And so, going yet again against my once-cherished principles, I let the matter rest, considering it one more example of justice in the raw. I did at least promise that when we got back I would call Sergeant Kovalski and tell him that it was Lebrun that had hired the two thugs in Brooklyn, and that he had been killed by bandits in Corsica; we didn’t want the sergeant to go on hunting a man who no longer existed. But aside from the ten-minute conversation that resulted in those decisions, we stayed away Marcel Vercier, Charles Lebrun, and everything related to them.

  Ditto for our long flight home, during most of which Lily slept with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her, so that when we got off the plane at LaGuardia I hadn’t moved for four straight hours for fear of waking her up. I felt like the Tin Man before the oil can was applied.

  That night, back in our own bed, we slept the restless sleep of the jet-lagged. In the morning Lily awakened early and hungry, went down to the kitchen and pantry to forage, and returned with a puzzled look on her face.

  “Pete, what in the world were you living on while I was gone? Flour? Tomato paste?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.

  We decided on breakfast at Dubrow’s Cafeteria on King’s Highway and drove there through the gray slush of a day-old snowfall. And it was there, in a warm, brightly lit, homey atmosphere redolent of cinnamon and cloves, over a basket of almond horns and hot apple danish, that I finally thought it might be time to return to our unfinished business.

  “Lily, I made a couple of calls while you were getting dressed. One of them was to Stanley Kessler. He can run the film for us this morning, before the matinee starts, if we want. We’d have to be there by 10:30. What do you say? I think maybe it’s time to see what’s on it, don’t you?”

  Stanley Kessler was one of my boyhood friends, the only one of the gang I ran with, to my knowledge, who had achieved his life’s highest ambition, the one he’d solemnly vowed to reach on the day of his twelfth birthday: Stanley was now the projectionist at Loew’s Pitkin, the grand art deco movie house that was the pride of Brownsville.

  Lily nodded abstractedly, toying with her danish. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “But you don’t really want to.”

  “No, it’s not that, it’s just that I have so many questions. Watching a movie isn’t going to answer them.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, if it really was Uncle Charles who had my father killed—”

  “Oh, it was. He flat-out said so up at the citadel. Armand Chastenet too—the guy in Veaudry.”

  “—then why did he wait until my father came to New York? Why didn’t he do it long ago in Barcelona?”

  “Yes, I’ve been wondering about that too, and I think everything goes back to the film, Lily—or rather the two copies of the film; Lebrun was after them both. He knew your father had one copy in a vault here in the States. so he had to wait until he came here and got it out. “

  She rocked her head slowly back and forth. “What could be on it that was so important to him?”

  “Whatever it is, we’ll find out soon enough. I don’t know if we’ll understand, though. How about some more coffee?”

  She nodded, and I went back to the counter, got two refills, had the ticket punched, and returned to the table. Lily was deep in thought, rolling tiny balls of dough with what was left of her almond horn.

  “The other copy of the film,” she said deliberately, working things through. “That’s the one we brought home from Corsica, the one I was supposed to know where to find, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So if I was supposed to know where it was all along, why did Uncle Charles wait almost a month, until I was in Corsica, to come after me? Why didn’t he do it right away, after he killed my father?”

  As it happened, I actually knew the answer to that. “Because he didn’t know it then.” It was Lebrun himself, I told her, who had told me that he’d only heard about the “insurance copy” from his cleaning woman just before I called him from home. By that time, of course, Lily had already left, so he had no more idea of where to find her than I did.

  “But how would he know that I’d left?”

  “Because Kovalski told him, or rather Officer Ramirez did.”

  I explained that the other telephone call I’d made while Lily had been dressing had been my promised call to Kovalski. One of the things he’d told me was that Lebrun, in one of his conversations with Ramirez, had asked, reasonably enough, after his partner’s daughter, and had been informed of the situation. The “ask your wife” he’d flung at me had been nothing but malicious humor. He knew he wasn’t taking a chance on my getting hold of the film because I hadn’t known where she was either.

  “But then,” she said, “when you were in Barcelona, you told him you were looking for me—”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  “—and he had you watched because he figured that you had a better chance of locating me than he did on his own? Is that the way it worked? He hoped you’d lead him to me, and I’d lead him to the copy?”

  “That’d be my guess. I think he had a spy reporting to him in Veaudry—if I had to guess about that, I’d say that it was the head clerk at city hall, the guy who was in Lebrun’s old job, but who knows? It could have been anyone. And then when I went back in Barcelona, I was dumb enough to ask his assistant, Mrs. Aguilar, to get me a ticket to Corsica. She must have told him, and he must have thought: what other reason could I have to go to Corsica other than that I believed you were there? So out he came too, maybe on the same boat.” I shrugged. “That’s it. What do you think?”

  She looked at me with her head cocked while she processed the whole complicated mess. “Whew.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said.

  * * *

  Loew’s Pitkin is one of those astonishing old neighborhood theaters built in the Thirties, when movies had nothing but good times ahead: gilded classical reliefs, plush carpets, chandeliers, a grand double staircase, a glittering lobby the size of most of today’s entire movie houses. And uniformed ushers complete with double rows of brass buttons and little plug hats held on with elastic chin straps. When I was a kid, it was always a special treat to get taken to a picture-show there, especially in the evening, mostly because there was an eight-act vaudeville show that went along with it instead of a second feature.

  Following Stanley’s instructions, we showed up at the side door he’d specified. He was there waiting and looking furtive. He snatched the film can out of my hand and made a shushing motion, his finger to his lips.

  “We have to hurry,” he whispered. “Kids’ matinee. They start setting up at noon. You better sit upstairs. Be careful, I don’t want to turn on the lights.” He shook his head. “How did I let you talk me into this? You owe me, Pete.”

  “I think he’s a little nervous,” I said as Lily and I found our way in the dark to the last row of the balcony, just in front of the projection booth, while Stanley set up the projector. “I’ll make it up to him.”

  She turned to smile at me as the projector whirred on and a beam of pale blue light shot through the ribbons of cigarette smoke that still hung about the ceiling from the previous evening. “I’m little nervous too.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders, kissed her on the temple, and drew her toward me. We might have been a couple of teenagers settling back for a session of necking in front of the silver screen.

  The film, in what seemed to be to be professional-quality black and white, had no title or credits. Once the numbers finished flashing backwards we were into the meat of it. It was forty minutes long and was shot in one take, as far as I could tell. It showed no secret conferences, revealed no Frenchmen betraying their nation. It showed nothing but a single person, a lone man working quietly at his craft and explaining what he did as he did it.

  The craft was counterfeiting, and the man was my father-in-law, Marcel Vercier.

  Chapter 26

  The scene before us was a small, plain, well-lit room, or possibly a set. Vercier, visible from the waist up and seated at what seemed to be a heavy wooden work table, was seen from a few feet away and slightly above eye-level. In his hands, which rested on the table, was a half-sheet of paper. He was looking straight into the camera, far different than when I’d seen him alive, a thin, vigorous-looking, middle-aged man, beardless now, and with dark hair. His glasses, the same kind of gold-wire-framed glasses he’d had on in Brooklyn, were at his elbow. He wore a shop apron over a shirt and tie. At an unseen signal, he nodded and began speaking in French.

  “My name—” I felt Lily’s arm jump at the sound of his calm voice coming from the speakers, so unlike the shrill screaming on our doorstep. “—is Marcel Vercier. Today is October 29, 1943. We are in the third year of the German occupation of northern France.” The quality of the sound wasn’t up to modern standards, but we had no trouble understanding him.

  He slipped on his glasses, looked down at the paper, and read aloud, in a monotone, from what I could see were brief handwritten notes. “When these evil days are over, there may come a time of terrible retribution. In the event that such a time should indeed come upon us, I now make this visual record in an effort to prove that I never betrayed my country to those who now oppress us.”

  “Menteur!” Lily snarled at the screen. Liar.

  Vercier folded up the paper and slid it aside, then seemed to relax and, to my surprise, smiled into the camera with puckish charm, hardly something I’d associated with him until now. “Naturally, it goes without saying that if the Germans should win the war, nobody will ever see this—including you.”

  At his nod the camera panned down to the table top to show a framed rectangle of silk fabric into which were set three large, old-looking coins. “Now. Here in front of me are three ancient silver coins of considerable value; Syracusan decadrachms from approximately 450 B.C., during the time of the Greek colonialization of Syracuse.” He removed them gently from their mat and placed them on the table side by side, describing each one as he laid it down. “The relief-heads they bear are those of Hieron the Tyrant, the nymph Arethusa, and—”

  “—Mithradates VI of Pontus,” I exclaimed. “I remember them! They were in the tribunal records. They went to Goering himself.”

  Lily didn’t hear me. She was focused rigidly on the screen, breathing shallowly through her mouth.

  “They are the property of the widow Françoise Denier.” Vercier was still smiling. “In a few days, I will inform my esteemed associate Poliziemajor vom Steeg of their illegal possession—by a Jew, no less—and Major vom Steeg will see to it that they are removed to more appropriate Teutonic lodgings.”

  “I want to go,” Lily said, starting out of her chair. Even in the gray light of the projector beam I could see how pale she was.

  I held her back. “Wait. Sit. Give it another minute.”

  “No—!” She pulled at my restraining hand but I hung on..

  “Unfortunately for poor Major vom Steeg,” Vercier went on smoothly, “what he will come away with are counterfeits; counterfeits of the highest quality, to be sure, but counterfeits all the same. These—” He gestured at the coins. “will go back to the widow Denier with my compliments, and, let me point out, at no cost whatever to her.”

  “Wha-a-a-at? What did you say?” Lily whispered to the screen as if her father could answer her. She stopped struggling, looked wonderingly at me, and silently sank back into her seat. I put an arm around her again. I could feel her shivering.

  “For some time now,” Vercier said, looking at his folded hands, “our German masters have been the recipients of my assistance in securing for them various objects of value that had been in the possession of Jews and other undesirables who lack property rights under the current regime. Our masters have been happy to pay me—pay me quite handsomely, I may say—and I have been more than happy to take their money.”

  He stared suddenly into the lens—right into our eyes, in effect—and for the first time looked a little like the intense, determined old man from our doorstep. “In every case—every single case—the objects they received have been created by me. I swear before God that I have never put into their hands a single authentic object that had been the property of a citizen of our country. Whenever possible the original pieces went back to their owners—”

  “I don’t believe it,” Lily murmured, but without conviction.

  “—who could then rest easier, being able to show receipts from the German authorities confirming that the objects had been confiscated, as required by law, and were no longer in their possession. When even this was impossible for them, I myself paid all that I honestly could for them and kept the originals myself for future use. This I swear before God.”

  Lily turned from the screen to me. “Pete, you don’t suppose it could be true? That he—but why—”

  “Lily, I honestly don’t know what to think,” I said. “I’m as bowled over as you are.”

  Vercier reached to one side and pulled into the field of view a thick wooden plank, like a butcher’s chopping block, and a tray holding a mallet and some unfamiliar metal implements. Setting them beside the coins, he folded his sleeves neatly to the elbow. The camera zoomed in so that the tabletop and Vercier’s graceful hands filled the screen. From the tray he took a metal tablet about an inch thick and four inches on a side and placed it on the wooden block. Laid flat on top of that was a slightly smaller square tablet with a circular depression in the center.

  “My profession is that of restorer and dealer of ancient coins and jewelry,” he said as he arranged the items. “As it fortunately happens, the skills required are also those of a counterfeiter, and it is one of these skills, the making of counterfeit coins, that I shall now demonstrate. Here before me—” One hand indicated the two metal plates stacked on one another. “—resting on this anvil, is the lower die, the die that will strike the reverse side of the coins. And here—” He held up three eight-or-ten-inch long metal cylinders, each about an inch in diameter. “—are the upper dies to strike the obverse sides of the coins. Permit me the small vanity of pointing out that, unlike most of today’s workers in this field, I do not cast my finished products in molds or use any mechanical means of reproduction; I strike them, as you shall see, using dies which I myself engrave by hand. The hardest part of the process, the engraving of the dies, which took several weeks in this case, has already been done. Here are the results.”

  One at a time he held the dies up to the camera, ends forward, so that the images that had been cut into them were visible: two classical heads in profile, one full-face.

  “And these,” he said, holding up one of several lens-shaped metal discs, “are the silver blanks, previously cast in a simple mold, from which I will strike the new coins Observe.”

  Vercier took one of the blank discs, set it into the circular depression that had been cut in the lower die, into which it fitted perfectly, placed one of the cylindrical upper dies squarely on it, like a chisel, and gave it two sharp, clean taps with the mallet. The disc was removed and the operation repeated twice more, using the other two upper dies and fresh discs. The three newly made coins were then laid out on the table beside the originals. To my eyes, at least, they seemed perfectly identical.

  “You will note, he said with ride, “that each coin bears the name of the engraver, Eukleidas of Syracuse, in Greek letters, along the rim, exactly as do the originals, greatly increasing their interest and value. As to the reverses, unfortunately here I was forced to bow to the exigencies of time.” He turned the counterfeit coins over. Each of the other sides had the same simple square cut into it—the image that had been impressed on it by the lower die. “While these incuse squares were common on early Greek coins, by 450 B.C. reverses had become more elaborate and individual, as you can see here.” He turned over the authentic coins to show three different, complex scenes showing groups of people; too small and detailed to see clearly.. “Ah, well, that’s as it must be. However, I feel reasonably safe in making the assumption,” he said dryly, “that neither Major vom Steeg nor Herr Goering is likely to have a particularly close acquaintance with the precise chronology of the evolution of Greek colonial coin design. They will be content, I think, with their incuse squares.”

  The camera pulled back so that we could see Vercier’s face again. He talked on a little more, clearly enjoying himself and roguishly pointing out that his bronze dies were good for about 10,000 stampings each (“After all, there are already so many inauthentic Greek coins in existence, what are a few more?”) and explaining his “exclusive, highly technical process” for artificially aging coins. (He put them in a box filled with iron filings and stuck the box in the axle-housing of the village milk wagon for two days.)

  “The widow Denier will get her possessions back,” he said. “The Germans will have three beautiful coins to rub their hands over, with the added joy of having legally stolen them from a Jew. And I will get my money for my humble assistance. Everyone will get what they deserve, wouldn’t you agree? All ends well.”

  His nodded again to someone unseen on one side of the camera lens, this time as if he’d been signaled that it was time to conclude.

  “Ah … I would like to say one more thing,” he said, hurrying a little and for the first time looking unsure of himself. His eyes went down to his folded hands again. “I believe that I am not known as a particularly generous or charitable man. The question then is sure to arise: why would I engage in this dangerous, painstaking effort to fool the Germans? Why go through all this work when I could collect the same fee from them by simply informing them of the location of the authentic objects and washing my hands of the matter?”