Hostile Witness (10 page)

“Isn’t everyone?”

“Not everyone. But you want to know why, Vic? All right. Because my instinct tells me you’d sell your mother for a hundred bucks. Is my instinct right?”

“Actually, yes,” I said, turning back to the bar to pick up my drinks. “But then you don’t know my mother. In any event, what’s any of it to you? I don’t see your name on an indictment.”

“Yeah, well, I got lucky.” He reached over my shoulder for his drink. “And so did you. But I’m naturally lucky. Are you naturally lucky, Vic?” He raised the bourbon up as if he were toasting me and then swallowed half the drink in one swallow. “You better hope so.”

I blinked twice as I watched him go.

I handed Beth her beer and together we wandered through the open galleries. It was a treat to have the museum to ourselves, and even though there were plenty of people, that it was a private party made it feel like we had the museum to ourselves. We were drifting in the museum’s Impressionist gallery, paintings by Renoir, Degas, paintings by Mary Cassatt, who had been born in Pennsylvania but had been clever enough to leave. Then we passed from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Shadowy figures from Jasper Johns, a collage in flames by Rauschenberg. I paused at a stark painting of a grand and empty courtyard, slashing shadows, a bare statue, repetitive arches, and in the background just the top of a train belching smoke into the empty air. There was a terrifying emptiness about the painting, a palpable sense of loss.

“Giorgio de Chirico,” said Beth, reading from the little plaque on the wall.

“It should be called ‘My Life,’” I said.

“Now what do you know about de Chirico’s life?” asked Beth.

“Who’s talking about de Chirico?”

“Well, look who’s over there,” said Beth.

I turned to see a tall thin woman in silk pants, leaning back, hips thrust forward like a model’s. She was strikingly beautiful, blue eyes, straight narrow nose. Her black hair swept out with the unnatural wings of a television anchorwoman. She was with a tall, gray-haired man who looked perfectly natural in his expensive tuxedo and who was not her husband. I knew that because I knew her husband, I hated her husband terribly, and never before had I seen the gray-haired man who now put his arm over her shoulders and brushed the top of her head with his lips.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said softly.

“Don’t you think we should say hello?”

“Let’s go. Please.”

“Oh, Lauren,” said Beth in a high-pitched call, loud enough for the woman to hear. She turned, and her eyes brightened into a smile. With her adulterous friend in tow she came to us, leading with her hips, walking across the room as if it were a runway at a Paris opening. She reached out her arm to me, wrist cocked down. Two thick gold bracelets, stamped with runes and encrusted with diamonds, slid bangling down on her thin forearm. “Why, Victor,” said Lauren Amber Guthrie, wife of my ex-partner Guthrie. “I’m surprised to see you here. You don’t usually come to these sorts of affairs.”

“Hello, Lauren,” I said.

“Beth dear,” said Lauren in her soft breathy voice. “What a cute little dress.”

“You know, Lauren,” said Beth, “I’ve been looking but I haven’t seen Guthrie here tonight.”

“I don’t think he’s coming,” said Lauren. “I’m here with Rodolpho. Rodolpho dear, meet two dear friends, Victor and Elizabeth.”

“Charmed,” said the gray-haired man in a voice twisted by a strong Italian accent. “I justa love this…” He gestured to all the paintings, struggled to find the right word, and then shrugged. “This,” he said.

“Don’t give up on the tapes,” said Beth. “They take time.”

“Rodolpho is in silk,” said Lauren. “He comes from Como.”

“Como, Texas?” asked Beth.

“Italia. I’m from Italia.”

“She knows, dear,” said Lauren. “She is just being funny.”

“Ah, yes. Now I see.” He laughed deeply and falsely.

“Where’s Guthrie tonight, Lauren?” I asked.

“I really don’t know.”

“Don’t you think you should know where your husband is?”

“Unwatched husbands sometimes stray,” said Beth.

“How would you know, dear?” said Lauren.

“Husband?” said Rodolpho.

“He’s hardly ever violent,” I said. “Except when he becomes jealous.”

“Husband? Do I know about this husband?”

“I could use another champagne, Rodolpho,” said Lauren. “Be a dear?”

“Of course. But we musta talk about this husband, yes?”

“Tonight, yes. Now hurry,” she said, her breathy voice turning breathless. “I’m so very thirsty.”

We watched Rodolpho as he walked with mincing European steps out of the gallery on his way to the bar.

“I met him at a reception at the Italian consulate,” said Lauren. “You’d be surprised how many Italians are in
Philadelphia, it’s like a glorious, sophisticated subculture in the midst of the Philistines.”

“That you have made it your mission to entertain,” said Beth.

“Be nice, dear, and I’ll introduce you to it.”

“Don’t you think you should be more discreet in your infidelity?” I asked.

“I have been, Victor. I’ve been the soul of discretion. But things have changed.”

“You’ll introduce me?” asked Beth.

Lauren looked Beth up and down, examining her closely. I expected her to stick a finger in Beth’s mouth to check her teeth. “There’s a serious young man, Alberto.” She rolled the “r” in Alberto. “An architect working with Venturi. Dirt poor but very handsome. Give me your number, dear, and I’ll pass it on.”

“How have things changed?” I asked.

“We’re separated, Victor. I moved out. Well, really Sam moved out, but I would have been the one to leave if my father hadn’t bought the house for us.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I lied. “How’s Guthrie taking it?”

“Not well, I’m afraid.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, fighting the smile.

Beth was rifling through her small red handbag.

“And Victor,” said Lauren. “You know that crack about the jealous husband, it was not so far off.”

“Guthrie?”

“He can be brutal. Violent. An absolute beast. I should have known from the first. Anyone who sweats as much as he.”

“You married him,” I said accusingly.

“I thought it was charmingly masculine at the start, those subtle beads of perspiration. He is very athletic, you know. But it kept on coming. Like Niagara Falls. Finally I had him go to the doctor about it, but there was nothing to be done.”

“And so Rodolpho,” I said.

“For tonight, at least. Have you smelled him? He wears the most marvelous scent.”

“Turn around, Victor,” said Beth. I did as she ordered and, using my back as an easel, she scratched out something on a business card. “My home number’s on the back,” said Beth as she handed the card to Lauren.

“You should have two different cards, dear,” said Lauren. “One professional, one personal. That’s what I do.”

“But you don’t work, Lauren,” I said.

“Now that I’m suddenly single, I’ve gone into fashion.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “The destitute divorced woman, abandoned by her husband, forced to scratch out a desperate living on her own.”

“Close enough,” said Lauren. “Oh, here comes Rodolpho. If you’ll both excuse me, you’ve worried him so. I need to calm him.”

“You won’t forget,” said Beth.

“Alberto,” said Lauren, again rolling the “r,” her eyes widening with the excitement of it all. “Victor, now that things have changed, give me a call. I’ve missed you.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Oh, do, Victor. We had such fun.
Ciao.
” And off she swept, hips forward, right arm raised, her gold runic bracelets jangling together on her arm, off to intercept the worried Rodolpho and lead him on to another gallery.

“Alberto,” said Beth, rolling the “r.”

“Poor old Guthrie,” I said.

“Yes, Guthrie the beast. All that money,” mused Beth. “That wonderful old name. Gone.”

“But at least he had everything for a time.”

“What about you? You were with her first. What happened?”

I shrugged. “She was slumming when she met me, looking for fun. She said she found me too serious. It was his basic insincerity that first attracted her to Guthrie. And
she liked the way he hit on her all the while she was sleeping with me.”

“What else are partners for?”

“Well, at least it’s working out all right in the end.”

We strolled through the rest of the twentieth-century wing, ending in a room dominated by the work of Marcel Duchamp. There were tiny surreal sculptures, a wall of cubist paintings, visual jokes on paper, a glass vial of 50 cc of Parisian air in a case by a window looking out over the front courtyard. In the rear of the room, in its own alcove, was a wooden door with a peephole. I looked. Through a hole in a brick wall I saw a faceless woman, lying on her back, naked in the straw, her vagina jagged as a wound. The woman was holding a lantern that illuminated the scene brightly. It was a wildly disconcerting view through that little hole and I was slightly off balance when I left the alcove and bumped into Veronica. Chester Concannon was with her, still playing the beard.

Veronica was wearing a short silk dress, her head purposefully facing away from us, scanning the walls, showing off her long neck and gentle gentile profile, as I made the introductions. When I mentioned her name her head slowly turned until she stared me straight in the eye. “Hello, Mr. Carl.”

“Pleased to meet you, Veronica,” said Beth with an amused voice that Veronica ignored.

“How’s that landlord of yours?” I asked.

“Still a problem,” she said. “So tell me, Mr. Carl, what do you think of this painting?”

She gestured to a large canvas on the wall. It was painted in different shades of red and brown and tan, a flurry of abstract shapes. I walked over to it and bent down to read the label. “Duchamp:
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.
1912.” I stood back and could just make out the figure on the stairs and track her movement downward and to the right.

“Interesting,” I said.

“I had a boyfriend once who told me I looked like that,” said Veronica.

I stared into her eyes for an instant and then turned back to the painting. “It’s sort of abstract,” I said. “Which makes it hard to tell.”

“It’s easier if you see me with my clothes off.”

She was smiling at me, I could tell, even with my back to her. When I faced her again I smiled back and so we smiled at each other.

“Do you want to join us after the fund-raiser, Victor?” asked Chester, interrupting our smiling. “You too, Elizabeth. We’re meeting at Marabella’s.”

“Thank you, Chester,” I said. “But I should get some sleep this week, don’t you think? Can I have a word, though?” I motioned him away from the two women so we could talk confidentially. “Tell me a little about your friend Chuckie Lamb,” I said quietly.

“Oh, Charles is all right,” he said. “He’s smart as hell, but peculiar, too. Very loyal to the councilman, very loyal to his friends, devoted to his mother. But if you catch him wrong he can be difficult to take.”

“I must have caught him wrong.”

“Then you’re in pretty good company.”

“Why wasn’t he indicted with you and Jimmy?” I asked. That was the question I was really interested in. Chuckie said it was luck that kept him out of it, but federal prisons are full of guys who thought luck would keep them out of it.

“They didn’t have any direct evidence about him at the time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, you see, he never met with Ruffing or talked to him on the phone. It turned out Charles had only one meeting.”

“And let me guess,” I said. “That meeting was with Bissonette.”

“That’s right. And with Bissonette unable to testify they didn’t have anything about Charles they could put before the grand jury.”

“Quite the convenient little coma for Chuckie,” I said.

“You could say that,” said Chester, slowly, like an idea was starting to form. He looked at me for a moment. “Don’t get into any trouble, Victor.”

I shrugged.

Then he called out to Veronica, “Look, Ronnie, we have to go. He wants us there first.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Carl,” said Veronica as she turned to follow Chet.

“Nice meeting you too,” said Beth to her back.

I watched them go, well, actually watched her go, watched the way she shifted inside her shift, and then turned back to the Duchamp painting. I studied its lines and angles ever more closely, and found them suddenly very sensual.

“That’s a sweet little girl,” said Beth.

“The councilman’s mistress,” I said.

“Aaah,” she said. “And dangerous to boot. When’s that trial of yours scheduled?”

“A week from Monday.”

“What are you doing to prepare?”

“I have some documents to look at, but other than that, nothing, which is exactly what my client wants me to do.”

“But that would leave the whole trial to Prescott.”

“Do you think she looks like this?” I asked, still looking at the canvas, feeling an erection stir. “I’m beginning to see the resemblance.”

“Have you ever thought, Victor,” said Beth with an audible sigh, “that the reason Prescott gave you the hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar settlement in
Saltz
was so that you would take this case and then stay out of his way as he screwed your client? Did you ever consider that?”

That brought me away from the painting. “You’re saying he bought me off?”

“I was just bringing up a possibility. I mean, of all the lawyers in all the firms in this overlawyered city, why did he pick you to step in to represent Concannon?”

“He hired me because he thinks I’m a good lawyer and a smart enough guy to stay out of his way and he’s right. They gave me a fifteen-thousand-dollar retainer, they’re paying me two-fifty an hour, and there has been the promise of more good things to come. Whatever he wants me to do, I’m going to do.”

“You just don’t get it, do you, Victor,” said Beth. “They’re never going to let you join their little club.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond because just then a flash of red shot through the window onto the wall, and then blue and then red again. There was a police car now outside in the front courtyard, and then two more, their lights all spinning. Five cops and a man in a tan raincoat stepped out of the cars and headed up the stairs to the entrance of the museum.