Harmony In Flesh and Black (26 page)

“The piece,” Fred said, “is in my car and stays there.” He slammed the car door, locking it. He held the key while he allowed the redhead to pat him down, feel that the shoulder rig was empty. The redhead felt the cassette in his jacket pocket, pulled it out, looked it over, and put it back. Nothing dangerous there.

“Okay, Champ,” he called to the Rolls.

The man who got out was young—about thirty, Fred guessed. He was dressed as elegantly, or at least as expensively, as Clayton, but with more ostentation, more lilt and élan to lapel and shoulder pad, more
suggestion de maquereau
in the cinch at the waist of the blue suit with white stripes. He wore his black hair slicked back with no part. He was clean-shaven, with a hard, boyish face and square jaw. Fred walked toward him, and he beckoned toward the office, which Fred entered first. That left the redhead and the weasel standing outside looking like a couple of hit men.

“Sit in the car,” Fred's host yelled at them as he closed the office door. He sat behind the cluttered Formica table, Fred on the other side.

“I expected Buddy Mangan,” Fred said.

“I give a fuck what you expected. The money,” the guy said. “You have it?”

“It's here,” Fred said. “Check.” He reached toward the inside jacket pocket on the right, opening the jacket as he did so to demonstrate the flatness of its contents, but the guy wasn't worried.

Fred handed the check over. The guy took a look.

“It's a cashier's check,” Fred said.

“I see that,” the guy said. “It's made out to Fred Taylor. Who's Fred Taylor?”

“That's me.”

“They call you Arthurian.”

“I can't help that,” Fred said. “They call you Champ.”

The guy slapped the check down on the desk, disgusted. “This is shit. I can't use this.”

“It's as good as cash when I endorse it,” Fred said.

“So endorse it,” the guy said. He took a nail clipper out of his jacket pocket and started clipping his nails onto the surface of the desk.

“After I have what I came for,” Fred said. “The kid and the letter.”

“Why don't you go sit in your car a minute,” Champ said.

Fred left the check sitting on the desk with nail clippings falling on it. He walked outside and over toward the car. The redhead and the weasel were looking alert, their doors in the back of the Rolls opening, the guy in the office motioning them impatiently to stay where they were.

Fred watched Champ pick up the phone, punch numbers, talk, wait, talk, wait, talk, wait maybe four minutes, talk again, and hang up. Champ beckoned him to come back in.

“Okay. It's like this,” Champ said, still clipping. Fred noticed that the blue-and-white paisley handkerchief in the breast pocket of the man's suit matched his tie but was the inverse of it.

“Yes?” Fred said.

“The guy you want to meet, that kid Russ, he's waiting for you. At the airport, the Green Airport, five miles south of here. You know it?”

Fred knew it: a little airport for the capital of a little state.

“Pick him up. Come back. Endorse the check. Fred Taylor, how the check is made out, right?”

“The kid's at the airport?” Fred asked.

“In the waiting room. He's supposed to wait for you. We think he will.”

“And that letter,” Fred said. “Maybe I'll have a look at it before I go. Make sure everything's copacetic.”

“Copacetic?”

“Like, okay,” Fred told him.

“The letter,” the guy said. He looked carefully at his nails, left hand, right hand, before he put the clipper back in his pocket. “There's a problem with the letter.” He raised his hand to calm any objection Fred might have. “A problem, but we're working on it. I'll tell you about it when you get back.”

“Should I be talking to Mangan?” Fred said.

“Put it this way,” Champ said. “I'm the guy that's here.”

“When I get back with the kid,” Fred told him, “I want to talk with Mangan.”

“Mangan is shit,” Champ said, and he spat.

“Or the guy Mangan works for,” Fred said. “That happens before the check is good.”

Champ stood, shook out his pants creases, dusted his lapels. “You know twenty-five grand is not a lot of money for this kind of aggravation?”

Fred said, “It must be the principle of the thing.”

“When you bring the kid,” Champ said, “leave him in the car, down the road a ways. The kid's not smart. We'd as soon he doesn't see me or my car. You understand business. He never will. That's my opinion. The other matter, you talking to another party, I was you I wouldn't hold my breath.”

“Tell you what,” Fred said. “Take this tape to the guy that does the deals. Only him. Tell him to play it. Only take him a few minutes. We'll see if he wants to talk.”

“Give me an hour,” Champ said, looking at his watch and shrugging his shoulders. He dropped the cassette into his coat pocket and smoothed the bulge before he walked to the office door, Fred following. The redhead and the weasel came to meet him like dangerous puppies, leashed back.

The redhead, bulging and weaving, hunched next to Fred, menacing. “Anytime you want, buddy,” he said.

Fred told him, “See you around.”

“Fuck you,” the redhead said.

“Shut up,” Champ told his assistants. “Get in the car.”

The mechanic came out of his garage and went into the office again.

*   *   *

Fred drove to the Green Airport and parked. He left the gun under the seat. He looked at the airport entrance. It was a public place you could get to easily, fast, unnoticed; it was also a place where a gun battle was less likely to develop than in a private home, say, in Cranston.

The Green is a small but pretentious airport. It has everything you could want, but just one of it. Just one Russell sat in the waiting area. Nobody was waiting with him or even watching. He looked subdued and forlorn. He wore his student outfit still, a green tweed jacket and khaki pants, the red butterfly looking slept-in and the white shirt very dirty.

Fred sat down next to him. “My name is Fred. We've talked.”

Russ looked over and said, “It's you.” Then he more or less crumpled. Fred put a big hand on the kid's shoulder.

“Okay,” he said. “Let's go, Russ. We're halfway home.”

Nobody followed them out. Fred got Russ into the passenger seat up front, put the seat belt on him, and locked the door. The kid was in shock and barely moving. Fred walked around to the other side of the car and got in. He looked at Russ looking blank, told him, “Hold on,” and went back into the restaurant snack bar for a couple of coffees. The guy had said to give it an hour. Fred put milk and a lot of sugar into Russ's coffee, sugar being good for shock. Some take alcohol, but it's sugar they want.

Fred sat beside Russ in the front of the car, drank his own coffee, and made Russ drink some of his.

“What are you going to do to me?” Russ said.

“We're going to get through this, and then you are going to go back to the Celtic bronze. Get that Ph.D.”

Russ shuddered.

“So you can be some kind of pimp all your life,” Fred said. He watched a big plane land behind the airport building just as three little planes took off. It looked like a circus trick, the big plane breaking on a bounce into the three little ones.

Cars drove in and out of the parking lot. Russ drank some of his coffee and continued to shiver.

“That other business, blackmail and photo models and all that,” Fred said, “it's finished.”

Russ trembled and shivered. “Dawn found him in there dead,” he said. He gulped, as in the period of agonized reflection that precedes a long spell of puking. “God, it's the worst thing I ever did in my life, sneaking past all that, that dead man, and taking out his stuff. But he wasn't going to use it, and he owed me. He screwed me. He sold the painting to another guy, this Arthurian. I was just going to get enough to see me through grad school—me and Dawn. Then stop. God.”

Russ puked, Fred steering his head in time out the passenger window. Russ hung his head out, gasping.

“Did they hurt you?” Fred asked.

Russ shook his head. “They said they would,” he said. He rinsed his mouth with coffee and spat. He brought his head back into the car again. “Two guys, a big one with red hair and a knife—they thought I had the money. I never saw their money. I told them you were Arthurian. You had the painting. You had the money. You had everything. What could I do? They would have killed me.” He was miserable, looking straight ahead.

“Well,” Fred said, “here I am. My next question is, what about the letter?”

“The letter,” Russ said.

“From William Merritt Chase to Conchita Hill. It went with the painting Smykal had.”

“I was right. I knew you were Arthurian,” Russ said, his voice bitter, sullen.

“I'm trying to save your ass,” Fred said. “And it's not much of a prize. I want the letter, too.”

“I can't talk about it,” Russ said. “They said if I talk they'll cut out my heart. And then go and find my mother,” he said, “and make her eat it.”

“Suppose
I
cut your heart out?” Fred said.

“You wouldn't,” Russ said.

He might talk later, when his fear and shock diminished, but for now he was letting his animal instincts fear most the greater potential evil.

“Tell me what happened,” Fred said, “what went on between you and Buddy Mangan.”

“Buddy Mangan?” Russ asked. He trembled. He started drooling and fell over on his side. Fred went around the car, pulled him out, and laid him in the backseat. Russ curled there in a semi-doze, his eyes wide, snoring.

Fred drove back to the gas station, went past it, and parked up the road, off the edge, in some bushes. He told Russ, “You're all right here. Stay down. I have to go buy you from these people.”

He'd do that even if the letter didn't appear, would cover it himself if he had to. He'd have nothing to show for his trouble except Russ, but Russ's mother would prefer it this way.

Fred put the gun back under his arm. He didn't want to leave it in the car with Russ and have it be there when the guilt hit, if Russ was capable of that, or of the massive feeling of worthlessness that follows failure and captivity.

Fred walked back along the fields until he reached the gas station again. He went into the office. The mechanic, behind the table with a newspaper, his feet up, was going to try to make him wait outside, but Fred told him, “I'll stay here.”

The old man scratched the white whiskers on his cheeks, then shrugged and offered Fred the sports pages. Fred didn't need them. He would look out at the sky. Birds were out there. A hawk was way up, circling, celebrating nature—the innocent state of nature.

Fred watched the Silver Spur pull up again. Champ got out. The backseat was empty this time. Champ came into the office and motioned with his chin for the mechanic to get out.

“I have my piece on me,” Fred said.

“I don't give a smoking shit,” Champ said. He didn't sit down. He laid Fred's check on the desk. “After you sign that, leave it,” he said. “Put something on it so it doesn't blow away. A guy wants to talk to you.”

Still standing, he punched out a number, shading the buttons with one hand. He got an answer, said, “I'll get him,” and handed the phone to Fred. Then he stepped out and went back to the Rolls and sat out there.

31

The voice on the telephone was one Fred didn't know. It was that of an older man. He had a warm, slow manner, accustomed both to persuading and to going uncontradicted.

“Arthurian?”

“My friends call me Fred,” Fred said. “Thank you for calling.”

“I received what you sent.”

“Yes.”

“It was a surprise.”

“I thought it might be,” Fred said.

“Mangan said you must have killed the man when you took the painting. And my money.”

Fred said, “Forgive me, but I would not, myself, want to be guided by what Mangan says.”

“I appreciate your returning my money.”

“So you're under no delusion,” Fred said, “that was never your money. It's money to buy the life of a stupid man. I don't know a thing about your money. But I'm surprised you would use as ostentatious a front for your investments as Mangan.”

“I don't discuss my associates or my investments with you. Wait a minute,” the man said.

Fred could still see the hawk from where he sat. The bird was sailing, enjoying the thermals and the press of hunger that would be satisfied.

“You vouch for this film?” asked the man.

“I do.”

“Mangan says Henry Smykal was dead when he arrived.”

“Well,” Fred said, “the tape shows Smykal moving pretty well for a dead man. My theory is that Smykal made the deal with Russ and Russ told Mangan when to deliver the money, while Smykal himself was waiting to see if my guy would come through with a higher bid—which my guy did. Then Smykal informed Russ that the deal was off, and—after I picked the painting up—your boy Mangan turned up at Smykal's to discuss it with him.”

There was a short silence. Fred waited.

“How do you happen to have that film?”

“Let me ask this,” Fred said. “The letter I am looking for—the agreement I made with the person in the Rolls Royce? Do you stand by it?”

“I stand by my agreements. There has been a difficulty.”

Fred waited. The hawk could move while it waited.

“For the time being, on account of a misunderstanding, I am not able to send anyone for the letter.” The man paused. “I like things simple,” he said. “This has not been simple. I listened to bad advice. Bear with me.”

He paused again. “Why did you send the videotape to me? I imagine other copies exist?”