Michelangelo_s Notebook

37

Michael Valentine moved through the rooms of the top floor of the Ex Libris building methodically. Every area of the apartment had been torn apart; no drawer was left unopened, every cupboard had been searched. The intruder had come in through an airshaft vent and exited through a small unalarmed bathroom window. Following behind Valentine, Finn Ryan was horrified by the damage. Valentine ended his survey in the kitchen.

Valentine sat down at the yellow Formica table. “What did you do when you heard the glass breaking?”

“I thought the thing to do would be to investigate.”

“And then you thought again.” Valentine smiled.

“It wasn’t like in the movies. The girl goes out onto the moonless dock to look for her boyfriend and a hand comes out of the water and grabs her ankle. I’m not that stupid.”

“The real thing.”

“After Peter…”

“The glass breaks and…” Michael prompted.

“I turned around, got back into the elevator and went back to the office. I phoned the cell number you gave me.”

“So he never made it down to the office, never got to the computer.”

“No. I was there most of the day.”

“It looks like he did a fair amount of damage, but nothing irreplaceable.”

“What if he comes back?”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. If he was really looking for something he would have come down to the office.”

“He was trying to scare us?” asked Finn.

“I think so.”

“Why?”

“We’re getting too close to something. We’ve been doing a lot of digging. There could be, probably are, alarm bells ringing.”

“Did you find out anything when you went to your dealer friend?”

“Lots,” said Valentine, and then he told her about what Peter Newman had said and about his visit to Eric Taschen. In turn she told him about her efforts on the computer.

“So what does it all mean?”

“It means that there’s more than one thing going on. The murders of Crawley and Gatty are connected, and so is the third guy I told you about-the one my connection at One Police Plaza told me about, Kressman I think his name was. So far there’s no real evidence but it looks as though they were all involved in some sort of deal to put stolen and looted art onto the open market. I don’t think that particular set of killings has anything to do with you at all. The whole thing with the Michelangelo drawing was just bad timing. I think Crawley would have died anyway.”

“Peter wasn’t bad timing.”

“No, which means that one of Crawley’s partners in crime was worried about what you’d found. Whoever that was hired Peter’s killer and the Vietnam gang member on the courier bike.”

“So there’re two killers out there?”

“Yes. One wants you and that drawing wiped off the slate. The other is interested in the group that Gatty, Crawley and this Kress were involved in-the ring that both Newman and Eric Taschen mentioned.”

“They have to be connected.”

“Yes. Presumably the art is the common factor.”

“The stolen art market?”

“From what you told me about the history of Greyfriars it has to go deeper than that. This Carduss Club is obviously some kind of secret society, like Skull and Bones at Yale, except a little less obvious.”

“According to what I found out they disappeared in 1945 or something.”

“So did Skull and Bones, except they didn’t disappear at all-they just changed their name. Your Delaware-numbered company-they have the least restrictive incorporation laws in the world; that’s why the CIA always uses them for their proprietary companies, like Air America.”

“You don’t think this is some kind of spy thing, do you?” She looked at him carefully, trying not to think too much about what he really was or what his real relationship had been with her father. Maybe that could come later but there was no time for it now.

Valentine’s expression darkened. “No. It’s big, though. The man they just found murdered in Alabama was dealing in hundreds of millions of dollars.” He shrugged. “It’s not hard to get into big money when you’re dealing in Michelangelos.”

“So what do we do now? Detective Delaney must have figured out I wasn’t part of any plot to kill Peter by now. Why don’t we go to the police?”

“It’s not just your boyfriend. Now it’s Crawley, Gatty and Kressman as well. That’s four murders in as many days and millions of dollars’ worth of stolen paintings. Enough motive to keep you in jail for a long time; enough motive to have you killed. Somehow you’ve stumbled on a conspiracy involving a lot of big-time people-people with things to hide and the ability to keep them hidden at all costs. Until we know exactly who those people are and how far the conspiracy goes we stay away from the cops.”

“None of it makes any sense. From what I read, these people were already rich. Why did they want more?”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with money at all.”

“Then what?”

“Power. I’ve got a thousand volumes down in the stacks about groups from the Knights Templar and the so-called Illuminati all the way through to the Shriners. It’s never really about money. Power and how to hold on to it. Good old-fashioned Yankee xenophobia. People are afraid of change and they group together and try to stop it. China tried to ignore the rest of the world for a thousand years, but even they had to start changing things in the end.”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve dealt with this kind of thing, is it?” Finn asked.

“We’re all dealing with it. All the time,” answered Valentine. “The battle between the old and the new has been going on since time began. This is just another version.”

“There were a dozen names on that list of trustees. I only tracked down a few of them. How are we going to know which one is next on our killers list?”

“There’s no way of knowing. We don’t even know if there’s only been the three murders- Crawley, Gatty and Kressman. Peter Newman seemed to think that Crawley’s boss, James Cornwall, had died of natural causes. Maybe he was wrong.”

Finn reached out and wrapped her fingers around Valentine’s hand, squeezing hard. “Okay, like I said before, what’s next?”

“We dig a little deeper. We need to know what kind of stakes we’re playing for, and just exactly who the players are.” He paused. “We’ll have to see my hacker friend.”

“Hacker?”

“Computer freak. His name is Barrie Kornitzer. We went to school together, way back when.”