she wanted anyway. I gave her more money, told her we’d possibly be another day here. I wasn’t sure. We’d meet at the waterfront. As we parted, something Zole did stuck in my mind. I grabbed him as he slipped something under Sherman’s collar.
“What’s that, you little tyke?”
“Lemme go, Lovejoy.”
A knife, a shiv about eight inches blade, an etched horn handle. I showed it to Magda, thunderstruck. People in the street took no notice, too occupied watching the loud bands form in procession.
“Magda? This child’s got a dagger! For God’s sake, woman! What the hell are you thinking of?”
She shook her head wearily. “Don’t sheet me, Lovejoy. We look out for each other best we can, okay?”
“No it’s not okay!” I blazed. “He’s still a —”
“Don’t say it, Lovejoy!” Zole threatened, all aggression. Sherman growled. I growled back and it gave a canine sort of shrug and settled on its haunches to await the outcome. “I’m no kid! I already stuck three pimps tried to muscle —”
“You stay a kid until I tell you different, understand?”
I cast the knife into the harbour waters, and marched off in a fury.
“We in a strange town, Lovejoy!” he shouted after me. “We gotta carry, man! Or you done.”
Ever get that feeling that you’re suddenly the centre of a world gone mad? It happens a lot around me.
“DAM, everybody calls me, Lovejoy,” the collector said. “Would you believe Damski for a first name? Sort of goes with Hirschman, right?”
A humorous man, but laughing without a crack in his face. His dark eyes were humourless. I wondered if every high-fly collector has a facade of mirth, but then remembered Mr Verbane.
The house was one of a terrace, a street actually as I know streets. A curved courtyard with shrubs in pots and trellises supporting climbing plants—wisterias, vines, bougainvilleas at a guess, though usually when I’m showing off with plant names women come and correct me. Wrought-iron gates, pavements and garden patios seemed to be the New Orleans fashion.
We entered through french windows, a comfortable and masculine salon. Hirschman was impassive, rotating his whole body before sitting down, a Bavarian Victorian clockwork automaton. He was pudgy in each limb. Rings shone on his fat fingers. I recognized a pro.
“It’s your collection, er, Dam.” I could see no purpose in delay. “I’ve come for a proportion of the valuation.”
“Protection, Lovejoy? You don’t look the type.”
“Not in the way you mean, Dam. Protection for your unbought, as well as the bought.”
“But I finish up paying you, that it?”
“Yes.”
“Anti-semitic, huh?”
“Some of my best friends, et cetera.”
“Never mind the boughts, Lovejoy. Them I got, a’ready. Tell me the unboughts. I never heard that scam before.”
“The Kroller-Muller Museum in Holland,” I said. He was too cool. I felt the humidity reach into my clothes and sweat start tickling.
“I heard of it.” He lit a cigar like a bratwurst, admired his smoke.
“In that forest, by Arnhem. The robbery took two minutes —smash glass, rush twenty paces into the gallery, grab three Van Goghs, vanish. Remember it?”
He spread his hands, in mock appeasement. “How’d I remember, Lovejoy? You only just told me. Terrible, terrible.”
“The police were there in a flash. The crooks were gone in half a flash. The museum still has two hundred and seventy-five works by Vincent, but…”
“The three have never been found?”
“Not so far, Dam.”
“Why come to me, Lovejoy? I’m one of millions.
“You’ve companies in Japan, Dam. You’ve offices near the Mitsubishi Bank in Tokyo—the one lately held up by the Yakuza street gangs there.”
“And they pulled the Kroller-Muller heist? That what you’re saying?”
“No. They’re the ones stole the Corots in France. Like the say-so Corot copy you later exhibited, saying you had it painted the same week, copied from photographs.”
“You’re alleging my copy’s the genuine stolen Corot? I have certificates to prove —”
“I’m a divvy, Damski. Any test you like.”
Which brought silence in on cue, amid smoke and the barking of a dog nearby. I’d been pleased to see the old- fashioned roadstones outside in the street. Tradition dies hard in New Orleans, it seems. I wondered if those marching bands were part of the same tradition. Dixieland? Wasn’t that the stuff they played hereabouts? Or was that Nashville? I’m hopeless with music, though I sing in a choir in my home village —
