by S. J. Rozan
“Okay,” I said. “And?”
“Eva Nouvel’s work is very, very high priced. Any gallery in town would love to handle her, but she’s been with her gallery—Sternhagen—since she first started to show in New York, close to forty years ago. Bill, they take seventy percent.”
“Umm,” I said. “How do you know that?”
“My brother Elliot? You know his wife’s an art consultant. She has a friend who has a friend who used to work at Sternhagen.”
The Chin network. I said, “You believe her?”
“Him. Yes.”
“Lydia, I didn’t ask you to check on Eva Nouvel.”
She paused for a moment. “No, that’s true. But I was waiting for some people to call me back and I got curious. What’s the problem?”
I rubbed my eyes. “No, nothing. It’s okay.”
A slight chill crept into her voice. “It might be better if I knew what was really going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, if I knew who the client was,” she said. “If I knew why six valuable paintings were sitting around a storeroom in cow country. If I knew why you took a case up there at all. If I knew things like that, maybe I wouldn’t make dumb mistakes.”
“You never make dumb mistakes.”
“I might if I don’t know what’s going on.”
The windows I’d opened had made it cold in the bar. Back where I was, by the phone, the floor was empty, all the tables and chairs crowded together in the other half of the room as though something were wrong back here.
I rubbed my eyes again; that did about as much good as it had done the first time. “Jesus,” I said to Lydia. “Look: you’re right, and I’m sorry. But it’s been a long day. Can we do this tomorrow?”
“We can do this whenever you want. You’re the boss.”
“That’s not—”
“Apparently it is.”
“Lydia—”
“Should I keep on it?” she asked, brusque and professional.
“Yes,” I said. “Please.”
“Talk to you later, then.”
The phone clicked, and she was gone.
I walked around the silent room shutting the windows I’d opened. Then I went through the swinging doors into the kitchen, lifted Tony’s jacket off the hook there, brought it to him. “Come on, buddy,” I said softly, leaning down. “Time to go home.” He looked at me as if he didn’t know me. He rose unsteadily, pushing on the arms of his chair. I gave him his jacket. It took him some time to get into it. I didn’t help, just stayed close enough to catch him if he needed that. He didn’t.
I shut the lights and locked the place and we went out into the parking lot, crunching through it to the road. The night was dark and damp and foggy. It wasn’t the up-close kind of fog where you couldn’t see your own hand if you held your arm out straight. It was a soft film you didn’t notice if your focus was close, where everything was clear and sharp and normal, what you expected. It was only when you tried to look around, to get your bearings, that you noticed that five yards away in all directions there was absolutely nothing at all.
8
I LEFT TONY inside his front door without a word. I waited on the porch just long enough to see him get a light on; then I headed down the steep stone steps and across the road to my car.
The fog was thickening along 30 as I drove toward my place. I kept my speed down. I was hungry, exhausted, and in spite of Tony’s bourbon I could feel all my nerve ends twitching.
The car slipped in and out of silvery patches of fog. I half expected with each one to come out somewhere miles away, some bright, warm place where people had honest work to do and no one’s steps echoed in an empty house. Someplace where you didn’t get to be Tony’s age, or mine, with nothing to show but a collection of losses.
Down at the end of my fissured road my cabin was a squat, unnatural shape hunching in the winter trees. I thought of the work I’d done on it over the years, the constant battle to keep anything man-made—no matter how small, how carefully built, how wanted—from corroding, rotting away. The processes of destruction were relentless, and had all the time in the world.
Inside, the cabin wasn’t bright and it wasn’t warm but it was a familiar harbor. I put on a CD, Jeffrey Kahane playing Bach three-part inventions. I built a fire. The smell of cedar and woodsmoke, the music, the shadows began to work on me. I sliced some bread, fried some eggs to go with a can of hash I found on the shelf. I drank some more bourbon and followed the music. Bach. Logic, order, clarity. I should play more Bach. The hard knots in my shoulders began to melt and my eyelids got heavy.
In the morning I had to force myself out of bed. The day was gray and I’d slept badly, prodded awake more than once by uneasy dreams I couldn’t remember. I had a dull headache and though I knew it wasn’t from sleeping badly, I poured a shot of bourbon into my coffee cup and downed it before the coffee was ready. It helped a little. The coffee helped some more. I showered, and this time I shaved, carefully but not carefully enough, cursing as the foam burned my cheek.
Leaning on the kitchen counter, I smoked a cigarette, worked on the day. The piano gleamed in the light of the kitchen lamp. It wasn’t as good a piano as I had in New York, but it was fine, an upright with a strong, clear sound. A guy from Albany with a key to the cabin came out a few days before I came up each time and tuned it for me; and I kept the heat on low in the front room all winter, so the piano did all right. Those things cost me. But the reason I came up here and the reason I played were pretty much the same, and this setup worked for me.
I finished the last of the coffee. If I spent the day practicing, the new Mozart might begin to sound like music. Music; sleep; walking in the silent winter woods: that sounded like a good day to me.
But I thought about Eve Colgate’s eyes as she told me about what she’d lost. And I thought about Tony’s eyes, and about other kinds of loss. There were so many kinds.
Halfway up 30 toward Eve Colgate’s there was a 7-Eleven. I bought more coffee and some other things, drank the coffee in the car with the Mozart Adagio in the CD player. If I couldn’t play it at least I could listen to it.
Eve Colgate’s yellow house seemed to stand more somberly on the hilltop under the gray sky than it had yesterday in the sunlight, but it was still a vaguely comforting sight, like an old friend at a funeral.
I parked in the drive behind the blue pickup. As I started toward the porch the black dog raced, barking and yapping, around the side of the house. He stopped when I did, cocked his head, wagged his tail tentatively a few times; but when I started forward again he snarled and dug his feet in as he had the morning before. His breath was visible on the cold air.
Eve Colgate came around the house, wiping her hands on a stained red sweatshirt. “Leo!” she called.
“Okay, Leo,” I said. “You’re tough. I know.” I reached into the 7-Eleven bag, brought out the doughnut I’d bought for him. “Come on.” I squatted, held out a piece. He looked at it, looked at Eve Colgate.
“It’s okay,” she said.
He grabbed the piece of doughnut and inhaled it, wagged for more. I held out the rest. “Sit,” I said. He didn’t. I gave it to him anyway, dusted sugar from my gloves, scratched his ears.
“You can’t buy him that easily,” Eve Colgate said.
“I’m not in the market. I just want a friend.” I straightened up, took the wrapped package from the back of my car. The dog escorted me up the drive, nuzzled Eve Colgate’s hand when he reached her.
“Good boy.” She scratched him absently. Her eyes swept over my face as though registering small changes since she’d last seen me. Then she looked at the package I was holding. “Come inside,” she said.
I followed her through a vestibule where a yellow slicker hung on a peg into a single room running the width of the house. On the right was a kitchen, not new but ample and serviceable. On the left an antique dining table and chairs, carefully refinished, stood under the front wi
ndow. There was a woodstove like mine on the hearth, its flue running up the fireplace chimney. A couch, an easy chair, a side table, a cedar chest on the bare, polished floor. A few framed watercolors—none of them Eva Nouvels—hung on the walls and on the mantel there was a china pitcher and bowl painted in the bright yellows and purples of spring.
I shrugged off my jacket, looked around for a place to put it. Eve took it from me, pausing as her eyes caught the worn shoulder holster with the .22 from the car slipped into it.
“Do you always wear that?”
“Yes.” A long time ago I’d stopped answering that question with anything more elaborate.
She turned, hung my jacket in the vestibule. She pulled off her sweatshirt and hung it there, too. Under it she wore a thick white turtleneck tucked into flannel-lined jeans.
The air was warm, and pungent with cinnamon. There was music, too, strings. Schubert, maybe.
“Do you want coffee?” Eve asked. “I’ve been baking.”
“Sounds great. Smells great.”
She handed me a plate of sticky looking sweet rolls. “How do you take your coffee?”
“Black.” I bootlegged a piece of roll for Leo, who was walking between my legs, head twisted to sniff at the plate.
I put the plate and the wrapped silver on the cedar chest, sat on the couch. Eve brought over coffee in two white mugs. She made good coffee; better than mine, much better than the 7-Eleven’s. The rolls were warm and sweet and crunchy with walnuts.
She kicked off her shoes, sat cross-legged on the other end of the couch, her back against the armrest. “How’s Tony?”
“I haven’t seen him today.” I could have guessed how he was, but she could guess, too.
“The police are looking for his brother, aren’t they?”
“That’s what I hear.”
She poured cream into her coffee from a round jug. “Tony used to work for me, before his father got sick. Spring, summer, and fall, as a laborer. I was sorry to lose him when he took over the restaurant.” She cupped her hands around her coffee. “I don’t have anything to offer him, except sympathy and money. He won’t want my sympathy. He won’t want my money either, but he might need it.” She sipped at her coffee, was quiet a moment. “I’ll say this to Tony later, but I’ll tell you now. If there’s anything he needs—lawyers, whatever it is—I can take care of it.”
“Why tell me?”
“So somebody with a more level head than Tony will know what options he has.”
“You’re right,” I said. “He won’t want it.”
“Trouble can be expensive. Especially . . .” she paused. “Do you think Jimmy could have killed that man? I hardly know Jimmy. When he was young Tony brought him by occasionally.”
“Could have?” I said. “He could have. I don’t know anyone who couldn’t, for a strong enough reason.”
She fixed me with her pale, disturbing eyes. “Do you really believe that?”
“It’s true. Reasons vary, but everybody’s got one he thinks is good enough. If you’re lucky you never get the chance to find out what yours is.”
She explored my face briefly, then looked away, as though she hadn’t found something she had hoped, but not expected, to find.
The flashing, contrapuntal figures of the music filled the air around us. I put down my coffee, picked up the wrapped package. I laid it on the couch between us, unwound the paper, watched her face as she watched my hands.
At first she didn’t react. Then her face drained of color and her hand went slowly to her mouth. She stared at the candlesticks and tray resting on the crumpled paper as though she needed to count every vein in every leaf engraved on them.
She reached out a hand. I stopped it with mine. “Don’t touch them. There may be prints.”
She looked surprised, as though she’d forgotten I was there. She drew back her hand, shook her head slowly. “They were a wedding gift from Henri’s mother,” she half whispered. She looked away, hugged her chest. Her face was still pale but her voice was stronger as she said, “I deal with my memories in the way I can. I kept these, but I haven’t looked at them in thirty years.”
I drank my coffee, gave her time.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You had to identify them. I didn’t realize it would be hard.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head again. “It’s all right. What do we do now?”
“Two things. We try to lift prints from these, and we try to find the blond girl who fenced them.”
“What if she’s not from around here?”
“I have a feeling she is. She could have gotten more for things like these in New York, or even Albany or Boston; if she’s not local, why fence them here?” I put my mug down. “You know, both finding the girl and identifying the prints would be a lot easier if you’d report this to the police.”
She flushed angrily. “And when they found her and my paintings, the whole world would know who I am.”
“If this girl or anyone else has any idea what the paintings are, the whole world will know soon anyway,” I pointed out.
“Maybe she hasn’t. Or maybe it won’t occur to her that I made them, just because I had them.” She stood abruptly, paced the room, her hands in her back pockets. The dog, curled in the chair, lifted his head and followed her movements. She stared out the window for a time; then she turned again to face me. “It’s important,” she said. “Maybe it’s not rational. But I’m past apologizing for it. It’s why I hired you in the first place. If you can’t do it the way I want it done, I don’t need you.”
The music had stopped, leaving nothing in the air but the fragrance of cinnamon and coffee and the weight of Eve Colgate’s anger.
“I’m working for you,” I said. “We’ll do it however you want. But I’ve got to give you the choices the way I see them.”
She nodded, said nothing.
I rewrapped the silver. “I’ll send these to New York. There’s a lab I use on Long Island that can pull the prints.” I stood. “Can I use your phone?”
Lydia’s machine answered my call. Well, that was okay; the machine liked me better than Lydia’s mother did. Right now, maybe better than Lydia did. I told her to expect a package on an afternoon Greyhound out of Cobleskill, and that I’d call again and tell her when it was due. Then I called Antonelli’s.
Tony’s voice sounded hoarse and tired.
“How’re you doing?” I asked him.
“Sick as hell. You?”
“I feel great. Maybe you should switch to bourbon.”
He grunted. “Can’t afford it.”
“I’ll come over and buy you a bottle. You open?”
“What’s the difference? Wasn’t open last night. Didn’t stop you.”
“True. You heard from Jimmy?”
Silence. Then, “No. Brinkman called an hour ago, asked me the same thing. He ain’t called me, he ain’t gonna call me. Why the hell should he?”
“He’s in trouble. You’re his brother.”
“Hell with that. I’m through with that.”
“Tony—”
“Don’t preach to me, Smith. I got no time for it.”
This time it was I who was silent. “I’ll be over later,” I finally said.
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Whatever. Listen, you got a call. If you’re gonna keep givin’ out this number, you better tell people it ain’t my job to know where you are when you ain’t here. An’ tell ’em it don’t help to try an’ impress me with who the hell they are, ’cause I don’t give a damn who the hell they are.”
“You tell them,” I said. “You sound like you enjoy it. Who called? MacGregor?”
“That trooper? Nah. One of your big-time pals. Lifestyles of the rich an’ famous.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mark Sanderson.”
I frowned into the phone. “Mark Sanderson? Appleseed Baby Foods? I don’t know him.”
“Well, now’s your chance. He left a number. Want it
?”
I found a scrap of paper in my wallet. “Yeah, go ahead.” He read it off to me. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“To me? I’m just the hired help.”
“Okay, Tony, thanks. Listen, there’s something else. Two things. Last night you were telling me about Jimmy’s girl. Do you remember? Alice. You said something about pies. What did you mean?”
“Oh, Christ, Smith, what do you care?”
“Look, Tony, I know what you think, that Jimmy killed that guy. I think you’re wrong. And even if he did, he can’t hide forever. In the end it’ll make things worse. I want to talk to him. Maybe I can help.”
“Maybe he ain’t around. Maybe he already beat it, Mexico or someplace. Maybe you helped enough.”
“Maybe.”
Neither of us said anything. I heard footsteps from the floor above, looked around to find I was alone.
Tony gave a tired sigh. “Alice Brown. I don’t know where she lives. Not around here.”
“What about the pies?”
“When they started comin’ around, she started bringin’ me pies, or cakes. Couple at a time. Fancy stuff. She said she made them. I served them here. They were good.” He paused. “She’s a sweet kid, Smith. Only met her three or four times, but I liked her. Don’t know how she got tied up with Jimmy.”
“And you wouldn’t know where to find her?”
“No.”
“Do MacGregor and Brinkman know about her?”
“I didn’t tell ’em.”
“Good. Here’s the other thing. I’m looking for a girl, long blond hair, small, pretty. She may be a friend of Jimmy’s. Does she sound familiar?”
“No, but I ain’t met his friends, except the ones he gets arrested with. What’s she got to do with it?”
“Nothing. A friend of mine asked me to find her. It’s something completely different.”
“Eve Colgate. I knew you was workin’ for her.”
“Not your problem, Tony.”
“Shit. You tellin’ me to mind my own business?”
