In a True Light

by John Harvey

  They had been at it since early morning, loading the U-Haul truck, first with her possessions from the Bronx, then the East Village; finally carrying everything up five stubborn flights.

  ‘Next time,’ Cherry said, unburdening himself inside the front door, ‘try a rental with an elevator.’

  ‘You know how much extra an apartment with an elevator would cost?’

  Twenty minutes later they were sitting on a pair of folding chairs, surrounded by bags and boxes of every shape and size.

  ‘You want a drink?’ Vargas asked.

  ‘I’d give my life for a cold beer.’

  ‘How about champagne?’ Jumping up, Vargas disappeared into the tiny square of kitchen and, after much foraging, found paper cups. It was only when the bottle was two-thirds empty that either of them spoke Delaney’s name.

  Vargas sat with a legal pad open on her lap, ballpoint in her hand; Cherry, using boxes as a table, had layered several pages of computer printout, one over the other, and topped these with a pocket-size, leather-bound notebook.

  ‘You want to go first?’ Vargas asked.

  ‘You. It’s your place, after all.’

  Vargas didn’t need asking twice. ‘Okay, Vincent Anthony Delaney, born Las Vegas, nineteen forty-nine. His old man was a gambler, worked the casinos, dealing faro. Hung around the coat-tails of the mob. When Delaney was born it looks as if the mother skipped town. Whatever the reason, he was brought up by his dad. Whether his father had ideas of Delaney following in his footsteps or not, Delaney clearly had plans of his own. Left Vegas for the coast and got himself a law degree.’

  Cherry whistled in appreciation.

  ‘Joined an LA firm specialising in entertainment, media, all the glitzy stuff. Junior partnership in the bag, seemed to have it made. Except he overreached himself.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘One of his clients was stuck in a recording contract she wanted out of. Delaney, wanting to cover his back, had a quiet word with the judge.’

  ‘Is this the plain brown envelope story? Unmarked bills? The briefcase left under the table, beside the men’s room stall?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Vargas said. ‘Only Delaney either didn’t offer enough, or tapped the wrong judge. Either way, he ended up disbarred.’ She turned another page. ‘Exactly what happened after that I’ve no clear idea, except a year or so later, he’s running a club in West Hollywood.’

  ‘Sounds familiar.’

  ‘You want familiar? How about this? In nineteen eighty Delaney’s arrested in South Pasadena, charged with assaulting a woman with whom he’d been having an affair. Marianne Burris, a banker’s wife. Case gets to court but no further; the woman changes her mind about giving evidence, denies all previous testimony, Delaney walks free.’ She looked over at Cherry, waiting for him to speak.

  ‘Okay,’ Cherry obliged, ‘the woman, she was either threatened in some way or paid off. Has to be. And Delaney, this is what you’re suggesting, this is the beginning of a pattern.’

  ‘Right again. Seattle, nineteen eighty-seven. Beat a woman within an inch of her life.’

  ‘You know this?’

  ‘I know this. I talked to her, on the telephone, several times. Mary Jane Flood. Charming, runs an animal sanctuary. What happened with Delaney, it’s behind her. She talked about it, though, albeit grudgingly. Seems ninety-eight per cent of the time Delaney was a perfect gentleman. A tad overprotective, maybe, but that’s what some people seem to need. She was an accountant when they met, doing the books for a supper club Delaney was managing. Everything running smoothly until Mary Jane decides she’s had enough.’ Vargas shook her head. ‘One thing you don’t do easily to Vincent Delaney, walk away.’

  ‘She didn’t press charges?’

  ‘Says she was too traumatised. Too afraid. But now I think she could be persuaded to go on record.’

  ‘Corroboration, it’s what we need.’

  ‘Wait, there’s more. One of the reasons Mary Jane wanted out, she’d been becoming more and more convinced everything wasn’t above board at the club.’

  ‘Delaney had been skimming off the top?’

  ‘A distinct possibility. But that wasn’t her main concern. What was, the amount of money passing through, the revenue, it always seemed in excess of the business being done. I mean, she’d go in there some nights and the place’d be less than a quarter full, but according to the books things were booming.’

  ‘Then Delaney was using the place to launder money.’

  ‘Somebody was.’

  ‘At the very least, Delaney must have known.’

  ‘It’s not credible he didn’t.’

  ‘Your Ms Flood, did she ever pick him up on this, confront him?’

  ‘No.’ Vargas shook her head.

  Cherry was on his feet, leaning first this way and then that, loosening up muscles he seldom used and could feel beginning to tighten up. ‘Is it stretching the imagination to suggest the reason he took up with her, one of the reasons, was he thought she might turn something up and figured if they were together, comfy-cosy, the less likely she was to spread it around?’

  ‘Intention or not, seems it worked.’

  ‘Till now.’ Cherry reached down and picked up the printouts. ‘Delaney’s got four bank accounts I’ve been able to trace, all pretty healthy. Not only does he own the apartment he’s living in, as in own outright, he owns another in the same building, which he rents out. Oh, and then there’s the yacht.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t actually a yacht, it’s some kind of power boat he keeps out on Long Island. State-of-the-art. Cost six months’ salary, yours and mine combined.’

  Vargas put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes. She was tired; it had already been one hell of a day. ‘All of which means, chances are Delaney’s still laundering money.’

  ‘Through the Manhattan Lounge and all the rest.’

  ‘Despite what we’ve been told.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Energised, Vargas was on her feet. ‘If he’s doing it in any serious way, it’s got to be the Mob.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Christ, John!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who else needs to bury large amounts, shift them coast to coast?’

  ‘You want me to count them? The Russians, Chinese, the Vietnamese.’ Cherry ticked them off on the fingers of one hand.

  ‘But if I’m right and it all goes back to Vegas …’

  Cherry nodded. ‘Yeah, I see what you mean.’

  Vargas poured out the last of the warm champagne.

  ‘I’ve got a friend in the Department of Justice,’ Cherry said. ‘I’ll get in touch, see if Delaney rings any bells.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  Cherry finished his drink, set down his cup. ‘Feel like getting something to eat?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m going to go through a few of these things, call it a night.’

  ‘Till tomorrow, then,’ Cherry said, heading for the door.

  ‘John …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thanks for everything.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Vargas slid the bolt into place and surveyed her new home.

  Cherry met Pat Holland, his friend from the Department of Justice, in the restaurant of the St Regis, 7.30 a.m., Holland’s choice. Holland was there early, already well into his fresh fruit, low-fat yogurt and no-cal muffin by the time Cherry arrived.

  ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’ Cherry asked, pointing suspiciously at Holland’s glass.

  ‘Hot water.’

  Cherry ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, rye toast, coffee.

  ‘Your friend Delaney,’ Holland said, ‘his connections go back a long way.’

  ‘Vegas?’

  Holland nodded. ‘Via LA. Nothing big time, nothing that was ever going to draw much attention. Low profile.’

  ‘Flying under the radar.’

  ‘Exactly.
The kind, oh, we’d look at him once in a while, figure, hey, bigger fish to fry. Fronting for guys on the fringes of the Mob, made guys, money laundering, that’s his steady number. Nothing spectacular. Nothing greedy.’

  Cherry shook Tabasco on to his eggs. ‘And he doesn’t step out of line?’

  Holland pushed away his empty plate. ‘There was something in Reno, seven years back. Nothing I could get to the bottom of, but it seems he messed up somehow. Frozen out for a while. This guy, Marchetti, brings him back in. Sets him up, running this small network of clubs. Delaney, as you might say, he’s expanded his portfolio from there.’

  ‘But he’s still Marchetti’s boy?’

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘Sticky fingers?’

  ‘If his hand wasn’t in the till for a little, they’d figure something was wrong. So, yeah, within reason. But that’s a guess, speculation.’

  ‘And reason is what? Ten per cent? Fifteen?’

  ‘Again, I’m guessing, but fifteen seems kind of high.’

  Cherry spooned sugar into his coffee and stirred it round. ‘Your connections, any way you could put it around he was getting greedy, taking more?’

  Holland smiled thinly. ‘So that Marchetti heard?’

  ‘So that Marchetti heard.’

  The Department of Justice man ran the pattern in his head: names, faces, links in the chain. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And soon?’

  ‘Consider it done.’ Holland was on his feet, Times in one hand, clapping Cherry on the shoulder with the other. ‘Next time it’s on me.’

  Which was what he’d said the previous time, and the time before. Cherry glanced at his watch, signalled for more coffee, finished off the last of his bacon and eggs.

  34

  Rachel preferred not to talk while she drove. Instead, she punched the pre-set buttons on the radio of the rented Saab until she came to something palatable and kept her own counsel, Sloane alternately dozing and gazing at the scenery. At Southampton they stopped for coffee, cinnamon Danish for Rachel and for Sloane, eggs over easy on wheat toast.

  ‘How much further?’ Sloane asked.

  ‘Not so far. Another twenty miles, twenty-five. Just past Amagansett, where the Fork starts to get really narrow.’

  ‘Mason’s place is on the shore?’

  ‘Inland. And beautiful, great views. From the upstairs you can see the Atlantic to the south, Long Island Sound to the north.’

  Thirty minutes later they were back on the road.

  ‘Long Island Sound’, Sloane thought, the tune title surfacing on the tide of his brain. Jimmy Raney? Stan Getz? A bit more of his adolescence that wouldn’t stay down.

  They turned off the highway on to a dirt track that took them up through a rough meadow, before levelling out to pass through an apple orchard with Mason Ranch’s white clapboard house beyond. Ranch was on the porch to greet them in a creased blue cotton suit, his hair still full but now completely white, face deeply lined, his belly seeming to have survived while the rest of him had shrunk. An antique golden Labrador barking as it hobbled arthritically down the steps, wagging its tail, and while the dog brushed unsteadily against their legs, Mason Ranch waited at the top of the porch steps, arms outstretched. Rachel he kissed on both hands and then both cheeks, before shaking Sloane’s hand, then clasping him in an earnest, clumsy embrace.

  ‘You, my dear,’ he said to Sloane, ‘I’ve scarce seen since you were barely weaned. And beautiful. You wouldn’t believe’ – addressing Rachel now – ‘how beautiful this boy was when he was eighteen.’

  ‘Oh, I think I might,’ Rachel said, close to smiling.

  ‘And, his saving grace, entirely oblivious of the fact.’

  There was little Sloane could do, other than stand there awkwardly, an object of appraisal.

  Chuckling, Ranch led them inside into a large room with broad windows on three sides, pale polished boards and faded rugs, high-backed wicker chairs and a low settee strewn with cushions. Books, floor to ceiling, occupied one wall; newspapers and magazines lay haphazardly across occasional tables and, here and there, on the floor. Opposite the settee a grand piano stood, lid raised, and behind it a painting which Sloane thought could have been by Jane Freilicher, though at this distance he couldn’t be sure. There were vases of flowers everywhere.

  ‘A little refreshment after your journey,’ Ranch said. ‘Mimosas, I think.’

  Rachel went with him to the kitchen, leaving Sloane to cross towards the painting, which was indeed a Freilicher, oil on canvas, a splash of marsh flowers, cream and pink and purple, rising above green leaves from a rich, reddish-brown jug on the table end: and through the window beyond, fields of green and yellow-gold leading down to a solid blue finger of sea, the shifting, paler blue of sky.

  ‘She lives out here, you know,’ Ranch said, coming back into the room. Behind him, Rachel was carrying three tall glasses on a tray. ‘Water Mill. That’s one of the views from her studio.’

  ‘She was as much in love with colour as the rest of us,’ Sloane said. ‘She just used it in a different way.’

  There was a book of Chopin nocturnes open at the piano, which Sloane paused and glanced at as he passed.

  ‘You play?’ Ranch asked.

  Sloane shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Me either. Not any more. Not with hands like these. The best I can do now is sit there in the afternoons and read the score, hear the damned thing in my head.’ Slowly he lowered himself into one of the chairs. ‘It’s so shitty getting old, the way your body makes you give up on things, one by one. And you, Jackson …’ He gestured towards the Labrador which was making courtship gestures against one of Sloane’s legs. ‘You’re in pretty much the same boat, so you can stop pretending and go lie down.’

  The dog half raised his head and sniffed the air, then waddled away.

  ‘Time was,’ Ranch said, ‘he’d try and fuck anything if he thought he had half a chance.’ He chuckled. ‘Why we called him Jackson, I guess.’

  For a while they sat and drank their mimosas, Sloane mostly listening while the other two chatted back and forth.

  ‘You’re still happy here, though?’ Rachel queried at one juncture. ‘You wouldn’t think of moving?’

  ‘Only every other day when some developer drops by with his chequebook and offers me more money than I could shake a stick at.’

  ‘And you’d take it? You’d go? Mason, you’ve been here half your life.’

  ‘I know, but the way this area’s changing, smart money moving in more now than ever, I scarcely feel I belong here any more. This artist feller, Schnabel, for instance. Neo-Expressionist, I think that’s what he calls himself. Just recently bought a place further down the Point. Ten bedrooms, seven acres. An eighty-foot pool with a goddam island in the middle of it sprouting cherry trees.’ He looked across at Sloane. ‘When you and Jane Graham stayed out here, I wouldn’t mind betting you pumped water straight from a well and used a crapper in the outhouse.’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘I was sorry to hear about her dyin’.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You and her, you lit up the sky for a while.’

  Sneaking a glance across at Rachel, Sloane nodded.

  ‘I’ve got some of her pieces, you know,’ Ranch said, ‘things we worked on together, if that’s what you can call the way we did it. Airmail, for the most part. One time I did get over to see her, when she was still living in Paris, but that was all.’

  ‘These are the paintings based on your poems?’ Rachel asked.

  Ranch nodded. ‘The ones you’re here to offer me a good percentage on, I’m hoping. I wouldn’t have sold one of ’em when she was still alive, but now, well, if I am goin’ to hang on to this place, I’ve got to realise any assets I can find.’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘Got in touch with my publisher a while back, same imprint I’ve been with more’n thirty years. Finally got to speak to this youngster, fresh out of college by the sound of him. Polite, once he�
��d recovered from the shock of realising I wasn’t good and dead. Told him I just about had enough poems for a new collection and would they be interested. Wow, he said, that’s wonderful and yes he was absolutely sure they would. Just give him a few minutes to log on to the computer, check a few sales figures and he’d get right back to me. Haven’t heard a damned word since.’

  Ranch laughed savagely and the laughter became a cough, which doubled him over and sent Rachel hurrying for a glass of water.

  Recovered, he apologised before walking slowly upstairs to fetch the pieces he wanted Rachel to sell. Jane Graham’s style was immediately apparent, her brushwork, her use of colour, the paint merging here with the words of Ranch’s poems; sometimes these had been stencilled directly on to the surface, in others his own handwritten version had been cut around and pasted on, partly painted over. Each piece was clearly numbered and signed, one through six.

  ‘You sure you can bear to part with these?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘I’ve one I’m keeping, upstairs. Jane was never totally happy with it herself, that’s why it’s not numbered as part of the set.’ He smiled lopsidedly. ‘Maybe it’s a love of waifs and strays that makes me like it best.’

  ‘I almost hate to say it,’ Rachel said, ‘but since her death Jane’s star’s been rising. I can ask a good price for these.’

  ‘Thirty pieces of silver plus inflation,’ Ranch said caustically. ‘I shall do well.’

  Afternoon, Sloane read silently from the canvas closest to him, the light falling softly in the northern sky. These trees … And you, your heart, the best of you, is still.

  ‘Now why don’t the two of you go for a walk, drive down to the beach?’ Ranch said. ‘Let me rest.’

  It was just warm enough for them to have dinner out on the porch, smoked chicken and sesame noodles, a green salad with lime dressing.

  Looking across at Ranch, Sloane remembered him at the quay-side, kissing Jane goodbye, waving her off flamboyantly, hair falling across his eyes.

  ‘When Jane went to Paris,’ Sloane said, ‘did you know she was pregnant?’