Why wait for my art suspense to appear on the NY Times Best Seller List?
Get it first! Get it here! Happy reading. Taos-based photographer Cladia Kelly and her Paris lover,caught up in a tangled web of Nazi conffiscated art, are bewildered as to why they are being pursued by a man who may be a neo-Nazi psychopath.
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Excerpts:
(In Code of the Running Cross, the prologue begins in 1933; the story begins post 9/11 2000 something. The book is written not in chapters, but in a series of cinematic like scenes. When Claudia Kelly, the Taos-based photographer is in the scene, the story is told first-person from her persepective, and it is Kelly that moves the ensemble-like story forward).
From the prologue: Ely & Lisle in Geneva, Switzerland Winter, 1933
Ely and Lisle stowed their skis in the racks outside the inn and hurried inside. So far, his plan had gone well. Getting to Geneva from Paris, partly by train, had been without incident. With patrols everywhere, getting back safely to France from Geneva was a different matter. The twenty-six year old artist, a French-Jew, glanced at his companion but kept this thought to himself. What they needed now was food, drink and rest.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
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Jan, the guide, and Lisle, in Anamasse, France, 1933
Why had she, thinking Ely dead, and now, she, dying, begged him to remember that single name? When he felt Lisle sleeping, Jan got out of bed and pulled on his pants and his jacket. He opened the door slowly and went outside to piss against a tree. He watched the golden liquid sink into the snow as if into quicksand, leaving only a dull yellow circle. He looked up at Van Gough’s starry night and made wishes¾ for Lisle and Ely, for himself, for Switzerland and France and all who stood in the path of the coming locusts of destruction. He looked down again at the stain in the snow. If only urinating like animals did, could mark out territorial claims made by men, he thought, instead of wars.
“Oh piss on the Nazi bastards,” he shouted angrily at the tree, the bushes, the night, as if the curse could make a difference.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
Ely and Minuette in Paris, Winter, 1954
“Do you plan to pose for me, my love?” Ely asked, taking in Minuette's still voluptuous body.
“I plan to fuck you, monsieur,” she laughed boldly, enjoying his bewilderment and the growing bulge in his pants. After her early miscarriage, they’d lived side by side, so many lonely years. She took her much older artist- husband to her bed. The rich glow of the open fireplace flashed across her hand-sewn quilts and their naked bodies like a gold-foil painting by Gustav Klimt. Ely loved her gently, intending, when she taken her pleasure to withdraw at the appropriate time. The appropriate time arrived, and she would not release him.
Nine months later, in the spring of 1955, Minuette gave Ely a son, François. Standing by his window, watching the rain send shoppers scurrying for cover in the Paris street below, Elie picked up his boy-child from the rug in front of the fireplace. Now, he thought, cradling the baby close to his body, the future is here. I must find Antoine, and get the paintings. But New York was far from Paris, and he would not find his old friend.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
Post 9/11, 200…: Claudia Kelly in Barra de Navidad, Mexico
The two men in the marketplace made me nervous. It wasn’t like me to get nervous, especially in Mexico. I’d come down here often on my own photography self-assignments and had always enjoyed a sense of freedom and abandonment. Now, I closed and locked my motel room, looked out the window again, then pulled the curtains. Hacienda del Mar motel’s balconies were perched on stilts out over an ocean inlet. I glanced back at the window and then started to undress. I wished François were already here, but I wasn’t about to let two strangers rob me of my holiday. I glanced out at the ocean. I was looking forward to just diving over the side into deep water.
I loved Barra de Navidad. It still felt the way Puerto Vallarta must have before they made the movie with Richard Burton. I knew François would enjoy it here. We would only have a few, rare days together. Then I’d fly back to Albuquerque and drive home to Taos, and he’d fly back to Paris. Sometimes I envied Paris, home for Francois. Sometimes I felt jealous of his magazine, Envol, too, and the way his blues-rock concert production company kept him from me. Now, I just wished he were finished with his music business in Mexico City and would suddenly walk through my door
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Earlier: CK and Roberto, Latino news publisher in Mexico City
Roberto took my arm and steered me toward the open bar. “His wife. She’s German. Well, she was born in Argentina, but she sides with her European ancestry. Considering they were Nazis, I think she’d let that pass,” he laughed. She was born in Ushuaia actually.”
“That’s practically in Antarctica!” I said.
“About four hours south of Buenos Aires if I remember. Julia invited us to spend a week at their hacienda,” Roberto said. “If you can call their palacio of a house a hacienda. Took me the whole week just to walk the circumference of the place!”
“And Thalia’s father?” I probed. Alonzo’s remark about art had pricked my curiosity.
“Oh, art dealer of some sort. He’s into all sorts of things. One of my press buddies down there did some sleuthing for Time, and found what he claimed was evidence of arms shipments out of Ushuaia, to Spain of all places. Claimed he was a neo-Nazi. But nothing was proven.”Gift yourself or another mystery-suspense lover with Code of the Running Cross
Later: François Rosen in Barra Navidad, Mexico, that year
François stood in the doorway and watched the men walk away. Looking past him, I saw one of them approach Mariana and slap her hard across the face. François stepped outside and started toward them, but Daniel shook his hand in a gesture of no, and hurried Mariana down the street. François locked the door then checked the windows. “Claudia, luv, those men across the street. I saw them in the café when I asked for your room. They have bothered you?”
“No, darling,” I lied, reaching for him. “No more talking. Not tonight.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
CK in Paris, later that year
The cab driver apologized, an oddity for a taxi driver anywhere, for taking a circuitous route. He wanted to avoid, he explained in good English, some rowdies who were gathering to march later this morning. As we crossed Boulevard de Clichy, I looked out the window to see some young people gathering in the street. They wore black, mostly leather jackets in the early morning chill. A few of the jackets were emblazoned with red and black graphics, a crimson square with a black swastika.
The driver, an older man, grey hair escaping rebelliously from his tight, black beret, honked his horn, gestured at the crowd with his middle finger and spit out the window. “Qu’est-ce que vous avez? Etes-vous fou folle? ”
“Oui, monsieur,” I agreed. “ I think they are a little crazy!”
“Pardon, madame,” he said, searching out my face in his mirror. “My father and mother were shot and left for dead in the resistance. And now these young punks, these ignorant imbeciles, are trying again to make that monster Hitler into a hero! Quel dommage! A pity! A shame!” He spit again, careened around a corner, barely missing an old lady crossing the street with her poodle.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
CK in New York
She pulled the medallion out of the bag and laid it in my hand. It was heavy, ornate silver, like the crosses some Rap musicians wear. There was moon-shaped disc on the bottom. On top, a cross. But beneath the cross, or rather behind the cross, was a Jewish Star of David. It was the symbol on top - the one smashed down against the cross and the star that made me want to throw up. A running cross.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
In NY, CK calls friend,Tony Villanueva, the Taos, New Mexico DA
"Well, like I said” Tony replied. A coincidence probably. Though my father’s people say nothing is a coincidence, or that all coincidences are tracks on the pathway of the truth.”
“Thanks a lot, Tony,” I sighed. “But this pathway is pretty damned cluttered.
“By the way. You and Francois. You two getting through this OK? I mean, between you. It’s OK?”
“Oh sure, Tony. Just too much distance between us. I’m thinking of flying to Paris for a few days, instead of going back to Taos.”
“Well, let you know if I find out anything worthy of writing a thriller over. The Tony Hillerman genre could use a female touch.”
“Thanks Tony.” Suddenly, I just felt terribly alone.
“Hon? Take care of yourself and watch your backside. I hate to say this, but rattlesnakes tend to hide out where you’d least expect them.”
“I’d rather have you watching my backside, Tony. “
“Well, if you want to send me a naked photo?” He was teasing, but his voice was low, quiet, full of concern. “Oh yeah…just a thought: it wouldn’t hurt when you get back to Taos to let one of us teach you how to handle a gun. I know you can handle the Winchester. Keep it in your jeep to when take those trail trips you go on. But we can find something else for you. A Walther PPK .32 maybe. It’s lightweight, small enough to keep in your house. You’re out there in the sticks by yourself.” Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
François in Madrid with Art Dealer Dieter Shroeder:
“Auction, Dieter?” François asked, refilling their glasses. He wished the old man would go back to sleep. It was his wife who was the interesting one.
“Art auction, François!” Rachel interrupted with an inviting smile. “Dieter is an incredibly knowledgeable collector of art. Of course I don’t know all that much about it. But our collection was started around 1930.” Rachel removed her cameo and set it on the table.
François reluctantly turned his attention back to Schroeder. “1930, Dieter?”
Schroeder laughed heartily, stifling a belch. “Seventy is old,” he sighed. “but not that old! I inherited a lot of things from my family. Some things they stashed in Switzerland, or Argentina when my father took my sister and I there, when we left Berlin, you know. My father bought a lot of things for a song, from that gallery owner in Paris? The one who paid Goering a tidy little sum to get the whole lot to Switzerland?” Schroeder scratched at his crotch. “A lot of that art they are trying to give back to so-called rightful owners. The Jewish stuff.”
François flinched. Had he mentioned his father? Hadn’t Schroeder made the connection of François’ own name, Rosen, as a shortened version of Rosenberg? Could it be this son of a Nazi had paintings by Ely Rosenberg? The German’s eyes were growing heavy again. He belched loudly without apology, and asked the direction to the toilet. François escorted him into the bedroom suite. “Damned wasted of time, that business, if you ask me.” Schroeder’s voice was slurred not only with drink, but with an old man’s fatigue.
François steadied him, opening the bathroom door. “What’s a waste of time, Dieter?” he asked, leaning against the door jamb to make sure the old man did not fall. Dieter pissed loudly, then turned, stuffing his small, wilted penis into his shorts. No wonder Rachel has such longing in her eyes, François thought. Dieter hasn’t been able to use that thing in years probably.
“What business, Dieter?” François wanted, did not want, to know. He thought he’d left the whole annoying world of art behind him when he’d put Sue Ling in the taxi.
“Why man,” Schroeder said, zipping his pants. “This business of trying to get the paintings by Jewish artists, and the paintings owned by Jews back to their families or their so-called rightful owners. You know, stuff the Nazis took!” He turned on the faucet full force and lathered his hands. For François, sent to Catholic catechism by his mother, Minuette, the scene conjured up an image of Pilot washing his hands before handing Jesus, the Jewish Rabbi, over to the mob.
“Here’s how I see it,” Schroeder said. He examined the gold monogram on the ivory hotel towel, then rubbed his hands briskly. “Those Jewish artists are dead. It is only the art that lives. Better it should live in my house and collectors like me, who know how to appreciate good art.” He refolded the towel and hung it neatly on the rack. “Don't you agree?” Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
David Nace in Taos, New Mexico, with Spaniard, Don Diego
“Mira, David,” the old man said, looking around the Alley Cantina. “There is my ranch in Spain, as you. But I have other interests. It is very important I learn certain things. And you know how to find out things, don’t you David?”
“Too well, Don Diego, too well.” David said with some bitterness. His time in Viet Nam flashed through his mind as if he were dying. Napalm and M14's; James Brown, Da Nang Airbase; Nixon, tunnel rats; Raquel Welch in a mini-skirt; himself, kneeling in a rice paddy to protect a suspect Viet Cong woman and her three crying children, turning his head away when he saw the fifteenth mangled body of a fallen comrade, writing Eat Rice Smoke Pot on his helmet.
One day, because of his smarts, they’d taken him out of the fight to spend his time behind a desk ferreting out secret codes and useful information. When it was over, he’d come back home to the states to be spit on. First, there was Guatemala. Now, the bastards wanted him back for more secretive work. Well, piss on them, he’d thought.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
Francois in London with Sue Ling
“You’re a beautiful woman, Sue Ling. But not here and not this way.” Francois walked over and picked up Sue Ling’s dress. “Put it on,” he commanded, ignoring the tears filling her eyes.
When she was dressed, he took her in his arms. “Now, some answers, love. Who the hell put you up to this?”
She wiped at her eyes. “Didn’t you put together the connection between my last name and the man you’re doing business with today?”Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
Claudia in London with the old WWII photographer
“Because of the two soldiers, Teddy?”
“No miss. Because they were SS officers.” He paused, seeming to travel a long distance in his mind. “I was in a camp, missy. I stayed alive taking photos of the prisoners. They’d parade the young Jewish ladies there naked. Skinny they were, like skeletons, and young. Scared. Trembling. Sometimes, even the young ones, had been beaten so bad, I knew no one could identify their faces. I took thousands of those pictures. What did they want those photos for, missy? When the next stop was the gas chamber?”
I stood up and touched Teddy’s arm. “Come on old lad. I need some fresh air. Show me the Thames. It's my first time to London."
He took his cane, pushed himself up from the table, and linked his arm in mine.
“Let’s have sausages and beer next door.” he said.
“From the Nazi’s son?” I questioned.
“Times change,” he shrugged. “And a sausage is a sausage and a beer is a beer is a beer,” he said, paraphrasing Gertrude Stein.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
CK in Taos calls Latino friend, Roberto, San Diego newspaper publisher
There was a pause, a long pause. “There are ....radical groups, yes. But then people called Caesar Chavz a radical, and that he was! Imagine trying to do something for poor downtrodden farm laborers in Salinas,” Roberto said, his newspaper publisher's voice edged with empathetic sarcasm. “But that’s not what you mean is it?”
“No, I mean groups, even individuals, with frankly anti-semitic ideas.”
“Blaming the Jews, the Zionists for their troubles?”
“Something like that. Linking Zion and the US together as the great enemy of the people.”
“Of la raza.” Another long pause.
I sat down at my table. “Roberto, what are you not telling me?”
“I’m telling you mija, to be careful. Don’t go looking for ghosts. The Nazis were defeated in World II, remember?”Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
CK in home in Taos
“Tony?”
“Who are you calling ma’am?”
“I’m sorry I thought I had called the Taos County DA’s office.”
“You have the Taos Police Department,” the male voice explained. “Would you like Tony Villanueva’s number?”
“No, thanks. It’s personal. I have his cell phone number at home.” Tony was an old friend. I had no idea what he could tell me, or do, for that matter. The Mexico experience had me undone. Back home now, in New Mexico, I was hoping Tony could have someone run some identity checks for me…
Tony had arrived just when it started to rain. He shook himself off at the door like a wet dog, eagerly exchanging his jacket for a cold Tecate. I poured my own into a glass and set out chips and salsa. The department had a hard night, he’d explained, corralling some kids partying in a back canyon, and then shooting off rounds just to hear the noise. Unknowingly, the kids had strayed onto Taos Pueblo land, and the police were glad to hand all them, their hands tinged with spray paint, over to the County sheriffs.
The Pueblo police sergeant had thought the images the kids had sprayed on the walls of the buildings looked like the running crosses woven by the ancient mothers into complexly patterned rugs highly prized by collectors of Native Americana. But, to Tony Villanueva, whose father, a Navajo and former Marine, had seen World War II service in Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima from 1942 to 1945, the symbols on the canyon wall were out and out Nazi swastikas.
“You’re not usually involved in front line stuff are you Tony?” I asked.
“Nope.” He scooped up some salsa, and washed it down with the beer. “Unfortunately, one of the kids was my nephew. My sister’s in Albuquerque getting radiation treatment for breast cancer,” Tony said, shaking his head. “Rains, it pours.”
Stunned, I was finally able to mumble I’m sorry. “Look Tony,” I said, reaching over to touch his hand. “You’ve had a hard day. You don’t need to sit there and listen to my concerns!”
He interrupted me. “Shit happens, Claudia, like the bumper stickers say. Anyway, I’m enjoying your company.” He took another swallow of his beer. “So, I’m here and you’re here, little lady. What’s bothering you?”
“Well,” I laughed nervously, “the thing about the kids tonight leads right in to it. Do you," I hesitated, “do you think the kids up there tonight were just pranksters, or… “
“Neo-Nazis?” Tony said, finishing my sentence. “I doubt they even know what a Nazi was, much less a neo one. Too bad too. If we lose touch with history,” he said, remembering his own Navajo grandfather's advice, “we lose ourselves.”
“But kids today are pretty savvy. Movies, the Internet.” Finally, I asked him straight out. “Look Tony. Suppose some character, with power, money, motivation and neo-Nazi sentiments were trying to recruit Latino youth, could they succeed in New Mexico, in Taos?”
Tony laughed, savoring his beer. “Especially in Taos. Nobody's keeping tabs out in the rural areas.” He paused to think about it. "Seriously? Well, I don’t think terrorists, whoever they were, could recruit kids whose family have history here.”Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
Francois, surprises Claudia in Taos:
The sky threatened rain, but for a while, before it grew dark, we had sat outside, under my tree. François strummed quietly on the guitar, his gift from Laina. I was still in a state of pleasant shock about his being there. He was sitting on the wall outside my yard when I got home from seeing Tony. I was amazed that he could have found me. With his typical good luck with women, he’d stopped in the Plaza and went up to Ogilivies for a drink and directions. Halley, the bartender, was just getting off and lived in Red River. François followed her to where my road began….
…I wished I hadn’t told him about the hour I’d spent with Tony and his father John Villanueva. Maybe the code stuff was all smoke and mirrors. We wouldn’t know anything for sure until Tony heard from Lucas Yazzi in the Washington bureau. I ladled some salad into our plates, and explained the sopaipillas. “Just puff pastries, deep fried, and served hot with honey. I had some left over and fixed them like this.”Gift yourself or another mystery-suspense lover with Code of the Running Cross
“I could feed one to you, honey and butter dripping from your lips,” he teased, reaching around to pat my derriere.
“Eat, François!” I said, wriggling out of his grasp. “And I don’t mean me!” I knew we were both just trying to lighten things up. I reached down and kissed him. If he’d said then, come live with me and make my Paris your home, I would have given him a simple yes. But he could not, I knew now, say that. I sat down, and picked at my salad. “All that’s happened, maybe only scarecrows, love…like you’ve told me all along.”
François banged his wine glass on the table. “Mon dieu, Claudia! It is not only me these fucking idiots want something from! It is you too, because of your association with me. And you don’t know what they want either! What if someone comes here the way they did with Arabella and Jean-Marc insisting you tell them what you don’t even know? He stood up and pulled me to him. “I’ll want to kill anyone who hurts you.”Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
The neo-Nazi, Fernando at CK’s Questa cabin
…. Fernando’s lips came together tightly as he clinched his teeth. He stood up and walked around behind me, and stroked my neck with the pistol. “Perhaps I should treat Claudia tenderly, the way you did my sister and my mother. Or maybe, he said, grabbing my hair, “she would enjoy a stronger touch.”
François’ eyes flared. I glanced a warning at him. “The information, Fernando,” he said between clinched teeth, “What is it that you think I know?” He had hesitated, knowing it was full well in his power to give the paintings to Fernando. One of the paintings was in his room at the Sagebrush Inn, at the southern edge of town; the other possibly in Madrid.
“Claudia is quite beautiful,” Fernando said, caressing my hair with the gun. I shivered, just at the thought of his hands touching me, let alone the gun.
….Fernando reached into his pocket, pulled out a small envelope and emptied some pills into his hand. He filled his glass with the remaining wine and drank it down like water, then slammed the glass down on the counter. “And with money, Rosen, money of my own, not money begged from my father, or my Jew mother, but money that you’ll tell me how to get to, I’ll mount a war against you and your kind, a final war….”
“And in such a war, you don’t need navies or marines either, do you Fernando?” I was taking a big chance. “What would you need with them when you have cell phones and the Internet?”
Fernando laughed. “I like a clever woman. So few women are clever, Francois.” He walked over and leaned close, blowing smoke in François’ face. “I can see why you like this red-headed bitch.”
Knowing Fernando was baiting him, François stared back, a technique he’d practiced a thousand times, and waited.
“She’s right. We surf, no, we navigate,” Fernando gloated. “That’s the word. We navigate the Internet seas, and with the Internet, with cell phones, with bank accounts, we do not need an air force either, Rosen. We own the air! With money to operate on, my words typed on the keyboard of a computer and people live or people die. With this small instrument,” he said, pulling out his cell phone, “one word from me and the world changes. Lamb feasts become bloodbaths, Rosen, and Jews like you die like the vermin that my grandfather, and Adolph Hitler knew that they were.”
So. Fernando was behind the explosions. But still, that kind of killing was distant, like dropping a bomb in World War II on some anthill of a city below. Would he kill face to face? He picked up his pistol and walked around behind Francois. I felt my legs tremble, tensing my muscles, hoping neither of them could see my fear.
. David Nace paid for his beer, left the Alley Cantina and hurried back to his rental car, cursing himself for even having stopped. The rain had started up again, and fell in fat, heavy drops. There was no time to drive to his trailer in Questa, especially in the rain, and then swing back halfway between there and Taos to find Claudia’s house in the dark. Besides, maybe he had nothing to fear but fear itself. Maybe he wouldn’t need a gun. What he did fear was finding somebody dead.Order CODE OF THE RUNNING CROSS
