The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (109 page)

“How do you know he is an impostor?” I asked.

He took the cigar from his mouth. “I wanted to be certain,” he said, “so I deliberately called the Dionysus a ‘Bacchus’ sculptured by Orinaldi. The fellow corrected me. But Bacchus is the Roman name for the Greek god, Dionysus. An art connoisseur of Leiderkrantz’s caliber would have known that. Also,” he added, “there was never, to my knowledge, a sculptor named Orinaldi.”

I grinned because I couldn’t help it. But when I went out I didn’t think any part of it was funny, and I was glad for the opportunity to settle for a couple of knots on my head.

The Pittsfield Hotel turned out to be an excellent indication that Leiderkrantz was a phony. Schweingurt had sized the guy up right on that point. But Schweingurt had pressed his intuition too far when he claimed that our man would be back. From what I learned, I was pretty sure we would never see Leiderkrantz again.

No one by that name, according to the desk clerk, had checked into the hotel. There had been a man of Leiderkrantz’s description, however, who had checked in shortly before noon. But the clerk was pretty sure the man had come in from Chicago or Milwaukee, or some place out West. Not Lisbon.

If Leiderkrantz had registered under another name, it was logical that he would also falsify his address. I checked the bellhops.

The two bellhops on duty hadn’t recalled carrying any luggage with a Trans-Ocean Airlines tag; but one of them – a young blond kid with fuzz on his plump cheeks and a squeaky voice – remembered hopping for a short, stocky man, flashily dressed, with a dapper, rust-red mustache. The kid especially remembered the nickel tip the man had given him.

I called Schweingurt, learned that he was in conference with Dr Bramble from the Lexington Museum, then sat down in a leather chair in the lobby to wait for the man who had fitted Leiderkrantz’s description. After a while I got restless, went over to the cigar stand and brought a pack of cigarettes, went into the bar and drank two beers – all the time keeping my eye on the lobby, the entrance door and the room desk. When I finished the beer, I went back to the lobby, sat down, got up again and bought a package of chewing gum at the cigar stand. I was walking back to my chair again when the bellhop grabbed my arm and pulled me excitedly behind a huge potted fern.

“That’s the guy I meant,” he told me and pointed to a red-haired man stepping into the elevator. “That’s the bird from Milwaukee who checked in this morning.”

I glanced eagerly through the green fronds of the fern and growled out a curse. The man wasn’t Leiderkrantz. I turned to the blond kid, saw the disappointment on his cherubic face, tossed him four-bits and hurried out of the lobby. It was after five o’clock and I wanted to boot myself all the way cross-town for killing the whole afternoon. It might have been speedier at that. The taxi I grabbed was plenty slow, but it gave me an opportunity to try to figure out the puzzle.

No matter how I added it up, it wouldn’t make sense that Leiderkrantz – rather, the man who had posed as Leiderkrantz – would make the trip from Europe with the valuable Dionysus, risk exposure in order to deliver the statuette to Schweingurt, then disappear.

When the cab pulled up in front of Schweingurt’s place, I was drawing a blank all around, and still didn’t have any answers.

There were a green-and-white police car and an ambulance at the curb when I left my cab. A crowd of silent people stood in front of the art galleries, trying to peer through the huge front windows. A big, perspiring cop at the door was growling at them and endeavoring to move them away from the place. I flashed my shield at the cop, told him I was working for Schweingurt, and he let me through.

“You just lost your job, buddy,” he told me as I passed him.

Max Schweingurt was lying on the floor of the Grecian Court, at the foot of the Athena statue. A doctor from the Medical Examiner’s office was crouched over the body. Schweingurt’s hair was matted with blood and his head was twisted crazily so that his sightless eyes stared up at the statue above. He was very dead. There was a bright crimson stain on the base of the statue, near the foot of the goddess, that trickled down to the floor. Evidently Schweingurt had struck his head on the statue when he fell. I moved over to where a detective was questioning the dark-haired attendant in the gray smock. The attendant’s name was Maurice Cambelli, it developed.

The Medical Examiner got up from his crouch with a grunt and turned to the detective. He gazed down at the corpse and grunted again, running long fingers through his shaggy hair. “This man was dead before he hit that statue,” he said in a rumbling voice. “The right side of his head – where you see the blood – struck the base of the statue. But,” and he pointed to a livid mark behind Schweingurt’s left ear, “he was struck a much harder blow on the left side of his head before he fell. I’m pretty sure that first blow caused his death.”

“Hmm!” the detective murmured and he stepped slowly over to the corpse. “Murder!”

Cambelli gasped, repeating the word as if it choked him.

A police lab photographer took shots of the body before the Medical Examiner’s men removed it, and a fingerprint man studied the room as if trying to decide where to start dusting the place.

I said to Cambelli beside me, “Come on into Schweingurt’s office. I need a drink. And I think you do, too. Maybe we can find a bottle there.” He followed me into the office at the rear, nodding silently as the police detective warned him to stick around the building.

I closed the door of the office and Cambelli went over and took a bottle of Bourbon and a water glass from the bottom drawer of the desk. He poured a good triple shot into the glass, gulped it down, poured a lighter drink and handed the glass to me. I held it in my hand and sat down on the corner of the desk.

He told me he had worked for Max Schweingurt since coming from art school in Italy eight years ago. He wasn’t familiar with the Dionysus acquisition, he told me – Mr Schweingurt had been pretty secretive about it all – but he did know that the Dionysus statuette might possibly be a forgery. Mr Schweingurt had claimed it was, though Dr Bramble from the Lexington Foundation Museum was certain it was the original.

“Isn’t Bramble supposed to be an expert on that sort of thing?” I asked him.

He nodded quickly. “Oh, yes,” he agreed. “The very best. But Mr Schweingurt made tests of it up in the laboratory and proved to his own satisfaction that it’s no more than four or five hundred years old. The original would be several centuries older than that, dating back to around 450
B.C.
” He spoke with a certain pride found only in men of his profession, but he spoke of centuries the way we might speak of years, say the turbulent Thirties or the roaring Twenties. “I shouldn’t claim that the Dionysus we received is a forgery, I suppose,” he said; “rather, it’s a copy of the original made by a sculptor of a later era. An excellent copy, too; and worth a great amount of money. But it can’t approach the value of the original.”

He was silent for a moment. I said, “You say that this Dr Bramble from the museum claimed the Dionysus was the original?”

“Yes.” He nodded his dark head. “He and Mr Schweingurt had quite an argument about it.”

“Ah!” I murmured. My thoughts began clicking into some semblance of order.

He leaned forward in his chair aggressively. “No, no! Dr Bramble wouldn’t have done anything like –
that!
Besides,” and he wiped his fine, smooth hand across his eyes, “the Dionysus is gone. Missing. Stolen! Dr Bramble wouldn’t have stolen it, let alone committed murder for it, whether it was the original or a copy.”

I sipped my drink, gestured with the glass in my hand and argued, “Look at it this way: Suppose the Dionysus
was
an original, even though Schweingurt’s tests proved it wasn’t. Bramble was so sure it was that he wanted it. An art connoisseur will commit murder for something so priceless as a statuette dating before Christ.” I emptied the glass and watched the thoughtful frown on his face, as he turned the theory over in his mind. He poured himself another drink.

He shook his head. “No. That’s no good. If Bramble were certain the statuette was an original, he could have agreed with Schweingurt and purchased it, as a copy, for a small fortune less than he believed it was worth. He would have done that if he had wanted it badly. He wouldn’t have stolen it.” He took my glass and filled it for himself. “Besides,” he said resolutely, “Dr Bramble
wasn’t
interested in the Dionysus, which is a decisive point in his favor. He has already bought the Athena – the statue of the goddess outside, which Mr Schweingurt struck when he fell. The Athena is the only original by the same sculptor in the country and is worth even more than the Dionysus. So you see – if Dr Bramble had wanted the Dionysus as representative of that period of art, he might have purchased it as a copy, rather than spend many, many times more for the Athena.”

“The Athena is an original?” I questioned.

“Oh, definitely!”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Well, I hardly think Dr Bramble would have purchased it as an original if it weren’t. He is an expert, you know. And he has been quite anxious to get it these last few days.”

“How long have you had this statue of Athena?” I asked him.

“About two years.” He thought a moment. “Maybe a little longer.”

“And Dr Bramble has been only anxious to buy it in these past few days?”

“Yes.”

“Odd, isn’t it? Especially since Bramble is supposed to be such an authority and would certainly have known of Schweingurt’s having the only authentic sculpture in this country?”

He shrugged indifferently. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “Certainly, Dr Bramble wouldn’t have stolen the Dionysus. I can’t understand why anybody would want to steal a copy.”

“Schweingurt told me the original was worth about sixty-five thousand dollars,” I said. “How much was the copy worth?”

“A couple of thousand, maybe.”

“Plenty of murders have been committed for less than that,” I told him. “Besides, whoever did steal it may not know it’s a copy.”

“Which would leave Bramble out of the picture.”

“Yes.”

Cambelli stared suddenly at the Bourbon in his glass. “Even stealing an original would be stupid,” he mused. “An original Dionysus would be too hard to dispose of. No art connoisseur would buy it unless he knew exactly where it came from. And no one but a connoisseur would be interested in it.” He sipped his whiskey thoughtfully. “There’s a lot more to this than robbery,” he added.

“Much more,” I agreed and let it go at that.

When we left the office, Schweingurt’s body had been removed and the lab men were packing their equipment. I hung around a few minutes near the Athena statue to see if I might pick up some faint clue to the murder, but found nothing and started to turn away when I saw what appeared to be a pencil-shaped object made of marble lying near the base of the statue. I stooped to pick it up when a rough voice behind me bellowed, “Keep your hands off that!”

I straightened quickly, my hands at my sides and stared at the object on the floor.

The voice came alongside me and said, in a friendlier tone, “Oh, it’s you, Mike.” I glanced up at the big, red, Irish face of the plain clothes man. “Sorry,” he said. “Reilly don’t want nothin’ touched. He’s comin’ back in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I told him. “That pencil-shaped thing caught my eye.” I recognized it as the tip of the staff I had seen on the Dionysus statue, and it told me something – Schweingurt probably had been holding the statuette when he was murdered, the tip of the staff had broken off as he fell.

“What does Reilly think of this job?” I asked the cop.

“Reilly don’t know. The place was closed and there was only the assistant here.” He glanced furtively at Maurice Cambelli standing nervously near the door to Schweingurt’s office. “He thinks maybe there was a robbery motive . . . but he’s not so sure but what Cambelli might have something to do with it.”

I shook my head. “He had no motive,” I argued, thinking of what I already knew about the case – the statuette, Leiderkrantz, Bramble. “I don’t think he had anything to do with it.”

The cop shrugged. “Reilly just isn’t sure about him, that’s all.” He moved away, turned and said, “You won’t touch anything, will you, Mike? Reilly would raise hell with me if you did.”

I nodded, said, “The answer isn’t here, anyway, Grady.” I walked out of the place.

Picking up Leiderkrantz’s trail was a hopeless cause, but it was the only lead I could think of. It kept me busy for three days, picking up pieces, querying people who might have known him or seen him – and running up against a dead end every time. The Customs and airlines representatives were looking for him without success. I finally decided to give up that angle.

A week passed, a week in which I accomplished nothing. Then, one morning I picked up my newspaper and read that Maurice Cambelli had been slapped in jail for the Schweingurt murder. That night I had two visitors, Reilly and Grady from the detective division.

I pulled out a bottle and poured three drinks after they arrived. Reilly looked at the drinks, then at me. “This isn’t a social call, Mike,” he said gruffly and shook his head at the drinks. “We want to know how much
you
know about the Schweingurt murder.”

I waved my hand at him and got up from my chair. “Okay,” I told him. “Ignore my hospitality. Besides I’m an unsociable guy.” I went into the bedroom, put on a lounging robe and came back. Two of the drinks were gone. That made me feel better. I don’t like the law to be out of sorts with me.

“What about the Schweingurt murder?” I asked. “I thought you’d grabbed the Cambelli kid for that.”

The fire had gone out of Reilly’s eyes. “Don’t try to sell it, Mike,” he said softly. “Maybe you know something, maybe you don’t.” He shrugged. “We grabbed the Cambelli boy. But that doesn’t solve the murder. We found out that a statue was stolen – a thing called Dionysus – and figured there probably was a robbery motive. We found the statue in Cambelli’s room.”