The Memorist

Chapter 37

Vienna, Austria

Monday, April 28^th-6:08 p.m.

“Be careful,” the client on the other end of the phone warned him for the third time.

Paul Pertzler was annoyed. Since he’d been hired, this client had lectured him as if he were a clumsy oaf. He’d stolen the Beethoven letter and the antique gaming box but he couldn’t be trusted to touch the precious items? Moving the camera, he aimed it away from the box onto an empty section of the wall, careful not to reveal anything identifying.

“I’ve lost the picture.” The voice on the other end was restrained but frustrated.

Smiling to himself, Pertzler just waited.

“Are you there? I said I’ve lost the picture.”

Pertzler thought about cutting the computer connection that allowed him to speak to the buyer and simultaneously show the item.

“What are you doing?” the voice demanded.

Even paying top dollar didn’t buy his employer the right to be rude.

“Where’s the camera?”

Repositioning the camera, Pertzler angled it back on the gaming box. “Computer glitch, so sorry.”

“I’ve seen enough of the outside, let’s go inside,” the client said. “We need to check that everything’s intact. Give us an overview first, if you will.”

Pertzler panned the contents, slowly moving the camera over each small compartment.

“Now, please show us the whist markers close up.”

Pertzler stared down at the various gaming pieces without any idea which ones were whist markers. He didn’t like the buyer’s attitude and would prefer not to ask what whist markers looked like.

“Those chips made of mother of pearl. To your right.”

Moving the camera right, Pertzler zoomed in and wondered if the “we” that the buyer used was a figure of speech or a ruse to give the impression there was a group involved instead of an individual. Pertzler knew better than to indulge in speculation like this. He was good at his job because he didn’t get distracted wondering about irrelevancies. Except he’d made mistakes on this job. Two people were dead. A shame for several reasons but especially because the dead attracted the authorities in a way that stolen goods didn’t.

“Now, show us the cribbage board, that’s a scorekeeping device for a card game that dates back to the 1600s. We didn’t see it in the overview but it should be there. It’s probably made of bone or wood and has many holes in it.”

“I think this is it, no?” Pertzler adjusted the light so it illuminated the left corner and then moved the camera across the surface of an ivory object yellowed with age.

“Wonderful. Now there are four decks of cards, with gold edges. Can we look at each one of those more closely?”

One after another, Pertzler focused the camera on each deck.

“I’m afraid this is going to get a bit tedious, but I need you to go through each deck with us. Show us the front and back of every card. We’re going to be freezing the frames and keeping them as static shots.”

“It’s your time. You’ve paid for it.”

The buyer was amused and chortled. “So we have, so we have.”

The process took the better part of the next two hours and was, as his client suggested it would be, laborious.

“All right then,” the client said finally. “We’re done.”

“Where would you like your items delivered?”

“For now we’d like you to hold tight to both the gaming box and the letter you found in Geneva. Is that possible? We expect you can keep it as safely as anyone else.”

Pertzler specialized in marital assets recovery. Typically, that meant stealing jewelry and artwork back from husbands who preferred their exes not keep all the spoils, or wives who wanted a family heirloom to remain on their side of the family. It was highly unusual for a client, or the group of clients, to ask him to keep possessions.

“For how long?”

“A week. No more. We would also like to know if you also do surveillance work?”

“I do, yes.”

“We are going to need you to start right away.”

They discussed money, agreed to a price, and then the buyer described who they wanted followed and how and when they’d be calling in for updates as well as a number to call in case of emergencies. “Leave a message, if it’s necessary to get in touch with us.”

“What would constitute an emergency?”

“Use your judgment.”

After ending the marathon call with that enigmatic coda, the client hung up. Pertzler rose from his desk and stretched the way his cat did after waking up from a long sleep in the sun. She sat watching him from the couch. A black cat with white markings. The apartment smelled musty from all the cigarettes he’d smoked while he was on the phone and he opened the window, standing there for a few moments, watching the sun sinking below the horizon. This time of day always depressed him and he went into the kitchen and cut a thick slice of a chocolate cake he’d bought the day before but his cell phone rang just before he could take the first bite.

Pertzler had two phones, one on which he accepted incoming calls but never used to call out and the other, which he used to call out but never shared the number.

“Hello?”

“Hi. Are we still going to the cinema tonight?”

Pertzler recognized Klempt’s voice. No salutations were necessary. It was safer this way for both of them. A brief discussion ensued about what movies were playing. The two men decided on the seven-o’clock showing of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and planned on meeting at the theater a half hour before to get a beer at a nearby tavern.

It was the kind of conversation no one paid attention to if they happened to overhear it but if someone had been listening and checked the movie theaters they would have discovered there were no Hitchcock films playing in all of Vienna that night. So there would be no way to figure out which theater the two men were meeting at, if they were meeting at a theater at all.

They didn’t, in fact, meet at a theater, but at the Hummer bar. If they’d said they were going to see a Godard movie they would have met at the bar called the Guess Club II. If they’d chosen a Fellini film it would have been the Fledermaus and so forth. There were ten bars coded, so they could avoid being seen at the same one too often.

Klempt was already nursing a beer when Pertzler arrived.

“I got a call about a freelance job,” Klempt reported after some small talk. A computer hacker and corporate espionage specialist, he and Pertzler worked together often, availing each other of their specific expertise.

“Will it pay well?”

“Very well.”

“You want another?” Pertzler asked, noticing Klempt’s empty tankard.

He checked his watch. “My wife…I’d better not.”

Pertzler made a joke about his friend being under his wife’s thumb and the two laughed.

Only there was no wife. It was more code they’d perfected over the past fifteen years of working together. If they erred on the side of being too careful, it served them well.

Out on the street they headed toward the same subway station and only then, after they were both sure they weren’t being followed, did Pertzler ask about the job.

“I have a client who would like to hire you to find something that has been lost,” Klempt said.

“Lost?”

The light changed and even though there was little traffic, they stopped at the curb.

“Interesting word, no? The client said lost. I questioned him and asked if it had been stolen. He said he preferred lost.”

“Sounds like a fruitcake.”

Klempt shrugged. “Lost. Stolen. It doesn’t matter. I need you to steal it back.”

“How much?”

Klempt named a substantial five-figure sum.

Pertzler nodded. “Do you have a photograph?”

Klempt pulled an envelope from his pocket.

“Good night,” Pertzler said, taking it and walking off in the opposite direction.

Fifteen minutes later, back in his kitchen, Pertzler opened the envelope and found page 16 from the Dorotheum auction house catalog. All the information he needed was written in the margins but he wasn’t reading the words, he was staring at the photograph.

Page 16 showed an antique gaming box, circa 1790. The very same one that he had been hired to steal last week.

That he had stolen. And that was in his living room, right now.