The Deceivers by Harold Robbins Read Free Book Online

Khmer art used an enormous amount of sandstone in its wonders and the dancers are a common subject. So right off my first inclination, sight unseen, is that it’s a Khmer piece.”
    â€œMy thought, too. I have a picture of it.”
    â€œI haven’t heard anything about an Apsaras panel on the contraband lists, but I’ll check. Com’on over, you’ve got me intrigued.”
    â€œI’m on my way.”

6
    Bolger’s place was on the west side of Chelsea a couple blocks from the Hudson River. Back in the days when I was struggling to get a career going, my place in Chelsea wasn’t far from where Bolger was located now.
    The rain had stopped by the time I stepped out of the subway station three blocks from his place, close enough to hoof it the rest of the way. Not a glamorous neighborhood, some of the apartments and stores looked a little seedy, but the streets were clean.
    I got an odd feeling that someone was following me and I turned to look over my shoulder. I was being followed all right, by dozens of people, none of whom appeared to know I existed. As in any big metro area, few people smiled or even made eye contact at passersby. Too many people, too many nuts.
    Bolger’s small bookstore was on the bottom of a two-story brick building that he owned. The apartment living room was the actual store. The only furnishings in it were a dog-eared recliner that needed recovering and a TV that was perpetually on. I never saw him look at the TV and I suspect it was more “companionship” than entertainment.
    The two-bedroom apartment upstairs was rented out to a middle-aged couple with no children, like most of his previous tenants. He didn’t dislike kids; what he didn’t like was the pitter-patter of running feet above him when he was engrossed in one of his art books or examining a work of art.
    Unlike me who had focused on the works of the great Mediterranean civilizations, he had a wide range of knowledge. The Met was an eclectic museum that housed pieces from most of the great antiquity sites of the world. Working there for over thirty years, he developed a profound mental database of the key elements to look for on a particular piece—and it didn’t matter whether it was a Greek sculpture, a Mayan pictograph, or a clay pot from the Gobi Desert, he had seen it sometime in his career.
    I didn’t know if he still was doing authentications for fees. People like me who knew him from the old days could call him up to pick his brain.
    A very small sign outside on the wrought-iron railing said “Bolger’s.” Nothing about being a bookstore. Probably wasn’t permitted to have a business in the building, but it wasn’t much of a business, anyway. The fact that he hadn’t sold a book for days wasn’t news—he hated to sell his beloved books and was more likely to encourage customers to browse the book or even borrow it rather than part with it.
    I’d never seen the rest of his apartment but if the bookstore was any indication, it was probably overcrowded and disorganized. In the store part, books overflowed boxes, were stacked in leaning, wobbly-looking piles, and crammed into shelves. The place looked ready to collapse with a good sneeze.
    How he kept track of what-was-where I didn’t know; yet if you asked him for a particular book he knew exactly where it was located.
    Besides books, he had antiquity pieces in nooks and crannies and on high shelves around the room. The pieces were an eclectic lot, some real though not priceless, some extremely good fakes, including several he obtained after he exposed them as reproductions to a disappointed owner.
    Bolger was in his early seventies and a bachelor. His first name was Charles, but I never heard him called anything but Bolger even back at the Met.
    He wasn’t a small-talk person. I knew nothing about his personal life other than the part about art. And he could be crotchety