Painted Ladies

“I’ve always claimed,” I said, “that if I could think of it, someone would do it. But I don’t know; I’m not sure I could have thought of the Holocaust.”

“I know,” Susan said. “Should I go on? Or is it too boring.”

I waited until I had chewed and swallowed the large bite of pizza I had taken. Then I said, “It’s not boring.”

“Okay,” she said. “So after a while Judah dies, and Prinz takes over the care of Isaac, you know, sort of like a big brother. They both survived, and when they were liberated, Amos took Isaac back to Amsterdam, where the family had lived. The house had been looted and was boarded up, but Isaac found the painting in a secret place he remembered. His family had hidden it there when the Nazis came.”

“Probably the most valuable thing they owned,” I said. “What happens next.”

“They sold it,” Susan said. “Two kids, about fourteen and eighteen by then, destitute. They sold it to an art dealer in Rotterdam for . . . I think he calls it ‘a pittance.’ And where it went after that, the dissertation doesn’t know.”

“Do we know the name of the art dealer?”

“No,” Susan said. “But I thought it a fascinating story, especially for a doctoral dissertation.”

“It’s more fascinating than you know,” I said. “Did Prince offer any further identification of Amos Prinz?

“No,” Susan said. “He says that both Prinz and Herzberg disappeared, as he puts it, ‘obscured by the fog of historical events.’”

I nodded and ate some more pizza, and drank some beer, and gave Pearl a crust.

“You know we don’t feed her from the table,” Susan said.

“Of course we don’t,” I said.

“It just encourages her to beg.”

“What could I have been thinking?” I said.

“Your capacity for tough love gets very low scores,” she said.

“Always has,” I said.

“However,” she said, “your capacity for other kinds may have retired the trophy.”

“Pizza,” I said, “beer, and you. This is the trophy.”

“So how much more fascinating is it?” Susan said.

“Ashton Prince is Jewish, like you,” I said. “His real name is Ascher Prinz. His father was at Auschwitz.”

“His father?” Susan said.

“I found a phone number and the name Herzberg on a note tacked to the corkboard in his home office.”

“Did you call the number?”

“I did,” I said. “The answering machine said that it was something called the Herzberg Foundation.”

“Did you leave a message?”

“No.”

“Did you ever get a live person?”

“No.”

“Did you call the phone company?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a nonpublished number.”

“So they wouldn’t give you an address,” Susan said.

“No.”

“But you can find a way to get it,” she said.

“Quirk or Healy,” I said.

We were quiet.

“You think it’s the same people that Prince wrote about in his dissertation,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You think he’s Amos Prinz’s son,” she said.

“Yes.”

“That would be how he would know the things in the dissertation.”

“I’d say so.”

“So what does it all mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Yet.”

“If he was guilty of some kind of criminal behavior,” Susan said, “or even if he just wanted to conceal his identity, wasn’t it foolhardy to get that close to it all in his dissertation.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Or maybe,” Susan said, “he had to write a dissertation, and that’s what he had.”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe he felt some need to sort of confess,” Susan said. “In which case, where better than a dissertation?”

“Your secret will be safe?” I said.

Susan smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “I think mine went from my typewriter direct to university microfilms, unseen by human eye.”

“You mind that?” I said.

Susan grinned at me.

“I was grateful,” she said.

“Bad?”

“It took me two weeks to write it,” she said.

“But it got you the Ph.D.,” I said.

“That’s what it was for,” she said.

45

I called Healy in the morning. He said he’d get back to me. I hung up and sat at my computer and typed up a report of what I knew, how I knew it, and what I made of it. I printed out two copies, put them in self-sealing envelopes, put first-class stamps on them, and walked to the end of my hall, where there was a mail chute. Healy called back in less than an hour.

“Phone number is listed on Market Street in Brighton,” he said.

“Pays to be a state police captain,” I said.

“Not in real money,” Healy said.

He gave me the address.

“You want to tell me more?” he said.

“I just sent you a letter, and a copy to Belson,” I said.

“Quirk’s man?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I talked with him yesterday,” Healy said. “He filled me in on the bomb.”

“I have written down everything I know, and everything I suspect, and how I know it, and why I suspect it. I reread the thing before I mailed it, and it’s beautifully written.”

“In case they win and you lose?”

“Expect the best,” I said. “Plan for the worst.”

“Well, at least I’ll have a keepsake,” Healy said.

“That doesn’t sound like a vote of confidence,” I said.

“They seem to know what they’re doing,” Healy said.

“And they’ve missed me twice.”

“If you hadn’t had the dog the first time. If you hadn’t thrown your bag the second time,” Healy said. “You’re alive mostly through luck.”

“ ‘Luck is the residue of design,’ ”I said.

“You quoting somebody again?”

“Branch Rickey,” I said.