To Veil's right, a few yards inside the entrance, a huge, hulking man who he assumed was a detective was questioning a frail, trembling woman whom Veil judged to be in her mid- or late twenties. The man's back was to him, but he could see the woman's face—and she was clearly terrified. Her face was virtually bloodless, made to seem even whiter by the shimmering blue-black of her long hair and her large black eyes. She kept shaking her head, as if she were denying something. Occasionally a thin, tapered hand would brush away a strand of hair or pluck at her thin lower lip in a curiously birdlike motion.
The woman saw Vahanian, reached a trembling hand out toward him. "Is Toby all right?" she asked in a quavering voice.
Vahanian turned to her, but before he could answer, the huge man took a step to his left and, like some tropical moon, eclipsed the woman from sight. The man's voice came across the room to Veil's ears as a low, slightly menacing rumble.
"Veil!" The Russian who was his friend and mentor lumbered like some circus bear down the length of the room, threw his thick arms around Veil, and kissed him on both cheeks. "God, I'm glad to see you here. This is a terrible, terrible thing."
Veil once again glanced over to where the hulking detective was questioning the woman. Something was wrong, he thought; he was becoming increasingly certain that the woman was terrified of the man, not the situation.,
Vahanian walked over to the other man, and both detectives stepped aside and huddled for a whispered conference while the woman stared down at her feet and hugged herself, as if she were broken inside. Once, the big man looked back over his shoulder, and Veil found himself looking into a round, doughy face with small eyes that reminded him of two raisins lost in a pie; there seemed to be no light, no life, in them. Huge, gnarled hands closed into fists, then relaxed again. Veil held the man's gaze for a few moments, then abruptly turned to his friend.
"What happened, Victor?"
Raskolnikov spread his arms out to his sides in a gesture of helplessness. "I couldn't stop it, Veil. Everything just happened too quickly. Now this man I hired to guard the statue is dead."
"How did it happen?"
"The young woman over there came in with a young man. The man, he had a very strange look in his eyes—and he was looking at the statue from the moment he came in the door. He never said a word, just started walking straight toward the statue. The woman screamed and tried to stop him; she grabbed his arm and shouted at him in this funny language, like nothing I've ever heard before—click! click! click! Very strange. The man just pushed her away, grabbed one of the spears off the wall, and used it to smash the glass case over the statue. He moved so fast that he caught Frank—the guard—by surprise. Frank yelled at the man to stop, and when he didn't, Frank kind of panicked, I guess. He drew his gun and fired—hit the man in the shoulder, I think. Then the man threw the spear at Frank. Veil, I've never seen anyone move that fast. One moment Frank was aiming and getting ready to fire again, and the next moment he was dead." The Russian paused, swallowed hard, then gestured toward the opposite wall without looking at it. "Like that."
"Your guard did hit the man, Victor. I saw him. He escaped into Central Park after causing the damnedest chain collision you've ever seen on Fifth. But they should have him soon. By now there'll be an army of cops beating the bushes for him, and they're using a helicopter. I just hope your statue isn't damaged."
"I don't give a damn about that statue!" Tears suddenly glistened in the art dealer's eyes. "I paid a lousy three thousand dollars for it. What's three thousand dollars— what's anything?—compared to a man's life? The newspapers sure as hell made a big stink about it, but they couldn't tell me what I should do with the damn thing. The police wouldn't take it off my hands because they said it was legally mine. The United Nations made a stink, too, but they wouldn't take it. If they took it, then they wouldn't have anything to make a stink about. I didn't want to sell it to just anyone, Veil, because I felt very deeply in my heart for that tribe. All I wanted was my money back, and that didn't seem unreasonable. Then this gangster business came up and the courts said I couldn't sell it to anyone until a complete investigation had been made, but the judges wouldn't take it off my hands, either. Hell, I figured I might as well keep the statue on display for the publicity value. But I didn't want the tribe to lose it to some thief, so I hired a guard to make certain it stayed safe until somebody told me what I was allowed to do with it. I simply should have sent it back to the tribe in the beginning. Then I wouldn't be responsible for this man's death."
"Take it easy, Victor," Veil said evenly. "You aren't responsible for anything but being a very decent man caught in a bind and trying to find the right thing to do. You didn't fire a gun to protect a piece of wood, and you didn't throw the spear."
"Are you Veil Kendry?"
Veil turned to find the big man with the doughy face and dead, raisin eyes standing very close behind him. "I'm Kendry," he replied evenly.
"You've met Detective Vahanian," the big man said in a rumbling, phlegmy voice as he jerked a thumb in the general direction of the dark-complexioned man who was standing off to one side, trying not to look embarrassed. "I'm Detective Nagle. I understand you witnessed what went on up the street."
"Yes. As I told your partner—"
"I know what you told my partner, and I don't need to hear it again. You're the one who needs to be told something."
"You sound like a man with heavy things on his mind," Veil said in a neutral, flat tone. "Why don't you unload them?"
Nagle leaned even closer, to the point where his face was only inches from Veil's, and Veil could smell beer and garlic on the man's breath. "You've got a bad rep, Kendry," Nagle rumbled, planting the thick index finger of his right hand in the center of Veil's chest.
"Do I?"
"You do. For one thing, I hear that you have a habit of sticking your nose in police business. I hear you think you're a hotshot private investigator."
Veil considered pushing the finger away from his chest but instead stepped back. Nagle grunted with satisfaction.
"You'd better back off from me, pal."
"Am I to take it that you're feeling a bit cranky this evening, Detective Nagle?"
Nagle frowned. "I'm in a good mood, Kendry. You'd better hope you never see me in a bad one."
Veil glanced across the room to where the woman was staring at him, the expression on her face frozen somewhere between fear and amazement. "Look, Nagle," Veil said easily, "I don't know what your personal problems are, and I don't care."
"You watch how you talk to me, chief."
"You picked up wrong information somewhere. I'm not an investigator, private or otherwise. I'm a painter."
"You bet your smart ass you're not a PI. You've got no license. If you had, it would have been pulled long ago. The point is that you act as if you were a PI. You've had run-ins with cops all over this goddamn city, and cops most definitely do not like amateurs stepping on their toes. We've got more than enough bag ladies, bums, street jugglers, and street musicians; we don't need a street detective."
"From time to time I do a favor for a friend."
"You seem to have a lot of friends."
"Yeah. I make friends easily."
"I've even heard it said that you have friends in very high places in Washington, like in the CIA."