Proof of Intent (16 page)

“Lucky for you, we have our major firearms sale coming up very, very soon.”

“How soon is very very?”

“May 11.” Elliot smiled.

“That's six months!”

Elliot Fosterthwaite blinked. “I suppose we could put it in with the antique arms in February.” A sad smile. “But I'm afraid the catalogue's already been printed. And if you really want the sort of hammer price this gun deserves, you'll need to wait for the firearms collection anyway.”

I put the gun back in its walnut case and headed for the door.

I called Lisa's hotel room again. No answer. Then I visited the gun maven at Christie's. The outlook for quick cash turned out to be as dismal there as it had been at Sotheby's. Finally, I checked the yellow pages. Which led me to take a cab to a store on the Upper East Side—R. Phelan & Son, on Lexington Avenue—which billed itself as “Purveyor of the World's Finest Arms.”

I was greeted at the door by a man in his late seventies who introduced himself, not especially warmly, as Seamus Phelan. Like Elliot Fosterthwaite, he was done to the nines in handmade English togs. His accent, however, was pure New York.

I opened the walnut case, revealing the disassembled shotgun.

“Hm.” Phelan peered at it apathetically, then sighed loudly. “Well. Let's have a look in the back.”

I followed him through a door into a tiny, dark, Dickensian workshop, where he put on a worn leather apron. He fitted the barrel on the stock, hefted the weapon, then screwed a jeweler's loupe in his eye, using it to scrutinize the engraving, then the barrels. Next he used a very expensive-looking ebony-and-brass-handled screwdriver to disassemble the gun, taking out the lock and examining every scrap of the mechanism in minute detail. During the entire inspection he never spoke a word, only grunting dubiously now and then. When he was done, a litter of parts lay on his workbench.

“I hope you know how to put it back together,” I said, aiming for a little humor.

“Well, the good news,” he growled, “it's not a fake.”

“I'm aware of that,” I said. “The provenance is entirely in order.” So as to avoid my seeming like a sucker, Miles had given me detailed instructions about the lingo used by shotgun aficionados.

“Provenance!” The old man snorted. “Had a fellow come in here the other day with bills of sale going all the way back to Lord Acton for a supposed Cogswell & Harrison hammer gun. Cogswell & Harrison? Hah! It was a second-rate W&C Scott that somebody had tarted up a little, fooled around with the lock, added some cheap Spanish engraving, so on, so forth. It wouldn't have fooled a four-year-old child. Every one of those bills of sale was a forgery. You'd be amazed.”

“Be that as it may, we both agree this one's real. Are you interested?”

He shrugged, made a face. “Got too much inventory now.”

“I didn't see a Purdy with Damascus barrels and gold inlay out there,” I said. Not that I'd have known a Purdy from a water-cooled machine gun.

Another broad shrug, another face. “Let me see the papers.”

I showed him what I'd brought. He narrowed his eyes when he saw the bill of sale to Miles Dane. “Miles Dane? He's that guy. That writer. The one that killed his wife.”

“Allegedly. I'm his attorney.”

There was a sudden glimmer of interest. “He's raising cash to pay the shysters, huh?”

“Not really,” I said. “He's just shuffling some assets around. Rich people do that from time to time. Makes them feel frisky.”

Phelan didn't crack a smile. He looked down at the disassembled shotgun, then said, in the most skeptical New York tones, “Well. I suppose I could ask the old man, see what he says.” He turned and hobbled up a dark staircase in the corner of the room, moving slowly and quietly, as though he were trying to sneak up on somebody. The old man? If Phelan
pére
actually existed, he must have been a hundred and ninety years old.

I waited for a long time. Eventually Phelan the Younger hobbled back down.

“He's not sure,” Seamus Phelan said.

“Not
sure
? Look, spare me the good cop, bad cop,” I said. “Just give me a number.”

Phelan smiled for the first time, very briefly. “There's no good cop,” he said. “Me and the old man, we're both the bad cop.”

“How much?”

“We could go forty.”

“Put it back together,” I said. “I'm going back to Sotheby's.”

“Time you pay the commission, insurance, catalogue fees, handling, cartage, whatever other nonsense they can nickel-and-dime you with, Sotheby's ends up a terrible deal.”

“Put the gun back together.”

Phelan didn't move. “Plus you've got to wait till the firearms sale comes up in May. You try selling it at the antique arms sale, you won't get what you want for it.”

I crossed my arms and gave him a hard stare.

“Okay,” Phelan said. “The old man says I can go forty-six.”

I just stood there, didn't move a muscle.

After what seemed a very long time, Phelan said, “Hold on.” As he went creeping up the stairs again, I wiped a little sweat off my brow. Eventually he came back down with a check in his hand.

“Final offer,” he said, and tried to hand me the check.

I looked at the check and laughed. Despite my bravado, however, I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn't do a lot better in any sort of reasonable time frame.

Phelan curled his lip. “We both know the score here, Mr. Sloan,” he said. “Your client has his keister in a crack and needs cash. You're over a barrel. You can go to any gun dealer in the city, they'll sniff it out as quickly as me. You don't stay in this business for long without knowing what's what. Difference between me and the others—most of them, they can't raise this kind of money in five minutes.”

To tell the truth, this was about what I'd expected. But still, cold hard reality puts a knot in your gut. I took the check, folded it in half, put it in my coat. So that was it. Now I was going to have to make this entire case fly, not on eighty thousand, but on fifty-two five. Which would barely cover expenses.

This whole case was feeling more and more like a train wreck.

To my infinite relief, Lisa answered the door of her hotel room when I knocked. She looked terrible—her skin pale and greenish.

“Where's your meeting?” I said.

“I haven't been in almost a year.”

“That's not what I asked. Where is it?”

“A YWCA up near Columbia.”

“Does it meet tonight?”

She looked at her watch nervously. She was clutching a large leather portfolio under her arm, as though afraid it might run away if she put it down. “This afternoon actually.”

“Let's go,” I said.

The AA meeting began at four-thirty. Lisa and I sat next to each other in the back row of folding chairs. She was still carrying the leather portfolio.

“My name is Charley,” I said as the meeting began, “and I'm an alcoholic.”

“My name is Lisa,” my daughter said. “I'm an alcoholic.”

If there were things she needed to say, I didn't want my presence keeping her from saying them. I leaned over and whispered to her as the other members introduced themselves. “This one is yours, not mine. I'll be waiting outside.”

After Lisa came back outside, I said, “You slipped. It happens. It was thoughtless of me to send you here. Let's head on out to the airport and fly back to Michigan.”

“I can't,” she said. Her mascara had run and was now all over her cheeks. I took out my handkerchief, wiped her face.

“Am I wasting my time being here?” I said.

She looked up and down the street, as though expecting someone to come up and grab the leather portfolio she was still clutching in her arms.

“Lisa?”

“I don't
know
, Dad!” she said.

“Let's at least go back to the hotel.”

She looked at her watch. “Can't.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, on the phone I said I had good news and bad news. The bad news is that I called Shearman & Pound's trust department. I couldn't squeeze anything out of the woman I talked to. You know how it is; at first she wouldn't even confirm that Diana Dane was a client. I said the prosecuting attorney would get the trust documents sooner or later, so she might as well give them to me now. She said, ‘Mr. Olesky has already requested them. We're currently litigating the matter.' ”

“So what's the good news?”

“I'm having a drink with Diana Dane's brother.”

“Really?”

“I got him on a pretext,” Lisa said. “We're getting together at the Oak Bar down at the Plaza Hotel. I'll see if I can work things around to Diana and Miles, pump him for information.”

“Drinks?” I said dubiously.

“I'll be fine.” She put something resembling a smile on her face and hugged the portfolio to her chest.

“No you won't.”

Lisa looked up and down the street again. Suddenly it was as if something had melted in her eyes. “I'm sorry, Dad. I'm being a jerk. We'll go together. When we get there, you can get a table next to us and sort of keep an eye on us. If you're watching me, I know I won't have a problem sticking to soda water.”

We began walking.

“So what's in the portfolio?” I said after we'd gone three or four blocks.

She gave me a sidelong mysterious look. “You'll see.”

The Oak Room at the Plaza is an old, famous bar where people smoke cigars and show off how rich they are by swilling drinks that cost ten dollars a pop. It has a twenty-foot-high ceiling, marble floors, big chairs, good service, and just about the right amount of noise—enough to make you feel like you're being fun and witty in the company of other fun and witty people but not loud enough to drown out your conversation. In short, back in my days of drink and megalomania I would have loved the place. Now, however, it made me feel like an aging hick lawyer. My suit wasn't as nice or as well pressed or as well fitting as most of the men's in the room; I was alone at my table; and the smell of expensive cigars and single malt whiskey reminded me of the many things gone forever from my life.

Lisa sat down at a small round table about eight feet away from me, setting the portfolio next to her chair. She had just gotten her coat off when a very tall man wearing a bow tie and a Brooks Brothers suit approached her table. He was probably six-foot-three, broad-shouldered but somewhat stooped, with a head of soft white hair that floated over his face like airborne lint. He looked like a university professor who'd played lacrosse or football in college, then let himself go. His lower lip protruded slightly, and his face was asymmetrical so that one side looked quite pleasant and the other somewhat predatory, as though two different instincts were warring inside him.

“Lisa?” he said.

“Good afternoon, Mr. van Blaricum.” Lisa showed her even teeth and suddenly looked very much like a grownup.

“Please. Call me Roger.” Somehow he didn't strike me as the call-me-Roger type. His manner was slightly pedantic, and his accent was Old New York: Mr. Howell from
Gilligan's Island
with a little bit of Brooklyn in the vowels. He pulled out her chair ceremoniously, signaled to the waiter. “Two scotches, neat.”

“Ah . . .”

“Something wrong?” Van Blaricum blinked, mildly surprised.

Lisa hesitated. “No. No, scotch is fine.” The knot in my stomach tightened.

They settled in and exchanged a few pleasantries, then van Blaricum said, “I have to tell you I was terribly intrigued by your note.” He favored her with a smile that seemed to mean something different on each side of his face. “But of course I'm wondering how you found me.”

“Oh, people know people in this business. You understand.”

She had not yet told me the nature of the pretext she had used to entice Diana Dane's brother to this meeting, so I was intensely curious.

“The business. Yes.” He smiled musingly. “Oddly, I've never even heard your name before.”

“I'm primarily based out of Milan,” Lisa said breezily. “The bulk of our clients are Italians and Swiss.”

“You're quite young to be running your own shop.”

“Oh, I hope I didn't give you that impression. I'm an associate of Aldo Pozzoni—though in this case I'm acting on my own account. You're familiar with him, I'm sure?”

“We've spoken. Twice, I think.” Roger van Blaricum said it as though that were two times too many. “You know, my dear, I'd love to chitchat of course. But you intimated on the phone that you have something of unusual interest to show me.”

Lisa picked up the worn leather portfolio, set it square in the middle of the table, the buckles toward her chest. “Put your drink on the floor, please, Mr. van Blaricum,” she said, placing her own scotch next to her foot.

Van Blaricum eyed her briefly, as though not accustomed to being told what to do. But then he did as he was told, placing the drink next to the leg of his chair. Lisa took a large white cloth out of her purse and carefully wiped the tabletop. Van Blaricum's eyes were fixed on the portfolio.

Lisa opened the straps on the portfolio and pulled out a white folder, which she opened and passed to van Blaricum. His right eye widened when he opened it, but his left seemed to narrow slightly.

“Good God!” he said. “Where did you get it?”

I was trying not to be too conspicuous about watching the pair, but I had to let my glance linger. Inside the folder was a large piece of heavy paper with a scene printed on it in bold colors—reds, blues, greens. I'm no art expert, but it appeared to be a Japanese woodblock print. And it certainly took no expert to make out the subject matter: The print showed a man having anal intercourse with a woman wearing a mask that looked like a demonic Buddhist temple guard.