Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) Read Free

have” -. The waiter paused expectantly. He was all capped teeth, artfully streaked blond hair and too-good-to-be true turquoise eyes. He was probably one of those waiters-slash-models. Everyone in New York seemed to be a hyphenated blend of what they were doing temporarily and what they were meant to be.
    What Claire wanted was the fresh-caught tuna served with aioli, but even though she knew that aioli was fresh-made garlic mayonnaise, she didn’t know how to pronounce it. Did you say all the vowels? Unfortunately, none of the other people sitting at her table had ordered it.   Claire compromised. “The tuna.”
    The waiter nodded and scribbled without saying anything, so Claire remained unenlightened. His gaze moved on to Tabitha, who was seated next to Claire. He added a few dozen more teeth to his smile, taken in by Tabitha’s jet black hair and tip-tilted eyes. “The tia pila,” Tabitha said. Handing her menu back with a snap, she continued the monologue the waiter had interrupted. “So they won’t fund the segment on the death camps unless I can get footage. But how can I get footage without any funding? The whole thing’s circular, but they just won’t see it.”
    Tabitha was a documentary filmmaker who specialized in war - specifically its effects, not on the main combatants, but on women and children. (Of course, as a war ground on, it wasn’t unusual to find that the person holding the gun was a twelve-year-old, or that a camp follower had scavenged a weapon and turned it on the enemy.) Lately her beat had been extremist Muslim conflicts, and unfortunately, she had a number from which to choose. Disguised behind a floor-length black chadoor, her blue eyes covered by a screen of mesh, Tabitha ventured into the field with a tiny camera hidden in the voluminous folds of her headscarf. Because she was an American infidel who risked stoning or a headsman’s sword, she also kept a revolver strapped to her ankle and a stiletto tucked in her bra.
    Unfortunately for Claire’s self-esteem, Tabitha was typical of Dante’s old friends. They were all vivid, fascinating and more than slightly exotic. Claire sat silent, listening to the play of conversation around her as it touched on war, politics, dance, theatre, art. At one point, Dante gave her shoulder a squeeze, but it didn’t make her feel any more sure of herself. What was Claire Montrose - who one year ago had never been farther east than Boise, Idaho - doing in New York City, eating food she couldn’t pronounce?
    The answer was that she had sneaked in when no one was looking. Six months earlier, she had inherited a mysterious oil painting from her great aunt. After gathering up all her courage she had gone to New York City, taken her painting on the rounds of auction houses and museums. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dante had offered to look at it.
    Later Dante had admitted to Claire that he had instantly fallen in love with both her and her painting of a woman in a ermine-trimmed yellow jacket. The little painting turned out to have been looted, first from its original owners by the Nazis, and then by Claire’s great aunt’s U.S. Army boyfriend. Haunted by the thought of the thousands of Jews whose deaths had allowed both Hitler and Goering to amass enough art for a dozen museums, Claire had turned over the money from the sale of the painting to the World Jewish Restitution Organization. It was only at the insistence of her elderly roommate - herself a concentration camp survivor - that Claire had kept just enough to give a few things to her family and free herself from the drudgery of Specialty Plates.
    The waiter took Aryeh’s order and then departed. Aryeh, who was sitting next to Tabitha, was an Israeli artist who referred to his works as “installations.” They seemed more designed to shock than to beguile. His latest was a pig, freeze-dried whole, which had then been sliced by a laser beam into one-sixteenth-inch segments. Reassembled in