by Ed McBain
“Enemy? I don’t hold Charles in such high regard. He’s simply a pompous ass. If he were mugged for his wits, he would only impoverish the thief. So tell me, who perpetrated the fraud?”
“Not sure. Either Fimmel or Arzate. Anyway, you can’t get a fake Herrera past me.”
“I’m sure it helps to have a photographic memory.”
Echo grinned.
“Perhaps you should be doing my job.”
“Now, Stefan.” Echo reached out to press the second-floor button.
“Some day you will have my job. But you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”
Echo grinned again. The elevator stopped on two.
“What are you doing? Aren’t we leaving?”
“In a little while.” Echo stepped off the elevator and beckoned to Stefan. “This way.”
“What? Where are you dragging me to? I’m desperate to have a smoke and find out how My Little Margie placed in the fourth.”
Echo looked at her new watch, a twenty-second birthday present from her fiance that she knew had cost far more than either of them should have been spending on presents.
“There’s time. I want to see the Ransome they’ve borrowed for their show of twentieth-century portraitists.”
“Oh, dear God!” But he got off the elevator with Echo. “I detest Ransome! Such transparent theatrics. I’ve seen better art on a sailor’s ass.”
“Really, Stefan?”
“Although not all that recently, I’m sorry to say.”
The gallery in which the exhibition was being mounted was temporarily closed to the public, but they wore badges allowing them access to any part of the Highbridge. Echo ignored frowns from a couple of dithering functionaries and went straight to the portrait by Ransome that was already in place and lighted.
The subject was a seated nude, blond, Godiva hair. Ransome’s style was impressionistic, his canvas flooded with light. The young woman was casually posed, like a Degas girl taking a backstage break, her face partly averted. Stefan had his usual attitude of near-suicidal disdain. But he found it hard to look away. Great artists were hypnotists with a brush.
“I suppose we must give him credit for his excellent eye for beauty.”
“It’s marvelous,” Echo said softly.
“As Delacroix said, ‘One never paints violently enough.’ We must also give Ransome credit for doing violence to his canvases. And I must have an Armagnac, if the bar downstairs is open. Echo?”
“I’m coming,” she said, hands folded like an acolyte’s in front of her as she gazed up at the painting with a faintly worshipful smile.
Stefan shrugged when she failed to budge. “I don’t wish to impose on your infatuation. Suppose you join me in the limo in twenty minutes?”
“Sure,” Echo murmured.
Absorbed in her study of John Leland Ransome’s technique, Echo didn’t immediately pay attention to that little barb at the back of her neck that told her she was being closely observed by someone.
When she turned she saw a woman standing twenty feet away ignoring the Ransome on the wall, staring instead at Echo.
The woman was dressed all in black, which seemed to Echo both obsessive and oppressive in high summer. But it was elegant, tasteful couture. She wasn’t wearing jewelry. She was, perhaps, excessively made up, but striking nonetheless. Mature, but Echo couldn’t guess her age. Her features were immobile, masklike. The directness of her gaze, a burning in her eyes, gave Echo a couple of bad moments. She knew a pickup line was coming. She’d averaged three of these encounters a week since puberty.
But the stare went on, and the woman said nothing. It had the effect of getting Echo’s Irish up.
“Excuse me,” Echo said. “Have we met?” Her expression read, Whatever you’re thinking, forget it, Queenie.
Not so much as a startled blink. After a few more seconds the woman looked rather deliberately from Echo to the Ransome painting on the wall. She studied that for a short time, then turned and walked away as if Echo no longer existed, heels clicking on the gallery floor.
Echo’s shoulders twitched in a spidery spasm. She glanced at a portly museum guard who also was eyeing the woman in black.
“Who is that?”
The guard shrugged. “Beats me. She’s been around since noon. I think she’s from the gallery in New York.” He looked up at the Ransome portrait. “His gallery. You know how fussy these painters get about their placement in shows.”
“Uh-huh. Doesn’t she talk?”
“Not to me,” the guard said.
The limousine Stefan had hired for the day was parked in a taxi zone outside the High-bridge. Stefan was leaning on the limo getting track updates on his BlackBerry. There was a Daily Racing Form lying on the trunk.
He put away his BlackBerry with a surly expression when Echo approached. My Little Margie must have finished out of the money.
“So the spell is finally broken. I suppose we could have arranged for a cot to be moved in for the night.”
“Thanks for being so patient with me, Stefan.”
They lingered on the sidewalk, enjoying balmy weather. New York had been a stewpot when they’d left that morning.
“It’s all hype, you know,” Stefan said, looking up at the gold and glass facade of the Cesar Pelli-designed building. “The Ransomes of the art world excel at manipulation. The scarcity of his work only makes it more desirable to the vulturati.”
“No, I think it’s the quality that’s rare, Stefan. Courbet, Bonnard, he shares their sense of … call it a divine melancholy.”
“‘Divine melancholy.’ Nicely put. I must remember to filch that one for my ARTnews column. Where are we having dinner tonight? You did remember to make reservations? Echo?”
Echo was looking past him at the Woman in Black, who had walked out of the museum and was headed for a taxi.
Stefan turned. “Who, or what, is that?”
“I don’t know. I saw her in the gallery. Caught her staring at me.” Uncanny, Echo thought, how much she resembled the black queen on Echo’s chessboard at home.
“Apparently, from her lack of interest now, you rebuffed her.”
Echo shook her head. “No. Actually she never said a word. Dinner? Stefan, I’m sorry. You’re set at Legal’s with the Bronwyns for eight-thirty. But I have to get back to New York. I thought I told you. Engagement party tonight. Peter’s sister.”
“Which sister? There seems to be a multitude.”
“Siobhan. The last one to go.”
“Not that huge, clumsy girl with the awful bangs?”
“Hush. She’s really very sweet.”
“Now that Peter has earned his gold shield, am I correct to assume the next engagement party will be yours?”
“Yes. As soon as we all recover from this one.” Stefan looked deeply aggrieved. “Echo, have you any idea what childbearing will do to your lovely complexion?”
Echo looked at her watch and smiled apologetically.
“I can just make the four o’lock Acela.”
“Well, then. Get in.”
Echo was preoccupied with answering e-mail during their short trip up Memorial Drive and across the river to Boston’s South Station. She didn’t notice that the taxi the Woman in Black had claimed was behind them all the way.
Hi Mom,
Busy day. I had to hustle but I made the four o’lock train. I’ll probably go straight to Queens from the station so won’t be home until after midnight. Scored points with the boss today; tell you all about it at breakfast. Called Uncle Rory at the Home, but the Sister on his floor told me he probably wouldn’t know who I was …
The Acela was rolling quietly through a tunnel on its way out of the city. In her coach seat Echo, riding backwards, looked up from the laptop she’d spent too much time with today. Her vision was blurry, the back of her neck was stiff, and she had a headache. She looked at her reflection in the window, which disappeared as the train emerged into bright sunlight. She winced and closed her lapto
p after sending the message to her mother, rummaged in her soft-leather shoulder bag for Advil and swallowed three with sips of designer water. Then she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.
When she looked up again she saw the Woman in Black looking solemnly at her before she opened the vestibule door and disappeared in the direction of the club car.
The look didn’t mean anything. The fact that they were on the same train didn’t mean anything either. Even so for a good part of the trip to New York, while Echo tried to nap, she couldn’t get the woman out of her mind.
TWO
After getting eight stitches to close the cut near his left eye at the hospital in Flatbush, Peter O’Neill’s partner Ray Scalla drove him to the 7-5 station house, where Pete retrieved his car and continued home to Bayside, Queens. By then he’d put in a twelve-hour day, but he had a couple of line-of-duty off days coming.
The engagement party for his sister Siobhan was roaring along by the time he got to the three-story brick-and-shingle house on Compton Place, and he had to hunt for a parking space a block and a half away. He walked back to the house swapping smack with neighborhood kids on their bikes and skateboards. The left eye felt swollen. He needed an ice bag, but a cold beer would be the first order of business. Make it two beers.
The O’Neill house was lit up to the roof-line. Floodlights illuminated half a dozen guys playing a scuffling game of basketball in the driveway. Peter was related one way or another to all of them, and to everyone on the teeming porch.
His brother Tommy, a freshman at Hofstra on a football scholarship, fished in a tub of cracked ice and pitched Pete a twelve-ounce Rolling Rock as he walked up to the stoop. Kids with Game Boys cluttered the steps. His sister Kathleen, just turned thirty, was barefoot on the front lawn, gently rocking an infant to sleep on her shoulder. She gave Pete a kiss and frowned at the patched eye.
“So when’s number four due?”
“You mean number five,” Kathleen said. “October ninth, Petey.”
“Guess I got behind on the count when I was workin’ undercover.” Pete popped the tab top on the icy Rock and drank half of it while he watched some of the half-court action on the driveway. He laughed. “Hey, Kath. Tell your old man to give up pasta or give up hoops.”
Brother Tommy came down to the walk and put an arm around him. He was a linebacker, three inches taller than the five-eleven Peter but no wider in the shoulders. Big shoulders were a family hallmark, unfortunately for the women.
One of the basketball players got stuffed driving for a layup, and they both laughed.
“Hey, Vito!” Pete called. “Come on hard or keep it in your pants!” He finished off the beer and crushed the can. “Echo make it back from Boston?” he asked Tommy.
“She’s inside. Nice shiner.”
Pete said ruefully, “My collar give it to me.”
“Too bad they don’t hand out Purple Hearts downtown.”
“Yeah, but they’ll throw you a swell funeral,” Pete said, forgetting momentarily what a remark like that meant to the women in a family of cops. Kathleen set him straight with a stinging slap to the back of his head. Then she crossed herself.
“God and Blessed Mother! Don’t you ever say that again, Petey!”
Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was full of people helping themselves to beer and food. Peter gave his mom a kiss and looked at Echo, who was taking a pan of hors d’oeuvres out of the oven with oven mitts. She was moist from the heat at her temples and under her eyes. She gave Pete, or the butterfly patches above his eye, a look and sat him down on a stool near the door to the back porch for a closer appraisal. Pete’s middle sister Jessie handed him a bulging hero.
“Little bitty girl,” Pete said. “One of those wiry types, you know? She was on crank and I don’t know what else.”
“Just missed your eye,” Echo said, tight-lipped.
“Live and learn.” Peter bit into his sandwich.
“You get a tetanus booster?”
“Sure. How was your day?”
“I did great,” Echo said, still finding small ways to fuss over him: brushing his hair back from his forehead with the heel of one hand, dabbing at a drip of sauce on his chin with a napkin. “I deserve a raise.”
“About time. How’s your mom?”
“Didn’t have a real good day, Julia said. Want another beer?”
“Makes you think I had one already?”
“Ha-ha,” Echo said; she went out to the porch to fish the beer from the depths of the cooler. Peter’s sister Siobhan, the bride-to-be, followed her unsteadily inside, back on her heels from an imaginary gale in her face. Her eyes not tracking well. She embraced Peter with a goofy smile.
“I’m so happy!”
“We’re happy for you, Siobhan.” At thirty-five she was the oldest of the seven O’eill children, and the least well favored. Putting it mildly.
Her fiance appeared in the doorway behind Siobhan. He was a head shorter, gap-toothed, had a bad haircut. A software salesman. Doing very well. He drove a Cadillac, had put a down payment on a condo in Valley Stream and was planning an expensive honeymoon cruise. The diamond on Siobhan’s finger was a big one.
Peter saluted the fiance with his can of beer. Siobhan straightened unsteadily and embraced Echo too, belching loudly.
“Oops. Get any on ya?”
“No, sweetie,” Echo said, and passed her on to the fiance, who chuckled and guided her through the kitchen to a bathroom. Peter shook his head.
“What they say about opposites.”
“Yeah.”
“Siobhan has a lot to learn. She still thinks ‘fellatio’ is an Italian opera.”
“You mean it’s not?” Echo said, wide-eyed. Then she patted his cheek. “Lay off. I love Siobhan. I love all your family.”
Peter put the arm on his fourteen-year-old brother Casey as he came inside from the porch, and crushed him affectionately.
“Even the retards?”
“Get outta here,” Casey said, fighting him off.
“Casey’s no retard, he’s a lover,” Echo said. “Gimme a kiss, Case.”
“No way!” But Echo had him grinning.
“Don’t waste those on that little fart,” Pete said.
Casey looked him over. “Man, you’re gonna have a shiner.”
“I know.” Pete looked casually at Echo and put his sandwich down. “It’s a sweatbox in here. Why don’t we go upstairs a little while?”
Casey smiled wisely at them. “Uh-uh. Aunt Pegeen put the twins to sleep on your bed.” He waited for the look of frustration in Peter’s eyes before he said, “But I could let you use my room if you guys want to make out. Twenty bucks for an hour sound okay?”
“Sounds like you think I’m a hooker,” Echo said to Casey. Staring him down. Casey’s shoulders dropped; he looked away uneasily.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Now you got a good reason not to skip confession again this week,” Peter said. Glancing at Echo, and noticing how tired she looked, having lost her grip on her upbeat mood.
Driving Echo back to the city, Pete said, “I just keep goin’ round and round with the numbers, like a dog chasin’ its tail. You know?”
“Same here.”
“Jesus, I’m twenty-six, ought to have my own place already instead of living home.”
“Our own place. Trying to save anything these days. The taxes. Both of us still paying off college loans. Forty thousand each. My mom sick. Your mom was sick—”
“We both got good jobs. The money’ll come together. But we’ll need another year.”
Peter exited from the Queensboro Bridge and took First uptown. They were nearing 78th when Echo said, “A year. How bad can that be?” Her tone of voice said, miserable.
They waited on the light at 78th, looking at each other as if they were about to be cast into separate dungeons.
“Gotta tell you, Echo. I’m just goin’ nuts. You know.”
“I know.”
/> “It hasn’t been easy for you either. Couple close calls, huh?” He smiled ruefully.
She crossed her arms as if he’d issued a warning. “Yeah.”
“You know what I’m sayin’. We are gonna be married. No doubt about that. Is there?”
“No.”
“So—how big a deal is it, really? An act of contrition—”
“Pete, I’m not happy being probably the only twenty-two-year-old virgin on the face of the earth. But confession’s not the same as getting a ticket fixed. You know how I was brought up. It’s God’s law. That has to mean something, or none of it does.”
The light changed. Peter drove two blocks and parked by a fire hydrant a few doors down from Echo’s brownstone.
“Both your parents were of the cloth,” he said. “They renounced their vows and they made you. Made you for me. I can’t believe God thought that was a sin.”
Blue and unhappy, Echo sank lower in her seat, arms still crossed, over her breasts and her crucifix.
“I love you so much. And I swear to Him, I’ll always take care of you.”
After a long silence Echo said, “I know. What do you want me to do, Pete?”
“Has to be your call.”
She sighed. “No motels. I feel cheap that way, I can’t help myself. Just know it wouldn’t work.”
“There’s this buddy of mine at the squad, he was in my year at the Academy, Frank Ringer. Like maybe you met him at the K of C picnic in July?”
“Oh. Yeah. Got a twitch in one eye? Really ripped, though.”
“Right. Frank Ringer. Well, his uncle’s got a place out on the Island. Way out, past Riverhead on Peconic Bay I think.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Frank’s uncle travels a lot. Frank says he could make arrangements for us to go out there, maybe this weekend—”
“So you and Frank been having these discussions about our sex life?”
“Nothing like that. I just mentioned we’d both like to get off somewhere for some R and R, that’s all.”