looking for anything?”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Sure you don’t, but that doesn’t keep people from buying this stuff anyway. Who needs any of it?”
“I don’t, I’m afraid. But it is all very nice.”
“You bet.” He paused to breathe and look around, and he smiled. “Real nice. Because it’s real. Every piece.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“I don’t mean it’s not fake. I mean there’s something about it. You have to have the eye.” He put his finger beside his eye and tapped. “If you have the eye, you can look at anything and tell. I’ll go places and walk through somebody’s showroom and nothing’s real. It’s not fake, but it’s not real. And I can see it. I can see it a mile away. You know what I mean.”
“I do know, Norman. I know exactly what you mean.”
“Sure you do. Why else be in the business? You’ve got the eye, Charles. You can see what’s real. I don’t do books, but I can tell, even with them.”
“Anyway,” Charles said, “I have a question.”
“Maybe I even have an answer! What do you want?”
“Yesterday that man called me, Edmund Cane.”
“Yeah, right, he was asking who I knew at the auction and I told him all the names I knew. He was trying to find out who the blonde was.”
“Do you know if he found out?”
“Nope. I sure didn’t know who she was. He might have found out, but I don’t know.”
“Who was he?”
“Cane? Oh, just a guy from a place in New York. He looks just like Einstein. Did you want to talk to him again?”
“Maybe. I’d at least like to know how to.”
“Sure, you could look him up. The place in New York, it’s called Horton’s on Fortieth.”
“Horton’s.”
“On Fortieth, that’s part of the name. Big place. Say, that was some auction yesterday. All I was trying to do was just buy back the stuff I sold the guy.”
“That reminds me, Norman. I have another question.”
“I think I can do two, but don’t push your luck!”
“I won’t. You said the police gave you a list.”
“Right. Stuff that got stolen from the house the night the guy got whacked. They want me to be looking for it.”
“Yes. Do you have a copy?”
“Yeah, sure, somewhere back here. Give me a minute and I’ll find it. You think you’ve seen something?”
“Probably not. I was just curious.”
“I’ll find it. It’ll just take a minute.”
Charles browsed. They were real things. The shelves and floor and tables were blanketed by a dizzying variety of shapes and materials and uses, but they were all very real.
Charles could tell.
Then the real Norman was again with him. “I got it. It’s the list of the stuff that got stolen. You’re supposed to keep an eye out for them, and if you see anything, call that number at the top. It’s the police, and that’s the detective to ask for, his name is Watts. And there’s an FBI guy on it, Frank Kelly, since it’s antiquities, and you can call him, too.”
“I see. There are over fifty things here!”
“Oh. It’s from all the burglaries. I think Bastien was the fifth one. Some guy going through the neighborhood.”
“Norman-does it mean anything to you?”
“What, the list? It’s stuff that got stolen.”
“Yes,” Charles said. “But the things that were stolen-do they say anything about who would have stolen them?”
“Huh? It’s all kinds of stuff. A little French statue, a mahogany letter file, an ivory dolphin-that was a nice one, I sold him that one.”
“They’re all antiques.”
“So the burglar’s got good taste. And they’re all small and valuable. He breaks in, grabs stuff, and runs. That neighborhood up there in Foxhall, every house is piled high with stuff.”
“I have several customers up there,” Charles said.
“Great place for a burglar. Except when Derek Bastien walks in on him right in the middle of his haul. Too bad. Wrong place, wrong time, and the guy panics. Grabs a marble statue and wham, wham, wham! You read about it, right?”
“I didn’t read the details.”
“I sold him that statue. I bet it weighed thirty pounds, at least. One whack would have been plenty, but the guy’s panicked I guess. Blood everywhere. You know, I wonder if that’s why the desk sold so high. But they wouldn’t sell it with all the blood, would they? They’d clean it off.
But you have to be careful cleaning those old finishes-”
“Thank you, Norman. It’s been so nice to see you.”
AFTERNOON
The return from Georgetown had been about the same as the trip to it.
“Mr. Beale,” Alice said as he paused in the showroom, “there was a telephone call for you. Mrs. Beale has the message.”
“Thank you. Have we sold anything this morning?”
“A Dickens. The Olde Curiosity Shoppe.”
“There are shops where curiosity is a dangerous thing,” he said.
“Hello, dear.”
“Well, well,” she said, with a lemon meringue tartness.
“Well what?”
“Congresswoman Karen Liu’s office called and she would be pleased to see you tomorrow, Wednesday, at 7:30 in the morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?” he said.
“Yes, and please call back to confirm.”
“I will. How unexpected.”
“Charles.” The lemon had some sour. “What are you going to say to her?”
“I have until tomorrow to think of something.”
“I still don’t know why you are even going.”
“I am going to look at her and tell if she’s the real thing.”
“The real what?”
“The real thing.”
“How will you tell?”
He tapped his finger beside his eye. “I can see it.”
“And did Norman Highberg answer any of your questions?”
“Some of them more than I wanted. Dorothy, I have some odd things to think about.”
“It is because you are looking in odd places.”
“Yes. And now, I think, bookstores in California should be open.”
“Mr. Leatherman, please. This is Charles Beale.”
