The Case of the Purloined Painting

  The Case of the Purloined Painting

  Carl Brookins

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  St. Cloud, Minnesota

  Copyright © 2013 Carl Brookins

  Print ISBN 978-0-87839-708-2

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-87839-933-8

  All rights reserved.

  First edition: September 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302

  Dedication

  This story is dedicated to my wife, Jean, my traveling companions, Kent and Ellen, my editor, Mary, and my new friends at North Star Press. They, with patience and good humor, helped me make this story better. Further, I want to recognize the hundreds of women and men around the world who are still working to find and restore the art and other treasures stolen during the war in Europe.

  Chapter 1

  Three men, all heavily bundled against the cold wind and snow that blew down the river and swirled across the stones stood pressing the railing, rigid and stiff, shielding their faces from the biting air. Close together. But not quite huddled. Anger and tension radiated from their positions. Staring each other in the face. Two of them, side by side against the third, the shortest one. “You have it. You must have it on your person. Give it to me now.” A harsh demanding voice quickly lost in the growling wind.

  The tallest man, lean, his face partially covered by the wide floppy brim of an old-fashioned fedora pulled well down on his forehead against the elements, spoke with a guttural accent. His tone was sharp, low, as if he was afraid of being overheard, even in the midst of the snowstorm on a lonely bridge. He raised a hand to hold the brim of his hat. His companion, several inches shorter, a bulky dark mass, shifted slowly shuffling through the thickening carpet of snow until he was just off the shoulder and to one side of the third, the one they had confronted. A heavier blast of snow swirled down the sidewalk.

  The response from the shortest, wiry appearing even in winter wraps, the man who’d been stopped, was hard, belligerent, but oddly hesitant. “Where’s what? Who are you? What do you want of me? I don’t know you, any of you. Just leave me alone. Did you call? Are you the ones?” His accent became more pronounced as his agitation grew. He leaned for ward and shifted his shoulders as if about to take a step. The tall man seemed to brace for an impact.

  “Dummkopf! Just give us the ledger und we leave you be.”

  The confronted man shifted then, tried to step back, away from the two who had blocked him. The third man, the bulky silent one, shifted forward, chest out to prevent separation. He trapped the short man against the stone railing, pressing closer. “Get away from me!” The stocky man began to twist. His cloth cap flew off, lost in the wind and the snow. “I don’t know what you think I have, whatever it is you want! I haven’t got it.” His words were ripped away and flung into the void by the biting wind.

  The silent one bent slightly, grabbed the stocky man and as they struggled, pinned his arms. The tall man ripped at the other’s coat, throwing it open to the wind. He pawed at the short man’s breast. At his pockets. A raised elbow sent a dark stocking cap off into the storm. Gloved hands ripped at the short man, then he abruptly recoiled with a jerk. Suddenly in a moment both frozen in time and exploding with movement, partly obscured by a snow squall, the short man rose up, first on tiptoe, his coat flapping in the wind, the noise lost in the tumult. He tried to fend off the hands grasping his arms, his waist, urging him off the pavement. He leaned, back arched over the concrete parapet, and flailed off into the void. He made no cry as he disappeared in the darkness. The tall man and the other paused for a second, peering over the railing. Then they turned almost as one and, hunched over against the gale, trudged off the bridge back the way they had come. And disappeared. Another snow squall dimmed the glow of the city and muffled their going. Snow swirled into their footprints, obliterating all evidence of their passing. After several frozen moments, a pale slender figure, almost invisible in a long white hooded coat with a big fur border and a skirt that reached the snowy street, rose from a crouch across the bridge on the opposite sidewalk and shuffled over the slick snow-swirled roadway. The figure paused, then bent to the place where the open stone railing met the pavement. A wellgloved hand reached out and brushed snow from a small pale object in a drift of snow where it lay against the base of the railing. The slender figure, bent low against the storm, plucked up the object and shuffled off along the curved stone bridge toward the dark eastern side of the river, soon lost in the building storm. In minutes, thick snow covered the area and nothing visible remained of the brief drama.

  Chapter 2

  Your name is?”

  “Is this necessary?”

  “Yes, it is. I need some minimum information. You should understand that anything you tell me is confidential, right? Including my files.” I peered expressionless at the guy sitting on the other side of my desk. Late winter afternoon gloom penetrated the two windows of my office, building muted shadows in the corners.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it,” he muttered.

  “All right. Give me a phony name. It doesn’t matter and I don’t care.” “Robert Gehrz.”

  “Okay, Mr. Gehrz.” I printed it on my pad. Robert Gehrz. He didn’t spell it for me. “What brings you to my office this cold February day?”

  He looked down at me for a moment, thin lips working. He didn’t want to be here. He appeared like a lot of my upscale, well-dressed, clients. He looked like he should be striding confidently through the skyways, enjoying a warm, controlled environment, hiring some guy in a truck to move the snow out of his ritzy long driveway so his big Caddy or Lincoln or BMW could get to the street. Or sitting comfortably in his expensive smoking jacket by a nice fireplace fire with a long illegal Cuban cigar in his fingers and a snifter of good golden brandy nearby.

  I hadn’t bothered to turn on the office lights when this suit showed up. He didn’t seem to mind. He was out of his environment and the dim winter afternoon appeared to satisfy him. I pegged the guy as a corporate type or maybe an attorney, a product of good breeding, expensive education. Successful. He radiated money and confidence. A level of power and authority. Yes, definitely a corporate type, in spite of the brief descent into gutter language. He looked well-barbered. His fingers were long, tapered. I had the impression of a well manicured hand. His fingers went with his height. I judged him to stand well over six feet. That put him about a foot taller than me.

  I reached out slowly, switched on my small desk lamp. It put a bright pool of light on the polished surface of my desk. The effect was to darken the far corners of the office still more. The silent, dusty, corners. It was a scene from a B movie. I should have been wearing a dark gray fedora.

  A sigh, then he leaned forward. Pinned me with his remember-youare-working-for-me look.

  His slender fingers flickered in the lamp light when he gestured. His voice was well-modulated. He spoke in complete unaccented sentences. His language, however, was a little abnormal. My synapses raced about, cataloguing, evaluating. Not a positive statement, could be, not will be. Not am. Difficulty, not danger, not even serious trouble.

  I figured he meant whatever this was, his reason for being
in my office that afternoon, it was only somewhat illegal. Or maybe, in his mind, just exceedingly private. If word got out it would cost the guy some bread. Some cash. Maybe some image. But it wasn’t a career-breaker. Probably.

  I raised one eyebrow at him, a move I’ve practiced. It seems to send a message that we’re connecting, that I understand. I wiggled the eyebrow. The right one.

  He nodded. Stared at my eyes. I stared back. He nodded again. Then he talked some more.

  “Here’s the thing. I have a certain… Reputation… To maintain. If this… Situation… Becomes public, it can be costly.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m in a kind of sensitive situation right now. So I want discretion on your part. If this leaks out I could be in difficulty. Absolute. I realize that can make it harder. Your job.” He waved one hand, fingers flashing in and out of the tiny pool of light. Definitely a B movie.

  “All right. We understand each other.” I leaned forward. Assertive, interested.

  “I’ve been seeing this girl… This woman.”

  “And you’re married.”

  “No, I am not. Please don’t jump to any conclusions.”

  “Sorry.” I wasn’t, really. Jumping, that is.

  “We had a… A date, last week. And she missed it. She didn’t show up.”

  “Did you call her?” Master of the obvious, that’s me.

  “Yes, after a few days. But she’s never there to pick up.”

  “How do you know? Maybe she’s avoiding you.”

  He shook his head. One brief movement. He seemed to know that wasn’t the case. “Did you go to her place?” A quick nod.

  “What’s your arrangement with her? You leave a message and she calls later?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Only she has stopped calling back. I rarely go to her apartment.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  He was silent for a moment. Either assessing the question or trying to remember an earlier lie.

  “A week ago,” he said finally. “No, it must have been two weeks ago.”

  “So you’ve had no contact of any kind with this… Woman. For around two whole weeks. Is that right?” I paused deliberately but he gave me nothing. “For how long? Give me a date. The date of your rendezvous. The date of your original date.”

  “I’ll have to look it up.” He didn’t make a move toward a pocket calendar he might have been carrying. His type almost always carried a pocket calendar.

  My instincts said not to mention the police. “You waited a long time to come,” I said. Through all this, since he walked in and sat down about half an hour earlier, I had kept my voice carefully calm and neutral. Low key. My movements were slow and supremely non-aggressive. I try to do that with any new non-threatening contact. I’m one calm, cool dude, you see. A small PI with a large reputation. Sean NMI Sean, at your service. Tracer of lost persons, collector of evidence of malfeasance, revealer of fraudsters and thieves. Like that.

  Another sigh, then he seemed to come to a decision. His decision was to move forward with this situation. That’s what he called it. A situation.

  We continued the conversation as the room grew even gloomier. The days are short in February in the northern climate. Like the month. Not as short as January right after the winter solstice, of course, but February seems to be one of the depressing months.

  I learned that my client, Mr. Gehrz, had a highly stressful job in a highly stressful industry. Exactly what, he wasn’t prepared to say, but it paid a good salary and benefits. Perks, he called them. He would pay me in cash, he said. I told him that was all right. But I expected a retainer.

  “Yes,” he said. Then his hand disappeared into an inside pocket. It was a move that had twice resulted in my being shot at when the disappearing hand reappeared holding a pistol. The first time my assailant missed. The second time the jerk winged me.

  I didn’t miss either time.

  So I flinched when Mr. Gehrz reached for his inside pocket. What he brought out was not a pistol but an envelope, a fat tan heavy duty business-size envelope, the kind with the opening at one end. He tapped the envelope twice on the edge of my desk with his long slender well-kept fingers and then he extracted several pieces of paper. I recognized them instantly as Federal reserve notes representing the full faith and honor of the United States of America. Each one he laid down on my desk had a picture of Benjamin Franklin on it. He counted them out, one by one. When he got to twenty he stopped. Then he slid the rest of the bills back into the envelope and returned the envelope to his pocket.

  I didn’t say anything. I considered suggesting that he be careful in my neighborhood, carrying around all that cash. But then I figured he probably knew that already.

  He put his finger tips on the little pile of bills at their edge and slid them slowly through the pool of yellow light from the desk lamp until they were right in front of me.

  “A down payment. A retainer,” he said and sat back.

  “Tell me exactly what you want me to do for that,” I said.

  “I want you to find the woman, figure out what’s going on with her, why she has dropped out of my life and whether she wants to resume our relationship. Report the conversation to me verbally. No reports on paper are necessary. Do this all with the utmost discretion.”

  “I’ll need a name and a description, an address and phone perhaps?

  Anything you can provide will be helpful.” “I have a picture for you. Her name is Tiffany market. She’s tall, about

  My height, blond, usually, around thirty. She’s good looking but not flamboyant. Tiff is not a model or an actress.”

  His hand did the disappearing act again and he brought out a wallet. From it he fished a small photograph. It was bent at the corners and I suspected he’d had it for a while. It showed an attractive blond woman, average build, standing on an urban street smiling widely at the camera. It was the kind of picture dozens of amateur photographers make of their friends and loved ones. It was unique in its unremarkableness.

  “I’d like that back when you are finished,” said Mr. Gehrz. “I’ll make a copy,” I said.

  I turned my back on him and slid the photograph into my copy machine. Noises and lights and I had an exact color copy. I returned the original to him after quickly scanning the blank back of the photo.

  “Write down, her name,” I said, handing Mr. Gehrz a fresh tablet of lined yellow paper. “Include her name, her address, and the number you call to arrange a date. Include a few public places you’ve been together, such as restaurants, clubs, events. Also any other aspects of your relationship you’d care to share. The more I have to work with, the faster I’ll be able to solve your mystery, Mr. Gehrz. Please don’t forget to include your telephone number.” He eyed me with what I took to be a contemplative look then took

  The pad I offered and spent a few minutes writing down some information as I had asked. There was a pause and my client turned the pad over and laid it face down on my desk. Then he stood up, straightened his long overcoat and gazed down at me. Definitely over six feet. Maybe I should introduce him to Catherine.

  “Let me know if you need more money,” he said and turned away. I didn’t get up from my desk. Mr. Gehrz walked to my office entrance

  And quietly left, closing the door behind him. Gently.

  I looked at the pile of Benjamins and the upside-down-pad on my desk and decided I wasn’t going to be happy with this case. Then I picked up the pad by the edges and laid it on my copy machine. After making a copy of the page, I carefully tore off the sheet my client had written on and slid it into a large glassine envelope on which I noted the date. The envelope went into my lower left-hand desk drawer. I thought about our conversation. Was this Tiffany person a pro? A prostitute? Blond usually. What did that mean? Maybe the woman was married. Is
that why Gehrz emphasized discretion? Maybe this woman didn’t want to be found. Gehrz’s story was not exactly rock solid.

  It was a long time before I again talked with Mr. Gehrz.

  Chapter 3

  So you didn’t see where the two guys went? After they shoved the one guy over the railing? Are you sure they pushed him over the railing? You didn’t notice if they had a car at the end of the bridge, for example?

  You didn’t see anything else of relevance? You sure?” I had a lot of questions my guest sitting across from me couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer. First the Gehrz client and now this close-mouthed woman, just a few hours later.

  “You didn’t call the cops either, I guess.”

  Her dark hair swung back and forth against her ears when she shook her head. I didn’t ask why not. None of my business. We’d probably get to that later anyway. I’ve learned over the years that when a citizen observes a crime and doesn’t call the cops, there’s usually something in the citizen’s background that made said citizen reluctant to get involved. I had other questions I didn’t voice right then. After all, being nosy is part of my DNA. Detectives detect by asking questions, lots of them, often impertinent ones. Even in books detectives ask questions. Especially in books. Successful detectives also know when to and when not to ask certain questions.

  “It’s an interesting story, Anne?” I put a question mark there in my voice because when she came into my office and I asked her name she told me to call her Ann, or Anne. She didn’t spell it. The obvious implication being that Ann or Anne might not be her real name.

  “It must have been a horrible experience, but I don’t know what you want me to do about it. Other than call the cops.”

  “Here,” she said. She had a low throaty voice, probably from smoking, or drinking, or both. Or maybe she was born with it. Or maybe she’d gone to a lot of trouble to cultivate it. Other than her voice, which you could call sexy, I suppose, she was one of the most ordinary looking souls you could ever see. You wouldn’t. See her. You’d pass her on the street a dozen times and never remember her. An unremarkable woman of early middle years with nice ankles appropriately dressed for the season. That was it. I knew she had nice ankles because she took her high boots off when she sat down in my visitor’s chair. Gave me a flash of smooth calf under her long skirt. Her toenails were painted pale red.