Six
They left the F train at York Street, where an aging saxophone busker leaned against a lamppost playing All Bird’s Children. Bridget dropped a twenty into his open case; the bill stood out amid the collection of coins. They were halfway down the block when he started another Woods’ piece: My Man Benny. The persistent honking of a taxi stuck behind a delivery truck ruined the intricate jazz melody. The drivers of both vehicles started cursing at each other in different languages.
“Maybe we should’ve taken a cab.” Otter set his step in time with the blat of the horn.
“Cabs smell like Pine-Sol.”
“Yeah, well, Mom, that subway smelled worse.”
“And every other cabbie is a psycho.” Bridget mentally corrected herself; things had gotten better, now it was every third cabbie.
Bridget did not travel by taxi, and did not own a car or possess a driver’s license. She secretly loved traveling on the subway. None of her dealings in the city took her far from a subway stop. “We only have to walk two blocks.”
“I couldn’t tell you the last time I visited Dumbo, Mom. Nostalgic, huh? I think I was ten and on a field trip for some art exhibit. It was warmer then. Never been here at night.”
“There are some amazing places to eat in this neighborhood,” Dustin said. “Grimaldi’s has coal-fired pizza.”
“I like pizza,” Otter said.
“The Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory,” Dustin continued. “No preservatives, no eggs, freshly-made hot fudge. The River Café, a little pricy, but I think well worth it. Your mother and I ate there a few days ago. The Wagyu Steak tartare was an exceptional appetizer with its Cognac gelée, and the Mediterranean sea bass with chorizo sausage and shrimp stuffing was superb. I would like to try their roasted Amish chicken. The prosciutto served with it is said to—”
“I like pizza,” Otter repeated. “Though the swim coach says we should all watch our carbs. Kinda blew that on your garlic mashed potatoes and the birthday cake, huh? But maybe I’ll take Lacy to this Grimaldi’s, if you think it’s hot. She’d get a kick out of a date in Dumbo.”
Dumbo referred to Down Under the Manhattan Brooklyn Overpass, a Brooklyn neighborhood that stretched to Manhattan across the East River. More than one hundred years ago it was called Fulton Landing because of the ferry stop that operated before the Brooklyn Bridge opened. In those early years it was filled with warehouses and factories. Through the decades that changed to primarily residential blocks with coveted loft apartments, art galleries, non-profit centers, and trendy restaurants.
Now a historic district, Bridget’s destination was one of the oldest buildings that still actually functioned as a warehouse. The taxi had stopped honking, the delivery truck finally moving on. A siren cut in, and the flashing blue light of an unmarked police sedan bounced off the windows of parked cars. Bridget stood still until the sedan passed.
A boat out on the river sounded a long, low note. Another car started honking, and Bridget pointed at a dirt-brown building. “This is it.”
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s here,” Otter said.
“This time of night, that’s the way it’s supposed to look.” Bridget led them through an alley too narrow to drive a car down and to a thick, steel side door. There was an electric key pad, and Bridget punched in a lengthy string of numbers, tugged the door open, and gestured Dustin and Otter inside.
It was well-lit, a fact hid to the outside world because of blackened windows. Big crates formed walls branching away from the center like the spokes on a wheel. The cavernous building smelled of old stone and dust.
“Do you own all this?” Otter craned his neck this way and that.
“Bought it two years go. Just the building,” Bridget said. “The crates belong to some of the shops down here—we rent storage space to them. There’s a loading platform in the back.”
“Makes the place seem legit, huh?” Otter gave his mother a knowing nod. “Makes you the respectable businesswoman.”
“And it brings in a respectable income.” Bridget took the closest passage, then turned and directed them to the back.
A half-dozen folding tables that stretched end to end were covered with an assortment of objects, some of which glittered under the fluorescent lights.
Otter rushed forward. “Wow.” He stopped just short of barreling into a table and stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled.
Four men came out of the shadows, and Bridget indicated that the boy and Dustin were her guests.
“Double wow,” Otter said. “This shit looks old.”
Bridget took in the display. “This is it?” She didn’t hide her disappointment. “I expected more from this shipment. Last month I was told—”
“Boss, the mate said not everything got loaded. Said Spanish and Italian cops were crawling through Genoa looking for cocaine smugglers. Captain didn’t want to get caught in the net by accident, so he left before the big pieces came on. Said that stuff is probably long gone. But he said this was the best of the lot anyway. Looks like this is worth a crapload.”
“Triple wow.” Otter seemed oblivious to the conversation and tentatively reached forward, stirring some old coins in a box.
“Hey—” one of the men warned.
“Some cool stuff, boss, don’t you think? Said come late spring he’d make another run for you. And we got the ship coming in from England in a week with some paintings, and then the one from France after that. So, do you want—” Bridget waved him off, and the man stepped back.
“No, not bad then, considering,” Bridget decided. “Definitely not bad.” She’d been shorted before because of problems in port; smuggling was often a crapshoot. At first glance she estimated that these goods could bring in four to five million, with thirty three percent going back to the captain, who had some expenses on his end, and another fifteen percent divided among Bridget’s crew. Bridget had other costs to take out of it too, but in the end she was certain to pocket at least a million for herself.
Bridget went to the first table, Dustin close enough behind her she could smell the scent of his soap. She cleared her mind and let the heavy silence of the warehouse close in. Bridget had spared no expense in having the building soundproofed so the city noise did not slip inside; nor did sounds from within travel out. The resulting quiet was eerie and thick, and helped Bridget focus and call up her talent.
A quartz bottle stopper capped with an oval cut sapphire caught her eye. She held her palm above it. Then lower, lower, until her skin touched the crystal.
She let the magic take over.
“Show me,” she whispered.
An image formed behind her eyes, of an artisan chipping away at the sapphire, polishing it, then another man setting the finished gem into the housing of the stopper. The image shifted and a manic, yet regal-looking man came to the fore. Bridget absorbed the face and dipped deeper.
“Rurik,” she said. The stopper had been crafted for Rurik in … she strained to get the information … 872. He was a Varangian chieftain who gained power over Lagoda ten years prior and went on to found the Rurik Dynasty, which ruled Russia until the seventeenth century. The history of the piece rushed at her now. The stopper was presented as a birthday gift along with a case containing three bottles of plum wine from the vineyards of a monastery. Rurik, a pagan, had served the “Christian brew” to his servants because he feared one of the monks had poisoned it. There was no sheet detailing any this information, but Bridget had “read” it clearly nonetheless because of her arcane sight.
With a little more effort Bridget saw Rurik’s age-spotted hand touching the bottle stopper, holding it up to admire the facets caught in the sunlight spilling through the window of the chieftain’s sitting room. There was pleasure in the man’s wild eyes; he seemed to delight in shiny things. Today, Bridget placed the stopper’s value at $11,700. Her gift of psychometry let her see—in her mind’s eye—not only the person who had owned a thing or touched it or crafted it, but the actual worth of it. And she always translated that worth into today’s American coinage. It wasn’t automatic or unconscious—she couldn’t simply touch a thing and discover its past. She had to center herself and concentrate before her mind could pull in the details.
Near the stopper was a heavy silver comb dotted with tiny pearls. Her palm hovered above it. Ufanda, Rurik’s wife, used this, inherited it from her mother Umila. Bridget felt the beautiful Ufanda dragging it through her thick hair as she hummed a dissonant melody. Value in today’s market, more because of its pure silver content rather than historical merit: $700.
Another elaborate comb, made of ivory and with a tine missing, could bring $400 from a collector if Bridget could prove the provenance of the tsar’s family. Other trinkets from the same lot, a bulky cameo on a silver chain: $2,800; a battered brass chalice festooned with mismatched pieces of topaz once belonging to Rurik’s grandfather Gostomysl: $2,100; a bronze cup set with a single large canary diamond also once held by Gostomysl: $38,500 for the stone alone; two balsa-rimmed mirrors inlaid with gold and ivory: $1,700 for the pair. Bridget saw Vadim, Rurik’s cousin, stealing the mirrors from the bedchamber of a young woman who had refused his drunken advances.
There wasn’t a single document to explain the age or significance of any piece. Bridget’s gift precluded a need for such and let her differentiate originals from clever copies. She’d come into her “sight” when she was a little younger than Otter, but it took her a few years to fully develop it and understand that there was real magic in the world.
She had briefly considered taking on a legitimate job because of her amazing talent—museum curator, archaeologist, historian. There was so much trafficking in stolen and forged artifacts that her gift to determine genuine from fake would have been put to a good use.
But all of those occupations required an advanced college degree to back her up, and Bridget had never finished high school. By the time a friend suggested she could pay to have forged whatever diploma she needed, Bridget had decided that smuggling and brokering for the Westies was more interesting.… and allowed her to keep the choicest pieces.
There were more belongings of the Russian family: a chalice, two swords, a bejeweled glove with the leather rotted, a mug with crudely cut emerald inlays, a gold anklet that once belonging to Rurik’s raven-haired mistress, a wood horse the size of a pumpkin; Bridget felt the hands of Rurik’s young son carving it.
All interesting and all able to be sold above and below the counter in her Fort Greene antiques shop, but nothing truly outstanding. Perhaps the goods on one of the other tables could yield more.
“See anything here you’d like for your birthday, Otter?”
“Anything? I can have anything?”
“Of course.” Bridget hoped the boy would not realize the value of some of the oldest pieces and would make a selection based solely on appearance. Still, tonight she was prepared to give away whatever caught her son’s fancy.
“What about this?” Otter was several feet away, looking at a table filled with ornamental swords and daggers. Bridget sensed that they had once belonged to French nobles. She would have to get closer to pinpoint which weapon had been carried by which man. The boy held up a thin-bladed sword with rubies and citrines set into the hilt. “This is awesome.”
Bridget joined him and concentrated on the piece. “Curious.” The fingers of her left hand grazed the hilt and for an instant the air smelled of an overly sweet perfume. This was the one piece in the collection not owned by a French nobleman.
“This was actually a woman’s, Otter.” After a moment’s focus she gained a name. “Diane de Poitiers, mistress to King Henri II.” Bridget placed its value, for its history and gems, at $89,800. She hoped her son would select something else, as she knew a sword collector in Manhattan who would buy it.
“A woman’s sword, huh?” Otter laid it down, apparently no longer interested. “Hey, look at this over here! This is kinda cool.” He hefted a silver chalice. A mix of dark and faint blue stones were set in a fleur-de-lis pattern. “French, I take it. King Henri’s? Or one of his mistresses?”
“Eventually Henri’s.” Bridget concentrated and sorted through the images that came at her. “Henri’s grandfather owned that first, then his brother, then eventually Henri.”
“I could set this on my desk at home. Too pretty to drink out of. But I could put pens and pencils in it.”
Bridget smiled. The faint colored stones were blue-white diamonds, their size and clarity making the piece exceptional. It was, perhaps, the single most valuable piece on this table, perhaps of everything in the warehouse: $151,000 would have been her asking price. Maybe Otter had inherited some of Bridget’s skills after all.
“I like it, Mom. I’ll take this cup-thing,” Otter said, the grin wide on his face. “Okay? Of course I know not to show it to anyone, ’cept Dad. I won’t even show it to Lacy. None of this stuff … well … someone’s probably looking for it, right?”
The majority of the items on the tables were stolen from the basements of museums and collections from estates, certainly none gained through any proper channels, else they would not be here, Bridget knew.
“Someone could be looking, yes,” Bridget agreed. “But they’ll forget about it after a while.” If they even remembered owning the pieces in the first place. She knew that some of those estates and museums had so much inventory, they might never notice what was missing.
“Years,” Otter supplied. “A lot of years, I’d bet, they’d be looking. Well, they won’t think to look in Dad’s condo. Thanks for the cup, Mom.”
Bridget walked to the next table. She absorbed the history of the collection, discarding various images and locking on the visage of a fat, elderly man who seemed important and who had owned all of this lot. Bridget saw expressions flit across the heavily-lined face: anger, pleasure, sadness, confusion was the most prominent.
“A troubled man,” Bridget decided. The ill-tempered portly fellow had a thin beard and moustache and fancied wearing elaborate collars that hid his thick neck. As Bridget’s fingers brushed first a cloak clasp in the shape of a wolf’s head, next a carving kinfe and fork, then a pipe bowl, and finally a ring, a name came to her: Albrecht Friedrich, a Prussian duke in the 1500s who had seven children. Bridget sensed that Eleanor was the duke‘s favorite, fifth-born and always in his thoughts, dying at age twenty-three while she gave birth to what would have been her first child. Bridget took on the duke’s grief, then cast it aside, felt the man’s smooth fingers wrap around the handle of the carving knife. Then she reached deeper and felt the duke’s hunger and anticipation of a holiday meal. More, and she absorbed a disturbing twinge of … what? … Bridget directed all her attention to the collection, shutting out the pleasant scent of Dustin’s soap and the sound of her son’s continued oohing and ahing. What?
Odd, scattered, chaotic thoughts bordering on the edge of madness. Albrecht had been a conflicted man. The longer Bridget focused on the items, the more she absorbed, and the more her own thoughts became muddled. She picked through the disorder. Albrecht was named Duke of Prussia by the king of Poland, to whom he paid feudal homage. Fluent in Polish, he had tried—and failed—to gain acceptance to the Polish senate. A protestant, he enjoyed the backing of some influential Polish Lutherans, and so believed he could ascend to the Polish throne. But that did not happen. In 1572, four years into his reign as duke, his thoughts became even more ambivalent, and those around him questioned his sanity. Albrecht died more than forty years later, crying out the name of his lost daughter.
“Eleanor.” A tear slid down Bridget’s cheek. She shook off the connection and went to the last table, a mix of more Russian and Prussian antiquities ranging in value from several hundred dollars each to several thousand, and …
A sudden sensation of giddiness threatened to drop her when her mind touched something valuable and out of place with the rest of the assortment. It was something very, very old.
***