Gwenny June's Tommy Crown Affair
Page 33
Chapter 33 – Back at Work
For obvious reasons Tommy didn’t want to go into work the next day. Not entirely obvious? First, hangover, and a good one. Second, who wants to work the day after having a lot of fun? Third, work meant crook hunting, and he was falling in love with the prime suspect. Fourth, I had told him I communicate with my dog, telepathically, which is both unusual and interesting. Right? More interesting than crook hunting, at least for most people. Stacked against all that were two reasons to get back to work, the first being the fee he would earn when he found the crook, i.e., the woman he was falling in love with, and second, this same person, i.e., the love interest, had alluded to a connection with Gwendolyn Bedgewood, the star of the stolen painting.
It was ten am and Tommy still was in his hotel room, working on a third cup of coffee and trying sort out these motivational factors when his cell phone rang. The caller ID said ‘Office,’ which was another motivational factor, albeit in this case a negative one. He faced the music and answered, hearing the stone-like voice of Ms. Granite. “Crown! What’s up?”
“Good morning to you, too,” he said.
“I offered ‘good mornings’ to people here in the office four hours ago. We’ve put in half a day's work. I know people in the south move slowly, but you’re a New Yorker, a barracuda, stridently aggressive, killer instinct. As least you were, had. What’s up?”
“I’m making progress. I have two reports to send you.”
“What reports?”
“One is the history of the painting; the artist, the provenance, genealogy, that stuff. The other is about the security system breech. I’ll send them up.”
“I’m not paying you to play art historian or to play around on ancestry.com. That’s not what you get the seven percent for. You get paid to find the painting so I don’t have to pay them the two point five. Tell me the painting’s going to be back on their wall. Soon.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Don’t go deferential on me. It doesn’t become you. Something’s up down there, I can tell. What?” Through Tommy’s mind ran: telepathy with a dog, airborne Steve McQueen Mustangs, inner and outer people, doppelganger women. He didn’t say anything. “Ok, Crown. Just remember the motto on my wall up here: Manos de Piedra. Let me hear from you. Soon.”
Tommy wondered if Gwen ever had employed that motto to motivate her employees: Hands of Stone. He doubted it. But the call did motivate him to get up and get out, and he found himself walking not towards the museum but towards the promenade at The Battery. He picked up his walking pace, trying to drive the blood through his body and evaporate the alcohol lodged therein. He felt better after two miles and his brain starting working. He needed to sort out the motivators and decide which one to follow today. He walked past a nice yellow car parked next to the promenade, which made him think of the Mustang and the high speed ride over to Sullivan’s. A few minutes later he passed a Jag X-Type, also parked along the road, which made him think about money, which made him think about his conversation with the woman with hands of stone back in New York, which made him think about seven percent of two point five million dollars. If he wanted to put that in his pocket he had to find the painting. If he didn’t find the painting, not only would he not earn enough to buy the Jag, he very well might be out of a job, given the veiled threats expressed earlier by his boss. Opposed to these motivators were memories of the chess match and dinner at The Sanctuary, to say nothing of allusions to talking dogs and communication with ancestors from the past.
You can feel Tommy’s quandary.
Another half mile of walking brought to the surface of his mind the entire issue of the little white-bearded Plato perched on his shoulder, incessantly reminding him of the deal he had made with me. Why had he done that? I was a ten in all departments, and the deal precluded consummation in one of them. And that department wasn’t a minor one; it wasn’t shipping and receiving; it wasn’t the cafeteria; it was way up at the top floor of the organization, right? A VIP of a department. It had a corner office with its own bathroom and wet bar. Was he really going to be able to sit across the chessboard, across the dining room table, knowing there was going to be zilch in the sex department?
An hour of high speed walking had ameliorated the hangover, but the entangled quandary remained, pounding inside his head. On one side was money and Plato; on the other, the presence of a Deneuvian woman, the first of his experience. Stalemate. But he had to do something. He stopped walking and looked across the harbor at the flags snapping in the wind over Fort Sumter. He relaxed and cleared his mind, letting the opposing forces drift away in the breeze. A minute later they were replaced by an image of a beautiful woman in a floor length old-fashioned dress. Gwendolyn Bedgewood. This was something he could do that was connected to both sides of his quandary, hunt for the painting. Finding it meant a payoff, for sure, and it also might mean plumbing the depths of a Charleston secret. Can I, Gwenny June, really talk with my dog and my doppelganger ancestor?