The Blackmail Club (27 page)

Jack rode up to his floor and went into his room. He wasn’t sure what to expect from Nora as Candy Robson. One minute he was filled with hopes, even fantasies, and in the next minute crowded by reservations. Nora was his partner.

After a while, he called his office.

“McCall Investigations. Mary Lou speaking.”

“It’s Jack, anything shaking?” A moment later he heard a knock. “Hold on, Mary Lou, I think Nora’s at the door.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Come in. It’s unlocked.”

“Hi there, big boy. My name’s Candy Robson and I’m looking for a handsome hunk to take me to dinner.”

She looked ravishing. He kept his hand over the mouthpiece and held the phone out. “I’m checking in with Mary Lou.”

Nora walked over and stood in front of him and shimmied her shoulders, leaned in, and kissed the exposed side of his neck. He inhaled her perfume. His mouth inches from her cleavage.

He had forgotten the phone when Mary Lou startled him. “Nothing’s happening here. Anything shaking there?” He mumbled something, then Mary Lou said, “Now you and Nora find some time for fun while you’re in the Big Apple. You know, all work and no play.”

“If you need us,” Jack said, “you know the number. If you need someone fast, Max is on standby.”

Jack hung up the phone. “Now stop that. Behave yourself.”

Nora stopped.

“Who told you to stop?”

“Why you did, and tonight I’m yours to command.”

She leaned in and kissed his neck again, then put her arms around his shoulders, her cleavage coming even closer to his face.

Jack hadn’t been with a woman since Rachel died and his body was sending him past due notices, yet he was swamped by the feeling he would be cheating on his deceased wife.

“Stop!” He said too loudly and felt embarrassed. “We’re … we’re going to be late for dinner.”

In the elevator, Nora told Jack about the steakhouse. “Gallagher’s has been here for, I don’t know, a hundred years or something. The place was started by one of the Ziegfield girls named Gallagher. The walls are filled with autographed pictures of celebrities from Mayor Jimmy Walker, Mickey Mantle, and John Barrymore to the big names of today. And the food’s great.”

After being seated, they ordered martinis. Then reviewed their plan for handling the forger they would see in the morning. After chatting through dinner, he signed the credit voucher for their meal and emptied the second bottle of wine into their glasses.

Nora moved her glass and, without taking her eyes off Jack, crossed her arms below her breasts, making them rise even farther above her low-cut neckline. Then she reached out and put her hand on top of his. “Jack, we’ve been dancing around this long enough, and I’ve had enough to drink to say what’s on my mind. Will you listen?”

“Yes.”

Their faces were as close as possible, allowing for the disinterested table that stood between them.

“Rachel saved my life,” Nora began, “neither of us will ever forget her. No one can ever replace her, but we both know Rachel would not want you to live without love.” She stood and held out her hand. He took it and they left.

Jack unlocked the door to his hotel room and held it open. After they were inside, Nora closed the door and turned to face him. She approached him slowly, until she was standing right before him. Leisurely, she traced the curve of his neck with her fingers. She went up onto her tiptoes to have her lips trail over his ear, his cheek, and onto his mouth, teasing him with the tip of her tongue. Their lips met in all their glory. The kiss was not gentle, but hungry. A kiss crowded with promises. The air clouded with intimate feelings.

She backed away a few feet and turned slowly. “You haven’t told me how you like me as Candy Robson?”

Jack sat in the chair off to the side of the bed, still uncertain how he felt about what was about to occur. “I like Nora Burke, but you do look delicious in that Candy dress.”

She moved to other side of the bed, and slowly took off the dress. Beneath it she wore a red and black, satin and lace bustier with a see-through panty to match. Then there were her stockings. The back-seam, thigh-high nylons looked delicious on her. She walked around the bed dragging her dress beside her and dropped it on the floor next to his chair. She lowered her head and kissed him, a lingering wet kiss.

He reached up and put his hands on her.

After a few minutes, Nora stepped back, put one foot up on the bed, and slowly peeled off one of her nylons crowned by smooth white flesh, and draped it over the lamp on the dresser. Then she removed and draped the second stocking, casting the room in muted grayish light.

“Close your eyes,” she said.

He could hear her moving about, but could not tell what she was doing.

“Open your eyes.”

She was in bed, leaning into several pillows propped against the headboard, her reddish-blond hair outlining the side of her face. “Come over here,” she said, patting the open sheets beside her.

On the way he passed the bustier and panties she had draped overtop the nylons, easing the grayish light into a soft pink. The top sheet covered the lower half of her body except for one exposed leg, her arms extended along the sides of her breasts. Her nipples awakened.

Chapter 40

Herman Flood’s studio loft was atop an old industrial building across from the Hudson River. The lobby windows revealed hand-wiped smears wherever the sun struck the glass. The wood paneled walls around the bank of elevators wore dust the way peaches wore fuzz. Jack and Nora stepped into an elevator which greeted them with an indecipherable groan. Jack lowered its rough-hewn wood-slatted door, and pressed the hard white button below a hand-printed label that read: loft. When they stepped out at the top, the deep-throated horn of a river barge hollered a message understood by others who spoke boat.

The loft’s hardwood floors were covered with row after row of paintings leaning against high walls. The entire room was awash in the brightness that poured through windows on two sides and a peaked industrial skylight. One row of paintings was fronted by a colorful rendering of the city’s night lights reflecting off the river. Across from that a wonderful capturing of the skyline of Manhattan, but mostly the room was filled with portraits. A few of famous people, the rest unknowns, older, weathered faces with lines like road maps that foreshadowed their journeys, lessons learned, and pains survived.

Herman Flood’s painting skills far exceeded his selling skills.

Flood was older than sixty. He had small hands but a strong shake. He wore frail wire-framed glasses, a blue New York Giants T-shirt and a pair of jeans; both streaked with blotches of paint. His unruly white gossamer hair tossed like a salad of colors from his artist’s palette.

The old man’s warm smile towered over him as he shook hands with Nora. “How do you do, Mrs. Miller? I enjoyed speaking with you on the phone. Hello, Mr. Miller.” He nodded slightly. “It’s kind of you both to visit my studio. If you wish, look at my paintings. When you’re finished, you can tell me about the portraits you want done.”

“Your talent is obvious,” Jack said. “May we sit over there?” He pointed toward a small couch and chair near the window.

Flood rushed ahead to remove two blank canvases from the couch and an open box of paints that sat on the small table; the box’s loose flaps extending like ears listening in four directions.

“I have some sodas in the back. Would either of you like one?”

“Our names are not Miller, Mr. Flood,” Jack began, ignoring the invitation. “This is Nora Burke. My name is Jack McCall. We’re from McCall Investigations in Washington, D.C.”

Flood’s body sagged, and his face spoke confusion.

“You painted copies of four presidents from the originals that hung in the National Portrait Gallery. Your paintings have been swapped for those originals.”

“Good Lord.” Flood’s eyes, rimmed by concentric wrinkles, flitted from Jack to Nora, then back to Jack. The artist put his hands to his face and mumbled through his fingers. “I didn’t know. Maybe I suspected some at first … Maybe I didn’t want to know.” He lowered his hands. “No. I did not know. I’ve had opportunities, plenty. I could have been wealthy.” He gestured around. “Instead I live alone, an obscure painter, painting to live because I live to paint. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. But I’m a copyist, not a forger.”

He sagged deeper into the chair, his hands again covering his face.

Nora pulled a little pointy paper cup free from the dispenser next to a large bottle of water and filled the cup. She touched Flood’s slumping shoulder; he took the cup and drank.

“I’ve painted all my life. Now my work ends up being used as forgeries.” He lowered his eyes.

Jack sat forward. “Mr. Flood, we aren’t the police. In our eyes you’re a victim, just like the National Portrait Gallery. We want you to help us find the criminal who conned you and stole four of America’s art treasures.”

“I’ll help any way I can, but I must be guilty of something.”

“Gullibility, for certain,” Jack said. “But at times we’ve all been bitten by that bug. You are a painter, a master copyist, lied to by a master criminal. It’s true you wanted the fee. The criminal counted on that.”

“Wait a minute. My signatures were on the backs of the canvases. Isn’t that how you found me?”

“Your signatures had been chemically removed.”

He rubbed his arms as if he were cold. “I can’t return the fee. I’ve used it to pay debts.”

“Would you like another cup of water?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Miller. Forgive me, Ms. Burke.”

He got up and walked a path worn in the wooden floor planks by countless past walks by himself and those who had occupied the loft for decades before. When he reached the far side of the room, he gazed down into the river.

Jack went to him and spoke softly. “This is no longer about you. It’s about finding the criminal. It’s about recovering the portraits.” He paused, hoping his comment had taken root. Then said, “Tell us about when he contacted you.”

Flood paced as he talked. “The first call came about eighteen months ago. We discussed the assignment. The next morning I found an envelope under my door stuffed with fifty thousand dollars, half the agreed fee. He even threw in extra to cover the costs of the portrait transparencies I would need.”

“Didn’t the whole thing seem odd?” Nora asked.

“Sure. It seemed odd; it was odd. And I let him know that the next time he called. But the way he explained it, made it seem okay.”

Jack, still standing by the window, asked, “What date did you find the envelope under your door?”

Flood reached onto a shelf behind him and picked up a black appointment book. He rambled on about the bills he had paid with the money while flipping the pages.

“The man told me about the limits of cash you can deposit into a bank without having to complete forms, and that I should keep most of it in cash. Ah, here they are. I got the first half of the fee on September sixteenth, the year before last. I made a few deposits from the seventeenth through the twenty-fifth, in several different accounts, and held the rest in cash.”

“How did the caller explain the need for secrecy?”

“He told me right off that it was an odd assignment.” Flood went to the water cooler and leaned his crossed arms over the top of the bottle. “He said his client was a wealthy businessman from the Middle East who loved America and did a lot of business with us. That some of the radical Islamist elements in his country were starting to accuse him of being too close to America.”

Flood pulled free another cup, filled it with water, and drank it down. “The caller explained the portraits were of the four American presidents who had been assassinated in office. The Middle Eastern businessman planned to hang them in his palace. Then, when the radicals came, he could make incendiary statements. The only good American president is a dead president, like that. He’d then remind the extremists that he donated a part of his profits to help fund Islamic fundamentalism. It was all for show, he explained, so they would not see him as an American sympathizer.”

“The good financier of terrorism,” Jack snarled.

Flood raised his hands. “I didn’t do it to aid terrorists. I’m just a simple painter.” As if a puppeteer had relaxed the strings, his arms fell limp to his sides.

Jack had seen many American soldiers killed with weapons paid for by Middle Eastern businessmen who financed the terrorists while claiming to be moderates themselves. Entire governments in that part of the world played that game.

“What else?” Nora asked.

“The man would not give his name. We could not meet. He would make all payments in cash.” Flood’s face turned ashen. “It was weird. I grant you that, but it was plausible … Wasn’t it? He came through with the rest of the money.”

“I’m not going to judge you.” Jack said, in an unconvincing tone.

Nora took the lead to give Jack a moment to chill out. “Tell us about how you gave him the paintings and how you received the other half of your fee?”

Flood crushed the empty paper cup he still held. “I agreed to be finished in sixteen months. Believe me that was a breakneck pace. The paint must be layered and time is needed to let the paint age at several points in the process. He called this past January to confirm I was on schedule.”

“Were you?” asked Nora.

“Yes.” Flood said, continuing to squeeze the crumpled cup as if it were a hand-exercise ball. “We agreed I would deliver them on February sixteenth. He told me to cover my paintings in white paper and put them in the back of my van. I was to park at the Ritz Carlton on the Avenue of the Americas, just south of Central Park. He said, ‘In hotel parking lots, people take things in and out of the backs of vehicles all the time. You will not raise anyone’s attention if you do it exactly the way I’m telling you.’

“I was to park away from the hotel building, near other parked cars, but in a spot where the spaces on each side were empty. ‘Get a duplicate key to your van,’ he said, ‘and lock all the doors. Put the original key on top of the right front tire and keep the duplicate key with you.’”