One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [142]
“More important than your crocodile Birkin bag?” Annalisa teased. She didn’t for a moment think the cross was real. Billy had told her that Sandy had been buying Connie so much jewelry lately, he was developing a reputation as an easy mark. Knowing Sandy, he’d probably bought the piece from a shady dealer and had made the guy’s day.
“Handbags are not important anymore,” Connie admonished her. “It said so in Vogue. Right now it’s all about having something no one else possesses. It’s about the one of a kind. The unique.”
Annalisa lay down on the Venetian chaise and yawned. She’d had two glasses of champagne at lunch and was feeling sleepy. “I thought Queen Mary was evil. Didn’t she have her sister killed? Or have I got the story wrong? You’d better be careful, Connie. The cross might bring you bad luck.”
Meanwhile, a few blocks away in the basement offices of the Metropolitan Museum, David Porshie, Billy Litchfield’s old friend, hung up the phone. He had just been informed about the rumor of the existence of the Cross of Bloody Mary, which was said to be in the hands of a couple named Sandy and Connie Brewer. He sat back in his swivel chair, folding his hands under his chin. Could it be true? he wondered.
David was well aware of the mysterious disappearance of the cross in the fifties. Every year it appeared on a list of items missing from the museum. The suspicion had always been that Mrs. Houghton purloined the cross herself, but as she was beyond reproach and, more importantly, donated two million dollars a year to the museum, the matter had never been thoroughly investigated.
But now that Mrs. Houghton was dead, perhaps it was time—especially as the cross had surfaced shortly after her death. Looking up Sandy and Connie Brewer on the Internet, David discovered exactly who they were. Sandy was a hedge-fund manager, of all things—typical that an arriviste should end up with such a rare and precious antiquity—and while he and his wife, Connie, deemed themselves “important collectors,” David suspected they were of the new-money ilk who paid ridiculous prices for what David considered junk. People like the Brewers were not generally of interest to people like himself, a steward of the great Metropolitan Museum, except in how much money one might extract from them at the gala.
He couldn’t, however, simply call up the Brewers and ask if they had the cross. Whoever sold it to them would have been smart enough to warn them of its provenance. Not that a shady past ever stopped a buyer. There was a certain psychology in the purchaser of such an item that wasn’t dissimilar to the buyer of illegal drugs. There was the thrill of breaking the law and the high of getting away with it. Unlike the drug buyer, however, the illegal-antiquities purchaser had the continued elation of owning the piece, along with a feeling of immortality. It was as if mere proximity to such a piece might also convey everlasting life to its owner. And so, David Porshie knew, he was looking for a specific personality type along with the cross. The question was only how to make such a discovery.
David was prepared to be patient in his pursuit—after all, the cross had been missing for nearly sixty years—and what he needed was a mole. Immediately, he thought of Billy Litchfield. They’d been at Harvard together. Billy Litchfield knew quite a bit about art and even more about people.
He found Billy’s cell number on a guest list from the events office and called him up the next morning. Billy was in a taxi, coincidentally on his way to Connie Brewer’s to discuss the Basel art fair. When Billy heard David’s voice on the phone, he felt his whole body redden in fear, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “How are you, David?” he asked.
“I’m well,” David replied. “I was thinking about what you said at the ballet. About potential new patrons. We’re looking for some fresh blood to donate money to a new wing. The names Sandy