“Would you mind if I spoke to her?”
“Not at all. I’ll tell her to expect your call. But even if, as you say, this Ralph Ciulla was involved in the theft, why would he be killed now?”
“My best guess,” I said, “is that the murder was a warning to Charles to stay away.”
“Is he going to heed the warning?” said Quick.
“I’ll have to ask him that, won’t I? Much will depend, I’m sure, on you.”
“What are you talking about?” said Spurlock. “How are we involved in the decision?”
I poured myself more of the sparkling water, took a drink to keep them waiting. The meeting was about to shift from their purpose, to upbraid me for the media frenzy, to my own purposes, and I was using the pause to make the point.
“I’m afraid to say, gentlemen, that you are not the only ones interested in the painting. Because of the unwanted publicity, our Rembrandt self-portrait is suddenly in play.”
“In play?”
“An offer has been made, a very generous offer.”
“But it is legally ours,” sputtered Spurlock. “It cannot be legally sold.”
“This is all true, and I will so inform my client. But he has not been much concerned with legal niceties in the past and I don’t expect the legal situation will have a great deal of impact on him now.”
“What are you suggesting we do?” said Spurlock.
“Two things. First, increase the pressure on the government to come up with a deal that will bring Charlie home. The federal prosecutor I mentioned before, Jenna Hathaway, is for some unknown reason standing in the way of what I believe would be a fair resolution of Charlie’s criminal matters. Someone needs to strip her of the case and take responsibility, someone perhaps more amenable to negotiation. Second, you had mentioned that a cash payment might be arranged. It might be a provident time to come up with a specific figure that I can relay to my client.”
“We will not bid against a criminal element for what rightfully belongs to the trust,” said Quick in his usual languid manner.
“Don’t consider it a bid. Consider it a conciliatory gesture to a man who desperately wants a reason to come home and happens to have control over a valuable piece of your property.”
“It is out of the question,” said Quick.
Spurlock turned to Quick and said, sharply, “All avenues remain open until the board closes them off, Stanford. We will decide what to do; your job is to bend the law to make sure our decision stays within its bounds.” He focused his eyes on me, clasped his hands together. “How much is he seeking?”
“He hasn’t given me a number,” I said. “But it appears to be in your interest to wow him.”
“We understand. I will take this to the board, and we will be in touch with you when we have a more definite response.”
“Don’t wait too long. Now, Mr. Spurlock, I have a question on a not entirely unrelated matter. I believe you’re acquainted with a Bradley Hewitt?”
“I know Bradley.”
“I am involved in a domestic matter in which he is on the other side. His attorney used your name to threaten me.”
“How so?”
“He intimated that if I continued to press my client’s claim against him, you might scotch any deal with Charles.”
“That’s preposterous,” said Spurlock. “Bradley is a personal acquaintance, that is all. To think I would abridge my responsibilities to the Randolph Trust on his behalf in some sort of domestic dispute is insulting. And with the ongoing federal investigation, you can be sure I want nothing more to do with that foul-mouthed liar.”
“Federal investigation?”
“Mr. Spurlock has perhaps said too much,” said Stanford Quick.
“Federal investigation?”
“Our discussion of Mr. Hewitt is at an end,” said Quick curtly. “Now, Victor, I want you to listen closely.” Quick leaned forward, sharpened his gaze until it nearly pierced my forehead. “You say that the murder of Mr. Ciulla was possibly a warning to your client. Have you considered that the warning might not have been meant for Charlie but instead meant for you?”
His stare was so pointed, and his voice suddenly so cutting, that I jerked back as if indeed I had been stabbed in the head. Where did that come from? I wondered. And when I looked at Jabari Spurlock, it seemed as if he were wondering the very same thing.
28
“I don’t know what you’re going on about so much,” said Skink. “It ain’t like you’re the only one what ever got hisself inked.”
“But I might be the only one who didn’t remember getting it,” I said.
“Oh, don’t give yourself so much credit, mate. If it weren’t for the mind-numbing effects of alcohol, half these joints would be out of business.”
By these joints, he meant tattoo parlors, because that’s where we were, in a tattoo parlor, or, to be more precise, a tattoo emporium, Beppo’s Tattoo Emporium. Tacked onto the walls of the cramped and dark waiting room were Beppo’s original designs: dragons and griffins, swords and daggers, religious icons, movie stars, insects and guns, dancing spark plugs, frogs and scorpions, skeletons and clowns, geisha dancers, samurai warriors, naked women in all manner of lascivious pose. Scattered about the waiting room were a few plastic chairs, a ragged coffee table with loose-leaf notebooks filled with art. The place smelled of ammonia and rubbing alcohol, of cigarettes smoked to the filter. From behind the curtain that covered the doorway came a steady buzz punctuated here and there by a whimper of pain.
“You find anything on that Lavender Hill yet?”
“I’ve been asking around.”
“And making noise about it, too. He is not happy.”
“It’s how you wanted it, mate. Apparently he has a hand in many pots and just as many names.”
“No surprise there.”
“Those what know him some think of him as a harmless fop with impeccable taste. But those what know him better are too scared to talk.”
“That’s troubling.” I thought of the outline of Ralph’s body on the carpet of his house. “Any reputation for heartless violence?”
“Heartless and otherwise.”
A yelp erupted from the back room. The buzz stopped for a moment. There was a loud slap, and then the buzzing started again.
“I had a friend once,” said Skink, “what got a tattoo of a rooster on his shin. The rooster had a noose round its neck. He said that way he could always tell the dolls he had a cock what hung below his knee.”
“He sounds like quite the ladies’ man. Anything yet on the federal investigation involving Bradley Hewitt?”
“I’m working on it,” said Skink. “We might have an errand to run in a few days that you’ll enjoy.”
There was another yelp and a falsetto curse, followed by a harsh “Calm your tools, we almost done,” before the buzzing started up again.
“You think this Beppo can help?”
“Oh, Beppo’s a pro, he is. The other artists in the city, they call him the dean. We’ve had no luck tracing the name, so we might as well trace the tattoo. He’s our best bet to pick who did the what on your chest. We find him that did it, we might find us some answers.”
“What’s there to find? I stumbled in drunk as a skunk and immortalized on my chest the name of a woman I hardly knew and can’t remember.”
“Well, mate, all that might be true. But the needle boy might remember who you was with and might be able to tell us how he was paid. Interesting, isn’t it, that your money was intact and nothing came up on your credit card?”
“Maybe she paid,” I said.
“Maybe she did, unusual as that might sound, and if she did, and paid with something other than cash, we might be able to trace her that way.”
“It’s worth a try, I guess.”
The buzzing stopped, replaced by a quiet, pathetic whimpering.
“How do you know this guy?” I said.
“I did him a favor once. While you’re in the chair, you want I tell Beppo to put a rooster on your shin?”