Death of Riley (21 page)

We set off arm in arm across Washington Square, past the silent university buildings and on to Broadway. Fleishman's was buzzing with activity, full of fashionably dressed people as well as the more eccentrically dressed inhabitants of the Village. There was even a crowd waiting to be served.

“Why aren't all these people in church, where they should be?” Gus demanded. “We can't have New Yorkers getting lax about their religion, or we'll never get a table at Fleishman's again.”

Sid was scanning the depths of the large room. “Wait—there's Lennie in the corner. Let's see if we can squeeze ourselves around their table.”

She forced our way through the crowd. There were three other young men at Lennie's table. One of them was Ryan.

“I’m sure you've got space for three slender females,” Sid said, “especially females who are dying of starvation and might faint if they have to wait in that long line.”

The young men had risen to their feet. “You've never fainted in your life, Sid darling,” Ryan said and kissed her on the cheek.

I felt a great surge of jealousy.

“True, but Gus and Molly have been raised more delicately than I and are capable of a swoon when necessary.” Sid sat on the chair that Lennie had brought across for her.

The other young men were finding seats for Gus and me. “I don't think we've met.” A pale, shy-looking boy dusted off the chair before he offered it to me.

“You haven't met our sweet Molly yet?” Ryan asked. “Then let me do the honors. Molly, these disreputable gentlemen are Lennie, whom I think you already know, Hodder, who professes to be a poet, although none of us has ever been allowed to see his poetry, and Dante, who has just returned from Paris and is making us all wild with jealousy at his descriptions of the salons there. He actually dined with Monet. Imagine that.”

The pale young man gave me a shy smile. “And with a new man called Matisse,” he said. “Ffis paintings are so daring—all those primary colors and distorted shapes. I'm having a go at it myself.”

“Does this mean you've finished the last act of your play, Ryan?” Gus asked, putting her arm around his shoulders as she perched on a chair beside him. “I seem to remember you swore you would not leave your selfimposed exile until it was done.”

“One has to eat occasionally—even geniuses like myself need nourishment,” Ryan said. “But the end is truly in sight. You'll be the first to know when I write those magnificent words,‘The curtain falls to tumultuous applause.’”

“You hope,” Lennie said.

“I'll invite all my friends to the premiere,” Ryan said. “I know enough people to create tumultuous applause.”

How wonderful it felt to be part of this noisy, laughing group. I was half-tempted to abandon my plans to be an investigator and really try my hand at poetry or play writing so that I could truly count as one of them. I noticed heads turned in our direction as we made our exit from the cafe around midday. There were still people milling around, waiting for tables. As I was about to pass through the front door, someone grabbed my arm. I started in alarm and looked up into Daniel's face.

“Molly, thank heavens you're all right.” He was still holding my arm, gripping it fiercely. “I've been trying to locate you.”

“Of course I'm all right. Why shouldn't I be?”

“I heard there was a fire at Paddy Riley's place. Then I went to your old address and Mrs. O'Hallaran said you'd moved out and she'd no idea where you'd gone. I thought something might have happened to you.”

“I'm very well, as you can see, thank you, Captain Sullivan,” I said. “I have a new life and a new group of friends and I'm very happy.”

“So you've given up this crazy notion of being a detective,” he said. “I'm so glad. I can't tell you how worried I was that you might try and get involved in Paddy's murder yourself.”

“Have the police solved the case, then?”

“It's possible they never will,” Daniel said, “and it's also possible that there's a dangerous element involved. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever find any proof now. But it's definitely not the kind of thing I'd want you mixed up in.”

Ryan poked his head around the door. “Come on, Molly. What's keeping you? If you delay me from my garret any longer, it will be all your fault if the play's not finished.”

“Coming, Ryan,” I said.

I could feel Daniel looking at me. “I have to go,” I said. “So nice to meet you again, Captain Sullivan.”

Ryan put an arm around my shoulders and escorted me from the cafe. I didn't look back to see Daniel's reaction, but I permitted myself a broad smile. The fact that my heart wasn't aching must mean that I was truly getting over him.

As we walked back toward Washington Square, Ryan kept his arm draped over my shoulders, and I did nothing to dissuade him. But my talk with Daniel had reminded me that I had been neglecting the task I had set myself. What better moment to glean some facts from Ryan than during an unguarded moment when we were strolling in the company of others.

“Tell me, Ryan,” I began casually, “someone said that you might know Angus MacDonald, the millionaire's son. Is that true?”

A brief spasm of annoyance crossed his face. “Used to know,” he said.

“So you're no longer friends?”

“We parted amicably enough,” he said. “He a little less amicably than I, but that's usually the way it goes. I told you how I am, I fall in and out of love so quickly, and leave behind me a trail of broken hearts.”

I think the world stopped turning for a second as I tried to digest what I had just heard. Ryan was still chatting away easily. “Poor old Angus took it rather hard, but I always shy away when it's getting too serious. To tell you the truth, I can't stand the thought of having another human being dependent on me—besides, there was a rumor that his wife might be divorcing him and you know how I abhor scandal. Think what harm it would do to the new play. It would have been an absolute disaster. You know how positively puritanical New Yorkers are.”

The blood was pounding through my brain. With my sheltered upbringing in Ireland, it had never crossed my mind that Angus MacDonald and Ryan O'Hare had been more than friends. I think I had heard whispers and insinuations that this kind of thing happened, and my parish priest had once preached an incomprehensible sermon about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but it had never been part of my world. So it was really true that a man could fall in love with another man! I took this idea one stage further and felt the flood of embarrassment turning my face crimson. It came to me with a shock of realization that Gus and Sid might also be more than friends. I remembered their amused glances when I suggested that Gus still had plenty of time to find a suitable husband, and my bewilderment that there was only one luxuriously decadent bedroom in the house. Now I considered it, they were, to all intents and purposes, a married couple.

I managed to attempt a normal conversation until we left Ryan outside his hotel. And when Gus asked me, “Molly, darling, is something wrong?” I replied that I must have drunk too much coffee and it had given me a headache. Then they were both most solicitous and insisted that I lie down in a darkened room with an ice pack on my forehead.

I lay there, hearing their conversation and laughter coming up from the garden below. My thoughts were still in turmoil. How stupidly mortified I felt that I had believed Ryan might be attracted to me. Now I examined his behavior in the cold light of reason, I saw that he was equally friendly to everyone. To flirt, to put an arm around a shoulder, to kiss on the cheek were part of his nature. I had deceived myself in hoping for too much.

Then I sat bolt upright, the ice pack tumbling to the floor, as something else occurred to me. If Ryan and Angus MacDonald had been more than friends, if he had been the person that Elizabeth MacDonald was going to cite as the co-respondent in the divorce case, then there was a powerful motive for stopping Paddy Riley from presenting evidence. J.P. MacDonald, the puritanical patriarch, might forgive his son a dalliance with a young woman, but he would never forgive what he perceived to be a terrible sin. He could easily have cut Angus off without a penny.

I took this further: all three of them then had a motive. Angus, to prevent his disinheritance; old J.P. to prevent the shame and scandal from tarnishing the family name; and Ryan himself, who had just stated to me that a scandal like this could ruin his new play.

I went to my purse and got out the little black book. There was no mention of Angus, nor, it seemed, of J.P. But there was that cryptic message about RO and LC at O'Connor's. I had no idea who LC might be, or how he was concerned with the case, but I now had a clear line of inquiry ahead of me. I must take every opportunity to probe into the movements of Ryan O'Hare and to uncover what might have happened that night at O'Connor's saloon.

And so I attempted to turn myself into a social butterfly. I urged Sid and Gus to come with me to O'Connor's every evening. How could I hope to become a writer, I said, if I didn't have a chance to observe life? My upbringing in Ireland had been so sheltered that I knew nothing about human relationships at all. They were amused and, like all good parents, indulged me. So we became regulars at the saloon. Sid and Gus chatted with friends while I sat listening in to conversations, observing people around me. Ryan didn't show up for four infuriating days in a row. I hoped he'd complete his play quickly and come back into society. If not, I wasn't sure how I was going to get in touch with him. I could hardly go to call on him in his hotel room—that would be too forward, even for Greenwich Village.

In the meantime, I made it my business to chat to his friends. This was not easy, given the noise level at O'Connor's most evenings and the fact that people were always coming and going. Every time I asked about Ryan, the reaction was the same—”Oh, well, you know, Ryan is Ryan. One of a kind.”

Ryan was fun, Ryan was unreliable and Ryan thought of nobody but himself. Nobody suggested that Ryan might be dangerous.

Then, one night, Lennie came in, beaming broadly. “Drinks all around,” he called to the bartender. “I've just sold a damned great painting. I'm fifty bucks richer!

Everyone clustered around him, congratulating, slapping him on the back and making sure they were included in the free drinks. Only Sid and Gus didn't rise from their table. “Fifty dollars for a genuine Lennie Coleman! Cheap at the price,” Sid said, with sweet sarcasm, “What did you do, Lennie, put a gun to the poor soul's head and force him to buy it?”

“It wasn't a he, it was a she, if you want to know. Her husband is making a fortune in steamships and she wants to set herself up as a patroness of the arts.”

This produced an instant reaction, with ten other starving artists wanting to know her name and address. Myself, I sat lost in thought. I had just heard his surname for the first time. It had never crossed my mind before that this regular at O'Connor's was an L.C.

Luck was in my corner that night. Lennie, tired of having to buy drinks for an ever-increasing circle of admirers, came to sit with Sid, Gus and me.

“Gee, but it's tiring being famous,” he said. “I don't know how Ryan handles it.”

“He laps it up,” Gus said. “Loves every second of it. Haven't you ever noticed—if he's not the center of attention, he sulks?”

Lennie chuckled. “I hope to God this play he's working on is good. You know how he hates failure. He's unbearable when things go wrong.”

“He's working hard, which is a good sign,” Sid said. “Earlier in the summer he was making flippant remarks about getting the cast to ad-lib the last act and create thenown ending.”

“So what are you going to do with the fifty dollars, Lennie?” I asked.

“Live a little longer, I hope,” he said, laughing. “Buy more paints. Pay the rent on my studio for a couple more months. Paint another damned painting to sell.” He seemed to notice me for the first time. “How would you like to be painted, Molly?”

“Me?” I was thrown off-guard.

“Sure.” Lennie was smiling at me. “I've got a yen to do more life studies. You'd make a perfect model with all that red hair.”

I realized this was my opportunity, the chance to chat, one-on-one, with Lennie Coleman in his studio. If I couldn't unearth any useful facts during long painting sessions, then I wasn't much of an investigator.

I gave him my most charming smile. “I'd love to, Lennie. When do you want to start?”

It wasn't until I let myself in to the building on Tenth Street the next morning that I began to have misgivings. It was a long warehouselike structure, housing many artists' studios, and the inside hallway felt damp and cold after the muggy heat outside. My feet echoed up stone stairs. Not a sound in the whole building. No hint that it was occupied. “Saw RO with LC.” Paddy's words flashed through my mind. Lennie might look pudgy and benevolent, but I would have to watch every word I said. As I tapped on Lennie's front door, I reminded myself to watch my tongue. If he was the L.C. in Paddy's book, then he mustn't know that I was in any way connected to Paddy.

In contrast to the cold, dark hallway, the studio itself was bathed in light from tall windows. It was a big room, half living area, half studio by the looks of it. On my left were a bare wood table holding the remains of a breakfast, a gas ring and sink and an unmade bed. On my right it was uncarpeted and unfurnished except for an easel with a new canvas on it, a table containing paints and a palette, a stool and another stool backed by cloth drapery.

“Hi, Molly. Ready to get started then?” Lennie greeted me as I came in.

“Indeed I am.” I looked around for a place to put my purse.

“I hope it's warm enough in here,” he said. “You can go behind the screen to take off your clothes.”

“Pardon me?”

He pointed casually to the far corner, behind the bed, where there was a wooden screen. “You can go over there to get undressed.”

“Now just a minute.” I heard my voice rising. “What kind of girl do you think I am? You lure me here on the pretext of wanting to paint me and then you start making indecent suggestions the moment I step in the door. Fm not staying another second.”