by S. J. Rozan
He shrugged. “It ain’t rang in two days.”
I took my beer over to the pay phone against the back wall. I thought for a minute, about Tony, Jimmy, Eve Colgate’s pasture, and some paintings she hadn’t seen in thirty years; about how things change and how they don’t. Then I slipped in some quarters, dialed Lydia’s office number in New York.
I got the bounce-line message; so she was on the phone; either actually in her office or at home on the line that rings through. Normally I would have just left a message of my own, but calling me back up here wasn’t all that easy. I took a chance and dialed the other number, the one that rings at home, in the kitchen. It’s not a number I call often, but it’s engraved deep in my memory just the same. I tapped my fingers on the old, scarred woodwork as the phone rang and rang.
Finally a woman’s voice answered in Cantonese, using words I recognized, though I didn’t understand them. I gave her my dozen Cantonese words: a respectful greeting and a request. There was silence, then a snort; then the phone clattered in my ear and I could hear the voice calling to someone else.
A few moments later came another woman’s voice, this time in English. “My mother says you should stop trying to impress her; your Chinese is terrible.”
“What did she call me this time?”
Lydia said, “The iron-headed rat.”
“What does it mean?”
“‘Iron-headed’—you know, stubborn, willful; sometimes stupid. I guess it could mean gray-haired, too.”
“You think she meant that?”
“No. In Chinese that’s a good thing.”
“Great. Why rat?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Someday she’ll like me. Listen, are you real busy, or can you take something on?”
“She’ll never even tolerate you. I’m tailing a noodle merchant whose wife thinks he’s messing around with her younger sister, but it’s not as engrossing as it sounds. But I thought you were up in the country.”
“I am.”
“You never call from there. Are you all right?” A slight quickening came into her voice.
“I took a case.”
“Up there?” Now, surprise. “I thought you—”
“It’s a long story,” I said, even though as I said it I realized it wasn’t; or at least, not the way that’s usually meant. “I got a call from someone up here; that’s why I came up. Can you work on it?”
“Um, sure.” Her tone told me she wanted to ask more, maybe hear the long story, but she answered the question I’d asked. “What do you need?”
I told her about the burglary, what was stolen. I didn’t say from whom. She whistled low. “Six Eva Nouvels? My god, they must be worth a fortune.”
“Maybe two million, together,” I agreed. “Could be more: they’re unknown, uncatalogued.”
“How unknown?”
“The client says completely. I don’t know. But right now I’m not thinking anyone came looking for them. It was probably just a break-in, kids. They may even have junked the paintings by now, just kept the stuff that looked valuable to them.”
“That’s a cheerful thought.”
“I’m going to try some other things, but if nothing turns up it may be worth a trip to the county dump. But just in case, I want you to look around down there. I don’t think anyone will try to sell those paintings in New York; they’d ship them out to Europe, maybe Japan. If that’s happening I want to stop them.”
“What were they doing in a storeroom? Six paintings that valuable?”
“That’s where the client kept them.”
“Okay, funny guy. And who’s the client?”
“I can’t tell you.”
She skipped half a beat. “You can’t tell me?”
“Now,” I said. “From here. Over the phone.”
“Oh.” That single word held a dubious note, as though my explanation was logical but not convincing. “Are there other things you’re not telling me?”
“Yes,” I said. “But when I tell them to you, you hang up on me.”
“For which not a woman in America could blame me. What do I do if I find a trail? Are the police in on this?”
“No, and that’s important. I don’t want anyone who doesn’t know these paintings exist to find out from us.”
“Top-secret paintings stuck in a storeroom by a top-secret client in the middle of nowhere. And I thought it was all trees and cows and guys who shoot at Bambi up there. Silly me.”
“I’ll call you later,” I told her. “If anything turns up, you can try the cell phone, but you might not get through up here.”
“I’m surprised you even took it with you.”
“You told me I had to carry one. I always do what you tell me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Uh-huh. Well, anyway, if you can’t get through, try this number.” I gave her the number of the phone I was at. “Ask for Tony. Leave a time and a place I can call you. Hey, and Lydia?”
“Yes?”
“Tell your mother I’m a nice guy.”
“I never lie to my mother. Talk to you later.”
She hung up. I took out another quarter, dialed Obermeyer’s garage—the number was carved into the wood-work—and asked for Jimmy. A voice muffled by food told me he hadn’t come in yet. “You got a problem?”
“Lots,” I answered. “If you see him, tell him Bill Smith is looking for him, okay?”
“Sure.” The voice slurped a drink, went on. “If you see him, tell him I’m all backed up here, and where the hell is he?”
“Sure.”
There were loud crunching sounds. I hung up.
The vinyl-covered phone book was chained to the shelf under the phone. I flipped it open to the Yellow Pages in the back, found Antique Shops, pages of them. Schoharie was studded with these places. Most of them were no more than someone’s front room or disused garage, where chipped china and molding books shared space with broken-legged tables and chairs with torn upholstery. But a few shops were bigger or more choosy about their merchandise. It was still possible to come across the kind of finds up here that had long since vanished from areas closer to the city or more attractive to tourists. The past was one of the few things people up here had to sell.
Jimmy could have pointed me in the right direction. He’d have protested innocence, or maybe with me he wouldn’t have bothered; but he’d know where to find a fence for the sort of things Eve Colgate had lost. Without him it was a crapshoot, so I fed quarters into the phone and started from A. With everyone who answered I used the same line. A teapot, I said I needed, describing vaguely a silver teapot Eve Colgate had described to me in great detail. For my wife, I said, for our anniversary. She liked that kind of thing, I didn’t know anything about it, myself.
At the end of half an hour I had four promising places, all within an hour’s drive of Eve Colgate’s farm.
I brought my empty glass back to Tony at the bar. The T-shirts were gone; the place was empty.
“You leavin’?”
“Yeah. I’ll be back tonight. Someone may call me here.” I pointed a thumb at the phone.
“Okay,” Tony said. “Only help me out with somethin’ before you go.”
“I thought I was supposed to mind my own business.”
“You gonna want ice in your goddamn bourbon later, this is your business. Damn thing’s busted again.” Tony’s antiquated ice machine had more weak points than a sermon.
“What is it, that valve? Like when I was here in the fall?”
“Yeah, and twice in the winter when you wasn’t. You gotta turn it off downstairs, wait till I tell you to turn it on again. The red one. You know.” I knew. “Unless you’re in a hurry. It can wait till the O’Brien kid comes in, or Marie.”
“No hurry.”
The door to the cellar was back by the phone. Under my weight the wooden stairs creaked. The light from the head of the stairs didn’t reach very far, but dusty gray daylight filtered in through the gr
imy windows in the back wall. The place smelled of mildew and damp concrete. I shook a spiderweb from the back of my hand.
Tony’s cellar was a shadowed landscape of boxes, crates, abandoned furniture. Lying across the pipes overhead were old fishing rods, skis, a pair of snowshoes whose leather webbing was crumbling to dust. About five miles of greasy rope was heaped in a corner, next to a bureau Tony’s father had moved down here before Tony was born.
Tony knew every object here, and could navigate smoothly through them in the dark. I couldn’t. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness, then picked my way carefully to the middle of the room, where a single light-bulb dangled from the ceiling.
I reached a hand up to it; then I stopped and froze. I wasn’t the only thing moving.
Barely visible, a shadow darker than the others slid noiselessly behind a hill of boxes.
Slowly, silently, I eased the gun from under my arm. I stared through the dimness; there was nothing. Everything was still, as though it always had been. But I’d seen it. I moved to my left, to where the shadow went. My steps were silent. Maybe whoever it was wouldn’t hear my heart pounding, either.
Suddenly a crash, something shattering on the concrete floor. Another flash of movement. I pressed my back against the wall, gun drawn. Before me two unblinking eyes appeared, glittering in the half-light.
The cat whose face they were in crouched on a pile of boxes, hissed, thrashed its tail. It turned, flowed through a broken windowpane and was gone.
I breathed. “Shit,” I said to the vanished cat. “You could get killed doing that.” I put my gun away, rubbed the back of my neck.
“Hey, Smith!” Tony yelled from above. “What the hell are you doin’ down there?”
“All right!” I yelled back. I stepped over a broken barstool into the center of the room and yanked the chain on the dangling bulb. The sudden glare brought sharp edges and color springing out of the soft shadows. I looked around, searching for a clear path to the back of the room, but I never found it.
From the back wall near the floor another pair of eyes met mine. These didn’t blink either, but they didn’t glitter. They were human, and they were dull because they were dead.
4
HE MUST HAVE been standing right up against the back wall when he was shot. Three dark rings with darker centers the size of a baby’s fist stained his shirt. He’d slumped down leaving a thin smear of blood on the ancient whitewash, until he settled, sitting on the dirty floor, one arm over a case of empties as though it were a friend of his. His face was a mottled gray, like candlewax and ashes, and from his slack, open mouth a thin line of blood, now dry and cracking, had dripped down his chin to splash perfect circles onto his open, bony hand.
I knew those hands. After last night, the way they’d circled my throat, shaking and choking, after that I’d have known them anywhere.
He looked so foolish, so surprised. I wanted to close his eyes, his mouth, cover him with something. He was indecent, unready as the curtain went up on his final show, probably the only starring role a guy like him had ever had.
I knelt, felt his neck for a pulse. I knew it was stupid. I lifted the edge of his coat with a finger, looking for the gun he’d had last night. It was gone.
The sweet smell of blood was thick in the damp air. I let his coat fall and stayed where I was, prowling the floor with my eyes. I didn’t know what I was looking for but I found it, a set of keys on a silver ring in the dirt by his knee. I stared at them in the dim light; then I took out a handkerchief, picked them up in it, and slipped them, wrapped, into my pocket.
I stepped back the way I’d come, careful not to disturb anything I hadn’t disturbed already.
The creaking of the stairs as I went up seemed louder than before, but I could have been wrong about that.
Tony and I were sitting at the round table in the front of the room, about as far from the cellar as you could get. I was drinking bourbon; he was drinking gin. Tony had called the state troopers. Now all we had to do was wait.
A fly, early and stupid, staggered slowly around a wine stain in the red-and-white tablecloth like an old man avoiding a puddle.
I lit a cigarette, shook out the match. “Tell me about it, Tony.”
Tony looked into the glass in front of him. He didn’t find anything but gin. “Nothin’ to tell.”
“There’s a stiff in your cellar says otherwise.”
He raised his head sharply, glared at me. “You think I put him there?”
I shook my head. “You didn’t even know he was down there or you wouldn’t have sent me down. But you do know something, Tony. About what?”
Tony didn’t answer. I sipped my bourbon, tried again. “What did Grice want last night?”
“Ah, shit!” He slammed his glass onto the table. “He thinks he’s got somethin’ on Jimmy.”
“Does he?”
Tony poured himself another slug of gin. He didn’t speak.
“What does he want?” I asked. “For whatever he’s got?”
He shrugged, drank. “I told him to go to hell.”
“Does that mean you don’t know? Or you don’t care?”
He started to stand, his face darkening. He started to speak, too, but stopped, clamped his mouth shut, and sat back down heavily. He stared at his gin, then drank it as though he were doing it a favor.
I took the handkerchief from my pocket, unwrapped it, laid it on the table. The keys on the silver ring glinted between us.
Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you get those?”
“Downstairs,” I said. “They’re Jimmy’s, aren’t they?”
Sirens wailed as cars screeched into the lot. I slipped the keys back in my pocket. Doors slammed and the curtains at the front window pulsed red and blue.
“Tony,” I said quietly, “I’m on your side.”
He got up to open the door for the law.
Sheriff Garrett Brinkman, followed by a paunchy, sleepy-eyed deputy, stepped around Tony into the room. Their boots made hard sounds on the worn wood floor. Brinkman wore high black boots like a motorcycle cop, and kept them shiny enough to see your face in. He was a long-faced, long-legged man whose hair was thinning and hadn’t been much of a color when he’d had it. His hands were big and his eyes were small. When he was young, he’d played right field for a Triple-A ball club. He still held the minor-league record for spiking second basemen.
“Brinkman.” Tony scowled. “What the hell are you doing here? I didn’t call you, I called the troopers.”
“No, how about that?” Brinkman drawled amicably, his eyes shifting from Tony to me, back again. “My county, you find a dead guy, but you call the state and you don’t call me.” He smiled a small, nasty smile, and waited, eyes on Tony, for an explanation we all knew he didn’t need and wasn’t going to get. Then he shrugged. “But what the hell, Tony. We picked it up over the radio. So I thought we’d come give the pretty boys from the state a hand, in case they need to find their dicks or something.” Brinkman turned to me, the nasty smile widening. “And how lucky can I get?” he said. “Look who’s here.”
“Hello, Brinkman,” I said. “Long time.”
“Not long enough, city boy.” The smile pushed back the deep creases that ran from his nose to his chin. “I hope you’re messed up in this.”
“Sorry.” I smiled too. It was in the air. “I found him. That’s all I know.”
“We’ll see,” said Brinkman. Then, “Show me.”
I pushed my chair back, got up from the table. I was about to throw back the last of my bourbon when Brinkman put his hand over my glass. “I like my witnesses sober.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess alcohol could dull the pain.” I stopped smiling.
“Don’t push me, city boy,” Brinkman said softly.
I walked around him, opened the cellar door. Brinkman and the deputy clattered down the wooden stairs. Tony and I followed.
I’d left the light on. Sharp black shadows lay heavily b
eyond the circle of it. “Where?” Brinkman asked.
“In the back.” I showed him how to go.
We picked our way among things once wanted, now useless and decaying. The four of us collected in a semicircle at the back wall. The little bony guy stared at us out of sightless eyes, his arm still over the dusty bottles, his mouth still open.
“Well,” said Brinkman. “This just gets better, doesn’t it?” The smile twitched again at a corner of his mouth. “Know him?”
Tony took that one. “Met him once,” he said tightly. “Don’t know his name.”
“Oh?” said Brinkman. “Well, his name’s Wally Gould. Works for Frank Grice. What I hear, he does anything so dirty even Grice won’t touch it. What’s he doing here, Tony?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Smith?” Brinkman said over his shoulder, without looking at me. He squatted next to the body, moved the dead man’s coat aside, as I had. His boots scratched in the dirt as he stood again and turned.
“Forget it, Brinkman. I came down to shut off a leaky valve. I found him like this, we called the troopers, got you instead. That’s it.”
“I guess you didn’t know him either?”
“I met him once, same as Tony.”
“Uh-huh. When was that?”
Tony answered before I could. “Last night. Grice was here with two guys—this guy, and some big gorilla. I threw ’em out.”
Brinkman raised his eyebrows, the small smile still playing on his lips. “And they just went?”
“No. They were lookin’ for trouble.”
“Oh.” Brinkman let the smile grow. “That what happened to your face?” he asked me.
“I was born with this face, Brinkman. Some days it just looks worse than others.”
Brinkman pushed back his hat, revealing more of his endless forehead. “You know, a guy in your position should show more respect for the law.”
“What position am I in?”
“Hey, you’re the top man on my shit list, Smith. Ahead of Tony’s little shit brother, ahead of Tony, even ahead of Frank Grice. Right on top.”
“Listen, Brinkman, I’m sorry about your little plan to put a net over Grice, but it wouldn’t have worked anyway. Jimmy wasn’t going to deal.”
