken Greeks. Katarina must have a team.

That made sense, he thought. If she was this legendary collector, who had remained anonymous, she would have needed help. She would have needed people to deliver messages, to watch her back, and to make payments. Henry didn’t know what it took to be a world class stolen art collector, but he was sure it wasn’t a one woman job.

For a moment there was the slightest glimmer of hope. Maybe a lieutenant had knocked off Mickey? He started to rerun the imaginary conversation again, this time, with a plausible explanation. She didn’t order the hit, it was his decision, and she didn’t approve. He would ask her why she didn’t tell him the truth. The glimmer of hope died, when he realized that there still wasn’t an answer he could accept.

Henry went to bed and slept for almost two hours, until a loud bang, from his basement, woke him up.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Henry was startled and couldn’t imagine what had just exploded. He grabbed the baseball bat in the corner and made his way through his house, turning on one light at a time. On the basement stairs, with his mind a bit clearer, realized it must be the closet. There wasn’t anyone downstairs so he opened the door and lying on the floor was a New York Times.

The date October 16, 1988; thirty-three and one half years from where Henry stood, and he knew it must have a clue. His closet, with its gift from the future, seemed to give him the little extra nudge in the right direction, whenever he needed it. Henry had suspected that the newspapers left this week had been put there from the near future, but he had found them too late. He had been bothered by this, blaming himself for missing a chance to save Mickey.

Henry took the paper upstairs, dropped it on the table, and started a pot of coffee. He had spent enough hours thinking about the how and why of his closet, without coming up with any ideas, that he took it all in stride. He looked at the front page and read a few articles. This was almost as cool as the machine which played movies in color. Reading about the future was exciting, but he couldn’t indulge his desire to think about all the strange things advertised and written about. This paper contained a clue, something which will point him in the right direction and help with the next move.

Henry didn’t expect a huge headline from 1988, screaming ‘Henry Wood Saves Day’ with an article describing what he had done in 1955. It would be subtle. He read a few more articles and nothing. The coffee was finished brewing, so he poured himself a cup, added sugar and cream and sat back down. Out of habit he pulled out the sports section. What he saw next shook him to the core.

He just stared at it. The headline almost stopped his heart. It wasn’t the clue, it was something much worse. Everything he should be thinking about seemed to be nothing but a din of background noise. He read the article, twice, and just didn’t understand. It appears that the night before, in front of 55,983 people, in California, the Los Angeles Dodgers won the first game of the World Series against somebody called the Oakland Athletics, 5-4. His love of baseball and the Dodgers made this the most horrible revelation he could imagine.
How could they leave?

The coffee was good. Henry had a hard time getting back to the paper, he wondered if he would live long enough to find out who wins game two and the series. If he did make it to October 1988, he would have to remember to put a few bucks on game one. That made him smile, but only a little. The worst part was living with the specter of their move hanging over his head. He would go to more games this year, just in case. He assumed it didn’t happen for at least 20 or 30 years though, they were just too loved right now, to leave anytime soon. The cup was empty, but he wasn’t up in the middle of the night, to think about baseball. He needed a second cup.

After another 20 minutes of reading he came to an article about the tearing down of a building in the Bowery. This was it. He didn’t know the relevance, but the description in the article sounded like it was one of Randy’s hiding places. The article talked about how the clever hiding place looked like it had been created and then gone unnoticed by every tenant since. If they hadn’t been tearing down walls, it might have never been discovered.

Henry decided he was up now. He got in the shower to get ready for the day.

At his apartment in the city, his phone rang again. It was the third call he had missed.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

It was not what Katarina expected. They sat in leather chairs in a large space. In front of them was a table, with a pitcher of water, and a couple of glasses. On the other side of the table sat a gentleman with a white beard, drinking a glass of wine. The floor was concrete, but had a nice Oriental rug on it. There were very bright lights surrounding them. The lights were too overpowering to see the walls. Katarina sensed there were people, beyond the lights, but couldn't tell how many.

The strangest part was that Katerina couldn’t remember being moved from the truck to the chairs. But here they were, the show was about to begin.

“My name is…not important…nor is yours to me. I have only one concern and that is to recover what is rightfully the property of our little organization and right this wrong.”

Katarina wanted to establish some credibility with their captors. She had an idea how she might pull it off, but feared it might blow up in her face. She went for it. She leaned forward and calmly poured a glass of water and then said, “You must be Thorstians.”

The man showed the slightest hint of being impressed. “We are. There are few who have ever heard of us. We like our privacy.”

His tone made her think she might have misplayed the hand, but folding wasn’t an option, so she continued, “I've been searching for the Eye of God for a long time. I didn’t have anything to do with stealing it from you, but I do admit to being interested in buying it. I should mention, my friend here didn’t steal it either. He is merely the broker.”

“Is that true?”

Patrick nodded. He was at a loss for something helpful to say.

“I see you are a man of few words. To be truthful, we know you didn’t steal it, we know exactly what you are…a fence.”

He found his voice. “Begging your pardon, but I'm not ‘A Fence’, I'm ‘The Fence’.” Proverbs 16:18 suddenly came to mind, ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall’, and Patrick realized that he should be a little more modest. He wasn’t sure if he would get too many more chances, though.

The man across them seemed neither amused nor offended. “I really don’t care if you are the greatest fence to have ever lived. We have this situation today, because you are trying to sell something which is not yours, or your clients. Which brings us to my two concerns, who is your client, and where is our box?”

Patrick and Katarina had agreed to be honest about how the box was temporarily misplaced, because of the untimely death of Randy. Patrick went into great detail about his arrangement with Randy, explaining why he trusted him, and the advantages to hiding valuable works of art this way. He wanted to make sure that their captors understood that he was not making up a story and to do that, he needed to explain his reasoning. If he had simply said, “I don’t have it, it is hidden, and I don’t know where it is.” They wouldn’t have believed him, or worse, they would have tried to beat it out of him.

The old Greek man listened. When the story was done he sat quietly for a moment. “I'm not a violent man. I just wish to have returned what rightfully belongs to me and my associates. But you can see where we have a problem. Though your story seems quite convincing, it doesn’t help me achieve my goals. Let us start with something you can tell me. Who is your client?”

Patrick didn’t like the idea of telling him, but the situation was looking rather bleak. “To be honest, I'm not sure I could pronounce it, but if you give me a pencil, I'll write it down for you.”

A large man appeared from out of the darkness with a piece of paper and a pencil. He had a machine gun looped around his neck and looked like he might enjoy getting to use it. Patrick wrote down the name and slid it across the table to their host. The man with the beard read the name. He did not look happy.

The sound of anxious footsteps was all that could be heard. Someone whispered in Greek. Katarina guessed it was Greek for, “Who is it?” The man in the chair said something back in a harsh tone. The walking around ceased and there was silence.

Katarina sensing her moment said, “I believe I have an idea, which will help you locate ‘The Eye’, but I have a condition.”

She was wrong about it being her moment. He exploded, “A condition!” He stood up and disappeared from the light, returning with a pistol. He pointed it at her, then waved the gun to his left and fired. Patrick’s hand went to the right side of his head and cupped his bleeding ear. “You are not in a position to be making demands!” He then disappeared from the lit area again, and they could hear his heavy footsteps behind them.

Katarina looked over at Patrick. His expression was a mixture of shock and horror. The blood was trickling between his fingers. She felt a hand come over the top of the leather chair and pull her chin upward. All she could see was the barrel of the gun pressed between her eyes and a giant meaty hand holding the trigger.

“Where is it?” he said, in a voice of tempered rage.

“I don’t know. But I believe my idea is the only way you'll find it. I still have one condition.”

The man in the beard’s hand began to shake and the accompanying silence was the scariest thing anyone in the room had ever not heard. The sound of the hammer being lowered eased the tension ever so slightly. The man’s voice, having returned to a calm state, said something in his native tongue. A few men came forward and grabbed Patrick and took him away.

He sat back down. “Everyone, leave!”

The room was emptied and the sound of a heavy metal door closing, was followed by quiet. Katarina, with the nerves of a fighter ace, stared into the man’s eyes. “I know a man who knows where the first hiding place was and I believe he may have some ideas about where it is now.”

“And you will tell me who this man is, if I agree to your…’One Condition’…what is that condition?”

“I want to ask the ‘Eye’ one question.’