A Killer's Guide to Good Works Read online

  “What’s his name?”

  Greta lifted her head. “Saul Bensoussan.”

  “Go on.” What a coup. Bensoussan may have unearthed a forgotten manuscript. Untranslated, most likely. Unstudied, for sure.

  “He’s made several trips to the Morgan over the last two years, working on an English translation of the original. Everything was going fine,” Greta went on, “until last week, when the librarian brought him the satire in its very old wooden box and set it down. Imagine his chagrin.”

  “Why chagrin?”

  Greta gave her a long look. “Because he’s pretty sure,” she said as they headed for the door, “it’s a fake.”

  4

  Norfolk

  It was the small one, the young monk with the restless eyes, called Eli, who had come to Antony Bale to report his friend missing. First the one named Fintan had missed Lauds that morning, the boy standing before him ticked off on his fingers, and then he failed to show up in Housekeeping for the chores. Tick two. The boy stared frowning at his fingers, clearly wishing the evidence of something off, something amiss, had been more.

  “Is that unusual?” Bale asked, where he sat at his small desk in the Warming Room. It was a cool April noon, and the guttering fire felt especially good while he went over the abbey books.

  “Very,” said the boy, one hand absently patting down a cowlick that made him look twelve. “Fintan is very devout.” And when he seemed dissatisfied by that account of his friend, he added, “Which is not to say he can’t let loose.”

  Bale smiled. “When the occasion calls for it.”

  Eli nodded once.

  “No harm in that,” Bale reassured him, although this was a boy who didn’t appear to need much of that.

  Suddenly the boy blurted, “There was that whole thing about the urn.”

  “With—Fintan?” He wished he could remember the boy who hadn’t shown up for Lauds or chores…

  The boy chewed a fingernail with a kind of intensity, while Bale simply waited. Then the one called Eli told him how it was the urn they had passed outside one of the outbuildings two nights ago, when the four of them—Fintan, Eli and their mates—snuck out after Compline to get up to some fun in the woods. Bale had a flicker of admiration for the boy who could easily recount a tale that included about three or four broken rules. By the next morning, Fintan was asking around about it. Had we seen it? Did we move it anywhere? Did we see anybody mucking around with it?

  Colum told Eli that Fintan had questioned the maintenance crew. And Miles overheard him asking Brother Martin and two of the other—here the boy stumbled over his words—garden monks. But what really disturbed Eli was when, about an hour after lights out in the dorter, they were all supposed to be asleep, and he heard a small sound and opened his eyes just enough to see Fintan pulling aside the clothes and books and personal stuff in Miles’s locker. Eli stayed still, not asking his mate what the hell he was up to. One by one Fintan went methodically through his mates’ lockers—looking with a penlight for the damn urn, Eli had to think, when they had already all told him they hadn’t touched it.

  “What happened then?” Bale asked him.

  Through narrow eyes, Eli watched his mate sink onto the foot of his bed, and—here the boy looked away—let out what sounded like a sob. In the morning, Eli had dawdled until the others had gone down for the Daily Service, and he checked each of the lockers. Nothing looked at all disturbed. Fintan was careful to set everything back the way he had found it. It was strange, Eli thought, and sneaky. And Fintan was gone. Even after Eli and the others had told him they hadn’t touched “your bloody urn,” Fintan didn’t believe them. But he had wanted them to think he had. And now he was gone. Bale watched the boy take a mighty breath. Two more things, the young monk said then, ticking off another two fingers.

  “Yes?”

  Eli with the restless eyes said he was embarrassed to tell it, but Fintan had peed in that very urn as the other three joined him that night, although when Eli got closer it didn’t smell like piss, so he had good reason to doubt Fintan’s explanation for what he had been doing. Finally, the boy said with tight little shakes of his head, he felt terribly sorry for Fintan, since he must have been so disturbed about the missing urn that he wasn’t thinking straight, mucking about in his mates’ things despite what they had told him. From what Eli had seen, there was no way in heaven that urn could have fit in any of the lockers, even if they had been completely empty.

  “Why have you come to me?” said Bale softly, interested.

  “It was Prior Berthold,” the boy explained with a quick little shrug. “He said it was your sister’s urn. He had given that urn to your sister.”

  “Ah.” Mystery solved. Adrian had it. “Did he say why?”

  “For her museum. Which was what he told Fintan yesterday. Plus the name of the museum.” A church warder who lived in town had offered Adrian a ride to the train to London, which was why none of the monks Fintan had asked could account for the urn. Antony stared at the fire which still crackled even though it was nearly down to embers. “Sir,” said Eli, his left leg jiggling, “I’m thinking it’s a good guess your sister has the urn Fintan’s been looking for.” Then he made a grand two-handed gesture, like he was turning over an important piece of information on a platter, and now it was the responsibility of the old-timers.

  “Yes, Eli, I’d say we’ve found the urn.” He’d give Adrian a call to verify. Although locating the urn didn’t explain why it was desperately important to the missing young monk. “And now,” said Bale, pushing himself decisively out of the old, high-backed chair that in better days had adorned the nave, “I think we had better find Fintan.”

  New York

  As she and Aunt Greta pushed their way onto the 4 train at the 68th Street station, Val did her daily two-handed clutch of her red leather work tote against her chest. No seats, not at that hour. As the doors slid shut, Val managed to find a bare-handed pole position and pulled in her aunt, who was wearing blue kidskin gloves. Greta wore gloves, Val wore germs. When the train started with a lurch, Val staggered backwards, mashing the instep of a guy about her age with a fleshy neck, earbuds insulating him from subway boredom and panhandlers, and a black topcoat that had the look of those somber men who direct cars out of the parking lot at funeral homes. He actually gnashed his teeth, then recovered quickly when she muttered an apology. She guessed he had a long ride ahead of him down to Wall Street and hers was just the first of the day’s foot mashings.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked Greta, who gave her that long, thin-lipped smile Val remembered from her childhood. It was a smart, worldly look, suggesting great things to come, mostly in secret.

  “About the satire?” When Val nodded, she narrowed her green eyes and seemed to study the MTA map mounted behind plastic next to the doors. “I’ll send a field op from the office first,” she answered, swaying into Val as the train picked up speed. “See if we can get the good professor to meet with us. Beyond the fact of the fake, he wasn’t particularly forthcoming.” Greta’s simple shrug didn’t have much room in the tight crush of riders.

  “And if he’s right?”

  “Then it depends. Our next move is to figure out how long it’s been a fake. A year? Five? Two hundred? Forever? If we believe it’s recent,” she fixed Val with a lively look, “we have one or two crimes we can pursue,” Greta moved closer to the pole, “with a certain amount of delight.” A short, very pregnant woman pushed by to claim a seat a crazy-haired student with a violin case awkwardly stood to give her.

  At 59th Street, the train disgorged a few commuters, exposing more pole positions. With an exhale a little more audible than she would’ve liked, Val slung an arm around the pole, tucking herself in tight. She still clutched her red work tote against her chest with two bare hands like it held all her money in the world plus a one-of-a-kind satire on parchment
from the sixteenth century. If the Hunter professor was correct, and the holding at the Morgan Library was a fake…who could possibly want to steal such a document? Legitimate scholars and researchers would content themselves to see it, read it, and study it there at the library—even springing for a hard copy or the microfilm. It seemed to Val that the ones who came to study it for its possible literary value were precisely the ones most likely to respect it.

  If Greta’s professor the whistleblower was correct that it was a fake, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to steal the original, substitute a good forgery to avert suspicion, and—what? What on earth was Greta dealing with? What could a little satire—if that’s what it truly was, not simply described incorrectly by the Inquisition’s scribe who quite possibly didn’t know what he was looking at—what could a little satire matter to someone desperate enough to remove it? Was the work itself dangerous somehow? Or something the thief did not want available to all those other scholars? Was professional jealousy at the bottom of it?

  The easiest explanation was that the professor was wrong.

  Val watched a few commuters cluster around the closed doors as the train pulled into Grand Central. She and Greta should be able to get seats for the rest of the ride. Val would push her way out at 23rd and walk to the block to the Flatiron Building and the renovated offices of Words on Fire, leaving Greta to press on alone down to 330 Seventh Avenue. She leaned into her aunt and said in a low voice, “Can you really imagine anyone being able to pull off that kind of theft at the Morgan Library? It’s like a fortress.”

  Greta Bistritz gave her niece a quick, fond look. “Oh, nothing is impenetrable, darling,” she said with a smile. “Not even you.”

  5

  Norfolk

  By the middle of the afternoon, when Bale had interrupted his investigation into Fintan’s disappearance and prayed None with the others in the sanctuary, the lines of Psalm 118 felt troubling. I shall not fear when foes abound. My God, my Savior is near. Sometimes, he had to admit, he didn’t know which line felt truer to him—that foes were afoot or that the divine was there to help. The psalmist believed that both were true. Which felt like a bit more faith than Antony Bale himself could bring to bear on the problems of modern life.

  Where could the boy be?

  Bale had at least determined a few things. By the time Eli had come to the Warming Room to report his friend’s disappearance, Fintan had been missing—or, at any rate, had not been seen—for more than half a day. From the time Eli had caught him going through their lockers in the dark, about eleven p.m., they figured, until now. A discreet search of all the buildings yielded nothing. Bale hadn’t wanted to send out a general alarm, not yet, so he had enlisted Eli in the hunt.

  The clever boy knew Fintan’s favorite indoor spots—the choir loft, the back of the monks’ frater after the meal had been cleared away, and the window seat in Misericorde, when no one was excused from fasting—and was thorough in poking around everywhere else. Bale had talked to the maintenance crew—no luck—and had put out a few feelers among the shops in town. Getting there would have been a hike, and none of the bikes were missing, but Fintan could conceivably have done it given enough motivation. Whatever that might be. And from there he could have caught the train anywhere. Calls to his cell phone went unanswered.

  Bale himself checked the boy’s locker, while Eli stood nearby, looking distracted. When Bale called him closer, to see whether everything appeared to be present, the answer was yes. Fintan’s set of “off-world” clothes—what he had come to Burnham Norton wearing—and a Manchester United hoodie Eli swore Fintan would never leave behind. None of the others were allowed to touch it, especially the sleeve clapped by the hand of Beckham himself when Fintan had gotten his autograph after a match. Very fussy about that hoodie, he was. A jumbled stack of books, a worn Dopp kit holding toiletries. On the single shelf, a tin holding trinkets. For Bale, while Fintan was simply missing for not even a day, it was enough to have Eli verify that the locker’s contents looked normal—as far as he knew.

  Bale turned slowly to Eli, who was clearly waiting for one of the two of them to blurt something brilliant that would lead them straight—and quickly—to his missing mate. “Had he been himself lately?” asked Bale.

  “Yes.”

  A little too fast. “Sure?”

  “Well, himself but more, oh, keyed up.”

  Bale looked closely at the boy. “Worried?”

  Eli snorted softly. “Not hardly. More like—” He narrowed his eyes. “More like he had been paid a visit by the Blessed Mother herself and was just enjoying it privately for a bit.” The boy shot him a look a little too wry for someone committed to the religious life. “If you know what I mean,” he added.

  Bale did. “He was keeping something to himself.”

  “Oh, yeah.” It was as if it was the first it had occurred to Eli, and now that it had—Fintan was keeping something to himself—it fit.

  Was Fintan planning to run off from Burnham Norton? Not without that Manchester United hoodie, that’s for sure. Bale made a few discreet calls to key shopkeepers in nearby Mundesley, but no luck. And the station master didn’t recall anyone by that description boarding any train in the last half day. Bale heaved a sigh, there was no way around it now. If Fintan hadn’t escaped to town, or bolted on the train for parts unknown, or was hiding in some favorite spot inside the monastery, then it was looking more and more likely to Antony Bale that the boy was taken against his will. Or worse. Either way, it was about time to call the police. And announce the disappearance of Fintan to the community as a whole.

  But there was one more place to search. The woods Fintan and his mates headed for when they wanted a smoke. Beyond that, the ridge walk. And this was part of the search for the missing boy—here he glanced smoothly at the clever Eli—that he wanted to do alone. So he sent the boy to interview what he had referred to as the garden monks, and Bale slipped out the side door of the East Range.

  The afternoon was overcast and cool, weather Bale enjoyed. He cut across the paved paths and the north lawn, the breeze pushing his white robe against his legs as he strode. Four days ago, he had hiked the ridge walk with Adrian, toward Cromer, where the cliffs rose lower against the sea. Not like here at Sidestrand, the highest point along the Norfolk coast. The walk with Adrian hadn’t been one of their old slogs from when they were in their twenties, when they could head to the Catskills and hike the Hunter Mountain trail in half a day and still be game to get back to the city for a night at Swing 46. All the while testing each other’s resolve to defer future fun for what might be all time to pursue the monastic life or a doctorate in art history.

  Over the years, the hikes became more urban—from the studio walk-up where Adrian was living at the time in the East Village to the Metropolitan Museum—and they still went swing dancing together, but had given up the sidecar step. Other pleasures continued. For both of them, despite vows and scholarship.

  The woods between the abbey grounds were small and really rather thin. No more than a quarter mile across, by the looks of it. There were thickets of gorse and second growth pine trees, and a few docile beeches, but light had no problem penetrating these woods. In the bright overcast, Bale could just about see through to the ridge walk. Heading in, he slowed, keeping to the closest thing to a path he could find. What if the boy was lying hurt? “Fintan,” he called, scanning left and right. Nothing moved, not even Bale, as he stood still and listened for something human. Bale cupped his hands at his mouth. “Fintan!”

  A dreary inevitability settled over him. Mostly, in this life, boys get in over their heads with secrets. Either because they can’t keep them, or they keep the wrong ones—or the secrets sadly have something to do with adults. Mere boys are no match. If the young monk Fintan wasn’t artful enough to search his mates’ lockers without being seen, no matter how quiet he thought he was being, no matter how skillfully
he had kept from disturbing the contents, Bale doubted he was artful enough to keep clear of the secrets of dangerous adults.

  Bale strode out to the ridge walk that lined this point on the Norfolk coast that was barren and rocky in both directions. Overhead a bittern wheeled and shrieked, white against the thin overcast. Bale crossed the trail that wound bleak and beautiful as far as the eye could see, empty of human habitation or industry of any sort, and stepped to the cliff’s edge. At the foot of the cliff hundreds of feet below was a plume of white. For a second he narrowed his eyes against the thudding of his heart as he imagined what he saw was some bright outcropping of chalk. Or a lost sail that had found its mysterious way over the gray blue water.

  With fingers suddenly cold, Bale stripped off his robe and started to find easy footholds sideways down the cliff toward the plume of white he knew was the missing boy. A boy who had kept his very last secret, only not very well.

  New York

  When Val emerged from the subway at 23rd Street, and stepped out of the way of glazed pedestrians jockeying for sidewalk position on the way to their offices, she checked her phone. There was a voicemail from Adrian. Val, I don’t care what you think your lunch plans are for today—her voice was excited—I want you to change them. No, make that your breakfast plans. Come to the museum if you want a once in a lifetime chance to see—here Adrian took in a mighty breath—the finest example of Euphorbia milii in the known world. I can’t hang on to it very long.