“And the carving?”

The reclusive scholar smiled. “One of Thibodaux’s favorite smugglers-”

“Smugglers?”

“Yes, Ms. Cooper, you heard me. Pierre has a few favorites he relies on when he doesn’t get his own way with his checkbook. It’s an old tradition in this field. Anyway, Pierre’s man managed to get the piece out of Switzerland in about a week’s time, before the arrangements were made to ship it to Copenhagen. For his usual four percent commission. A month later, it was in one of our storerooms deep below Fifth Avenue.”

“You stole the carving.”

“Surely you don’t prosecute crimes that occur in Europe?” Bellinger laughed. “That’s been the nature of this work since museums first opened their doors. Some treasures came home in grand style, like Lord Elgin stealing the Greek marbles and setting them up for all the world to see in the British Museum. Others arrived more quietly and were bartered around town in secret. If there weren’t grave robbers and petty thieves, I’m afraid there would be far fewer works of art in public institutions everywhere in the world.”

“And your precious little object?”

“Will go on display after the summer. There wasn’t much of a scandal. We sent the Danes something of ours that they’d been longing for, and I got my ivory. All that was needed was a cooling-down period. People forget after a year or so. They quiet down.”

“And Grooten?”

“She learned as we all did. If you’re looking for a selfless way to help humanity, Detective, join the Red Cross. If you’re going to work in a museum, get used to the fact that most of what you see has been stolen from beneath someone’s nose. The great archaeologists who dug in Egypt and Turkey and Pompeii, they all believed what they recovered belonged to them personally. Took the urns and coins and jewels home to display on their own mantels and bandy about at their gaming clubs. Gave them away as gifts. Sold them to the highest bidder.”

I looked around the room at the assortment of tombstones from France, Belgium, Spain, and England. Lords and ladies at rest together, far from their intended graves.

“The spoils of war and the looted booty of imperial rule, Ms. Cooper. The Trojans did it, the British did it, the Germans did it, and may I add, even the American troops serving in the European and Pacific theaters did it during the Second World War. The only pretty part of this museum acquisition work is what you finally see behind the glass display cabinets.”

I was standing beside one such case, mounted on a pedestal, as Bellinger spoke to us. It held the upraised statue of a man’s arm, completely silvered and bejeweled, with its long golden fingers raised in a position of blessing. The legend at its base described it as the reliquary of a bishop, and I could see the crystal windows in the arm that once displayed his sainted bones. I wondered what had become of the rest of the poor man’s remains.

When we reached the top of the staircase through which we had entered, opposite the gift shop and the cloakroom, Bellinger started to say good-bye.

Mike withdrew a small glassine envelope from his pocket. “What kind of tickets do you use for checking coats here?”

Bellinger looked over his shoulder but there was no one inside. The day had been too mild.

“The usual. A small square with a number on it.”

“Like this?” Mike asked, showing him the stub that Dr. Kestenbaum had given to us.

“Identical. Ours are blue. All the city-partnered museums use the same system, just different-colored tags.”

“Who uses red ones? The Met?”

“No, they’ve got white ones, if I’m not mistaken. The one you’ve got there is from the Museum of Natural History.”

Mercer led us down the steep incline from the Cloisters exit ramp and across the cobblestoned parking lot. Using a map that the case detective had sketched after her interview with Katrina Grooten, he tried to reconstruct the route the young woman had taken the night of her attack almost one year earlier.

“What did you think of Hiram Bellinger?” Mike asked.

“Not what I expected. I thought we’d get old and stodgy.” As soon as we reached the bottom of the shallow steps down which Grooten had steered her bicycle, we were engulfed by the thick foliage of shrubs and bushes.

“Somebody could have been waiting for her back here,” Mercer said, pointing into an area where the greenery stood as high as his shoulders.

“Like Grooten was a particular target?”

“Yeah, if it was someone from the museum who did it, or who set her up.”

“I thought you’d had some ski mask robberies in Fort Tryon Park.”

“So this was either one more random victim in the pattern, or a copycat trying to make it look like the others.”

“How about Lloyd, the guard who freaked her out?”

Mercer tapped Mike on the back of the head, steering us up the hill again. “Don’t be putting the blame on the old black guy, Chapman.”

“There’s no question the rapist was a black man. Everybody’s in the mix till we say they’re not. And besides, I didn’t like this Bellinger guy a fraction as much as Coop did.”

“He’s white, Mike.” Mercer laughed.

“Too white for my taste. How do you know he didn’t set her up? Claims he didn’t know her all that well, but seems to me he went out of his way to try to urge her to stay here. What was that about? C’mon. We got stuff to do. I’m going right down to Central Park West, check out this coatroom business. You with me?”

I nodded my head. “What was your beep?”

Mercer had been paged toward the end of the meeting and returned the call when we stepped outside the museum. “Beth Israel North. A nurse walked into the room of a ninety-one-year-old patient and found a man in bed with her. His pants were down and he had removed her hospital gown. The nurse screamed but the perp pulled his trousers up and ran out. They think it’s a guy who delivered flowers to the room next door. Crime scene dusted the vase and we got a call in to the florist. I’m going to stop by the hospital and see if I can get statements from the staff.”

“The patient, too?”

“She’snon compos. ”

“Call the florist?”

“Hospital security already did. The guy hires homeless men from local shelters to make his deliveries.”

“That’s comforting.” I looked at my watch. “It’s almost four-thirty. Want to meet at my place when you’re done? We’ll go through Katrina’s personnel file and figure out how to tackle this thing. I’ll have Sarah assign someone to work with you on the new case.”

I got into Mike’s department car and we wound our way down the circular drive to get on the West Side Highway going south. I took out my cell phone and dialed Ryan Blackmer.

“Any more e-mails from your cyber monster?”

“All quiet. Harry works a four to twelve. So that means Brittany doesn’t get home from her after-school activities till almost dinnertime.”

“I got an idea. Why don’t you suggest tomorrow’s meet be at the Museum of Natural History? What kid doesn’t love that place? Dinosaur bones, butterfly exhibits, the planetarium. They could meet in front by the statue of Teddy Roosevelt. That gives the backup team lots of cover with the crowds around. I’m sure the guys can find a crummy hotel within a block or two, between Columbus and Amsterdam.”

“Not bad. I’ll suggest it.”

There were a few places in town that were naturals for pedophiles. In winter, the Christmas tree and ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center were a magnet for men who wanted to rub up against the rear ends of little girls who stood mesmerized by the lights of the huge evergreen and the practiced spins of the twirling skaters. Summer guaranteed a slew of girls and boys in public swimming pools, jumping on top of each other and enjoying the horseplay.

Among the year-round havens were the city’s museums and zoos, which delivered busloads of kids every day to wander through the exhibits, usually oblivious to the hungry adults who lurked in rest rooms and around the concession stands.