Scarlet Night (13 page)

Romano got a what’s-a-nice-girl-like-you-doing look in his eyes. The king of porn. “I may as well tell you, Miss Julie, I wondered if perhaps your Mr. Abel had bought up old canvases and painted on the reverse side of something that might prove more interesting than
Scarlet Night.”

“Poor Ralph,” Julie said. Then: “I’m absolutely certain, Mr. Romano, he had no idea what was behind that painting.”

“That was the question I was coming to. I wonder if you would mind telling us now—in your own words, as they say in the courts of law—how you came into possession…You may find it useful yourself to have a record of it.”

Julie thought for a moment. “I’ll take it from when I poked my head into the gallery before the opening, the Maude Sloan Gallery on Greene Street in SoHo.”

Romano was great: he interrupted now and then with a question and made her repeat every mention of Ginni, but he always put her back on the track at the point at which he had taken her off. He was particular about dates.

“A beautiful operation, it would seem—until Rubinoff. There’s more to it of course than we know. An appalling laxity at Customs, for example. But I wonder if the game could be improved upon—if it were possible to run it backwards.” He glanced up at Alberto.

Alberto grinned, showing a beautiful set of teeth. It was pretty hard to find all that sorrow Julie had thought was in his eyes.

“Forgive me, Miss Julie. Alberto and I are at some small advantage. We were able to make inquiries yesterday, as you see…” He indicated the newspaper clipping. “And more this morning. Consider the time difference between New York and Rome…I gather you exonerate Maude Sloan as well as the misguided artist?”

“I think so…except for backing up Rubinoff’s claim to prior purchase. I’m not sure about that.”

“An understandable lapse of honor, given the frailty of her business.”

“I figure she’s trying to make up for it: she invited Jeff and me to a party for Ginni Saturday night…”

Romano raised his eyebrows.

Julie began then to see enough of the smuggling operation to want to ask questions herself. “Is Ginni the boss?”

“Oh, yes. There’s no question of that. But didn’t you say she had backed down on her promise to attend the opening?”

“Now she thinks she’s coming before the closing. Or so she’s told her mother.”

“One wonders about that.” Romano rubbed his hands together. “I must admit to being fascinated. If the looting of Italian treasure were not such a foul offense against the people of Italy, one might regret your interruption of the play, Miss Julie.” He paused, watching for her reaction, his eyes very bright. “One might even consider letting it proceed—if one could be sure in the end of returning the Leonardo unimpaired to the Italian people.”

Julie couldn’t think of the right questions; what she was trying to do first was fix a line of demarcation between right and wrong. But certain vital qualifications were missing. If you could qualify right or wrong.

“Yes?”

“What I’m trying to figure out, Mr. Romano, is—why? I mean why would you let it proceed?”

“That is the question of the moment surely. You would not say I am an especially playful man, would you?”

“There are a lot of things I wouldn’t say at this point, Mr. Romano.”

He smiled broadly and looked up at the younger man. “Alberto, will you trust me to explain while you bring the sandwiches? We ought not to have wine. Clear heads. Iced tea or coffee. Or an orange something or other. Do you like orange, Miss Julie?”

“I do.”

“There is an assumption we must make at the outset,” Romano began when Alberto had left them. “The drawing was almost certainly stolen on consignment. In other words, the thieves knew what they wanted, where it was, and how much the consignee would be willing to pay for a work of art that would have to remain in the closet, so to speak, for very many years. We can learn a great deal, you, Alberto, and I, by working backwards from what we do know. And of course, such information as we are able to turn up can be made available to the F.B.I., Interpol, the Italian Police. The thieves and the smugglers might well be caught. I’m by no means sure that at this point a case could be made against Rubinoff…and, oh, my dear, the man—or possibly it was a woman—in whom I am interested is the collector for whom the Leonardo was stolen. That is the divine secret, known only to—whom?”

“Rubinoff.”

“And possibly one other—his counterpart in Italy. There are ways, of course, to persuade Rubinoff, but they are crude for such an exquisite adventure, and you might find them offensive.”

“You’re putting me on,” Julie said.

“Am I? Of course I am, but I am quite sincere in my conviction that it will be very difficult to get the name of the collector. I do wonder, however, if we three could not manage it.”

“And then, in order to catch him,” Julie said, “you’d have to deliver
Scarlet Night.”

“Rubinoff would have to deliver
Scarlet Night—
and the Leonardo. It would be safe, remember. It is destined for someone no less reverent than myself.”

Julie nodded tentatively.

“You are wondering at what point we involve the police.”

“Well, yes.”

“It may be shocking to you, Miss Julie, but I want to point out to you the miserable record of the police, in this country as well as abroad, in the recovery of stolen art. In this case they would be dealing with an exceedingly wealthy person—possibly a resident alien—possibly a most highly respected person, a patron of the arts with an obsession that has tempted him to do something of which no one would ever think of accusing him. There would be the question of search warrants and their service, and suppose by that time the culprit had properly secreted his treasure and it was not found, wouldn’t that be embarrassing?”

Alberto came, wheeling a service cart, and Romano got up and bounded across the room to help ease the cart over the doorstep. He inspected the open-face sandwiches. “Crab-meat, is it? And salmon. What are those?”

“Cucumber, which you always say clears the palate.”

Romano approved and looked around at Julie. “Orange drink seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?”

“Not by me,” Julie said.

“Please,” he said, indicating that Julie was to help herself to sandwiches.

Midway through lunch, he wiped his lips with his napkin and said: “Do you have a favorite charity, Miss Julie?”

“Well, yes.”

“And you, Alberto?”

“My mother and my father.”

Romano beamed. “Isn’t he a good boy?”

Alberto blushed to the earlobes.

“What I feared was,” Romano continued, “the money might be going to a bank in Switzerland or some other unsavory foreign cover. But with Ginni arriving here, I’m inclined to think there must be an American bag man.”

“Mr. Romano…”

He interrupted: “Romano, plain Romano. Please?”

“I need to know what I seem to be agreeing to,” Julie said.

“Why, to the most expedient return of an art treasure to the country from which it was stolen, and the furtherance of what we might call poetic justice. So far as Alberto and I are concerned, I think we should call it a counter-caper; you may find such a description compromising. But if you are to become a good newspaper woman, Miss Julie, it is the story of a lifetime. Believe me, it is much better than a profile of Romano. But I will give you both. There is one question, however, I think you should decide: to what extent are we to involve Geoffrey Hayes?”

“To no extent whatsoever,” Julie said. “Absolutely not.”

“You are misunderstanding. I don’t wish to involve him. I did wonder how you could escape it if, for example, you are both going to Maude Sloan’s party on Saturday night.”

“We’re not. Jeff is in West Virginia and he’s not going to be home over the weekend.”

“Then you must have an escort! Alberto is clean, well-mannered, and esteems every woman as though she were his sister. Have a slice of melon, Miss Julie. Then we must go to work.”

O
’GRADY AWOKE TO
a throbbing noise which seemed at first to be in his own head only; it came through stronger and he knew that someone was pounding on the door. If it was the police, sure, wouldn’t they say it was the police?

He called out, “Who’s there?” and got no answer, only a pause in the pounding and then its resumption, softer, as though the knocker was resting his knuckles and using the fat of his hand.

“Have you no tongue?” he shouted, trying to get his feet into his slacks. “Hold your bloody horses till a man gets his clothes on.”

He unlocked the door and threw it open. There in her green-eyed, auburn-haired glory stood Ginni, laughing at him.

“Holy God, what are you doing here?”

“Hello, Johnny.”

He retreated before her advance into the room. “Yes, well, hello.”

“I got bored waiting. My God, you look awful. Were you in a brawl?”

“I had a bit of a tumble, an accident, never mind. I can’t believe my own eyes.”

She cast a critical look around the room. “Don’t you even have a bedroom?”

“It was my mother’s.”

“But she’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Aye, but I don’t like sleeping in there. It’s…it’s crowded. I still can’t believe it. I’m going to wake up in a minute…”

“I hope so,” Ginni said. “I feel about as welcome as a cockroach.”

“Ah, love, give me a minute in the bathroom and I’ll welcome you proper.” He threw the coverlet over the daybed on his way to the bathroom, which was off the kitchen. Lucky he was to have one of his own. It wasn’t the case with every family in the building. He paused at the kitchen door. “Have you seen your mother yet?”

“Why?”

She had the look of long-distance travel about her: the knit dress and the sandals, the elegant purse. She’d have perked up his neighbors coming up the steps. “I was wondering. She’ll be surprised to see you, that’s all.”

“She knows I’m coming. You’re the one that’s surprised. Johnny, is anything wrong?” She was advancing again.

“Nothing fatal. I’m going in here or I’ll bust. I’ll be out in a minute.”

It was going to take more than a minute to sort out the implications of her arrival—to say nothing of what she was to be told. She’d find out from her mother if he didn’t tell her that
Scarlet Night
had gone astray, and it wouldn’t bode well for him if she got it there first. Was he glad to see her? He wasn’t sure. Something had retarded the customary leap of hot blood in his veins at the sight of her.

The look at himself in the mirror was a shock. He resembled a sick raccoon, his eyes in heavy circles from the bang on the back of his head. Which reminded him of where he had lost his pocketknife. He had always said the best days of his life were with Ginni, but he saw no way of making this day one of them.

He turned on the water in the fixture he had built for himself over the tub, and then called out, his mouth to the crack in the door: “I’m going to take a quick shower to wake myself up.”

If she answered, he didn’t hear her, and when he went out a few minutes later, there was no sign of her. “Are you playing games with me?” He went from room to room, all three of them. It wasn’t as though there were closets or places to hide. He looked in the wardrobe and while there selected a shirt he could wear open. Ginni loved to twiddle with the hair on his chest. He opened the front windows and looked out. The air was muggy and getting hot. No sign of her below. His watch showed one o’clock. Rubinoff had said he would call him by noon.

O’Grady picked up the phone and started to dial. He put it down when he heard a clatter in the hall and giggling. His first thought was that she was moving in with him; his heart gave one leap and stopped dead, or so it seemed: if he couldn’t sleep in his mother’s bed, he certainly couldn’t do anything else in it. Ginni, with her father’s mansion and her mother’s loft, and her goddamned love of the working class.

The door opened the width of a head. Ginni poked hers in, looking toward the kitchen. She murmured a word to someone behind her. The door opened wide. She saw O’Grady then, and he saw the two companions she was whispering with: they were young, good-looking, and male, dressed in flashy new suits and grinning at him. They dropped their suitcases inside the door and came forward to shake his hand while Ginni spouted to them in Italian and to him in English, introducing them as Tommy and Steph.

“Tommy and Steph,” he said, looking at her after letting them shake his hand. He had a sick feeling that he already knew who they were.

“The whole bloody family,” he said. Not only had she come over herself, she had brought the two who had made the museum snatch.

“Not quite. Only us kids,” Ginni said. “When the circus closed for the season last week and they were looking for something to do, I thought, why not? They’d never been to America.”

“Ginni, we’re going to have to have a serious conversation, you and I.”

“They don’t speak English.”

“I don’t know whether that’s bad or good.”

“Don’t just let them stand there, Johnny. Where’s your Irish hospitality?”

“With O’Leary in the grave,” he muttered blasphemously. Then: “Tell them to take off their coats. I’ll see if there’s anything cold in the kitchen.”

“Oh, God, it’s hot,” Ginni said, following him. She ventilated herself by plucking at the see-through knit that clutched her breasts. Then in one swoop, she crossed her arms and pulled the top to her dress over her head. Topless. Stark.

“Not in front of them, for God’s sake. I’ll get you one of my cotton shirts.”

“They’re in show business, Johnny…You’re such an old puritan.” She followed him to the sink. “How’s Ralph?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” He ran water over the tray of ice cubes to loosen them.

“Did he sell any pictures besides…?”

“Will you wait a minute, damn it. There ought to be some easy way…”

“Mother has a refrigerator that just coughs them out…I’ll bet Ralph’s living with her, right? She’s always been passionate about my rejects. The trouble was when I lived with her, she didn’t wait for me to reject them.”

“You shouldn’t talk that way about your mother even if it’s true.” He filled the pitcher with water and plopped in the ice cubes. “Bring some glasses there.”