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“Before you do that, I might just point out that you have a far more serious problem than I.”
“Yeah? And what the hell’s that?”
Pendergast nodded toward the bedroom door. “Does Mr. Brock know you are entertaining a lady in his suite?”
An uneasy hesitation. “Mr. Brock’s got no problem with me entertaining ladies.”
Pendergast raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But on top of that, if you attempt to ‘plaster’ anything on the wall, you’ll find yourself the unfortunate center of attention on this ship. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with a murder charge. If you’re not, it will beyour brains decorating the wallpaper. I’m also armed, you see.”
Another hesitation. “I’m calling ship’s security.”
Pendergast took another sip. “You’re not thinking this through, Mr. Curt.” The man jabbed the gun at him. “It’s Johnson. Curtis Johnson. Not ‘Mr. Curt.’”
“Excuse me. Mr. Johnson. Even if it’s true Mr. Brock doesn’t mind you entertaining ladies while on duty, if you call security there may be questions raised about the cargo Mr. Brock has stored in that bedroom you are using as a love nest. On top of that, you don’t know who I am or why I’m here. For all you know I mightbe ship’s security. And so, as I said, Mr. Johnson, we both have problems. I’m hoping there’s a way we can solve our respective problems intelligently, and to our mutual advantage.” He slowly inserted two fingers inside his tuxedo pocket.
“Keep your hands in view.”
Pendergast removed the fingers, which were now holding a small sheaf of crisp hundred-dollar bills.
The man stood, meaty hand clutching the gun, his face flushed and confused.
Pendergast dangled the money. “Lower the gun.”
The man lowered the gun.
“Go ahead, take it.”
The man reached out, snatched the money, shoved it in his pocket.
“We have to work quickly, Mr. Johnson, so that I’m gone by the time Mr. Brock returns.”
“You get the hell outta here. Now.”
“You take my money and still kick me out? How unsporting.”
Pendergast rose with a loud sigh, turned as if to leave, but the motion accelerated with mercurial quickness into the tossing of the glass of champagne in Johnson’s face while, with a simultaneous, lightning-fast motion, he brought his left fist down on Johnson’s wrist. The gun bounced on the rug and skidded halfway across the room. As Johnson let out a shout and dove for it, Pendergast tripped him up, then shoved his own Les Baer 1911 in the man’s ear, putting one knee at the base of his spine.
“
Doucement
, Mr. Johnson.
Doucement
.”
After a long moment, Pendergast stood up. “You may rise.”
The man sat up, rubbed his ear, and then stood. His face was a dark mass.
Pendergast stuck his own weapon back inside his jacket, walked across the room, picked up Johnson’s gun, hefted it.
“A Walther PPK. You’re a James Bond fan, I imagine. Perhaps we have less in common than I imagined.” He tossed it back to Johnson, who caught it, surprised. He held it, uncertain what to do.
“Be a smart fellow and put it away.”
Johnson holstered the weapon. “Now,” said Pendergast pleasantly, “here’s the choice, Mr. Johnson. You could be my friend, do me the tiniest of favors, and earn another thousand. Or you could continue to act out of misplaced loyalty to a contemptuous jackass of a man who underpays you and who will fire you the very minute he learns of your indiscretion and never think about you again. So—which is it, Mr. Johnson?”
The man stared at Pendergast for a long time, then nodded curtly.
“Splendid. Open the back bedroom, my newfound friend. There’s no time to waste.”
Johnson turned and went to the bedroom door, unlocked it. Pendergast followed inside.
“Curt, what the hell’s going on?” A woman with huge hair lay on the bed, the bedclothes pulled up to her chin.
“Get dressed and get out.”
“But my clothes are on the other side of the room,” she said. “I don’t have anything on.”
“Nobody gives a shit,” said Johnson roughly. “Get going.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that?”
He waved the gun. “Move it!”
The woman jumped out of bed, heavy breasts flopping, snagged her clothes, and retreated into the bathroom. “Asshole!” came a second muffled insult.
Pendergast looked around. The bedroom, as he noted earlier, had been intended for storage: half a dozen large wooden crates were in view, all stamped
Fragile
and taking up much of the room.
“Do you know what is in these crates?”
“No idea,” said Johnson.
“But you were hired to keep an eye on them?”
“You got it.”
Pendergast walked back and forth in front of the crates for a moment. Then he kneeled before the nearest and removed a screwdriver from his bag.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Just taking a peek. We’re going to leave everything just as we found it. Nobody will know.” In a moment he had the end of the crate off, exposing green felt and padding. With a knife, he made a careful incision across several layers of padding, felt, and custom-cut pieces of Styrofoam, exposing a rack of what looked like oil paintings. Judging from the fact that the other five crates were of exactly the same dimensions, Pendergast deduced they were full of paintings as well.
He thrust his flashlight into the incision in the padding, moving it this way and that. There were eight paintings in all, unframed. From what he could see, they seemed to be all by second-tier impressionist artists—Charles Théophile Angrand, Gustave Caillebotte. There were also two German expressionist works, apparently by Jawlensky and the other, Pendergast guessed, by Pechstein. Obviously, the paintings were destined for Brock’s gallery on 57th Street.
While Pendergast immediately recognized the styles of the various painters, he recognized not one of the actual paintings themselves, at least what he could see of them. They were, at best, obscure examples of their artists’ oeuvre.
Reaching into his bag again, he pulled out a small leather case, which he unzipped and laid flat on the floor. He extracted several tools from the case—a jeweler’s loupe, a pair of forceps, a scalpel—and set them on the nearest crate. These were followed by stoppered test tubes.
Johnson shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. “Whatever the hell you’re doing, man, you’d better hurry it up.”
“Calm yourself, Mr. Johnson. Your employer won’t be back from di
Kneeling before the nearest crate, Pendergast turned his attention to the Jawlensky painting. Picking up the tweezers, he plucked off a few threads of canvas from the back of the work, where the cut canvas was nailed to the frame. Next, using both the forceps and scalpel, he shaved away a small, built-up fragment of yellow paint from the very edge of the painting and placed it in the test tube. He moved on to the Pechstein and several of the others and did the same.