“Oh.” Barton looked doubtful.
“Holly has already been very helpful. She knows everything I know about the situation, and I’d like both of us to know more.”
Barton nodded, seeming satisfied. He went to his safe, got out the key, opened the large cabinet and, with Stone’s help, slid out the rear wall to expose the secretary. Then he switched on the lights in the cabinet.
“Oooh, that’s beautiful,” Holly said.
“Do you know anything about American furniture?” Barton asked.
“I know how to get to the Ethan Allen store,” Holly said.
Barton chuckled. “Well, at least you’re honest.” He began a lecture on the piece.
Stone had heard it before, so he wandered around the shop, looking at the old hand tools on the walls. They reminded him of things he had seen on the walls of the woodworking shop at Williamsburg, Virginia, where period-style furniture was still made. He returned to Holly and Barton.
“There are only seven of these known to exist, apart from this one, and six of them are in museums or other institutions,” Barton was saying. “There are only two of them in private hands, and this is one of them. The other is said to rest in a private home near San Francisco that is built directly over the San Andreas Fault.”
“I wonder how the owner’s insurance company feels about that?” Holly observed.
“It’s probably self-insured.”
“How would someone authenticate a piece like this?”
“By being very familiar with other pieces from the same maker.” He pointed to the carved scallop shells at the top of the piece. “For instance, the cuts made in these figures can be matched to the work of a maker, by the tools he used and the strokes he made. There are no signatures, numbers or brass plates identifying the maker, and all the pieces are somewhat different from each other, often built to the specifications of those who commissioned them.”
Stone came over. “Barton, can we talk?”
Barton showed Stone and Holly to a little sitting area at one end of the shop, and they all took seats.
“Barton,” Stone said, “I want to ask you about a couple of people you were in the army with. Will you tell me what you can about them?”
“If my memory is working properly,” Barton said.
“The first is a Charles Crow.”
Barton looked thoughtful.
“You remember Bob Cantor?”
“Oh, yes. My best squad lead, later my best platoon leader. I got him a field commission.”
“Crow was a member of Cantor’s original squad.”
“Oh, yes. I remember him,” Barton said, looking enlightened. “A real hustler; he was always buying or selling something, for less than it was worth when buying and considerably more when selling.”
“Sort of like an antiques dealer,” Holly interjected.
Barton laughed, showing a lot of teeth.
It was the first time Stone had seen him even smile, and he wondered if the joke would have gotten as big a laugh if it had come from him instead of Holly. “Did you ever see Crow after your outfit was back in the States?”
“I threw a party during our last week together, as people were beginning to be discharged or transferred.”
“Was Crow discharged or transferred?”
“Why do I think you already know the answer to that question?” Barton asked.
“Sorry, Barton; I have to check your memory from time to time to see how it’s working.”
“Of course. Crow didn’t re-up, as I recall. Neither did Cantor, though I thought he would have had a future if he’d stayed in the Corps.”
“Do you have any idea what became of Crow after his discharge?”
“I remember that he was a New Yorker. I think he might have returned there, but I’ve no idea what he did after that.”
“Another name: Abner Kramer.”
“Ah, Ab,” Barton said, smiling again. “A great success story. He was a big cheese at Goldman Sachs, then started his own investment bank, and he has a colonial estate up here. He’s up practically every weekend.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Stone said. “Do you think you might introduce me to him?”
“I could give him a call, I suppose. Why do you want to see him?”
“I’ll be frank with you, Barton,” Stone said. “I know about the, ah, transaction that took place among you, Cantor, Crow, Kramer and one or two others in Cantor’s old squad.”
Barton’s eyebrows went up. “Do you, now? How much do you know?”
“Just the broad outlines,” Stone said. “Will you fill in the gaps for me, tell me the whole story?”
“I think the whole business is better forgotten,” Barton said.
“You understand, don’t you, that you have no legal worries about that now. After all, it was back in the seventies, so the statute of limitations has expired, the government of South Vietnam no longer exists, and I very much doubt if the present government of Vietnam knows about the incident or has any interest in it.”
“You doubt that, do you?”
“Do you have any reason to believe that they could be involved in what happened to you recently?”
Barton sighed. “All right, Stone; I’ll tell you the story – under the protection of attorney-client privilege. And you, Holly, since you work for Lance, are unlikely to reveal this to anyone.”
They both nodded.
“When you’ve heard it, you can tell me who you think might be involved.” Barton settled into his seat, rearranged his features into a reminiscent mien and began to speak.
15
Barton settled himself and began. “We were pulling back from positions north of Saigon,” he said. “We knew it was almost over, and we were just trying to do it in an orderly fashion. Some of the South Vietnamese commanders were in much more of a hurry.
“There was a ragged column of their forces pulling out of our joint fire base very early one morning, and I saw a South Vietnamese unit in several vehicles pulling out, one of them a truck with a fairly large object in the back, covered with a tarp and tied down. Later in the morning, when we finally began moving our equipment down the road to Saigon, our last two trucks caught up with Bob Cantor, riding point in a Jeep, and he took me forward a few yards on foot and showed me something through the reeds.
“The truck carrying the object was mired to its rear axle, along a riverbank, and they had the blanket off and were cutting the ropes tying it down. It was a large safe, quite an old one, from the look of it. The truck was listing toward the river at an alarming angle, and it looked as if it might tip over any moment.
“As we watched, the commanding colonel ordered a dozen of his men to get hold of the safe and tip it into the river. It made a big splash and disappeared into the muddy water. They abandoned the truck and got into another one and headed south.
“We were in less of a hurry than they, so several of us went into the water, got some cable around the safe and, using a winch mounted on our truck’s front bumper, dragged it out of the river. We also had a wrecker with a crane, so we got it aboard a truck, covered it and began driving toward Saigon. We came under mortar fire twice and lost one man, but we finally made it to the city.
“I had rented a house there, with an attached garage, and Cantor and I, along with three enlisted men, got the safe in there and washed the mud off. Then we had to get the thing open, which turned out to be easier than I had imagined. It took Cantor about forty minutes to crack the safe. Who knew he had these skills?”
“Bob has many skills,” Stone said. He knew because he had employed many of them.
“What was in the safe?” Holly asked.
“A lot of papers, mostly in Vietnamese, and six large leather sacks, containing hundreds of gold Chinese coins. They had been crudely struck, probably during or shortly after World War Two, and they weighed about an ounce apiece. I locked them in the garage, and we agreed to meet the next evening for dinner to talk about what to do with them. Two of my men got the safe onto the wrecker, drove it down to the river and made it go away.”