Harmony In Flesh and Black (19 page)

The waitress brought Fred's coffee. She looked a question at Buddy Mangan. Mangan nodded. He thought a minute, smiled at Fred, and made the “fuck you” into a joke, retroactively.

“We both want something, right?” he said.

Fred nodded.

“The same thing.”

Fred nodded again.

“This Arthur Arthurian. According to the paper, the cops want him, too. We want to find him first. We can work it together. I don't know. If we get the painting for my client and you keep your guy out of it, there'll be something in it for you.”

“So I help you find Arthurian's painting,” Fred said. “Tell me about the commission.”

“Five thousand dollars. How's that sound?”

“Maybe we get a better price from my guy,” Fred said.

“You find that painting, get in touch with me first,” Mangan said. “My people do not like to dick around. You know what we're looking for, I presume?”

Mangan reached into the bib pocket of his overalls and pulled out a card for Buddy Mangan Fine Art, with the Cohasset address and phone number. The waitress delivered his beer. Mangan threw a twenty onto the table, hauled out of the same pocket.

“There's one thing bothering me,” Fred said.

“Don't worry about the dead guy,” Mangan whispered confidentially. “The stuff I hear he was into, I assure you he was asking for it. It makes it harder, though, don't it? What a business we're in! ‘Complex,' to use your own well-chosen word. And relative as all shit!” Mangan laughed and swallowed his beer.

“You want to be careful just the same,” Fred said. He stood.

“Keep in touch,” Buddy Mangan said. He waved toward the waitress.

21

Fred walked out. He had to decide whether to drop this right now.

Russ was hunting with Mangan, acting as his jackal. Russell was a dangerous fool. That academic arrogance. Triumph of the mind. Russ was a kid with no conscience, no center, no understanding of the world. Perfect for a career in Celtic bronze. As far as working with Buddy Mangan—you don't outrun a waterfall. You don't stand and argue with it, don't try to appeal to its sympathy. Either it batters and drowns you or you find your way around it by land.

When Fred got back to his room, he called Molly's and talked to the kids for a while. Mostly he talked to Sam, man to man. But he feared Sam wasn't believing him. Fred tried to explain that he was doing something that meant he had to be closer to town. He'd maybe see them Saturday, or Sunday.

Then he realized that the reason Sam didn't believe him was that he was lying. That was fair.

“Look, Sam,” Fred said. “I should level with you. The fact is, the work I'm doing has started getting risky. I'm thinking it might make a dangerous situation around your house, for your mom and you and Terry.”

“I know,” Sam said. “She'll be pissed if you're hurt.”

“I will be, too,” Fred said. “I'll be careful.”

“Good,” Sam said. “Mom says you have your gun. I'll put Terry on.”

“Miss you,” Terry said.

It was good, over the phone, almost as if he deserved it, having two children, one saying she missed him, the other one thinking it would be better if he didn't get hurt. It was a problem, though, because it meant he had to be careful.

*   *   *

Fred had the evening free. He wasn't going to lean on Russ, or follow him, or push him any more. He knew now where the Russ theme led: to Mangan. And at the moment he wanted no part of that. If Clay had the painting and Mangan the letter that authenticated it, that was an interesting problem made still more so by the corpse lying between them.

Fred called Clayton and reported that he had found a loose end to pull but wasn't convinced it was a good idea since there was something nasty on the other end. Clayton should sit tight, do nothing.

Clay was remarkably docile. “I'm reading Proust,” he said. “It's what I always thought I'd do in prison.”

Fred took off his shoes, sat in the hotel's chair, and put his feet up on the bed, looking out over the hotel's darkening river. It should have swallows darting over it, but it was still too dead.

Buddy Mangan. Prior to this Fred had only seen the man throwing his weight around in the auction room. He acted as if he'd had a deal with Smykal. Presumably he had the letter Clay needed. Had Smykal been fool enough to sell the package twice—to deliver the painting to Clay and the letter to Mangan—and then run? He might have believed he could diddle Clay, but hardly Mangan—unless he'd met only Russ.

Fred thought about it, wondering whether it would be worth it to find Russ and sit down with him. Or should he leave this where it was and tell Clay to take the loss?

Meanwhile, the tail end of Smykal's avocation flicked from under a rock Fred hadn't turned over: the photography he had been making when Fred came back for the letter, of which no evidence remained when Smykal's body lay there not long after, starting to cool in its blood and sweat.

It was a troublesome fact to know about and not resolve if Fred decided to let it be his business. His urgent instinct was to leave it.

*   *   *

Fred called Molly and asked her to come into Cambridge. Maybe she could take in a movie with him.

“Sam has a Spanish test I have to study for,” Molly said. “I can't be gallivanting around with you.”

Fred would sleep awhile, let things settle in his mind. Then he'd find dinner if he felt hungry.

He was uneasy. He wanted something to unravel the tangles in back of his eyes between what he knew, what he didn't know, what he didn't know he knew, what he knew he didn't know, and what he didn't want to know if he could help it.

He woke sometime after one, startled. Was there noise? Someone in the room? Something out in the hall?

He recalled Molly's waking in fear some nights ago to find him standing naked in her dark window. How could he not be the thing she rightly feared?

He'd wakened as you do when the phone rings, adrenaline pulling you out of sleep like a diver hauled too fast from the deep. He listened, looked into the dark. Nothing else was breathing here. Pulling open the drawer of the bureau, he slid the gun out and paced through the room. Faint light reflecting off the river came through his window. He listened at the door, opened it quickly, and stared into the empty corridor.

He was awake for certain now and wouldn't sleep again.

He went to the window. The sky had cleared. The glass was cold.

Molly had packed a sweater with his clothes. It was wool, navy blue. He put that on over a heavy shirt, with his jeans and sneakers. Smart Molly to think he'd want them. He could call her, wake her, and thank her. Then the shoulder holster and the jacket. It was a tight fit, but warm.

He eased through the hotel, still active in the bars and lobby with people putting off going to bed. He'd leave the car in the garage and walk down to Pearl Street, stretch his legs, maybe check on Russ; just take a look.

Walking through Harvard Square, still fitfully merry with stragglers, he wondered, was it sympathy that had wakened him? His feelings about Ennery had changed, as if they'd been pushed off a high cliff. He had the kid in his mind and was feeling sorry for him. Whatever his business with Mangan was, Russ was outclassed, out of his depth, suffering a big loss and trouble he could only start to guess at. On the telephone he'd come on bravely, doing his best, trying to scramble long enough to retrieve something out of the ruin. If Russ was reporting to Mangan, Mangan was calling the plays.

Fred didn't want to despise Russ. He didn't want to see him hurt. He didn't want to see that silly bow tie, so naive and defiant, so newly out of its chrysalis, smashed into permanent submission.

What had awakened him was a feeling of danger for Russell. Fred wanted to take care of the kid.

He'd have to be careful, then, and see to it that he didn't allow his judgment to be pulled out of focus by his instincts and emotions.

Outside the square, traffic, vehicular and foot, thinned out fast. Fred stretched his legs, warming up, almost everything closed now along Mass. Ave. Video King was dimly lit but empty. Cops dozed in their cruiser on Turbridge Street in front of Smykal's building. The Irish pub on Hancock Street was open. Someone was working behind closed doors at the Post Office, a few lights on. Central Square was brighter, friendlier. More people were out. It was a different population here, with more variety of color, shape, and size. It was more truly cosmopolitan, with Indians, Haitians, Arabs, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, and the multitudinous immigrants of the European countries.

Fred spotted a place still open that did barbecue, and indulged a sudden hunger. He had coffee with his sandwich. Seven or eight people were in the storefront, a couple of them drumming on a table. It was lively. The walls were painted fire-engine red. A pair of cops walked in, in uniform, joking with the people behind the counter. No two people in the place were the same color.

Fred thought, I'm playing bachelor. He'd been knocked off track by the seductive affection that had come over him in his sleep. If he'd had a son back when he was first old enough to have one, that son might be Russ Ennery's age now. Was that it? Was Fred the bull cow looking for his calf? A sympathy like that was irresponsible. You could lose men that way.

Well.

He paid the guys at the counter, told them good-night, nodded to the cops, and went on to Pearl Street. It was three in the morning now. The front door of Russell's building sagged open, as usual. No lights were on in the apartments, but one bulb burned in the stairwell. Someone was sleeping in the back of the first-floor hallway. It looked like an old lady back there, curled up. She snorted in a toothless way when he looked down at her, and curled tighter in her nest of plastic bags, stuffed with what she owned.

You couldn't tiptoe up these stairs, but people who conspired to leave their street door flapping open wouldn't be surprised by heavy footsteps on the staircase at any time of the day or night.

Fred climbed to the top floor. The kitty litter outside Russell's door had been changed. There was a saucer of milk out. Russ was in residence. Fred stood listening at the door, but he knew there shouldn't be anything to hear if Russ was sleeping.

He stopped on the second-floor landing and stood outside the apartment he'd been in this morning, talking with Dawn and Sheila. Anyone who saw him standing here would take him for a middle-aged geek, a peeper.

“Jesus Christ!” Fred said almost aloud. “What did I throw away?”

He hurried back into Central Square, found an all-night convenience store where he picked up a tiny flashlight, batteries, and heavy gloves, and headed back toward Harvard Square.

“Goddamn,” Fred said. “When's trash day?”

The night was darker and more deserted than before. The cops were still sleeping in their cruiser in front of Smykal's place on Turbridge Street, lulled by the companionship of their radio, voices, static, and the occasional flickering shadows of passersby crossing the streetlight. The insides of their windows were fogged by their breathing.

The barrels stood full, even brimming, next to Smykal's building. Piled next to them, and heaped on top, were soaked cardboard, a mattress, a busted baby stroller, and the rest. Fred put it through his mind and called the image back, selected the second barrel in from the sidewalk, figured how far down he ought to have to go, and pulled the gloves on. The street surrendered enough ambient light for him to see what he needed to.

“I'm not the only person in this town combing through people's trash to look for cans and bottles,” Fred muttered. “And watching out for needles.”

If the cops in the cruiser woke and saw him, it wouldn't cause a moment's question.

I guess they found enough to go through in his place, Fred thought, surprised that the Cambridge detectives had not sorted through the building's trash.

“What do I do for Clayton Reed?” he said aloud. “You'd call me a curator, madam.”

Two feet down and relatively dry, he found it: the Kinko's bag he'd tossed early last Saturday morning on his way to visit Smykal's corpse.

LIGHTS ** CAMERAS ** ACTION and the rest of it. LIVE ** MODELS and the number.

Fred put one of the posters in his pocket. Alone outside the dead man's place, he felt a wave of dismal kinship moving toward him: the wary fellowship of the lone man.

Live Models. A thing of beauty is a joy for about a moment. Fred had taken a thing of beauty from this place, a thing that had a genetic link with the dead man. Conchita Hill, that charming young woman, naked and frank as an apple—what had become of her? Where were the paintings she made? Her wedding dress? The basket of pins and ribbons she used, her glasses and false teeth? How had the energy and beauty of the woman, launched into the world, come to find itself finally cornered hopelessly in the dead end that was Smykal?

That thing of beauty, Conchita—everything she had done or made had vanished utterly.

*   *   *

Fred sat in his room and watched the sun think about lifting itself to ride over the river. He laid the poster next to the phone. He looked at the phone number. He looked in the book; Smykal was not listed. He looked at the number and dialed it. Four-thirty in the morning. He listened to it ring until it clicked into a cheerful recorded voice: “Lights. Cameras. Action. Our models are busy but willing. Please leave your name and number. We'll get back to you.”

The voice was Dawn's.

*   *   *

Fred tasted the fecund air of the outdoors. Mangan nagged at him. He wasn't going to sleep. The man had had the gall to hand his card over as if he were an insurance salesman. Mangan was up to his eyeballs in Fred's business. In Smykal's killing, too, maybe—not Fred's business. But it was Fred's business if Mangan had the letter, the Chase autograph. He itched to drive to the South Shore, take a look at Mangan's famous spread, walk in and look around. A move like that would have to wait, though, until after the auction. Fred should at least follow his own advice and not risk making waves until the issue of the Heade was settled. Wait. Let it wait.