Bad Blood (11 page)

I glanced at Tony. His empty glass had slipped from his
grip
and was lying on the newly scrubbed floor. He was still staring ahead of him, looking at nothing.

I fed the phone again and called Lydia. This time, Lydia answered her office number. That line rings through to her room at home, and I knew that’s where she was, because I could hear her mother puttering around in the background, singing a high-pitched Chinese opera song. She obviously had no idea what a narrow escape she’d just had, not having to talk to me.

I, on the other hand, did.

After Lydia got through telling me who she was in English and again in Chinese, I said, “Hi, it’s me. You have anything for me?”

“Oh,” she said. “Well,” as though she was thinking about it, “just information.”

“What else could I want?”

“What you always want.”

“Not over the phone,” I said in wounded innocence.

“Since when?” I heard her rustling some papers; then she asked, “Are you all right? You sound tired.”

“I am.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s why the lack of snappy patter.”

“No, this country living must be dulling my razor-sharp senses. I thought I was being pretty snappy.”

“Wrong. Now listen: I haven’t picked up anything about your paintings, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Among many other things. Where are you looking?”

“Shipping companies. Maritime and air-ship insurance. Art appraisers, auction houses.” She paused. “Don’t worry, I was subtle.”

I hadn’t said anything, but she knew me. “How?”

“Mostly I said I was looking for stolen Frank Stellas that would be being shipped as something else. People were very cooperative.”

“Good old people. Anything else?”

“I went to see your friend Franco Ciardi. He remembered me and was charmed to see me.”

“Isn’t everyone always?”

“Of course they are, but sometimes they hide it well. Anyway, he knows nothing, but he promised he’d be interested and most discreet if I do come up with anything. Was he offering to take them off my hands if I find them, do you think?”

“I’m sure he was. That’s it?”

“Yes, but isn’t no news good news? There’s no sign yet that those paintings are on the market. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes. How sure are you?”

“Well, I’ve only been on it since this morning. I may be missing something; but you can do a lot with a phone and a cab in a day.”

“Okay. Any other ideas?”

“I haven’t got any ideas. But I have something interesting.”

“I’m sure, but you won’t let me see it.”

“And you said not over the phone.”

“Sorry.”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, listen. You know how art galleries work? On commission? Well, the normal commission is ten to fifty percent of the price of the work—the lower
the
sale price, the higher the commission. Artists who feel a gallery is taking too high a percentage will go with another gallery, if someplace else will take them. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “And?”

“Eva Nouvel’s work is very, very high priced. Any gallery in town would love to handle her, but she’s been with her gallery—Sternhagen—since she first started to show in New York, close to forty years ago. Bill, they take seventy percent.”

“Umm,” I said. “How do you know that?”

“My brother Elliot? You know his wife’s an art consultant. She has a friend who has a friend who used to work at Sternhagen.”

The Chin network. I said, “You believe her?”

“Him. Yes.”

“Lydia, I didn’t ask you to check on Eva Nouvel.”

She paused for a moment. “No, that’s true. But I was waiting for some people to call me back and I got curious. What’s the problem?”

I rubbed my eyes. “No, nothing. It’s okay.”

A slight chill crept into her voice. “It might be better if I knew what was really going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, if I knew who the client was,” she said. “If I knew why six valuable paintings were sitting around a storeroom in cow country. If I knew why you took a case up there at all. If I knew things like that, maybe I wouldn’t make dumb mistakes.”

“You never make dumb mistakes.”

“I might if I don’t know what’s going on.”

The windows I’d opened had made it cold in the bar. Back where I was, by the phone, the floor was empty, all the tables and chairs crowded together in the other half of the room as though something were wrong back here.

I rubbed my eyes again; that did about as much good as it had done the first time. “Jesus,” I said to Lydia. “Look: you’re right, and I’m sorry. But it’s been a long day. Can we do this tomorrow?”

“We can do this whenever you want. You’re the boss.”

“That’s not—”

“Apparently it is.”

“Lydia—”

“Should I keep on it?” she asked, brusque and professional.

“Yes,” I said. “Please.”

“Talk to you later, then.”

The phone clicked, and she was gone.

I walked around the silent room shutting the windows I’d opened. Then I went through the swinging doors into the kitchen, lifted Tony’s jacket off the hook there, brought it to him. “Come on, buddy,” I said softly, leaning down. “Time to go home.” He looked at me as if he didn’t know me. He rose unsteadily, pushing on the arms of his chair. I gave him his jacket. It took him some time to get into it. I didn’t help, just stayed close enough to catch him if he needed that. He didn’t.

I shut the lights and locked the place and we went out into the parking lot, crunching through it to the road. The night was dark and damp and foggy. It wasn’t the up-close kind of fog where you couldn’t see your own hand if you
held
your arm out straight. It was a soft film you didn’t notice if your focus was close, where everything was clear and sharp and normal, what you expected. It was only when you tried to look around, to get your bearings, that you noticed that five yards away in all directions there was absolutely nothing at all.

8

I LEFT TONY
inside his front door without a word. I waited on the porch just long enough to see him get a light on; then I headed down the steep stone steps and across the road to my car.

The fog was thickening along 30 as I drove toward my place. I kept my speed down. I was hungry, exhausted, and in spite of Tony’s bourbon I could feel all my nerve ends twitching.

The car slipped in and out of silvery patches of fog. I half expected with each one to come out somewhere miles away, some bright, warm place where people had honest work to do and no one’s steps echoed in an empty house. Someplace where you didn’t get to be Tony’s age, or mine, with nothing to show but a collection of losses.

Down at the end of my fissured road my cabin was a squat, unnatural shape hunching in the winter trees. I thought of the work I’d done on it over the years, the constant battle to keep anything man-made—no matter how small, how carefully built, how wanted—from corroding, rotting away. The processes of destruction were relentless, and had all the time in the world.

Inside, the cabin wasn’t bright and it wasn’t warm but it was a familiar harbor. I put on a CD, Jeffrey Kahane
playing
Bach three-part inventions. I built a fire. The smell of cedar and woodsmoke, the music, the shadows began to work on me. I sliced some bread, fried some eggs to go with a can of hash I found on the shelf. I drank some more bourbon and followed the music. Bach. Logic, order, clarity. I should play more Bach. The hard knots in my shoulders began to melt and my eyelids got heavy.

In the morning I had to force myself out of bed. The day was gray and I’d slept badly, prodded awake more than once by uneasy dreams I couldn’t remember. I had a dull headache and though I knew it wasn’t from sleeping badly, I poured a shot of bourbon into my coffee cup and downed it before the coffee was ready. It helped a little. The coffee helped some more. I showered, and this time I shaved, carefully but not carefully enough, cursing as the foam burned my cheek.

Leaning on the kitchen counter, I smoked a cigarette, worked on the day. The piano gleamed in the light of the kitchen lamp. It wasn’t as good a piano as I had in New York, but it was fine, an upright with a strong, clear sound. A guy from Albany with a key to the cabin came out a few days before I came up each time and tuned it for me; and I kept the heat on low in the front room all winter, so the piano did all right. Those things cost me. But the reason I came up here and the reason I played were pretty much the same, and this setup worked for me.

I finished the last of the coffee. If I spent the day practicing, the new Mozart might begin to sound like music.
Music
; sleep; walking in the silent winter woods: that sounded like a good day to me.

But I thought about Eve Colgate’s eyes as she told me about what she’d lost. And I thought about Tony’s eyes, and about other kinds of loss. There were so many kinds.

Halfway up 30 toward Eve Colgate’s there was a 7-Eleven. I bought more coffee and some other things, drank the coffee in the car with the Mozart Adagio in the CD player. If I couldn’t play it at least I could listen to it.

Eve Colgate’s yellow house seemed to stand more somberly on the hilltop under the gray sky than it had yesterday in the sunlight, but it was still a vaguely comforting sight, like an old friend at a funeral.

I parked in the drive behind the blue pickup. As I started toward the porch the black dog raced, barking and yapping, around the side of the house. He stopped when I did, cocked his head, wagged his tail tentatively a few times; but when I started forward again he snarled and dug his feet in as he had the morning before. His breath was visible on the cold air.

Eve Colgate came around the house, wiping her hands on a stained red sweatshirt. “Leo!” she called.

“Okay, Leo,” I said. “You’re tough. I know.” I reached into the 7-Eleven bag, brought out the doughnut I’d bought for him. “Come on.” I squatted, held out a piece. He looked at it, looked at Eve Colgate.

“It’s okay,” she said.

He grabbed the piece of doughnut and inhaled it, wagged for more. I held out the rest. “Sit,” I said. He didn’t. I gave
it
to him anyway, dusted sugar from my gloves, scratched his ears.

“You can’t buy him that easily,” Eve Colgate said.

“I’m not in the market. I just want a friend.” I straightened up, took the wrapped package from the back of my car. The dog escorted me up the drive, nuzzled Eve Colgate’s hand when he reached her.

“Good boy.” She scratched him absently. Her eyes swept over my face as though registering small changes since she’d last seen me. Then she looked at the package I was holding. “Come inside,” she said.

I followed her through a vestibule where a yellow slicker hung on a peg into a single room running the width of the house. On the right was a kitchen, not new but ample and serviceable. On the left an antique dining table and chairs, carefully refinished, stood under the front window. There was a woodstove like mine on the hearth, its flue running up the fireplace chimney. A couch, an easy chair, a side table, a cedar chest on the bare, polished floor. A few framed watercolors—none of them Eva Nouvels—hung on the walls and on the mantel there was a china pitcher and bowl painted in the bright yellows and purples of spring.

I shrugged off my jacket, looked around for a place to put it. Eve took it from me, pausing as her eyes caught the worn shoulder holster with the .22 from the car slipped into it.

“Do you always wear that?”

“Yes.” A long time ago I’d stopped answering that question with anything more elaborate.

She turned, hung my jacket in the vestibule. She pulled off her sweatshirt and hung it there, too. Under it she wore a thick white turtleneck tucked into flannel-lined jeans.

The air was warm, and pungent with cinnamon. There was music, too, strings. Schubert, maybe.

“Do you want coffee?” Eve asked. “I’ve been baking.”

“Sounds great. Smells great.”

She handed me a plate of sticky looking sweet rolls. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black.” I bootlegged a piece of roll for Leo, who was walking between my legs, head twisted to sniff at the plate.

I put the plate and the wrapped silver on the cedar chest, sat on the couch. Eve brought over coffee in two white mugs. She made good coffee; better than mine, much better than the 7-Eleven’s. The rolls were warm and sweet and crunchy with walnuts.

She kicked off her shoes, sat cross-legged on the other end of the couch, her back against the armrest. “How’s Tony?”

“I haven’t seen him today.” I could have guessed how he was, but she could guess, too.

“The police are looking for his brother, aren’t they?”

“That’s what I hear.”

She poured cream into her coffee from a round jug. “Tony used to work for me, before his father got sick. Spring, summer, and fall, as a laborer. I was sorry to lose him when he took over the restaurant.” She cupped her hands around her coffee. “I don’t have anything to offer him, except sympathy and money. He won’t want
my
sympathy. He won’t want my money either, but he might need it.” She sipped at her coffee, was quiet a moment. “I’ll say this to Tony later, but I’ll tell you now. If there’s anything he needs—lawyers, whatever it is—I can take care of it.”

“Why tell me?”

“So somebody with a more level head than Tony will know what options he has.”

“You’re right,” I said. “He won’t want it.”

“Trouble can be expensive. Especially . . .” she paused. “Do you think Jimmy could have killed that man? I hardly know Jimmy. When he was young Tony brought him by occasionally.”

“Could have?” I said. “He could have. I don’t know anyone who couldn’t, for a strong enough reason.”

She fixed me with her pale, disturbing eyes. “Do you really believe that?”

“It’s true. Reasons vary, but everybody’s got one he thinks is good enough. If you’re lucky you never get the chance to find out what yours is.”

She explored my face briefly, then looked away, as though she hadn’t found something she had hoped, but not expected, to find.

The flashing, contrapuntal figures of the music filled the air around us. I put down my coffee, picked up the wrapped package. I laid it on the couch between us, unwound the paper, watched her face as she watched my hands.