'Harry,' I said, 'you're weird.'
But not so weird that he didn't order half a sauteed chicken.
I wasn't very hungry, and asked for a small chicken salad.
'Oh, by the way,' he said, when the waitress had brought apple juice for him and a glass of Mosel for me, 'speaking of pictures…' He unfolded a poorly photocopied sheet with four photographs on it: two men, each photographed from front and side, with names and numbers beneath. 'Would these possibly be friends of yours?'
They were like faces from a nightmare. No-neck, the gorilla man and his sidekick Skull-face. 'You got them!' I cried. 'The guys from the storage room! Harry-'
'Ah,' he said with satisfaction, 'good. But don't get too excited. We don't have them; we just know who they are.'
'Who?'
He took back the sheet and spread it out on the table in front of him, smoothing down the creases. 'Just a couple of particularly nasty rent-a-thugs. The Polizei has records a mile long on them. They call the one with the forty-inch neck the Beast.'
'Gee, I wonder why that is,' I said, remembering with a shudder how it felt to be lobbed six feet into a concrete wall.
'Got a little more news for you, Chris,' he said, watching me over the rim of his glass. 'We also know the guys who killed van Cortlandt-that is, the ones who walked him through those bars that night.'
I slowly put down my wine. 'Why didn't you tell me that before? Who are they?'
He smiled and tapped the sheet.
My eyes widened. 'The same ones? How did you find all this out?'
'Wasn't too hard. I got a dozen possible matches to your Photofit and took them to Frankfurt yesterday. Then I spent last night with a couple of Polizei, showing the pictures to people in the bars around the Paradies. Three people positively identified them as the guys who were hauling him around from bar to bar, more or less holding him up between them.'
I turned the sheet around and looked hard at the pictures. The men who'd killed Peter. 'Why did they do it?' I asked dully.
'Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that? Somebody hired them, I guess.'
'And somebody hired them to rob the storage room?'
'I think so.'
'And that's all you know?'
'Hey, look, Chris, I'm not Superman,' he said testily. 'Don't worry, we'll find these guys.'
'Hey, Harry, I'm sorry, you've done a terrific job. It's just… well, even if we know who they are, we don't really know anything more than we did before, do we?'
'Oh, I wouldn't say that. We know the murder and the break-in are connected now. We didn't know that before.'
'That's true. You don't suppose-you don't think Peter somehow found out that the robbery was planned, and they killed him to keep him quiet?'
He didn't seem impressed with the idea. 'Possible, but what happened to your forgery theory?'
I shook my head. 'I don't know.'
We sipped our drinks thoughtfully until the waitress came back with our dinners.
'Aahh,' Harry breathed, 'that smells great. He tore off a wing and went to work on it-quite carnivorously, I thought. 'Now,' he said, licking at his thumb, 'you want to tell me what that was about with Gadney?'
'What what was about?'
'Your burning interest in logistics.'
'I wanted to see if he'd admit to being alone with the open crates,' I said, and went over the conclusions I'd reached in Florence, while Harry nodded and made steady progress on his chicken.
'OK,' he said, 'so you're saying, (a) either the forgery is one of the three paintings from Hallstatt-in which case probably nobody connected with the show had anything to do with it-or (b) it's from Bolzano's Florence collection-in which case somebody in the show has to be involved. And you figure it's b?'
'No, I figure it's a, but I didn't think it would hurt to talk to Egad. Did what he said sound right to you, by the way? About the bills of lading and the travel orders?'
'It sounds possible.'
'Well, I'll check around and see.'
'I'll check around.' He wiped his fingers on a napkin and reached for another. 'You really think that little guy's mixed up in this thing?'
'That little guy' was an inch taller and at least ten pounds heavier than Harry.
'No, but if the fake is from Florence-which I doubt- and not from Hallstatt, either he's involved with it, or Flittner is, or Robey is. One of them has to be.'
'No, I don't see it that way.'
'There's Jessick, you mean? I don't think so. He wasn't cleared to get near the paintings. Flittner, Robey, and Gadney are the only ones with the access and the knowledge. It's got to be one of them.'
'No, it could have been all of them. Or any two.'
I put down the Mosel and thought about that. 'A conspiracy? That's pretty-'
'Or van Cortlandt.'
'Peter? Are you serious? My God, Harry, he was murdered!'
'Yeah, well,' he mumbled into his beard, 'I was figuring that any involvement would have been before he died, you know?'
'That's not what I meant. There's no way Peter would have had anything to do with something crooked. And if he did, why would he tell me about it?'
'Hey, calm down, Chris; don't get excited. Eat your salad.'
'I am calm, damn it!'
'All I'm doing,' he said, searching sadly in the debris on his plate for any shreds he might have missed, 'is thinking out loud, building possibilities from what you told me, you know? And it's possible- possible -that van Cortlandt was involved in something shady, and that he wound up getting killed on account of it.'
'Yes, I know, but-'
'There are some other possibilities too. Anne Greene, for instance.'
'Anne? You're out of your mind! She didn't know anything about it. And she's the one who kept trying to tell everybody Peter was murdered right from the beginning.'
'Look, you said-and it's a good point-that the people who had access and knowledge are our best bets. Now, she's got both, right? Stop being so subjective, for Christ's sake. Whoever's guilty, you can bet there's someone, somewhere, who thinks he's a wonderful person.' He cocked his head and scratched raspily at the hair on his cheek. 'Well, maybe not Flittner.'
'I understand what you're saying, and you're right. But Anne-well, hell, I had access and knowledge, too, for that matter. What about me?'
Harry licked grease from his pinky and nodded thoughtfully. 'Yeah, then there's you.'
'Not likely,' I said, in a tone implying that of course he was being playful. 'I just got here last week.'
'And how do I know this forgery business didn't get set up last week?'
'Because Peter told me about it the very first day I was here, for one thing.'
'Yeah, so you say.'
'So I… Why the hell would-'
Harry threw back his head and chortled. 'Hey, relax, will you? You're not on my list of suspects, OK? Neither is Anne. I just enjoy seeing the veins stand out on your neck, that's all, but I don't want you to have a stroke. Loosen up; don't be so intense. I'm on your side, you know.'
Intense, again. What was this? When did I become so intense? 'That's nice to know, but how come you're being generous enough to exclude me?'
'Intuition. Also the fact that you almost got yourself killed in the storage room. But mostly intuition.'
'Thanks for the vote of confidence.' I took a long sip of the Mosel. 'I'd like to help any way I can,
