Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [79]
“Sorry,” said Speyer. “I was required to ask three times today. How much do you want? I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“Now you’re bribing me? That’s five more years in the pen.”
“I beg your pardon. I assumed you were shaking me down.”
“Shaking you down. Pretty good English for a German. What did you do that I’d be shaking you down for?”
“I’m not German,” said Speyer, pronouncing the G in German with a hard Ch. “I was born in this city. I’m as American as you are.”
“Sure you are,” said the detective. “That’s why you bankrolled the German army after we declared war.”
“Not me—my relatives, who live in Frankfurt. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Then why did your pal the Kaiser make you a knight of the Red Eagle?”
“That was in 1912,” protested Speyer. “And if that makes a man a traitor, you should have arrested J. P. Morgan. He received the Eagle too.”
For the first time, Littlemore was caught off guard: “Morgan?”
“Yes. He won it the year before I did.”
“If you’re such a patriot,” said the detective, “why are you skipping out of the country?”
“Skipping out? I’m going to Hamburg to have some very important contracts signed. I’ll be home the eighth of October.”
“Show me those contracts,” said Littlemore. “And your return ticket.”
“In my briefcase,” said Speyer. “On the dinner table.”
Littlemore, pushing Speyer before him, entered a formal dining room, heavily ornamented, with a Michelangelesque fresco splashed on its ceiling. Oil paintings, large and small, adorned the walls. The detective stopped before a small portrait, so dark he could not at first make out its subject; it depicted an old man with a ruddy face and pouches under his eyes. “This one must be worth a lot, since you can’t even see it. How much does a little thing like this go for?”
“Do you know what that ‘little thing’ is, Officer?” asked Speyer.
“A Rembrandt.”
It was Speyer now who was taken by surprise.
“Saw one just like it at the museum,” added Littlemore.
“I paid a quarter of a million dollars for it.”
Littlemore whistled. On a rectangular table long enough to seat twenty lay an open briefcase. Inside was a ream of bond and debenture documents in English, Spanish, and German. Littlemore flipped through them. “And who did the full-length picture behind me?” asked the detective, without looking up. “The one of Mr. James Speyer.”
“A boy from the Lower East Side,” said Speyer. “A student at the Eldridge University Settlement. One of the schools I fund.”
The contracts concerned an enormous sum of money, evidently destined for a Mexican bank—whose chief officer was James Speyer. Littlemore also found an American passport and a ticket on the Cunard White Star sailing for New York City out of Hamburg on October the first.
“Don’t you think this is taking things a little far,” asked Speyer, “for a bottle of wine?”
“What bottle of wine?”
“The one I had at Delmonico’s. Isn’t that why you came to my table? Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Dry laws aren’t my department,” said the detective. “Let me get this straight. Your story is that you ran out on me at Delmonico’s because you were afraid I was going to pinch you for boozing?”
“That’s right.”
“And what—you thought I’d just let you go?”
“I didn’t realize you knew who I was,” said Speyer. “But now that you do know, I might as well warn you, Officer. I’m a rich man, and a rich man can make life very unpleasant for a policeman who troubles him.”
“Don’t give me that. You’re broke, Speyer,” said Littlemore. “You had to sell off two of your bigger paintings recently. You even let go of your old servants.”
Speyer stared at the detective: “How do you know so much about me?”
“Just using my eyes.” Littlemore pointed to two spots on the wall where the slightest lightening of the wallpaper indicated that smaller portraits were now on display where two larger frames used to hang. “You wouldn’t be answering your own doorbell if you still had the servants a man who lives in this kind of house ought to have. I’d say you’re trying to maintain appearances,