second thoughts.'
I nodded. Feeble or not, how would I feel about parting, even temporarily, with a Vermeer I hadn't seen in forty years? I sympathized, although as problems went, I could imagine worse.
'Ee-ya-AOH!' yawped the movie. 'HAI1EEE!' It had been going loquaciously along for a couple of minutes and I still didn't know what language it was in.
'Refill?' I asked, pointing to her glass.
'No… Yes, please.'
I got another glass of wine for her and switched to it myself. I wasn't yet up to coping with two martinis.
'Anne,' I said as I sat down, 'did Peter ever say anything to you about there being a fake?'
'In the show? No.' The violet eyes widened. 'Is there one?'
'I think so, yes.'
'But-which one?' She leaned forward excitedly. 'It's that Corot, isn't it? I knew it!'
I shook my head, smiling. I knew what she meant. Quai at Honfleur was the usually estimable Corot at his gauzy worst; a soft-focus panorama of muzzy fishing boats and gray-green trees done in the 'poetical' Salon manner that had made him one of the most popular artists of the late nineteenth century.
'You know what they say about Corot?' I said. 'That he has the most prolific posthumous production of any artist in history. That he painted one thousand pictures, of which twenty-five hundred are in Europe, five thousand in America, and the rest unaccounted for. No, Peter wouldn't have been so pleased with himself over just another fake Corot. I think it's another one.'
'You think? You don't know which one it is?'
I sat back and told her about the conversation at Kranzler's.
'A forgery…' She turned it over in her mind, then looked sharply up at me, her eyes snapping. 'Chris! You don't suppose it has anything to do with his death! Of course it does! It must!'
I looked blankly at her.
'The forgery!' she cried. 'Peter discovered a forgery, and they killed him to keep him quiet!'
I looked blankly at her some more. Where was everyone getting these ideas? 'Who's 'they'?'
'I don't know who they is-are.' She made an impatient httle noise. 'But it's a clue. What else is there to go on? I told Colonel Robey Peter couldn't have been killed that way.'
I put my wineglass down. 'Are you saying,' I said very slowly, 'that you don't accept the police version of how Peter was killed?'
'I don't know what the police think, but I certainly don't believe Peter van Cortlandt was crawling around Frankfurt's red-light district last Wednesday night or any other night-' She stopped. 'Well, do you ?'
I did, but I wasn't going to say so. She obviously wanted very much to believe-did believe-that Peter was above anything so sordid, and I had no great desire to disenchant her. Or to differ with her, for that matter. Actually, I was grateful to her for wanting to think the best of Peter. I wanted to think the best of him, too, but the difference between us was that she was an innocent, happily unaware of the essential baseness of men, while I, more seasoned and more tolerant, knew that all men were pretty much alike when it got down to essential baseness.
So I thought, in the full radiance of my ignorance and condescension. Anne was a naive young female, Harry was a typically paranoid cop, and I alone was worldly-wise enough to accept things for what they were.
'I'm not sure what I believe,' I temporized cleverly. 'What did Mark say when you talked to him?'
'You know Colonel Robey,' she said wryly. 'You're never sure what wave length he's on. He listened, nodded very gravely, said 'Hmm, yes, well, I can see where you're coming from,' but his mind was somewhere else. I could tell he thought the same thing you do: that Peter was out-playing around-and got mixed up with a rough crowd, and… that's what happened.'
'Anne, I didn't say I believed that.'
'But you do.' She shook her head, a jerk of frustration. 'You do, don't you?'
'Well, I don't rule it out.'
'But how can you think that? Peter was so decent, so clean. You knew him better than any of us; do you really believe he could… a prostitute with a tattoo on her behind… a horrible, filthy hotel room?' She shivered.
'Anne, listen. I really liked Peter, and I respected him. But deep down I didn't know him any better than you did. Look, just because a man seems to be decent- is decent- doesn't mean that there aren't some pretty dark things going on below the surface. It's not something a man can help, you know-'
Understandably, she laughed at this vapid pedantry. 'That's what Colonel Robey said, and that's just the way he said it. Chris, do you really think I'm that wet behind the ears?' She laughed again, this time with exasperation. 'I've been in the U.S. Air Force for six years, you know.'
As a matter of fact, it was exactly what I thought, but I warmed to her on account of it; because she liked Peter, because she thought more of him than I did. Nevertheless, it seemed like a good time to change the subject.
'Well, maybe you're right,' I said. 'Anyway, will you let Mark know I'll get a plane to Florence as early as I can tomorrow?'
'Sure. And thanks again.' She glanced at the Dortmunder Bier wall clock above us. 'Seven o'clock. No wonder my stomach's growling.'
Invite her to dinner, dope, I told myself. She practically asked you to. Instead I said, 'I've stuffed myself with hors d'oeuvres from the bar, so I think I'll pass up dinner tonight. I'm still catching up on my sleep.'
'Oh.'
'Maybe we can have dinner one night when I get back.'
'Mm-hm,' she said noncommittally. Which was all the answer I deserved. She pushed her chair back from the table. 'Good luck with Bolzano. And thank you for the wine.'
I watched her go with conflicting feelings. One part of me wanted to chase after her and tell her I really wasn't the jerk I seemed to be, that jet lag, concussion, and codeine had combined to throw me off form, and would she like to go to Kranzler's, or the Cafe Wintergarten, or maybe go for a schnitzel at nearest Wienerwald after all?
The other part of me won. I sat awhile in morbid solitude, finished my wine, and got up to leave. I really wasn't hungry, and I really was tired. And thinking again about Peter's wretched ending had gotten me down; no question about that. On my way out I passed directly beneath the television set.
'But what can it awr mean, mahstah?' a sloe-eyed young man was asking earnestly. So it was English. Of a sort, anyway; the mushily orientalized version dear to the dubbers of Oriental films. I paused to hear the response.
'It means, my impetuous young flen,' a sagacious robed figure replied, 'that you may be heading for gleat… difficurty.'
I took the elevator up and went to bed.
Chapter 8
I called Florence from my room the next morning and spoke with Lorenzo Bolzano, the collector's son. The elder Bolzano, Claudio, was in the hospital for a twenty-four-hour checkup, so I arranged with Lorenzo to come the following day. Thus, with a free day I flew to Frankfurt to talk to the Kunstmuseum's director for administration, to see if I could resolve the insurance question that had come up on the El Greco. That was the matter that had taken Peter to Frankfurt in the first place, but of course he hadn't lived to make his appointment.
Emanuel Traben was a quiet, worried-looking man of fifty with a sparse little gray goatee, a round red spot on each sallow cheek so unnaturally bright it might have been rouged, and digestive difficulties that kept his fingertips hovering discreetly near his mouth during most of the time we talked.
'You understand,' he said apologetically, 'that we're most anxious to cooperate, but signor Bolzano has entrusted the care of his magnificent painting to us and'-there was a pause while he winced and belched gently behind his hand-'excuse me-we feel we cannot release it to another party, even at signor Bolzano's request, unless
