Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

Barbarossa and Company by Kathryn Gottlieb

On the last Monday in hot and gritty August, I found myself marooned, to all intents and purposes, on the island of Manhattan. In my pockets were my flight ticket back to Geneva, an ancient address book, and not much else. I hadn’t expected to stay more than a day. When I finally did get away, my pockets were bulging, my heart subverted, and my mind reeling.

Had she? Hadn’t she? Had I aided and abetted? As to what happened, some will consider me an opportunist and some something worse, but — outside of the White House, or should I say Washington? — where are the moralists? The moral, of course, are everywhere.

The deal that had me hanging involved, as usual, surplus electronic equipment of the kind used by the military all over the world. Three years ago I opened an office in Geneva, for those reasons correctly associated in the public mind with conducting a business from there rather than, say, Cleveland, Ohio. I signed my first contract there on my twenty-ninth birthday, and it is my recollection that I fully expected to be a millionaire at thirty. That didn’t happen — but one never knows, of course, about the future. Contrary to what Max told Anna, I am not a gun runner, and when I denied it, I told the truth. I do, however, sell equipment to governments you and I wouldn’t vote for. But then, so does the U.S. government, so I make no apologies.

I had flown into New York that morning to wind up a business deal, but nothing was right and nothing was ready. Contracts and equipment were promised again, this time for the thirtieth, and I was left with a week to kill. Cash was low and nothing urgent called me back so I decided to wait it out. There was one stroke of luck — my old friend Hal Pierce handed me the key to his apartment. Hal’s quarters occupy the front half of a reamed-out brown-stone. You know the kind of place — bare brick walls, dying house plants, chrome, glass, last week’s bread crumbs. The usual. Why do they do it? Why can’t they at least leave the plaster on the walls?

Hal was on vacation, headed for Cape Cod. As soon as he took off I got busy with the telephone.

Two years can make a difference. Hedi Blume now had an unlisted phone, and so did Mary Bell. John Fischer, whose gallery handles paintings for me, was in Canada. George Becker’s British secretary informed me in cutting tones that Mr. Becker was at the Vineyard. Toni Warren (female) didn’t answer. Tony Marano (male) didn’t answer. The whole world was out of town. Aggrieved, I walked out into the afternoon glare and into a place called Volstead’s Retreat — it’s a cute neighborhood — and picked up a bottle.

I was putting my change away when my eyes hit on a display of fine Holland gin — Bols Genever, in its brown earthen crocks — and I remembered Max Klinck.

There was someone to talk to after all.

Max is an incunabulist — for those of you not in the trade, a dealer in rare books and manuscripts. He is a towering, red-bearded Dutchman with blazing blue eyes and a wooden leg of the best bird’s-eye maple — which is, he assures me, much handsomer than the other. Max was a war casualty after the war ended. One day while playing with other children on the sandy beach of Oostmahom on the North Sea, he had the misfortune to trigger off a buried land mine. He was eight or nine at the time.

I find Max a genial man with no illusions about the world — it’s a bad place, he says, and he’s lucky to be in it. I was first introduced to him a couple of years ago in John Fischer’s gallery on one of his rare ventures away from East 74th Street, where, in the ordinary course of work, he handles some of the rarest and most beautiful books in the world. I can imagine, perhaps foolishly, no more satisfying life.

Max is clumsy on his crutches, and attracts every eye. It is no pleasure for him to go out in the world and he rarely leaves his desk. And that, at the end of a fast hot walk up Lexington Avenue, is where I found him — but only after a brief and curious episode which barely caught my attention at the time.

Reaching 74th Street, I paused in front of Max’s establishment to mop my forehead and collect myself for a moment before going in. The place is, like Hal’s, an old brownstone, but its antique and rotting splendor has so far escaped improvement. Max calls himself, for business purposes, “Barbarossa” — the name had been fixed beside the doorway in small bronze letters. I was taken aback a little to see that the letters had gone and in their place was a sign that said “Barbarossa and Company.” I shook my head. Was Max about to vanish too?

I was frowning at the words when the heavy door at the top of the steps flew open and a small man hurried down to the sidewalk. I’d have paid no attention to him if he hadn’t paid attention to me, attempting, as he brushed past, to conceal his face with a sudden, awkward lift of his hand.

I looked after him, curious. A little past middle age, heavy-featured, expensively tailored, vaguely familiar: not someone known to me, but someone well known. The name escaped me. No matter. What mattered was if Max was in.

I climbed the stairs, rang, and was admitted. The first floor is devoted to the sale of fine and rare books, and is presided over by staff. Max’s private domain, where treasures change hands, is up a flight of stairs. One of the first floor flunkeys rang ahead to announce my name and unlocked an iron gate toward the rear of the place. I mounted the mahogany-railed flight into Max’s worm-eaten paradise and there he was, behind his desk, beaming, bellowing a welcome, his eyes sparkling, the same old Max.

“Sit! Sit!” he commanded, and I did, first gazing all around with remembered pleasure. A fine place to work, of handsome proportions, dark paneled, shelved all around, smelling of leather and ancient paper and noble dust.

“Max, I envy you.”

He grinned at me. “Don’t be a damn fool. You’re fine?”

“I’m fine. You?”

He nodded, reached behind his chair, took from a shelf a crock of Holland gin and two ruby tumblers, and filled them. I took my glass and he took his. “Now,” he said, “tell me everything.”

What was he — friend? acquaintance? — I was never sure. In any category, good company. But, for all the surface sparkle, the wit and gratifying curiosity, Max runs deep, and I have never known what Max was thinking.

We talked through several refills: about my business, some gossip — what else can I call it? — about mutual friends. He described to me, in a tone of cordial condescension, some of the peculiar treasures that had lately come into his hands. Max says that I am illiterate, and by his standards that’s so. And then I remembered.

“Barbarossa and Company,” I said. “What’s that all about?”

“Ah! I have a partner. Wait, wait till you meet her. You will say I am the luckiest fellow in the world.”

Directly behind Max’s desk is a wall of the controlled-atmosphere room that serves as vault and workroom, where his earliest and most fragile wares are stored. Max swung around in his chair and directed a shout at the wall. “Anna!” And again, a good bellow, “Anna!” There was silence for a moment, then the door to the strongroom swung open and Max’s new partner stepped into the room.

She smiled at me. Yes, a beautiful woman. “Anneke. This is Peter Hessberg, whom I have not seen for two years. Anna Eykert.” She took a step forward and extended her hand to me, a good square hand. I grasped it.

Another tumbler appeared. Anna sat and we had gin all around. There was chitchat, and then Max said, “Peter has a most interesting profession.”

“Oh?”

“He is a gun runner.”

Anna’s eyes looked into mine. “Listen to him! Is that true?” Her voice was round and clear, with an undertone of amusement. The cadences were foreign.

“No.”

She shook her head. “I thought not. Max is a terrible liar. A terrible liar.” She looked at him fondly. A little unwarranted pang of jealousy pinched off my smile. Why was I jealous — what was Anna to me? Is there such a thing as jealousy at first sight?

Max was speaking. “Indeed a small world. Anna grew up in my own little village by the North Sea.”

“It is called Oostmahom,” said Anna. “Have you heard of it?”

“He has heard of it from me,” said Max. “Peter is the only man in America who has heard of Oostmahom.”

We talked on, of inconsequential things, while I stared at the woman from Oostmahom. She conformed to no conception of beauty that I consciously carried around with me, but she was beautiful just the same: a good body of the sturdy kind; a broad and well modeled face; long, heavy-lidded blue eyes under straight brows; and a marvelously shaped mouth. When she spoke, I couldn’t look away. Her hair was very fair, very thick, cut short — very Dutch. I told myself that she was stocky, square-jawed, and too old for me. My age, at least. And, of course, she belonged to Max, who said, “You’re looking thoughtful.”

I shrugged.

Anna asked me if I made my home in New York.

“Geneva.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Such an elderly city! Are you happy there? It is so cold. So grey! And the people — nobody speaks!”

“Money speaks,” said Max.

“Ah, that’s dreadful,” said Anna. “It is rude. Don’t pay any attention to him, Mr. Hessberg. He has no humor. No funniness. He lacks good qualities.”

“Peter sometimes deals in paintings,” said Max. She shot him a look — startled, I thought — which he did not return. “Tell Anna about your business. It is interesting.”

The units I purchase from the U.S. military I ship to Amsterdam to my friend Piet Bonta at P. Bonta Electrische, N.V., where they are tested, rebuilt, and shipped out to my clients — in most cases, the so-called third-world governments, who pay me a long time after with first-world money. All this I described, briefly, for Anna’s benefit, omitting the problems.

When I finished, she said, “I think Max is right. You are a gun runner. I see no difference. One of those terrible people who keep the world in a ferment.”

“You might not approve of my customers, but they’re legitimate governments, all of them. I don’t deal with terrorist organizations.”

Max raised his coppery eyebrows. “All governments are terrorist organizations.”

“Don’t be childish,” said Anna, laughing.

“It’s true,” said Max. “Someday you will agree with me. Now, Peter, tell Anna about the paintings.”

From time to time business takes me to Africa; the new nations — uncomfortable places, but they fascinate me. In the last couple of years paintings, along with other heirlooms, have begun to surface; pathetic, abandoned collections, once the property of families established for generations in colonial Africa. Those families are gone; most left empty-handed, the victims of upheaval. Some of the paintings belonged to the dead. Most are the sort of thing you couldn’t give away just a few years back: landscapes, genre — nineteenth century, most of them, modest, agreeable works. Today there’s a market for them. What comes my way I ship to New York, to John Fischer’s gallery.

Anna listened to me, frowning. “I think it is sad,” she said.

Max, on the other hand, looked pleased. “I think Providence has sent our friend here today.”

“No. No, Max. I know what you are thinking.”

“He has a whole week to waste. Surely he doesn’t want to spend it in this grimy city!”

“Then let him spend it in Timbuktu. Oh, Max—” she clasped her hands “—I am not happy about this!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked them.

Max leaned forward, his powerful arms resting on the polished surface of his admirable desk. “I have promised to pick up a painting in Amsterdam and bring it back here this week. Nothing out of the ordinary — a little nineteenth century landscape, the kind of thing you have just been describing.

“I am doing this as a favor for a client who is important to me. He has formed a sentimental attachment to this painting — and he must have it at once.” Max laughed shortly. “I can tell you, he is a man who is accustomed to getting what he wants. So, I have very foolishly undertaken to pick it up for him myself. Peter, I don’t want to go. I don’t know when I was last out of the city. Or in the city.” He nodded in the direction of the crutches propped against the wall behind his desk. “I totter through the streets like a falling building. Heads turn.”

“Can’t Anna—”

“I need her here. Listen to me, Peter. New York in August is an abomination. You don’t want to stay here. I will pay you a nice fee — let’s say ten percent of the selling price — and all expenses, of course. You’ll pick up the painting from the dealer, a man named Gerrit Till. He is ten, twelve miles outside the city, that’s all. And you’ll bring it here.”

“What kind of money are we talking about?”

He grimaced. “I am almost ashamed to tell you. My selling price is twenty thousand dollars. As you will see, too much money for this little painting. For your share? Two thousand.”

“Do you mind telling me how much you’re paying for it?”

“Not at all. After all, you will pay the dealer for us. Two thousand dollars, that’s all. In cash. It’s worth a little more to him that way.”

“Is the buyer that fellow who was leaving when I got here?”

Anna’s eyes widened. “What?”

Max shook his head. “No, no. You would not know this man, you have not seen him here. Who it is doesn’t matter. What do you say?”

“What’s the catch?”

“None.” His gaze was a model of candor. “This is not a painting that the Netherlands Historical Commission is interested in. There are no restrictions against its sale or export. I promise you there is nothing to worry about. If I could move around more easily I’d go myself. And I’ll tell you the truth — Anna had a little run-in with the commission a few years ago. So I prefer not to send her. Why stir up old complications?”

A plausible tale. Did I believe it?

Again Anna glanced at him and for some moments their eyes carried on a mutual discussion. Then she said, almost whispering, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Anneke, my love. This is nonsense!”

Anneke-my-love shook her head, and the fine fair hair flew back and forth. “No.”

“You’ll do it?” Max asked me.

Anna’s blue eyes held mine, willing me to refuse.

“I’ll do it.”

It was agreed I would go on Wednesday, as the painting wouldn’t be ready before then. Max said there had been a little damage to a corner of the landscape — no more than a square inch was involved — and Gerrit Till, the dealer, who was fortunately an expert in restoration, was doing the necessary patch-up. I was not to be concerned — the buyer was aware of the state of the canvas.

“Gerrit’s a fine fellow,” Max told me. “Interesting, too. An Indonesian background. A good contact for you. Maybe someday you’ll do business with him yourself — who knows?”

Anna left with me. It had begun to rain, bringing up a strong smell of wet stone and city dust from the sidewalks.

The afternoon had grown prematurely dark. Here and there the lights of store windows were reflected on the pavement; the city looked cosy and glistening. I walked beside Anna for a block or two toward the East River. She seemed distracted and had nothing to say. She disliked me, I thought, or distrusted me. I stopped under a street lamp at the corner of Third Avenue and put a hand on her arm. “Why don’t you want me to go?”

She shrugged. “Max knows that I would be glad to do it, but he says I mustn’t. He is stubborn, something terrible. It’s a waste of money to send you, that’s all.”

“That’s not the only reason. I think I ought to know.”

“I’ve told you, there’s nothing else. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll go along without you.”

“Why should I mind?” In the harsh light of the street lamp she looked a little older than she had in Max’s softly-lit domain, but only by an hour or two. Max’s property.

I bent my head and kissed her forehead. I said, “I’ll bet you were a beautiful woman.”

“I am a beautiful woman,” said Anna serenely. She patted my arm and walked off down the street.

Forty-eight hours later I turned the key in the door of my apartment in Amsterdam and threw open the windows to the familiar maritime air. For the past two years I’ve rented the ground floor of a skinny old house on Verimus Straat that belongs to a youngish widow who lives on the upper floors. We maintain a pleasant, if formal, relationship. Our paths cross occasionally in the little entrance hall we share, and when they do we talk about the weather. My part of the house consists of a sunny, bow-windowed front room that serves me as office and sitting room and a small bedroom opening off it. At the very back there’s a tiny kitchen, and at the back of that a window looks out over a walled garden. A narrow road, little used, runs past the end of the garden, and beyond lies a stretch of low, open land — whence the sea-tasting breezes. I have no staff working for me there, but I keep duplicates of the files on current contracts. It’s a useful, peaceful place, and quite handy to Piet Bonta’s factory.

I slept until mid-afternoon, then I drove out in the direction of the coast along the road that took me to Ihmuiden, turning off to the north, as instructed, just past the ISOL Works on a potholed road through land that appeared unstable and was surely empty. Over my head a pewter sky hung heavy, wide, and unsupported — there appeared to be nothing to keep it from moving downward in a swift, enveloping motion. I told myself not to be fanciful. I had been under a lot of grey Dutch skies and none had ever fallen on my head.

Still, land and weather were oppressive, and my worries returned. I asked myself why they had sent me here and why I’d been fool enough to come. Besides the cash, of course. It must be very nice to be rich and not have to do foolish things for money.

Five miles beyond the turnoff I came to a cluster of little houses, then emptiness again, and then, alone in the fields, Gerrit Till’s house, a small, ill-proportioned place too tall for its base, standing in a stretch of empty fenland. I pulled to the side of the road and got out of the car. The place was dead quiet except for the whine of the wind in the wires over my head. What a place to live! I crossed the road, climbed the steps, and rang the bell.

Gerrit Till opened the door and I recalled Max’s reference to an Indonesian background. Dark Oriental eyes, sparkling with welcome, looked out at me from a round Dutch face, surmounted by a thatch of fair and greying hair.

“I’m Peter Hessberg.”

“Of course! I am expecting you. Come in!” His voice was deep, his English, like Anna’s, without accent but European in its cadences. He showed me into a room jammed with books and papers and heavy Dutch furniture. There was a smell of turpentine in the air. Business, said Gerrit Till, could wait a moment. First we must have a drink together — and he poured the inevitable portions of Genever. I accepted mine, smiling, very much at my ease — I found him charming, likeable.

He was talkative. How were Max and Anna? What did I think of the art market? Did I know there was quite a market suddenly in the paintings of Albert Boertson? Very odd. What did I think, was there any merit in them? It was so very good of me to come. He hoped I had had a pleasant journey. We talked, we drank. “Now,” he said, “if you will excuse me for a moment.”

He went out through a door toward the rear of the room, shutting it behind him. There would be a kitchen back there, I supposed — the usual layout. I realized with surprise that we were not alone in the house. I heard his voice, at least I supposed it to be his — just a murmur through the heavy door — and then a woman laughed, and I thought I heard her say es niet stom, es niet stom! — don’t be silly! — and then a man’s voice, his, no doubt, the words indistinguishable.

A moment later he came back into the room. The painting was under his arm. He placed it across the arms of a chair and stooped to look at it, grunting.

“I’m getting to be an old man, with old complaints,” he said with a laugh. “Would you believe it? I had a letter today from my mother, who is in Soerabaya. She worries and she scolds me — she thinks I am a boy still, a boy who does not take care of himself. She is very old now. I suppose I will always seem like a child to her. Well, come, let us examine this painting.”

I moved to his side.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

I nodded. It was very nice. An ordinary, pleasant landscape, sentimental in the way of the past century, and somehow very attractive. A quiet scene — blue sky, broken clouds above a broad valley, and in the foreground a wide-branched oak and a cow placidly cropping grass.

“Behold the cow,” said Gerrit Till. “I cannot look at her without wanting to sleep. All summer afternoon is in that cow.”

I agreed, laughing. “It’s very well done.”

“You realize that there is a little patch in the corner. Max knows about this, of course.”

“He told me you had had to do some work on it.”

“Can you smell it? Poof!” He wrinkled his nose. “You do not mind the smell of turpentine?”

“No, I don’t mind it.”

“It should vanish soon enough.”

He then disappeared himself through the door at the rear, returning with paper and string, and proceeded to wrap the painting neatly. “Voilà!” he said. “She is ready to travel.”

I was leaving when I remembered the money. He hadn’t mentioned it. I dug it out of my pocket — a packet of American bills of mixed denominations — and handed it to him.

He took it, smiling.

I said, “It doesn’t seem enough.”

“That’s true. It’s worth a little more. Max, of course, will get more. But I owe Max some favors. This is fine. I am satisfied.”

I drove back to Amsterdam. The weather hadn’t improved, but my spirits were considerably higher. Why not, I thought, have dinner with Piet Bonta? There was no reason to conceal the fact that I was in Amsterdam. Everything was on the up-and-up.

Piet, as I mentioned earlier, is head of the plant that reprocesses most of the equipment I buy and sell. We met at seven at a place run by Pauli BenBroek on the Reguliergraat — nothing fancy, but you get good food there, and plenty of it. We talked for a while about this and that. Maia and the kids were fine, the problems were almost solved with the last shipment of battery chargers I had shipped over — an ordinary conversation. And then Piet, shaking the sauce bottle over his rice, said that he didn’t know what the world was coming to. “You would think,” he said, “that at least outside the city you would be safe in your own home. But now I don’t know. Did you hear the radio?”

“I haven’t had it on. What happened?”

“Some fellow was shot to death this afternoon right in his own home. A harmless old man, it sounds like. Perhaps not old — I don’t remember.”

“It’s terrible, all right. Sounds like New York. Was it a robbery? You know,” I said, waving a fork at him, pontificating my way through — had I known it — my last carefree moment, “the way to cut down on this sort of thing is to get rid of the fences. As I understand it, you can place your order for your favorite brand of TV or a yellow Toyota and they’ll pick it up for you in twenty-four hours.”

“This wasn’t a TV,” said Piet. “They think a picture was stolen.” I put my fork down. “A painting?”

“Yes. I think they said it was an oil painting. This fellow’s body was found by a woman who comes late in the afternoon to cook his dinner and tidy up. It seems he was an art dealer. She had seen him working on a painting — touching up the frame, she thinks, or putting varnish on. Is that possible?”

“Yes.”

“Well, whatever it was, she noticed him working on it yesterday afternoon. Nothing of great value, she says — a picture with a cow in it, ordinary stuff. But this woman says that today it’s not there.”

“Maybe he sold it.”

“That could be. Or maybe some hoodlums who broke in looking for a color TV took the painting instead. God knows! In any case, the fellow was shot and he’s dead. It’s a terrible world when you’re not safe in your own house.”

“Where did this happen?”

“It was out along one of those roads in the direction of Ihmuiden. I’ll tell you the truth, I never cared for the area myself. It’s desolate. But people live there. There’s no accounting for tastes.”

I pushed my plate away.

“You’re not hungry?”

I shook my head. “I had a late lunch.”

“Oh.”

“Did the radio say anything else?”

“About the killing? Oh yes, it was full of it. Let’s see. An old lady who lives down the road, closer in to the city, told the police she saw a little blue car going down the road in the afternoon. She thinks it must have come from the dead man’s house since no one lives beyond. A blue station wagon. Don’t ask me how she saw it. Maybe she has a telescope. Wonderful witnesses, old men and women. They sit all day in their parlor windows and witness.” He made a wry face; the clear blue eyes caught mine for a moment with a look of amusement. “That’s how we’ll end our days, old friend. Witnesses.”

“I wonder—”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. As you say, hoodlums out for a lark. Or a killing. Well. Have you finished?”

“Oh, yes.” Piet patted his stomach. “No dessert. I promised Maia to take off five pounds. It’s the only birthday present she wants. I’d rather give her a diamond necklace.” He pushed back his chair. “Will I see you at the plant tomorrow morning?”

“I doubt it. Not this trip. I have business to do at the bank and then I’m due back in New York.”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “All right. Let’s go.” He walked out with me to the cobbled road beside the canal and stood talking odds and ends of business, leaning with one arm braced against the hood of the car. Suddenly he paused, smiled, and said, “Aha! Here’s a little blue station wagon right under my elbow! You didn’t drive to Ihmuiden today, yourself?”

I smiled too. “Damned if I can remember. You’d better watch your fingerprints.”

When he had covered a dozen yards in the direction of his own car he looked back and called to me, “Gerrit something. Do you know the name?”

I shook my head.

The painting seemed to be what it seemed to be. I examined it, my door locked, blinds drawn, for a quarter of an hour, tilting it this way and that, running my fingers over the surface. I remembered Gerrit Till’s wiry body crouched down in front of the painting, his voice saying something about the cow and summer afternoons. Dead. I frowned at the painting. No one would have killed for it. I reminded myself that no one had. The proof of that was here in my hands. I had the painting, and I had paid for it fair and square. And yet, an odd-chance break-in? I didn’t believe it. The police didn’t believe it, either. They were looking for a blue station wagon.

I covered the picture with a blanket, stepped out into the hallway, and shouted up the unlit staircase. After a moment a light went on and Mevrouw Hendrix appeared on the landing above. She was clutching an old bathrobe, a man’s robe, about her. She looked apprehensive, a little absurd, and very pretty. “What’s wrong?” she asked me.

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m sorry to disturb you. Do you have a flashlight?”

“Has your electric gone off?”

“Nothing like that. I just want to look at something.”

“I’ll get it for you.” She came down the stairs, crowded past me in the narrow hallway. I allowed myself to observe all those attributes to which in her case I normally closed my eyes — the fine-grained skin, the silky hair now falling over her shoulders, the desirable figure. I reminded myself that this was no time to abrogate, as they say at The Hague, my nonintervention policy. I heard her rattling things in the little pantry behind the stairs and then she was back with a square plastic flashlight which she put into my hands. After a considering glance which met my eyes, she climbed the stairs.

I waved the flashlight at her. “I’ll bring this up to you later.”

“No, thank you. When you are finished using it, put it on the stairs. I’ll pick it up in the morning.”

“But—”

“We have a perfect relationship,” she said firmly. “Let’s not tinker with it. We meet, we talk about the weather, we will go on that way.”

“Tina—”

She closed the door.

The flashlight revealed what ordinary lamplight had failed to disclose, minute elevations and depressions in the clear blue patches of sky. It was the only anomaly I could find. The brushwork in the area should have been smooth, and it was, but something lay underneath. Gerrit would have been wiser to fill the sky with storm clouds — the busy brushwork would have concealed the brushstrokes underneath. But then, of course, the cow’s afternoon would have been spoiled.

I spent a restless night, pacing through the little rooms, gazing alternately across the dark salt meadows at the back and out into the street, where foot traffic, none of it sober, went on through the night. I kept my windows locked, carried the steel-tipped roller of a window shade for a weapon, and knew myself for a fool. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that Gerrit Till’s death was connected with the painting, that Max and Anna had sent me there to avoid danger to themselves, and that the painting now resting under my mattress was a national treasure. I felt a strong urge to get rid of it — to dump it in the nearest canal — and the nearest canal wasn’t far. But I can’t drown a kitten and I can’t drown a painting. Art lives.

Near dawn I dozed off in the armchair in the bay window, and when I awoke — don’t ask me how the mind works — I knew the name of the man who had walked quickly and furtively out of Max’s doorway. We have all seen his picture in the papers. Ambrose Voyt — multimillionaire, art collector, a man of unknown origins and manifest destiny.

Ambrose Voyt, it is said, buys nothing worth less than half a million. I looked at the time. It was half past five, and the house-fronts opposite were pink in the early light. I got to my feet, made myself a cup of coffee, drank it, tore the paper backing off the picture, studied it, killed time till the stores opened, went out, returned the car, wasn’t arrested, came back on foot with packages, and said goodbye to the cow.

“Thank God you’re back,” said Max. “You are back, aren’t you? Where are you calling from?”

“I’m back.”

“I expected to see you two days ago. What happened?”

I told him I’d had a number of things to take care of.

“Do you have the painting with you?”

“Yes.”

There was a sigh of relief. “It is charming, is it not?”

“Charming.”

“You’ll bring it right around?”

I said I was afraid I couldn’t do that.

There was a throbbing silence, and then Max said, in a voice I hardly recognized, “What’s wrong?”

I told him I thought perhaps there’d been a little misunderstanding and that I’d be there shortly to talk things over.

I let an hour go by and then walked uptown. Max nodded when I came into his presence and motioned me to a chair. He was pale, and — it may have been my imagination — his hair seemed to have lost its coppery gleam. Anna was there, composed and unsmiling. No one could be beautiful, I thought, who didn’t look like Anna. Moments passed in a heavy silence and then Max spoke. “I hope you’re not going to tell me something has happened to that painting. It’s not damaged?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“And you brought it back with you?” I nodded. “Good, then!” He forced a smile. “It’s the money, is it? I’ll give you your money and then you’ll bring it here. How’s that?”

I said nothing.

“Or perhaps you’d like us to pick it up. Anna will go back with you to wherever you are staying, and perhaps you would not mind to see her safely back here.”

“It’s not that simple.”

Max stiffened and looked away — not at Anna, just away, then back. “Perhaps you will tell us what it is that is not simple.”

“Our arrangement, Max. Ten percent—”

“Ah!” He smiled. “Perhaps I have been ungenerous. And of course we are very grateful. Shall we say fifteen? Although I must say I would not have expected this of you. After all, we made our bargain.”

“Ten percent’s fine. Ten percent of the selling price.”

“Yes. As we agreed. Two thousand dollars.”

“Forty.”

“Oh!” said Anna.

“Explain yourself,” said Max, in a voice of ice.

I settled back in my chair. “Let’s have some schnapps, Max — then we can talk like civilized people. And you don’t have to worry — I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t already know.”

Max reached for the bottle on the shelf behind him, not taking his eyes off me. Anna handed me a tumbler, staring at me from an immeasurable distance.

I waited until she was back in her chair. “Gerrit Till is dead.”

Anna’s hand flew to cover her mouth. Max looked wary. “Murdered.”

“No,” said Anna. “Oh, please, no!” Her hand dropped to her lap. The dismay in her voice and in her eyes was real.

I felt a rush of anger. “Do you know that his mother is living? An old, old woman living out in the Indies somewhere? Her heart will be broken.” I looked from one to the other of them. “It was a wicked thing to kill that man.”

“Yes, it was,” said Max. “Tell us what happened.”

I described what the broadcast had said, in particular the statement of the housekeeper, who had found the body at about five o’clock when she turned up to fix the murdered man’s dinner. The morning newspaper had described her as grief-stricken.

“Oh, it’s so sad,” said Anna. “It’s so sad.”

I said, “You set me up, you two.”

“What?” said Max. “What?”

“I’ve had plenty of time to think things out. You bought that painting for Ambrose Voyt—” Max’s jaw tightened “—and I figure that makes it worth half a million. But I can’t be sure, so let’s say, at a conservative guess, four hundred thousand. All right? At a hundred percent markup you would have had to pay Gerrit Till two hundred thousand — a quarter of a million, maybe. The two thousand you gave me to hand him was to pacify me, not to pay him. He laughed when I gave it to him. Now I understand why.”

“This is fascinating,” said Max. “Here — let me fill your glass.”

“No, thank you. You gave him his quarter million, waited for me to pick up the painting — which I so obligingly did for you — shot him, and took back your money. Ambrose Voyt’s money.”

“But why send you?” said Max. “Why didn’t I do it all myself?” He smiled at me. “You’re my good friend, Peter, but you’re a crazy fellow, too.”

“You sent me—” I groped for a reason “—to get the merchandise through customs. To be seen. I am known to be a dealer, after all, in a small way. To take the heat off, Max! Why do I have to tell you this? You know it better than I do. If they had picked me up, who would have believed I didn’t kill him? I was there. My car was seen.”

“This is nonsense.” He poured himself a gin, drank it, and set the tumbler down with a sigh. “That’s better. Look, this has all been a great shock, you know? Gerrit was a fine man. What has happened is terrible. And you — I am afraid you are suffering from an overwrought imagination. The painting is what it is, no more — a pretty little landscape — and it reminds Ambrose Voyt of the farming country where he was born — somewhere in Eastern Europe, I think. He’s a sentimental man. The picture is worth twenty thousand to him, and half that to anyone else. Less. Everything else is fantasy.”

I got to my feet.

Anna spoke. “Max and I have been here in the city the whole time you were gone. The whole time.” Her voice was earnest, and her eyes shining with the will to be believed.

I walked to the door at the head of the stairs.

“Where do I reach you?” Max’s voice was calm, but I heard the turbulence underneath. It reminded me of the blue sky Gerrit Till had painted over the unknown work.

“I’ll call you tomorrow after the banks are open,” I said.

Max came thumping into Hal’s apartment a little after half past ten in the morning. Anna was with him. I indicated the sofa. He handed Anna his crutches and they both sat down.

He gazed around the room as though he hadn’t a thing on his mind. “This is your friend’s apartment?”

I nodded. “It’s hideous, isn’t it?”

He looked at me for confirmation. “Who would do this to such a handsome old house?”

He turned to Anna.

“Oh, Max,” she said faintly, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

But Max was himself again. His hair had regained its fire. “That painting over your chair, Peter. Behind your chair, should I say? Dreadful!”

I turned my head and squinted up at the painting: broad black slashes crossing a dead-white ground. Up and down, left and right. Zip-zap.

“A poor man’s Kline,” said Max. “And if I am not mistaken, a left-handed painter.” He narrowed his eyes. “Who is it, Peter? Can you tell me?”

I obligingly swiveled around again. “ ‘P.H.,’ ‘P.L.,’ something like that.”

“Peyell?” He shrugged. “It’s not familiar.”

“Please, Max,” said Anna. “Can’t we do what we came to do and get out of here?”

“Of course,” said Max. “Peter, the painting.”

“The money.”

He brought out a sheaf of bills and placed them on the table beside the sofa. “Two thousand,” he said. “We’ll forget yesterday’s nonsense.”

“Forty.”

“No,” said Max. “I’m sorry Gerrit was killed. May I remind you, I have known him longer than you. And I’m sorry for his mother as well. She is a fine woman — no one should have to suffer so. But what happened has nothing to do with Anna or with me, nothing whatsoever. My dear friend, I must insist that you hand over the painting.”

I shook my head.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Anna jumped to her feet. “Max will give you the money, the forty thousand. All you are asking. We deceived you about the value of the painting, that’s true — but you wouldn’t have brought it out if we hadn’t, would you? You know you wouldn’t! We had no intention to place you in jeopardy and we didn’t! We didn’t! The customs people didn’t make any trouble, did they? What happened was a coincidence, a terrible coincidence! Unless—” a look of the remotest amusement crossed her face “—you didn’t do something foolish, did you?”

That wasn’t worth an answer and it didn’t get one.

“Max — pay him. You promised me — you promised me.”

“No,” Max said. “He has not a shred of evidence. Of course—” he looked at me “—the blackmailer is in a position of power. Accusation is a powerful weapon, a bludgeon. I assure you I understand that. But I repeat — you have no evidence.”

“Evidence can be gathered,” I told him. “Let’s say I start with the passenger lists of airlines flying into Schiphol on Tuesday.”

“I doubt if they will be made available to you.”

“The police will have no trouble getting hold of them.”

“Max, I beg you. He is crazy. He will make endless trouble.” Anna was staring at the floor, all color gone from her face.

Max looked at her for a long moment, a peculiar slanting look under half-lowered lids. “All right, Peter,” he said in a toneless voice. “I agree to your terms. Let’s have it.”

“The money, if you don’t mind.”

He reached into a pocket, and this time the roll of bills was considerably thicker. He threw them onto the little table with a gesture of contempt, then put out a hand and fanned the money across the surface. He didn’t remove his hand. “Don’t touch it.” There was no emotion in his voice, but a nerve jumped spasmodically under his eye. “I’ll have the painting first. You are to understand that this is your commission at ten percent of approximate value. That is all it is. It is neither an admission nor a coverup. It is an adjustment of price and an abatement of a nuisance.”

“Fine.”

“Let’s have it then.” He placed himself between me and the table, unsteady on his feet but managing without the crutches, which Anna was holding with a white-knuckled grasp.

I turned away from them and lifted the poor man’s Kline down from the wall.

“Oh,” said Anna.

“That’s it?”

“It’s there. Under your landscape, where you buried it.”

“If you have damaged it!” His eyes were bulging. “It is priceless!”

“If your landscape didn’t do it any harm, then my small effort didn’t hurt it either,” I told him. He opened his mouth and shut it again. “Tell me,” I went on, “how did you protect the painting when Gerrit painted over it? That is — was — his landscape?” I smiled at them. “Gone now, I’m afraid.”

Anna’s voice was vibrant with relief. “It’s overpainted on a styrene wrap. Three-millimeter. It’s a trick to get it to take the paint, of course. Gerrit knew what to do.” At the mention of his name, she burst into tears.

I looked at Max. “What’s under it?”

“You don’t want to know,” said Max. He took his crutches and they left without another word. Anna carried the painting.

I picked up the money from the table and went to the door to close it. Max and Anna were standing just inside the old fashioned vestibule. I saw Max shift his crutches, then reach out and brush the tears from Anna’s cheeks with his strong, ruddy fingers. Then he leaned down and murmured something very low. Anna smiled. The heavy glass door muffled her words, but I heard the familiar rise and fall of her voice. “I’m all right,” I think I heard her say. “Really, I’m all right.”

They left.

I told myself I wasn’t stealing, only demanding a fair return on a business deal. Nor was I concealing a crime. I had no shred of evidence in my possession, only a moral certainty; some words not clearly overheard and a theory that could indeed have fit the case and was quite possibly wrong. And Max, of course, had given me the money. I closed the door and turned back, a sour old man of thirty-two, wondering what the use of money was anyway.

I finished up my business in New York and flew back to Geneva.

I keep thinking of Anna, standing in the vestibule, crying. What if I’m wrong? Is it possible for a woman with such a broad, calm brow, such eyes, such lips, to murder a decent man — or any man — in cold blood, even for a substantial sum of money? I tell myself it isn’t. And yet, there is Anna’s trick of repeating her words, and the recollection of a voice, a murmur, behind a heavy door — someone saying to Gerrit Till, in the last hour of his life, es niet stom — don’t be silly — and saying it again.

I’ll be back in New York in October. I’ll ask her to have dinner with me, just the two of us. We’ll talk all evening, quite possibly all night, and Anna will tell me all I want to know.

But how much do I really want to know?

Maybe we’ll just talk about the weather.

But I should know the truth, shouldn’t I? The truth is an absolute good.

Es niet stom. I’d rather have Anna.