“You’re not fat.”
“I’d be Archie Goodwin.”
“That might work.”
“So what’s your problem?”
“Murder, funnily enough.”
“Did you do it?” said Valentine, waving her toward one of the club chairs.
“No,” said Finn.
“Then there’s no problem,” said Valentine. “There’s just a situation that has to be resolved.”
“I think it’s a bit more than that,” said Finn.
“Explain.”
So she did.
15
Half an hour later, while munching on cookies and drinking coffee, her legs drawn up under her in one of the big club chairs, she had brought Valentine up to speed.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
“I think Peter got in the way and died because of it. I think Crawley died because I saw the Michelangelo and I think I’m next.”
“Interesting.”
“It’s more than interesting. It’s my life, Mr. Valentine.”
“Michael, please. I didn’t mean that part of it was interesting. I meant the part about someone dying just because they saw a particular work of art. It doesn’t have any logical basis… yet.”
“I don’t think it has a logical basis period. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“It makes sense to whoever killed your friend and the director of the Parker-Hale.”
“Why do I get the feeling we’re going around in circles?”
“Because we are,” said Valentine. “The circles get smaller and smaller, and finally you come to the little point of truth right in the center.”
“Way too Zen for me,” answered Finn. “My mother gave me your number if I ever got into real trouble, which is what I think I’m in right now. Aren’t you supposed to do something? We’ve been sitting around drinking coffee and eating cookies and we’re not getting anywhere.”
“Depends on your point of view,” said Valentine. “I know a lot of things I didn’t before. I know what you look like, I know where you live, I know that among other things you’re a nude model, a teacher of English as a second language, a recently fired intern at a prestigious art museum and you’ve been involved in two violent deaths. Any one of those facts could be vitally important to the situation at hand.”
“Why does everyone harp on the nude model part?”
“Because it forces people to imagine you with no clothes on. For some people that’s probably very uncomfortable, for other people it’s probably a delight. It’s a lot different than saying you work as a waitress at IHOP, you’ve got to admit.” Valentine sighed. “My dear Finn, it’s my job to look at details, very small details. When I’m doing a valuation of a rare book for someone, the shape of a letter can mean the difference between the work being authentic or a forgery. If I’m advising somebody on a piece of crucial information, that information has to be exactly right. If you look closely at things you see the details, you see the flaws and sometimes you see the absolute perfection. They can be equally important.”
“You mean the Michelangelo?”
“As an example, sure. That may be the problem right there-it might not be a Michelangelo at all. It wouldn’t be the first time someone was killed over a forgery.”
“It was the real thing. I’m sure of it.”
Valentine smiled. “No offense, kiddo, but you hardly qualify as an expert.”
“And you do?”
“You told me you had a digital image of the drawing.”
Finn nodded. She dug around in her pack, which was leaning by the chair, found her camera and handed it over to Valentine. He opened the flap at the camera’s bottom, withdrew the firewire connector and plugged it into the black, flat-screened IBM on his desk. Finn got up and came around to stand behind him as he worked the keyboard. She looked around but she couldn’t actually see the computer itself.
“It’s a server down in the basement,” said Valentine without looking up from what he was doing, as though reading her mind. “It’s cooler down there.”
“What do you have?” Finn asked. “A supercomputer or something?”
“Not quite,” he answered. “But close. I do a lot of work for some people in California. They pay me in computer technology.” He sat back in his chair. “There we go.” On the screen was the Michelangelo drawing, full size. The detail on the screen was flawless.
“Well?” Finn asked.
“I’ve got to admit it looks pretty good. Authentic at first glance, anyway.” He tapped some more keys and the drawing vanished.
“What are you doing?”
“Comparison test. I’ve got some material on file. If we need more, I can get it out of the stacks.”
“Comparing what?”
“The words in the corner there. See if the handwriting’s the same.”
The screen stayed blank for a moment, then resolved itself into a windowpanelike alignment of four sections. Each one appeared to hold a small piece of handwriting. He then hit another key and a fifth pane in the window appeared with the Michelangelo drawing. After another keystroke, the drawing dropped away, leaving only the writing.
“Now we’ll see,” said Valentine. He tapped keys with his long fluid fingers and for a moment Finn found herself thinking that they’d be very sensitive touching her. She wiped the thought out of her mind as quickly as the images on the screen disappeared. Now there were only two sections to the window-one on the left with a scrap of obviously very old handwriting in cursive Italian, the other a blown-up version of the writing on the drawing.
Finn leaned over Valentine’s shoulder, her hair cascading down over his cheek. She read the lines easily:
“What joy hath you glad wreath of flowers that is
Around each hair so deftly twined,
Each blossom pressing forward from behind,
As though to be the first her brows to kiss.”
Valentine picked it up at the beginning of the next line:
“The livelong day her dress hath perfect bliss,
That now reveals her breast, now seems to bind,
And that fair woven net of gold refined
Rests on her cheek and throat in happiness.”
Finn stepped back, blushing, realizing that she’d been standing much too close to Valentine while they read. “It’s one of his sonnets to his mistress, Clarissa Saffi. She was a courtesan, actually.”
“The first one he wrote about her, if I remember correctly,” agreed Valentine. “You’re very good.”
“You’re not bad yourself,” she said, taking another step away, grabbing her hair nervously and holding it against her neck. “Most people don’t even known he wrote poetry.”
“Everyone wrote poetry back then,” said Valentine, smiling and showing off his large square teeth.
He turned back to the screen. “I think poetry took the place of game shows.” He played with the keyboard again. “Now let’s see if we can get them to match up.” Slowly he used the mouse to drag the writing from the drawing across and atop the other one. He fiddled with the mouse, clicking it from time to time, then entered a series of instructions. The screen cleared again, split down the middle with five individual letters on each side:
Valentine then used the mouse to drag one set of letters so that they covered the first:
A
E
I
O
U
“Looks like a match to me,” said Finn.
“Me too,” said Valentine. “I’d say your drawing was definitely a Michelangelo.” He stared at the screen. “Certainly the handwriting is the same.” He paused. “Did Delaney tell you how Crawley was killed?”
“He said he was strangled but somebody stuck some kind of ritual dagger in his mouth.” Finn made a face. “I didn’t like Mr. Crawley, but it still sounds gross.”
“This ritual dagger, what kind was it-do you remember?”
“He called it a koummya or something.”
“Spanish. Andalusian. Sometimes from southern Morocco.”
“You know everything?”
“A little bit about a lot,” he said. “That’s what makes me dangerous.”
“You’re dangerous?”
“I can be.”
Finn went back to her chair and sat down again. “So now what do we do?”
“I’m not sure, exactly,” he murmured, still staring at the screen. “This is interesting but…”