Vengeance in the Script

By Iain Howard

Vengeance in the Script, an exciting and suspenseful novel released by author Iain Howard through Xlibris, is filled with unforgettable characters, witty dialogue, and a powerful story line. This book is a perfect addition to anyones library.

David Lyon is an expert mechanic who lives in a quiet village and restores classic cars. But his peace is disrupted when beautiful Vivien Sachs walks into his life. Vivien works for a charity and wants David to appraise a rare Mercedes-Benz thats been left to it in a willbut hell have to find the car first, because no one knows where it is! The minute David agrees, all hell breaks loose. A brutal attack is made on his friend Charlie, and murder and mayhem follow David everywhere as he learns that the hidden Mercedes is at the heart of a terrible secret. While looking for the car, David must also try to figure out whether the mysterious Vivien is going to be his lover or his assassin.

Readers will find themselves following David and Vivien as they pursue their own tangled relationship while confronting a series of mind-bending riddles obstructing their way to the mystery car. The book will keep readers enthralled by a complex web of crime, deceit, love, and hatred leading to the revelation of a bizarre vengeance through inscription. Vengeance in the Script will hold you captive until the very last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456842994

Book preview

Vengeance in the Script

Iain Howard

Copyright © 2011 by Iain Howard.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010919383

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4568-4298-7

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4568-4297-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-4299-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

92066

Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX

for WCN

ego te per omne quod datum mortalibus

et destinatum saeculum est,

. . . tenebo fibris insitam

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I shall repay.

Note to the Reader: The author begs the indulgence of Swiss and German readers, especially, for having set malefactors abroad in their beautiful and peaceful countries, and for having endowed them with a largely imaginary topography, both urban and rural. Although many names of real places have been used, what follows is an entirely fictional product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance discerned in it to actual places and to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

I

There’s nothing to put you off sex like the sight of a gruesome corpse. I was driving home in a Jaguar XK 140, and as journey’s end approached, I was sure the young woman in the passenger seat was sharing my cozy thoughts of hot bath and bed. But as we turned off the road into the private lane leading to the rear of my property, it was clear that something wasn’t right—that something was in fact very, very wrong. Both sides of the narrow lane were heavily wooded and there was an odd luminescence above a pall of smoke in the night sky over the treetops on the left, like a faint searchlight beam arrested in its course. The acrid smell of burning was intense. We made the sharp turn a mere hundred yards or so from my back gate—and I braked the car to an abrupt stop and cut the engine. The silence was eerie, broken only by the furtive scurrying noises of nocturnal animals in the dense shrubbery on the left side of the road.

Immediately ahead of us was a badly wrecked sedan whose burned and twisted frame was still smoking. One headlight, not yet extinguished, directed a pencil of light skyward at a crazy angle. The damaged vehicle was a mass of torn metal, especially on the driver’s side: the windows, as well as the windshield, had been smashed into innumerable fragments and razor-sharp shards of glass and steel were everywhere. Even from close up it was hard to tell if anyone was in the car. There were dark stains and puddles, shreds of cloth . . . of flesh. My companion, spirited and tough-minded as she was, elected to return to the Jag, lighting a cigarette to steady her nerves. With difficulty I made my way past the sedan, through the tangled undergrowth in the direction of gnawing sounds, and suddenly came upon the dreadful remains of the intruder. He had been flung out of the car with considerable force and practically impaled on a massive thornbush. His face was an unrecognizable mask of blood from countless lacerations and contusions that had effectively effaced his features. The unnatural canting of his head suggested a broken neck, and a clearly broken left arm dangled uselessly from its socket. The right arm and right foot were missing altogether, and it was clear that various rodents momentarily scared away by my arrival had already started work on the mutilated corpse. I stumbled back out of the woods, heedless of the thorns tearing at my clothes and retching violently. After I had emptied the contents of my stomach I made my way back to my car.

Has to have been a bomb, Vivien said. How bad is it?

Awful. It must have detonated prematurely—looks like it blew him right out through the side window.

Is he . . . ?

Oh, yes, he’s dead all right—I’ve never seen anyone deader.

But I’m getting ahead of my story . . . .

Vivien, in whose arms I was not destined to spend that night after all, had come into my life barely a week before—and not in the most propitious circumstances. I was underneath a Bugatti when the businesslike tapping of swift heels announced her arrival over the cobblestones outside my workshop.

A cultured feminine voice sang out, Anyone here? I’m looking for David Lyon, then added, as an afterthought, Dirk Koffman suggested I consult you.

My heart sank a little. I was working on Koffman’s Type 40 Bugatti and I thought back to the day he’d brought it in during the previous week.

I’ve a friend who needs some help, he said, and you’re the one to provide it. In the past Koffman’s friends, like his car and for that matter, Koffman himself, have landed me in no end of trouble.

Great, I sighed grumpily. Who’s the friend? And what sort of help?

Drop the sourpuss act, Dave! Her name’s Vivien Sachs and she’s a lovely young woman. She works for a big charity and all she wants you to do is appraise a rare car someone left them in a will—it’s no big deal.

Oh, right, I thought, nothing’s ever a big deal until it is—and then it’s too late to back out. I should have said, I’m a mechanic, not an appraiser. And anyway, I’m much too busy. Send her to Christie’s or Sotheby’s. But I didn’t and now she was on my doorstep.

I slid out from beneath the car, getting my first look at the elegantly tailored slender form of Vivien Sachs, from her neatly shod feet on up. She was blonde, very good-looking, and probably in her late twenties. Her first impression of me must have been rather less favorable. My usual appearance is pretty average—just over six feet, brown curly hair, slightly assymetrical features, still on the good side of forty—but a morning of work under Dirk’s Bugatti had liberally begrimed my hair, face, hands, and overalls with motor oil.

You must be David Lyon. I’m Vivien Sachs. Dirk told me you are the perfect person to help with a problem I have. I decided I should just drop in because you don’t answer the telephone.

Vivien Sachs looked approvingly around my airy workshop. It’s a huge eighteenth-century barn I converted when I got into the business of restoring classic automobiles. I motioned her into my little office and invited her to sit in one of the two clean chairs while I scrubbed my hands and face in the sink.

Did he tell you that I restore and repair classic automobiles, Ms. Sachs? Those are the only kinds of problems I’m really equipped to tackle. (This fib was a cheap ploy to dismiss the matter from the start, and it got the treatment it deserved.)

Oh, you’re English! Vivien Sachs exclaimed brightly. I love that accent! She went on, I feel sure you can handle this. Did Dirk tell you that I work for the Consortium of Jewish Charitable Organizations?

No, he didn’t. In what capacity? And in any case, what does that have to do with me?

I’m the executive secretary, she said, smiling, not nearly as exalted a post as it sounds. I know that has nothing to do with antique cars, but it seems someone has left us a rare car in her will.

My curiosity was piqued. What kind of car?

Of course, I should have told you that right away, she said, fishing in her handbag for a folded letter. It’s a Mercedes-Benz.

I frowned. Nowadays people think of Mercedes cars of the 1960s, and even of the seventies and eighties, as classics, and I thought disgustedly that the rare car of the bequest was probably something of that kind. But even some classic Mercedes are problematical for me, for an entirely different reason.

I really don’t care to work on Nazi-era cars, I said.

Nazi-era cars? What do you mean?

German cars from 1933 on—after Hitler came to power and the German auto industry got involved in the Nazi war effort. Whatever make—Maybach, Mercedes-Benz, Horch, Auto Union, BMW—I’d rather not deal with any of them.

She consulted her letter. I don’t see why you should have a problem with this one, then. It says it’s a 1931—Model SS.

I sat up. Suddenly, this was exciting.

A 1931 SS? I asked. That’s really something. SS models were produced from 1928 to 1930. I didn’t think any had been built in 1931. Does your letter say anything about the style of the coachwork?

No, it doesn’t give any further details, she said. We’d certainly like you to appraise it, but . . . well, there’s another difficulty. You see, we don’t know where the car is.

Don’t know where it is? That seems an odd sort of bequest.

Perhaps you’d better look at the lawyer’s letter yourself. She handed it to me, her manicured fingernails just brushing the tips of my fingers.

The letter was from a New York law firm improbably called Staggers, Stein, and Grodger, and was signed by Bertram Staggers. It was brief and not very informative, stating merely that a recently deceased client, Edith Schoenbrunn, late of London, Zürich, and New York, had bequeathed a 1931 Model SS Mercedes-Benz car, chassis number such-and-such, to the CJCO, and that the undersigned would be grateful if Ms. Vivien Sachs, to whom the letter was addressed, would contact him at her earliest convenience. She did so, only to learn that the vehicle in question had not turned up in the inventory of Ms. Schoenbrunn’s possessions, and that her New York lawyers had no idea of its location, nor, indeed, any evidence of its existence. Ms. Sachs had asked if they had consulted Ms. Schoenbrunn’s Swiss lawyers, to be assured reproachfully that they had of course done so, with no better result. The lawyers who drafted the will had been assured that the car existed, but they had not seen it. If they came upon any further information that might assist in finding the car, they would gladly forward it. Staggers did point out that the will had considerately left the CJCO a modest endowment for maintenance of the vehicle until such time as it was decided to sell or otherwise dispose of it, and suggested that a portion of this sum might legitimately be advanced to defray the expense of locating it.

So you see, Vivien Sachs concluded, we are in a position to pay you a small retainer . . .

Wait a minute! A retainer for what? If the car isn’t found, I’ll not be able to appraise it.

Oh, she replied, slightly elevating her delicate eyebrows. The fact is, we were rather hoping you would try to find it for us.

At this point I could have said that I wasn’t a detective and that my work was restoring classic cars, not looking for them. But of course that wasn’t true. I’ve sussed out a good many classic cars hidden for decades in barns, sheds, cellars, and so on, and am always on the alert for new leads. A prior academic career had endowed me with good research skills and habits that were adaptable to more than seeking out and examining medieval manuscripts. And thanks to a couple of unplanned and ultimately hair-raising adventures, I have acquired a modest reputation as an amateur detective. Dirk Koffman, schemer that he was, knew that, and I felt sure he had set me up. I glanced at Vivien Sachs, who sat gently swinging her leg, with a look of innocent expectation on her face. In spite of my irritation I was gripped by the rising hope of actually finding a 1931 Mercedes SS, and I suppose that accounts for the weakness of my reply.

Well . . . It was a complete capitulation and Vivien Sachs knew it. How wonderful! she said, springing out of her chair and seizing my hand. Thank you! I knew you’d agree to do it! When will you come to my office so I can give you all the information we have?

I looked dubiously at Dirk’s Bugatti, at the Packard Twelve and Marmon Sixteen, at the still untouched Phantom I Rolls and KB Lincoln that had come in two weeks ago, and I agreed—without the least notion how much trouble this decision would get me into—to come to the CJCO offices promptly at eleven the following Monday morning to be briefed by Vivien Sachs. I had no expectation at all that within a week a dear friend of mine would be beaten to within an inch of his life and I myself would narrowly escape death at the hands of a hired assassin whose bomb, exploding prematurely, would lead to his comeuppance instead of mine.

After a frantically busy working week I showed up at the appointed time in Vivien Sachs’s office. The CJCO occupied a well-kept brownstone on East 88th Street in Manhattan, and I left the MG TC I’d driven at the nearby garage of a mechanic friend, Charlie Strasser. Vivien greeted me with a warm smile that seemed appreciative of my washed face, brushed hair, and the tweed jacket and flannel trousers that had replaced my mechanic’s coveralls. On this cool and overcast October day she was wearing a long-sleeved dress in a muted paisley pattern, and her shining blond hair was neatly tied back. The walls of her office, on the second floor, were decorated with framed museum prints displaying the same subdued good taste as her appearance, and the window behind her tidy antique desk overlooked a tiny garden where a few late anemones lingered.

She had disappointingly little to give me: two addresses, one in New York and one in Zürich; the shelf list of a personal library that seemed to have been dispersed among several heirs whose disposition of the books was not known; the names and addresses of the heirs, with their telephone numbers; and obituaries of Edith Schoenbrunn clipped from newspapers in several European capitals, as well as New York. She had apparently been well known in international social circles, as well as for her philanthropic work. The most promising items were two invoices from an automobile repair shop in Zürich for work on the Mercedes, but the more recent of them bore a 1952 date, implying a very cold trail indeed. Intending to look through all these items with care later on, I thrust them into a manila envelope Vivien gave me. She also offered me a check for far too large an amount.

In reply to my protests that the whole investigation would take no more than a couple of days and would probably be completely fruitless Vivien said, You’ll have to go to Switzerland, won’t you, to talk to her lawyers there and to try to find the mechanics who worked on the car—and what if you need to talk to her heirs? They’re scattered across Europe!

I accepted the check with resignation and began to take my leave.

Are you going right back to Connecticut? she inquired. When I nodded she said, There are trains every hour—surely you can spare a few minutes to join me for lunch?

I didn’t take the train, I replied ungraciously.

Of course! You must have driven one of your exotic cars. What make? I’d love to see it. I explained that I’d left the MG in Charlie Strasser’s garage, so she wouldn’t be able to see it. And, I continued, I’m a vegetarian, so it’ll be a nuisance to find a place where I can get something to eat, and I wasn’t planning to have lunch anyway.

Waving aside my protestations, she practically ran me down the stairs and out into the street, summoned a taxi, and within ten minutes had us seated in a quiet cozy vegetarian restaurant I’d never seen before.

The meal was not an unqualified success. The rice was gummy, one dish was quite uneatable, and somehow, in the course of the meal, Vivien contrived to lose a shoe. While we were searching beneath the table for it, I reflected uneasily that nothing was proceeding as it should. I was uncomfortable with the extent to which I felt attracted to Vivien, and she seemed to be making a dead set at me which I couldn’t understand. She had charm and sophistication in abundance and was surely not lacking friends of either sex, so her flirtatious manner and show of interest in me were both puzzling. Her readiness to put us on first-name terms made my reserve seem ridiculous when I addressed her as Ms. Sachs, so I finally dropped the pretense of formality, still resisting her urges to call her Vivi (all my friends do).

She told me she was Canadian and had grown up in Montreal, but since leaving there at the the age of sixteen to go to school in Switzerland, she’d only gone back for occasional family visits.

Vivien asked me what made a car a classic and my response led to a spirited discussion of judgments of taste. I was as impressed by her acumen and her indifference to the aesthetic considerations I brought forward as she was by the number of cars I owned and my obsessive interest in them. Not all of our conversation was serious: we’d been rather silly and had done a good deal of laughing together. In spite of my misgivings I felt strongly attracted to her, which annoyed me. I’d had enough experience to know that beautiful and accomplished women don’t throw themselves at a man without some good reason, and thought I had damned well better figure out quickly what hers was.

As we parted at the entrance of the CJCO offices, she said gaily, We’re going to have some fun working together, aren’t we?

Oh, lots, I replied ironically. She laughed and with a wave of the hand ran up the steps and through the handsome oak door.

I walked over to Charlie Strasser’s shop, which was in an old warehouse in the east 90’s, overlooking the East River—one of the few survivors of the earlier industrial character of a now extensively gentrified neighborhood. The gentrification was evident in the large bakery and gourmet food establishment, resplendent with glass, polished wood, and chrome, that occupied the ground floor of Charlie’s building. His shop was on the sixth floor, and the only access to it was by a huge, ancient freight elevator. The principal ground-floor entrance to the elevator was a garage door in a side yard accessible from the street. I rode up to the sixth floor, thinking about an odd point that had caught my eye in Bertram Staggers’ letter, although at the time I hadn’t realized its possible significance. There was something strange about the car’s chassis number. I wasn’t sure exactly what, but something seemed wrong about it, perhaps a superfluous digit, and I was hoping Charlie could tell me what it was. He had worked for Mercedes-Benz as a young apprentice in the pre-Hitler years, and even now, in his eighties, he had an encyclopedic memory for anything to do with classic Mercedes. I thought he’d probably immediately see what was odd about the number. For that matter, why, in such a curt letter, would such a highly specific detail as a chassis number be mentioned at all? Of course, it could serve to identify with precision the automobile in question, but why just that detail and not also the engine number?

Charlie’s shop occupied the entire sixth (and top) floor of the building. It was rather dark and entirely utilitarian, but he had never seen fit to improve its décor or amenities since he had moved there in the 1940s. Unusual motorcars of almost unimaginable magnificence (and often, in conditions of almost unbelievable decrepitude) had passed through its doors. Charlie was a mechanical genius who worked at his own pace and in accord with his own rules. Stories about his rudeness to rich and arrogant clients were rife. To a pompous man who offered him a bonus of $10,000 if he would complete the restoration of his Cadillac V12 roadster before the beginning of the Harvard football season so that he’d be able to take it to all the games, Charlie said, I don’t work for show-offs and sent him packing. A wealthy and titled lady who insisted once too often on the precise matching of hides for the seats of her Isotta Fraschini got a lecture on the regressiveness of upholstering cars with animal skins and had her car returned with the seats lacking upholstery altogether. And a famous athlete who begged him to restore her 1951 Ferrari was reduced to tears when he said, I don’t work on modern stuff like that. Owners who made a bad initial impression or were put off by Charlie’s brusqueness were simply shown the door, no matter how interesting their cars or how much they were willing to pay. A Strasser restoration took a minimum of three years, since Charlie didn’t believe in hired help, and cost a legendary sum. Charlie had rescued a Type 41 Bugatti Royale from a wrecker’s yard, he had restored a Hibbard & Darrin bodied Rolls-Royce that had been used to snake logs out of a swamp in Louisiana, and he had rebuilt a supercharged Duesenberg whose first owner, in a fit of wartime economizing, had replaced the original engine by a Cummins diesel. At the moment he had in his shop an extremely rare sixteen-cylinder Bucciali with front wheel drive that he was reconditioning for a California museum, and he generally had a variety of 1920s and 1930s Mercedes on hand.

The principal entrance to Charlie’s shop was from the freight elevator. When it reached the sixth floor and its door rolled up, you stepped onto a small landing, to be confronted by a pair of lofty double doors that were normally wide open during Charlie’s working hours. These doors, to my amazement, were firmly closed. I tried the door handle. Locked—and from the feel of it, bolted on the inside. That could only mean that Charlie, for a reason I couldn’t yet divine, had left work in the middle of the day—or, I began to think uneasily, that something was wrong: a heart attack, a stroke? I dismissed that thought as a panic reaction; if Charlie had suffered an unexpected attack the doors would have been open. There were two other points of egress (and, I supposed, ingress) from Charlie’s shop. One was the fire escape at the rear of the building, the other, a long-disused spiral stair in a corner—a secret he’d once shown me when we needed a swift retreat from the approach of a disgruntled client. In a fever of impatience I went down in the freight elevator and rushed around through the yard to the rear. The fire escape stairs ended about six feet above the ground, but I easily pulled myself up onto the lowest step and ran up them as fast as I could, paying no attention to anything until I reached the sixth floor. A tall window whose cracked panes were completely begrimed by soot opened onto the fire escape and stood slightly ajar. Momentarily winded from my rush up the stairs, I paused a moment for breath, then climbed in. Dull as the gray light outside was, the gloom inside was positively stygian. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust. What I then saw was a real shocker. Charlie was a crumpled heap in the passenger seat of my MG. I raced across to him, felt for a pulse, then ran over to the telephone. I phoned first for an ambulance, then for the police.

In a corner of Charlie’s cavernous workshop was a small refrigerator, with a sink next to it, and a cupboard above. I ran to get the first aid kit from the cupboard and an ice pack from the freezer. Charlie had been savagely beaten and probably left for dead. With mounting rage at whatever thugs had attacked him, I applied the ice pack to his bruises and gently used gauze pads to stop the blood from a dozen visible wounds.

I noticed then that he was not the only victim. The leather seats of my MG had been practically shredded. The weapon used was probably the nasty-looking knife that pinned a torn scrap of paper to the back of the driver’s seat. The block letters scrawled on it in red crayon were crude but the words were not. It read: sic hostibus, hic et ubique. What New York thugs left notes in Latin? And the message—thus to enemies, here and everywhere—had an odd and archaic formality. It was written on an ordinary torn scrap of paper, and I noticed that invoices and other papers from Charlie’s little desk were strewn all over the floor. Had they been looking for something? And had they found it? A quick look around the shop indicated that mine was the only car that had been vandalized. I began to wonder if the attack on Charlie was somehow connected with me, although I couldn’t imagine how. My thoughts as I heard the approaching sirens were unsettling.

The police lieutenant who arrived practically on the heels of the ambulance attendants agreed that the first priority was to get Charlie to a hospital, and we saw him carefully loaded onto a stretcher and taken down, to be transported to St. Luke’s, on West 59th Street. Lieutenant Zucker and his companion Sergeant Driscoll examined the jumble of footprints on the floor of Charlie’s shop with dismay. They asked me if I could translate the Latin message but found it no less bizarre in English. It seemed clear that there had been at least two, perhaps three assailants; it appeared that they had entered the shop, as I had, from the fire escape, probably leaving (after bolting the main doors) the same way; and that the attack had occurred between 11:30 in the morning, when I’d left my car, and 1:20 in the afternoon, when I’d returned. The police asked me if I knew who occupied the intermediate floors of the building and I told them: the gourmet food shop used the entire floor immediately above it for storage, and above that was a dressmaking establishment. At present (and for some time past) the two floors directly below Charlie’s shop were vacant. At the last moment before the police arrived, I had hastily dashed down the hidden stair and saw immediately from the disturbance of the dust on the floor below that Charlie’s attackers had lain in wait there. I had also (tampering outrageously with evidence, I knew) picked up a small object lying on the floor and put it in my pocket, but had otherwise taken pains not to disturb the prints in the thick dust. I knew they’d soon find the hidden stair and see what I’d seen, but for the time being, I needed to keep a step or two ahead of them.

You think the hoods knew this guy? asked Zucker.

I very much doubt it. What makes you think they might have?

They’ll knock over any little bodega or luncheonette on the street, said the lieutenant, but it’s not likely to be a random attack when you have to ride up six floors in an elevator to a place like this—from the street, you’d never even guess it was here.

I should think someone who knew Charlie, or knew about him, put them up to it, I said, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do this.

What about this lady you were having lunch with? Could she have something to do with it?

A very startling and unsettling suggestion. I’m sure she couldn’t have, I said, but Zucker’s question had planted an ugly suspicion in my mind. It wasn’t inconceivable that Vivien had planned a vicious assault on Charlie from the start while she distracted me by a spontaneous invitation to lunch. I’d told her what car I’d driven to New York and where I’d left it while she was rushing me out of her office and into the unscheduled lunch date. There’d been a couple of minutes when I’d been in the restaurant bathroom that might have sufficed her to notify someone else. But what could her motive be?

It looks like someone knew your car would be here, and that you’d be tied up with her for a couple of hours, said Driscoll. We’d better talk to her. They took down my name, address, and telephone number, warned me to be available, told me that my car was evidence and could not be moved, and padlocked all the entrances to Charlie’s shop. As soon as they had gone, I used my mobile phone to call Vivien’s office.

David? she began, have you found something out already? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again quite this soon—

Never mind that, I interrupted. You’ll soon be hearing from the police. I heard her gasp a couple of times as I told her quickly what had happened. Her astonishment and shock seemed genuine.

Don’t tell the police anything more than you absolutely have to, I said. When can we meet this evening? I have to talk to you.

We arrranged to meet in a Greenwich Village café at seven o’clock and rang off. I looked around the yard for clues as to the thugs’ arrival and departure, and was rewarded by finding a few drops of fresh (but very dirty) motor oil in one of the yard’s patches of old oil compounded with mud and dirt. I dipped my little finger in it and sniffed. It seemed to be one of the recently developed detergent oils, and had probably not been changed for fifteen or twenty thousand miles. So I needed to be on the lookout for a late model, probably high-end car that was poorly maintained and had an oil leak—and had relatively recently had a tire replaced, to judge from the three Michelin treads and one Goodyear. There were probably only twenty or thirty thousand vehicles in Manhattan that would fit that description. I sighed and thought about transport for myself. I had a couple of cars in storage in Manhattan and decided on a Jaguar XK 140 that would attract less attention than a vintage Lagonda or Bentley. Then I went to the hospital to see how Charlie was doing.

A nurse told me that Charlie had been taken to the intensive care unit. His cuts and contusions had all been treated. He was still unconscious, but, badly beaten as he was, none of his injuries appeared to have affected any vital organs. He was breathing more regularly and more strongly now. However, he still wasn’t out of danger, and the nurse expected him to remain in the ICU at least another twenty-four hours. I would be able to see him briefly the next evening, but it wasn’t clear how soon he’d be able to speak.

I went to the Public Library on 42nd Street and did a spot of research on Mercedes serial numbers. And that’s where I found it. All the serial numbers of the S cars began with 3, and all had five digits. That’s what was odd. The number in Staggers’ letter began with 3 all right, but it had six digits: 368494. Moreover, only one car in this series was listed as having been built in 1931, and it was an SSK, not an SS. However, a few of the SSK models produced in the years 1928-1931 were said to have been modified to SS by lengthening their chassis; maybe the mystery car was one of them. It seemed that it must have been, because according to the factory records quoted in the book I’d found, the chassis number of the single 1931 SSK was 36494.

I sat and thought. It now seemed obvious that Charlie had been attacked because I had been to see him. When I returned to claim my car, I would have been in a position to get some information from Charlie that someone didn’t want me to have. Was it something my conversation with Vivien would have caused me to ask him about? Or something he had received independently and would want to communicate to me? Not, surely, the question of the chassis number, which I had been able to run to earth by looking at a couple of books in the New York Public Library. There was some secret connected with this damned car that was worth committing murder to preserve, and someone thought Charlie had a key to it. Apparently there was no issue as long as Charlie knew nothing about the mystery car, but once I was drawn into the affair, it had seemed imperative to prevent the two of us from communicating.

The Olive Tree is a dark, quiet café on a little street, not much more than an alley, that runs off McDougall. I like it because the tables aren’t close together and the lighting is so subdued that even when it’s crowded (as it usually is) you can enjoy quite a bit of privacy. I got there before Vivien and saw her arrive. She had changed into slacks and a heavy dark green sweater. She looked pale and preoccupied. I greeted her unceremoniously, asking what sort of game she was playing.

What do you mean? she retorted. "I’m not playing any sort of game."

Don’t give me that line, I said roughly. You came to my workshop and asked me to find a weird car, and less than twenty-four hours later, a murderous attack was made on my friend Charlie. Do you really expect me to believe you don’t know anything about it?

Believe it or not, I don’t, she said coldly. Do I impress you as some sort of mobster? I don’t even know your friend Charlie.

I don’t suppose the thugs who beat him up did, either. It doesn’t look good, Vivien. You get me to come to your office for a meeting, you suggest lunch at a little place you know, you jolly me up with a lot of fun and games and delaying tactics . . . who else knew how long it would be before I got back to Charlie’s shop? For that matter, who else but you knew that I’d left my car there? I’m not suggesting that you sent the hoodlums, but maybe you told someone else who did.

If she was acting, she was doing it well. The combination of offended dignity and hurt feelings in her reply was impressive.

I didn’t tell anyone, and if you can’t take my word for it, we can forget about working together. Who could I have told? And how?—you were with me the whole time.

I’m afraid it’s gone a bit too far for us just to forget it, I said. Charlie’s in intensive care, and at the very least, I have to find out who did this to him. Maybe someone else in your office is involved. Who do you work for? What is the CJCO, really?

I’d thought it odd at the time that I’d seen nobody beside Vivien in the CJCO offices, but only now did it seem really sinister. I was about to go on, but Vivien’s expression told me that this verbal onslaught was too much. I stopped and reached for her hand.

I’m sorry—can we call it Pax? She managed a faint smile at my English schoolboy slang. Pax, then.

She began to tell me about the CJCO and a decidedly peculiar picture emerged.

The Consortium of Jewish Charitable Organizations featured three principals beside Vivien herself, and their four respective secretaries, a total of eight. Vivien’s immediate boss, the executive vice president, was called Kurt Wechsler. His office was on the floor immediately above hers, but he was seldom there, since he was usually away dealing with one or another of the Consortium’s constituent agencies, or talking to potential donors. Vivien was pretty sure he was in Europe at the moment. Wechsler’s secretary was a middle-aged married woman called Sandra Weill. Vivien considered her impersonal and boring, though competent. The president of the entire organization, Marcus Eberhardt, was a charming, delightful old man—really old (about ninety, Vivien thought), and his secretary