Harmony In Flesh and Black

by Nicholas Kilmer

  The air was cold on his naked body, and Arlington’s black dark threatened to shift into swamp and jungle. His gut wrenched at the thought of allowing the man he was, if that included carrying his gun, into the place where Molly and the children slept.

  “Wake up, Fred,” Molly whispered urgently from the bed behind him, frightened and barely coming out of sleep. “There’s a man in the room.”

  “It’s me,” Fred said.

  “You all right? You want me to wake up and be with you?”

  “No.”

  “Jesus, is this you sweating the bed?”

  “Sorry,” Fred said.

  “I’m just impressed,” Molly said, rolling over to sleep again.

  13

  By the time Fred was up and moving, having fallen asleep just as the birds were getting seriously into their new day, it was noon. Molly had gone to work. He called Clay and got no answer. Molly had left the paper on the table with the second-day article about Smykal marked. It was on the fourth page and added nothing to the piece of the day before, except to say that leads were being followed.

  Being someone who preferred the direct approach, Fred was not happy that his own tangential involvement in Smykal’s murder made it essential for him to lie low while he gathered information. What he couldn’t do was bull into the apartment building on Turbridge Street, stand people in corners, and ask questions.

  He made a breakfast of the picnic leftovers, then put on his working clothes—khakis, white shirt and tie, and tweed jacket—and went into Cambridge. The lunch crowd had been replaced by the afternoon coffee contingent when Fred settled in again at his sidewalk table. The clientele included kids coming out of the public high school next to Molly’s library. Up Turbridge Street a cruiser was still dozing in front of Smykal’s building, but there seemed to be no other relevant activity.

  Fred tried Clay’s number a few times and failed to get any answer. Clayton could be such a nitwit that he might take a notion to spend the night somewhere else. He might have taken a trip to the Grand Canyon. The man could be so upset that he wouldn’t answer his own phone. It was unusual, though, for him not to let Fred know where he was. His was an organized soul. Fred wasn’t happy about the prolonged silence at Clayton’s end; it put a strain even on Clay’s usual version of security. Because it was silence, it could be read as ominous.

  Violence spreads. Like a virus or good slang, it becomes common currency. Sipping at the large coffee with which he was paying his rent on the sidewalk table, Fred realized how the logic of newspaper fiction worked at rumor in the back of his mind. Already one man had been killed in the immediate vicinity of the painting Fred had taken out of Turbridge Street.

  Fred drove into Boston. The late afternoon had turned frankly cold. Unattached persons strolled up and down Charles Street, at the foot of Beacon Hill, beginning the evening’s search either for an attachment not previously attempted or for something incredibly cute to eat, to complement the new haircut.

  Clay’s car, a golden Lexus, was in its spot. Fred pulled up beside it, relieved. That much of him had gotten home in one piece, at least.

  He let himself into the office. The place was empty. Fred found one of Clay’s index cards on the clear space he kept in the center of his desk; on it, in Clay’s unmistakable semi-Greek printed hand, was the message, “Whistler. Copley.”

  That was Clay being inscrutable, using code.

  Fred’s first thought was, Well, then. So the painting of Conchita is by Whistler after all.

  But then what sense did “Copley” make?

  Fred wandered around his workspace, thinking, then went upstairs to look in Clayton’s living quarters. He didn’t go up there often, only when Clay asked him up for a drink after a long evening. They were most comfortable together when there was an issue between them regarding work, their shared interest in Clayton’s passion.

  Clay’s living space was made comfortable with furnishings that Fred was sure had once been attached to the young lady, née Lucy Stillton, who looked out from the silver frame on the baby grand piano that was never played, at least not in Fred’s hearing. The piano was draped with a Kashmir shawl. Clay’s living area was lined with gilt side chairs, large Oriental pots, and armchairs upholstered in brocade. Some of the furnishings might have come over with the first of the pirate barons who started the American wing of the Stillton dynasty. Fred knew the paintings well and had participated in the care and acquisition of several of them. It was up here that one could most easily enjoy the company of Clayton Reed; here, surrounded by objects that he cared for, Clay seemed a whole person, even one who cared for other people.

  Feeling an intruder, Fred looked into the rooms the next floor up. The bedroom where Clayton slept was so plain as to seem almost monastic. It was bare except for the single bed with brass headboard and footboard, a bureau, and a straight-backed chair. It was so ascetic after the refined opulence of the rest of the apartment that it seemed like Clayton’s idea of a hair shirt.

  Fred would never remark on it, but his guess was that this was Clayton’s way of reinforcing the pleasure he took in his collection, and a way also for him to rest his eyes.

  Fred looked into Clay’s bathroom. His prizewinning collection of toilet articles was not in evidence. There was no need to look further.

  Clayton had fled.

  The enigmatic notice “Whistler. Copley” was doubtless designed to give Fred this information, revealing where he was and how to find him: a method so much more secure than calling him on the telephone.

  Fred went back down to the office and sat at his desk. He stared at Clayton’s note. Boston has a hundred things and offices and stores and institutions that proudly bear the name Copley. Dry cleaners and commercial groups. But Fred figured Clay for having sneaked away to one of the two hotels with that name: the Copley Plaza or the Copley Square. There was no Copley Whistler.

  Fred called Molly. She’d be home and would have finished supper with the kids. She was not expecting him because he had remembered, before he left in the afternoon, to leave a note telling her not to expect him. He might not be home till late.

  Fred could see Molly, finished in the kitchen, in her living room now, all blue and gray, not a pretentious puff in it, books lying around, the walls hung with photographs, mirrors, and posters. She’d have flowers in vases, hyacinths, making the room smell. Thinking of her there talking to him, from the luxury of her domestic simplicity, made his office feel dingy.

  “Are you having any luck finding a track to start on?” Molly asked.

  “Nothing looks promising at the moment. Clayton’s run off. He’s apparently staying at one of the Copleys. Copley Square, you may be sure.”

  “I know,” Molly said. “He called me at the library to give you the message. He said he was calling from a pay phone because he thinks they might tap his line, or mine, and so he doesn’t want to use either.”

  “Clay’s not used to a life of crime,” Fred said, picking up the index card and beginning to shred it absently, by hand. “Because they can tap a phone doesn’t mean they do or will. If Clay wants to divert suspicion from himself, it’s a stupid move to start acting guilty, staying at a hotel several blocks from his perfectly good house.”

  “Listen,” said Molly. “Tell Clay. Don’t tell me. Are you coming back, or what hotel are you going to choose for yourself? Something in Saugus?”

  “See you later. Stay awake, or I’ll wake you.”

  “Listen,” she said. “Stupid suggestion, but you don’t think Clay’s done something he really has to hide out for?”

  “Don’t think so,” Fred said. “Really, I don’t. He’s sticking to his priorities. Number one is Clay. Clay wants the Heade. He wants to keep it simple: no calls, no interruptions. I’m going over there and interrupt.”

  Fred walked to the Copley Square Hotel. He got through the Boston version of grotesque opulence in the lobby and made inquiries at the desk, discovering that Mr. Whistler was regist
ered in Room 314 and not answering his phone.

  For the hell of it, Fred checked out the hotel restaurant, sweeping aside harpist and maître d’ and a fleet of incipient waiters. He looked around the room, the chairs and people all done in velvet and shellac, the antique Musak on the harp perfectly matched, everything reaffirmed in the mirrors, and found Clayton behind a large menu lettered by hand in a script chosen to suggest refined complexity rather than comfort in dining.

  Clay was still dressed for a wedding, as he had been Sunday morning—as he was every day. A small rose did its job in the buttonhole of his dark blue suit. His angular face was twitching over the choices parading before him. Fred’s shadow crossed his menu.

  “Ah, Fred. Will you join me?” he offered, looking up.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Fred said, sitting across from him on a frail chair speedily offered by a waiter.

  “The chef is well recommended,” Clay said.

  “I mean running away from home,” Fred said.

  “It’s too tense. I can’t be where Albert Finn can find me,” Clay said blandly. “So I moved. Moved out. Let them infer that I left town.” He turned his attention back to the menu. “Will you dine, Fred?”

  “I’ll have a drink,” Fred said. “You go on.”

  Fred wasn’t in the mood to eat anything that took so many curls to write down.

  Clay took his time choosing between the Noisette farcie and the Farce noisettée. Sea bass mousquetaire. Abomination d’artichaut.

  Fred let Clay order while he looked the other way. Clay had to ask questions of the waiter, like a nervous king taking a particularly delicate crap. You really wanted to be somewhere else.

  Fred didn’t listen to what Clay was going to ingest. He ordered a large gin and bitters, “House brand.”

  These items of importance set aside, they talked.

  The waiter bowed and delivered Clayton a kir, smirking as if he’d thought it up himself. Imagine having the wit to mix fruit syrup and white wine in a glass and charge five dollars for it.

  Clayton sipped and nodded toward the expectant waiter. Waiter, energized by approbation, drifted back into the wings to undertake new triumphs.

  “Also, if anyone should be looking for Arthurian,” Clay continued, “then it’s fortuitous that I am out of reach. Smykal may have told someone about my incognito visit. From the moment I saw him, I knew he’d be indiscreet. His own art was indiscreet, did you not think, Fred? He opened the door and I heard a voice say to me, immediately, Clayton Reed can’t be here.”

  “It turns out that was a good decision. Was that the first you’d seen him? That Friday?” Fred asked.

  “I stopped by Friday morning.” Clay put into his mouth something the waiter had brought with his kir, which must be other than what it appeared to be: three dollops of goat shit on a cracker.

  Every few minutes the waiter brought something new. They had to keep Clay from getting impatient, breaking furniture, while he waited for them to breed his salmon correctly, bring it up right, and send it to the best schools.

  Clay went on, “I introduced myself and was invited in. He denied having any paintings by Conchita Hill, or ever having seen one. All he had left, he said, was that picture—which I had not been prepared for. I asked what it was. He showed me the letter. I told him I’d buy it and asked for a price. He gave me a price. He wanted cash. I went and got it. It was simple, surprisingly simple.”

  “Too simple,” Fred said. “Except as it turned out. There are times, Clay, when you should do some heavy lifting.”

  “So you say now,” Clay answered. “What he told me then was that he wished to make a photograph of the work, to keep as a memento. That being a blood relation of his, how could I refuse?”

  He motioned toward a new arrival: rose petals mixed with cucumber and something almost white squirted on the cucumber.

  “I’m all right,” Fred said.

  Fred had a respect for materials. He liked his food to look like food, not like a hat or a boat or a day at the races.

  “How did he know what it was, a man like that? How did he know how much he wanted for it?” Fred asked. “Normally, in a situation like that, you don’t get in and out so cleanly. You know, Clay, if a person has something like that painting, and you show interest, they right away get paranoid, thinking that if you want it at all it’s because you’re trying to cheat them. The more you’re willing to pay, the more they’re sure you want to cheat them.”

  14

  Clay sipped impatiently at his kir while the harpist undertook her revenge on a Chopin prelude.

  “I am aware of this, Fred,” Clay said. “You request that they supply a figure they consider attractive, and they are stricken dumb. They had believed what they owned was worthless, or priceless.”

  “It’s true? You asked him how much he wanted for the painting, and he just told you?”

  “It did surprise me,” Clay said.

  Clay had now to attend to the wine steward, tasting the Vieux Chêteau d’Antipape, an Avignon rosé, and pronouncing upon it.

  “Once you alert them,” Clayton said, “the truly unintelligent try to outsmart you. The less unintelligent cast out blindly into the world for appraisals. They run to auction houses and art dealers. They try to set up their own private bidding situation, in the course of which everyone sees the painting, the thing gets shopped, the price—supposing the painting is truly interesting—fluctuates madly.

  “Meanwhile, the owner gets flustered with hope, loses all faith in the world, and puts the picture in a vault or, better, in a basement, where it rots.

  “By this time my own interest has flagged. The owner must be left to the tender seduction of the bow-tied functionary from the auction house, who is the sad result of the ill-advised cross between mortician and old family retainer.”

  The waiter presented Clay with his opening course, an aspect of saumon fumé d’ambre gris. Everyone bowed, except the fish, which was beset by outsize capers split and stuffed. It looked as if it had died of infected tumors.

  Clay nodded. The waiter withdrew. Clay raised his fork.

  The simplest way to get a painting away from a Smykal—and numerous people used this technique well—was to wear old clothes: the pay-me-and-I’ll-clean-your-basement-or-attic, lady, haul-the-crap-away approach.

  Arthurian had done this, but in fancy dress.

  “Yes,” Clayton said. “I did think it was odd when Smykal volunteered a price and seemed so comfortable dealing with me. Of course, I had attacked his defenses by admiring his own work—the man thought of himself as an artist, remember—and I also encouraged him to believe I might accept his invitation to slither in his footsteps. That disarmed him further.

  “In the meantime I asked him, ‘Since you don’t have any paintings by Conchita Hill herself, will you permit me to purchase the nude?’ My excitement at finding her represented in a painting of such quality was unfeigned. I asked for a price and he answered straight out, ‘Thirty thousand. Cash.’”

  “Jesus,” Fred said.

  That was a solid chunk of money for an unsigned painting. No wonder Clay wanted the letter. The artist must indeed be someone of interest. “And here,” Clayton said, “I think I did something that helped settle any reservations Mr. Smykal might have been harboring. I asked if he’d accept three thousand more and let me take the frame also.

  “Naturally the price he’d given me included the frame, but he didn’t blink. He took the extra three thousand.”

  Buying and selling are like judo. The winner must be alert to what direction the weight and position of the opponent are tending in and supply the extra touch or feint to allow him to let both weight and movement carry him down. The victor is the combatant who takes best advantage of gravity. Your own weight fells you.

  “Will you accept a glass of this wine?” Clay asked.

  “Thanks, Clay. I’m driving back to Arlington, so I’ll pass.”

  “Here’s what
I want you to do,” Clay said, business now. “Concentrate on the Heade. This is Monday. The sale is Saturday. Our problem will be Finn.”

  “Unless Buddy Mangan is a player,” Fred reminded him.

  “Brute force we can deal with,” Clay said. “What worries me is Finn’s finesse—and the fact that we can’t guess what that devious man might know. It was the lady Molly who reminded me. On the phone, when I called her, at around noon. Assume the worst. I must think about how Finn works and who his informant is.”

  Fred began shredding a roll for something to do.

  Clay went on, “Suppose the informant is a past or present student, a scholar with time for research, endless and grueling. ‘Why don’t you look at the graduate students?’ Molly asked. ‘Find out who in the neighborhood is working with Heade, or with Vermeer. Start from the bottom and work up.’”

  The way Clay said it, as he began to separate the leaved flesh of his fish, made Fred recall those nature films where the lioness runs the warthog down, getting her first good hold under the tail.

  “For the moment, let us keep what advantage we can in the game,” Clay said. “Let us be elastic, versatile. We can change plans where indicated. Let the police do what they do about the Cambridge misadventure. We will respond as needed, doing what we do, if need be.”

  “Right.” Fred rose from the table. As far as the Cambridge “misadventure” was concerned, he would do what he thought was best and safest for all concerned, regardless of Clay’s directions.

  “Give me a call tomorrow,” Clay said. “I’ll ask around, too. I’ll call a friend at BU who knows who’s doing what. Why don’t you check Harvard? Go on to Brown if you like. Talk to the guy. Who is it? That book on Mondrian? It can’t hurt, as long as we are absurdly careful and—”

  “Other than that…,” Fred said, standing and watching the servitors become edgy about the large man standing, looking like a potential threat. “Other than that, Clay, you’d best be thinking about what our position is going to be, financially speaking, especially if Buddy Mangan’s got his eye on it. As a Heade, the estimate is eighty to a hundred K, already too much for that picture. I’ll need to know how far to go on the thing, what the cushion of risk is between what the Heade is worth to you as such and what it might be worth if it’s what you hope.”