Hot Mahogany

39

Stone stared at the secretary. He turned and looked at Barton.

“What do you mean, it isn’t yours?”

“I thought I was pretty clear,” Barton said.

“This is the secretary that was locked in Charlie Crow’s storage locker. It was the only thing in there.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Barton said. “It’s quite beautiful, but it just isn’t mine. This piece is a copy of the Newport secretary. It was manufactured in Charleston, South Carolina, sometime between eighteen ninety and nineteen ten. The quality of the mahogany isn’t anything like that of my secretary, and the company built more than three hundred copies over the twenty-year period, more than half of which survive. I could take it down to my shop and get seventy, seventy-five thousand dollars for it. Anybody who paid more would be an idiot.”

“How do you know all that?” Dino asked.

Barton crooked a finger, led them behind the piece and pointed at a brass plate that gave the name and address of the manufacturer and a number, 241.

Dino directed a withering glance at Stone. “So, under your sterling leadership, we stole the wrong secretary.”

“That’s not fair, Dino,” Cantor said. “After all, we didn’t even take all the wrapping off.”

“Stone wouldn’t have known the difference if we had,” Dino said.

“Did I ever say I was an expert on eighteenth-century American furniture?” Stone asked.

“Look, fellas,” Barton said, “just rewrap the bloody thing and get it out of here, will you?”

The three of them went to work, taping the blankets around the piece, while Barton watched impatiently, then they loaded it back into the van and left.

“Why don’t we get some dinner and take the thing back tomorrow?” Dino asked.

“Because,” Stone said, “Charlie Crow is sending somebody to pick it up tomorrow morning at eight.”

“Oh.”

Stone looked at his watch. “We might make it to Elaine’s by midnight.”

“Yeah,” Dino said, “if we don’t get arrested for grand theft secretary.”

At the Sutton warehouse, they woke up the night man, who was snoring away, his feet on his desk.

“What?” he said, snapping his eyes open.

“We’re taking this piece to Mr. Crow’s locker,” Cantor said.

“Didn’t you just take it out?”

“We got our orders,” Cantor replied.

“Okay, go ahead,” the man said.

They trundled the two pieces up to the locker, which Cantor opened with his lock picks, and, when the pieces had been returned to their original spot, snapped the lock shut again.

Stone and Dino walked into Elaine’s at half past midnight, while Cantor parked the van. The joint was jumping. Gianni, one of the two headwaiters, approached them. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? I’d have kept a table for you.”

Stone looked at his regular table and saw four people he didn’t know sitting there. “Who’s that?”

“A guy named Charlie Crow, big deal in real estate.”

Dino began to laugh.

“Oh, shut up,” Stone said.

“All I’ve got is something in the next room,” Gianni said.

“I’ve never even been in the next room,” Stone said, “except for a party.”

“Come on,” Gianni said. “I’ll bring you a cake with a candle on it.”

Dino was still laughing when they sat down.

“Gianni,” Stone said, “head off Bob Cantor when he comes in, and bring him in here. Don’t let Mr. Crow see him, if you can help it. And bring whiskey, quickly.”

Cantor was at the table by the time the drinks came. “Jesus, I just saw Charlie Crow in the other room, sitting at your table.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Stone said.

Dino began to laugh again. “Shall we send Mr. Crow’s party some drinks?”

The three of them ordered dinner.

“Dino,” Stone said when they had finished eating, “can you put a couple of guys on the warehouse tomorrow morning? I want to know where Crow has the secretary delivered.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Dino said, getting out his phone.

Stone was having breakfast the next morning when the phone rang. “Hello?”

“It’s Dino.”

“Where’d they take it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“My guys watched them load the secretary into a dark green furniture van with the name Van Hooten on the side, then they followed the van. It got onto the West Side Highway and headed north. They followed it up the Sawmill River Parkway as far as Yonkers, then they called me, and I told them to come back to the precinct.”

“You couldn’t let them follow it all the way?”

“All the way to where? Montreal? You don’t know where the fuck they’re taking the thing.”

Stone thanked Dino and hung up. “Maybe I do,” he said aloud to himself. He picked up the phone and called Barton Cabot.

“Hello?”

“It’s Stone, Barton. I’m sorry about last night. I thought we had found your secretary.”

“No harm done,” Barton replied.

“I hope you had a good dinner with Carla.”

“I had a good everything with Carla. She’s quite a girl. I’m taking her back to the city this morning.”

“Dino put a couple of detectives on the warehouse, and a van with the name Van Hooten picked it up and drove north. They followed it as far as Yonkers, then broke off the tail.”

“Van Hooten is a respected dealer in furniture,” Barton said.

“I wonder if you’d do something for me before you leave for New York?”

“What?”

“Could you drive up to the clearing that overlooks Ab Kramer’s house and see if the van turns up there? It’s dark green, and it should be arriving in about an hour, if it’s coming.”

“All right, I guess I could do that. You think maybe Ab bought the piece from Charlie Crow?”

“Let me ask you this: If Ab saw the piece we had last night, could he distinguish it from the real thing?”

“He could, if he read the brass plate on the back.”

“What if Charlie was smart enough to remove the plate?”

“Ab has a good eye, but he doesn’t have any real depth of knowledge about that period. It’s a handsome piece; it might fool him. You think Charlie is ripping off Ab?”

“It’s a possibility,” Stone said. “It’s not hard to fool somebody who already believes he’s getting the real thing.”

“How very interesting,” Barton said. “I’ll call you when I know more.”