Harmony In Flesh and Black (23 page)

“I'll call,” Fred said. “And thanks. For not saying it again.”

“Not saying what?”

“‘Don't be an asshole,'” Fred said.

“I felt that went without saying,” Molly told him.

*   *   *

It was three-fifteen.

Suppose Russ Ennery deserved whatever they were doing to him? Fred couldn't calmly let it come. Even though it was not his business, because a life was at stake and salvageable, Fred's instinct was, as Molly had guessed, to engineer a straight trade: La Belle Conchita for Ennery. But Mangan didn't answer his phone, and the anonymous friend from Providence was not calling. Fred would find another way to float a message down.

You think of those cartoons where there are twelve little fish swimming, and in back of them six bigger fish with their mouths open, teeth; behind those are three bigger ones looking really hungry, and behind them, the biggest, smiling, lazily swimming, keeping track.

You want to get word to the big guy without having the messenger get eaten.

Fred was friendly with a couple of people in the art business in Providence. The smartest of them, and the one he liked best, was Harriet Raskin, who had a one-person operation downtown. Fred called and found her.

“Look, Harriet,” he said. “I'm working on something and I want to talk it over.”

“You want to come down?” Harriet asked.

He could see her, lean as an ostrich, smoking continually, sitting in her little gallery in a cloud of blue smoke, a bunch of nineteenth-century landscapes on the walls, with the tree, maybe the cow, the piece of water, the mountain, the sky.

Two bullterriers slobbered beside her.

“Let me just talk a minute, Harriet.”

“You want to give me a general idea of what you want to talk about?” Harriet asked. Fred heard her cough and strike a match.

He said, “There's been a mix-up up here.”

“Has there?” said Harriet. “What kind, if you want to say?”

“Apparently a person in your part of the country arranged to buy something that didn't get delivered. Something in your field.”

“I wouldn't know,” Harriet said.

“I didn't think you would. This person is naturally disappointed, and I may be able to assist.”

“Yes or no: do you know who you want to talk to?”

“I thought, asking around, you might find out and let me know.”

“I can ask. Is it urgent?”

“I get the idea the person is pretty disappointed,” Fred said.

“Let me see what I can stir up,” Harriet said. She asked how she could reach him.

Fred gave her his number at the Charles. “Don't stir too hard,” he said. “There are delicate objects involved.”

“I know delicate objects,” Harriet said. “I'm in the picture business. Sit tight. I'll see what I can do.

“By the way,” she went on, “while I have you, what can you tell me about a collector by the name of Arthur Arthurian? Sounds Armenian. I never heard of him.”

“I wish I never had either. The person I want to reach is likely the one who wants to know about Arthurian.”

“Stay there,” Harriet said. “I'll get on it. You'll be at your phone?”

“I'll be here.”

26

Fred called LIVE ** MODELS again and got the machine. Then he called Mangan's number.

He had nothing to read. To occupy his mind with white noise, he turned on the TV and watched a painter working—an educational painter. He did a whole picture in a half hour, a 1990s version of the landscapes Harriet sat in front of in her Providence gallery, though hers had taken longer to make. A thick round bush of hair grew on this educational painter. Fred wanted to rub the painter's hair in the art he was making. You'd get a nice little effect that way, on both the canvas and the hair.

The painter with the hair blessed the world and disappeared. Fred did not want to learn how to build a new antique table out of a condemned barn using only seven thousand dollars' worth of power tools. He turned off the set.

Clay had Proust in his prison.

What was Russ reading? Had he been carrying something with him when they picked him up? Was that where he'd been a couple of nights ago? In Providence? Or had he been hiding from them, too?

Fred called Sheila's again. His phone didn't ring until almost five. It was Clayton, wanting to know, “What's going on?”

“Nothing. I don't know. I have to keep the phone free. I'll call you when I have something.”

Five-twenty. Telephone.

“Fred.” It was a man's voice.

“Yes.”

“Wait a minute. You got more name than that? These guys balls everything up.” There was whispering on the other end.

Fred waited, holding the phone to his ear. He couldn't make out any words.

The voice tried again: “This the Charles Hotel, Cambridge?”

“Yes,” said Fred.

“You want to talk about some money we are missing?”

“A painting,” Fred said.

“Got in too deep, didn't you, asshole?”

“I know where the painting is,” Fred said.

“Wait a minute.”

More whispering.

“We don't want the fuckin' thing. We want our money. You want to bring it down?”

Fred said, “Let's talk a minute and see if we're going to be able to put a deal together.”

“Put together a what?” The voice was offended, outraged. “Put our money together and bring it, that's what you put together. The fuckin' pitcher, do what you want.”

“Let me talk to Mangan,” Fred said.

“He's out,” the voice said.

Fred said, “The money. How much you missing?”

“Twenty-five grand, asshole.”

Smykal had done a silent auction. Offered twenty-five thousand by Russell's pet shark Mangan, he had told Clayton the price was thirty. Then Clay had paid him thirty-three: a quick profit of eight grand over the first offer. But apparently the money on Mangan's end had actually been delivered as well.

“Look,” the voice went on. “I'm standing in a fucking gas station talking on the fucking telephone and you want to play fucking guessing games? You going to deliver the fucking money, or not?”

Fred said, “Maybe I can. There are a couple of other things I'll need to talk over, Mr.—do you want to give me a name?”

“Do you want to eat your own fucking nuts? Fuck you. What else you got to say?”

“Two things,” Fred said. “There's a guy I want to see, maybe you can help me with, who's been detained.”

Pause.

“Oh, the kid. I hear you. No problem. We have the money, we don't need him for anything.”

“And I want the letter.”

There was an exclamation of amazed disgust. “He wants a fucking letter? Personal visit isn't enough? Phone call won't do it for him? What am I, the fucking federal government, put my business on paper? You fucking crazy?”

“The kid knows about the letter,” Fred said. “Or ask Mangan.”

Pause. Whispers. Was Mangan in the room, next to the voice Fred could not see?

“Mangan knows about it,” Fred said. “Maybe he has it.”

Another pause.

“Have to call you back.”

“Hold it,” Fred said.

“Have to talk to a guy. Talk to another guy. That's gonna maybe take time.”

“I have to go out,” Fred said. “I'll be out for an hour at least.”

“Listen,” the voice said. “Wait a minute. I was you, I'd wait a few hours, maybe someone calls you. If you don't hear by eleven, I didn't reach him. Then I'll call you tomorrow morning, set something up, okay?”

“Everything cool until then?” Fred asked.

“Stay near your phone.”

“Okay,” said Fred.

“We'll get someone to fix your car. So you can drive down tomorrow.”

Fred said, “It's your business, but your guys—you think they can change a tire?”

“Fucking comedian. I'll tell them take it one step at a time,” the voice said. “Talk to you, if I don't get back tonight, in the morning. First thing.”

“What time is first thing?” Fred asked.

“Like ten, ten-thirty, eleven. In there.”

Fred stood up and stretched. Stay in his room, the guy had said, the voice of Providence. Wait for the phone.

They didn't want answers. They didn't want the painting. They wanted their money back. That would have to come from Clay. It was going to cost an additional twenty-five thousand to get that letter. He'd have to see how Clay felt about it.

27

Nothing stirred in the corridor when Fred edged out at midnight. Clay had called back five times, furious, confused, perturbed, exasperated, repentant, even intrigued. Why was it going to cost so much? Why, when Fred didn't know who had the letter or where it was or even if he could get it for certain?

Fred had explained as well as he could without bringing in Mangan's name; there was no point in starting Clay thinking in terms of turf wars. The extra money amounted to ransom, but since Clay wouldn't see any reason to buy back a kid he hadn't met and didn't want, Fred did not emphasize that argument. Instead, he reminded him of the value of the painting of Conchita Hill.

“If you get that picture for a total of fifty-eight thousand, you're stealing it, Clay. You're buying it at a third of its market value at auction. Personally, I'd estimate it higher, wouldn't you? A Chase that good, that early, of that subject? Having the letter with it, and the story, and the provenance?”

“It's not a story we're going to publish,” Clay had said.

Clayton had kept insisting that the painting's monetary value was beside the point. Why should he buy the letter twice? It was the principle of the thing.

Fred had given up. “Tell you what,” he had said. “I'll give you till tomorrow morning at eight to make up your mind. Smykal's dead, and your deal died with him. If you don't buy the letter, I will. You'll have first option to purchase it from me at cost. Let me know by eight. It'll take time to put the money together.”

And by God, he had realized as he hung up, he'd do it, too, though at the moment he had not the faintest idea how. He had no money of his own put away. He was not comfortable living like that, keeping things. What money he had he'd put into the house in Charlestown. He could sell his share of it—but not fast. He'd manage something.

He'd still not had an answer or a call back from the phone at Sheila and Dawn's. Mangan's phone did not answer. Waiting in his room, he had been planning, once the midnight deadline was past, to go down, change his tire, and drive to Cohasset to look at Mangan's place. But it would be more prudent not to make a stir anywhere around the outskirts of a business most of which he did not understand. There was nothing more he could do about Russ tonight without adding to the kid's danger. He'd see what the opposition's bid was in the morning, “first thing”—around noon.

In the meantime, his disquiet was growing at the lack of response at the women's Pearl Street apartment. Fred put his sweater on under his jacket, changed his tire, and drove to Pearl Street. The same old lady slept in her nook under the stairs. He knocked on the second-floor door and got no answer. He waited and listened to the building's creaks and silences before he let himself in.

*   *   *

Fred was sitting cross-legged in the darkness on Dawn's futon when Sheila came in at two. She didn't see him and was moving through Dawn's room toward the kitchen. She was dressed in black—jeans and a black jacket—her blond hair swinging and a black leather bag over her shoulder.

“Russell's in trouble,” Fred said.

Sheila jumped, gasped, backed against the wall, and turned to run. Fred, up fast, took her wrist.

“It's Fred,” he said. “Be smart. Where's Dawn?”

Sheila said, “I know fuck-all about Dawn. She let you in? Let go, will you?” She pulled against him until she remembered that she knew him already.

“Russell's in trouble with ugly people,” Fred said.

Sheila dropped her bag on the floor and looked defiant. She stared around the room. Fred released her wrist.

“Dawn fucking took off?” she said, noticing that the majority of Dawn's things were gone. Fred had reached the same conclusion.

He sat on Dawn's futon again. Sheila gazed down at him, her hands on her hips. She was simultaneously bleary- and bright-eyed, high on something.

“I'm not afraid of you,” she said.

Fred waited.

“I've fucked with worse people,” she said.

Fred waited.

“I'm going to smoke some weed,” Sheila said, kicking her sandals off and closing the apartment door. “So I can think.”

Fred nodded for her to go ahead.

“I can sell you a joint if you want,” she said.

“I'm fine,” Fred told her.

Sheila smoked. She dropped her ashes onto the mangy carpet and rubbed them in with her bare foot.

“The people Russ is in trouble with,” she said, “was something he's doing on his own, giving Dawn and I the runaround. As far as Russ is concerned, we're just rental pussy.”

Fred watched the red glow work against the ash. The smell was that of before dawn, while you wait for them to come for you from the other side of the clearing. The fools around you, frightened, numb their senses to trick the death they fear toward pleasant adventure.

He said, “Dawn told me Russell said their troubles—his and Dawn's—would soon be over. What did he mean?”

Sheila thought. Her lean face focused on the operation of the joint until she finished it, then she stood and went to find a saucer in the kitchen to stub it out in. She dropped the charred end into a tin from her bag.

“I guess Russ has something going with Dawn,” she said, “is what it sounds like.” She shrugged her shoulders and came back and sat on the far end of the futon. “Whatever you want, let's do it. I'm tired.”