Speaking of half-assed, the cleft of Larry’s buttocks was now clearly visible above the waistband of his pants. She could hardly bear to see him naked now. It pained her, the way everything about him sagged: his buttocks, his belly, his little shriveled organ, now practically hairless like his little shriveled head. Not that she was any bargain herself, but she was younger than her husband and knew how to make the best of what she had, and how to hide her deficiencies. A number of men had learned, just a little too late, how deficient Sandy Crane was once her clothes hit the floor, but they’d screwed her anyway. A lesser woman wouldn’t have known whom to despise more: the men or herself. Sandy Crane didn’t worry too much about it, and as in most other areas of her life, settled for despising everyone but herself equally.
She had met Larry when he was already in his fifties, and she was twenty years his junior. He hadn’t been much to look at, even then, but he was in a pretty good position financially. He owned a bar and restaurant in Atlanta, but he sold up when the “faggots” started making the area their own. That was her Larry: dumber than a busload of tongueless morons, so prejudiced that he was incapable of seeing that the gays who were moving into the neighborhood were infinitely classier and wealthier than his existing clientele. He sold the business for maybe a quarter of what it was now worth, and he had seethed over it ever since. If anything, it had made him even more of a sexist, racist bigot than he ever was before, which was saying something because Larry Crane was already only a couple of holes in a pillowcase away from putting burning crosses in people’s backyards.
Sometimes she wondered why she bothered staying with Larry at all, but the thought was quickly followed by the realization that snatched moments in motel rooms or in other women’s bedrooms were unlikely to be translated into long-term relationships with a sound financial underpinning. At least with Larry she had a house, and a car, and a moderately comfortable lifestyle. His demands were few, and growing fewer now that his sex drive had deserted him entirely. Anyway, he was so coiled up with piss and fury at the world that it was only a matter of time before he had a stroke or a heart attack. That garden hose might yet do her a favor, if she could learn to keep her mouth shut for long enough.
She finished her cigarette, lit another from its dying embers, then tossed the butt in the waste disposal. The newspaper lay on the table, waiting for Larry to return from his labors so that he could have something else to complain about for the rest of the day. She picked it up and flipped through it, conscious that this simple act would be enough to get her husband pissed. He liked to be the first to read the newspaper. He hated the smell of perfume and menthol upon its pages, and raged at the way she wrinkled and tore it as she read, but if she didn’t look at it now, then it would be old news by the time she got to it; old news, what’s more, with Larry’s toilet stink upon it, since her husband seemed to concentrate best when he was sitting on the can, forcing his aged body to perform another racked, dry evacuation.
There was nothing in the newspaper. There never was. Sandy didn’t know quite what she expected to find in there every time she opened it. She just knew that she was always disappointed when she was done. She turned her attention to the mail. She opened all of it, even the letters addressed to her husband. He always bitched and moaned when she did that, but most of the time he ended up passing them on to her to deal with anyway. He just liked to pretend that he still had some say in the matter. This morning, though, Sandy wasn’t in the humor for his bullshit, so she just ripped into what was there in the hope that it might provide her with a little amusement. Most of it was trash, although she laid aside the coupon offers, just in case. There were bills, and offers of bum credit cards, and invitations to subscribe to magazines that would never be read. There was also one official-looking manila envelope. She opened it and read the letter within, then reread it to be sure she’d picked up all of the details. Attached to the letter were two color photocopies of pages from the catalog of an auction house in Boston.
“Holy shit,” said Sandy. “Sweet holy shit.”
Some ash fell onto the page from her cigarette. She brushed it off quickly. Larry’s reading glasses lay on the shelf beside his vitamins and his angina medication. Sandy picked them up and gave them a quick clean with a kitchen towel. Her husband couldn’t read for shit without his glasses.
Larry was still struggling with the hose when her shadow fell across him. He looked up at her.
“Get out of the light, dammit,” he said, then saw what she had done to his newspaper, which, in her distracted state, she had tucked untidily under her arm.
“The hell have you done with the paper?” he said. “It ain’t fit for nothin but the bottom of a birdcage now you been at it.”
“Forget the damn newspaper,” she said. “Read this.”
She handed the letter to him.
He stood up, puffing a little and tugging his pants up over his meager paunch.
“I can’t read without my glasses.”
She produced his glasses and watched impatiently while he examined the lenses and wiped them on the filthy edge of his shirt before putting them on.
“What is this?” he asked. “What’s so important you had to turn my newspaper into an asswipe to bring it to me?”
Her finger pointed to the piece in question.
“Holy shit,” said Larry.
And for the first time in over a decade, Larry and Sandy Crane enjoyed a moment of shared pleasure.
Larry Crane had been keeping things from his wife. It had always been his way. Early in their relationship, for example, Larry hadn’t bothered to mention the times that he’d cheated on her, for obvious reasons, and thereafter tended to apply to most of his dealings with Sandy the maxim that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. But one of Larry’s few remaining vices, the horses, had gotten a little out of hand, and he currently owed money to the kind of people who didn’t take a long view on such matters. They had informed him of their position just two days before, when Larry made a vig payment significant enough to allow him to hold on to all ten of his digits for another couple of weeks. It was now at the point where his house was the only asset he could readily turn to cash because even disposing of the car wouldn’t cover what he owed, and he didn’t see how Sandy would approve of his selling their home and moving them into a doghouse in order to pay his gambling debts.
He could try turning to Mark Hall, of course, but that was a reservoir that he had well and truly tapped out a couple of years back, and only absolute desperation would bring him back to it again. In any case, Larry would be playing a dangerous game if he used the blackmail card on Old King Hall, because Hall might just call his bluff and Larry Crane had no desire to see out the remainder of his life in a jail cell. He figured Hall knew this. Old Hallie might be a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them.
And so Larry Crane had been wrestling with the garden hose, wondering if there might not be a way to turn Sandy to some use by strangling her with it, dumping the body, and claiming the insurance, when the lady in question cast her shadow upon him. Larry knew then that he had about as much chance of successfully killing his wife as he had of looking after the Playboy Mansion on the days when Hugh Hefner was feeling a little under the weather. She was big and strong, and mean with it. If he even tried to lay a hand on her she’d break him like he was a swizzle stick in one of her cheap cocktails.
But as he read and reread the letter, it quickly became apparent to him that he might not have to resort to such desperate measures after all. Larry had seen something like the item described in the photocopies, but he had never suspected that it might be worth money, and now here was a story informing him that it could bring in tens of thousands of dollars, maybe more. That “could” was an important caveat, though. What was being sought was not actually in the possession of Larry Crane. Instead, it rested in the ownership of one Marcus E. Hall, the Auto King.
While the face of the Auto King remained that of Mark Hall
, the old man was now little more than a figurehead. His sons, Craig and Mark Jr., had taken over the day-to-day running of the family business almost a decade ago. Jeanie, his daughter, had a twenty percent share in the company, based on the fact that it was Craig and Mark Jr. who did all the work while Jeanie just had to sit back and wait for the check to clear. Jeanie didn’t see it that way, though, and had been raising quiet hell over it for the past five years. The King saw the hand of her husband, Richard, at work. Dick, as his sons liked to call him both to his face and behind his back, and always with a little added venom, was a lawyer, and if there was one species of rodent that would use the excuse of money to gnaw its way into a family’s heart and consume all the goodness inside, it was a lawyer. The King suspected that as soon as he was dead, Dick would start producing pieces of paper in court and demanding a bigger share of the business backdated to the time when the Virgin Mary herself was in mourning. The King’s own legal people had declared everything to be watertight and above reproach, but that was just more lawyers telling their client what they thought he wanted to hear. There would be days in court after he died, of that the King had no doubt, and his beloved dealership, and equally beloved family, would be torn apart as a result.
The King was standing outside the office of the main lot on Route 17, sipping coffee from a big cup emblazoned with a gold crown. He still liked to put in a couple of days each month, and the other salesmen didn’t object because any money he earned in commission was put into a communal pot. At the end of every month, one salesman’s name was drawn from a hat over beers in Artie’s Shack, and all of the money went to him, or to her, for two women now worked on the King’s lots, and they sold a bunch of cars to the kind of men who had wires running straight from their dicks to their wallets. The winner paid for beers and food, and so everyone was happy.
It was four in the afternoon, dead time, and since it was a weekday in the middle of the month, the King didn’t expect it to pick up much before closing. While they might get a few walk-ins once the office workers finished up, the only thing most of them would have in their pockets would be their hands.
Then, right at the end of the lot, he saw a man leaning into the windshield of a 2001 Volvo V70 Turbo wagon, 2.4 auto, leather interior, AM/FM/cassette/CD player, sunroof, forty-five thousand miles. Thing had been driven like it was made of eggshells, so there wasn’t a scratch on the paintwork. The King’s boys had it tagged at twenty thousand, with plenty of room for maneuver. The guy was wearing a sun visor and dark glasses, but the King couldn’t tell much else about him other than that he looked a little old and beat-up. The King’s eyesight wasn’t so good these days, but once he got his marks in focus he could tell more about them in thirty seconds than most psychologists could learn in a year of sessions.
The King put his cup down on the windowsill, straightened his tie, slipped the keys to the Volvo from the lockup box, and headed out into the lot. Someone asked him if he needed any help. There was a burst of laughter. The King knew what they were doing: looking out for him while pretending that they weren’t.
“Guy is older than I am,” he said. “I’m only worried that he don’t die before I get him to sign the papers.”
There was more laughter. The King could see that the old man at the Volvo had now opened the driver’s door and slipped into the seat. That was a good sign. Getting them into the damn car was the hardest part, and once they were test driving, then guilt started to kick in. The salesman, a nice guy, was taking time out of his busy schedule to go for a ride with them. He knew a little about sport, maybe liked the same music once he’d taken a flip through the dial and found something that made the mark smile. After he’d gone to all that trouble, well, what could a decent human being do but listen to what the man had to say about this beautiful automobile? And hey, it was hot out there, right, so better to do it in the cool of the office with a cold can of soda in one hand, huh? What do you mean, talk to your wife first? She’s gonna love this car: it’s safe, it’s clean, it’s got solid resale value. You walk out of this lot without signing, and it won’t be here once you’re done having a conversation with the little lady that you didn’t need to have to begin with, because she’s going to tell you what I’m telling you: it’s a steal. You get her hopes up and then bring her down here only to find out that this baby is gone and you’re going to be in a worse position than you were before you started. Talk to the bank? We got a finance package right here that’s better than any bank. Nah, they’re just numbers: you’re never gonna end up paying back that much . . .
The King reached the Volvo, leaned down, and looked in through the driver’s window.
“Well, how you doin to —”
The pitch died on his lips. Larry Crane grinned up at him, all yellow teeth, unwashed hair, and dirt-encrusted wrinkles.
“Why, I’m doin fine, King, just fine.”
“You lookin at buyin a car there, Larry?”
“I’m lookin, King, that’s for sure, but I ain’t buyin yet. Bet you could do me a favor, though, we bein old war buddies and all.”
“I can cut you a deal, sure,” said the King.
“Yeah,” said Larry. “Bet you could cut me one, and I could cut you one right back.”
He lifted one mangy buttock from the seat and broke wind loudly. The King nodded, even the false warmth he had managed to generate now fading rapidly.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Uh-huh. You ain’t here to buy no car, Larry. What do you want?”
Larry Crane leaned over and opened the passenger door.
“Sit in with me, King,” he said. “You can roll the windows down, the smell gets too much for you. I got a proposition to make.”
The King didn’t take the seat.
“You ain’t gettin no money from me, Larry. I told you that before. We’re all done on that score.”
“I ain’t askin for money. Sit in, boy. Ain’t gonna cost you nothin to listen.”
The King exhaled a wheezy breath. He looked over at the office, wishing he’d never left his coffee, then lowered himself into the Volvo.
“You got the keys for this piece of shit?” asked Larry.
“I got ’em.”
“Then let’s you and me go for a ride. We got some talkin to do.”
France, 1944
The French Cistercians were used to hiding secrets. From 1164 to 1166, the monastery at Pontigny, in Burgundy, gave shelter to Thomas Becket, the English prelate exiled for opposing Henry II, until he decided to return to his diocese and was murdered for his troubles. Loc-Dieu, at Martiel in the Midi-Pyrénées, provided a refuge for the Mona Lisa during World War II, its combination of a fortress’s high walls and the grandeur of a country manor rendering it most appropriate for such a lady’s enforced retreat. It is true that other monasteries farther afield held treasures of their own: the Cistercians of Dulce Cor, or “Sweetheart”, at Loch Kindar in Scotland, were entrusted with the embalmed heart of John, Lord Balliol, in 1269, and of his wife, the Lady Devorgilla, who followed him to the grave two decades later; and Zlatá Koruna in the Czech Republic held a spine reputed to have come from the crown of thorns placed upon the head of Christ, purchased from King Louis himself by Premysl Otakar II. Yet these were relics known to be retained, and while they were guarded by the monks, there were few concerns by the twentieth century that an awareness of their presence might lead to the monasteries themselves being targeted.
No, it was those artifacts retained in silence, hidden behind cellar walls or within great altars, that placed at risk the monasteries and their inhabitants. The knowledge of their presence was passed on from abbot to abbot, so that few knew what lay beneath the library at Salem in Germany, or under the ornate church paving at Byland in Yorkshire’s North Riding.
Or in Fontfroide.
There had been monks at Fontfroide since 1093, although the first formal community, probably made up of former hermits from the Benedictine order, was established in 1118. The abbey of Fontfroide its
elf appeared in 1148 or 1149 and quickly became a frontline fortress in the fight against heresy. When Pope Innocent III moved against the Manicheans, his legates were two monks from Fontfroide, one of whom, Pierre de Castelnau, was subsequently assassinated. A former abbot of Fontfroide led the bloody crusade against the Albigensians, and the monastery aligned itself staunchly against the Catharist forces of Montsegur and Queribus otherwise tolerated by the liberals of Aragón. It was perhaps no surprise that Fontfroide should eventually seize the greatest of prizes, and so the abbey was finally rewarded for its steadfastness when its former abbot, Jacques Fournier, became Pope Benedict XII.
Fontfroide was wealthy to boot, its prosperity based upon the twenty-five farmsteads that it owned and its grazing herds of over twenty thousand cattle, but gradually the monks grew fewer and fewer, and during the French Revolution Fontfroide was turned into a hospice by the city of Narbonne. In a way, this was Fontfroide’s salvation, for it led to the preservation of the abbey when so many others fell into ruin, and a Cistercian community flourished once again at the abbey from 1858 until 1901, when the state put Fontfroide up for sale and it was bought and preserved by a pair of French art lovers from the Languedoc.
But in all that time, even during periods when no monks graced its cloisters, Fontfroide remained under the close scrutiny of the Cistercians. They were there when it was a hospice, taking care of the sick and injured in the guise of laymen, and they returned to its environs when the wealthy benefactors, Gustave Fayet and his wife, Madeleine d’Andoque, purchased it to prevent it from being shipped, brick by brick, to the United States. There is a little church that lies less than a mile from Fontfroide, a far humbler offering to God than its great neighbor. It is called, in English, the Vigil Church, and from there the Cistercians kept watch over Fontfroide and its secrets. For almost five hundred years, its treasures had remained undisturbed, until World War II entered its final phase, the Germans began to retreat, and the American soldiers came.