A Victim Must Be Found (13 page)

“As far as I know, we don’t have any business to discuss.”

“I want to make you an offer.”

“What kind of offer won’t keep until morning?” I’d said that without thinking. I wasn’t purposely playing hard to get, I just wasn’t thinking fast enough. I mean, with Pambos in the cold room at Niagara Regional, I wasn’t working for anybody. With Pambos dead, I could go back to tracing a line of credit card receipts that would lead me to Matt Kirwin, who had picked up his daughter after school one day three months ago and vanished with her and her homework. The credit cards told me Kirwin was careless about details and I would be able to put that file away just behind the Kiriakis file. “I’m a reasonable man, Mr. Abraham, but I just got out of a hot bath and am looking forward to half an hour with the classics and then sleep. There’s an unpleasant sight I want to get out of my head. I think you know the one.”

“I do, indeed. When we first met,” he said, his voice trying to sound casual and even friendly, “we could both see that your business with Mr. Kiriakis had come to an end.”

“I ought to take up a solider line of work.”

“What I would like to suggest is this. I would like you to stay on the case. That’s my proposition. Same terms you had with Kiriakis. I want you to find that list.”

* * *

The place Jonah Abraham called home had been designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1938, when the German architect came to North America. It was said that he never saw the house either while it was under construction or later after it had been completed. He was kept informed of the project through detailed photographs and long-distance telephone. The builder was Jonah’s father. He’d started with the idea of having a simple house designed around an atrium. The spot he picked commanded a view of Lake Ontario and the plain rising from it to the Niagara Escarpment, immediately below the proposed windows. Somewhere between the initial sketch and the final installation of a doormat, the plans got out of hand. The simplicity of line was still there, as you drove up the curved approach, but the lines were longer, higher and deeper than those first clear intentions. The place was a mansion. Jonah told me that his father and mother could never leave well enough alone. Everything got embellished and exaggerated, even the plans of Mies van der Rohe. On weekends you could visit parts of the house for two dollars a head, but I never got past the velvet ropes before.

I’d relented on my stand. A position taken on the telephone requires face-to-face negotiation. Besides, thought that the night air might do me good, help me sleep, after the pressures of the day. I wrote out a note about where I was going and left it under my pillow. It was a silly tactic, but it made me feel better as I closed the door to the apartment and headed down the stairs.

Two of Abraham’s boys were sitting in the front seat of the car. They didn’t look particularly happy to see me; they kept eyes front, while the driver put the car in gear and moved smoothly on a fine German engine out of the downtown area.

When the car came to a stop, I didn’t wait for the royal treatment, I opened the door and walked towards the big front door. The car moved away soundlessly with the boys still maintaining radio silence. I rang. The servant who answered the door moved on oiled ball-bearings. We walked through a succession of screens and frames to an open space that appeared to be the reception area. I could tell that because there didn’t appear to be anything else going on there, and it was here that I first saw Jonah Abraham coming towards me, with his pal Vince, a respectable three steps behind his master. “Ah, Mr. Cooperman! I’m so glad you changed your mind.” He was wearing a green turtleneck sweater, which surprised me. I guess I was expecting a smoking jacket with an ascot tie. Vince was wearing both a tie and a dark suit. Informality is for those who can afford it. “I don’t think you’ve met Vince, here. Vince Davey. Vince is something of a righthand man around here.”

Abraham kept on talking. It was the sort of banter that fills up the empty spaces: “I was in the market for company tonight. My daughter has abandoned me for the dubious charms of the younger generation.” Abraham held out his hand and I took it. His clasp was firm but not extravagant. He didn’t need to prove anything, least of all to me. The sweater looked new up close, but his eyes, in spite of the smile they offered, looked old and tired. He smelled of talcum like he’d come from a late-night swim or rub-down. “Come,” he said, taking my arm, “we’ll talk.”

The servant who’d let me in had vanished. Vince began backing away from us, and disappeared when Abraham asked him to look after the boys from the car. To be honest, I didn’t see where he went. The geography of the house eluded me; I couldn’t find any doors or windows. It was all screens and pictures in large tidy frames with a lot of white matte showing. There were chairs too, but not the kind you can slip your jacket around the back of. It was a private house, but it had the chill of a dentist’s office or maybe, to give it credit, a retailer in high-quality business furniture.

We walked through halls and places that were almost rooms, except that one bled into the next in a confusing way. The house might have gone up in the thirties, but it was doing that modern thing with more gusto than the new police headquarters or Secord University, and they were hardly five years old. Abraham was leading me, with some purpose, through the screens. Here and there I saw a familiar velvet rope pushed out of the way on its two brass stands. Suddenly, Jonah stopped. “But you must forgive me,” he said, giving me his most charming smile, “I’ve forgotten my manners. May I get you something to drink, Mr. Cooperman?”

“I thought we’d come to talk, but maybe Abraham was given to walking around his target. “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “I’m not much of a drinker.”

“Ah, but you must have one of my Bloody Marys. My father got the recipe from Hemingway in 1947 in Cuba.” We resumed walking, but in another direction. When he stopped he was standing before a professional-looking bar. “You need to make a whole pitcher of these,” he said, pulling out a long cylinder of ice, and letting it slide back into the pitcher again. “Ernest taught Dad to use tennis-ball tubes to get the right amount of ice. If you use cubes, the drink gets diluted with the melt-waters. A big chunk of ice like this is what you need …” He went on and on about how Hem added the Tabasco and the Russian vodka. I didn’t pay attention. I was wondering why he was buttering me up. He knew I had accepted his offer to continue the investigation when I agreed to come up here, so why was I getting this spiel about how the great Hemingway made his Bloody Marys?

When he finished talking, he handed me a frosted glass and took another himself. I tried it. I recognized the Tabasco and a trace of lime juice. People say you can’t taste vodka; was there ever a sillier statement made about strong drink? It was rough on the way down, but it was sneakier than rye or Scotch. Abraham leaned in for my opinion. I held the glass at the end of my arm, like I could taste it two feet away; I nodded with enthusiasm, and Abraham grew quite rosy with appreciation.

We sat, and finished our drinks while Jonah kept on talking about the mixing of drinks. He let me in on his version of the perfect dry martini. I don’t know whether it came from Hemingway, his father or from his own artistic imagination. He kept the olives in the freezer and used just enough vermouth to cover the bottom of the glass. He used the same tennis-ball tubes full of ice to chill the mixture. It sounded like Hemingway to me, but he didn’t admit it. Maybe he wasn’t a complete snob.

When he had finished his drink and saw that I was not going to get any further into mine, he pinched the creases in his trousers and got up. “I’m glad you decided to come and work for me,” he said as he moved his right hand in the direction he wanted us to walk. He managed to balance the business of being my host and employer very deftly; I could feel the tug of ownership and the salve of hospitality rolled up together in his gestures. We walked by a huge Japanese screen about half the size of Albania, without a word. “You may find it awkward working for one of your suspects.”

“You may be a police suspect, Mr. Abraham. Remember I’m not looking for the person who killed Pambos Kiriakis. That’s a Niagara Regional matter. I’m looking for some missing pictures, that’s all. But now I’m working for you. I guess if you have some of them, I’m still going to try to find out about it. I’m not a specialist in this art stuff. I tell you that straight out. Still, maybe finding pictures isn’t a lot different from finding other lost or strayed property.”

“Through here,” Abraham said. He held open the lefthand side of a large double door that didn’t appear to be part of the original design. “I feel like showing off my collection.” We entered a large gallery full of pictures and glassed-in cabinets. “Here we are. What do you think?”

It was impressive. The walls were lined with paintings, with a few slim sculptures thrown in to break up the monotony. I recognized many of the pictures; I’d seen them reproduced in books and magazines, I guess. I looked deeply and tried to give back to Abraham’s proprietary grin, the response required. “Nice,” I said, “nice. Very nice. It must have set you back.” He walked towards one of the pictures.

“This Thomson is the only known portrait painted in his maturity. The National Gallery still badgers me about it.”

“Nothing like practice, eh?”

“This Lamb, now. What do you think? I’d part with the Pissarro next to it or the Miro over there by the Klee before I’d give this up. Look at the underpainting! What a marvel!” I tried to look at the underpainting, at the same time wondering what weather conditions would ever make underpainting necessary. I wondered if paintings ever leaked after a Canadian winter. I couldn’t see it, but I was still learning.

“Did you get it from Tallon?” I asked, trying to keep a foot in the conversation.

“I got most of my Canadian pictures from Arthur at one time. My father is responsible for most of the European things like this Giacometti figure. That’s a Lautens over there. He missed on Lipchitz, Maillol and Brancusi,” he added with a flattering smile. It worked too; I was quite proud of myself for being taken for somebody who can recognize the holes a few missing Lipchitz and Brancusis can make in your sculpture collection. “Father was one of Kahnweiler’s only Canadian customers.” I nodded and tried to remember where I’d heard that name tossed around before.

“With all this European stuff, Mr. Abraham, why all the panic about the Canadian things like the pictures on Pambos Kiriakis’s list? The Canadians must represent only a tiny part of the value of, say, a collection like this one.”

“A good question, Mr. Cooperman.” He rubbed his hands together like he was going to enjoy answering it. While he talked, we continued to walk around looking at the pictures. “The European pictures were bought by my father years ago. He bought them in France mostly as I’ve said from dealers like Kahnweiler. Others he bought here from people who deal in European canvases and sculptures. They represent the largest part of this collection, which my father left me in a sort of Gertrude Stein– Alice B. Toklas arrangement. I mean I have a life interest in it. I couldn’t begin to estimate the value of this part of the collection should it ever come to light at a public auction. The smaller part of the collection is something I’ve built up myself. These are the Canadian things like those Cullens over there and these Colvilles and Pratts. In monetary terms, you can’t compare them with the European part of the collection, although I should think I could get six figures for every major Canadian work in this room.

“The reason for the panic about Mr. Kiriakis’s list is that it represents free gold. Tallon, as I’m sure you know by now, was notoriously bad about keeping track of the paintings he dealt with. Some, no doubt, were left with him on consignment, but he had a regular dealer relationship with most of the painters. He was always buying things from them in order to keep them in paint and tobacco. I’ve heard stories that he bought many canvases at prices that would now be considered ridiculously low. But in those day there was no market for these works. You see, many of these painters had no reputation when Tallon took them on. When their reputations grew, they went on to other dealers in many cases. Tallon’s operation was always underfinanced. The collection he built up was built with love on a shoestring. The irregularities that you are investigating involve trifling amounts of money when compared to the total value of Tallon’s collection as a whole. You will be cleaning up loose ends, enabling those settling the estate to get on with the job.”

“Then why was Pambos Kiriakis killed?”

“Mr. Cooperman, I’m sorry to puncture your balloon. I am only guessing, of course, but I think when the police uncover Mr. Kiriakis’s murderer, it will be, like most murders, a rather sordid domestic incident perhaps a vindictive room clerk or waiter that he fired who carried a grudge. The money involved in the pictures represented on Kiriakis’s list would never be worth a human life.”

“Maybe you put a higher price on it than other people?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh, “you are right. To some a life has no value at all.”

“Your Canadian pictures came from Tallon?”

“I got most of them from him at one time. I do have connections in Toronto and Montreal, but he was the only local dealer I’d give the time of day to. Years ago, Arthur took me under his long, lean wing and taught me how to look at pictures. That was one of the things my mother and father took for granted. It probably accounted for the turmoil it took six psychiatrists years to sort out. Tallon taught me what my parents thought I’d learned with breathing and walking. Tallon showed me what to look for, and later, what to buy. He had a remarkable eye. Uncanny.”

“So, you believe in the list?”

“Oh, yes; I believe in it,” he said, his eyes developing a network of smile lines as he looked at me. “And I have a better reason for putting you to work on it than poor Mr. Kiriakis had. He was just trying to put the cat among the pigeons. I need to find this list, because without it there is a shadow cast on the whole Canadian part of my collection. Without the list …” Here he broke off. He was looking over my shoulder. I turned to see a young woman standing at the far end of the gallery. I hadn’t heard a sound. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over a white shirt. She crossed the room with a glide that didn’t seem like walking at all. Jonah held out his arm and reeled her into an affectionate embrace.