The Oldest Confession Page 12

  “And now you need help.”

  “We’re Americans. We don’t know anybody in Spain who could run this down.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “My husband and I. Since we were hijacked in Spain they must be meant to stay in Spain because why should anyone take the risk of getting them out of the country when we were going to take them out anyhow and they knew it.”

  “You think they’ll turn up in Spain then.”

  “If it was a professional job. Nobody would steal paintings worth this kind of money just to look at them. They have to sell them somewhere, and when they do move with them the Spanish underworld has to know about it.”

  “You’re a smart girl figuring this out and getting to me like this.”

  “My husband has the brains.”

  “Why isn’t he here?”

  “He’s running down some other leads.”

  “No duplication, I hope. One doesn’t want two lads on the same errand.”

  “No duplication.”

  “I know the operation in Madrid and Barcelona. Very political-minded crooks, they are.”

  “I go to Paris tonight to meet my husband. I expect we’ll be in Madrid by tomorrow night.”

  “I couldn’t move that fast. One can’t do these things by wire, you know.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Well, maybe I can. But there’ll be certain expenses involved.”

  “Of course.”

  “About a thousand pounds.”

  “Are you crazy? For sending one wire then going back to sleep? Come off it!”

  “Of course if you knew how to do it yourself you could get it done for nothing, couldn’t you?”

  “Look, Mr. Tense—”

  “Call me Jack. Everybody calls me Jack.”

  “Look, Jack—I’ll make you an even better deal. How would you like to get five per cent of the fifty thousand quid we’ll get when we pick the paintings up again?”

  He laughed with genuine enjoyment. He had a high-pitched, womanly laugh. He was really greatly amused by her offer and at last had to dab at his eyes with a handkerchief. He didn’t bother to answer her with words.

  “We just don’t have a thousand pounds,” she said.

  He didn’t answer her but sipped at his ale still smiling warmly over that percentage offer.

  “How much in cash?” she finally asked him. He grinned at her and patted the back of her hand. “I haven’t laughed like that in years. How about dinner tonight?”

  “I told you. I’m leaving for Paris.”

  “Change your plans. We can have dinner together at my place. Just the two of us. We’ll have a fine time. Then, at breakfast tomorrow morning we can talk about a revised estimate on the fee.”

  “On whose fee?”

  “Why, bless your heart! My fee!” He smiled at her with delighted eyes as fondly as if she had been his own.

  “That’s good. I’m glad you didn’t have my fee figured at any thousand pounds.” She glared at him so indignantly that he began that shrill laugh, which was not unpleasant, and which was even more boisterous this time. He pounded the mug on the table to emphasize his pleasure. When he calmed down at last he had to dab at his eyes again.

  “What a chapter it would have made,” he gasped, “if you had only come along. Merton would split. Intrigue, sex, the Spanish underworld, great masterpieces, oh, he’d love it, Merton would, and I think we ought to write it anyway. Look here. When you get back to Paris will you send me your photograph with a passionate inscription in your own writing. Something like—‘To Jack, my masterpiece—You gave me my castles in Spain.’ Then sign it with your full name. Any name.”

  “Why?” she said, genuinely puzzled.

  “The Populace will need illustrations when the chapter comes out. ‘Crime Is My International Business’—how’s that for a title?”

  “My picture?”

  “Well, I suppose not. Then send me any pretty girl’s picture you happen to come across. That’s not asking much, is it?”

  “Plus how much cash to find me some friends in Spain?”

  “Ah—make it fifty quid.”

  Jean Marie’s inquiries drew blank after blank with dealer after dealer in country after country, but each one of them greatly admired the reproductions from the Dos Cortes catalogue. Out of the twenty-seven dealers he spoke to in seven countries, fourteen identified them as from the Dos Cortes collection, which would be a surprise to Bourne, although none of them had ever seen the originals. They told Jean Marie that if such paintings showed up they would surely advise him but that he would have to take his place in line with a few hundred others, and he would have to have more money than a bank, which depressed Jean Marie.

  The dealers in Geneva, London, and Rome, once the original topic had been exhausted, which didn’t take long, persuaded Jean Marie to allow them to represent his work in their markets. He had not traveled at all, being a Parisian, so he was extremely gratified to learn how famous he had become in the art trade. He made several promising arrangements. By the time he had left Ciampino for Madrid he had apportioned all of his leftover canvases to dealers in three cities on a consignment basis and life once again began to take on that rosy glow which had been tarnished by the news of the murder of Señor Elek.

  Jean Marie reached Madrid two and a half days after Bourne and Eve; just in time for the party which the duchess gave to celebrate the arrival of the newlyweds.

  To establish the shy ambiance of newlyweddism, Bourne had waited in Paris for Eve to return from London, and sent a cable to Cayetano in Barcelona which read: FEEL LIKE AWFUL SNEAK BUT MARRIED IN PARIS TODAY TO WONDERFUL GIRL RETURNING MADRID TOMORROW NOTICE YOUR SCHEDULE TAKES YOU VALENCIA THEN THREE DAYS PAUSE BEFORE JEREZ SO HOPE WE WILL SEE YOU AND BLANCA MADRID BEST BOURNE.

  Chern had been a bit noisy what with pounding on the cellar door for more than an hour in the early evening, but it was a thick, ancient door and his voice could not be heard, just distant thuds which gradually weakened and then stopped altogether. Bourne had left a flashlight in there with him so that he could find his way to the water tap. He had decided that it would not be unhealthy not to give him any food; that conversely it might be very good for him to fast for a sixteen to twenty day period.

  When Eve got to Paris the evening before the morning they left for Madrid, he decided not to mention Chern’s presence in the cellar because it would disrupt her ease and since she never went near the cellar unless she were alone and looking for cognac, he decided that the whole thing would be better overlooked. She had asked him how productive the meeting with Chern had been and he had told her that it had yielded nothing, which was the truth, and that Chern had been indignant over having been brought to Paris on a wild-goose chase, which was strictly accurate as well.

  Eve returned on a wave of triumph. The most shining result of her journey had been two very elegant Frenchwomen stopping her in the hall of the Savoy to ask her where she got her wonderful clothes; secondly she had accomplished her primary mission of establishing a crime cartel, and, in glorious addition, she had succeeded in finding a copy of Robert Graves’ Antigua, Penny, Puce on Charing Cross Road, which Penguin had let fall out of print and which Bourne had been seeking for two years.

  She told Bourne it was a pity that he had formed such a rigid policy about refusing to fraternize with other criminals because Jack Tense had definitely been a Warner Brothers hoodlum by J. Arthur Rank. They had ended famous friends and he had driven her to the airport in a robin’s egg blue Rolls almost as big as a Staten Island ferryboat. He was at work even then having a poll taken of London fences big enough to handle a deal like three Spanish master canvases and he had assured her that he would jolly well know about it, and that she would be informed forthwith. Bourne became apprehensive. He had not rehearsed her on what to say for receiving follow-up information, but she reassured him blandly. Tense would contact her through the Spanish contact who was to reach her through the key desk of th
e Hotel Autentico which was just off the Calle de Toledo in Madrid, on the Calle de la Cava Baja. She told him proudly that the Spanish crime executive whom Tense had found for her was actually the board chairman of the most effective operation in Northern Spain, meaning all but Andalusia. His drop name would be Enrique López and he always appreciated it, Tense had said, if all exchanges, as far as operationally possible, could be done with innocuous notes through the key desk at the Autentico. Tense had guaranteed that no one could dispose of the paintings in the Spanish underworld without Señor López knowing about it, if López sent out the word that he wanted to know about it, which he most certainly would.

  Bourne was as pleased with her as if she had won the Women’s Singles at Wimbledon, but there was very little that she did which did not please him. If she had returned from London to report that it would not be possible to arrange for a Spanish contact he would have accepted that and would have made other arrangements, because part of his love for her was in the unending growth of the conviction that her judgment was impeccable and that her loyalty to him and to their life together an expanding thing of unmeasurable proportions.

  They spent the evening at home. Bourne read and smiled over the Graves book. Chern remained utterly silent. Bourne had taken the precaution of shutting the two doors leading to the pantry which held the cellar door, but twice during the evening he had gone to the kitchen to pretend to fetch a drink of water and not a sound could be heard. Eve packed their trunk and their suitcases, darned socks and pottered generally wearing a breath-taking french-blue house coat over skin as though it were a Mother Hubbard. She seemed entirely oblivious of the effect her extraordinary figure produced in that slashed sheath until Bourne was forced to comment on the effect, to which she had replied, “Why don’t you do something about it?” So he did, striking a decisive blow for Togetherness.

  Later on, while he was back at his book and she back purring over her darning he reminded her that it was essential that she remember that they had been married that afternoon, because they would be entering Madrid as bride and groom. She nodded. He said he had known she wouldn’t mind it, so he had had a new marriage certificate made so that the servants at the hotel could find it and spread the verification. She told him that marrying him had given her three lives and four identities, had transformed her into an active, exciting community of people which was something few women in the world had ever had and that she was grateful for it and that she loved him and that she would always love him. He could not do any wrong with her. He was truth for her, which is what everyone seeks, she said.

  For ten minutes or so he conjectured aloud as to whether or not Señor López could have been the man who had hijacked them. It seemed to be a thought which gave him comfort if only because it gave their villain a shape, and a place in space. Gradually he proved why that condition would be entirely unlikely. All at once she began to weep. She was sitting on the edge of a hassock when it started. She tried to stifle the sound. He didn’t talk. He didn’t ask why she was crying, knowing that she had an excellent reason to weep if she wept. After a while it was over.

  “I dread going back to Spain.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure why. I only know that there is something very wrong about this whole thing.”

  “It’s the first time for you. There is always a strain the first time.”

  “We don’t want those paintings if that man had to kill to get them.”

  “What man? We don’t know it was a man.”

  “You know what I mean, Jim.”

  “Killing is a terrible thing,” he said, “but people aren’t to be feared just because they kill. Stupidity, not invincibility, makes a killer. He just didn’t know what else to do. The murder of one man has no connection with the life or death of another.”

  Eve got up and went into the bathroom. He could hear the water running while she washed her eyes. She closed the bathroom door, then he heard water running from the shower. He went back to his book. After forty minutes or so she came out again wearing a pale blue nightgown and a pretty, filmy robe. She sat down opposite him and spoke in an even, friendly voice all of the thoughts she had been preparing and editing as she had bathed and perhaps for some time before that.

  “Jim, you know I’m not advocating a return to government by women’s intuition, don’t you?”

  “You can if you want to, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “It’s just that—well, for one thing there’s the duchess.”

  “Yes?”

  “I have to say this sometime so I’ll say it now and get it out of the way. I can’t accept the duchess’s friendship. I don’t like the feeling of hypocrisy. It makes me feel cheap and sick. We have exploited her and stolen from her.”

  He snorted. “It’s about time you brought that up.”

  “Please, Jim, let me finish. There’s Dr. Muñoz, too. I cannot be natural with a man whose trust we have used so that we could steal with less risk from people who trusted us because Dr. Muñoz trusted us. And your friend, Cayetano Jiminez; your very dear friend, and you his, and yet we stole from the woman most important to him.” She leaned back in the chair.

  “Finished?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am not reproaching you.”

  “I understand. I was not reproaching you. I only said I would rather not go to Spain and face those people.”

  “Eve, what business was your father in?”

  “He was an insurance broker.”

  “You’ve carried different kinds of insurance, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “For example—did you ever carry a floater policy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever lose anything after you had the policy?”

  “Oh, a camera, once, I think.”

  “How much was it carried for in the policy?”

  “I don’t remember for sure. About two hundred dollars. Why?”

  “You reported the loss right away?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did the insurance company pay you?”

  “Why—about five months later.”

  “How much did they pay you?”

  “They wanted to replace the camera with another used camera, but I decided I’d take the cash. I think they paid me ninety-five dollars.”

  “Not two hundred dollars?”

  “Well, you see it was a used camera. It had depreciated.”

  “But when you bought the policy you thought the camera was insured for two hundred dollars? It said in the policy that the camera was insured for two hundred dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father was able to face you though?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What business was your grandfather in?”

  “Jim, what are you trying to prove?”

  He held up his hand for an instant. “In a minute. Tell me.”

  “Well, he’s been in the restaurant business for nearly fifty years. He owns the Huxley chain.”

  Jim exploded with a guffaw then subsided into a grin. “You mean the chain that bought all of that meat during rationing without giving up any rationing stamps while tens of thousands of hospital cases needed meat like that and couldn’t get it, and old people and all sort of folks like that?”

  She dropped her eyes and flushed.

  “He was still able to face his family and friends and customers after the newspapers had finished disgracing him, wasn’t he, honey? But he was exactly like everyone else in this world. There is an area of business and an area for friends. They cannot overlap. If they were to overlap it would be like putting Saint Francis d’Assisi in charge of the Roman games; it just couldn’t work. It would be too moral, too Christian for our times.”

  He pulled his chair over closer to her and took both of her hands in his hands. “Good heavens, there are thousands and thousands of examples wherein the area of business must be separated from the social, frat
ernal world. There is hardly a business in existence today which does not practice cheating and dishonesty; and if we are to accept degrees of dishonesty, then we must make allowances for honest criminality, like yours and mine. There is absolutely no doubt about our dishonesty, no shadings or degrees, so there may be no possible doubt about our complete honesty, either.”

  He pulled her head to his and kissed her with rough passion, then held her head to his with his enormous hands.

  “Business is a form of hunting. It’s shooting for the pot in modern terms, isn’t it? If one’s dearest friends walk across one’s hunting grounds they can get shot, can’t they? Furthermore, for all we know, the duchess or Cayetano or Victoriano Muñoz may have been our hijacker. They are far more likely candidates than Señor López or Lawyer Chern. The duchess has perfectly good copies hanging now in her ancestral halls. She, before anyone else, could offer the originals for sale because she is the ultimate authenticator. Victoriano Muñoz is art-crazy and on Spanish art is paranoically insane. Cayetano, for all I know, might be a big-time thief for the thrill of it, he does everything else dangerously. But forget that. You have been trained to view crime as immoral. I have been forced to the conclusion that almost all business is immoral, and certainly all religion. I lived with that for a long time and then I moved over into criminal operations and lived with that for a long time and I say that there is no right and there is no wrong and there is no shape nor beginning nor ending. Where does the definition for stealing illegally end and the definition for stealing legally begin? I am you and you are me and what can we do for the salvation of each other? That is all that matters. Stealing canvas and paint and wood from the stone wall of one of the nine houses of the Duchess of Dos Cortes is not an unkindness nor a sin, but to turn my back on her, to run and hide because of that canvas and paint or for you, my wife, to say that you cannot face her and accept her friendship would be an unkindness and therefore a sin because of all the things men give and take from one another there is only one sin which is punishable and that is unkindness.”

  “How long will we stay in Spain?”

  “I have not decided.”