Jim McGill 05 The Devil on the Doorstep Read online

  She stopped on the stairs a moment to ask, “You do wish to see my best, don’t you?”

  Grateful for the momentary respite, a tired Pruet said, “Of course.”

  “Good. We’ve just had something extraordinary come in.”

  They renewed their climb. The third floor had been redone as one large open space.

  The first painting Pruet and Odo saw, bathed in a spotlight, was a Renoir.

  “Le Mariage d’Antoine et Jocelyn.” Pruet’s great-grandparents on their wedding day. A gift from the artist to Antoine Pruet in appreciation of his patronage. Until recently, it had never hung anywhere except his family’s summer home in Avignon.

  Pruet could sense Odo, behind him, start to become agitated.

  The magistrate discreetly shook his head. Now was not the time.

  Duvessa had her eyes on the painting. She turned to look at her guests.

  “Magnifique, no?” she asked.

  Pruet said, “Renoir has always been my favorite.”

  Omni Berkshire Plaza — Midtown Manhattan

  Odo had wanted to walk back to their hotel through Central Park.

  Hoping a villain would be foolhardy enough to attempt a mugging.

  Giving him an excuse to thrash someone.

  Pruet was too tired for a long walk and not in the mood for drama. They declined Duvessa’s offer of a ride in her towncar and took a taxi. Odo sulked throughout the ride. He began his tirade only after they’d returned to Pruet’s room at the Omni.

  He’d wanted to rip the Renoir off the wall, Odo told Pruet.

  After giving Duvessa’s bottom a thorough paddling for toying with them as if they were children. Had she been a man, the punishment would have been far worse. Then they could have been off to the airport. Entrusted the painting to the cargo handlers of Air France, booked seats on the following evening’s flight home and been done with the affair.

  It was only after Odo had paused for breath that Pruet told his friend and protector, “The painting is a forgery.”

  Odo pulled his head back as if he’d been slapped.

  “How do you know this?”

  The magistrate sighed. “Duvessa Kinsale is not the only one who studied her family’s paintings as a child. Of all my father’s collection, the Renoir was indeed my favorite. It captured my heart from my youngest years. I imagined that someday I would have a bride as beautiful as Jocelyn and another great artist would paint my wedding day.”

  Odo’s anger was displaced by sympathy for his friend.

  Yves Pruet had grown up to marry a very beautiful woman, Nicolette Bisson. She had not only broken the magistrate’s heart, she’d smashed his beloved guitar. There had been no more certain a way to show her contempt for the man she believed had failed her so badly.

  Nicolette had expected social status and wealth from her marriage.

  The love and music of a good man had been a poor substitute for her.

  Odo shrugged and said, “Where would you have found another Renoir?”

  “Nowhere, so far,” Pruet answered, “and I’ve looked quite hard. Odo, old friend, I know every brushstroke of that painting. Over the years, I’ve memorized each of them. The painting we saw tonight was a respectable effort at reproduction. All the more so for being done in a short time. The forger has talent, but he does not have genius.”

  “Then why did you write a check for one thousand euros to Duvessa for the privilege of bidding on the painting when it is auctioned?” Odo asked.

  “I wrote the check in the hope it would be deposited, creating a paper trail to follow.”

  Odo thought about that. “You think she would do such a thing?”

  “Do you think Madam Kinsale is a thief or an honest saleswoman who has been duped?”

  “A thief,” Odo said with certainty. “Or an equally guilty accomplice.”

  Pruet said, “A cunning one. If we had accused her of dealing in stolen art, she would have asked what kind of a fool did we think she was, to lead us straight to a stolen painting. She would deny all knowledge of the theft and forgery. If we somehow managed to have her arrested, her lawyer would have demanded proof of guilt before she could be kept in custody. Lacking that, she would be released and disappear.”

  “Setting us back to the starting line,” Odo said. “You were right, Yves. But if she’s as clever as you say, why would she let us see the painting at all?”

  “To taunt us, perhaps. Let us get ever so close to what we seek, then tug it out of reach. Of course, even if the police seized the painting, what would they have but a forgery?”

  Odo’s face clouded. Now he really wanted to make the woman pay.

  “So she is cunning,” Odo said. “Far too smart to cash the check, n’est-ce pas?”

  Pruet said, “Thieves live to enjoy their spoils. Where is the pleasure in leaving an ill-gotten check uncashed? If she has unusual self-restraint, though, the check might make a pleasing keepsake. A reminder of how she outwitted us.”

  Odo’s mood darkened further. “We might have just taken the woman to some out of the way place and made her tell us where the real painting might be found.”

  “And perhaps we might also have found the thief that way as well?” Pruet asked. “Is that what you are thinking?”

  Odo frowned. Outwitting M’sieur le Magistrat was never easy.

  “I will be the one to dispose of him,” Pruet said.

  “And I will be there with you, should you change your mind.”

  Pruet said, “Mon ami, these people who have wronged us are no fools. If we’d behaved rashly tonight, as you suggested, Duvessa would have had a countermove ready. Perhaps a small army of thugs, too many men for a lone Corsican to overcome. On the other hand, she might have needed no more than one corrupt policeman who would —”

  A hard knock on Pruet’s door cut the magistrate short.

  He and Odo looked at each other.

  They’d taken the taxi so Duvessa’s driver wouldn’t learn where they were staying.

  Odo waved to Pruet to move out of line with the door.

  With that done, Odo asked, “Qui est là?” Who’s there?

  A man’s voice replied in French. “Agent Spécial Riddick du FBI.”

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation?

  Pruet and Odo looked at each other again and reached the same judgment.

  It was time to call James J. McGill.

  Chapter 3

  Q Street — Washington, DC — Tuesday, January 8, 2013

  Twenty-five years with the Secret Service hadn’t so much as bloodied Celsus Crogher’s nose, but one week after leaving the job, he started to think retirement might kill him. He found it impossible to sleep more than six hours a night, two more than he had for his time as head of the Presidential Protection Detail. That left three-quarters of a day to fill.

  He worked out for two hours, running and lifting.

  He devoted an hour to maintaining his townhouse.

  He spent an hour at the firing range.

  Invited to join his neighborhood watch, he reorganized its procedures and was quickly asked to assume its leadership. That took up another thirty minutes, including a daily call to the Metro cops to ask if there was any spike in criminal activity in the area of which he should be aware.

  Given his former status, the cops told him things they didn’t share with just anyone. He passed information on to his neighbors. Parceling it out on a need-to-know basis. Didn’t want to scare them silly. Just keep them on their toes.

  He spent ninety minutes a day working on his ballroom dancing. Alone.

  There was no way he was going to embarrass either the president or himself when he danced with her at the inaugural ball. That was coming right up. Less than two weeks now.

  The sum total of time required for all the activities he’d devised for himself occupied six hours. He had no clue as what to do with the remainder of his twelve hours of waking moments. He paced a lot, hoping his phone might ring. Praying
it would be the White House with an offer of something for him to do. He’d have weeded the Rose Garden, had anyone asked him.

  A package with no return address, but bearing a DC postmark, had arrived at his home a week after he’d left his job. Living dangerously, Crogher ripped it open, not caring if it was a mail bomb. Inside the box, he found two large needles, a skein of yarn and a copy of Knitting for Dummies. A former colleague’s idea of a joke, though there was no note with the gift.

  For a moment, Crogher wondered if Holmes — James J. McGill’s code name — had sent the package to him. Decided he hadn’t. For all their differences, Crogher had to admit to himself the president’s husband had never tried to belittle him.

  Other than to imply the former SAC wasn’t totally human.

  If only. He wouldn’t be bored if he were a machine.

  Crogher looked at the knitting needles on the side board where he’d left them. Some former law enforcement officers, when life after the job got to be too much or wasn’t enough, did themselves in with their former duty weapons. Only Crogher’s duty weapon had been an Uzi. He’d never want to leave that kind of mess for someone to clean up.

  But those knitting needles. Somebody’s idea of a joke. He wondered if he had the resolve and the strength to shove one of them in one ear and out the other. He didn’t think that would leave too much blood. Cops who found him might even get a laugh, the way he’d look.

  Only the prick who’d sent the package would feel sick about it.

  Not quite ready to end it all in either a macabre way or a more mundane fashion that sunny, cold winter morning, Crogher decided to pass some time in a way said to lengthen the life of a useless old fart like him. He went out the front door for a walk. Thinking he might not stop until it was time for the early bird dinner special at some chain restaurant.

  He’d no sooner stepped outside and locked his front door than a classic old Chevy Malibu pulled up to the curb. A knockout blonde was behind the wheel. Now, there was a thought he’d never considered. Find himself a girlfriend.

  Only not this particular woman.

  Margaret “Sweetie” Sweeney was Holmes’ partner in his private investigations agency. A government worker to his core, Crogher also had never considered a career in the private sector. Two new ideas in one morning. Maybe he ought to get out more often.

  He descended his front stairs.

  Intending to ask Sweeney if Holmes had sent her.

  Before he could get a word out, she lowered the passenger side window and said, “Let’s go for a ride.”

  Penn Station — Manhattan

  “So your plan, Yves, is to motor up to the White House gates and ask if M’sieur McGill is receiving visitors this fine day?” Odo asked in French.

  The Acela train bound for the nation’s capital, with a stop in Baltimore, was just leaving the station. The car was all but full. A visual survey of their fellow travelers had shown row after row of what the two Frenchmen took to be domestic passengers, affluent business people moving from the country’s hub of business to its political center. Neither of them had spotted the features, the manners or the wardrobe of any other foreign visitors.

  No one had been speaking anything but English, Americans being the most determined of mono-linguists. That wasn’t to say some well educated commuter might not have taken courses in French at his or her university. As a lark, if for no other reason. So, in the spirit of caution, Pruet and Odo kept their voices down.

  “My thought,” Pruet said, “is that it would be only polite to call in advance.”

  “Of course. You’ll have to forgive my provincial manners. Do you have M’sieur McGill’s phone number?”

  “Several of them.”

  “I should have known.”

  “You might have guessed,” Pruet said.

  “D’accord.”

  The two men settled into a companionable silence. Odo turned his attention to the passing landscape. The normal position for him would have been the aisle seat, to fend off an attack on Pruet by another passenger. Pruet had accepted that logic until the morning he and Odo had boarded the Eurostar train at the Gare de Nord for a day-trip to London.

  As they were making themselves comfortable for the journey, one of Pruet’s political enemies happened to pass by outside the train and notice him. The man had stopped, given Pruet an evil grin and cocked his fingers at him as if he held a gun. The salaud — bastard — had gotten off his mimed shot and strolled down the platform before Odo had even turned his head in Pruet’s direction.

  After that, the magistrate and his bodyguard changed their seating arrangement.

  On trains. Odo still took the aisle seat when they flew.

  They had sat side by side last night at their hotel when Special Agent Osgood Riddick of the FBI had dropped by to speak with them. Pruet had taken the arm chair in his room, showing the nonchalance of an innocent man by putting his feet up on the accompanying hassock. Odo had pulled the desk chair over to sit next to the magistrate.

  Riddick rested his backside on the edge of the desk.

  With a smile, he’d asked, “Are you gentlemen visiting the United State to buy art, and before you answer, let me inform you it’s a federal crime to lie to the FBI.”

  “All of you at the same time or individually?” Odo asked.

  “Both,” Riddick told him.

  “We are here to look at art,” Pruet said. “Perhaps we’ll buy something, perhaps not.”

  Tired and coping with a portfolio of unresolved frustrations, Odo asked, “Is it the custom of the FBI to extend professional courtesy to colleagues from abroad?”

  Before the fatigued Pruet could intercede, Odo displayed his police judiciaire — judicial police — identification. Riddick’s eyesight was sufficient to read the credential from where he’d perched. A new smile creased his face.

  “Bienvenue, gentlemen. Of course, we extend a warm welcome to our comrades in arms. Are you here in an official capacity? And you, sir,” he addressed Pruet, “are you also with the police?”

  Pruet said quietly but with authority, “The police are with me. I am an investigating magistrate.” He produced his own identification.

  “Okay. I’m not familiar with your country’s justice system, but my guess is you’re something like a prosecutor, on the state or federal level.”

  “The national level, yes,” Pruet said.

  “Got it,” Riddick said. “Now, if you don’t mind, can we get back to my other question? Are you and M’sieur Sacripant in the United States on official business?”

  “No,” Pruet said. “We are here on a matter of personal curiosity.”

  “You’re not armed, are you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good, but it also means you should be careful.” Riddick paused to mull his thoughts for a moment. He decided to share, just a bit of information. “The bureau has Duvessa Kinsale under observation.”

  “It would be impertinent of us to ask why?” Pruet said.

  “It would be more than I can tell you, except to say there would be an element of risk for you to return there.”

  Pruet and Odo shared a look.

  Riddick wondered what that was all about. He asked, “Do you know any police officials in this country, someone who might advise you of the etiquette of dealing with the FBI.”

  “We are close acquaintances of a retired police captain,” Pruet said.

  “That’s good,” Riddick said. “He can give you the guidelines, if he was with a big enough police department.”

  “Chicago,” Odo said.

  “That’ll do.”

  Pruet added, “And he was chief of police in a smaller town, I was told. Winnetka, Illinois.”

  That combination clicked into place for Riddick. For a moment, he regarded the two Frenchmen with a dubious look. Then he decided he’d better err on the side of caution.

  “Do you mean —”

  Pruet handed the business card McGill had given to hi
m to the agent.

  He inspected it closely.

  The magistrate told him, “M’sieur McGill’s private number at the White House is on the back of the card.”

  Riddick looked at the number and was suddenly glad he’d exercised good manners with the magistrate. He returned the card to Pruet. Got to his feet and nodded.

  “Enjoy your visit to the United States, gentlemen, but it really wouldn’t be a good idea for you to revisit Duvessa Kinsale.”

  Odo remained impassive.

  Pruet asked, “If am not intruding too far, may I know your area of responsibility?”

  Riddick told him, “I’m with the FBI art crime team.”

  McGill’s Hideaway — The White House

  McGill asked, “How’s it coming?”

  For the most part, he’d tried not to speak while Gabbi Casale was working on his portrait. When they’d started, it had been moderately burdensome for him to simply sit for an hour or two. Gabbi had taken some of the difficulty away by saying, “I’ve laid in the underpainting. So I’ll work on your eyes now. I want to see the light in them, show what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. So feel free to talk, softly. Just don’t move your head, okay?”

  That had worked for McGill. Helped the time to pass agreeably. He’d heard what Gabbi had to say about living in Paris. Was surprised when she told him she had given up the city for the first three months of each year, spending her time on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean.

  “The light there is so much better than Paris in the winter,” she said.

  “Always a big consideration for a painter,” McGill said. “Doesn’t hurt that you can go outside in a T-shirt and shorts either.”

  “Doesn’t hurt at all.”

  Then she confided she’d met someone who had led her to the island. They’d moved on, but she had grown fond of painting in a tropical setting and kept going back.

  “A Gauguin thing?” McGill asked.

  “A Gabbi Casale thing. I don’t do bare-breasted island girls, but a young man at work or play without a shirt, that’s another thing.”