Painted Ladies

Quirk leaned over and checked the tape recorder, listened to a moment of playback, nodded to himself, set it back down, and pushed record again.

“Tell me about Ariel Herzberg,” Quirk said.

“His grandfather was not lucky,” Lloyd said. “I believe he died in Auschwitz, where Ariel’s father spent several years of his childhood.”

“Nine to fourteen,” I said.

Everybody looked at me as if I had barged onto the stage during a performance.

“When he was liberated,” Lloyd went on, “his only possession was Lady with a Finch. Which he sold to a dealer in Rotterdam right after the war. The question Ariel wanted answered, with which I was trying to help, was: Did the sale constitute a legal agreement among adults? I thought we could certainly argue that it did not. The boy was fourteen and destitute, recently free after five years in Auschwitz, with no legal guardian. It was our position that the dealer exploited the boy, and that all else in terms of legal possession is tainted by that initial illegality.”

“Who’s financing all this?” Quirk said.

“I don’t know,” Lloyd said. “The foundation seems to have enough money.”

“Didn’t you have to lend them a car?” Quirk said, as if he was puzzled.

Lloyd smiled.

“That, I think, had more to do with low profile,” he said, “than money.”

I glanced at Belson. He seemed to be sitting blankly, looking at Lloyd. But I knew he heard every word.

“They do any fund-raising?” Quirk said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Lloyd said. “I offered to introduce them to philanthropic members of the Jewish community, but they said they didn’t want to be beholden.”

Quirk nodded.

“But they had money,” Quirk said.

“Apparently,” Lloyd said.

“Do you know where they got it?”

“No,” Lloyd said.

Quirk nodded again.

“Tell me more about Ariel,” he said. “Did you think his dedication was real?”

“To the point of obsession,” Lloyd said.

“Would he kill someone?”

“Kill someone?” Lloyd said. “He’s trying to do good.”

“So he wouldn’t kill anybody?” Quirk said.

“No,” Lloyd said. “Good God, of course not.”

“So what are you scared of?” Quirk said.

I smiled to myself.

Gotcha.

Lloyd was silent. It wasn’t a silence of pondering the question. It was a silence of I don’t know what to say. He had relaxed as he talked, feeling more and more lawyerly, confident that he could play these cops. Quirk was patient. He waited, letting the pressure of the silence work on Lloyd.

“This seemed personal to him,” Lloyd said finally.

“Enough to kill people?”

Lloyd contemplated his answer for a bit.

Then he said, “If you knew too much.”

“You know too much?” Quirk said.

“I know what I’ve told you.”

“You think he killed others?”

“Prince, and Prince’s wife, maybe,” Lloyd said. “A building supervisor in a building on Marlborough Street.”

“Because they knew too much?”

“Maybe,” Lloyd said.

“What did they know too much about?” Quirk said.

“This damn painting,” Lloyd said.

“Lady with a Finch?” Quirk said.

“Yes.”