Three-Day Town

“A what?” Sigrid and I both asked.

“There was an article in the Smithsonian magazine last month on Al Streichert and his early works. Did you see it?”

I shook my head. I’d never heard of an Al Streichert, but Sigrid was nodding slowly. “I didn’t read the article, but someone mentioned it.”

“Who’s Al Streichert?” I asked.

“Albrecht Streichert. Sculptor. Worked mostly in stainless steel.”

I rummaged through old memories of the one art history course I had taken in college. “Like Henry Moore?”

Buntrock nodded. “Only less abstract and not quite as famous. He left Germany in the mid-thirties, but not before he’d bought into all that Aryan garbage about the need for racial cleansing. Once he got to New York, though, and saw how thoroughly integral to the artistic culture Jews and blacks were, he was so conflicted—at least that’s what he later said in his autobiography—that he made a few small bronzes like this thing for his own pathetic amusement.”

He handed the camera to Sigrid, who frowned as she studied it closely. “How on earth did my grandmother come by something so odious?”

“I don’t suppose she was part of the New York art scene in her youth?”

“Not that I’m aware of. Mother might know. On the other hand, Grandmother’s taste in art has always been American landscapes like the Hudson River School.”

I peered into the camera when she handed it back to me. “If he made a bunch of these—”

“But he didn’t,” said Buntrock. “And he never showed them to anyone except like-minded bigots. That’s what makes this so curious. We know about them solely by hearsay and a single photograph which was taken by one of those friends. According to the Smithsonian article, he only made three or four, and he melted those down and donated the bronze to the war effort when he fell in love and married his wife. She was Jewish and he was utterly devoted to her. According to the granddaughter—she’s the one who gave the interview —he never got over being ashamed of that part of his past.”

“Maybe this one’s not by him after all,” I suggested.

“I don’t suppose you checked to see if it was signed?” asked Buntrock.

“Sorry.”

Sigrid was still puzzled. “I wonder why Grandmother sent this to Mother. Why didn’t she just destroy it if she read the article?”

Buntrock shrugged. “Would you destroy a Henry Moore?”

Before she could answer, the front door opened and a man and a younger woman entered. I didn’t need to be told that they were homicide detectives.

CHAPTER

5

New York is proud of its police force and keeps reiterating that it is the very “finest” in the world—a statement that is not modest but has a good deal of truth in it.

—

The New New York

, 1909

SIGRID HARALD— SATURDAY NIGHT

Had Sigrid realized that Sam Hentz was on call that evening, she would have pulled in Sergeant Tildon, with whom she was more at ease even though Hentz was the best on the squad and the one who had taken over for her when she fell apart after Oscar Nauman’s death. Despite her slight seniority and better fitness reports, he was a year older and had resented her from the first because he had expected to get that promotion. He had not bothered to hide his resentment, but she had let it ride until he goaded her into losing her habitual cool. Out of the hearing of others, her normally calm gray eyes shooting sparks of ice, she got in his face and in a low cold voice said, “That’s the last time you question my authority, Hentz. I got the promotion, you didn’t. Deal with it or put in for a transfer.”

After that, they had developed a modus vivendi that allowed them to work together with grudging respect, which was all that Sigrid required, especially when the job became awkward on a personal level. Part of it was inheriting artworks worth millions; the other part was discovering that her boss had once been her father’s partner and her mother’s lover. Within the department, it was like the shifting of tectonic plates. Even those who managed to take her new wealth relatively in stride and who knew that she was good at her work could not help wondering if she had made lieutenant because Captain McKinnon had smoothed the way.

After Mac retired and married her mother, things should have been easier. Instead, his replacement was a woman who alternated between sucking up to her and making digs at what was presumed to have been Sigrid’s protected position. She was aware that most of her colleagues wondered why she continued to stick it out when she no longer needed the pension and budgetary contraints had frozen promotions, but no one had the nerve to ask her why, not even Tildon, the detective who was most comfortable with her.

Social ease had never been one of her strengths and she had struggled hard to mimic it after Nauman died. Feeling that she owed it to the artist’s memory to become the woman he had thought she was, she styled her hair, learned how to dress, and mastered the intricacies of makeup. Accepting that she had become a public figure was a different matter. When her housemate sat her down in front of his computer and Googled her name, she had been appalled to see over a hundred thousand citations. Nevertheless and against all reason, she still hoped the job would eventually let her become anonymous again.

From Hentz, sleek and urbane in a well-cut topcoat and dark fedora, she got a neutral, level-eyed nod, but the others gave her respectful smiles as they crossed the room to join her by the French doors. Lieutenant Vaughn entered, too, followed by Kate’s brother- in-law and the John Jay professor. Close on their heels were the crime scene team and an ME. Beyond them, she