The Case of the Purloined Painting Read online

  I finished changing the furnace filter and went upstairs to fry me a chunk of beef. Twice in one week. I had to watch my diet.

  As long as I was dancing along lines of speculation, suppose Ann/Anne was in that place because she was following Mr. Gottlieb and maybe she was doing that because she hoped he’d lead her to whatever she was looking for. Now, if that was the case she could be some kind of agent, and it would make sense she wanted the murderers caught, but couldn’t be publicly linked to the event. It would blow her cover, so to speak.

  My life was definitely becoming more complicated.

  Chapter 17

  The note brought me out very late that night and I wasn’t happy. Snow, large, blobby flakes of the stuff were drifting down. I could see them in the glow of distant street lights. My breath was a pillow-cloud of moisture that bloomed and then wandered off. The snow seemed to muffle the sounds of the sleeping city that lay all around. It would have been romantic if it wasn’t so freakin’ cold. The texture of the scene was also altered by my knowledge that the man standing in the narrow doorway behind me had one hand under the unzipped side of his thick jacket so his standard issue Glock was in easy reach of his fingers. Off-duty detective Sergeant Ricardo Simon shuffled his galoshes-clad feet, making a soft shushing noise.

  I wanted to swing my hands together in a heavy clapping motion to help the circulation in my numbing fingers, but I had a somehow superstitious feeling that if I did that, this clandestine meeting would never take place. We were already thirty minutes after the time specified in the note I’d received that morning at my office.

  Before the mail came, I’d called Catherine at the apartment we share in the Kenwood area of Minneapolis that morning from my place in Roseville to tell her I was looking forward to fixing dinner later. It was another promise to my lady that was going unfulfilled. The list was growing. When the mail arrived it included a plain white metered envelope with no return address. Inside was a single piece of ordinary white typing paper folded around two more copied pages from a ledger. It took me only a moment to verify my instinct, these were identical to the copies I’d received a few days earlier.

  On a separate half-sheet of paper was a printed note. It gave a time and a place, explicit instructions as to signals and doors, and suggested it would be useful for me to show up. Tracing the printer that placed the words on the paper or tracing the paper itself might be possible, but in the end probably not informative. When I suggested testing for fingerprints by the Minneapolis PD, I was met with overt skepticism that there would be anything to find. It was also suggested I turn everything I knew over to the FBI or the Secret Service and take a vacation down south.

  I dialed Catherine at her massage school to cancel our dinner date. She was understanding. Of course I would show up for the meeting. The date was that night, the time was 1:30 in the morning and the place was an older, slightly seedy, office building on Chicago Avenue, on the south side of Minneapolis. My good friend, the aforementioned detective Sergeant Ricardo Simon, agreed to accompany me as my armed backup. The note hadn’t said to come alone.

  So here we were now, half-frozen as the February temperature continued to fall, waiting for a light to flash in yonder window which was the signal I should cross the street and enter the door that faced me. I would be jaywalking in the middle of the block and there was no alley. Because of winter parking restrictions, there were no cars on either side of the street. I suppose somebody standing at one of the several dark windows in the five stories that faced me could be waiting with a rifle, but it just didn’t feel like that kind of a setup. I tend to go with my gut feeling in these situations. Several friends have suggested that’s foolish, but I’m still here, aren’t I? Still scuffling around doing my job.

  That’s not to say I wasn’t a little nervous. I would have preferred not to be there. After all, not too many miles away, in a warm and cozy place, my good friend Catherine McKerney waited, holding in her warm hand a nice glass of single malt. And a warm welcoming smile reserved just for me.

  Second floor, left corner. A light flashed twice in the curtainless window. After a brief pause, the signal came again. I stepped into the street, a dark blob shuffling across the snowy pavement. I was tense and tuned to the sound of an engine, in case that box truck tried for me again, but it would have to come around a corner from half a block away. Nothing happened except that I reached the designated door and went in. The steps only led down to the basement. It was dark and I went cautiously. Ricardo would stay in that doorway for five minutes and then follow me into who knew what?

  “Hello?” No response.

  Five steps down and I was in a long dim concrete corridor that seemed to split the block. I couldn’t see the other end. There were some dim bulbs in ceiling sockets that didn’t quite illuminate the space. Dim bulbs. I was another, slowly easing my way into the interior. I reached a door set flush in the concrete wall. The wall and the door and the painted door knob were all cold to my fingers. I stopped beside the door and reached out to slowly turn the knob. Except for my hand and forearm, I was protected by the wall. I touched the knob and then I realized there was an identical wooden door directly across the corridor. Not good.

  With eyes on the door across from me, and somewhat down the hall, I continued twisting the knob in hand, meeting no particular resistance until I tried to open the door. It was locked. I looked across the space at the other door. Two steps and I twisted an identical knob. This door too was locked. I continued down the long concrete corridor thinking this was ridiculous and I should leave. Soon I encountered another pair of doors opposite each other, both of which were locked. I judged I was now about halfway across the building. I couldn’t quite see the end of the hallway. The whole situation was nervewracking.

  Behind me came a harsh rattling noise that bounded off the concrete walls. It sounded just like someone trying to open a locked door. From the sound and the direction I figured it was Ricardo trying to enter the building from the same door I had used at the street level. A door that now was apparently locked.

  Time to leave. My pulse was sky high and my heart was thumping a strong hot rhythm. I turned around and licked my suddenly dry lips. This was supposed to have been a meeting. To me that meant some other person would be present and we would exchange information, or lies, or maybe gunshots, but I was alone in the long hall. I decided to risk a quick trot to the far end of the hall. Almost at the very end, in which appeared to be a metal door, I noticed a large thick envelope on the floor. The envelope was propped against the wall beside a third door. I leaned over the envelope and peered at it. The pounding behind me, from the door where I’d entered, sounded louder and more urgent.

  I took my penlight from a side pocket and shined it on the package. I didn’t see any wires. Then I turned my head away and with one foot, pushed the thing over so it fell on the floor. No flash, no noise, no explosion. I exhaled.

  The sealed envelope had two large black S’s on it. Printed in what looked like a black marker pen. I picked up the object and felt it. It was substantial enough to contain a quantity of something, paper, perhaps. The rattling noise came again, louder this time. I thought I heard a faint shout. I sprinted back down the corridor and ran up the stairs. Ricardo Simon, about to shoot a hole in the door frame, flinched as I appeared. When I pushed on the door, it opened easily. Of course.

  “Damn, it! I was getting worried,” he said.

  “Me too. Part of me says I guess this is the way anonymous people want to play it. Another part says they’ve been reading too many bad spy novels.”

  “A possibility that occurs to me is this.” Ricardo scratched his nose while he organized what he was going to say. I think he picked up the scratching habit from me. “Maybe whoever left the package wanted to see if and who might be your backup as well as provide some more information.”

  I blew out my breath and we turne
d the corner to where we’d parked my Taurus. “Do you feel like we need to check the car for a bomb?”

  Ricardo looked at me and shrugged, reaching for the door handle. “In for a penny.”

  He yanked on the door which refused to budge. “It’s probably frozen shut. Does that sometimes.”

  I pulled strongly on the driver’s side door and it swung open. Inside, I swiveled and slammed both feet against the inside of the other door. This time, when Ricardo pulled, it creaked open. It didn’t get much use so I’d have to remember to spray the hinges every so often with WD-40.

  I slid the key into the ignition and hesitated.

  “Not enough time to rig something,” Ricardo muttered. I started the engine and nothing blew up.

  Ricardo reached for the overhead light but there wasn’t one. I removed it years ago. Helps keep me from getting potted by a sharpshooter at night. Or seen entering and exiting.

  The dash compartment gave up my trusty maglight and we put our heads together and examined the envelope. It was padded, white, about eleven by fourteen inches, dirty and smudged. There was some evidence that old labels had been removed. One end was sealed with beige masking tape. I slit the tape and eased the end open.

  Ricardo was scanning the street when I said, “There are several sheets of paper in here, but I don’t see any wires or powder or anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Okay. A white box truck just cruised by.”

  I jerked my head up to see the back end of such a vehicle disappearing down the block. “Let’s make tracks.”

  “Or just haul ass,” he cracked.

  I dropped the envelope in his lap and we beat it out of there back to my office.

  Chapter 18

  My feet were Just beginning to warm up with the car heater on full blast when we got to my office on Central. My watch read 2:45 as we shuffled down the dim hall. I stopped at the closed door and peered at the lock. I was tired, adrenalin bleeding out of me after my high-tension confrontation with the envelope in the basement of that office building. But I was also jazzed enough to want to see what was in the package.

  He didn’t say so, but I knew Ricardo well enough that I was sure he wanted a gander at the contents as well. Plus, being a cop he had to know whether I’d laid hands on vital evidence of some sort that might pertain to an active case of the homicide squad.

  “What?” he said when I didn’t open the door. “My penlight’s out of juice. You got one?”

  Ricardo fished out a regulation-sized flash and aimed it at the door lock.

  “Does that look okay to you?”

  “Sean, you are getting paranoid.” He bent for a closer look. “Yeah, it’s fine. C’mon, open up.”

  I did. Inside I threw off my coat and gloves and said, “If I was a good, classic, P.I., I’d offer you some whiskey, or at least some coffee.”

  “Okay.”

  “Alas, I’m neither good nor classic. No booze and no coffee. Sorry.”

  Ricardo shrugged and I upended the envelope on my desk. What slid out were three white business sized envelopes and several folded pieces of paper. I reached into my desk drawer and found my tweezers and magnifying glass.

  “I got gloves here,” Ricardo grunted.

  The drawer also contained a partly crushed box of tic tacs, which Ricardo waved away when I offered them.

  The first envelope I tweezed open contained a stack of newspaper clippings. Copies. Somebody had dated most of them in pen or pencil but had not written the name of the newspaper, although as I picked through them, a few had dates from a Chicago paper and from the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Another was a Minneapolis Tribune piece.

  “Whoever collected these must be foreign born,” Ricardo muttered.

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “Look at the way the dates are written. And the sevens.”

  “I wonder if these are originally from Manny Gottleib. Maybe his writing?” I said, then paused. “Look at this.” I pushed over a letter from another envelope. The printing at the top indicated a war crimes organization of some sort, but the language was unfamiliar. “Polish, maybe? Russian?”

  “Huh. It thanks the sender for the inquiry, but doesn’t say what the subject is. It’s dated July of 1953.”

  “That would be right after Gottlieb got to Minneapolis,” I said. My eyes focused on another letter, but then things got a little blurred. I needed some serious sleep time. I shook my head and tweezed open another envelope. This one contained copies of articles from a newspaper neither of us could read. All were dated in script from mid 1954.

  “What language is this?”

  Ricardo lifted his hands. “No clue. Let me rephrase. I suspect the language is from eastern Europe somewhere. It could be Romanian.” He pointed to a long name that seemed to have several m’s and z’s. “you’ll need to get these translated. Prob’ly someone at the U could help.”

  I nodded and tweezed open the third envelope. The envelope contained a neat stack of pages I recognized. I spread them out. “I’ve seen these before,” I muttered.

  “Yes? How come?”

  “They look like original pages from a ledger. I already have copies of pages from the same ledger.”

  “You’re sure it’s the same ledger?

  “Of course not,” I said, “but, yes, I’m sure. Look.” I pulled open my file drawer and fished out the copies Ann/Anne had sent to me.

  Ricardo spent a couple of minutes bent over the copies and the pages, being careful to keep them in separate piles on my desk. He used my magnifying glass to peer at first one then another. Finally he looked up at me.

  “Okay, I agree. These copies you say you got from your client Ann, are definitely from the same or an identical source. I’d say they’re written in the same hand and even if we can’t analyze the ink or the paper for comparison…”

  “Agreed,” I said. “Here’s the deal.” I filled him in on the client with the ledger and her apparent connection to the deceased Manfred Gottlieb.

  “We’ll require that the documents be turned over,” Ricardo said. “Manny Gottlieb is an open case. If these papers can be linked to him, they belong in police custody.”

  “No problem. I’ll just make copies for my files while you saunter down the hall to the men’s room.”

  He did and I did and a few minutes later we had our heads together above the desk, staring down at the papers. “I haven’t any more thoughts on this, have you?” I mumbled.

  “Maybe we’ll find some fingerprints we can use.” He yawned. “It’s almost dawn and I’m wiped. I have to drop these at the property room and make out an affidavit before I can head home.” Ricardo gathered the material together and slid it back into the padded envelope. “Fortunately, I don’t have a shift today.”

  We closed up my office and at the building entrance Ricardo and I touched gloved hands. “Thanks for backing me up,” I said.

  “Don’t mention it,” he responded with a tired smile. “But let me know if things develop.”

  He turned and went to his car. I followed him out of the lot and drove home to my house and cats. At least I think I did, because I woke up late the next morning in my Roseville bedroom with no real recollection of how I got there. Zoned out, or slept on the drive home. On automatic pilot. I hoped I hadn’t killed anybody, or damaged somebody’s property.

  * * * *

  Near noon I left the house for the drive to Minneapolis. I did a thorough inspection of the Taurus. No ticket. No new bumps, dents or breaks. Apparently I’d managed to make it home in one piece. I hoped Ricardo had had similar good fortune.

  At my office there was a single message on my answering machine. The elusive and mysterious Robert Gehrz, putative client, would materialize at one. He arrived at two minutes before the appointed hour. As at his p
revious and only visit, he was impeccably and expensively dressed for the season.

  “Sit down, Mr. Gehrz.”

  “Thank you. I have limited time today, but it occurred to me you may be needing some additional funds to continue your search for Ms. Market. Unless you have found the woman I seek.”

  “Thank you. I do require some additional funds. There are certain inquiries I shall have to make that will involve the payment of funds. Besides which I have already spent a good deal of time on this effort. Let me lay it out for you.”

  I recapped in some detail what I had done to find the woman. “The address for the woman you seek is, as you must know, an upscale townhouse in northeast Minneapolis. She has a lease that expires in June. The manager gave me a description of the woman that matches yours in every important aspect.” Gehrz nodded.

  The building manager admitted he hadn’t seen the woman in quite a while, I explained, but there had been no complaints and all expenses associated with the space were current and always paid on time. In spite of a pecuniary inducement, I got no more from him. I told Gehrz that I left the building with the impression the guy would have said more if he’d known anything else. His gaze had followed the thick fold of Benjamins back into my pocket with what appeared to be considerable longing. Or maybe just avarice.

  Gehrz said, “You paid the man a hundred dollars.”

  “I did. Probably one of those bills you paid me with initially.”

  “I see. Do go on.”