Stars and Bars: A Novel

by William Boyd

  “Where are we?” she asked, looking about her with half-closed eyes. “Is Duane here?”

  Henderson pushed her into their taxi without replying. She immediately fell asleep again, her head on his shoulder.

  “Long trip?” asked the taxi driver. His identification card gave his name as Ezekiel Adekunle. “Atlanta,” Henderson said.

  “Ow! Whatin you go dere for? Ah-ah.” The taxi driver sucked in air through his teeth.

  Good question, Henderson thought. “Been raining long?” he asked.

  “You are Englishman?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “I am from Nigeria.”

  “Oh. I see. Been raining long?”

  “Two days. We done get flash-flood warning.”

  With a wet sloshing of tires the taxi climbed a gentle hill on the freeway. At its crest they were afforded a view of the north end of Manhattan. The clouds hung low over the city. The upper stories of even the more modest skyscrapers were engulfed by gray. His heart lifted at the view, but only by an inch or so. They crossed the Triborough Bridge and began the long drive south to Melissa’s apartment block. The low clouds, the relentless rain, the teeming umbrellas on the sidewalk made the crowded streets appear more fraught than ever. If your view up is denied in Manhattan, Henderson thought, the place holds about as much appeal as the Edgeware Road.

  They arrived at Melissa’s door. Henderson propelled Bryant beneath the dripping awning.

  “Welcome back, Miss Wax,” said the doorman.

  Bryant frowned, her brain trying to grasp this new information.

  “Don’t tell her mother we’re here,” Henderson said. “I want it to be a surprise.”

  They ascended in the lift, stepped out and pressed the buzzer on the thick door. He heard the harsh yelping of Candice and Gervase. Henderson felt like leaving Bryant on the threshold like a foundling, and tiptoeing away.

  The door opened.

  “Baby! Darling!” Hugs, tears, lavished kisses. Henderson followed mother and daughter into the sitting room. “Is Duane here?”

  “No, baby, he certainly is not.” Aside, in a cold, distanced voice to Henderson. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s very tired. Early start. It was a difficult journey. A cold coming we had of it.”

  “What are you talking about? Here, Albertine, take Bryant to her room.” Bryant was led away by the maid. Melissa turned to face him.

  “Now, my fine fellow, what are we going to do about you?”

  Henderson listened, head down, as his character was put through the shredder. With the damp toe of his shoe he moved the pile of the carpet this way and that. He interjected the odd rejoinder to the effect that it had been—when all was said and done—Bryant’s decision to come to Luxora and, indeed, come to think of it, Melissa’s enthusiasm about the notion had been conspicuous. But these caveats went unheard in the acid rain of scorn that descended on him.

  A natural release, he told himself; all that repressed fear and apprehension has to let itself go somehow. But by now anger had given way to irony. Melissa was wondering how Henderson had spent his “precious” time while her little baby was getting corrupted by some red-neck pervert. She had a certain amount to learn yet about her little baby, Henderson thought.

  “I suppose you got your precious paintings and you’ll go back to your precious office some kind of a hero. But what about Bryant? What kind of awful trauma—?”

  “You might be interested to know, Melissa,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them out again, “that the paintings have been destroyed and I’ve lost my job.”

  That silenced her for a while.

  “What kind of man are you? You … you jerk-off. What sort of an excuse for a … You’re pathetic. That’s what you are, pah-thetic!”

  “Goodbye, Melissa,” Henderson said firmly, stepping abruptly to the door. He didn’t need this. Gervase and Candice bounded from the sofa—where they’d idly been surveying the row—and came yapping and nipping around his ankles.

  “Gervase! Candice!” Melissa screamed.

  Henderson hornpiped out of her life.

  He slammed the apartment door and leaned against it, a little breathless, like a heroine who has locked the inept lecher out in the passageway. He pressed the button for the lift, pursed his lips and shook his head sadly. Delete paintings, job and ex-wife. That only left Irene.

  Going down in the lift he reflected with false calm that a lot of his sanity now rested on Irene’s strong shoulders. He wondered if the present moment was the one in which to assail her. He looked at his watch. Nearly lunchtime. She would be at work with her bearded brother. She always ate in the same delicatessen … perhaps that would be the place. Just saunter in: “Hi, Irene, I’m back. Wow, what a time I’ve had. Busy tonight?” It sounded good, but he had grave doubts. Still, he was a desperate man now.

  “Let me call you a cab, Mr. Dores,” the obliging shiny-oilskinned doorman said, opening the glass panels of the doorway and blowing the whistle he wore around his neck on a lanyard.

  Three mackintoshed men on the sidewalk turned around.

  “Hey, Henderson,” one of them called. “No problem. We got the car around the corner.”

  chapter two

  PETER Gint, Henderson thought, had singularly bad taste in shoes. The model he was looking at, some two inches from his eyes, was a heavy brogue two-toned orange-and-brown number. That was the left shoe; the right rested on the back of his neck.

  He was lying on the floor in the back of a car, heading, as far as he could determine, south through Manhattan. In the front were Freeborn and Sereno. Gint sat in the back guarding him.

  When he had emerged from Melissa’s apartment block the three men had surrounded him like old friends and had jovially led him away. Gint had showed him a gun, a black, clenched, snub-nosed-looking thing, and Henderson had decided swiftly to do everything they asked.

  Once inside the car Gint had produced the gun again and asked him to lie facedown on the floor. No one had said anything, with the exception of Freeborn, who from time to time leaned over the front seat and said, “Bastard. We got you, you dipshit bastard.”

  Henderson stared at Gint’s shoe. Some safety device in his body was preventing him from being sick all over it. He felt frightened, all right—but for some reason it wasn’t overwhelming. Every time he tried to protest, Gint would increase the pressure on the back of his neck and say, “Shut up.” Lying facedown he was, Henderson could see nothing of the city. He heard only the noise of the rain on the roof, the metronomic ticking of the windscreen wipers and the splash of the tires on the wet streets. How had they caught up with him so quickly? he wondered. But then on reflection he realized it wouldn’t have taken brilliant sleuthing to have divined where he was heading—there were plenty of airports and plenty of planes to New York—and Bryant’s presence would indicate a visit to Melissa at some early juncture. Bryant’s address? … From her abandoned luggage, no doubt, or Duane.

  He pillowed his head on his arms and waited for the journey to end. What would they do to him? he wondered. What did they want of him? The continued absurdity of his predicament had ceased to give offense. It seemed now, after everything that had gone before, an entirely apt and normal state of affairs.

  Eventually, the car stopped. Henderson clambered out under the watchful eye of his captors. Glancing up and down the street he saw wet mean tenements, boarded shops, ribbed and battered garage fronts. He caught a glimpse of the twin thick legs of the World Trade Center descending from the low haze of the clouds. Above a door in front of him a fractured plastic sign read OK REFRIGERATION. The rain drenched his hair. The sidewalk gutters were overflowing; flotsam sped by, driven by strong currents. The raindrops rebounded six inches when they hit the stone and asphalt. Gint pushed him into the doorway, where Sereno fiddled with a clutch of fist-sized padlocks.

  “What is this place?” Henderson asked. “Your gallery?”

 
; “Shut the fuck up,” Freeborn said.

  Sereno opened the doors and Henderson was pushed through into a dark concrete lobby. A large industrial elevator faced him. The grille doors were slid open and they all got in. They went up two floors. When they emerged Henderson saw they were in a large white room, brilliantly lit and filled with the noise of light industry. In one corner sparks of molten metal flashed prettily around a man welding pipes together to form a knotted intestinal fist. Beside him another man filed down the edges of a sectioned girder, bright chrome and mounted on a three-foot-high marble plinth. From the far end came the hectic buzz of a high-powered spray gun as a man rendered a tall canvas dull maroon.

  Sereno stood in the middle of the room and clapped his hands for silence.

  “OK, boys, take a holiday. See you tomorrow.”

  The men stopped work. Henderson looked around him, astonishment momentarily displacing his fear. Large fresh abstract canvases were stacked in piles against a wall; a rubble of scrap metal filled a corner. Sereno talked to the men as they laid down their tools.

  “I like it, José,” Gint said to the man with the spray gun. “You’re getting real good.”

  “What is this?” Henderson asked, looking at the painting. “What’s going on here?”

  “We call it color field painting,” Gint said equably. “Sorta kinda like a big field, you know? Colored.”

  Sereno came over. “Corporate art,” he said. “Know how many offices there are in this country? Know how many big empty lobbies they got? They need plants and they need art. Big good art, not too expensive.”

  “Big good art.”

  “That’s what you got here.”

  A young Hispanic girl in a grubby jersey and a tight short skirt came out of a small office at the far end of the room.

  “Hey, Caridad,” Sereno said. “Take the day off. We need to use your office.”

  She had a piece of paper in her hand.

  “Ben,” she said. “I got a call. Two Rothko, one Kline—”

  “Early or late?”

  “Jus’ black an’ white, he say. Big one.”

  “Good.”

  “An’ one Sam Francis.”

  “Who? Do we do Sam Francis? Is it in the catalog?”

  “I got it,” Gint said, emerging from the office with an art book. He held up the illustration.

  “Can you do it, José?”

  “Ow. Is difficul’, this one.” José scratched his head.

  “Try it tomorrow. See you tomorrow, guys.”

  The men filed out. Caridad went back into the office for her raincoat. She came back and stood not far from Henderson, one arm sleeved, a small beaded bag between her teeth, as her other arm probed vainly for the empty sleeve. Henderson helped her on with her coat.

  “These men are holding me against my will,” he whispered. “Tell the police.”

  Caridad, coated, turned and belted him around the head with her beaded handbag, some rasping, spitting Spanish oath following swiftly.

  Henderson rubbed his stinging hot ear.

  Sereno looked pityingly at him as Caridad walked stiffly out.

  “You’re a cool one, Dores, I’ll give you that. Always the ladies’ man, eh?”

  Henderson cupped his burning ear, his eyes screwed up, riven with a sudden deep hopelessness. Breakers crashed on a distant beach. He watched Freeborn and Gint shift the furniture—desk, plastic armchair, coatstand, telephone, small filing cabinet—from the office.

  “OK, Dores, let’s take a meeting.”

  Gently, Sereno propelled him toward the office. Inside Henderson saw that the one interior window was covered by an iron grille, diamond-patterned. The room was completely empty apart from one wooden chair. A small opaque window in the wall overlooked a filthy alleyway. The floor was wooden, heavily scored and badged with old dark stains. Ink, Henderson hoped. He couldn’t hear any traffic noise and for the first time began to feel genuine alarm. These men, he was sure, acknowledged no civilized restraints to behavior.

  “Now listen,” he began. “I’ve been very patient, but I warn you—”

  Freeborn pointed at him and he stopped talking at once. Henderson moved nervously to the window. Nothing out there. Freeborn had a swift whispered consultation with the other two, then took a few paces toward him.

  “OK. Get the clothes off.”

  “Now just one minute—”

  “We can tear ’em off, man, if you want.”

  Henderson shut his eyes. Slowly he undressed. He laid shirt, jacket, trousers and tie across the wooden chair. He stood in his underpants, socks and shoes.

  “Everything off.”

  “Look, come on, chaps. Please.”

  Gint took out his gun and pointed it at him.

  “We want nekkid, Dores,” Freeborn said.

  Henderson took off his shoes and socks. The floorboards were surprisingly cold; he worried vaguely about getting splinters in his soft pink soles.… The chill rose swiftly up through his body and reached the top of his skull in seconds. Goose pimples covered his body. He stripped off his underpants, threw them on the chair and held his trembling hands modestly in front of him.

  “It’s not that cold, is it?” Sereno laughed.

  Henderson looked away.

  Gint gathered up his clothes and took them out of the office, then came back, snapping a pair of pliers in his hands.

  “What’s that for?” Freeborn asked.

  “You get a piece of skin in these, it’s like tearing paper.”

  Henderson heard the blood leaving his head. He staggered a bit.

  “Come on, Peter. Ben said I could go first,” Freeborn complained.

  “Aw, here, Ben, you always let me go first.”

  “Hold on there,” Freeborn said. “I mean, whose house was he in? Mine.”

  “Yeah, but he’s in our office now.”

  “But you wouldn’t have got him if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “Yeah, but I had to—”

  “Boys, boys,” Sereno said. “Relax. You got five minutes, Freeborn. Come on, Peter, give him the gun.”

  Sulkily Gint handed over his gun, then he and Sereno left. Henderson heard the noise of the lift.

  Freeborn wandered over. He pressed the revolver barrel against Henderson’s forehead.

  “I ain’t gonna kill you yet, fuck, but I am gonna shoot your fuckin’ foot off of your leg in ten seconds if you don’t tell me what you’ve done with the paintings.” He pointed the gun at Henderson’s white, twitching right foot. He looked down at his toes. The nails could do with a cut. He thought warmly of his foot’s hundreds of tiny fragile bones, its calluses, its one dear persistent corn. Finally he could speak.

  “You don’t. You mean, you don’t know that—”

  “If I knew I wouldn’t be here, mofo.”

  “—that Duane burned them all.”

  Freeborn grabbed Henderson’s throat and tried to push the blunt barrel of the gun up his left nostril.

  “Lying. Lying, you bastard!”

  His big face and his glistening, cusped and trefoiled beard were very close.

  “It’s true,” Henderson croaked. “Last night. I saw him. I caught him at it. He said your father ordered him. Before he died. Last words.”

  Freeborn stepped back, ran his fingers through his springy black hair. He looked over his shoulder, then aimed the gun at Henderson’s groin.

  “It’s true,” Henderson wept softly. “How could I have stolen the paintings? Think about it. Duane burned them. Ask anyone to check at the bottom of the back garden.”

  Freeborn was prodding and tugging at his plump cheeks, as if trying to force his features to change from increasingly troubled credulity.

  “Say you’re lying, Dores.”

  “It’s the truth. I swear.”

  “Oh, Jesus, no. That dumb … that iron-brain, that fuckin’ beam-head moron …” The gun dropped. Freeborn began visibly to tremble. “Oh, Jesus.” He sank down on his haunches. Hend
erson told him the story again, in great and convincing detail, Freeborn’s terror relaxing him somewhat.

  “I gotta check it out.” He stood up again. “You could be lying, Dores. Shittin’ me.” Doubt registered in his voice and eyes. “I gotta be careful. Very careful.”

  He approached Henderson again. “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth, but whatever you do, don’t tell Sereno or Gint, man, or we’re dead. Both dead. D, e, d, you know?”

  “I don’t see why I—”

  “They’ll kill me, boy. They’ll kill you too, sure as shit.”

  Freeborn paced around the room. “I’m gonna check this out. If you’re right, if you’re right, then I’ve got to fix up some way …” He paused. “I need some time.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Time,” he repeated. “Look, I know, we’ll say you hid them in Luxora someplace. Yeah. Let’s say, uh, you rented a garage off of … of, um, Ed Beak, yeah. And—”

  “Just a second. Why the hell should I go along with you, for God’s sake?”

  “ ’Cause those mean mothers’ll blow us both away for sure, numbnuts!” he shouted in shrill panic. “I’m tryin’ to save your ass as well as my own!” He paced around some more.

  Henderson kept quiet, though he felt profound unease at being inveigled into this alliance.

  “OK,” Freeborn said. “We go back to Luxora. That’ll take time. Good, good.” He stopped. He seemed suddenly on the verge of tears. He clenched his fist, and pounded it on his hip. “That pea-brain! That asshole! Why did he do that? I’m gonna kill him! I’m gonna roast his balls!” Henderson assumed Duane was the object of his venom. “Stay cool,” Freeborn advised himself. “Stay calm. Take it easy.”

  “Listen, you’re not going to leave me here like this?” Henderson spread his arms.