Painted Ladies

31

The 4Runner was registered to Morton Lloyd with a Chestnut Hill address. Morton Lloyd was also the name of the lawyer that Prince had threatened Walford University with. And he was also the lawyer who represented the Hammond Museum, and it was through his recommendation that Prince got the job of negotiating the return of the painting. Seemed unlikely that there would be two Morton Lloyds in the same case.

I was meeting Rita Fiore for lunch at Locke-Ober, and was already seated when she came into the dining room wearing heels that told me she hadn’t walked over from her office. The skirt of her gray suit was about mid-thigh, and everything fit her well. Her dark red hair was long and thick. Almost all the men in the place looked at her as she came in. Those who didn’t probably had a hormonal problem. I stood when she reached the table, and she gave me a kiss.

“Everyone in the place watched you come in,” I said.

She smiled.

“I’m used to it,” she said. “And I want a martini.”

“Anything,” I said.

“If only that were true,” she said.

She ordered a Grey Goose martini on the rocks with a twist.

“What are you drinking?” she asked.

“Iced tea,” I said.

“For a superhero,” Rita said, “you are certainly a candy-ass drinker.”

“I’m so ashamed,” I said. “What’s Morton Lloyd look like?”

“Haven’t you seen him?” Rita said.

“Once,” I said. “Tall, kind of heavy. Black hair combed back, lotta gel, kind of a wedge-shaped face, big mustache with some gray in it. Maybe fifty-five.”

“That would be Mort,” Rita said.

“Okay,” I said. “Same guy I met at the Hammond Museum. Not the same guy driving the car.”

The martini arrived. Rita drank some.

“Nothing like vodka and vermouth to knit up the raveled sleeve of care,” she said. “What car?”

“A car registered to Lloyd,” I said.

“But he wasn’t driving it?”

“No,” I said.

“I talked with him,” Rita said. “Says he barely knows Prince. Says Prince came to him through a regular client; said he feared being slandered by Walford University, and if he were, he’d want to sue them, and he wanted to know that Mort would represent him.”

“Lloyd recommended him to the museum to negotiate the return of the painting,” I said.

“Really?” Rita said. “Perhaps Mort was not being entirely open and honest with me.”

“I’m shocked,” I said.

The waiter came for our orders, we gave them, and Rita asked for another martini.

“Mort says he brushed Prince off,” Rita said. “Says if they slander him, he should give Mort a call.”

“Whatever the truth, it scared Walford off,” I said.

“And if somebody checked on him,” Rita said, “he had consulted Lloyd, and Lloyd had, sort of, agreed to represent him.”

“Yep,” I said. “Who was the client who sent Prince to Lloyd?”

“He said it was something called the Herzberg Foundation. Mort was evasive as to what it was. All I could get was that it was something to do with the Holocaust. And it might have been earlier than I thought. He was vague on that, too. I frankly don’t think he wanted to tell me anything,” Rita said, and smiled. “But you know how I can be.”

“I do,” I said. “He is their legal counsel?”

“Yes,” Rita said. “He seems happy with that. I gather he’s on retainer.”

“Is he a stand-up guy?” I said.

“Mort? Stand-up. Yes,” Rita said. “I’d say he is. But that would be true only if he were standing up for Mort.”

I nodded.

“The two guys who ambushed me both had an Auschwitz ID number tattooed on their arm,” I said.

“My God, Auschwitz was sixty years ago,” Rita said.

“More,” I said.

“I don’t do math,” Rita said. “I’m a girl.”

“And the world is a better place for it,” I said.

“Of course it is,” Rita said. “How old were these guys?”

“Late thirties,” I said. “They both had the same number.”

“So it’s, like, symbolic,” Rita said.

“Or something,” I said. “Now I see a guy visiting Prince’s old girlfriend, and he’s driving a car registered to a lawyer who represents some kind of Holocaust foundation.”

“Convoluted,” Rita said.

“It is,” I said.

“But you can’t ignore it,” Rita said.

“No, I can’t.”

“Is it a real serial number,” Rita said. “The tattoo?”

“It looks right,” I said. “You know, the right amount of numbers and such.”

“Maybe it can be traced.”

“Quirk’s working on that,” I said.

“You ID’d the two guys who tried to kill you?”

“Not yet.”

“You got any physical evidence linking the attempt on you to the Prince killing?”

“No.”

“But you know it is,” Rita said.

“Yes,” I said. “You were a prosecutor. You know when you know.”

“I remember,” Rita said.

“Prince was Jewish,” I said. “His real name, according to his wife, was Ascher Prinz. His father was in a concentration camp.”

“Which one?”

“His wife doesn’t know,” I said. “They all sound the same.”

“The concentration camps all sound the same?”

“What she told me,” I said. “She’s a poet.”

“The hell she is,” Rita said.

“She’s writing an epic poem, she says, about how her husband’s death has impacted her.”

“Can’t wait,” Rita said.

I was having a lobster club sandwich. Rita had a big plate of wienerschnitzel and a glass of wine. How she could drink two martinis and a glass of Riesling and eat a large plate of fried veal for lunch was a puzzle to me.

“How can you eat and drink like that,” I said, “and continue to look like you do.”

She smiled.

“Sex burns a lot of calories,” she said.

“Wow,” I said.

She smiled.

“I’ll help you with this any way I can. I’m a good lawyer, for a girl.”

“ ‘For a girl,’ ”I said. “When you were prosecuting in Norfolk, them defense lawyers used to call you Rita Shark.”

“They were referring to my sleek and sinuous grace,” she said. “But I mean it. I don’t like people trying to kill you. If I can help, I will. We have some pretty good resources at Cone, Oakes.”

“And you’re one of them,” I said.

She cut off a smallish bite of wienerschnitzel and chewed and swallowed and smiled at me again.

“I know,” she said.