“I’m sure you know all about my background, Detective,” he began tentatively, as his eyes darted back and forth between us, trying to measure our level of hostility or the extent of our familiarity with his past. His fingers trembled when they were at rest on the desktop, so he kept wiping at his head and neck, even before it was necessary. “But you need to know that I adored Deni Caxton, and I’ll be glad to help you in any way that I can.”

Chapman was unmoved by Daughtry’s effort to set a cooperative tone, so I sat back quietly, like a guest privileged to be at the interrogation but not encouraged to participate. Mike was aware of his witness’s vulnerability, so, in contrast to his meeting with Lowell Caxton, he knew he could control the conversation.

Mike let Daughtry think that if he bared his soul about the tax fraud matter, we’d get off the old case and move on to the mystery of Deni’s death. It seemed to calm him to tell us what we already knew about the tax matter, as though we would think better of him for admitting his wrongdoing aloud.

Then Mike moved his chair directly across from his target. “Now, Bryan,” he said, knowing the use of his first name would bring Daughtry down one more notch, “tell us about her. ”

Daughtry seemed relieved to be off the subject of himself and onto his friend. “Oh, Deni. She’s the only reason I’m still in business today, after getting out of-”

“No, no, no, Bryan. Not Deni. I want to know about the girl -about Ilse Lunen.”

The moisture gathered again on his pasty skin, and now he looked from me to Mercer and back again, hoping one of us would intercede with Chapman and call him off.

“I had nothing, nothing to do with that girl, Detective. I’ve never been charged with any crime. That sick little bastard should have been strung up and-”

“And stringing you up would probably have given you more pleasure than any pervert like you deserves, Bryan. Just keep in mind that there’s no statute of limitations on murder. You play with us on this case, you tell me even one little white lie about you or Denise Caxton or Omar Sheffield, and-”

“Omar? What does he have to do with any of this?”

The collar of his hunter green sport shirt was soaked through, and the underarms matched it. His surprise about Sheffield seemed genuine to me.

Chapman continued. “The slightest misstep with us, and I’ll go to the ends of the earth to find the nails for your coffin, the evidence that’ll stick you in a jail cell right next door to Bertrand Gloster. So, now-you tell me, Bryan. What’s this operation all about? And sit on your hands while you’re at it- you’re making me crazy with all your mopping and dabbing. Take a shower after I leave-you need it anyway.”

Bryan responded like a three-year-old child and literally put his hands under his thighs. He explained how he and Deni had met in 1990, when both of them had galleries in the Fuller Building. They discovered their similarities early on-both from poor families and with invented histories, each with an untrained eye but great instincts. Deni and Bryan delighted in the big sale to a famous client, and both would do almost anything-testing the boundaries in a fairly sedate business-to stumble upon a sleeper, a lost masterpiece that had suddenly come back on the market, and then find a Streisand or a Nicholson to buy it.

“Don’t forget the candy. You still sniffing, Bryan?”

“Not really.”

“No such thing as ‘not really’ when it comes to cocaine addiction. You and Deni had that in common, too, didn’t you?”

“May I wipe my mouth, Detective?” Chapman nodded and Daughtry lifted one of his hands and wiped his face and neck with the sleeve of his shirt. “We got high together occasionally.”

“Who’s your source?”

“Actually, Deni was. With my felony conviction I couldn’t take chances buying off the street. I relied on my-well- friends to give me coke. Artists, dealers, even the guys who work in the warehouse. There’s no shortage of the white stuff on the streets. You know that.”

Chapman stood and looked out through the glass wall of Daughtry’s office, down over the tracks to the string-lined display that we had seen on entering. “Did Denise really go for this garbage? I mean, you’ve seen the paintings in her home, and in Lowell’s gallery, haven’t you? They’ve got an amazing collection.”

“Detective, van Gogh only sold five of his paintings in his lifetime. Relatively speaking, merely a handful of artists have ever been recognized by their contemporaries. Deni wanted to get in on the next wave, pick the giants of the future, take some chances. What Lowell does with his collection of masters takes no brains at all, no imagination. Just money.”

“Let’s talk about your business.”

“It’s Deni’s business, not mine. I’ve put some money into it, but she couldn’t risk attaching my name to a venture like this. Too many people seem to remember too much.”

“D’you know she was having problems? Legal ones?”

“Of course I did.” Daughtry looked down at his desk. “I mentioned van Gogh a moment ago. I’m sure you knew about the controversy over Vase with Eight Sunflowers. ”

“Let’s say we know our version of it,” Mike bluffed. “Why don’t you tell us yours?”

“There’s a bit of a storm in the market these days. Vincent van Gogh only painted during the last ten years of his life. He’s been credited with completing 879 oils, 1, 245 drawings, and a single etching.” Daughtry was talking to me now, as though Mercer and Mike wouldn’t be able to understand the story.

I glared back at him. “Talk to the detectives, Mr. Daughtry. They’re much better at this work than I am. They’re really quite intelligent.”

“The brouhaha is that a great many experts now believe that some of the most famous paintings, and even the one etching, are fakes. In fact, they suspect that many of van Gogh’s contemporaries created them and others passed them off as the real thing. Since his work is fetching higher prices than almost anyone else’s, it’s a rather hot debate these days.”

“And Deni?”

“Well, Deni recently sold Eight Sunflowers to a client in Japan. I don’t know his name offhand, but it’s a matter of public record. He’s now made a claim with the United States government-”

I broke in. “I don’t get it. There are supposedly fake van Goghs everywhere from the Musée d’Orsay to the Metropolitan.”

“Yes, Ms. Cooper, but the gentleman’s claim is that Deni sold it after she had sent it to Amsterdam to be authenticated by the curators there, and after they’d told her its value was questionable.”

“So, after she’d been told it was a copy?”

“An opinion she fought vigorously with the Dutch Ministry of the Arts.”

“But rather than waiting for the outcome,” Chapman said, “she stiffed the client anyway. How much?”

“Four-point-six million.”

Chapman let out a whistle. “Not a bad day’s work, Bryan. What’s your cut of that? And what do you know about the bidrigging investigation the Feds are doing?”

Daughtry was shaking his head. “I didn’t have a piece of the van Gogh. I’m only involved in buying the contemporary works.”

Chapman was pacing the small room, looking through the glass panel at the space below. “Phew. You musta had that leather mask wrapped too tight around your brain. This junk’ll never bring you a nickel.”

“Deni wasn’t the least bit worried about the auction investigation. She was above all that-it never occurred to me to even mention it. And about your eye, Mr. Chapman,” Daughtry said, “if what you’re referring to as junk is that single oblique line of string you saw downstairs, I just sold the artist’s last piece- Red Yarn as an Octagon Half -for a quarter of a million dollars.”

“To some yupster Cooper went to school with, no doubt. When’s the last time you saw Denise Caxton?”