Stay the Night

Page 10

 

  "Then you get yourself some pills, drink some warm milk, or whatever it takes to stop walking the streets until dawn," Hutchins said. "If you don't, you're going to crack up or flame out. Assuming you don't get jumped some night by one of our fine, upstanding young crackheads. "

  Chris relaxed a little. "All right, partner. "

  "You don't argue much; I'll give you that. " He held out his hand. "My partners call me Hutch. "

  She took his hand as it was offered, with respect. "Chris. "

  "Are you a Christine, a Christina, or a Christa?"

  Norman hadn't even cared what her name was. "None of the above. "

  They left the apartment and took the elevator down to the parking level. To preserve Chris's cover as a fine-arts dealer, Hutch played the part of her chauffeur, requiring her to sit in the back of the Mercedes the bureau had leased for her use.

  "This is a little ridiculous," Chris grumbled as Hutch opened the door for her. "I'm not Miss Daisy. "

  "Oh, but you in Jawja now, Miz Renshaw," he said, rounding his shoulders, widening his eyes and exaggerating his drawl. "All the nice rich white ladies 'round here got theyselves a colored driver. "

  "Colored. " Chris sat back on the leather seat. "Do people actually still use that word?"

  He chuckled as he climbed in behind the wheel. "If you think Atlanta's bad, you should spend some time at the Central Mississippi office. Some of those old boys still display Rebel flag stickers on their personal vehicles. "

  The downtown art gallery that the FBI had appropriated for the operation had been abandoned by its owner when he had absconded to Australia with a collection of priceless European art on loan from France as well as all of his investors' money. The Australian police had agreed to suppress news of his capture and extradition back to the states, which allowed the bureau the time and means to take over operating the gallery and set up Chris as its new curator/director.

  "This informant who contacted you in Chicago and told you about this shipment of Nazi art," Hutch said as he worked his way through a snarl of downtown traffic. "How did he know that the Magician was the one who smuggled it into the U. S. ?"

  "He's a private collector," Chris said. "The Magician contacted him to offer him bidding rights. When he found out that the art had been stolen from the original owners by the Nazis during World War Two, he had a crisis of conscience. "

  He eyed her in the rearview mirror. "And you believed him?"

  "Normally I wouldn't," she admitted, "but this collector is a Jew who had grandparents murdered in Auschwitz. "

  Hutch nodded. "That'll do it. "

  Heavy damask curtains covered the glassed-in front of the gallery, effectively concealing the hive of activity behind them. Hutch parked in the side lot and ushered Chris inside the building. Once out of sight, he removed his hat and jacket and accompanied her to the manager's office, which was being used as their command center.

  "Agent Renshaw, Agent Hutchins. " Dennis Engleman, the A/V technician, didn't look up from his laptop but gestured vaguely toward a pair of microphones set up on the cluttered desk. "We'll be ready for you in five or so. "

  Another agent carrying a small aluminum case stuck his head in the door. "Hutch, you got the keys for this?"

  Hutch reached into his pocket, rummaged, and produced a pair of keys, which he tossed to the other agent. "Bring it in here for a minute. " He turned to Chris. "You haven't seen the book yet, have you?"

  "No, but I'm hoping they did a good job on it. " In the past Chris had handled a number of copied artworks produced by the bureau's resource division, and all of them had been good enough to pass visual inspection.

  "We're not using a copy," Hutch said, and nodded to the other agent, who unlocked the case and popped the lid. "This is the actual book. "

  The sight of the ancient manuscript, carefully packed in a nest of protective foam strips, made Chris's heart skip a beat. Recovered during a raid on a Chicago mob boss's home, The Maiden's Book of Hours had somehow survived the ravages of time intact, as perfect as it had been when it was created by Brother Thomas de Crewes. Brother Thomas, who had spent most of his life working as master of the scriptorium in a Benedictine monastery, had been one of the greatest illuminators of the Middle Ages. The Maiden's Book of Hours, which he had filled with obscure prayers, fables, and portraits of famous personages of his time, was the only example of his work still in existence.

  "I know what you're thinking," Hutch said as he handed her a pair of latex gloves. "Using the real book is risky. "

  "Using an irreplaceable, priceless artifact that men have been killing one another to possess for the last seven hundred years. " Chris said as she pulled on the gloves, "is insanity. "

  Hutch gloved and removed the manuscript from the case. "A fake won't fool the Magician. He'd take one look and walk on by. "

  Chris knew her partner had a point. During several jobs the Magician had pulled, he'd left behind at least a dozen paintings assumed to be worth millions. They were all later discovered to be forgeries.

  "Hard to believe they had to make all the books back then by hand. " Hutch lifted the manuscript out of the case and carefully placed it on the desk. "It weighs a ton. "

  "Forty-three pounds, eleven and a half ounces," Chris corrected him absently as she lifted an edge of the protective padding to admire the gem-encrusted front cover. "It looks as if it were handmade yesterday, doesn't it? Time, war, and ignorance destroyed almost all of the paintings made during the Middle Ages, but manuscripts like these were usually overlooked or better protected. They're like time capsules of lost art. "

  "I thought even the most expensive books fell apart after a century," Hutch said.

  "Brother Crewes developed some secret recipes to make his inks, paints, and vellum more colorful and, at the same time, more resistant to smearing and tearing. Experts have analyzed samples and identified linen, hair, and bone fibers, all preserved by a blend of five or six unknown organic substances. Whatever he used made the ink and paint permeate the vellum—that's why he glued the back of each page to the front of the next one—and rendered it as sturdy as varnished canvas, but as flexible as wood-pulp paper. Over time, his formulas also prevented mold, fungus, and every other deteriorating agent from attacking the manuscript. "

  The binding made an odd, slithering sound as Chris opened the cover to gaze at the first page, which had been covered with a layer of solid gold leaf, inlaid with enameled eluminures in the shapes of letters that spelled out the title. The brilliant jewel-tone colors of the lettering appeared as if they had been painted an hour ago.

  "Are those rubies?" Hutch asked, peering at the rows of square-cut flat gems forming a rectangle around the words.

  "Beryls. " Chris had to clench her fingers to keep from touching the surface of the page. "Rubies over three carats are rare, and they're harder to find, so they didn't come into common use until a few centuries later. " She took a letter opener from the desk drawer and used it to carefully turn the page. The next illustration, a miniature painting of the Garden of Eden bordered by interlacing colonnades of angels with flaming swords, took her breath away. "You can count the veins on every leaf. I read one book about Crewes that claimed he painted the smallest details with an eyelash he had filed down and glued to his own fingertip. "

  Hutch's whistle stirred the edge of the page. "He had some steady hands on him—and skinny eyelashes. "

  "This is an incredibly well-preserved artifact, but it's seven hundred years old. Even our breathing on it could damage the pages. " Chris gently closed the manuscript and returned it to the case. "It's wrong to use this. It shouldn't be handled by anyone but a trained conservationist. It should be in the Smithsonian, right next to the Hope Diamond. "

  "We're putting it in a hermetically sealed glass case," Dennis put in. "Coincidentally, we convinced the Smithsonian to lend us one of their new laser security nets for arming t
he case. Don't worry, Agent Renshaw. No one will be putting a finger on it. "

  Chris thought of some of the security systems the Magician had disabled, pulled off her gloves, and stood. "I'd like to personally oversee the installation. "

  All the wrong Jane Moran had done was shoplift some diet pills that her mother refused to buy her. She could have bought them, but they were expensive, and she was saving her allowance for a new wardrobe. By summer she planned to be in size threes. That was it; that was all.

  But the stupid clerk at the stupid drugstore had seen Jane put the pills in her purse, and the manager had called the police, and everyone had totally overreacted. Then the family court judge had decided to really make her suffer.

  She would never have touched so much as a Slim-Fast bar if she'd known about community service. For the next six months she had to spend every Saturday at a church hall with no air-conditioning, standing around for hours feeding homeless people.

  It was beyond disgusting.

  "You put one sandwich, one bag of chips, and one apple in the box," the shelter manager was saying. "Then you close the lid and hand it to the client. "

  Jane looked at the long line of dirty, shabby people waiting along one wall. "You call them clients?"

  "I'd better not hear you call them anything else. " The shelter manager handed her a pair of cheap, clear plastic gloves. "You have to wear these while you're handling the food. "

  Gloves. As if she were going to contaminate something. Jane thought about walking out, but her caseworker had warned her that any problem with her community service would get her tossed into juvie. Jane would certainly rather feed these people than have to spend the next six months living with their kids.

  She put on the gloves and went to her place on the serving line. Prewrapped sandwiches were piled in one box, chips in another, and a plastic bin of rinsed apples sat on the floor. She took a cardboard box from the stack piled behind the counter and filled it with the food before folding over the top and completing the box lunch.