“Murder cases?”
“No, nothing violent. Cases where a valuable piece of art — a painting, a sculpture, a precious document — disappeared, or mysteriously reappeared. Sometimes with fake papers, sometimes with no papers at all. But she’s slippery. Someone else always takes the fall.”
“She’s never been convicted of anything?”
“She’s never even been arrested.”
“Sounds like she’s lucky, or smart, or both,” I said. “What’s your take?”
“My take?” He looked startled, then he frowned. “Isn’t that what you call a corrupt policeman’s bribe — his take?”
“Ah. Not quite.” No wonder he’d looked confused and unhappy. “We do say that a crooked cop is ‘on the take,’ yes. But the money that a cop gets when he’s on the take is called his ‘cut,’ I think. ‘What’s your take?’ means ‘What’s your impression, what’s your intuition?’ So, what’s your take on this shady art dealer, Felicia Kensington — could she have killed Stefan?”
He studied the biggest of the strawberries, then plucked it from the platter and bit off the lower half. “My take is, she’s a morceau de merde—a morsel of shit, you would say?”
I smiled at the translation. “Americans don’t say ‘morsel’ a lot. We tend to say ‘piece’ instead.”
“Okay, she’s a piece of shit,” he said, popping the rest of the strawberry in his mouth. “But I don’t think she’s the killer.”
“Because?”
“Because she’s a woman, for one thing. Women almost never kill. They only kill their husbands or lovers. Well, sometimes their kids, but that’s rare. Besides, this woman has an alibi. She’s been in Cairo for the past two weeks. Probably buying mummies or robbing tombs.”
“Okay, so we can probably rule her out. Who’s suspect number two?”
He crossed himself, then raised his eyebrows expectantly, waiting for some sort of response. I shook my head and shrugged. Looking disappointed that I’d not understood the clue, he said, “The pope.”
“The pope? The pope? As in the Holy Father in Rome? Holy smokes.” The inspector nodded, cheered up by my dramatic reaction. “Well, well. I’ll say this for Stefan — he might have been stupid, but he wasn’t guilty of thinking small, was he? That’s a damn big fish.”
Descartes wagged a finger of clarification. “Not the pope himself, I think. The fax number belongs to the Vatican, though. The Vatican Museum, to be precise.”
“I’ve been to the Vatican Museum,” I said. “Took me six hours to go through it, and I skipped a lot. I’m guessing it’s not a one-man operation. Any idea who Stefan was negotiating with?”
“Not yet. The wheels of the Vatican roll slowly.”
“Gosh, there’s a revelation.” He didn’t seem to get the pun.
“They have two different police forces. The Swiss Guard is there to protect the pope.”
“Like the Secret Service in the U.S.,” I said. “They protect the president.”
“Exactement. The other force is the Vatican police — they do everything else. But neither group will cooperate with me unless someone très important commands it. The Catholic Church has had too many scandals lately. They don’t want bloody hands from a murder.” His lips twitched in an ironic little smile. “En particulier a crucifixion.”
“That wouldn’t look so good,” I agreed. “But do you think it’s possible that someone at the Vatican Museum would want the bones enough to kill for them?”
He shrugged. “I’m no expert. There’s plenty of blood on the hands of the Church. The Crusades. The Inquisition. Sexual abuse and cover-ups. But would the Vatican kill to possess the bones of Christ — or to destroy them? Only God knows.”
I slathered cherry preserves on a croissant and took a bite; for some reason, I’d started imitating Descartes, who seemed unable to string together more than three sentences without refueling. “So what do you know about the third fish, the one in Charlotte? Is it the Institute for Biblical Science, the place that contacted me?”
“No, that is not the place, but maybe there is some connection. This is a church.”
“Catholic?” He shook his head. “Protestant? Why would a Protestant church in North Carolina want to buy the bones of Jesus?”
“It’s not typical Protestant, I think. It’s called the Church of Dominion and Prophecy. A church gigantesque—a megachurch, oui? — with twenty thousand people. Also radio and television stations. The preacher is named Jonah Ezekiel. Not his original name; he changed it. He calls himself ‘Reverend Jonah, Apostle and Prophet of the Apocalypse.’ He’s — how do you say it? — on the fluffy edge of crazy.”
“Lunatic fringe?”
“Exactement, lunatic fringe.”
“Why do you say that, Inspector?”
“He thinks the world will end soon.”
“I hate to say it, Inspector, but millions of Americans — like, forty percent — think the world is about to end. Almost half of Americans believe that the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world will happen by the year 2050.”
He held up a finger. “Ah, but this preacher — he says he knows exactement when these things will happen. God brought him to Heaven, he says, and gave him a special preview.” I had to admit, this was starting to sound fringy. “Two years ago, he tells everyone, ‘The Rapture happens in six months.’ So his followers quit their jobs to help him warn everyone. When the Rapture does not happen, does he say, ‘Sorry, I was wrong, I am an idiot’? Non! He says, ‘God gave me more time to save souls, so give me more money.’” He spat out a strawberry cap. “Morceau de merde.”
It was the same phrase—“piece of shit”—that he’d used about Felicia Kensington, the black-market art dealer.
“That isn’t all. He wants the world to end. Look, I’ll show you.” He pulled several folded pages from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed me the top one. It was a printout from the church’s Web site, advertising a series of upcoming sermons by Reverend Jonah titled “Signs of the End Times.” Most of the page was filled by an illustration in vivid color. The illustration was captioned by a quotation from the Gospel of Mark: “Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down…and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows…For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time…” At the center of the picture was an immense, shining cross rising from the smoldering ruins of shattered skyscrapers. In the smoky sky, winged angels hovered beneath the gates of Heaven, welcoming a handful of white-robed, haloed people streaming upward from the ruins. Underground, naked bodies writhed amid the flames of Hell; some were being tortured, and others were engaged in sexual acts that were graphic, degrading, and grotesque.
I handed the page back. “I don’t know which is more disturbing,” I said, “his eagerness for the world to end, or his fascination with pain and perversion.”
“He isn’t just waiting for the Apocalypse. He’s trying to speed it up.”
“Speed it up? How?”
Descartes took a sip of coffee. “For one thing, by creating red cows for Israel.”
I paused, my own cup halfway to my lips. “Red cows for Israel?”
“Oui, exactement. Red cows. For Israel.”