Harmony In Flesh and Black (17 page)

A stealthy knock troubled the door. Clay jumped. Then he said, “Coffee. For you. I don't require stimulants. And my breakfast.”

Fred took the tray at the door and put it between them on a glass table that reflected, in the morning light, the blues and golds of the decor.

Clay pursed his lips and gestured toward the plated pot of coffee, poured orange juice and Perrier into a glass for himself, and said, “The police having that name, and looking for that person, Fred, does place us in an ambiguously anomalous moral position.”

He'd been rehearsing that.

“You get a prize, do you,” Fred said, “if you say it fast perfectly five times?”

Clay took a sip of his chosen beverage.

“I've got a line that may give me entry to the back door of the Smykal story,” Fred said, “in this Russell Ennery, who was doing research on your painting of Conchita Hill. But we can't afford games anymore, Clay, since the cops want you, and they assume Smykal was killed for that painting.”

“That's ridiculous,” Clay said. “People aren't killed for paintings! He didn't have the thing. I have it. I bought it.”

“Their theory is that you are Dr. No,” Fred said. “If they have a chance, they'll prove it. If they connect you to Arthurian, it will take them about five minutes to get a warrant to go through your place and find the painting—and about a half hour more to track you here. Since you paid cash, you can't even prove you bought the painting. It was a huge amount of money, Clay.”

Clay twitched and suffered. He didn't want anyone knowing his business. He must be fun for his accountant.

He said, being reasonable, “I know, Fred.”

Fred looked at it. “It's not too much to kill a person for, though, Clay. It's an attractive prize, money like that. Much more attractive than a Smykal. At the same time it's not much, would you say, for a Chase of that period, of that subject?”

“It's unsigned. And it's what the man wanted.” Clay was now on territory he understood. He spread marmalade on a roll, tasted, and nodded to himself. “In fact, he got three thousand more than he wanted. And he held out a significant portion of what I paid for, don't forget. He cheated me of the letter, which I still lack.”

Right. The welsher deserved the hammer treatment.

“Without that letter, I'm going to have a time convincing Pisano it is by Chase,” Clay continued.

“But how did anyone get your name?” Fred mused. “The Arthurian name. If the police have it, who else does? Now, obviously, everyone who gets the newspaper.”

Clayton went green. Marmalade trembled on the end of his knife. Fred pulled his chair closer and made Clayton look him in the eye. “One thing, Clay, is, on the off chance that someone outside the benevolent forces of the law connects you through that painting to the killing, we have to worry about your neck as well.”

“That may be,” Clay said. He put his knife down and fingered his neck absently.

They looked at each other.

“Short of publishing our business,” Clay said, “what do you suggest, Fred?”

Fred said, “I'm going to lean on that kid, to see what he knows, who he knows, and how he knows it.”

“Before you leave, Fred, I should tell you,” said Clay hesitantly, “this new development may impinge negatively on a small independent effort of my own.”

Fred, standing to leave, turned back. “What have you done now, Clay?”

“A ruse occurred to me by which I thought we might safely obtain my letter. I could not just sit idle. This was before you put your finger on the student yesterday.”

Clay sipped from his beverage and almost smiled. He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands, doing his imitation of the
Brahmin
by Gaugengigl. “I placed an advertisement that may bear fruit.”

“Advertisement, for God's sake?”

“In the personal columns of both this morning's
Globe
and
New York Times:
‘Wanted. Artist's autograph letter of value only to me. Cash reward. No questions asked. Reply in confidence. A. Arthurian.' The only problem I see is with my having used that unfortunate pseudonym again.”

Fred stared.

“Don't worry,” Clay said. “I arranged that all and any replies should be forwarded and held for Arthurian's arrival at the Ritz. You will make suitable arrangements about that later.”

It was a move of such grotesque stupidity that Fred could only admire it as one would a winged turd: a natural wonder, but who needs it?

“Clay,” he protested. “For God's sake, stay out of the cloak-and-dagger business. You haven't been to the right schools.”

Clay set his jaw.

“Don't leave this room,” said Fred. “Don't arrange any more surprises. Don't, for God's sake, go near the Ritz. Let me take care of this part of the operation.”

He stormed out before he killed the idiot himself, hearing Clay call out behind him, “Be careful, Fred. Watch out for yourself.”

*   *   *

The rain was colder, heavier. Fred drove through it into Cambridge. He had the .38 under his arm now. He hated to do it, hated seeing the stakes raised like this over a goddamn picture.

It was a beautiful goddamn picture. Representing perhaps forty dollars' worth of materials in its day and some daring good times for a couple of young artists, La Belle Conchita and Chase, this labor of pleasure, faith, and love, liberated from the fumbling grasp of a half-assed residuary legatee of a pornographer, was still on the outskirts of a trade in squalid adventure.

He thought of Molly and of how sometimes, when they were making love, she'd fondle one of his scars absently until she recollected what it was. Then she'd draw in her breath and look wounded. He couldn't stand to be at Molly's while he was carrying a weapon. He didn't want to be around her kids with the gun. He did not want, over there, to be a man of violence. He'd feel he was betraying all of them.

Meanwhile, he needed a place to work from where he could have a telephone, get messages, and have a dry space to operate. He booked a room at the Charles Hotel. He paid in cash and registered as Fred, a simple alias. He didn't want to be at Clay's to answer questions if anyone connected Clay to the Arthurian name.

They gave him a large pink room from which he could look out onto the river. He called Molly. He told her what he was doing and why and asked her to bring some of his clothes to the library with her, and he'd pick them up later.

“I can't bring a weapon into your house,” Fred said, meaning, I can't be in your house myself because I'm danger and ashamed of it. But he wouldn't say that.

“Sorry,” he added.

Molly said she was sorry, too. Maybe she'd see him when he came to the library for his things. Please take care.

19

Fred was working the secretaries at Harvard by nine o'clock.

Russell Ennery was indeed a graduate student in the fine arts, studying with people in archaeology as well, doing a thesis on Celtic bronzes in Iberia. Russell was twenty-four and had a home address in Maryland. He had attended New York University as an undergrad. Fred confirmed the address on Pearl Street and jotted down the names of graduate advisers. He couldn't get access to a transcript but could infer, reading between the lines, that Russell hadn't qualified to be a teaching fellow. Hence the job at Video King, which paid better and likely gave him access to a better class of people.

Fred now had enough to take over to Pearl Street. He drove to Central Square, the wad of lethal metal itching under his left arm. He'd look like law down here with his sport coat, his necktie, and the bulge.

Fred parked where he could watch Ennery's building. Pearl Street was busy and multiculturally seedy. Less in the way of blossoms, saying spring, put up a front against generic trash. At about ten, nobody having come out of the building and with nothing else of interest developing, Fred went in. Russell Ennery's apartment was on the third floor. The stairs were wood and chipped linoleum, smelling of mouse and roach and disinfectant and several varieties of smoke. He reached a dingy hall at the top of the stairs, with brown paint, a flaking ceiling, bike tires in the hallway, and a tray of kitty litter. Some extra had been generally kicked around the floor and squeaked under his shoes.

Fred knocked on Ennery's door, using a brisk, competent knock, like a narc's. There was no answer.

Fred called, “Russell?”

No answer. He tried the door. Nothing. He could come back and pop it later if he had to.

Fred went down one flight to the second floor and knocked. He heard movement inside the apartment, a scattering scramble and the sound of a toilet flushing. “Just a minute,” came a hoarse voice from within: female, he thought.

He stood on a green rubber mat that told him he was welcome. He looked at the sprig of dead hemlock on the door at eye level. The toilet flushed again inside. Footsteps came up to the door. A flicker of movement clouded the spy hole hidden in the hemlock. Fred stepped back and smiled. The hoarse voice, definitely female, said from inside, “Who is it?”

“I'm looking for Russ Ennery,” Fred said. “He lives in the building, upstairs. He's not home.”

The door opened narrowly on a chain, making enough space to reveal a young woman in a green terry-cloth robe. Her black hair was wet, and there were beads of water on her face, hands, and bare legs.

“You have something for Russell?”

“No,” Fred said. He waited.

“A message, anything like that?” the girl asked.

Fred shook his head.

“I can't help you. Sheila can help you,” the woman said. “Maybe. I'm Dawn. I can't.”

Dawn shouted, “Sheila,” turning her head. She held the green robe closed. The room behind her was dim. Its furnishings were rudimentary and gave the impression of having been passed from one generation of students to another. The smell of pot was definite but mild; to Fred, from past association, it was the smell of mortal panic.

“Sit down,” Dawn said. “If you want. On the stairs, buddy. A guy looking for Russ,” she shouted into the apartment behind her, closing the door on him again.

Fred sat on the top step, listening.

“Sheila will be out in a minute,” Dawn said, opening the crack in the door again and releasing the chain. “You might as well come in. If you're a friend of Russell's. Are you a friend of Russell's?” She looked doubtful.

“Not yet,” said Fred, following her green robe inside.

The room was sparsely furnished with yard-sale clutter and dingy carpet. A double futon lay in one corner, with a dirty Indian-print spread across it, and tumbled blankets. Clothes were piled next to it in a heap. A closed door on the left had water running behind it. Bathroom. Shower. To the right the room opened into a small passage kitchen, which must lead to another room. Sheila's bedroom? Aside from a large mirror, there was nothing on the walls at all, other than old tan paint on top of wallpaper.

“My futon's the only place to sit,” Dawn said. “I don't care if you don't. I'm not here much. I'm late.”

“Students, are you?” Fred said.

He sat on an edge of the futon. Dawn raised the blinds on the room's two windows and let light in—not much of it, since the next building was only an arm's length away. She held the green robe tightly together when she moved, as if she were naked under it.

“Sheila was, I guess. Maybe still is. I dance,” she said.

“What kind of dance?”

Dawn stood looking down at him, leaning against the wall between the windows. “Modern dance,” she said vaguely. “Like Twyla Tharp? Gestural. Something like that.”

“It's a hard life, dancing.”

“So life is hard, the man says. What else is new?” Dawn turned toward the bathroom door and called again, “Sheila! I have to go.”

She chose articles of clothing from the heap next to Fred—blue jeans and underpants—and put them on, carefully, primly, under the robe. She turned and let Fred see a glimpse of naked back, dropping the robe and shimmying into a black sweatshirt. She stepped into black boots with high heels.

“I'm leaving,” Dawn shouted. She pulled a shoulder bag out of the heap of clothing and, running out, told Fred, “She'll be with you in a minute, buddy.”

Fred listened to the shower running, enveloped in the aura of untidy female.

In five minutes Sheila and a cloud of steam came out of the shower. She was the blond girl Fred had seen yesterday talking to Russell Ennery on the sidewalk near Video King.

She had nothing on except for a pink towel wrapped around her hair. She had long legs like a horse's and reasonable muscle tone, breasts round as fruits, and skin pinker than beige.

“What the fuck…,” she said, seeing Fred. She doubled back into the bathroom and came out again wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a man's, with blue stripes and a button-down collar. She'd taken the towel off her head and left her long wet hair straggling.

“Jesus Christ,” Sheila said, looking at Fred. “What do you want? Fucking Dawn let you in?”

Fred stood up.

“Don't touch me,” Sheila said, backing into the door.

“I'm looking for Russell,” Fred said. “That's all.”

Water commenced staining through the shirt, showing the upper contours of her breasts, and their nipples.

“You want Russ, go to his place,” Sheila said. “Upstairs.”

She moved toward the apartment's front door.

“I want Russ,” Fred said. “But for now you'll do, Sheila. Russell's not home.”

Sheila fidgeted with the bottom of the shirt. “Let me get some pants on, for God's sake.” She looked skittish.

Fred said, friendly, “As long as I can't find Russ and you're his friend, I'd hate for you to disappear before we have a chance to get acquainted.”