“So soon?”
“We’ve outgrown the house. It served us well for a time.”
Quevedo motions loosely to the icons and crucifixes hanging around the room. “If you need help disposing—”
“Rest assured, my friend, when the time of the move comes, you will be called.”
“Anything I can do to help.”
“Yes, yes,” Hermann says, getting up and moving to the window, his back now to Quevedo. “And would you be able to help me today, Luis?”
Quevedo knew this was coming, but he still dreads it. There’s no reasoning with a man like Hermann. Customers of this nature should be avoided, no matter how profitable. In the end, the aggravation can be deadly.
“As I tried to tell you on the phone, Hermann,” Quevedo says patiently, “these types of transactions take time. There is progress. We are still working.”
“It has been months, my friend,” my friend not at all what he means.
“To be a successful collector requires a great deal of endurance. An ability to wait for the right moment. To sometimes wait years. You know, Hermann, in trying to hurry your acquisition, you may well have brought this delay on yourself.”
Kinsky’s anger is starting to simmer, but he can only afford to give the dealer so much guff. Judgment is everything.
“Your friend’s sudden departure had nothing to do with me.”
Quevedo can barely absorb this kind of insult to his intelligence. But he sucks it up for the promise of a record-breaking commission.
“As you say. We were dealing with an unstable man. I’ve known Jack for some time. I’ve expected this type of vanishing act. It is not the surprise to me that it is to others.”
“Exactly,” Hermann says. “He was nothing to me but a tenant. I never even visited the property. All the collections were handled by my nephew and his people.”
Quevedo almost chokes on the phrase his people. He finds the gangboys — the Grey Roaches — to be “people” in only the most generous sense of the word. He’s all too familiar with their monthly visits and he promises himself that if this deal becomes a reality, an exemption from the standard protection fee will be part of the closing costs. Quevedo will hand nothing over until he’s assured he’ll never have to look at Felix’s brutal face again.
“Tell me, Hermann, can I control mental illness? Please, tell me, how am I to knit a man’s mind back to normal? Jack was diagnosed with the schizophrenia long ago. He spent years at the Glaspoint Clinic in Algeria. He’s been an outpatient at Toth Care Facility since he arrived in the city. Treated by Dr. Raglan himself. The medication fails from time to time.”
“This is an answer to me?” Kinsky says quietly. “The medication fails from time to time. This should satisfy me?”
Quevedo’s been in the business long enough to know that he can’t win. He’s here to be chastised and prodded. The sooner he concedes to that, the sooner he can leave and get back to work.
“You’ve been exceedingly tolerant, Hermann,” he says. “Your waiting will be rewarded, I assure you. I have things in motion as we sit here. The machine is turned on, so to speak. I am expecting results any day now.”
Kinsky’s eyes turn not-so-subtly to the envelope on the tea tray.
“Is there a money problem, Luis? Do we need to purchase additional grease for the wheels of your machine?”
“Grease is good,” Quevedo says. “More grease is always a good thing.”
Kinsky nods and pushes the envelope just a few inches toward his guest. Normally, Quevedo would ignore the envelope until he was leaving, but he knows Kinsky wants him to take it right now, to put it in his pocket and acknowledge the gesture and its attached obligations. Quevedo lifts the envelope off the tray and actually makes a strained face to mime the heaviness of the package. Another customer might take this as a sign of parody and disrespect. Hermann Kinsky merely nods his agreement.
“Would you forgive me,” Quevedo says, “if I ask a somewhat personal question?”
“I’m sure,” Hermann says, “that would depend on the question.”
Quevedo runs a hand over his face. Now he’d like a cup of the tea, no matter how bitter.
“I know the mores of my profession,” he says. “Better than most. I’ve been in the field for so long. There are ways that things are done. Established modes of behavior. For the good of all parties involved — the buyer, the seller, and the broker. Usually, the less said, the better is the guiding principle.
“But,” Quevedo continues, “I can’t help violating the customs in this instance. It’s just so odd, really. So out of my experience, which, as I say, has been considerable—”
“Please, Luis, just ask your question.”
Quevedo pauses, leans back in his chair until he’s partially lost among the shadows.
“Everything here,” and Hermann can just see the broker spread his arms, indicating the whole of the chapel, “belonged to the missing nuns?”
“The room is as we found it, yes.”
“You brought nothing with you?”
“We fled Maisel in quite a hurry,” a stiff, wary tone to the voice. “And we have never been people to attach a great sentiment to inanimate clutter.”
In the dark, Quevedo snaps his fingers. “Exactly,” he says, “my point.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You don’t fit the profile, Hermann. You don’t strike me as a collector. You don’t strike me as an art lover. As someone concerned with the elemental images.”
“Perhaps,” Kinsky says, a sudden, murky pitch to the voice, “you believe you know me better than you do, Mr. Quevedo.”
Quevedo realizes that he’s misspoken in such a large way that he’s no longer sure of the deal. And when Kinsky takes a step in his direction, he’s not at all convinced he’ll be leaving the St. Vitus in the same manner he came in.
“Perhaps,” Kinsky’s voice now barely audible, his bulk slowly moving toward Quevedo, “you do not know me at all.”
“I meant no disrespect,” Quevedo says, wetting his lips, shifting in his seat.
Kinsky comes to a stop behind his guest, the scar tissue above Hermann’s left eye pulsing. He puts a hand on Quevedo’s shoulder, reaches into his suitcoat pocket and pulls out a small crucifix. He brings the cross to Quevedo’s neck, runs an edge of it across the Adam’s apple until he feels the broker’s throat engorge and release. Then he drops the icon into Quevedo’s lap and walks back to the stained-glass.
Quevedo picks it up and moves it around in his hands, turns it over several times. It’s intricately carved, forged from both wood and metal and he judges it to be Baroque Gothic, dating from the early seventeen hundreds, all horror-show details graphically depicting broken bones, torn flesh, flowing streams of blood.
“Are you a religious man, Luis?” Kinsky asks, his voice fallen back to the conversational, his finger tracing the lead borders of the window.
“I am a student of the Kabala,” Quevedo answers, relieved and trying to sound serious.
“The cross you hold,” Kinsky says, “is, as you say, an elemental image for millions of people all over the world, yes?”
Quevedo stays quiet.
“They worship before it, wear it on their persons. They bow down before it. It is a symbol of their faith. It is a sign of something beyond themselves. Beyond this brutal world. I don’t understand people who believe in signs and symbols, Luis. But I would like to. I would give more than you can imagine to feel what they feel.”
Quevedo looks down at his hands, tries to estimate the weight of the crucifix.
“I find Quinsigamond,” Kinsky says, “much like old Maisel. Both are built on seven hills. Both serve as home for many tribes. People brushing up against each other. Each night exploding with transactions of every variety. Everyone trying to summon up one demon and strike down another.