Painted Ladies

49

Brighton is mostly middle-class residential, and the house on Market Street fit in nicely. It had white aluminum siding and a porch across the front enclosed with jalousie windows. The concrete sidewalk was neatly shoveled, and ice melt had been scattered on it, and on the two steps to the porch door. A white signpost stood beside the door, with a white wooden sign hanging from it that read in black letters:

HERZBERG FOUNDATION

ART AND JUSTICE

I opened the porch door and went in. On the inside front door was a small brass sign that said Office. I opened that door and I was in what must have once been a living room but was now a reception area with a desk and several chairs, in case you needed to wait. At the desk was the guy I had seen with Missy at the Walford library.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

“You are?” I said.

“Ariel Herzberg,” he said. “And you?”

“Call me Ishmael,” I said. “Your father was Isaac Herzberg.”

Herzberg pushed his swivel chair away from the desk and leaned as far back in the chair as the spring would allow and stared at me.

“Your grandfather was Judah Herzberg,” I said. “He died in Auschwitz. Isaac, your father, survived Auschwitz and was liberated by the Russians with his friend Amos Prinz in 1945. He was about fourteen at the time. Amos was about eighteen.”

“He would have pronounced it ‘Ah-mose,’ ” Ariel said.

“They went together to Amsterdam,” I said. “Recovered a painting from a secret room in the now-abandoned Herzberg home, took it to Rotterdam and sold it to an art dealer for much less than it was worth but enough to feed them for a while.”

“So?” Ariel said after a bit.

“The painting was Lady with a Finch,” I said. “It was stolen a little while back, from the Hammond Museum.”

“I read about that,” Ariel said.

“I think you stole it,” I said.

“And of course you have evidence.”

“I think you blew up Ashton Prince,” I said.

“Evidence?”

“I think you tried twice to kill me, and succeeded in killing a guy named Francisco,” I said.

“Evidence?” Ariel said again.

“Ah,” I said. “There’s the rub.”

“It is a big rub,” Ariel said. “Don’t you think?”

“It is,” I said. “But I’m working on it. Did you know that Ashton Prince is the son of Amos Prinz?”

“I know nothing except what I have read in the papers.”

“Do you know—”

I stopped. I was going to ask if he knew Missy Minor, and if he knew Morton Lloyd, and what relationship he had with either. But if he’d tried twice to kill me for investigating, what might he do with a potential witness?

“You had a question?” Ariel said.

He would admit nothing, anyway. Why put them in jeopardy?

“I decided not to ask it,” I said.

“America is a great country,” he said. “We are free to do what we will.”

I had already baited him as much as I needed to. He knew what I knew. If it was as dangerous to him as I thought it was, maybe he’d make a run at me, and I could catch him at it. I took a business card from my shirt pocket. On the back I wrote his grandfather’s death camp number, and handed him the card.

“What is this number?” he said.

“Judah Herzberg’s Auschwitz ID number,” I said. “You probably have it tattooed on your arm.”

“You appear a good investigator,” Ariel said.

“Stalwart, too,” I said.

“No doubt,” Ariel said. “No doubt.”

He must have pressed a button someplace, because a door opened behind him and a big muscular blond guy came in wearing a tight T-shirt and looking scary. He paused beside Ariel’s desk and looked at him. I could see that there were numbers tattooed on his forearm.

“Throw Mr. Spenser out, Kurt,” Ariel said to him. “Not gently.”