Gypsy in Amber

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Sloan smiled reassuringly while his eyes betrayed ignorance. The two men were equals now, even friends, until Sloan could appropriate the odd visitor’s knowledge. The remark that it was simply an ‘old method’ was too vague for him to accept.

  ‘You collect yourself,’ the host prompted.

  ‘Study. I’m afraid I don’t have the money to surround myself with beauty the way you have, so I content myself with scholarship. From time to time, I advise beginning collectors.’

  Sloan gave another of his smiles of understanding. There were so many people trying to buy their way into society with the purchase of a Chippendale chair or two, usually at inflated prices. His visitor was getting more and more interesting.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Roman said. ‘Here I am taking up all your time when I was about to go. Thanks very much for the wine; the Loire grapes are my favorite. Now I will be on my way. It’s a long drive back to the city.’

  ‘Wait,’ Sloan said as if something had just occurred to him, although he’d been thinking about it for the past minute. ‘Have you got a room in Boston?’

  ‘No,’ Roman admitted. ‘I just dropped by today because this is my last week with the museum. They’ll be sending someone else out next week.’

  That was enough for Sloan.

  ‘Then I insist. You must stay here for the weekend. The director is an old friend of mine, and the least I can do is cooperate, and I’d find it a pleasure to show the collection to someone I know would appreciate it. I’ll have the guest room readied. The servants will bring your luggage from your car. You have no other plans for the weekend?’

  It was more an order than a question, but Roman displayed the decent amount of hesitation.

  Sloan winked. ‘She’ll wait. They always do.’ It was meant as a masculine insight, though it had that inevitable element of upper-class fantasy for the sexual life of ‘other types.’ How many times had Roman run into that myth when he was on the road with a kumpania, the gaja gaping on the sides of the road, nudging each other and not bothering to whisper about the Gypsy girls with their precocious breasts and bright petticoats – ‘The darker the cherry, the sweeter the meat’ – totally unaware and probably not caring that there was no female more chaste than a Gypsy? The girl who gave away her virginity gave away her seat by the Romany fire.

  ‘Okay,’ Roman said. ‘If you’d really like me to.’

  After another glass, a maid came and showed Roman to his room. His suitcase was already in it, opened on the bed, and his toilet kit was in the bathroom. He washed under his arms and shaved and laid himself out over the bed. The whole thing would have been easier to reconstruct if he’d been Isadore. He stared blankly at the dun-colored ceiling so tastefully in place with the Georgian decor of the room. Nanoosh. A Chippendale highboy. A body in several parts, making a murder out of an accident. A funeral with Madame Vera.

  Hoddinot Sloan. A man very interested and fairly knowledgeable about antiques. Wealthy, from what? The murder of whales, slaving, rum? It didn’t matter; money, it was universally acknowledged, got a polish with age. A snob, a man who found it difficult to deal with people. The tweed jacket and the lemon turtleneck, the banker’s profile, the signet ring with the crest, were just more furniture to surround himself with. A possessive man, a man who should have gone to New York outraged at the loss of the van’s delicate cargo. An ultimate gajo, who for some reason was not acting like one.

  What had he said? That he was not in the mood for meeting people. Sloan wasn’t the sort of man who stayed home to be alone with his thoughts. He was expecting something. Not someone, or he would never have invited a stranger to stay. The ploy with the récamier was barely enough to secure an invitation as it was. Sloan’s greed had swung it. It wasn’t strong enough to get him out, to go down to New York, but it was enough to have a stranger in his house for some information on the free. An unpleasant man, Hoddinot Sloan.

  A maid knocked on the door to report that dinner was being served. Roman dug a fresh shirt out of his suitcase, put it on and topped it with a tie.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘There you are,’ Sloan said with an air of discovery as Roman entered the dining room.

  There were three places set at the table, Royal Worcester on San Dominican mahogany. The dining room was similar to the others Roman had seen with the addition of a patriotic wooden eagle.

  Sloan removed a bottle of white wine that had been perspiring in a silver basket and filled their glasses. As a bit of before-dinner conversation, he asked Roman whether he could identify the various pieces in the room. It was a simple, tedious task, but Roman did it with a smile. After all, what else could Sloan imagine that they had in common? Loving? Hating? A slaughtered girl? It was an intimation of Roman’s social standing that Sloan didn’t bother to suggest who the third diner might be until she appeared.

  ‘Oh Hillary, we were wondering where you were. This is Mr Grey; he’s staying over for the weekend. My daughter.’

  Hillary had a cool hand, like the glass of wine. Roman had seen her picture in the living room in a frame from Biddle, Banks and Bailey. As she sat down, she still seemed to be in a sterling silver frame. Her hair was long and so fair as almost to be white. She’d inherited her father’s eyes of ice blue and a full mouth from someone else. She was dressed in a chic blouse, pants and an embroidered leather vest. Roman guessed her age at nineteen.

  ‘Something new,’ she said as a greeting.

  ‘I’m glad to meet you, too,’ Roman said. Before she could take umbrage, he gave her a wide smile of brilliant teeth against his dark face.

  She looked from Roman to her father trying to figure out the connection. ‘Well, Father, I thought I knew all your friends.’

  Sloan blushed. ‘Mr Grey is here to compile a list of the collection for the Metropolitan Museum.’

  ‘Ah.’ It was neat and informative. She’d not only put her father down with an ease that showed practice but also put the visitor in his place. There was an embarrassed pause while she innocently smoothed her napkin over her lap.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ her father said suddenly, as if it were a good idea.

  The supper was overcooked scrod and a salad, the sort of meal designed for a middle-aged man watching his weight. Roman grew sympathetic to Sloan’s digestion as the girl led the conversation from one sore subject to another in a soft, sweet voice. She was like a surgeon probing with a scalpel not to dispel pain but create it.

  ‘My father’s a very good collector. I’m so happy your museum is becoming aware of that fact. I bet there’s not another man in Boston with his eye for value. Remember the time’ – she turned for aid from her father – ‘when that old Irishwoman asked you to look at that chest. You know, she’d been a maid to one of the Cabot families her whole life, and all she got out of it was a dirty old bureau. She was practically in rags, you told me. Anyway, Father took one look at it and knew it was a, what, a William and Mary, that’s right. He paid her fifty dollars for it, brought it here and cleaned it, and sold it two months later for three thousand dollars.’

  She slid a fish knife down the flaccid spine of the scrod.

  ‘My friends are all against the war. I mean, half of them are in Canada, and the rest are trying to break a toe or something before their physical rather than let themselves be turned into cannon fodder. So far as I’m concerned that’s a lot braver than just letting yourself be inducted. The silly boys aren’t as original as they think, though. Father was just as smart as they are now and it was a lot more unpopular in World War II. It took real nerve claiming a bad back then, don’t you think?’

  By the time she was finished she’d picked her father as clean as the fish. Sloan’s eyes had the watery look of a man who was knocked out and merely refused to fall. The unusual aspect in the girl’s attack, what made it so effective, was an absence of any feeling. She didn’t act from betrayal or pique the way a daughter should. It reminded him of the absent presence in the framed pictures. There were no pho
tos of her mother in the house. The ones of Sloan and the girl together belied the idea that he ever held her on his lap for anything but portraits. He was the sort of father who sent his daughter from one boarding school to another, probably showing up late if at all on Father’s Day and then making contact with the other fathers instead of with Hillary Sloan. Now he was paying for it.

  She wasn’t just a girl anymore. Roman could feel her physical presence, the line that led down her cheek to a stylishly long neck to the casually unbuttoned blouse and the fact that no bra restrained her breasts as she twisted back and forth from her father to the fish. At the same time he was aware that she was studying him. It was unusual enough for a man like him to be sitting across from her whether he was from the museum or not. The few electric shocks she directed at him – ‘I’ve always supposed that immigrants understood better how bestial this country is’ – got no reaction, and this mystified her further.

  Roman began feeling sordid for having insinuated himself into the Sloan household to hear a dinner conversation that, except for its degree, was taking place in a million other American homes at the same time. He had to remind himself that it was necessary. The vilos, the old witches of Romania, could work magic on a person only when they had something of his – a fingernail, a hair. Something to make him concrete. Roman didn’t spend on magic, but he understood the truth of the system. He needed the frigid, arrogant pulse of the Sloans, or else he would be blind the way he had been on the highway trying to decipher a stretch of road and a handful of photographs. He was no detective. This was the only way he could work, the way the Romany had always worked.

  Hillary was talking about a rock festival. Sloan listened with a frown of disapproval. As she spoke, she raised her arms above her head, the imprint of her nipples through her blouse adding another level of intimidation. Sloan looked aside.

  Roman watched with interest. Few gaja understood the physical language between people, and the girl herself probably didn’t know what a good job she was doing of undermining her father. When her luxurious stretch was done and she saw that Roman had not diverted his eyes to his lettuce, she stared straight at him. His eyes still didn’t fall.

  ‘That’s a beautiful vest,’ Roman commented. ‘Kid leather had a religious significance during the Middle Ages. Especially black kid.’

  ‘Oh, she has one of those, too,’ Sloan said, eager to tell what he had given her.

  ‘Really? You’re an expert on any number of things,’ Hillary said. He watched the pupils of her blue eyes narrow with dislike. ‘I guess that’s a lesson. Those who can’t afford things know the most about them.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s the truth.’ Roman smiled disarmingly.

  The dessert came, glass bowls of sherbet. Sloan took small, disheartened scoops of his. His daughter took one large spoonful, praised it extravagantly, and let the lemon-colored ice melt into a puddle of conspicuous consumption. Roman enjoyed his completely.

  ‘Have you got reservations up in the White Mountains?’ Sloan asked. It was a last attempt to establish his role as patriarch.

  ‘Reservations at a rock festival would be a little illogical, Father,’ Hillary said, as if she were explaining affairs to a slow child. Her nostrils dilated, and her fingers rose a quarter inch from the table.

  ‘Cigarette?’ Roman asked. His hand held out his pack of Gauloises to her. Because that was what she had been thinking of and what her minute gestures told Roman, she took it before she could stop herself. ‘They’re strong things, but they’re all I have,’ he said.

  To give back the cigarette would be a confession of weakness. Hillary accepted his light.

  ‘Très chic,’ she said with a motion of the Gauloise.

  ‘Très cheap,’ Roman told her.

  Sloan attempted to drag the conversation back to the festival. His daughter led him on effortlessly. There had been a change in the relationship between the girl and the visitor. She showed off for Roman. He sat back and watched them, taking in the polite Sloan ferocity, their Royal Worcester, their inlaid mahogany prosperity, their worm-eaten ancestry, their hair and fingernails.

  As an exercise in imagination, he placed a dismembered body on the table in between the father and daughter and tried to see if it fit.

  Chapter Nine

  It wasn’t a good night for sleeping. The bed was made of pillows, and the Sloans spun around a lightless antique shop. He couldn’t make out what they said. Finally, he slept on the floor.

  Breakfast was Continental, croissants and coffee. He had that to be thankful for. The cook made his pot double strength, and he poured a stream of sugar into it. It was before eight, and only he and the staff were up. When he was finished, he went out into the garden.

  Sloan’s taste for things Virginian showed in the landscaping. No native evergreens were allowed to intrude, and the few maples were barely tolerated. The garden with the marble bathers was divided from the rose garden by a trellis. There was a second trellis halfway down the side of the lawn serving as camouflage for a potting shed. He wandered down to it and found nothing more suspicious than varmint poison. Rather than come back through the yard he crossed to the Sloan driveway. A yellow Buick station wagon was parked in it. He followed the driveway to the front of the house. On the west end were two rooms he had not yet seen, an office and a workroom with neat rows of paint cans and, hung on hooks from the walls, legs and arms salvaged from discarded possessions.

  ‘Looking for something?’

  Hillary came around from the gardens. She was in a green one-piece riding outfit with jodhpur wings and high boots. Her hands were on her hips. The effect of the green and her white-gold hair was what she wanted it to be.

  ‘Yes, you,’ Roman said. ‘The house is lovely, but I was hoping for some company. Maybe I’m just an early riser.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Hillary said, but didn’t bother keeping up the tension. ‘I can’t say that I like it. We used to have a house in Cambridge. When my mother died, we sold it. The neighborhood was changing, Father said. We bought this. I still don’t like it.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Twelve years. Before I forget, he sent me to fetch you. He’s at the breakfast table.’

  Hoddinot Sloan appeared to have recovered from last night’s dinner. He dabbed half a croissant with marmalade as he welcomed Roman.

  ‘Sleep well? That’s a pencil post four-poster in your room, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ Hillary commented. She poured twin braids of milk and coffee into her cup.

  ‘Which is more than I can say for you.’ Her father went on. ‘I’ve tried to interest Hillary in the study of antiques for years. All she can think of is horses and hippies, a fairly individual combination but not one likely to stimulate the brain.’

  Far away at the rear of the lawn a gardener laid out sprinklers. When they stretched from one fence to the other, he bent down to a water nozzle hidden in the grass and turned it on. A series of rooster tails erupted from the grass. The works, Roman thought, had also been turned on beneath Sloan’s own manicured exterior. Last night’s dinner had not been a normal one; he wasn’t a man to invite an audience to his own execution.

  ‘Father disapproves,’ she said. She crossed her arms, drawing the knit riding suit tight around her chest. Sloan still didn’t know how to handle the outlined maturity of her body. Sex, as usual, was the ultimate weapon. ‘Do you jump?’ she asked Roman.

  ‘Occasionally. On hot sand, things of that sort.’

  ‘No, no, jump horses. That’s Hillary’s hobby,’ Sloan said.

  Hillary giggled. ‘I thought it was quite funny.’ She began laughing again. The happier she was, the younger she looked.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ Sloan said. The last shred of croissant vanished into his mouth. ‘Come on, Grey. We have a lot of work to do.’

  While Hillary went down a path to the stables, Sloan escorted Roman into his private office. Sloan had chosen second-rate antiques for the ro
om, good enough to lend a pleasant air but nothing whose value would be ruined by wear.

  ‘Very wise,’ Roman said. ‘A lot of people would have just put these into storage.’

  Sloan pointed to the files. ‘I never waste anything. I got these at a dollar apiece. Simply replaced the runners and cemented strips on the drawers, and they’re good as new. I’ve been offered a hundred apiece for them now. Tell me, how do you plan to categorize the collection?’

  Roman explained that he intended no comprehensive catalogue, just a detailed list of those pieces that were of exhibition value. Sloan volunteered that he had photos of every piece that went through his hands with records of any restoration that had been done to them.

  ‘It’s a matter of protection,’ he added. ‘I don’t want anyone accusing me of bad faith. I tell them exactly what they’re buying. I may not tell people what they have when they’re selling to me; that’s part of the game. Otherwise, they shouldn’t be in it.’

  Roman nodded obediently, and Sloan went on.

  ‘I’ll tell you this, no one can accuse me of shady practices like so many New York collectors.’

  ‘Are there many people like, uh, that in Boston?’

  Sloan sniffed. ‘Mostly Irish here. I thought it was a good time to leave the city when the Kennedys bought it.’

  Sloan’s bigotry rose like a whale through the calm surface of a sea. It blew off its supply of bile and in a few moments returned to the depths of his personality. The conversation moved back to antiques.

  ‘It must have made you very sad when your Armory shipment was destroyed. Perhaps it wasn’t total,’ Roman suggested. ‘If you could restore the files and you have photos, you might be able to restore some of those pieces.’

  Sloan shrugged the suggestion off. ‘I doubt it. Besides – you’ll find this hard to believe – they’re being held as evidence or something by the New York police. Some murder or a body, I haven’t got it straight.’