“May I be of service, sir?”
The voice was deep, cultured, faintly British.
“I hope so, I truly hope so,” minced Dan Kearny. “I have a rather unusual request to make.”
“We deal in the unusual,” rumbled the Colonel.
Mid-60s, towering over Kearny, at least six-six and 260 in his ancient Stornoway Scottish wool tweeds soft as linen. Hair, still mostly black, but gray-shot at the temples. Face, all heavy bone, eyes black and flat, mouth surprisingly full-lipped and calipered by deep lines running down from either side of a nose that looked as if it had been struck off a Roman coin.
“I wish to examine Treasured Things’ rarest, most delicate, most expensive ceramic treasure.”
“May I ask your intentions, sir?”
“If it pleases me, I shall wish to buy it,” said Kearny.
“If it pleases you.” The Colonel boomed laughter. “My God, man, if it pleases you! Let me show you something.”
He strode to a cabinet with glass doors at the back of the shop. Inside was a foot-tall gently bulbous black pitcher with a graceful handle that rose from its shoulder and then curved tightly down to the rim. Concealed light illuminated a picture in rich russet tones that went all the way around its glossy black belly. The Colonel swung open the unlocked cabinet door carelessly, as if he knew no one would dare try to rob him.
“You are looking at an ancient Greek oinochoe.” The word had a harsh softness the way he pronounced it; his tone was almost reverent. He obviously was a man who loved beauty as much as he loved the dark underbelly of society. Indeed, Kearny was counting on it. “A pitcher, a standard wine jug. Functional design is always a mark of Greek pottery. They developed five standard shapes very early on and stuck to them.”
Depicted on the oinochoe was a man in a loincloth kneeling before an ornate stone or marble altar with a small and obviously squealing pig. Another man, standing, was raising a short, thick-bladed sword to slaughter the pig.
“What’s the story?” asked Kearny.
“It is a pre-Games ceremony at the Panhellenic Games that were held at Olympia every four years. After the pig was dead, the athletes would swear they had trained hard for ten months, everybody would eat pork, and then the Games would begin.”
Now they never went out of training, Kearny thought. In his rich eccentric’s voice, he asked, “And the pitcher’s worth?”
The Colonel’s lip unconsciously lifted at his crassness. “Inestimable. It was recovered intact — usually Greek ceramics are just a jigsaw puzzle of shards that have to be fit together. Then, it’s from an Olympic Games during the Peloponnesian War in the latter half of the fourth century B.C. Finally, although war was always suspended for the Games, during these Games, the city-state of Sparta was fined for violating the truce, and—”
“Fined?” asked Kearny. The Palestinian terrorists who had murdered the Israeli athletes at Munich hadn’t been fined; but they had been tracked down and dealt with by Israeli agents.
“It was a more ordered age than ours. Anyway, that’s the ‘story,’ and that’s what makes this pitcher unique.”
Kearny sighed silently: back to business.
He said, “You sold a German transmitter, some French plastique, and an Israeli radio-signal detonator to someone probably calling himself Frank Nugent. I want to know if he’s using that name, where I can find him, and what else you sold him.”
“You play games with me!”
The Colonel’s face congested, but Kearny snatched up the oinochoe in his right hand and held it over the hardwood floor.
“My Christ, man! Don’t—”
“So I’ll ask you again,” said Kearny. “Who was he, where can I find him, what else did you sell him?”
The Colonel couldn’t take his eyes off the oinochoe.
“He... called himself Frank Nugent and was recommended by a reliable contact. The address he gave me was a residence hotel out in Noe Valley — 746 Diamond, room 212.”
Kearny started backing out of the shop with the oinochoe. “What else did you sell him?”
“A grenade. Vietnam vintage but still reliable.”
“I’ll leave your pitcher by the front door.”
The Colonel said through gritted teeth, “Perhaps we will meet another time, we two.”
“I’m around,” said Kearny.
Then he was gone, surreptitiously wiping the sweat from his face with shaking hands as he went down the wide front steps.
Time was passing and Inga had not returned, but Giselle hated to just leave without learning... something. Then she saw a man wearing a down vest and carrying a tackle box and a broken-down fishing rod crossing the lot. She timed her approach so he was ahead of her, was sorting out her keys as he opened the gate.
“Oh, hey, thanks,” she said.
She went out the jetty to the Basic Pascal. The air smelled of brine and fish. Gulls wheeled and turned overhead. A westering sun was turning the bridge into a spidery black smile on the mouth of the Golden Gate.
She sang out, “Ahoy the boat.” No response. She grabbed the cable railing, pulling herself up, stepped over it to the deck. Her heels made tocking sounds against the planking. At the closed companionway door, she called, “Hello down there!”
A muffled voice finally called up from below, “Ye... yes?”
“Harbormaster.”
The door slid open. A pale oblong of face looked up at her. She could make out no features, but the voice was not Paul’s. And she’d left that silly pistol Kearny had given her locked up in her glove compartment! Some slick private eye.
“We’re... ah, checking all yachts for illegal boat people.”
He backed up a step, so Giselle just naturally had to start down the steep narrow companionway ladder. Light through the side windows was strong enough to show her a tall, thin man with a bony face, high forehead, thinning brown hair, good eyes, nice mouth, and a surprisingly beaky nose.
A face she had seen before in a photo in Paul’s workshop.
“Mr. Nugent, I believe,” she said, jamming her right hand into the purse hanging by a strap from her shoulder. “Don’t even think about it, I’ve got a gun in here.”
But his hands had shot up. “Ohmigod, you’re not the harbormaster! Don’t shoot! Ohmigod! You’re that detective woman who guards Paul! I knew I shouldn’t have let Inga hide me here!”
“You shouldn’t go around trying to kill people.”
He still had his hands up. “I never tried to kill anyone! I wanted to turn myself in after Inga said it was me with the pickax the other night, and say that I was innocent. But Inga said no, and who’s going to believe me now?”
“Then who tried to kill Paul all those times?”
“Tried not to kill Paul all those times.”
Giselle whirled at the deep, mocking voice from behind her. Standing halfway down the companionway ladder was a husky black-haired guy with a tough face and a hard-looking body under a white T-shirt with black letters on it that read:
She thought: Double negative. You are here, so you are shit.
He was grinning and his right hand wore a gun and wore it well. The gun was pointing at Giselle. It looked black and mean and efficient. She was going to have to learn about guns.
Nugent burst out, “Eddie! What are you—”
“Seeing how the rich bastards live. Drop the purse, girl.”