“Already?” I retrieved a small notebook and pen from my duffel and wrote down the information. The names, ages, occupations, and addresses were so different, it seemed as though they’d been plucked out of thin air. I asked Victor, “Do you even know these people?”
“All… part… of a… master… plan,” he said. I covered the mouthpiece and said to Callie, “I take back what I said before, about you being insane.” Then I said to Victor, “Are there many more?”
“Many,” Victor said in his weird, metallic voice. “Real… ly… Mr.
… Creed… evil is… every… where… and… must… be pun… ished.”
“I must see the Picasso,” Kathleen said.
“Then you shall,” I said.
“And the maitre d’,” she said. “They have one, right?”
“They do indeed.”
“Is he stuffy? I hope he’s insufferably stuffy!”
“He will be if I don’t tip him,” I said. We were in the Seagram Building on East Fifty-Second, in the lobby of the Four Seasons restaurant.
She touched my arm. “Donovan, this is really sweet of you, but we don’t have to eat here. I don’t want you to spend this much on me. Let’s just have a drink, see the painting and maybe the marble pool. We can share a pizza at Angelo’s afterward.”
“Relax,” I said. “I’m rich.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
The Four Seasons is famous, timeless, and the only restaurant in New York designated as a landmark.
“Do you mean really, you’re rich,” she said, “or that you’re really rich?”
“I’m rich enough to buy you whatever you’d like to have tonight.”
She laughed. “In that case, I’ll have the Picasso!”
Did I mention I liked this lady?
I gave my name to the maitre d’ and led Kathleen to the corridor where the Picasso tapestry had hung since the restaurant opened back in 1959. The twenty-two-foot-high Picasso was in fact the center square of a stage curtain that had been designed for the 1920 Paris production of The Three Cornered Hat. When the theater owner ran out of money, he cut the Picasso portion from the curtain and sold it. Now, with the economy in distress, Kathleen had heard the tapestry was about to be auctioned for an estimated eight million dollars. This might be her only chance to see it.
“Oh my God!” she said, her voice suddenly turning husky. “I love it!”
“Compared to his other work, the colors are muted,” I said. “But yeah, it’s pretty magnificent.”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “Impress me.”
“It’s a distemper on linen,” I said.
“Distemper? Like the disease a dog gets?”
“Exactly like that.”
