Stone Quarry (4 page)

"The paintings
"
I said, watched her eyes. "Who would recognize them as yours? An expert? A layman? Are they signed?"

"They're
not signed. An expert would certainly know them.
An
educated layman, possibly. My work is distinc
tive, Mr.
Smith. There are recurring images, themes that
don't
change."

I searched for the right way to put my next question. "If it were necessary to destroy the paintings to preserve your privacy, would that be all right?"

She didn't speak right away. Finally she said, "I don't
know."

Simple and clear, that answer; and I'd made my decision. I said, "There are some things I'll need."

"What things?"

"Descriptions of whatever was in the trunk. And I'll
need
to bring someone else in."

She stiffened. "Why someone else? No."

"If
I'd stolen your stuff, I'd forget about selling the paintings—assuming I didn't know what they were worth—
and
try to unload whatever looked valuable: silver, old photographs, things like that." And probably dump everything else in the county landfill, but I didn't tell her that. "But if I were smart enough to know what the paintings were worth, I'd also know I couldn't sell them up here. I'd take them to New York. I want to call someone, check that out. I could go down there myself, but I think I'm more useful up here."

She was silent for a time, her eyes roving over the sloping lawn, the drive, the ta
ngles of forsythia. "All right,
she said quietly. "I'm hiring you as a professional. If you think this is necessary, do it. But understand that total discretion is as important to me as the return of those paintings."

I couldn't help grinning. If I hadn't gotten that message already it would have been a good time to tear up my license and go fishing.

Chapter 3

It was early for lunch at Antonelli's. Tony was alone inside except for two T-shirted guys wolfing down beers, burgers, and a mountain of fries. Tony, leaning on the bar, looked up from his newspaper as I came in.

"Jesus," he said. "You look like hell."

"And you don't. Why is that?"

He grunted. "Clean livin'." He folded the paper, put it aside. "You okay?"

"Sure," I said. "Just thirsty. Let me have a Genny Cream." He opened a bottle and put it on the bar with a glass. "Listen, Tony, I need to talk to Jimmy. Where can I find him?"

"Trouble?" His mouth tightened.

"No. Just something I need to know."

"From that punk?" He gave a humorless laugh. "If you can't drink it, drive it, or steal it, he don't know nothin' about it."

"Oh, Christ, Tony, there are some things he's good for, if you'd cut him a little slack. He cooks as well as you do. And he's better than anyone I know with a car." I was sorry the minute I said it.

Tony's face flushed. "Yeah. He can fix 'em, smash 'em, or cool 'em off if they're hot."

Oh well, I was in now. "That what Frank Grice was here about last night? Something to do with the quarry?"

"That's none of your fuckin' business!" He slammed his open hand on the bar. The T-shirts looked up from their fries. Tony shifted his eyes to them, then back to me. He dropped his voice. "You saved my ass last night. I owe you, okay? But keep out of this. I can handle Grice."

"His type doesn't handle, Tony. You give him what he wants or you shut him down."

"What the hell do you know?"

"Not much," I said. "I only know Grice by reputation. But I've met a lot of guys like him. I do it for a living."

"Then stick to the payin' customers."

I drained my glass, turned it slowly between my palms. Tony gestured at it. "You want another?" I
nodded. He opened a bottle, fill
ed my glass. I drank.

"I'm sorry, Tony," I said. "I have trouble minding my own business. And guys like Grice make my skin crawl."

"Forget it." He took the empty bottles, put them in slots in the cardboard case under the bar. "Jimmy's been workin' a coupla days a week at Obermeyer's garage over in Central Bridge. Call over there, maybe you can get him."

"Thanks." I stood. "Okay if I tie up the phone for a while?"

He shrugged. "It ain't rang in two days."

I took my beer over to the pay phone against the back wall. I thought for a minute, about Tony, Jimmy, Eve Colgate's pasture, and some paintings she hadn't seen in thirty years; about how things change and how they don't. Then I slipped in some quarters, dialed Lydia's office number in New York.

I got the bounce-line message; so she was on the phone;
either actually in her office or at home on the line that rings through. Normally I would have just left a message of
my
own, but calling me back up here wasn't all that easy. I took a chance and dialed the other number, the one that rings at home, in the kitchen. It's not a number I call often, but it's engraved deep in my memory just the same. I lapped my fingers on the old, scarred woodwork as the phone rang and rang.

Finally a woman's voice answered in Cantonese, using words I recognized, though I didn't understand them. I gave her my dozen Cantonese words: a respectful greeting and a request. There was silence, then a snort; then the phone clattered in my ear and I could hear the voice calling to someone else.

A few moments later came another woman's voice, this
time
in English. "My mother says you should stop trying to impress her; your Chinese is terrible."

"What did she call me this time?"

Lydia said, "The iron-headed rat."

"What does it mean?"

"'Iron-headed'—you know, stubborn, willful; sometimes stupid. I guess it could mean gray-haired, too."

"You think she meant that?"

"No. In Chinese that's a
good
thing."

"Great. Why rat?"

"Don't ask."

"Someday she'll like me. Listen, are you real busy, or can you take something on?"

"She'll never even tolerate you. I'm tailing a noodle merchant whose wife thinks he's messing around with her
younger sister, but it's not as engrossing as it sounds. But I thought you were up in the country."

"I am."

"You never call from there. Are you all right?" A slight quickening came into her voice.

"I took a case."

"Up there?" Now, surprise. "I thought you—"

"It's a long story," I said, even though as I said it I realized it wasn't; or at least, not the way that's usually meant. "I got a call from someone up here; that's why I came up. Can you work on it?"

"Um, sure." Her tone told me she wanted to ask more, maybe hear the long story, but she answered the question I'd asked. "What do you need?"

I told her about the burglary, what was stolen. I didn't say from whom. She whistled low. "Six Eva Nouvels? My god, they must be worth a fortune."

"Maybe two million, together," I agreed. "Could be more: they're unknown, uncatalogued."

"How unknown?"

"The client says completely. I don't know. But right now I'm not thinking anyone came looking for them. It was probably just a break-in, kids. They may even have junked the paintings by now, just kept the stuff that looked valuable to them."

"That's a cheerful thought."

"I'm going to try some other things, but if nothing turns up it may be worth a trip to the county dump. But just in case, I want you to look around down there. I don't think anyone will try to sell those paintings in New York; they'd
ship them out to Europe, maybe Japan. If that's happening I want to stop them."

"What were they doing in a storeroom? Six paintings that valuable?"

" That's where the client kept them."

"Okay, funny guy. And who's the client?"

" I can't tell you."

She skipped half a beat. "You can't tell
me?"

"Now," I said. "From here. Over the phone."

"Oh." That single word held a dubious note, as though my explanation was logical but not convincing. "Are there other things you're not telling me?"

"Yes," I said. "But when I tell them to you, you hang up on me."

"For which not a woman in America could blame me. What do I do if I find a trail? Are the police in on this?"

"No, and that's important. I don't want anyone who doesn't know these paintings exist to find out from us."

"Top-secret paintings stuck in a storeroom by a top- secret client in the middle of nowhere. And I thought it was all trees and cows and guys who shoot at Bambi up there. Silly me."

"I'll call you later," I told her. "If anything turns up, you can try the cell phone, but you might not get through up here."

"I'm surprised you even took it with you."

"You told me I had to carry one. I always do what you tell me."

"Uh-huh."

"Uh-huh. Well, anyway, if you can't get through, try this
number." I gave her the number of the phone I was at. "Ask for Tony. Leave a time and a place I can call you. Hey, and Lydia?"

"Yes?"

"Tell your mother I'm a nice guy."

"I never lie to my mother. Talk to you later."

She hung up. I took out another quarter, dialed Obermeyer's garage—the number was carved into the wood-work—and asked for Jimmy. A voice muffled by food told me he hadn't come in yet. "You got a problem?"

"Lots," I answered. "If you see him, tell him Bill Smith is looking for him, okay?"

"Sure." The voice slurped a drink, went on. "If
you
see him, tell him I'm all backed up here, and where the hell is he?"

"Sure."

There were loud crunching sounds. I hung up.

The vinyl-covered phone book was chained to the shelf under the phone. I flipped it open to the Yellow Pages in the back, found Antique Shops, pages of them. Schoharie was studded with these places. Most of them were no more than someone's front room or disused garage, where chipped china and molding books shared space with broken-legged tables and chairs with torn upholstery. But a few shops were bigger or more choosy about their merchandise. It was still possible to come across the kind of finds up here that had long since vanished from areas closer to the city or more attractive to tourists. The past was one of the few things people up here had to sell.

Jimmy could have pointed me in the right direction.

He'd have protested innocence, or maybe with me he wouldn't have bothered; but he'd know where to find a fence for the sort of things Eve Colgate had lost. Without him it was a crapshoot, so I fed quarters into the phone and started from A. With everyone who answered I used the same line. A teapot, I said I needed, describing vaguely a silver teapot Eve Colgate had described to me in great detail. For my wife, I said, for our anniversary. She liked that kind of thing, I didn't know anything about it, myself.

At the end of half an hour I had four promising places, all within an hour's drive of Eve Colgate's farm.

I brought my empty glass back to Tony at the bar. The T-shirts were gone; the place was empty.

"You leavin'?"

"Yeah. I'll be back tonight. Someone may call me here." I pointed a thumb at the phone.

"Okay," Tony said. "Only help me out with somethin' before you go."

"I thought I was supposed to mind my own business."

"You gonna want ice in your goddamn bourbon later, this is your business. Damn thing's busted again." Tony's antiquated ice machine had more weak points than a sermon.

"What is it, that valve? Like when I was here in the fall?"

"Yeah, and twice in the winter when you wasn't. You gotta turn it off downstairs, wait till I tell you to turn it on again. The red one. You know." I knew. "Unless you're in a hurry. It can wait till the O'Brien kid comes in, or Marie."

"No hurry."

The door to the cellar was back by the phone. Under my weight the wooden stairs creaked. The light from the head of the stairs didn't reach very far, but dusty gray daylight filtered in through the grimy windows in the back wall. The place smelled of mildew and damp concrete. I shook a spiderweb from the back of my hand.

Tony's cellar was a shadowed landscape of boxes, crates, abandoned furniture. Lying across the pipes overhead were old fishing rods, skis, a pair of snowshoes whose leather webbing was crumbling to dust. About five miles of greasy rope was heaped in a corner, next to a bureau Tony's father had moved down here before Tony was born.

Tony knew every object here, and could navigate smoothly through them in the dark. I couldn't. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness, then picked my way carefully to the middle of the room, where a single light- bulb dangled from the ceiling.

I reached a hand up to it; then I stopped and froze. I wasn't the only thing moving.

Barely visible, a shadow darker than the others slid noiselessly behind a hill of boxes.

Slowly, silently, I eased the gun from under my arm. I stared through the dimness; there was nothing. Everything was still, as though it always had been. But I'd seen it. I moved to my left, to where the shadow went. My steps were silent. Maybe whoever it was wouldn't hear my heart pounding, either.

Suddenly a crash, something shattering on the concrete floor. Another flash of movement. I pressed my back against the wall, gun drawn. Before me two unblinking eyes appeared, glittering in the half-light.