Jim McGill 05 The Devil on the Doorstep Read online

  Papa might have disowned him had he brought home any of the paintings he was offered. And the schemers were far too small time in their propositions. They would have soiled themselves in their excitement had they come into possession of a Renoir, but they wouldn’t know how to sell it to their advantage.

  Fences were all about maintaining their advantage. They earned vastly more money than actual art thieves. In the area of antiquities, a looter might steal items of cultural significance, say, Mayan ceramics taken from a jungle site, and sell them for a few hundred dollars. The final buyer might pay six figures for the items. The fence and a willfully ignorant dealer would reap ninety-nine percent of the profit.

  Neither Pruet nor Odo felt as if they’d been approached by anyone who played in the league that interested them. Most of the art they’d seen was dreadful, at least to their eyes. There was some, of course, that was both stunning and masterful. But even in those cases, the work was too new. Anyone buying it would be placing a bet rather than making an investment. Speculating that a painting’s appeal would hold its allure indefinitely, with the artist’s growing fame, the piece’s lengthening history and inflation driving its price ever higher.

  Pruet and Odo were looking for someone who traded in art that had already cleared that bar. As the evening wore on, they wore down. Even with the long naps they’d taken on the flight to the United States, jet lag was catching up with them. At what they thought would be their final stop for the night, a gallery owner with a mischievous sense of humor had filled trash cans with ice and bottles of Kronenbourg.

  The idea of serving French beer rather than French wine amused both Pruet and Odo.

  “Est-ce que cela vous dérangerait si j'avais un?” Odo asked. Would you mind if I have one?

  Pruet said, “J'aurai un, aussi.” I’ll have one, too.

  Odo gave Pruet a look. M’sieur le Magistrat was not a noted beer drinker.

  Still, Odo said, “Bon.”

  He brought two bottles and the gallery owner back with him.

  She was young, no more than thirty, with ginger hair and a pert face. She addressed Pruet in French, spoken with a Belgian accent.

  “Cosette Lenaerts. I hope you will forgive me for saying so, but you remind me of my papa.”

  Pruet offered a tired smile. “If you think well of your father, there’s nothing to forgive.”

  “I love him dearly. You are comfortably situated in town?”

  “Yes, thank you. We’ve found pleasant lodgings.”

  “You’re recently arrived, right? You have that still-tired-from-flying look.”

  Odo asked, “You are a detective in your spare time?”

  “I notice things other people miss. That’s how I succeed in business.”

  Pruet told her, “Your gallery is very lovely.”

  “But the art isn’t quite what you’re looking for.”

  Pruet shrugged, spread his hands. Saying no as politely as his fatigue allowed.

  “Your tastes tend to the traditional?” Cosette asked.

  “Do your father’s?” the magistrate asked.

  “Oui.”

  “So do mine, in the matter of paintings.”

  “I have just the place for you then.” She took a business card from a pocket, gave it to Pruet. “This gallery is like a small annex of the Metropolitan Museum.”

  “Vraiment?” Pruet asked. Truly?

  “Yes. Of course, the prices are set accordingly. If that’s not a problem, I think you’d enjoy it. You’ll have to be buzzed in. Please say I sent you.”

  She gave Pruet her business card.

  “Will they still be open?” he asked.

  “Of course, it’s only eight p.m.” Cosette smiled. “You’re right off today’s flight 006, aren’t you? It’s the wee hours for your bodies.” Looking at Odo, she added, “Well, maybe not for you so much.”

  Pruet inclined his head to Cosette. “You are very kind.”

  She kissed Pruet on each cheek and told him, “I am just a good businesswoman.”

  She brought them two more bottles of beer.

  Had her town car brought ‘round to give them a ride.

  East 78th Street — Manhattan

  Duvessa Gallery was the name on the bronze plaque next to the front door of the townhouse.

  “Odo,” Pruet said as he pressed the doorbell.

  “Oui.” The bodyguard did a quick look around, saw no villains lurking nearby, took out his iPhone and concentrated on the task Pruet had set for him. Looking up the name on the plaque.

  It was a trait Pruet had picked up from James J. McGill, a curiosity about the meaning of names. McGill felt, and Pruet had come to agree, the meaning of a name was a window onto a person’s character. Even if the person in question was unaware of her name’s meaning.

  So Odo would look up the meaning of Duvessa, and see what else might be known about the gallery.

  “Voila,” Odo said. “Duvessa. Irlandais pour la beauté foncée.” Irish for dark beauty.

  Pruet nodded and was about to ask if there was more when he saw a silhouette approaching from the other side of the frosted glass in the door. Odo put his phone away. A woman in early middle age opened the door and smiled at them. Duvessa? If so, she lived up to her name in every regard.

  “Bienvenue, messieurs,” she said. “Je vous avais attendu.” I’ve been expecting you.

  Pruet and Odo glanced at each other. Expecting them?

  More of Cosette Lenaerts’ business acumen? Calling ahead to alert her colleague to their imminent arrival? Or something else?

  “Your French is lovely, madam,” Pruet said in English, dropping the comic accent. “Especially the delicate Irish lilt you bring to it.”

  The woman introduced herself, Duvessa Kinsale, the mistress of the house.

  She stepped aside to let them enter.

  She explained her command of French. “A convent school in Normandy, refined by time at fourteen rue Bonaparte.”

  Pruet’s eyebrows rose. He knew the Paris address of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. If there was anywhere in New York he might find what he wanted, the magistrate now felt, this would be the place.

  Odo, as was his duty, had been the first to enter the townhouse.

  Pruet had followed close behind.

  Closing the door behind them, Duvessa said, “I’m sorry to say, I can offer you no beer.”

  McGill’s Hideaway — The White House

  The president frowned at her chief of staff.

  McGill kept his face impassive.

  Galia Mindel had called McGill, asked if she might have a moment of his time. The two of them had begun their relationship as the best of nemeses, at perpetual odds with each over who should have the final word in the president’s ear. McGill readily conceded his place at the head of the line, if the matter at hand was purely political. He refused to budge, though, if he thought Galia was crossing the line into the Patti’s personal life.

  And God help the chief of staff if she tried to interfere with McGill’s professional life, as she had a time or two.

  With the intercession of the president and the passage of time, Galia and McGill had set down mutually understood boundaries and even come to regard each other with a wary trust. Then McGill had saved Galia’s life, in front of television cameras that transmitted the heroic deed to the world. For her part, Galia had done favors for McGill, privately, that had aided more than one of his investigations.

  With their relationship trending in a positive direction, Galia had some hope that McGill would help her out. He did, up to a point. He agreed to see her after business hours. He listened to her request. He even agreed to play along with her idea, conditionally.

  “I think you’re right, Galia,” he told her as they sat in his hideaway. “This one should be done under the radar, but —”

  Galia leaned forward on her chair. “We can’t tell the president.”

  McGill shook his head. “I can’t help but t
ell Patti. She’s my wife.”

  Of course, back in his days as a Chicago copper, McGill had done plenty of job related things he hadn’t told his first wife, Carolyn. If he had, she might have divorced him sooner than she had. Carolyn was a worrier. Patti had a far hardier composition.

  The faint of heart didn’t get elected president, twice.

  “But the politics —” Galia started.

  McGill put up a hand. “This isn’t politics for me. It’s being honest with my wife. That’s why you won’t be in the room when I talk with Patti. There will be no one who will ever be able to make either of us reveal what’s said. That’s the deal, Galia, take it or leave it.”

  Galia took it and left the room, before McGill asked the president to join him.

  She envied McGill for the spousal privilege he enjoyed with the president. He was right. There wasn’t a court or congressional committee in the land that could make him violate the confidence of a marital conversation.

  There had been one time McGill had been called to testify before the House Committee on Oversight on a matter not directly involving the president, but that had worked out so badly for the chairman of the committee that McGill was unlikely ever to be summoned to appear before Congress again.

  Galia would just have to —

  Jump to her feet when the president opened the door to McGill’s Hideaway and say, “Please join us, Galia.”

  Galia hurried into the room.

  Saw the president frown at her.

  Had the realization pop into her mind that very few chiefs of staff served two full terms of office under a president. But, damnit, after what she’d been through, almost dying on the job, making it through not just one but two elections of historical importance, she wanted to —”

  Not let her knees buckle as the president took her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.

  Told her, “I love you, Galia. You’re the sister I’ve always wanted.”

  The president being an only child.

  The chief of staff felt tears well up in her eyes.

  She was an only child, too.

  Before she could start blubbering, the president told her, “Go home. Have a nice dinner. Call your sons. Tell them Jim and I say hello.”

  Clearing her throat, Galia said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  On the way out of the room, Galia saw McGill give her a wink.

  That was all she needed to know. He’d smoothed the way for her.

  Galia’s plan would be set in motion.

  Having the room to themselves again, Patti told McGill, “Galia thought I was displeased with her. I could see it when she first saw me.”

  McGill smiled and said, “Always good to keep the help on their toes.”

  The president gave her husband a gentle slap on the chest. Then she laughed and let him put his arms around her. She said, “I’m issuing a presidential order as of this moment.”

  “Should I snap to attention?” McGill asked.

  Patti gave him a sly smile. “We’ll get to that later. What I want to tell you now is that it will be your job for my second term of office to jolly me out of any funk I fall into. I’m going to need to have my spirits raised regularly, I fear.”

  McGill nodded. “I’ll do everything I can. Except on truly solemn occasions.”

  “Of course.”

  McGill led Patti to his leather sofa and they sat hip to hip, holding hands.

  “You’re worried about Welborn,” McGill said.

  He’d explained Galia’s idea to Patti, about having the young Air Force officer investigate the radical fringes of the new True South party to see if any conspiracy to assassinate the president amounted to more than just talk. In the normal scheme of things, that would be the job of the Secret Service, but after an election in which True South’s presidential candidate had lost by one electoral vote, an official investigation would look like the president was trying to destroy her political opposition.

  Something Nixonian like that, should it come to light, would only make the president’s efforts to govern even harder. And the greater the number of people who knew about an investigation, the more likely it would be to leak to the press. A covert, unofficial operation — also Nixonian, come to think of it — would stand a better chance of going unnoticed.

  Especially if the investigator had the regional background to blend in with the conspirators. That and expert guidance from a shrewd cop who’d been around the block more than once. McGill had seen the necessity of his playing the role of Welborn’s mentor again.

  He couldn’t, however, get anywhere near the front lines.

  His presence would look even more political than that of the Secret Service.

  “Aren’t you worried about Welborn?” Patti asked.

  “I can’t say he’s like a son to me, but he’d qualify as a nephew.”

  “So you are concerned.”

  “Yeah, a guy with a new wife and two babies? I can identify.”

  “So what do we do?”

  McGill gave his wife a look. She saw he had an idea.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “More often than not,” he said, “undercover guys work alone. But it’s not unheard of for two of them to pair up. Heckle and Jeckle. Or maybe in this case Homer and Gomer.”

  Patti thought she knew whom her husband had in mind. “Leo?”

  McGill shook his head. “He’d do it and he has the right accent, but my money says there are lots of NASCAR fans in True South. They’d probably remember Leo from his racing days, and possibly know that he drives for me.”

  Patti had to agree. “But you can’t mean Deke.”

  “No, former Special Agent Ky is too ethnically exotic to blend in.”

  “Then who?”

  “A man of unquestioned courage. Someone off the payroll. Out of the building.”

  The president drew back, her eyes wide in surprise. “Celsus?”

  “Bet he’d do it,” McGill said.

  East 78th Street — Manhattan

  “Father was a bit of a scoundrel,” Duvessa said.

  She, Pruet and Odo sat in a private parlor on the first floor of the townhouse. The electric lighting was soft and a fireplace with dying embers added to the intimate atmosphere. As did the snifter of brandy each of them had in hand.

  Pruet had refrained from sampling his. He did not wish to fall asleep before returning to his hotel bed. Odo and Duvessa had only sipped their drinks.

  “What was the nature of his misdeeds?” Pruet asked.

  “He rearranged numbers to add to his accounts while taking from others.”

  “A thief with an advanced education?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Odo, always one to get to the point, asked, “He was caught?”

  Duvessa said, “Not that I’ve heard, and I think his capture would make news.”

  Pruet, who knew about corruption on a grand scale, said, “He made an offering. Something to let the authorities save face. Gave them reason not to pursue him with full vigor.”

  Duvessa smiled. “Bravo, m’sieur. Full marks. Eighty-five percent of what my father took was recovered. Fury was reduced to great relief and muted grumbling.”

  Odo shook his head. “There must have been no Corsicans harmed.”

  “That I can’t say,” Duvessa replied. “There might be one or two determined souls still looking for Father. In any event, Mother and I left England for France. I was quite young. Mother decided a convent school would be the safest place for me. When it came time for me to go to university, she married an American she had met and moved to California.”

  “And you went to art school and then to Beaux-Arts in Paris?” Pruet asked.

  “No, I went back to the UK. The London School of Economics.”

  “Who paid for your education?” Odo asked.

  “My stepfather.”

  Pruet and Odo shared a look. Combien commode. How convenient.

  “So you studied business, not a
rt?” Pruet said.

  “Exactly. But I’ve always loved art. When I was a little girl we had the most beautiful paintings at home. Before Father left, I spent hours every day looking at them.”

  “What happened to the paintings?” Odo wanted to know.

  “I asked Mother. She told me not to think of the matter. I honestly don’t know if my father still has them or they were seized as reparations. In any case, as I neared the completion of my studies, I saw an advert for a position with the business office at Beaux-Arts. It required someone who was fluent in French, possessed a broad knowledge of classical art and was well versed in modern business practices.”

  Pruet said, “The job might have been created with you in mind.”

  “I would have suggested a higher salary,” Duvessa told him. “Paris is terribly expensive. I also would have made dealing with the bureaucrats less impossible, and asked the artists to keep at least one foot in the real world. I said adieu after two years.”

  “Surely, there must have been some benefits,” Pruet said.

  Duvessa nodded. “Seeing how a great art school should be run, learning how to deal with both budgets and artists, led me to think I could run a successful gallery. Feast on beautiful paintings and make a respectable living. I came here, worked for two other galleries for five years to make sure I wasn’t deceiving myself and took the plunge on my own.”

  “Your stepfather helped with the financing?” Odo asked.

  “He’d passed on by then. My mother is a partner in the gallery.”

  “A family business then,” Pruet said.

  “Exactement. Now that we’ve become acquainted, would you like to look at some pictures? We have a nice selection at the moment. I think you’ll be pleased.”

  Duvessa led her prospective patrons up an ornately carved staircase to the third floor of the townhouse. She told them the work on the second floor was wonderful but of a more recent vintage. The third floor was reserved for her most discerning clientele.