The Hours of the Virgin Read Online Free PDF Page A

thousand.”
    â€œAnd I’ll take it, minus the five hundred, if we get the Virgin back in the vault where she belongs with her virtue intact. Until then I need to maintain a liquid operating fund.”
    He scribbled with a fat gold pen in a leather folder, tore out a check, and stuck it at me. “I’ll write up our agreement tonight and send it around to your office in the morning by messenger.”
    I put the check in my wallet. “Does your suspect have a name?”
    He fumbled getting the checkbook and pen back into his pocket, missing it the first time. The die was cast, he was going out to make a ransom drop.
    â€œHe does. Accounts Payable fired him last month for embezzlement. It was a simple scheme, and ingenious: He opened accounts in several banks using the names of various companies the DIA does business with, drew the checks himself, and deposited them, withdrawing the money later. There was no telling how much longer he might have gone on if one of his own office-mates hadn’t happened to turn over one of the canceled checks and seen his signature on the endorsement.”
    â€œIs the DIA prosecuting?”
    â€œIndividual cash contributions are important to the institution’s survival. That source would dry up rapidly if it got out a thief was employed here. The board of directors thought it wiser to just let him go. He cleaned out his desk Christmas Eve. Would that that were all he decided to clean out.”
    â€œCheer up. He could have come back with an AK-47. I take it no one knows where he’s living.”
    â€œI doubt very much his last action was unpremeditated. I’m one historian who doesn’t believe in coincidence.” He considered my question. “He rented a house on Kercheval. I called his landlady. She said he moved out some time ago, naturally without leaving a forwarding address. He didn’t work here long, perhaps a year. His name is Earl North.”
    I hesitated, then went ahead and plucked a Winston out of the pack. I rolled it along my lips until I found the groove, but I didn’t light it. “Is there a picture?”
    â€œThey may still have one in Personnel, but the fewer people who know about this the better. Anyway, it’s not necessary. I’m engaging you to help me get back the manuscript, not bring the man who stole it to justice.”
    â€œDescribe him.”
    â€œWhy? I just said—”
    â€œHe might come in late. If I know what he looks like I’ll be more alert when he shows up. Maybe I’m getting old, but skinflicks just put me to sleep.”
    â€œI barely knew him well enough to say hello to. Your height, I think, slighter build. Red hair fading at the temples. I think he had a bald spot on the back of his head. Middle forties.”
    â€œBlue eyes?”
    â€œI think”—he screwed up his soft pale face, looking at the ceiling joists for inspiration—“yes. Sort of washed out, almost gray. How did you guess that? Do you know him?”
    â€œWell enough to say hello to. A long time ago he killed my partner.”

4
    I cranked up the Cutlass and joined the rest of the statistics on their way home. I’d been feeling hungry, not having eaten since breakfast, and I never eat breakfast; but I’d left my appetite in that windowless room behind the green-faced Madonnas and bearded-lady Christs at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I passed the handful of restaurants that had managed to survive twenty years of local government-by-Swiss bank account like a eunuch in the locker room at the WNBA.
    Woodward was quiet at that hour, as it had been at most hours since plastic; the population had dipped below a million in the last census, prompting the old mayor to demand a recount and bus in enough of humanity’s loose change to keep the gravy flowing. The scraped gray of January without snow had the Motor City’s main street in its bony grip. Old sports sections and