"Why is the painting so important? What does it mean?"
"That's not your concern."
"Where's Veil Kendry?"
"Besides yourself, who else has seen this painting?"
"A few hundred cops, most of them police chiefs."
The man with the blackjack started to swing, then stopped when my interrogator held up his hand. But the sap remained cocked, ready to strike. The face of the younger torturer at the foot of my bed revealed nothing; he was just a man doing his*job.
"You must not try to be amusing, Frederickson," the older man said.
"It's the Goddamn truth," I breathed, wriggling my body in an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the cramps in my stomach. "The lecture I gave was to a group of police chiefs and criminologists."
"You took the painting with you to the lecture?"
"I didn't have time to go home. Everyone in the lecture hall must have seen me carrying it, but it couldn't have meant anything to anybody. I'm considered eccentric in some circles." I paused, tried to suck in a deep breath. "I'm answering your questions; I don't have any reason not to. Why don't you loosen the ropes so I can breathe a little?"
"Just a few more questions, Dr. Frederickson; you're tied to make certain we have your undivided attention. You claim that your brother hasn't seen this painting, and that you haven't discussed it with him. Wasn't he at the lecture?"
"No."
I groaned when the sap tapped harder against my left sole, but not too loudly; I didn't want the wet towel over my face again.
"But he said that he was going. Indeed, he seemed quite anxious to see and hear you."
"Some emergency came up at his precinct station, and Garth had to handle it. Look, I'm really sorry you lost me in the subway. If you'd been able to follow me around all day, you'd see that everything I'm telling you is the truth. Aside from what I've told you, I don't know anything. You're the ones who know all the important questions and answers, so I don't understand why you're hassling me. You've got the painting. I've got nothing left to give you, except the money, and if you'll be patient and wait a few hours without driving my feet up into my chest, I'll get that for you."
My interrogator nodded to his colleague, who raised Veil's painting to shoulder level for me to look at.
"What does the painting suggest to you, Dr. Frederickson?"
"I don't know what you want from me, pal," I replied with a rising anger that was thoroughly absurd for someone in my position. "For Christ's sake, it's not a Goddamn Rorschach blot. We're all looking at the same fucking painting; what you see is what I see. What the hell do you expect me to say?!"
"If you don't wish to be hurt again, keep your voice down," the older man said politely but firmly. "Just answer the question."
"It's Veil Kendry as some kind of armed angel floating over a jungle filled with soldiers and guerrillas. It's probably Viet Nam. Is that what you want me to say?"
"What associations to Veil Kendry does it call to mind, Dr. Frederickson?"
"None."
"What does the painting mean to you?"
"Nothing."
"Why do you suppose Mr. Kendry left this for you?"
"I've already answered that-"
"Why you, and not someone else?"
"Probably because he overestimated my intuitive abilities, not to mention my tolerance for pain."
"Ah, you're trying to be amusing again."
"I'm a private investigator as well as a criminologist, pal. You know that. It looks like he was trying to throw some business my way. I don't understand what you're trying to get at."
"The envelope with the money that was with the painting was clearly addressed to you, a point you repeatedly sought to make with your brother. I am suggesting that in the past Mr. Kendry may have said something to you, and only you, that would help you to understand the meaning of the painting. Furthermore, I am suggesting that in the past few hours you could have shared that information with one or more persons."
"That's one wrong from column A, and one wrong from column B."
"The connection could have come to you since your last phone conversation with your brother."
"Nope. You know, if you keep this shit up you're likely to make me angry."
"What do you know of Mr. Kendry's past?"
"When he first came to New York, he was apparently a very disturbed man. A few months before I met him, he'd started painting. It didn't quite keep him off the streets and out of trouble, but it apparently did help him keep his head straight. Now he's a big man on the art scene. He's also the best unarmed fighter I've ever met. Aside from that, nada. Zip."
"He never talked to you about his experiences in the years before he came to New York?"
"Never."
"Did he ever make insinuations?"
"About who or what?"
"About anyone or anything."
"Veil Kendry never makes insinuations of any kind. If he had something to say, about you or anybody else, he'd say it right in your face."
"You claim this man you call a friend never told you anything about his past?"
"It's the truth."
"And you never inquired?"
"I'm not the inquisitive sort. Was it one of you guys who winged a shot at him?"
"You most certainly are the inquisitive sort, Dr. Frederickson. If you weren't, the three of us wouldn't be in this unfortunate situation."
"When a friend asks me not be be inquisitive, I'm not inquisitive. Everything I've told you is the truth."
The man sitting on the edge of my bed stared at me for some time in silence. I stared back, reflecting on the fact that I had never felt more alone or helpless than at this moment, in my own bed in my own apartment, surrounded by neighbors around, above, and below me. I was cut off from everyone by pain, the threat of pain, and a wet towel.
Finally the older man stood up, turned to his partner. "I believe him," he said easily. "What do you think?"
The younger man nodded, spoke for the first time. "I think he's telling the truth. Apparently, Kendry never shared information with anybody, and he's still keeping his own council; executing this painting is as far as he would go. It's curious, but it does seem to be the case."
"Good," I said. "Now that you've got that right, let's close down this show. I'd appreciate it if you'd take these ropes off me and get the fuck out of my apartment. Go out and play in the traffic."
The man with the thick glasses looked down at me. "Do you smoke, Dr. Frederickson?"
"No," I replied quickly, glancing back and forth between the two men. I found the question decidedly ominous. "I was told it's unhealthy."
The younger man dropped the sap in his pocket and took out a can of lighter fluid. I started to yell, but the towel slapped down over my mouth. Then the older man wrapped it around the back of my head, tied it. I could no nothing but squirm and watch helplessly as the man with the cold brown eyes removed the top from the can, then thoroughly soaked the painting. This done, he walked slowly around the bed, soaking the edges of the bedclothes. He screwed the top back on the can, put it back in his pocket, and took out an expensive-looking silver lighter. He opened the cap, then flicked the lighter to produce a long blue and white flame, which he touched to a corner of the painting. The fluid-soaked painting instantly burst into flame. The younger man tossed the burning painting beneath the bed, and then, without a backward glance, the two men turned and walked quickly from the bedroom. A few seconds later I heard the apartment door open and close.
I immediately began tugging at the ropes, to no avail. Smoke was beginning to billow out from beneath the bed, and I struggled against the oxygen-greedy panic rising within me. Breathing deeply through my nose, trying not even to think of what it would feel like when the black smoke began to fill my lungs and the flames to touch my flesh, I groped with my fingers for the knots around my wrists. It was no use; the ropes were taut, and the knots expertly tied. Again, I thrashed my body and yanked with my arms and legs,
trying desperately to get one limb, any limb, free. But it was not to be. The only way the ropes were going to disappear was to burn along with me, which they would, obliterating any evidence to suggest that my death was anything more than the result of a freak accident, perhaps a fire caused by a short circuit in the reading lamp beside my bed.
Smoke was filling the bedroom now, almost totally obscuring my vision. Soon, I thought, one of my neighbors was going to smell it, if that hadn't happened already, and call the fire department. Unfortunately, I'd be long gone by the time anybody reached me. Ironically, the burning bed beneath me formed a kind of baffle for the thick smoke, affording me a pocket of relatively clean air. But it was only prolonging the agony; flames were shooting up all around me, and the mattress on which I lay was growing very hot.
Sayonara, I thought with something approaching an air of resignation. I'd read somewhere that people who'd been burned at the stake usually died of suffocation before the flames finally reached them. I fervently hoped that was true, and that the same principle applied in bed as at stake. The litter of lives Garth had mentioned had finally been used up. My night visitors had nailed me quickly, and they'd nailed me good. I was going to die, and I would never know the reasons for it.
It was the last thing I thought before finally passing out from heat and lack of air.
5
I woke up coughing. To my considerable surprise it appeared that I wasn't dead-only slightly singed and short of breath, with lungs that felt as if they'd been painted with the drippings at the bottom of a barbecue pit and a mouth that tasted the same. There was a soft hissing sound that seemed to come from all around me, and after a few moments I realized that what I thought was badly blurred vision was due to the fact that I was looking at the walls of an oxygen tent. I started hacking again, brought up dark phlegm. As if on cue, a flap of the tent was pulled back and a reasonably attractive nurse appeared with a metal bowl to contain my own drippings. The large, familiar, and comforting figure of my brother loomed up behind the nurse, peered down at me over her shoulder. When I tried to speak and could only manage a huge yawn, I realized I was pretty well doped up on analgesics, expectorants, whatever. I finished hacking and spitting, then lazily waved to Garth and drifted back to sleep.
When I did finally come around for an extended stay, I had a splitting headache. My mouth still tasted like a furnace, and my lungs felt like leather, but it was considerably easier to breathe. When I took a physical inventory, I found that I was burned on various parts of my body, primarily the lower parts of my arms and legs. However, even though the burns were covered with light gauze, I was fairly certain that they weren't severe. My feet and legs, and particularly my knees, throbbed from the pounding the younger man had given my soles, but he hadn't broken anything. Incredibly, I was not only alive, but not even seriously hurt. Considering the fact that the last thing I remembered was passing out on a bed that was going up in flames, I considered my present condition most peculiar, if not downright miraculous. Try as hard as I might, I could not come up with any kind of plausible scenario that could explain my survival.
I pushed back the flap on the oxygen tent, pushed myself up into a sitting position and swung my legs over the side of the bed, groaned when pain shot through my body and pounded in my skull. Garth, who had been sitting in a chair near the foot of the bed, quickly rose, came to me, and very gently wrapped me in his arms.
"Thank God," Garth said quietly, then tried to push me back under the oxygen tent.
"I'm all right," I said, pushing back. "Just let me sit up for a time. How the hell did I get here?"
Garth pulled the chair up to the side of the bed, sat down, and lightly rested his hand on my arm. "What do you remember?" he asked quietly.
A very dangerous question, I thought as I looked at Garth. I thought I was beginning to understand at least a few of the reasons why Veil had reached out for my help in such a maddeningly problematic and circuitous manner, and now I was in a position where I had to be very cautious about how I did things. I believed I had convinced my torturers that Garth was a totally disinterested party who hadn't even seen Veil's mysterious painting, and that we hadn't had any discussions about the matter other than those the men had monitored on the telephone. If the men hadn't been convinced of this, I was convinced that I would have survived the fire only to be told that my brother was dead. I had myself a dilemma witli no means to resolve it, no loft to leave open and no lights to leave burning. The circumstances surrounding Veil's disappearance were now most definitely a matter for the police to investigate, but the price of telling Garth what had happened could well be his life. I wasn't certain what I should do, and I wanted time to think about it.
"At the moment, all I remember is a lot of smoke and flame," I said carefully, watching my brother's face. "Who got me out?"
"It must have been a fireman, although I was never able to find out which one," Garth said in an odd tone of voice that went with the odd way he was looking at me. "I responded to the original call when I heard the fire was in your apartment building. As a matter of fact, I was the one who found you unconscious on the sidewalk where somebody had dropped you. You were wrapped in soaked drapes from your living room. Whoever got to you first had a lot of presence of mind; he was cool, quick, and gutsy."
Indeed, I thought. Also, whoever had broken through the apartment door, assessed the situation, torn down the living room drapes and soaked them in the kitchen sink, then waded under that life-saving shroud through a sea of flame to cut me free and carry me out, had to have been very close by-like virtually in the hallway outside my apartment. Even so, I considered it quite possible that my rescuer had been more badly burned than I was.
"What about the other people in the building?" I asked.
"The whole floor was gutted. Five people died-two of them children."
"Oh, my God," I whispered.
"You'll stay at my place until you find another one of your own," Garth said. His tone had gone from merely odd to almost cold. He turned slightly, nodded toward a stack of boxes piled up next to the window. "I brought you a few changes of clothes."
"Thank you."
"I've got a couple of other items for you, as well," Garth said, rising from the chair and walking to the window. He selected a box, came back and sat down again. Resting the box on his knees, he took off the top and brought out two handguns-a nickel-plated Beretta in a shoulder holster and a palm-sized Seecamp with an ankle holster. He placed the guns, along with a box of cartridges for each, on the bed next to me. "These will replace the ones you lost. You'll find copies of your city and state carry permits in the shoulder holster. It makes me very nervous to think of you going around unarmed, even in a hospital room."
I checked the magazine and trigger action of the Beretta, shoved it back into its holster. The weapons of death looked out of place in this room inside a house of healing. "Thanks again, Garth. You've really been taking care of business."
"Yeah. You say all you remember is waking up and finding yourself surrounded by smoke and flame?"
"Uh… something like that." I was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable.
"Something like that? Let me see if I can refresh your memory." Once again he reached into the box. This time he brought out four lengths of rope, each frayed at one end and sliced cleanly with a knife at the other. He tossed the ropes into my lap. "I'll bet a month's salary that the widths of those ropes match the friction burns on your wrists and ankles," Garth continued coldly. "They should, because that's where I found them tied. God knows how you got those bruises on your heels and soles; they're black. Do you always beat the soles of your feet and tie yourself up before you go to sleep?"
I'd run out of thinking time. "Garth, I-"
"What the fuck's the matter with you?!" Garth snapped, his brown eyes flashing with anger. "Five people died in that fire! Why the hell are you playing games with me?!"
"I'm sorry, Garth. I thought maybe I had a good rea
son for keeping my mouth shut. I can see now that I didn't."
"The fire that destroyed that floor started in your apartment, didn't it?"
"Yes."
"Very good. It sounds like your memory is improving."
I proceeded to tell Garth what had happened, finished by explaining why I had considered keeping the story to myself.
"Dumb, Mongo," Garth said, shaking his head in exasperation. However, his face had softened, and the chill was gone from his voice. "I appreciate your concern for me, as misplaced as it was, but don't really understand what you thought you were going to do next. Did you plan to try to find and take on these two guys by yourself?"
"I wasn't sure what I was going to do, Garth," I replied, thoroughly chastened. "I was thinking about it."
"Hell, all they did was tie you on your bed and light a fire under you."
"True; but they tried to kill me only after they'd asked me a lot of questions, which I think is important to consider. There's no doubt in my mind that if those guys had thought they already had the answers to the questions, if Veil had left me any kind of message clearly outlining what was going on, I'd have been blown away the moment I stepped out of Veil's loft onto the sidewalk. The men weren't certain of what I knew, or what others might know, and so they followed me instead of killing me right away. Now, if they find out I'm alive, they'll kill me on sight-and I believe they'll do the same to you if they find out we've talked. Doubt in the minds of Veil's enemies-doubt about what he's done, and plans to do-is the only reason I'm alive. That's one of the things I believe I learned from my visitors."
"One of the things? I thought you said they didn't tell you a damn thing."
"They didn't, but I think we know a little more now than we did before they popped in on me. I found the questions they asked and the situation itself instructive."
"Instruct me."
"We have confirmation that Veil is the guardian of a secret that profoundly threatens a very powerful person or persons unknown. The importance the men attached to the painting confirms that it contained a clue, or clues, to what that secret is; the secret involves events that took place a lot of years ago, sometime during the decade that the United States was involved in the war in Viet Nam."
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