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  “As I have been informed. Nevertheless, Mr. Gilmore, I am here.”

  Trace of a Spanish accent, Griffin decided. But European Spanish, not this hemisphere, not New World.

  “I am sorry, sir,” Griffin persisted. “You will have to leave.”

  He noticed the man in white wore an oversized silver signet ring on his index finger. There was some sort of design on the front of the ring, which Griffin could not quite see.

  Summoning up his most authoritative voice, Griffin insisted, “You will have to go back downstairs.”

  And how, Griffin wondered, do you know who I am?

  “Alas, Mr. Gilmore. I do not believe that will transpire.”

  Griffin noted the man spoke with the formality of someone fluent in, though not completely comfortable with, English.

  “And why not?” Griffin asked, curious now.

  “I regret the strong arm tactics, Mr. Gilmore. Honestly, I do.”

  The man in white nodded toward his left hand. Griffin followed his gaze and saw the gun there.

  Instinctively Griffin took several rushed steps backward, until he edged into something. The impact sent him tumbling. He broke his fall by grabbing the arm of the champagne-colored sofa he’d backed into. With gracious patience, the man in white waited to speak until Griffin righted himself.

  “Mr. Gilmore, do you know who first owned that sofa?”

  “The Contessa of Este.”

  The man tilted his head in an understated, aristocratic gesture of appreciation.

  “You are as thorough in your preparation as I was informed you would be,” came the reply. He sounded to Griffin like someone praising an expensive vintage at a wine tasting. “Yes, the Contessa of Este. Reputedly the most beautiful woman in Europe. Her portrait hangs in the Prado in Madrid. The Contessa was most admired for her flawless neck. Are you aware of how the Contessa died?”

  “Poisoned.”

  “Do you know for what reason she was poisoned?”

  “She was poisoned by a rival for the king of France’s hand in marriage.”

  Another head bob. Despite his fear and the circumstances, Griffin enjoyed the respect the man was giving him. Where all this was going, Griffin had no idea.

  “Indeed. She was poisoned. The cyanide burned a hole in her lovely throat. The Contessa died on that sofa directly behind you. She died,” with his gunless hand he pointed, “right there.”

  Griffin heard a fluufffing sound behind him. Turning, he saw what he realized, after a few seconds, was a bullet hole in the sofa where the man had pointed. Griffin needed a bit more time to realize the shot must have passed through the few inches of airspace between his arm and suit coat.

  “Forgive the theatricality of my gesture, Mr. Gilmore. I trust my point is taken.”

  “Yup.”

  Conversation ceased for a few seconds. Music drifted up from downstairs. The jazz fusion trio was launching into Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.” Griffin was watching the man in white’s face. When the Coldplay began – following something classical—the man winced. He was too well mannered to be blatant about his displeasure, but his dislike of the pop rock replacing classical music was unmistakable.

  “What do you want?” Griffin asked.

  “Your American directness is appreciated, Mr. Gilmore. Our time here by necessity must be limited.”

  The man took two steps forward. He moved with a limp. The man pointed at the display case. In the movement his gold hatband caught the overhead lights and gleamed.

  “You will repeat the process,” he told Griffin.

  “I’ll what?”

  “You will take the replica from the pocket of your suit coat. You will return the replica of the jailer’s key to the display. And from the display case you will retrieve the original key, which you will then hand to me.”

  “Do you have any idea how hard that is to do?”

  Griffin spoke reflexively. He was not trying to be confrontational – he wasn’t that foolish. Nor was he angry, though he was not at all pleased with the way this scene was trending. More than anything else, Griffin was being informative. He figured the man in white ought to know.

  “I am,” the man paused, in search of the proper word, “cognizant of the difficulties posed by my request. Nonetheless, you have proven yourself quite capable.”

  Cognizant? Griffin thought. He tried to recall the last time he’d heard that word. His mind tended to pinball around at entirely the wrong times. He needed to focus. He looked at the gun pointing in his direction. The barrel seemed the width of the Harbor Tunnel. His focus improved greatly.

  “I’m not sure I can do that again,” Griffin admitted. “If I make a mistake – if at any point the weight inside the display changes, changes at all – the alarm goes off. I listened to a tape of the alarm being tested. It’s ungodly loud.”

  “I am confident we will not need to concern ourselves with the alarm. I am confident in your skills, Mr. Gilmore.”

  Griffin said, “You are aware the key that I put back into the display – the original jailer’s key – is the least valuable of the twelve keys in the display?”

  “I am.”

  “You know that several of the other keys have appraised values ten times that of the jailer’s key?”

  “Yes.”

  “But this is the key you want?”

  “It is. This is not about money, Mr. Gilmore. I need that key and you shall give it to me.”

  “If the alarm goes off,” Griffin said, not stalling but genuinely curious, “what will you do?”

  “I shall endeavor to exit the museum prior to the arrival of security.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” Griffin said, happy to score a verbal point in their exchange, “with that limp.”

  “You would not see me try, Mr. Gilmore. You would be shot dead.”

  Griffin did as instructed. From his pocket, he took the replica and exchanged it for the original jailer’s key. He could feel beads of sweat working their way down both sides of his face as he switched keys, again. When he was finished, as he had the first time, Griffin slipped the key into his coat pocket.

  “No, Mr. Gilmore. You will kindly hand me the original key. Our business is now complete. I regret we could not meet under more congenial circumstances. May I inquire? Has your client perhaps mentioned he is himself of ancient Italian nobility?”

  “Every chance he gets,” answered Griffin, no longer surprised at the extent and accuracy of the man’s knowledge.

  The man in white responded with a bemused smile. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of his suit coat. As he put on the latex gloves, he explained, “It’s true. He is a direct descendent of the first Duke Ferlinghetti, whose father was a Borgia pope. Did he tell you he needs the key to avenge his family’s honor?”

  “He did.”

  “That too is true. At least in the Duke’s eyes. His father, the previous Duke, acquired substantial gambling debts at Monte Carlo. He sold the original key – the one you are still holding, despite my request – to a collector to help cover the debts. When the father was asked to contribute the key to a Rome museum, his nobleman’s pride did not permit him to admit the key had been sold. He had an identical, though worthless, copy of the key made, which he then donated to the museum. That key became part of this exhibit.

  “The son’s vices are not as expensive as the father’s. The son, the current Duke, was able this year to buy back the key from the collector, who himself had fallen on hard times. Now the Duke has the real key but wants – is needs too strong? – to give the key to the exhibit. In his mind placing the real key in the exhibit restores the family honor. The current Duke is quite determined to satisfy his family honor, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hence, when the exhibit of Italian keys traveled to Baltimore, your services were engaged by the Duke to switch the keys. Mr. Gilmore, I fear he will not be pleased when you meet him this evening with empty hands. Your fee arrangement is h
alf payment in advance and the rest upon delivery of the duplicate key, I believe.”

  “Yeah,” Griffin replied, thinking, Why aren’t I surprised he knows that?

  “My profuse apologies for your financial setback. But, alas.”

  But alas, indeed, thought Griffin.

  The man limped forward to receive the key. Again the room lights caused the gold hatband to shimmer brightly.

  He accepted the real key from Griffin, then motioned with the gun for Griffin to step back and to sit. Which Griffin did, on the spot where the Contessa of Este had died of cyanide.

  “I shall see myself out, Mr. Gilmore.”

  The man limped backward out of the room. Griffin remained on the sofa until the man in white reached the hallway. From there to the door at the end of the hallway was no more than twenty feet. The man was through the door before Griffin reached the hallway.

  Griffin considered but decided against chasing the man down the steps. Doing so might invite getting shot. Instead Griffin ran back into the room and went to the window at the far end. He arrived in time to spot a car, an older Buick-sized vehicle, a real land yacht, stop by a curb. In less than five seconds the man in white reappeared and got into the car. The car sped away. Griffin caught most but not all of the Maryland license plate: something, something R 187.

  A few minutes later Griffin collected Annie and Bobbie and started on the long walk to Kit in the limo. He wondered what the client would say, when Griffin arrived with what the man in white had called, far too accurately, empty hands.

  THREE

  June 4

  9:41 pm

  “I am not looking forward to this,” Griffin said. “First time I met the Duke he tossed a pheasant from room service out the window, because it was undercooked. This was twelve stories up, mind you.”

  “Just like that he heaved it out the window?”

  “I got a couple seconds warning when he cleared his throat, Kit. Then the pheasant went flying.”

  It was half an hour later. Griffin, Annie, and Bobby were riding in the limo to Duke Ferlinghetti’s hotel room. Kit, Griffin’s best friend since kindergarten, was driving. The champagne remained unopened.

  “I am not looking forward to this,” Griffin repeated. No one else said anything. Griffin knew they weren’t looking forward to this either.

  “What I can’t get over,” he said next, “is how much he knew about me. My name, our client’s name, our arrangements for payment, why we’d been hired. He knew everything he needed to know.”

  “Did he know about us?” Covington “Kit” Carson asked over his shoulder as he turned onto Pratt Street. Doing so, he cut off an SUV, whose horn blared in protest. Griffin suppressed the urge to cower beneath the dashboard. “Did this man in white know about Me, Annie, Bobby?”

  “Hey, Kit? Amigo?” Bobby yelled over the SUV’s horn. “I thought you said you had a chauffeur’s license.”

  “I said I was thinking about getting a chauffeur’s license,” Kit answered. “I did watch some YouTube videos on limo driving.”

  “Did this man in white know about the three of you?” Griffin asked, repeating Kit’s question. “Annie, how many servers were working the museum fundraiser tonight?”

  Annie bit her lip as she thought. “Seven.”

  “And you served him, just before I went upstairs to switch keys.”

  “A couple times I served him. He walked past other servers to get to me.”

  “Which tells us he knew you were with me.”

  “He was so well mannered, Griffin. That perfect gentleman you hear about and never meet. At five hundred dollars a ticket you’d think the guests would be better behaved. I wish. There was so much grabbing for the grilled curried shrimp half my tray got spilled. I barely managed to avoid getting it on my clothes.”

  “I wasn’t so lucky,” Bobby said, pointing to a greenish-yellow blotch on his right tuxedoed leg, mid-shin. “I played Ibsen in summer stock in these pants. One of the brats pelted me with a hors d’oeuvre. Twice.”

  “A token of the child’s appreciation for your performance tonight, I’m sure,” Griffin told Bobby. Neither of them smiled. “Annie, by any chance did the man in white touch a glass?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Griffin said. “That he never touched a glass. He put on latex gloves before leaving the room. With his limp he’d have to use the railing getting down the stairs. That might have left fingerprints. He’s too careful to leave prints.

  “The Hotel Monaco’s up here, Kit. Hang a left on Charles Street.”

  Kit did, causing an MG convertible, top down on this warm summer night, to slam on its brakes. A pair of middle fingers emerged over the windshield, pointed in the limo’s direction.

  “Oh, come on,” Kit said, pulling into a parking space after bouncing off the curb. A doorman who had been on the sidewalk flattened himself against a wall to avoid becoming the limo’s hood ornament. “It wasn’t that close.”

  “Yeah, it was,” Bobby said, climbing out of the limo as quickly as he could.

  “I’m not looking forward to this,” Griffin said again.

  *

  Griffin hesitated before knocking on the hotel room door, so Annie knocked for him.

  “Best to just get it over with,” she told him.

  “You may enter,” Duke Ferlinghetti called from inside. “There is wine to toast your success.”

  The four of them stepped inside the suite, Kit taking up the end of their reluctant parade. The lights were off. The only illumination came from a dozen candles, which sputtered and gave off a smell faintly reminiscent of a backed up toilet.

  “These candles,” the Duke explained, his back to them, “were made on my family’s Tuscan estate during the Napoleonic invasion. With no other source of tallow for the candles, the servants were forced to use the carcasses of diseased cattle.”

  Which may explain the smell, Griffin thought.

  Griffin had endured the candle lecture before, so he could let his mind wander to the man in white. The obvious questions Who is this guy? and How does he know so much about me? did not hold his attention long.

  Of greater interest to Griffin was the point the man had made: This isn’t about money. What then, Griffin wondered, is it about? For Duke Ferlinghetti it was about his family’s honor. What was it about for this man in white?

  The lecture on the Napoleonic candles was at full bore. On both sides of him Griffin could see Bobby and Annie standing with an appearance of feigned interest plastered on their faces, like students waiting out a principal’s lecture.

  Griffin asked himself how much he knew about the man in white. Spanish, knowledgeable, refined – Griffin recalled the man wincing when the jazz fusion trio started performing – and certainly well mannered, as Annie said. His age? Uncertain, anywhere from mid-forties to sixty or so. Thinking back, Griffin realized he hadn’t felt threatened, though he never doubted the man would have shot him if necessary.

  The candle lecture had apparently ended. Duke Ferlinghetti, still with his back to them, announced, “Fill their glasses, Gretchen, dear. It is time to toast our success. The Ferlinghetti honor has been restored.”

  To the Duke’s right, a tall blonde, spilling out of her low cut silvery gown poured wine into four glasses. In the uncertain candlelight Griffin could barely see the bottle’s label, which showed a drawing of the key now in the possession of the man in white.

  Griffin looked at the woman pouring the wine. Her hand was shaky and more wine wound up outside the glasses than in.

  He tried to remember if this was the same blonde he’d seen when meeting the Duke in Manhattan in the spring to discuss the assignment. Griffin doubted it. Wasn’t her name Ursula? To his recollection she’d also worn a silvery, cleavage-y gown. Apparently the Duke liked his women tall and Scandinavian and scantily clad. He seemed to have an assembly line and this was the latest model.

  “That wine is also from your ancestral
Tuscan estates, isn’t it?” Griffin prompted, delaying the moment a bit longer.

  “It is,” Duke Ferlinghetti answered, and went off on a lecture explaining the superiority of grapes grown within sight of the sea.

  Griffin felt himself smiling, and not only at the Duke’s self-importance, so easily manipulated. Griffin could not help but admire how effectively the man in white had managed the heist of the key, and the style with which he had done so.

  Griffin heard the Duke go on about how “temperamental” grapes are and how “shy” they can be. He listened with half an ear to the Duke’s lecture. Griffin was focusing on the huge and ancient car the man had escaped in. The choice of vehicle left Griffin puzzled. The car seemed downmarketly out of character for the man in white.

  “The grapes, you understand, must be protected from the rot which has ruined so many vineyards of inferior –“ Duke Ferlinghetti stopped abruptly, as if he’d slammed on his verbal brakes. Griffin knew the man was not a total fool. He was sensing Griffin’s efforts at delay.

  Duke Ferlinghetti spun around to face the four of them. Griffin was surprised, as he had been meeting the Duke, how commonplace he appeared. Average height, average build; chubby faced. He could have been an accountant or bureaucrat or anything. His only unusual physical feature was the hair which stuck out from the side of his head, too much like Bozo the clown to be ignored. The blue blood of nobility? Griffin wasn’t impressed.

  “I would like you to give me the replica of my family’s key now, Mr. Gilmore.”

  “I’d like to give you the replica, too.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I very much wish I could give you what you hired me to retrieve,” Griffin said. “But I can’t.”

  His answer angered the Duke, who placed his wine glass on the windowsill behind him. He grabbed a pint of Etrusca bottled water from the table in front of him. He put the Etrusca on the table but kept his hand on the bottle’s neck.

  Griffin asked, “Do you know a Spaniard, dresses entirely in white, good, very formal English but with a bit of an accent, walks with a limp?”