I prompted, 'For…?'
'You mean payment.' Meeting an antiques man better than herself had rocked her, but money was home ground. She became brisk, her old poised and perfect self again.
'How will I verify your accuracy? Of course, I can always give you a knowledge test.'
'I might fail it.' They always ask the same things. “Then where would you be?'
She blew a spume of smoke into the air, getting the point. Knowledge is only knowledge. I was on about the actual business of knowing, which is light years ahead.
'Have you any suggestions?'
'For proof? Yes. Stick your own price on any genuine antique, picked at random. I'll work for it.'
She bowed like the Gainsborough lady but her eyes were focused on distant gold.
'Instead of money? No other pay?'
I smiled at the caution in her tone. People are always stunned by somebody who backs his judgement to the hilt. I said, 'There is no higher price than time, love. It's all a person has.'
'You're hired.'
'Lend me enough to see the week out, please.'
Her eyes narrowed. 'I thought—'
'There's no future in starving to death, love.'
'That bad?' She drummed her fingers on her desk, shook her head. 'No. You might take off. If you are a genuine divvie, I need you here. Fabio!'
Fabio was into the office instantly, waving a notebook and agog with inquisitiveness.
He'd been listening, of course.
'Yes, Adriana.' He struck an exasperated pose. 'What's the verdict? Hitch him to our star, or under a passing bus?'
'Hitch.'
'Ooooh, fantabulation!' he squealed excitedly. 'I wonder what he'll say about that ebony thing you keep saying is an eighteenth-century Benin ceremonial mask prototype!' He winked at me with grotesque roguishness. 'She paid a fortune for it, dearie, been on tenterhooks ever since!'
I thought, oh dear. They make them near Dakar and have fooled the best of us. My expression must have changed because his eyes ignited with delighted malice. Adriana sensed the bad news and nipped it swiftly in the bud.
'Fabio. See that Lovejoy receives no money, no expenses of any kind.'
Fabio fingered his amber beads and beamed. 'Is it to be entirely a labour of love?'
'And you can stop that. We've come to an arrangement. Lovejoy will be paid in antiques of our choosing— after he's divvied them for us.'
'I'll book it in as payment in kind,' Fabio whispered confidentially to me. Adriana's lips thinned even more. I could see how Fabio could get on the calmest nerves.
'His food will be provided by me,' she coursed on tonelessly.
'Must I book a table, dear?' Fabio asked innocently, eyes on the ceiling.
She iced him with a look. 'By that I mean under my supervision.'
He pencilled an ostentatious note, murmuring to himself, 'Lovejoy to feed under Adriana,' then asked briskly, 'Anything else, dear?'
She gave up and turned to me. 'Have you a place to live?'
I thought swiftly. If she was this careful and I was fool enough to admit that I dossed in the park she'd probably stick me in some garret over her stables, with that businessman of hers counting the teaspoons every time I went for a pee.
'Yes, thanks,' I said. 'I'm fixed up.'
They both looked dubious at that but said nothing, and we went to work.
* * *
I'd found a nook. I was in with a chance of doing the rip. And doing Arcellano.
CHAPTER 12
The Vatican walls seemed more impenetrable than ever when I photographed them that afternoon. Every gateway, the enormous doors in St Peter's, the Museum entrance, every Swiss Guard in sight and the Angelica gateway, with me grinning and clicking away among droves of tourists all doing the same thing. I went about like someone demented. There wasn't a lot of time.
Adriana had objected when I asked to use the camera. All known antiques firms—
except Lovejoy Antiques, Inc, that is—have cameras of various sorts, though most dealers are too bone idle to use them much. She had finally let me borrow a cheap box camera that was hanging on hoping to become an antique, a century still to go.
'Thanks, Adriana,' I said. My last money would go on a film.
