A Place of Hiding

He began with the International Herald Tribune, logging on to their Web site, where he discovered that any story over two weeks old could be accessed only from the site at which the story itself had originated. He was unsurprised, considering the nature of what he was looking for and the limited scope of the paper. So he went on to USA Today, but there the news had to cover too wide an area and was thus confined to the Big Story in nearly every case: governmental issues, international incidents, sensational murders, bold heroics. His next choice was the New York Times, where he typed in PIETER DE HOOCH first and, when that brought him nothing, ST. BARBARA second. But here again, he achieved no useful result, and he began to doubt the hypothesis he’d developed upon first hearing about Vallera & Son of Jackson Heights, New York, and upon then hearing the exact nature of Vallera & Son’s business.

The only option left, considering what he knew, was the Los AngelesTimes, so he moved on to that broadsheet’s Web site and began a search of their archives. As before, he entered the time period he’d been using all along—the last twelve months—and he followed that with the name Pieter de Hooch. In less than five seconds, the monitor’s screen altered and a list of relevant articles appeared, five of them on one page and an indication that more followed.

He chose the first article and waited as the computer downloaded it. What appeared first on the screen was the headline A Dad Remembers. St. James scanned the article. Phrases leaped out at him as if rendered in a script bolder than the rest. It was when he saw the words decoratedWorld War II veteran that he slowed down his reading of the story. This covered a long-ago, heretofore unheard of triple-transplant operation—heart, lungs, and kidneys—that had been performed at one St. Clare’s Hospital in Santa Ana, California. The recipient had been a fifteen-year-old boy called Jerry Ferguson. His father, Stuart, was the decorated veteran mentioned in the article.

Car salesman Stuart Ferguson—for so he was—had apparently spent the remainder of his days seeking ways to repay St. Clare’s for having saved his boy’s life. A charity hospital whose policy it was to turn away no one, St. Clare’s had required no payment for what had amounted to a hospital bill well over two hundred thousand dollars. A car salesman with four children had little hope of amassing that kind of money, so upon his death Stuart Ferguson had willed St. Clare’s the only thing of potential value that he possessed: a painting.

“We had no idea...” hi s wi dow was quoted as saying. “Stu certainly never knew...He got it during the war, he said...A souvenir...That’s all I ever learned about it.”

“I just thought it was some old picture,” Jerry Ferguson commented after the painting had been evaluated by experts at the Getty Museum.

“Dad and Mom had it in their bedroom. You know, I never thought much about it.”

Thus, it seemed that the delighted Sisters of Mercy, who ran St. Clare’s Hospital on a shoestring budget and spent most of their time raising the funds just to keep it afloat, had found themselves the recipients of a priceless work of art. A photograph accompanying the story featured the adult Jerry Ferguson and his mother presenting Pieter de Hooch’s painting of St. Barbara to a dour-looking Sister Monica Casey, who, at the time of presentation, had absolutely no idea what she was laying her pious hands upon.

When later asked if they had regrets about parting with something so valuable, Ferguson’s mother and son said, “It gave us a surprise to think of what was hanging in the house all those years” and “Heck, it was what Dad wanted and that’s good enough for me.” For her part, Sister Monica Casey admitted to “heart flutters aplenty” and she explained that they would sell the de Hooch at auction once they had it properly cleaned and restored. In the meantime, she’d told the newspaper reporter, the Sisters of Mercy would keep the de Hooch “some place quite safe.”

But not safe enough, St. James thought. That fact had put the ball in motion.

He clicked on the succeeding stories and he felt little surprise at the manner in which events had unfolded in Santa Ana, California. He read them quickly—for that was all the time it took to ascertain how Pieter de Hooch’s St. Barbara had made the journey from St. Clare’s Hospital to Guy Brouard’s home—and he printed up the relevant ones. He gathered them together with a paper clip. He went upstairs. Deborah made tea as China alternately picked up the telephone receiver and dropped it back into its cradle, sometimes punching in a few numbers, sometimes not even getting that far. On their walk back to the Queen Margaret Apartments, she had finally decided to phone her mother. She had to be informed what was going on with Cherokee, China said. But now that she faced the Moment of Truth, as she called it, she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. So she’d punch in the numbers for the international line. She’d punch in the number one for the United States. She’d even get as far as punching in the area code for Orange, California. But then she’d lose her nerve.