Harmony In Flesh and Black

by Nicholas Kilmer

  “A painting works in layers, like a cake. If you cut it in half and looked at the layers, you’d start at the bottom, with the canvas. Then there’s the ground to make the cloth stable—that should be rabbit-skin glue on a Vermeer. Then maybe a layer of color. Then the underpainting, drawn with paint. Vermeer, though—you get this in Chris Norgren’s book, an obscure one, but Clay swears by it; I think it sold about five copies, and Clay bought one of them, Jan van der Meer van Delft—Vermeer didn’t draw on his canvases. His forms are seen in color, not in line. Then the painting itself, done in stages, glazes, over a long period of time. Months. Then a layer of varnish. Then dirt. Then two hundred years of new layers of dirt and varnish, and possibly somebody now and again painted on improvements. Films of smoke. And then the Heade, the icing, covered with a lot of Apthorp dust. Thank God they’re selling it in estate condition and haven’t cleaned it. That could have given away the whole show right there. And thank God Higginson’s boss is in Japan. He’d look at the painting, into it, and not just see himself in it, as Higginson likely did—everything in the world being his mirror.

  “Whatever happens, if what we suspect turns out to be likely, after we do the tests, there’ll be a committee of conservators sitting around this picture for a year just thinking about it, like diamond cutters around the Hope diamond before a single blow is struck.”

  * * *

  They tiptoed into the house late. The kids were watching Saturday Night Live.

  “Come on, herm,” Molly whispered in Fred’s ear, and leered. “Help peel me out of my basic black.”

  9

  The blossoms of Molly’s pear tree tapped at the window. That side of the house got the sun early, so you woke to the sound of bees.

  Molly was shaking Fred, alarmed.

  “That man’s dead,” she said.

  “What man?”

  “The one you told me about, where the nude came from—the one who still owes Clayton Reed a letter—Smykal. Henry Smykal.”

  Fred woke up.

  “It sounds awful,” Molly said. “God, Fred. We saw it. That was the fuss on Turbridge Street.”

  Her yellow robe flapped. She was holding the front page of the newspaper. Fred smelled bacon.

  He smelled Smykal’s apartment, the old bacon-fat smell, the dust and cigar smoke; saw the hot lights behind Smykal’s head; felt the pressure of Smykal’s door against his toes. Saw the caked blood around Smykal and the depressed slack in the side of his head.

  “I know,” Fred said. “Sorry about this, Molly.”

  “You know?” Molly stared at him, stunned, going white, trembling.

  “Let me get Clay on the phone,” Fred said, reaching across Molly’s bed toward the table on her side where the phone was. He looked up into her staring face.

  “What do you mean, ‘I know’?” Molly yelled, flushing and then going gray. Fred could see some of the awful thoughts that were pressing against her.

  “When I went back to get that letter,” Fred said, “he was dead. It’s more complex than that, though, since I went twice, talked to him the first time and found him dead the second. I elected to leave the body, saying nothing. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you either to take my part or not to. Still, I’m sorry to bring this with me to your bed.”

  Molly dropped the newspaper and left the room.

  Fred rushed through the article. One of the tenants in the building had Smykal’s key, had been asked to come in sometimes and feed the cat (what cat?), had entered Saturday night and seen the body lying in its large, pooled scabs, and had called 911. The police weren’t giving out information, but the reporter had found a willing bystander who’d seen the bloody mess. Smykal would have been happy about one thing: he was described as a “Cambridge artist.”

  Fred smelled the bacon cooking downstairs. With great reluctance, he dialed Clay and got no answer.

  “My God,” Molly said when Fred came into the kitchen. “What did you think I was going to do, tattle-tale on you?”

  She was angry, and crying, as well as burning the bacon, standing in the middle of her kitchen and wringing her hands. “What am I, Fred? Someone to play with, for God’s sake? The bacon’s burning.” She went to tend to it.

  “Molly, I’m not going to invite you to join me in a crime.”

  “All the time, over coffee at Pamplona, talking about Heade and Vermeer—and after—the whole time, you were hiding what you knew. That filthy thing. Horrible thing.”

  “That’s true,” Fred said. Molly had coffee on the stove. He put some in a mug.

  “Again the bold hunter stands between his little woman and the world,” Molly said. “It’s why so many little women think the world looks like a man’s back.”

  Fred said, “You tell me I have a nice back.”

  Molly turned on him furiously. “Yes. And I can read the scars on it as well, which we seem to agree never to speak about. Another of your secrets. For God’s sake, whatever your wonderful mysterious past is, I know you, Fred. You’ll do the decent thing. You used the word elected? Listen, Fred. I ‘elected’ to accept you as a companion. That’s a risk I freely take. It’s faith. It’s risk.

  “So have some faith in me. Take a risk yourself.”

  * * *

  Molly opened the kitchen door to the backyard. The air was refreshed by last night’s rain, which the bees disturbed among the pear blossoms. It was eight-thirty. The backyard glowed with spring promise. There was still ivy under Molly’s maple tree; Fred hadn’t used it all making his wreath. You could feel Spy Pond not far away, though you couldn’t see it. Sea gulls wheeled overhead, and crows. It was cold, with bright sun twisting fronds of vapor through the damp yard. Fred followed Molly out, and they stood drinking coffee while Fred recounted what had happened Friday night.

  “You’ll have to tell them,” Molly said. “You were there. Someone saw you. You did nothing wrong, but they’ll think you did if you don’t report it, if you don’t talk to them.”

  “Clayton was there, too, earlier,” Fred said. “That makes the situation more complex.”

  Molly said, “People will see—people who knew him—that the picture’s missing. They’ll assume you killed him and stole the painting.”

  Fred said, “Maybe. But the killing wasn’t about the painting. That’s coincidence.”

  “I didn’t see how he died,” Molly said. “The paper said ‘by violence.’”

  “They don’t tell you,” Fred said. “Until they can get the official word. He was pounded to death. With a hammer.”

  “How horrible,” Molly said.

  Fred nodded. The man had been horrible also, but maybe not as horrible as his death. “He was pathetic,” Fred said. “His place smelled bad. He looked like one of those losers who can’t keep a friend, can’t finish anything, be anybody. He was doing pornography. As well as cocaine. I hate bringing you this, Molly, but there you are. Probably it’s a simple thing; maybe someone discovered that he had Clay’s money. Then it wouldn’t matter who he was or what he was doing.”

  Molly said, “You didn’t tell me about the pornography.”

  “Sorry,” Fred said. “I’m taking first things first.”

  Molly said, “If he was involved in pornography, it’s another story. Pornography can mean organized crime. The people involved in that stuff could have any number of reasons to kill someone.”

  “I don’t know,” Fred said. “When we were little boys and girls, maybe, but now? It’s common as popcorn.”

  “I hate your being seen there, Fred,” Molly said. “You’re no picnic to look at. People remember you.” She began tidying the place under the maple tree where Fred had gathered ivy the night before.

  “He had other people in there when I first tried to get in,” Fred said. “At least one voice, a woman’s. Smykal was ‘filming.’ But there was no sign of that activity when I found him. That’s nagging me.”

  “So,” Molly said, straightening up and brushing crumbs of dir
t off her hands. “What do you plan to do with the situation?”

  “Nothing until I talk to Clay, who doesn’t answer his phone.”

  * * *

  Clayton appeared at the side gate. He was wearing a blue suit for this Sunday morning, with a white shirt and a sedate necktie. An orange blossom flourished in his buttonhole. He was ready for a wedding. Fred opened the gate for him.

  “Yes,” said Clay, looking at both of them. “I have seen the newspaper. The matter of Henry Smykal has lost its simplicity. You did not kill him, Fred?”

  Clayton was just asking.

  This was only the second time Clay had come to Molly’s house. The first was when Molly had made Fred invite him to a Christmas party a year back. It had not been a success. Ophelia had been there—part of Molly’s plan. She and Clayton had not got along, but only Clay had realized it, Ophelia being more of an optimist.

  “No coffee,” Clay said, spurning the cup Molly offered automatically. “I do not require stimulants. The garden’s beautiful.”

  Clayton was a gentleman. He apologized for coming around back. He hadn’t wanted to wake anyone by knocking. He thanked Molly for her efforts the previous night and asked after the children.

  “They’ll sleep till noon if we let ’em,” Molly said. “Today we’ll let ’em.”

  10

  Fred said, “You paid Smykal cash?”

  Clayton and Fred sat in the yard in folding chairs while Molly stood in her kitchen doorway in the yellow terry wrapper Fred had given her, holding her coffee mug, from which the steam had long since stopped rising.

  Clay made an expression of distaste. “The man said cash was the only form of payment he would consider. He could find someone else if I was not interested. He gave me three hours. Bluff, of course. But I didn’t want him to try. I immediately cashed a check, came back, gave him cash, took the letter, as I thought, and arranged that you would pick up the painting an hour later.”

  “Did Smykal understand what he was selling you?”

  “He did and he didn’t. I told him enough to make my interest reasonable. Of course not. He knew basically what it was. He knew what he wanted for it.”

  Clay was stalling.

  “Look,” Fred said. “I have to know, is there anything to show you were in that apartment?”

  “If Smykal made notes, he didn’t have my name. It’s obvious he wanted to keep our transaction secret. Let them look all they want for Arthur Arthurian.”

  “How did you find the man?” Fred asked. “What’s the connection? How did you locate the painting of Conchita Hill there? From the mark on the wall, he’d had it a long time. It’s dangerous to keep secrets now, Clay. Can someone follow this project back to us?”

  “There is a remote chance.”

  Molly’s hiss of indrawn breath was clear as a kettle reaching the boil.

  “I think not. I think it is remote enough,” Clayton said. He didn’t want Fred to learn his methods.

  “Clay, there are times to play games, and games to be played, and games I don’t need and won’t play. I’m in this, too. Come off it.”

  “Sarah Chatterjee at the Genealogical Society. She did the research under my guidance,” Clay said, smirking until he recalled the corpse. “Conchita Hill married Simon Goodson. In Baltimore. They had a daughter, Sarah, who married Franklin Arbuthnot. In Cleveland. Their daughter Annie married Henry Smykal. Senior. Of Somerville, Mass.,” Clayton recited from memory. He would have it all down on file cards as well, translated from Miss Chatterjee’s report. She’d have told him where everyone had gone to school, the names and numbers of offspring, and the rest.

  At least Clay hadn’t discovered it himself, Fred thought.

  “And Miss Chatterjee is…?” Molly asked.

  “In Bengal for six months, visiting her mother,” Clay said. “That is our good fortune, I imagine.”

  “Therefore the woman in the painting,” Molly said, counting on her fingers, “was Smykal’s great-grandma. In that nasty place.”

  “I should probably tell you,” Fred said, “that I found Smykal’s body and concealed the fact.”

  Clay looked at Fred, thinking. He stroked the Unitarian stripes on his necktie, settling them down. “I’m glad to hear that, Fred,” he said. “Therefore you had a chance to search for the letter.”

  His look turned expectant.

  Fred saw Molly start and open her mouth to say something, and then close it again, tight, saying it to herself through clenched teeth instead.

  “It wasn’t to be found,” Fred said. “Not in the time I had.”

  “A shame,” Clay said, still solicitous of number one. “I want that letter. It has to be somewhere. Between the time I saw it in his hand and when I brought the money to him, on Friday, he had three hours. Where did he put it? You don’t suppose you could go back now…” His voice trailed off in response to Fred’s snort of incredulity. “No, I suppose they have the apartment sealed or whatever it is they do.”

  “If you gentlemen will excuse me,” Molly said, “I’ll get dressed.”

  She slammed into the house.

  * * *

  Clayton was badly spooked. Fred had been right to tell him nothing. A murder happening near enough to the both of them for them to feel the wind of it—that was alarming. “A rude reminder of mortality,” Clay called it. They were sitting in the aluminum chairs, which Clay also found, it seemed, a rude reminder of mortality, to judge from the way he crossed his grasshopper legs and fidgeted.

  They looked the situation over. In the course of twenty-four hours, it appeared, they might well have lost, simultaneously on two separate fronts, their advantage on the Heade and the hope of completing the provenance on the recumbent Conchita Hill.

  As far as Smykal’s murder was concerned, what was their exposure? If either Clayton or Fred had been seen at Smykal’s apartment, it was by someone who did not know them.

  “But can we keep out of it? Our fingerprints will be there,” Clay said. “I imagine there’s something in that business of fingerprints?”

  “They have to compare them to something,” Fred said. “Fingerprints without reference mean nothing, like the exhibition history of a picture you can’t find. But we could volunteer, tell them we were in the apartment. If we don’t, we set a record that looks like guilty knowledge. If they’re going to find out anyway, it’s better we tell them now than they find out later.”

  “How would that help me get that letter?” Clay asked. “I keep recalling the way he strove to rub my face in his photographs! Can I want my associates and friends to think of me in such a place? Still … how do we get the letter, with who knows what storms washing around the place? You have many skills, Fred. I am sure you can manage something. It’s too bad about Smykal—a tragedy from his point of view. But for us, as you keep pointing out, Fred, the important thing’s the Heade. He’s clever, and he has great power,” Clay said, standing and walking toward Molly’s back fence.

  It took Fred a minute to understand. He realized that the Vermeer had filled Clayton’s horizon again; he was talking about Albert Finn.

  “We know Finn’s in the game since he’s staying in town.” Clay looked at his watch. “I have a wedding in Manchester I must get to, Fred. I conclude we should be guided by your judgment, which you have described so vividly using the metaphor of lying in ambush in a swamp. We must lie low and still, saying nothing while we watch carefully ourselves. Let us not allow them to see the water shake.”

  Fred agreed that they might as well keep silent at least until the auction was played out, acknowledging to himself what Clay did not seem to recognize, that any risk being undertaken according to this plan was primarily Fred’s.

  In the meantime, Clay suggested that “since we are citizens, and if you can do so without risking the possibility of my painting’s being confiscated from me as evidence in a crime,” Fred might as well use his many skills to pluck the letter safe and well from this flaming disaster, without le
tting himself be noticed.

  “And if I’m caught, say I don’t know you?” Fred shot at Clayton as he turned to go.

  Clay pretended not to hear. Ever the gentleman, he said, walking out the side gate to the front of the house, “Please thank the lady Molly for her hospitality, and apologize for me again for my breaking into the tranquillity of your Sunday morning.

  “I’ll understand if you don’t come in tomorrow,” he added. “Call. I may have an idea. You may also have something to tell me. I agree with your sage advice, though. Don’t lose track of our primary objective: the Heade. Whatever you do, don’t ruffle the surface.”

  Clayton paused in thought, the idea struggling for completion. “What’s ruffled will not reflect,” he told Fred.

  11

  There was discussion before it was decided what Fred would do. Molly had changed clothes, the yellow robe supplanted now by pink shorts and one of Fred’s white shirts, and they sat at the table in her kitchen.

  “It’s not the desert. Someone must have seen you come out of the building with that painting,” Molly said.

  “It was wrapped. It was the day before Smykal was found,” Fred said.

  “You’re damn right. Which you know because you were there just before he got killed, and then right after. Jesus, Fred, you were practically living at that place.”

  “Smykal was expecting someone,” Fred said. “He buzzed the door lock open without using the intercom. He said, when he saw me, ‘You’re not him.’”

  “Who was ‘him’?” Molly asked.

  “I may have to find out,” Fred said.

  If they had been married, Molly would have something to say about the situation he was in. And Fred would have to say something like, “Trust me.” This present arrangement was more awkward since it didn’t provide Molly any legal right to worry.

  “Just don’t be an asshole,” Molly said, taking his arm and giving it a rough shake.