“Sounds painful and unprofitable.”

“So you’ve got your answer on the age of the birdbath bust,” Renz said. “And while it’s an imitation, it’s a damned good one. So if nothing else, we’ve further established that Michelangelo was a breast man. Now we can go to bed.”

“I don’t think I will.”

Renz knew his old fellow cop and knew the signs. There had been a subtle but profound change in the investigation. A quickening. “We’re getting close, aren’t we?”

“Closer,” Quinn said.

After hanging up on Renz, Quinn went into the office’s half bath and rinsed his face with cold water. When he toweled dry and glanced at his reflection in the mirror over the basin, he was surprised. The man staring back at him was the familiar amiable thug he was used to seeing, but tonight there was also a curious lupine quality to his bony features. An intensity.

He knew the look. It frightened some people. It was that of a predator about to close on its prey. There was nothing about it that suggested reason or mercy. The time for conscious planning was past.

The fang was ahead of the brain.

76

Renz hadn’t wasted any time in telling Minnie Miner about the imitation bust at the Far Castle. And she hadn’t wasted time in making use of the information. Her guest on her morning program was Winston Castle. Quinn watched like a loyal fan.

Castle was wearing a nicely tailored suit and a red-and-blue-patterned ascot with matching handkerchief. He sat calmly in his wing chair, while Minnie sat facing him in a seemingly identical chair that had been made artfully and unobtrusively higher than its mate. There was a small table between the angled chairs on which were glasses of what appeared to be water. Minnie wouldn’t have her guests run dry.

“And you had no idea that Bellezza was hidden in your birdbath?” she was asking Winston. She was bright and incredulous.

“Nor that the bust was an imitation,” Castle said. He sounded absolutely British on TV. Quinn was impressed.

He and Pearl were seated at their kitchen table in the brownstone, facing the small flat screen on the counter.

“I’m glad we decided to watch this,” Pearl said. “Winston is a really great bullshitter.”

“World-class,” Quinn said.

“You’d think he just tossed on his post-foxhunt suit and was a guest at a summer lodge. Are you sure he isn’t really British nobility?”

As if he’d heard her, Winston nonchalantly crossed his legs and draped an arm over the back of the wing chair.

“I don’t think he’s sure what he is,” Quinn said.

“Are you and your incredibly dedicated family planning to continue the search for the genuine Bellezza?” Minnie asked Winston.

“Of course. But I think we’ll want to learn more about the imitation that was concealed in the birdbath in the Far Castle garden. We don’t want to dash off half-cocked somewhere and have everything go all pear shaped.”

Pear shaped?

“No,” Minnie said thoughtfully. “I suppose not.”

“Even on a noble quest like ours,” Winston said, “there come times when the most productive thing one can do is simply nothing. It gives the mind a chance to catch up with all this dashing around we’ve been doing.” He smiled broadly. “I will say the search has become even more interesting.”

Minnie smiled broadly, knowing they were going into a commercial. “Thanks very much for being our guest, Sir Winston Castle. Or should I call you Duke or Earl?”

Castle smiled modestly. “ ‘Sir’ will be just fine, Minnie.”

Minnie looked as if she might be about to upchuck, but she held her smile. “Good luck to you and to your fascinating family, sir. Tally-ho!”

Castle smiled thinly and Britishly, not exposing his teeth.

Quinn used the remote to switch off the TV just as a commercial for a product that made computers operate faster was coming onto the screen. An infant wearing a pin-striped business suit and a power tie appeared seated behind a vast desk.

“Did we really just see that?” Pearl asked.

“The baby IT guy?”

“You know what I mean,” Pearl said. “Sir Winston Castle.”

Quinn shrugged and then stood up to leave for the office.

Said, “Cheerio, old thing.”

It was priceless, the way Pearl glared at him.

77

Quinn found himself thoroughly admiring Winston Castle’s acting ability. So convincing had been Castle that he even had someone as incessantly phony as Minnie Miner frequently off balance. Surely this portly, elegantly attired factory of charm was on some level absolutely sincere. A kernel of sincerity lay concealed in every expression of bullshit. Though this installation of the news commentary program had been Minnie Miner’s production, Minnie Miner ASAP had been Winston Castle’s show.

At the same time, Minnie could seem to be whichever sort of person she chose. A woman with a closet full of personalities. Outward and aggressive as she was, she could also fool people into mistaking her for a naïf. Nature did that sometimes, made the most deadly flowers seem beautiful and innocuous. The ones with the poisonous thorns.

Quinn settled back in his desk chair, thinking about the Far Castle garden, how the concrete birdbath had been hidden in plain sight. Even if it had happened to be noticed and more carefully regarded, no one would have suspected that it might have been the concealment for something remarkable within.

No one would have dreamed that a creation of Michelangelo might lie beneath a crude layer of concrete, or that a much sought after concealed object might be a worthless facsimile.

This investigation reminded Quinn of those Russian dolls, each slightly smaller and hidden within the other, becoming successively more diminutive as they were explored. That kind of concealment tried the patience of any searcher, looking over and over again, finding the same thing, until curiosity, and then hope, finally waned.

It all reminded Quinn of the Tucker-Castle whatever it was—family, or cult, or what was the difference—when it came to finding and claiming a thing of beauty and a fortune? These people weren’t as deadly as D.O.A., but they were easily just as devious.

Quinn had his suspicions that it wasn’t only the killer who was yanking his chain.

He dragged his desk’s land line phone over to him and called Pearl.

She was still at the brownstone, and sounded calm when she answered the phone. Which meant that Jody had probably left. They had begun the day with the two women arguing about whose phone the government had legal and moral authority to tap. Pearl and her daughter could discuss such subjects until they were all talked out and Quinn had long since fled to wherever it might be legal and moral to smoke a cigar.

“Still reeling from the Minnie Miner show?” Pearl asked him.

“Not per se,” Quinn said.

“That sounds like something Winston Castle would say. He must have gotten to you with his member-of-parliament persona.”

“I suppose that’s why I’m calling,” Quinn said. “There’s something familiar about Winston Castle’s act. It reminds me of a magician’s patter, designed to get you looking at one hand while he’s doing something with the other. Just when everybody’s attention is distracted, Presto! Out of the hat pops the rabbit.”

“Or the right card,”

“Never play poker with them,” Quinn said.

“Rabbits?”

“People. Like the ones in Winston Castle’s whack-job family, or whatever it is. They have their patter.”

“Meaning?”

“Maybe somebody has a real Michelangelo up a sleeve.”

“Magicians,” Pearl said, not quite understanding. “I’ve always kind of liked them.”

“Their act wouldn’t work if you didn’t.”