“Just now? Mr. Ryan for Jessica.”
“How did it go?”
“Couldn’t have been better if we wrote the script.” Then, quickly and in a lowered voice, “Call me later, Eric.” And in a brighter voice, “Is that you, Jessica?”
From Dublin, Eric drove in a rented Ford to Monaghan, where he spent the night at the Nuremore Hotel. The following morning, he crossed the border into Northern Ireland and drove to the airport at Belfast, where Tony Saxe was waiting for him at the main cab ranks.
With Saxe tracing their route on an Automobile Club map, they circled the gray stone mass of the city with its armored cars and sandbagged intersections and drove south and east for thirty miles to the town of Ardglass and the port of St. John’s Point.
Simon Ethelroyd’s warehouse, a long, single story building with boarded up windows, was squeezed between two open produce markets several blocks from High Street, facing a railroad marshalling yard, power cranes, and truck scales.
The proprietor of Ethelroyd Enterprises (thus read the paint-flecked sign on the single front door of the warehouse) greeted them in an office acrid with smoke from a coal-burning stove. The room was small, crowded with packing cases, a rolltop desk and several files.
“Sit down, sit down, we don’t stand on ceremony here,” Ethelroyd said, waving them to a pair of chairs.
A tall, obese figure in a blue porter’s smock, Ethelroyd’s eyes were like the tips of daggers deep within the rolls of flesh that bunched up from his ruddy cheeks. His hair was thick and black, and his sideburns came down like jagged scimitars to meet beneath his chin. Ethelroyd sat in an armchair beside the desk and lit a thin, black cigar. When it was drawing well, he looked through the film of smoke and said, “I’ll have the photographs now, if you please.”
Tony Saxe gave him a thick envelope, and Ethelroyd dumped the color prints onto his desk, arranging them in tidy patterns with surprisingly deft movements of his puffy hands.
Opening a drawer, he removed a magnifying glass, leaning forward to peer through it at the colorful photographs of furniture and art objects from the salons, halls and gardens of Dalworth’s estate. Ethelroyd’s breathing was heavy and labored. With each inhalation his stomach swelled forcefully against his loose smock and collapsed when the wind wheezed from his lungs like a hiss of air from a punctured inner tube.
Eric glanced at his watch. “I’d like to get this business settled promptly, Mr. Ethelroyd.”
“Of course, of course. But begging your pardon, I’d like to satisy myself that the articles are genuine.”
“You’ll find everything just as we’ve represented it,” Eric said.
“I’ll be the judge of that, if you gentlemen don’t mind.”
Tony Saxe said, “You come well recommended, Ethelroyd. Buffy Cappella told us you were one of the best.”
“Very kind of him, I’m sure.”
“Yeah. What was the last job you did for him? It was hash, wasn’t it? Morocco, then bills of lading laundered here at St. John’s and shipped off to Copenhagen?”
Ethelroyd placed the magnifying glass with a decisive gesture on his desk, straightened, and looked from Tony Saxe to Eric, a malicious hostility glittering in his small eyes. “It seems Buffy has developed a bloody big mouth, doesn’t it? I trust you gentlemen haven’t succumbed to that affliction...”
“Now listen to me,” Eric said. “I’ve got two things to say, Mr. Ethelroyd. The first is that this is a cash transaction. Not an article leaves Easter Hill until we have the agreed-upon sums of money in hand. That is the number one condition and it’s not negotiable. The second point I want to make is—”
“Hold on with your points and conditions,” Ethelroyd said, standing so abruptly that his chair rocked and teetered on its castings. His cheeks were flushed and his breath whistled in and out of his mouth. “I’m not going to tell you fine Yankee gentlemen some of the problems we’re up against, certain obstacles which in your innocence I daresay you haven’t even considered. Come with me, please.”
Opening a door at the rear of his office, he stepped aside and gestured them to proceed, the sweep of his arm eloquent with sardonic servility.
They entered the main area of Ethelroyd’s warehouse, a vast structure stocked with tiers of dismantled furniture — chairs, tables, chests; bins of finials, brass hardware, hasps and hinges; shelves of carved arms and legs and fretwork filigrees; rolls of damask and brocades; and a brightly lighted counter, where three brawny men in turtleneck sweaters and leather aprons were working at what looked to Eric like an antique furniture assembly line.
With heavy sarcasm, Ethelroyd said, “Please have the goodness to attend to me, gentlemen. If you think we’re a gang of smash-and-grab artists, think again. The nannies and maids and old butlers will have paid loving attention to those objects of art at Easter Hill for many years. They will miss them, as surely as if a baby were snatched from a cradle. So understand me well.” Ethelroyd slapped two fingers resoundingly into the palm of his hand. “Each object we take has to be replaced by a reasonable substitute.” Gesturing at the shelves and bins of his warehouse, Ethelroyd said, “We’ll prepare the facsimiles here and they’ll pass muster long enough to give us any lead time we will need.”
“So what’s the big deal?” Tony Saxe said. “It’s what we’re paying you for.”
“Then let me explain something else to you bloody Yanks. You’ve come here to a country at war and expect an operation like this to go off like a piece of cake. Well, let me disabuse you of your naive expectations. First of all—” Again, Ethelroyd slapped his plump fingers into his palm. “First, I’ve got to take my lorries twenty miles west of Dungannon to cross the border. A little exercise which means paying off the following: the Ulster Constabulary, Irish Provos, the bloody Brits, customs agents on both sides, and probably the goddamn Irish Republican Army when we get into Eire — any or all of which will shoot us squarely in the ass if there’s the slightest slip, if anything goes sour. In addition to which there’s an expert forger to pay off for lading bills, a cargo master here on the dock, and a mate and captain on the ship that takes our goods to Liverpool.”
He turned and looked at them directly, his chest heaving, a film of perspiration beading his forehead. “So don’t try telling me my business, Yanks. Just don’t try it!”
Eric said smoothly, “I’d suggest you get yourself in hand, Ethelroyd.” Pointing at the man’s stomach, he said, “All that blubber pressing against your heart isn’t doing you any good. I imagine you’re already having the odd dizzy spell. And a second tip for your own benefit — don’t ever interrupt me again!”
The laborers had stopped their work to watch the mounting tension between their employer and the Americans.
“I told you I had two things to say,” Eric said. “You heard the first. Now you better pay damned close attention to the second. Buffy Cappella gave us three names to check out and yours wasn’t on the top of the list. So if you have any more reservations or complaints, we’ll consider this meeting over and done with. Clear enough?”
After a moment of silence, Ethelroyd’s eyes slid away from Eric’s and focused on the backs of his thick hands. “My doctor talked to me about the weight,” he said, in a voice shaded with conciliation. “He doesn’t take into consideration that I’m heavy-boned and need a lot of nutriments.”
“That’s the trouble with doctors. They seldom see the whole picture.”
“You’re right there, Mr. Griffith. I’ll tell you what. You gentlemen will come back around tea time, I’ll give you estimates on the whole project then, all details worked out, type of currencies preferred and denominations.”