Painted Ladies (22 page)

And there he was. Sitting in an armchair, drinking a glass of orange juice. His daughter sat in a straight chair near him. And his ex-wife sat on the couch with her hands clasped tightly and resting on her knees.

“Ariel Herzberg,” I said. “As I live and breathe.”

His reaction time was excellent. He dropped the orange juice, came to his feet in one graceful movement, stepped behind Missy’s chair, and produced a semiautomatic pistol.

Missy said, “Daddy?”

He made a push-away gesture at her.

I said, “Why don’t you go over beside your mother, Missy.”

“No,” Ariel said. “Stay put.”

Missy looked at her mother. Her mother put her hand up, palm out, in a stay-put gesture.

“You know why he wants you to stay?” I said.

“So I won’t be caught in a crossfire,” she said.

She was trying for defiance, but her voice was a little shaky.

“Pretty to think so,” I said. “But he knows I will hesitate to shoot if you are there.”

She looked at Ariel.

“Stay where you are,” he said, without looking at her.

“For God’s sake, Ariel,” Winifred said. “She’s your daughter. You can’t use her as a shield. Even you.”

“I do what needs to be done,” he said. “I have always done what needed to be done.”

Winifred stood.

“Where are you going?” Ariel said.

“If I can’t protect my daughter, at least I can protect myself,” she said, and walked across the living room and up the stairs.

“Remember,” Ariel said, “I have the girl.”

Winifred made no answer as she disappeared up the stairs.

“You have the girl?” Missy said.

“Shut up,” Ariel said to her.

He was looking a little beleaguered, and as best I could see, he hadn’t cocked the pistol.

“I’ve tried to kill you at least twice,” he said. “You are both skillful and lucky, and you have by and large destroyed my operation here.”

“No need to thank me,” I said.

Ariel shook his head slightly, as if there was something in his ear.

“But now I have you,” he said.

“Somebody has somebody,” I said. “And you haven’t cocked your weapon.”

Ariel smiled and thumbed back the hammer.

“You won’t shoot,” he said. “You won’t risk hurting the girl.”

He was right, and I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. I focused on his gun hand. As soon as it tightened I would dive, and maybe the girl could get out of the way before he killed me.

“Daddy,” Missy said.

Her voice scraped out as if her throat was nearly shut.

“Be still,” he said.

“You are hiding behind me,” she rasped.

“I’ll kill him,” he said. “Then you and I will leave.”

“You are going to hide behind me and shoot a man.”

“I am,” Ariel said, and raised the pistol.

I watched his hand. Missy stood up quite suddenly and lunged in front of me. I grabbed her and pushed her sprawling down behind the couch, and joined her. When we hit the floor, I shoved her away and rolled onto my stomach with my gun out ahead of me. The sound of a big flat shot filled the room, and Ariel stepped backward calmly and fell over on his back. I came to my feet and stepped around the couch to where Ariel lay on his back, his eyes open, seeing nothing. I crouched down and felt for his pulse, but I knew that there’d be no pulse. And there wasn’t. I stood and looked up. Winifred was at the top of the stairs, holding a long-barreled rifle. She was crying. Behind the couch, Missy was crying and yelling, “Momma.” She was struggling with her crying. “Momma.” Still carrying the rifle, Winifred half ran, half fell down the stairs and dropped to her knees beside her daughter. She put the rifle down on the rug beside her and put her arms around Missy, and they rocked back and forth together on the floor behind the couch. I took my gun off cock and put it back on my hip. I went to the kitchen and found a bottle of scotch and a water glass. I got ice from the refrigerator, put the ice in the glass, and poured some scotch over it. Then I walked back into the living room. A big container ship went dreamily past the picture window, heading for the Mystic River. The women cried and rocked.

I found a big hassock and sat on it and sipped my scotch and was quiet.

T
hey stopped crying and sat together on the floor behind the couch.

“We need to talk a little before the cops come,” I said.

“Do they have to come?” Winifred said.

“Yes.”

“I know,” she said.

Winifred stood and put the rifle carefully on the long coffee table. Then she turned and put her hand out to Missy, and pulled her to her feet. Neither one looked at the dead man lying on the floor.

“Where did I hit him?” Winifred said.

“Middle of the mass,” I said.

“I was the best shot in the Chicago office,” she said. “He was going to take her.”

“You shot him,” Missy said.

Winifred nodded slowly.

“Yes,” she said.

“Is he dead?” Missy said.

“Yes.”

“Will they arrest you?” Missy said.

“I don’t think so,” Winifred said.

“No,” I said. “They won’t.”

“I don’t want to talk in here,” Winifred said.

“Kitchen?” I said.

“Yes.”

We sat at the kitchen table with the scotch bottle in front of us. Winifred got glasses and ice, and poured a drink for Missy and a drink for herself.

“Okay,” I said. “The rifle legal?”

“Yes,” Winifred said.

Missy sipped some scotch.

“He didn’t love me,” she said.

“He didn’t have much in the way of feelings,” Winifred said. “He might have cared more about you than anyone else.”

“I thought he was a hero,” Missy said. “Restoring not only things but honor to his people, helping to erase some of the stain of the Holocaust, all this time later.”

“You’re quoting him,” Winifred said. “He used to say the same thing to me.”

“What was he really doing?” I said.

“Stealing paintings and selling them.”

“Tell me what you know,” I said.

“Hell,” Winifred said. “I know everything.”

“He was stealing paintings?” Missy said.

“His father had been in the death camp. The offspring of Holocaust survivors often feel a need to atone for not having been part of it.”

“Not being in the Holocaust?” Missy said.

“I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject,” Winifred said. ”And I think, in the beginning, the Herzberg Foundation was authentic. He was really trying to even up for the Holocaust. Take some risk to liberate objets d’art and restore them to their rightful owners.”

“So if someone wouldn’t sell him the work of art, he’d steal it,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And money became an issue, given the cost of buying such pictures.”

“And he felt it was wrong that he should have to pay,” Winifred said.

She poured a little more scotch into her glass.

“So he began to steal all of them,” she said. “It was his right. And he began to sell a few of them to finance the foundation, which needed it.”

“And it was working good,” I said. “And after a while the foundation became an end, not a means.”

“The foundation,” Winifred said, “c’est moi.”

“And the Auschwitz tattoos?” I said. “And the Israeli commandos? And the rest?”

“Whatever it started out as,” Winifred said, “it became . . . It was set decoration.”

I nodded.

“How do you know all this?” Missy said.

“Honey, I was a first-rate investigator,” Winifred said. “I knew most of it in Chicago.”

“And you let him ...”

Winifred took her daughter’s hand.

“Conceive you?” Winifred said. “Eagerly. You are not the only one who loved him foolishly.”

“How about Ashton Prince?” I said.

“They were partners,” Winifred said. “There was a family connection back to Auschwitz, I think. I’m not clear on the details. But Ashton would locate a painting, authenticate it, appraise it, and when they stole it and sold it, he would get a cut.”

“Why did they kill him?” I said.

“Ariel said that Ashton was trying to cheat them.”

“And he was afraid they’d catch him at it,” I said, “which is why he brought me along to protect him. Do you know how he was planning to cheat them?”

“No.”

I nodded.

“I think he was planning to switch paintings on them,” I said. “You have any idea where
Lady with a Finch
might be?”

Winifred, still holding Missy’s hand, tapped it gently against her own thigh. Her expression changed. If she had not been so recently traumatized, she might have smiled.

“In my bedroom closet,” she said. “There’s two of them.”

W
e were standing near the George Washington statue that faced Arlington Street. It was March. There was still snow in the Public Garden, but it was diminishing. Of course, in Boston March is not necessarily blizzard-free, but the odds are better, and so far the odds were holding. We were waiting for Otto.

“His mom e-mailed me last night,” Susan said. “They’ll be in town, and she feels Otto is desperate to see Pearl.”

“Why would he not be?” I said.

“I think it may be why they came up,” Susan said.

Pearl was engaged stalking some pigeons about ten yards from us. The pigeons allowed her to get quite close before they scornfully took wing. She watched them fly and saw them land maybe thirty yards away, and started over to stalk them some more.

“She doesn’t discourage easily,” Susan said.

“Hell,” I said. “The hunt is most of the fun.”

“You should know,” Susan said.

I nodded.

“Lotta trouble, though,” I said. “Sometimes.”

“Are the police going to charge either Winifred or Missy with anything?” Susan said.

“No, an armed man with a history of murder, holding her daughter as a shield? There’s no case there. And no one wants to make one. It’s self-defense.”

Pearl got really low as she closed in on the pigeons, and almost got there before they flew up. She watched them carefully as they flew entirely out of the Public Garden and across Beacon Street, toward the esplanade.

“And the paintings?” Susan said.

“Both there. The cops are having them examined to see which is which.”

Susan looked at her watch and looked toward Boylston Street, where she expected Otto to appear.

“Cops suspect that the copy might have been in the Hammond Museum, and that Prince had the real one on his wall.”

“Do you think that’s true?” Susan said.

“Might be,” I said. “I’m not sure there’s any way to know for sure.”

“What got him killed?”

“Ariel said that Prince was going to cheat them. My guess is he’d authenticate the fake, collect the ransom, take his share, and put the real one back in his office.”

“Could you prove that?”

“Maybe,” I said. “If I had to. But I don’t have to.”

Susan glanced toward Boylston Street.

“What was Ariel’s plan, do you suppose?” Susan said.

“Best we can figure, he was going to hole up there. He had the daughter convinced that he cared for her and was going to take her with him and the pictures when the heat had turned down.”

“You don’t think he would have?”

“The daughter was a way to make sure that Winifred behaved. If he didn’t need her for that anymore, no. I don’t think he’d have taken her. She would have been a bother.”

“A father that would use his daughter as a shield ...”

“Exactly,” I said.

Pearl gave up on pigeons and came over and sat on my foot. She sat on my foot a lot, but always for reasons known only to her.

“It’s hard to imagine,” Susan said, “what he was about.”

“Ariel?” I said.

“Yes. How much was sincere, at least at first, how much was traceable to being the child of a survivor.”

“How much is traceable to his being emotionally barren,” I said.

“That’s almost your standard of good and bad,” Susan said. “The ability to love.”

“Probably,” I said.

“The inability may be traceable to his history,” she said.

“Probably is,” I said. “But it did a lot of damage.”

Susan nodded. Pearl stood up suddenly, her tail wagging very fast. She made little cooing noises.

“Speaking of the ability to love,” I said.

Susan looked toward Boylston Street. And there he was, barreling across the Public Garden like a Cape buffalo.