“Pochenko? Who’s Pochenko?”
“Smooth. Not going to trip you up, am I?” said Heat. “Pochenko’s somebody whose picture you didn’t recognize in my photo array. Even though I showed his picture to you twice. Once here, once at your office.”
“You’re fishing. This is all speculation. You’re putting everything on hearsay from a liar. An alcoholic who’s desperate for money.” Paxton was standing in a direct sun ray from one of the high windows, and his forehead glistened in the light. “Yes, I’ll admit I met this Buckley guy at the Swallow. But only because he was shaking me down. I used him a couple of times to arrange hookers for Matthew and he was trying to extort hush money out of me.” Paxton raised his chin and thrust his hands in his pockets, body English for that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, thought Nikki.
“Let’s talk about money, Noah. Remember that little transgression of yours my forensic accountants uncovered? That time when you fudged the books to hide a few hundred grand from Matthew?”
“I already told you that was for his kid’s college.”
“Let’s pretend that’s the truth for now.” Nikki didn’t believe him but was applying another rule of jujitsu: When you’re closing in for a takedown, don’t get faked into a sucker hold. “Whatever your reason, you managed to cover your tracks by putting that money back two years ago, right after one of the paintings from this collection, a Jacques-?Louis David, got fenced for that exact amount. A coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Ochoa shook his head. “No way.”
“The detective is definitely not coincidence-?friendly,” said Raley.
“Is that how you started, Noah? You needed a few grand so you had one of his paintings forged and then swapped it for the real one, which you sold? You said yourself that Matthew Starr was a philistine. The man never had a clue the painting you put on his wall was a fake, did he?”
“That’s bold,” said Ochoa.
“And you got bolder. After you saw how easy it was to get away with that, you tried it with another painting, and another, and then started flipping the whole collection like that, piece by piece, over time. Do you know Alfred Hitchcock?”
“Why, is he accusing me of the Great Train Robbery?”
“Somebody asked him once if the perfect crime had ever been committed. He said yes. And when the interviewer asked him what it was, Hitchcock said, ‘We don’t know, that’s what makes it perfect.’”
Nikki joined Ochoa and Raley near the archway. “I have to hand it to you, swapping the real paintings for the fakes was the perfect crime. Until Matthew suddenly decided to sell. Then your crime no longer would be secret. The appraiser had to be silenced first, so you had Pochenko kill her. And then you had Pochenko come here and throw Matthew over that balcony railing.”
“Who is this Pochenko? You keep talking about this guy like I’m supposed to know who he is.”
Nikki beckoned him to her. “Come here.”
Paxton hesitated, eyeing the front door, but he came over to stand near the archway with the detectives.
“Take a look at these paintings. Any one you like, Noah, take a good long look.” He leaned closer to one, gave it a cursory examination, then turned to her.
“OK, so?” he said.
“When Gerald Buckley gave you up, he also gave up the address of the storage facility where you instructed him to deliver the stolen paintings. Today, I got a search warrant for it. And guess what I found there.” She gestured to the collection hanging there in the glow of the orange light of the setting sun. “The original Starr Collection.”
Paxton tried to keep his cool, but his jaw dropped. He twirled to look again at the painting. And then the one beside it.
“That’s right, Noah. These are the originals you stole. The forgeries are still in the piano crate in the basement.”