by Ed McBain
“Dance with your old ma, Peter.”
Somewhat shamefaced, he allowed himself to be led to the dance floor, holding ice knotted in the napkin to his lower lip.
“It’s twice already this month I see you too much in drink.”
“It’s a wedding, Ma.” He put the napkin in a pocket of his tux jacket.
“I’m thinking it’s time you get a grip on yourself,” Kate said as they danced to a slow beat. “You don’t hear from Echo?”
“Sure. Every day.”
“Well, then? She’s doing okay?”
“She says she is.” Peter drew a couple of troubled breaths. “But it’s e-mail. Not like actually—you know, hearin’ her voice. People are all the time sayin’ what they can’t put into words, you just have to have an ear for it.”
“So—maybe there’s things she wants you to know, but can’t talk about?”
“I don’t know. We’ve never been apart more than a couple days since we met. Maybe Echo’s found out—it wasn’t such a great bargain after all.” He had a tight grip on his mother’s hand.
“Easy now. If you trust Echo, then you’ll hold on. Any man can do that, Petey, for the woman he loves.”
“I’ll always love her,” Peter said, his voice tight. He looked into Kate’s eyes, a fine simmer of emotion in his own eyes. “But I don’t trust a man nobody knows much about. He’s got walls around him you wouldn’t believe.”
“A man who values his privacy. That kind of money, it’s not surprising.” Kate hesitated. “You been digging for something? Unofficially, I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“No beefs?”
“No beefs. The man’s practically invisible where public records are concerned.”
“Then let it alone.”
“If I could see Echo, just for a little while. I’m half nuts all the time.”
“God love you, Peter. Long as you have Sunday off, why don’t the two of us go to visit Rosemay, take her for an outing? Been a while since I last saw her.”
“I don’t think I can, Ma. I, uh—need to go up to Westchester, talk to somebody.”
“Police business, is it?”
Peter shook his head.
“Her name’s Van Lier. She posed for John Ransome once.”
SEVEN
The Van Lier residence was a copy—an exact copy, according to a Web site devoted to descriptions of Westchester County’s most spectacular homes—of a sixteenth-century English manor house. All Peter saw of the inside was a glimpse of slate floor and dark wainscotting through a partly opened front door.
He said to the houseman who had answered his ring, “I’d like to see Mrs. Van Lier.”
The houseman was an elderly Negro with age spots on his caramel-colored face like the spots on a leopard.
“There’s no Mrs. Van Lier at this residence.” Peter handed him his card.
“Anne Van Lier. I’m with the New York police department.”
The houseman looked him over patiently, perhaps hoping if his appraisal took long enough Peter would simply vanish from their doorstep and he could go back to his nap.
“What is your business about, Detective? Miss Anne don’t hardly care to see nobody.”
“I’d like to ask her a few questions.”
They played the waiting game until the houseman reluctantly took a Motorola Talk-about from a pocket of the apron he wore over his Sunday suit and tried to raise her on a couple of different channels. He frowned.
“Reckon she’s laid hers down and forgot about it,” he said. “Well, likely you’ll find Miss Anne in the greenhouse this time of the day. But I don’t expect she’ll talk to you, police or no police.”
“Where’s the greenhouse?”
“Go ‘round the back and walk toward the pond, you can’t hardly miss it. When you see her, tell Miss Anne I did my best to raise her first, so she don’t throw a fit my way.”
Peter approached the greenhouse through a squall of copper beech leaves on a windy afternoon. The slant roofs of the long greenhouse reflected scudding clouds. Inside a woman he assumed was Anne Van Lier was visible through a mist from some overhead pipes. She wore gloves that covered half of her forearms and a gardening hat with a floppy brim that, along with the mist floating above troughs of exotic plants, obscured most of her face. She was working at a potting bench in the diffused glimmer of sunlight.
“Miss Van Lier?”
She stiffened at the sound of an unfamiliar voice but didn’t look around. She was slight-boned in dowdy tan coveralls.
“Yes? Who is it?” Her tone said that she didn’t care to know. “You’re trespassing.”
“My name is Peter O’Neill. New York City police department.”
Peter walked a few steps down a gravel path toward her. With a quick motion of her head she took him in and said, “Stay where you are. Police?”
“I’d like to show you some identification.”
“What is this about?”
He held up his shield. “John Leland Ransome.”
She dropped a three-pronged tool from her right hand onto the bench and leaned against it as if suddenly at a loss for breath. Her back was to Peter. A dry scuttle of leaves on the overhead glass cast a kaleidoscope of shadow in the greenhouse. He wiped mist from his forehead and continued toward her.
“You posed for Ransome.”
“What of it? Who told you that?”
“He did.”
She’d been rigidly still; now Anne Van Lier seemed pleasurably agitated.
“You know John? You’ve seen him?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A couple of months ago.” Peter had closed the distance between them. Anne darted another look his way, a gloved hand covering her profile as if she were a bashful child; but she no longer appeared to be concerned about him.
“How is John?” Her voice was suddenly rich with emotion. “Did he—mention me?”
“That he did,” Peter said reassuringly, and dared to ask, “Are you still in love with Ransome?”
She shuddered, protecting herself with the glove as if he’d thrown a stone, seeming to cower.
“What did John say about me? Please.”
Knowing he’d touched a nerve, Peter said soothingly, “Told me the year he spent with you was one of the happiest of his life.”
Still it bothered him when, after a few moments, she began softly to weep. He moved closer to Anne, put a hand on her arm.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Just go.”
“How long since you seen him last, Anne?”
“Eighteen years,” she said despondently.
“He also said—it was his understanding that you were very happy.”
Anne Van Lier gasped. Then she began shaking with laughter, as if at the cruelest joke she’d ever heard. She turned suddenly to Peter, knocking his hand away from her, snatching off her gardening hat as she stared up at him.
The shock she gave him was like the electric jolt from a hard jab to the solar plexus. Because her once-lovely face was a horror.
She had been brutally, deeply slashed. Attempts had been made to correct the damage, but plastic surgeons could do only so much. Repairing damage to severed nerves was beyond any surgeon’s skill. Her mouth drooped on one side. She had lost the sight of her left eye, filled now with a bloom of suffering.
“Who did this to you? Was it Ransome?”
Jarred by the blurted question, she backed away from Peter.
“What? John? How dare you think that!”
Gloved fingers prowled the deep disfiguring lines on her face.
“I never saw my attacker. It happened on a street in the East Village. He could have been a mugger. I didn’t resist him, so why, why?”
“The police—”
“Never found him.” She stared at Peter, and through him, at the past. “Or is that what you’ve come to tell me?”
“No. I don’t know anything about the case. I’m sorry.”
She put her gardening hat back on, adjusted the brim, gave Peter a vague look. She was in the past again.
“You can tell John—I won’t always look like this. Just one more operation, they promised. I’ve had ten so far. Then I’ll—finally be ready for John.” She anticipated the question Peter wasn’t about to ask. “To pose again!” A vaguely flirtatious smile came and went. “Otherwise I’ve kept myself up, you know. I do my exercises. Tell John—I bless him for his patience, but it won’t be much longer.”
In spite of the humidity and the drifting spray in the greenhouse Peter’s throat was dry. His own attempt at as smile felt like hardening plaster on his face. He knew he had only glimpsed the depths of her psychosis. The decent thing to do now was to leave her with some assurance that her fantasy would be fulfilled.
“I’ll tell him, Miss Van Lier. That’s the news he’s been waiting for.”
The following Saturday night Peter was playing pool with his old man at the Knights of Columbus, and letting Corin win. The way he used to let him win at Horse when Corin was still spry enough for some basketball: Just a little off my game tonight, Pete would always say, pretending annoyance. Corin bought the beers afterward and they relaxed in a booth at their favorite sports bar.
“Heard you was into the cold case files in the Ninth,” Corin said, wiping some foam off his mustache. He looked at one of the big screens around the room. The Knicks were at the Heat, and tonight they couldn’t throw one in the ocean.
“You hear everything, Pop,” Pete said admiringly.
“In my borough. What’s up?”
“Just something I got interested in, I had a little spare time.” He explained about the Van Lier slashing.
“How many times was she cut?”
“Ten slashes, all on her face. He just kept cutting on her, even after she was down. That sound like all he wanted was a purse?”
“No. Leaves three possibilities. A psycho, hated women. Or an old boyfriend she gave the heave-ho to, his ego couldn’t take it. But you said the vic didn’t make him.”
“No.”
“Then somebody hired it done. Tell me again what your interest is in the vic?”
“Eighteen, nineteen years ago, she posed for John Ransome.”
Corin rubbed a temple and managed to keep his disapproval muted. “Jeez Marie, Petey.”
“My girl is up there in Maine with him, Pop!”
“And you’re lettin’ your imagination—I see your mind workin’. But it’s far-fetched, lad. Far-fetched.”
“I suppose so,” Peter mumbled in his beer.
“How many young women do you think have posed for him in his career?”
“Seven that anybody knows about. Not counting Echo.”
Corin spread his hands.
“But nobody knows who they are, or where they are. Almost nobody, it’s some kind of secret list. I’m tellin’ you, Pop, there is too much about him that don’t add up.”
“That’s not cop sense, that’s your emotions talkin’.”
“Two damn months almost, I don’t see her.”
“That was his deal. His and hers, and there’s good reasons why Echo did it.”
“Didn’t tell you this before. That woman friend of his, whore, whatever: she carries a knife and Echo saw her almost use it on a kid in the subway.”
“Jeez Marie, where’s this goin’ to end with you?” Corin sat back in the booth and rapped the table once with the knuckles of his right fist. “Tell you where it ends. Right here, tonight. You know why? Too much money, Petey. That’s what it’s always about.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw the commissioner’s head up Ransome’s ass.”
“Remember that.” He stared at Peter until exasperation softened into forgiveness. “Echo have any problems up there she’s told you about?”
“No,” Peter admitted. “Ransome’s just doing a lot of sketches of her, and she has time to paint. I guess everything’s okay.”
“Give her credit for good sense, then. And do your part.”
“Yeah, I know. Wait.” His expression was pure naked longing and remorse. “Two months. And you know what, Pop? It’s like one of us died. Only I don’t know which one, yet.”
As she had done almost every day since arriving on Kincairn Echo took her breakfast in chilly isolation in a corner of the big kitchen, then walked to the lighthouse. Frequently she could see only a few feet along the path because of fog. But sometimes there was no fog; the air was sharp and windless as the rising sun cast upon the copper face of the sea a great peal of morning.
She’d learned early on that John Ransome was an insomniac who spent most of the deep night hours reading in his second-floor study or taking long walks by himself in the dark, with only a flashlight along island paths he’d been familiar with since he was a boy.
Sleep would come easier for him, Ransome assured her, as if apologizing, once he settled down to doing serious painting. But the unfinished portrait he’d begun in New York on a big rectangle of die board had remained untouched on his easel for nearly six weeks while he devoted himself to making postcard-size sketches of Echo, hundreds of them, or silently observing her own work take shape. Late at night he would leave Post-it Notes of praise or criticism on her easel.
When they were together he was always cordial but preferred letting Echo carry the conversation. He seemed endlessly curious about her life. About her father, who had been a Jesuit until the age of fifty-one, when he met Rosemay, a Maryknoll nun. He never asked about Peter.
There were days when Echo didn’t see him at all. She felt his absence from the island but had no idea of where he’d gone, or why. Not that it was any of her business. But it wasn’t the working relationship she’d bargained for. His inability to resume painting made her uneasy. And it wasn’t her nature to put up with being ignored, or feeling slighted, for long.
“Is it me?” she’d asked him at dinner the night before.
Her question, the mood of it, startled him.
“No. Of course not, Mary Catherine.” He looked distressed, random gestures substituting for the words he couldn’t find to reassure her. “Case of nerves, that’s all. It always happens. I’m afraid I’ll begin and—then I’ll find myself drawing from a dry well.” He paused to pour himself more wine. He’d been drinking more before and after dinner than was his custom; his aim was a little off and he grimaced. “Afraid that everything I do will be trite and awful.”
Echo had sensed his vulnerability—all artists had it. But she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with his confession.
“You’re a great painter.”
Ransome shook his head, shying from the burden of her suggestion.
“If I ever believe that, then I will be finished.” Echo got up, pinched some salt from a silver bowl, and spread it over the wine stain on the fine linen tablecloth. She looked hesitantly at him.
“How can I help?”
He was looking at the salted stain. “Does that work?”
“Usually, if you do it right away.”
“If human stains were so easy to remove,” he said with sudden vehemence.
“God’s always listening,” she said, then thought it was probably too glib, patronizing, and unsatisfactory. She felt God, but she also felt there was little point in trying to explain Him to someone else.
After a silence the unexpected flood of his passion ebbed.
“I don’t believe as easily as you, Mary Catherine,” he said with a tired smile that became tense. “But if we do have your God watching us, then I think it likely that his revenge is to do nothing.”
Ransome pushed his chair back and stood, looked at Echo, put out a hand and lifted her head slightly with thumb and forefinger on her chin. He said, studying her as if for the first time, “The light in your eyes is the light from your heart.”
“That’s sweet,” Echo said demurely, knowing what was comi
ng next. She’d been thinking about it, and how to handle it, for weeks.
He kissed her on the forehead, not the lips, as if bestowing a blessing. That was sweet too. But the erotic content, enough to cause her lips to part and put a charge in her heartbeat, took her by surprise.
“I have to leave the island for a few days,” he said then.
Ransome’s studio had replaced the closetlike space that once had held the Kincairn light and reflecting mirror. It sat upon the spindle of the lighthouse shaft like a flying saucer made mostly of glass that was thirty feet in diameter. There was an elevator inside, another addition, but Echo always used the circular stairs coming and going. Ciera was a very good cook and the daily climb helped Echo shed the pounds that had a tendency to creep aboard like hitchhikers on her hips.
She had decided, because the day was neither blustery enough to blow her off her Vespa nor bitterly cold, to pack up her paints and easel and go cross island for an exercise in plein air painting on the cove and dock.
Approaching Kincairn village, Echo saw John Ransome at the end of the town dock unmooring a cabin cruiser that had been tied up alongside Wilkins’ Marine and the mail/ferry boat slip. She stopped her puttering scooter in front of the cottage where a lone priest, elderly and in virtual exile in this most humble of parishes, lived with an equally old housekeeper. Echo had no reason for automatically keeping her distance from Ransome until she also saw Taja at the helm of the cruiser, which wasn’t much of a reason either. She hadn’t seen the Woman in Black nor given her much thought since the night of the artist’s show at Cy Mellichamp’s. Ransome never mentioned her. Apparently she seldom visited the island.
Friend, business associate, confidante? Mistress, of course. But if she kept some distance between them now, perhaps that was in the past. Even if they were no longer lovers Echo assumed she might still be emotionally supportive, a rare welcome visitor to his isolato existence—his stiller doom, Echo thought with a certain poignancy, remembering a phrase of Charlotte Bronte’s from Echo’s favorite novel, Jane Eyre.