Rose was pale as her sister spoke. I dithered, returned, cleared my throat, looked at the time. Nigh midnight, and me being blackmailed into balderdash.
“You’ve got the wrong bloke, Moira,” I tried for the record.
“Rose?”
“Yes, Moira.” Rose passed me a sheaf of typewritten notes. Taking them, my mind went: My career was documented pretty well, but with that bizarre slant with which libel uses truth. “We are associated with antiquarians in England, Lovejoy. It took only an evening’s phoning. People didn’t even have to look you up. They already knew you.”
See how falsehoods spread? I was indignant with the sly bitch, but swallowed my ire. Why was deportation such a threat? Maybe America deports illegals to wherever they want to go! I could try for Australia, if they’d let me. Yes. That was clearly the way. Resist this attempt to blackmail me into helping the loony women. Bluff and double bluff. Be strong, show defiance. The American Way!
“All right,” I said weakly. “What do I have to do?”
BEING in the greatest of all lands is all very well, but antiques are antiques. And money rules. I was fast learning that America knew money. It is very, very dear to the US of A’s big beating heart.
In my time as a dealer I’ve seen all sorts of legend about priceless antiques. Every dealer has. Crazy, daft, loony—but they’ve generated fortunes, liaisons and affairs that have led to multiple murders, robberies galore. I’ve seen a million ancient charts to Lost Cities, King Solomon’s Mines, Merlin’s magic wands, Beethoven’s missing symphonies, and extinct species of plants living on under the Cotswold Hills. All pure imagination, maybe nothing more than wishes formed of faded sorrows. But—remember this—all confidence tricks have a basis in greed. And cons make money, right?
So I did a little diligent spadework using New York’s phones. And after a fortune in coins so minute I kept dropping the damned things, I got through to Thurlough in Buxton, Derbyshire. It felt really strange talking with somebody on the other side of the Atlantic but who sounded within reach. I had to shout over the night traffic.
“Thurly? Lovejoy. I haven’t got long.”
“Lovejoy? Do you know what frigging time it is?”
“Sod the time, Thurly. Look. A Sherlock Holmes bookseller…?”
“The best?” He took time off to complain to his missus that Lovejoy was ringing at this hour. They sounded in bed. “That’ll be Brian Cheeryble.”
Cheeryble, opposite the British Museum, up those rickety stairs. I got Thurly to find me the number, and when he tried to suss me out told him I had a chance of an earthenware bust of Conan Doyle, probably a modern fake. He rang off still grumbling, old misery. Brian Cheeryble. He’d know about any Conan Doyle grailer, if anyone would. I’d not contact him until I’d learned what I was really contacting him about.
CHAPTER SIX
« ^ »
THE commonest question is, how can you stay poor yet recognize antiques a mile off, by vibe? The answer’s pretty grim: imagine having responsibilities to every antique you ever met. A divvy has exactly that. It comes with the gift. Like being Dad to all the children on earth, you never know where you are, what to do. Even the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe only had forty kids. She had it made. She should have been a divvy, and learned the hard way.
Plus this thing called crime. Tell anyone that you’re a divvy, and you can see evil thoughts flit through their minds. And they aren’t innocent good-heavens-how-interesting thoughts. They’re greedy how-can-we-use-this-nerk-for-sordid-gain thoughts. I’ve seen it a hundred times. And don’t pretend you’d be any different. You wouldn’t be. Why am I so certain? Because avarice rules, that’s why.
Antiques equal treasure, yes indeed. But some are more equal than others.
Look at your average newspaper. In one week the Greeks re-excavate a temple to the God Poseidon in Corinth, and Boston University architects date it a sensational 665 BC; the Chinese find their earliest known celestial map—painted on a tomb’s vaulted roofing over twenty-one centuries ago; and two new living species of fly are discovered in Wales. I’m thrilled by the first two, because they’re antiques. But the flies are a yawn. Don’t misunderstand me—I’m all for conservation. Flies have to manage as best they can, and have wings and whatnot to do it with. But antiques can’t. They have nothing except soul. And they can only become fewer and shoddier, as we batter and revarnish and “mend”them whenever we think we’ll have a hamfisted go… See? Somebody has to be on their side. So far, I’ve only found me.
TWO o’clock I went to my crummy hotel, and found Zole in the lobby trying to lever open something under the desk.
“Hi, ma man. Watch yo back, Lovejoy. Tye’s waitin’ n’ baitin’”
The greetings alone are enough to wear you out. “Hello, Zole.”
I warned him in passing that the desk dozer was coming back down the corridor, and saw him ease silently out into the street. A minigangster, that one. What had he said? Watch my back? Tye Dee was waiting in my room, talking with Magda. He turned from her the instant he saw me, cutting her dead. It seemed odd at the time, but not later. I gave her a wave, got one in return.
Quarter past, we were in a skyscraper’s lift rising in grand style. We shared the lift with a suave bloke wearing an antique stock pin in his tie, the cret. Can you imagine? It had the true zigzag stem —I could actually see its shape—projecting slightly from his idiot modern tie. Well, I’m used to these Flash Harrys back home so I just glared a bit when he got out on the eighteenth floor in a waft of expensive aftershave.
On the nineteenth floor Mrs. Aquilina was waiting. Not Nicko, not Jennie.
Sumptuous was the only word. I stood in the doorway being searched for concealed ironmongery by Tye while she strolled and blew cigarette smoke towards the vast expanse of windows. She wore a confining black dress, scallop neck, and looked half as young as before.
“Clean,” Tye announced in his gravelly bark, and closed the doors as he left.
“I don’t doubt it.” Mrs. Aquilina avoided smiling, gestured me to sit opposite, a callous trick to play on someone undergoing enforced celibacy. A log fire seemed genuine. The air hummed coolth. The vast flat was dull as ditchwater, everything modern and expensive and thoroughly objectionable. Tastefully decorated, but who cared?
“Today I’m going shopping, Lovejoy.” She had aloofness, but not her husband’s terrifying knack of speaking to distant planets.
“Yes?”
A pause. She didn’t drum her fingers, but was impatient. She returned my gaze, squared. “You’re going to buy me some jewellery.”
“Sorry, missus,” I said apologetically, “I’m not well up in modern stuff. You’ve got some good tom shops in New York —”
“You proved your worth with gems, Lovejoy.”
“Spotting Mrs. Brandau’s jewellery was accidental, Mrs. Aquilina.”
“Sokolowsky gave you full marks. Yes, Blanche. Martini.” A bonny maid appeared and vanished. I wasn’t offered any revelry. “One hour, Lovejoy. Go and dress. Be in the foyer. Dee will show you.”
Dress? I was already clothed. I rose and like an idiot thanked her. For what?
“One thing, Lovejoy.” She ground out her cigarette. “I will not tolerate any more insolence. Last warning.”
“Right. Thank you, Mrs. Aquilina.” I almost nutted the carpet making an exit bow. Blanche’s glance avoided me as I left, but it felt sympathetic.