A Deadly Shade of Gold Read online

  Shaja and I were partners in the cooperative venture of keeping her calm. She seemed like a pleasant child subject to temper tantrums, a child who might, unguarded, break every dish in the cupboard. There was a self-destructive aspect to Nora's urgencies. Soothed, she would pull herself together and give a plausible imitation of the way she had been before Sam had returned.

  On the morning I was to fly up to New York, she drove me down to Miami International in her little black Sunbeam. We had time to spare, so we went to the restaurant atop the Airport Hotel and had coffee at a window table amid all those shades of blue, overlooked paved areas where the little yellow service vehicles sped back and forth in their ant-hill routines.

  "I shouldn't be so impatient," she said. "But it just..."

  "Look at it this way. You go charging at something, and nothing happens. Then you have to back off and try the vague chances, the off-beat things. By charging you may mess something up, and spoil all your chances. So armor yourself first. Later you may find out that the preparation wasn't necessary. But there's no harm done. This will keep, Nora. It's a case of whether you want an emotional release, or whether you really want to accomplish something."

  "I want to...."

  "Okay. We do this my way. I had to learn the hard way. I had to learn patience and care."

  They announced my flight. She went down with me. At the gate she gave me a sister's kiss, her dark eyes huge in her narrow face, eroded by loss. "As long as you're not just kidding me along, as long a we really will do something, okay then, Trav. We'll do it your way."

  New York, on the first day of March, was afflicted by a condition a girl I once knew called Smodge. This is a combination of rain, snow, soot, dirt, and wind. The black sky squatted low over afternoon Manhattan, and all the store lights were on, traffic braying, the sidewalk folk leaning sullenly into the weight of wind. There is a tax loophole in recent years which makes it possible for men to acquire tax-free fortunes by putting up the cheapest possible office buildings.

  Like some hovering undisciplined anus, this loophole has excreted its garish cubes all over the Upper East Side. These are the buildings where they purposely build a roar into the heating and air conditioning systems to compensate for the tissue thickness of the walls. There, in a sterile and incomparable fluorescent squalor, in stale air, under low ceilings, are devised the creative ideas to amuse, instruct, guide, and convince an entire nation. This time I was in no mood for the newer, or pseudo-Miami hotel architecture, and took a single at an eerie little ugly old hotel I had stayed at long ago, the Wharton, on West 49th, in the first block off Fifth. Red stone, oak lobby, high ceilings and Victorian plumbing.

  At two forty-five I ducked out of the sleety wind into the narrow entrance to the Borlika Galleries.

  The display window was a tasteful arrangement of small items of carved bone and ivory, some of it touchingly quaint. I hunted in my dust-bin mind for that word for that sort of work, and found it. Scrimshaw. Hobby of sailors on the old sailing ships.

  I pushed the door open and went in, wondering if I was dressed for the impression I wanted to make. My suit and raincoat were too lightweight for New York in March. No hat. Seagoing tan. Shirt collar slightly frayed. Scuffed shoes, now slightly sodden.

  A cluster of bells jangled as I pushed the door open. It was a long narrow place, meagerly lighted. It had the collection smell, leather and dust, sandalwood and age. In a long lighted display case was an ornate collection of cased duelling pistols. On a long table to my right was a collection of primitive wood carvings.

  A young man came toward me up the aisle from the back, with bone-pale face and funereal suit. It was a hushed place and he spoke in a hushed voice.

  "May I help you?" He had taken me in at a glance, and he spoke with precisely the intonation which fitted my appearance, a slight overtone of patronizing impatience.

  "I don't know. I guess you sell all kinds of old stuff."

  "We have many types of items, sir." He said the sir as though it hurt his dear little mouth. "We specialize in items of anthropological and archeological significance."

  "How about old gold?"

  He frowned. He was pained. "Do you refer to old coins, sir?"

  "No. What I'm interested in is old statues made of gold. Real old. Like so high. You know. Old gods and devils and stuff like that."

  It stopped him for a long moment. Finally he gave a little shrug. It was a long slow afternoon. "This way, please."

  He had me wait at a display counter in the rear while he went back into the private rooms behind the store. It took him five minutes. I guessed he had to open a safe or have someone open it. He turned on a pair of bright little lamps, spread a piece of blue velvet, tenderly unwrapped an object and placed it on the blue velvet. It was a golden toad, a nasty looking thing the size of my fist. It had ruby eyes, a rhino horn on its head, and a body worked of overlapping scales like a fish.

  "This is the only object we have on hand at the moment, sir. It is completely documented and authenticated. Javanese Empire, close to two thousand years old."

  It had a look of ancient, sardonic evil. Man dies and gold endures, and the reptiles will inherit the earth.

  "What do you get for a thing like this?"

  He put it back in its wrappings and as he began to fold the cloth around it, he said, "Nine thousand dollars, sir."

  "Did you hear me say I didn't want it, Charlie?" He gave me a baleful glance, a murmured apology, and uncovered it again.

  "Lovely craftsmanship," he said. "Perfectly lovely."

  "How did you people get it?"

  "I couldn't really say, sir. We get things from a wide variety of sources. The eyes are rubies. Badly cut and quite flawed, of course."

  "What would you people pay for a frog like this?"

  "That wouldn't bear any relationship to its value, sir."

  "Well, put it this way Charlie. Supposed I walked in off the street with this frog. Would I be one of those sources you said you use?"

  It put the right little flicker of interest and reappraisal in his indoor eyes. "I don't quite understand, sir."

  "Try it this way, then. It's gold. Right? Suppose somebody didn't want to get involved in a lot of crap, Charlie. Like bills of sale and so on. If he wants to make a cash deal, the easiest thing is to melt old frog down."

  "Heavens!" he said, registering shock.

  "But maybe that way he cheats himself a little."

  "A great deal! This is an historical object, sir. An art object!"

  "But if the guy doesn't want any fuss, Charlie?"

  His eyes shifted uneasily. "I suppose that if... this is just hypothetical, you understand... if someone wished to quietly dispose of something on a cash basis... and it wasn't a well-known piece... from a museum collection, for example, something might be worked out. But I...."

  "But you just work here, Charlie. Right?"

  He touched the toad. "Do you care to purchase this?"

  "Not today"

  "Would you wait here, please?"

  He wrapped it up and took it away. I had a five minute wait. I wondered what they did for customers. A little old man came shuffling out. He had white hair, a nicotined mustache, a tough little face. I don't think he weighed a hundred pounds. In a deep bass voice he said his name was Borlika.

  He peered up at me, his head tilted to the side, and said, "We are not receivers of stolen goods, mister."

  "Unless you're damn well sure they'll never be traced, old man."

  "Get out!" he bellowed, pointing toward the front door. We both knew it was an act.

  I put my hand on my heart. "Old man, I'm an art lover. It'll hurt me here to melt all the beautiful old crap down."

  He motioned me closer, leaned on the counter and said, "All?"

  "Twenty-eight pieces, old man."

  He leaned on the counter with both arms and kept his eyes closed for so long I began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. At last he looked at me and blinked as the gol
d toad would blink if it could and said, "My granddaughter is in Philadelphia today, doing an appraisal. In this area, you will talk to her. Can she see the pieces?"

  "That can be arranged later. After we talk."

  "Can you describe one piece to me?"

  I gave him a crude but accurate description of the sensual little man. His eyes glittered like the toad's.

  "Where can she find you this evening, mister?"

  "I can phone her and arrange that."

  "You are a very careful man."

  "When I have something worth being careful about, old man."

  He wrote the phone number on a scrap of paper, told me her name was Mrs. Anton Borlika, and told me to phone after eight o'clock. When I got back to the hotel I checked the book. The listing was under her name, an address on East 68th which would place it close to Third Avenue.

  With time to kill, I got a cab and kept it while I made a tour of inspection of the neighborhood. It was a poodle-walking area. At about five o'clock I found a suitable place about two blocks from her apartment. It was called Marino's Charade. There was an alcove off the bar/lounge with a booth at the end, perfectly styled for maximum privacy. The night shift was on, and the boss waiter was happy to gobble up my ten dollar bill and promise that he would keep it empty from eight o'clock on.

  Her voice on the phone, flat as only Boston can make it, had not prepared me for the woman. She was in her late twenties, black Irish, with blue eyes and milky skin, slightly overweight, dressed in a conservative suit, a big grey corduroy rain cape, droplets of the night moisture caught in her blueblack hair. As she walked along the alcove toward the booth I stood up and said, "Mrs. Borlika?"

  "That's right," she said, slipping the cape off. I hung it up. "You made yourself easy to find, Mister...."

  "Taggart. Sam Taggart." I watched for reaction and saw none.

  She smiled and smoothed her suit skirt with the backs of her hands and slid into the booth. "Betty Borlika," she said. "Have you eaten? I had a nasty sandwich on the train."

  "Drink first?"

  "Of course." The waiter appeared, took our drink order and hastened away.

  "How were things in Philadelphia?"

  She made a face. "I had three days of it. Thank God somebody else was doing the paintings. There must have been five hundred of them. Fifty years of miscellaneous collecting. Barrels, actual barrels of ikons. Temple bells. Chinese ivory. You have no idea."

  "You know what all that stuff is worth?"

  "Enough to give it an appraisal the tax people accept. I wouldn't say I missed it by far."

  With all her friendly casualness, I knew I was getting a thorough inspection. I returned the favor. No rings on the ring finger. Plump hands. Nails bitten down. Plump little double chin. Small mouth, slightly petulant.

  "You buy any of the stuff?"

  "There are three lots we'll bid on, when it goes to auction. You see, Sam, a man with no taste and a lot of money and a lot of time will acquire good things when he deals with good dealers." It came out "acquah" and "dealahs." "I have a pretty good range," she said. "I have a museum school degree and seven years of practical experience." She sipped her drink, looking at me over the rim of the glass.

  "Your husband do the same kind of work?"

  "He used to. Before he died."

  "Recently?"

  "Three years ago. His father and his uncle are active in the business. And his grandfather, of course. His father and his uncle are abroad at this time."

  "Or I'd be talking to them?"

  "Probably."

  "I like it this way better."

  "You won't get a better deal from me than you would from them."

  "If we deal."

  "Is there any question of that, Sam?"

  "There's a lot of questions, Betty. Right now there's two real good gold markets. Argentina and India. And safer for me that way."

  "Safer than what?"

  "Than making any kind of deal with something... not melted down."

  She scowled. "God, don't even say that."

  "This stuff isn't hot in the ordinary sense. But, there could be some questions. Not from the law. Do you understand?"

  "Possibly."

  "Another drink?"

  "Please."

  When the waiter was gone, she said, "Please believe me when I say we are used to negotiating on a very confidential basis. Sometimes, when it's necessary, we can invent a more plausible basis of acquisition than... the way something came into our hands." She smiled broadly, and it was a wicked and intimate smile. "After all, I'm not going to make you tell me where you got them, Sam."

  "Don't expect to buy them cheap, Betty."

  "I would expect to pay a bonus over the actual gold value, of course. But you must consider this, too. We're one of the few houses in a position to take the whole thing off your hands. It simplifies things for you."

  "The whole thing?"

  "The... group of art objects. Did you say twenty-eight?"

  "I said twenty-eight. Twenty-eight times the price of that frog would be...."

  "Absurd."

  "Not when you sell them."

  "Only when you sell them to us, Sam."

  In spite of all the feminine flavor, this was a very shrewd cool broad.

  "If I sell them to you."

  She laughed. "If we want to buy what you have, dear. After all, we can't buy things unless we have some reasonable chance of selling them, can we?"

  "These things look all right to me."

  "And you are an expert, of course." She opened her big purse and took out a thick brown envelope. She held it in her lap where I could not see it. She frowned down as she sorted and adjusted whatever she took out of the envelope.

  Finally she smiled across at me. "Now we will play a little game, Sam. We take a photograph for a record of everything of significant value which goes through our hands. These photographs are from our files. There are fifty-one of them. So that we will know what we are talking about, I want you to go through these and select any that are among the twenty-eight you have."

  "I haven't looked at them too close, Betty."

  She handed the thick stack across to me. "Just do your best." They were five by seven photographs in black and white and double weight paper, with a semi-gloss finish, splendidly sharp and clear, perfectly lighted. In each picture there was a ruler included to show scale, and, on the other side of the figurine, a little card which gave a complex series of code or stock or value numbers, or some combination thereof.

  I made my face absolutely blank, knowing she was watching me, and went through them one at a time. I felt trapped. I needed some kind of opening. Somewhere in the middle I came across the same little man I had seen, squatting on his crude lumpy haunches, staring out of the blank eye holes. I did not hesitate at him. I began to pay less attention to the figures, and more to the little cards. I noticed then that, written in ink, on most of them, were tiny initials in the bottom right hand corner of the little code card. I leafed back to my little man and saw that the initials in the corner were CMC. I started through the stack again, looking for the same initials, and saw that they appeared on five of the photographs. The figurines were strange some beautiful, some twisted and evil, some crude and innocent, some earthily, shockingly explicit.

  I looked at her and said, "I just don't know. I just can't be sure."

  "Try. Please."

  I went through the stack and began putting some of them on the table top, face down. You have to gamble. I put nine photographs face down. I laid the stack aside. I looked at the nine again, sighed and returned one of them to the stack.

  I handed her the eight of them and said, "I'm pretty sure of some of these. And not so sure of others."

  I tried to read her face as she looked at them. The small mouth was curved in a small secretive smile. She had to show off. She handed me back three photographs. "These are the ones you're not so sure of, Sam?"