The Empress of Tempera

by Alex Dolan

  “So what happened with Lucia?”

  “Are you recording this?” He looked her up and down for any unseemly bulges from recording devices.

  “I’m not recording anything.”

  “Show me your phone.”

  Paire pulled it out and powered it down before resting it on the counter.

  Rosewood wouldn’t look at her. “I don’t remember the second shot. She moved. Looking back, she was probably just trying to help Mayer. The gun went off. I know I must have squeezed, but it just happened. I didn’t mean it. She moved, and my hand squeezed.”

  “Reflex?”

  “It happened so fast. A couple of seconds.”

  “If it was an accident, how come you were more accurate with the second shot?”

  Rosewood rubbed the back of his neck. “For days, I’ve been trying to pretend nothing happened, that I never shot anyone. Down here, it’s almost possible to think it was a dream. That sounds stupid, but it’s the truth. I don’t know if you ever felt like distance helped wipe away something bad.” Of course he would know this was exactly how Paire felt when she left Maine. She resented that they shared this impulse, but she stopped twirling the wrench. “My Dad trained me to shoot low. I wasn’t aiming. You get that close to someone, the bullet’s going to go someplace important.”

  She continued, a touch softer than when she started. “So, what happened after?”

  “I did mostly what I planned to do. The van picked me up.”

  “Who drove?”

  “Lazaro,” he said.

  “Where did you go?”

  “We drove to Long Island. Made a bonfire and burned everything.”

  Paire suppressed a gag when she thought of the empress in flames.

  He said, “Not the paintings. Everything but the paintings.” Rosewood’s complexion seemed slightly gray as he looked out the back window to a trimmed lawn. Maybe he wanted to cry, but he managed to resist the urge.

  Paire realized that she’d never seen him cry, not even a little tear at a movie. Maybe years of living with the general had trained him out of it. She tried to keep her poise. “Where’s the art?”

  “I did everything I’d planned.” He said regretfully, “I handed it off.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Paire, I didn’t rob the place for you.”

  She didn’t understand.

  “I did it for someone else. I had to do it.”

  Her breath might have iced in midair. She didn’t fully comprehend what he’d told her until she let it absorb for a moment. The shootings had been accidents, but Derek Rosewood had always intended to betray her.

  “Who?”

  Rosewood didn’t answer.

  “We lived together,” she said.

  “You lived in my home,” he said, slightly resentful.

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  He frowned. “Because this has destroyed my life. As hurt as you’re feeling, it’s nothing compared to what I have to live with, or what I have to do now.”

  “You killed two people.” It felt grotesque for her to say this aloud.

  “You could turn me in, and I’d go to prison. And you’d go to prison too. You can decide to do that, and I won’t stop you.”

  “What’s your plan, then? You’re a public figure. You can’t just disappear.”

  “You’d be surprised how easy that is. People forget pretty quickly.”

  They sat in silence until she couldn’t stand it. “You think the shaved head is going to hide you forever?”

  “I shaved it for the army,” he said flatly. She scanned his face for a trace of bullshit, and as far as she could tell, he wasn’t lying. “That was my deal. I needed protection, and my dad offered me a deal.”

  “He’s making you go to war?”

  “We’re not at war. He wants me to continue the family legacy. He sees honor in it.”

  “Aren’t you too old?”

  He scowled at her. “You can enlist until you’re thirty-four.”

  “They’ll send you someplace hot. You can’t stand the heat.” Without trying to, she started feeling compassion for him. The acceptance of his punishment indicated how desperate he’d become.

  “I’ll go to jail otherwise.”

  She ruminated about all this, trying to make sense of it. “Were you hired to rob the Fern?”

  “You could say coerced. That would be more accurate.”

  Paire was close to hysterical, and Rosewood might have sensed it. He spoke slowly and softly, trying to do his best not to provoke her.

  “Were they going to pay you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then you were hired.” She squeezed the wrench in her hand. “You’re rich. You didn’t need the money.”

  “I needed the money more because I’m rich.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Rosewood’s fingers swirled at his temples. “Everything I do needs to be funded. The flat in Brooklyn Heights—you think I bought that outright? With the loads of cash I got from my military family? Every piece of my work, every business venture, needs money. And the more money I need, the more I’m indebted to the source of that money.”

  “Poor baby.”

  He squeezed his eyelids shut and slowly stretched his head side to side. “You need to know that I really liked you, Paire. I mean, really. I still do.” There was something that resembled affection in the way he looked at her now, but it failed to match any of his loving gazes back in Brooklyn. His face was apologetic. A beggar’s woeful simper.

  She fumed, “Who gives a fuck?” She clenched her jaw. “Where is the art?”

  “I handed off the Qi to him, and that’s the last I saw of it.”

  “So, it’s just gone.”

  “It’s his now.” His breath shortened, almost panting now, as he tried to articulate his next thoughts. “Don’t go after him. He’s crazy. He comes across as a blowhard, but he’s more dangerous than you think. When he found out about the shooting, I thought he was going to kill me—he gave me these.” Rosewood lifted up his T-shirt. Several bruises, purple as eggplants, stained the skin above his ribs. Bigger than a fist. A shoe might have seeded these wounds. “See this?” He lifted a gauze bandage to reveal a four-inch stitched gash in his lower abdomen. “He sliced me with a jackknife. He said it would remind me of my incompetence. He said if he saw me again, he’d kill me. Really, I think if my father wasn’t who he was, he’d have finished me that night.”

  A cold thought washed over her, but she wasn’t ready to accept it. She asked, “Who are we talking about?”

  Derek Rosewood looked at her in awe, shocked she had to ask. “Abel Kasson.”

  She rushed to the kitchen sink and puked, dripping an orange stream into the basin.

  Rosewood stood from his stool but didn’t dare approach. He made no noises behind her, but the lack of motion gave her the sense that he hadn’t moved anywhere. When she pulled her head out of the sink, he looked concerned, standing with his open palms facing her, the universal sign of a peace offering. His expression of fear and contrition might have been the last thing Lucia ever saw.

  Something ruptured in Paire. She hurled the wrench, not at Rosewood, but at the back door. They both watched it spin in boomerang spirals. When the metal hunk hit the glass, the door shattered, and they both flinched at the noise. It would have been the loudest noise in the neighborhood. The glass fractured in large hunks, with one jagged four-foot slice crashing down to the carpet like one of I. M. Pei’s John Hancock windows.

  “Call me a fucking cab,” she demanded, sliding up onto the kitchen counter, ankles dangling and shoulders rounded forward.

  Chapter 17

  Paire was eating a hummus wrap and watching the people across Park Avenue.

  At the corner of Park and East Seventy-Fifth, a homeless man watched a stream of taxicabs cruise down toward the MetLife building that stoppered the road at Grand Central. The thin white man had
a beard like an oriole nest. His loose-fitting raincoat stiffened in places from urine stains, and he staggered as if he were adjusting to an artificial hip. Not one of the mole people she had seen in City Hall station, but similar.

  Several times now, he’d passed under the green awning of an apartment building. The building stood eleven stories, with a limestone and brick façade and the sort of elaborate carvings and gargoyles normally appended to churches. The round-faced doorman shooed him away, each time more agitated than the last. Although he was dressed in a black coat with gold trim, and a hat that made him resemble an airline pilot, the uniform’s ill fit made the doorman seem more comical and less authoritative.

  The doorman threatened to call the police the last time, but the threat didn’t sink in. The homeless man stared at him, then through him, then focused on his face with a vague recognition, as if trying to recall where or when he had last seen the doorman. He slurred, “I just want some shade.”

  “You have to find it somewhere else.” The doorman might have wondered the last time this man had been indoors.

  “The coat’s too hot,” said the bearded man.

  “Then don’t wear it.” The summer heat had really kicked in that week, and in the middle of the day, it seemed too hot for everything. Truth be told, it was too hot for doorman uniforms too, but the doorman sweated in his anyway. He tried to be understanding and pointed west. “The park is a couple blocks that way. All the shade you want.”

  “But this is right here.”

  “You can’t be here.”

  “Why not?” The bum sounded drunk. Smelled drunk too, once one could smell beyond the piss. The doorman grimaced when the odors hit him and fanned his nose.

  “Because you can’t.” The doorman stepped closer, demonstrating how much larger he was. “Please don’t make me make you leave.”

  Something registered. Maybe he sensed that he might be in danger, but the raincoated man stumbled back, and eventually turned to amble in the direction the doorman had pointed.

  When the homeless man rounded the corner again and passed under the awning, the way a fish crosses across an aquarium window, the doorman clenched his jaw and balled up his fists.

  The doorman might have charged at him to run him off, but he didn’t get the chance. A second man breezed past the doorman. A redhead in a popcorn-white suit, he was slightly taller, slight of build, and in his twenties. He strolled leisurely, possibly taking a late lunch. The degree to which he was clean and buffed made him look European.

  The businessman made it to the street corner when the homeless man approached him and asked a question too subdued to hear, but he performed the universal pantomime for bumming a cigarette. Perhaps caught off-guard, or simply generous of spirit, the redhead dug out a pack of cigarettes and gave away a smoke. The doorman smiled to himself. Maybe he was surprised to see that someone in Manhattan still smoked. Definitely European.

  The man in the suit pulled out an impressive silver lighter that reflected the sunlight, and showed off an elaborate etching reminiscent of a Wild West revolver. After accepting the light and puffing a few clouds, the homeless man grasped the businessman by the hand, smearing grime on the French cuff, and tried to take the lighter away from him.

  At first they almost looked like they were playing. The suit smirked, as if dealing with a child who was adorably misbehaving. But when the bearded man pulled harder, they tangled. To push him away, the executive boxed him across the ear with an open palm. This knocked them apart a few paces, just long enough for the businessman to return the lighter to his pocket. The doorman marveled at the spectacle, unwilling to get involved.

  After taking a moment to collect himself, the raincoat man rammed his head into the other’s chest, knocking him hard on his back to the pavement. He wheezed and fought for breath. It looked like it hurt. With his opponent immobilized, the bearded man fished inside the suit jacket until he found the lighter. Once he palmed it, he bolted in the direction of the park.

  The doorman rubbed his hand across his jowls, and let out a long breath. He smiled and then chuckled mildly. One man tackling another for a lighter, almost like black-and-white clips of slapstick violence he’d seen from silent films.

  But the man in the suit didn’t get up. Moments went by, and then he let out a deep, primal scream of terror and agony, the sort of gravelly howl that shreds vocal cords. He lifted a hand, and his palm was red and wet.

  The doorman gasped. He looked back into the lobby. Technically, they were supposed to use the desk phone for emergency calls. At least, that’s what the union told them. He started to walk inside when the man called, “Help me,” and perhaps it didn’t feel right to abandon him. The doorman plucked out his mobile and rushed to the businessman on the sidewalk.

  When he stood over him, the doorman covered his mouth with a hand when he saw a red patch on the man’s stomach. The blood spread in a dark cloud across his shirt.

  “He stabbed me,” said the man, astonished. He spoke in a foreign accent. Maybe British or Irish. With the stress in the voice, it was hard to tell.

  “Let’s get you inside,” said the doorman. He tried lifting the man to his feet, but the movement made him scream even louder.

  He shook his head in protest. “I can’t get up.”

  The doorman lowered himself to his knees, prepared to use his mobile, but the injured man clutched the doorman’s wrists tightly. He shivered convulsively with the pain.

  The doorman placed one hand on his shoulders to comfort him, and wrenched one arm free to dial his phone. The emergency operator had barely picked up when pedestrians began to collect. Paire walked across the street so she could mill about behind them.

  This stretch of Park Ave didn’t get much foot traffic this time of the afternoon, but just like ants who’ve smelled a drizzle of honey, people were drawn by the commotion. The doorman suddenly found himself surrounded by a small cluster of people, all wanting to help, all asking questions while he was on the phone. What happened? Did you stop the bleeding? Does he need CPR?

  The emergency dispatcher now repeated her questions in his ear, and the doorman stammered through an explanation of what happened—something about a homeless guy, a stabbing, and no, he didn’t see a knife.

  A taxicab screeched to a stop right by the awning. Not one of the city’s yellow cabs, but a gypsy cab, beaten to crap with a lunar surface of dents in the body.

  A young Latino driver sprang out of the car, skinny with a white tee and camo pants, with an overgrown chin beard that rounded like a microphone windscreen. “What happened?”

  The doorman was still trying to explain things to the emergency dispatcher. He made the universal brush-off gesture to the cabbie, as if sweeping dust with his hand. The way he had tried to shoo away the bearded man. It proved just as ineffective.

  The gypsy driver said, “Throw him in the back. I’ll get him to the hospital.”

  The doorman wouldn’t be swayed. Possibly, he was comforted by the idea that professional paramedics would take the injured man.

  The driver snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Jesus Christ, man! We don’t have time to fuck around.”

  The doorman didn’t want to hang up. He made an excuse for why they should wait for an ambulance. “The blood. Your seats,” he said.

  “Does it look like I give a shit?” The cabbie seemed upset, and his energy possibly made the doorman wonder how quickly the man on the ground needed a doctor. The driver knocked the phone out of his hand. “Get him in the back and I’ll get him to the hospital in two minutes.”

  There was no time to think this through, especially not with the driver barking at him.

  “Get his shoulders. I’ve got the legs. You!” He pointed to a spectator, a lean, tanned woman dressed in yoga gear with a rolled rubber mat tucked under her arm. “Open the back door, please.” Back to the doorman, he said, “Ready? One, two, three, and lift.”

  The injured man quaked as they raised his body off
the ground. He pressed his hands against his stomach.

  Behind all of them, Paire Anjou slipped into the building lobby, unseen by everyone in the sidewalk gathering. Paire had dressed down today, in jeans and a T-shirt, with a dark brown wig pulled back in a ponytail to hide the red hair. She wore bookish glasses and kept her chin tucked down.

  She knew several people in the crowd. Charlie was in the suit, his blood no more than corn starch and food coloring. Humberto drove the gypsy cab, which they’d gotten on police auction for three dollars and would be able to ditch and burn if they had to. Lazaro played the homeless man. Homeless Erectus. By now, he’d probably stripped off the raincoat, and would shave off the beard as soon as he found a razor and a bathroom. Some of the bystanders were Lazaro’s contacts, people she’d never seen but seemed game to help out the cause.

  Paire acknowledged from the outset that the plan was reckless. Crude and dirty, there would be no janitor’s uniform, no hollowed-out trash cans, no insider to turn off the alarm system. Her actions would be driven by impulse. Lazaro and the rest of them didn’t seem to mind.

  Dressed as a UPS deliveryman, Lazaro had already visited the building several days ago to find out where the doorman kept the keys, where the service elevator was located, and the specific floor of Abel Kasson’s apartment.

  With the doorman now occupied, Paire headed straight for the mailroom and pinched the right keys off a hook board. The fastest way to get to the flat would have been the elevator, but elevators made noise, so she climbed the stairs that led to the back entrances to each apartment. She ascended fifteen flights before she arrived at the rear entrance to Kasson’s flat. Her face felt hot and damp by the time she reached the landing.

  None of them had ever been inside Kasson’s flat, but they knew he occupied the entire floor, as did every other tenant in the building. Paire didn’t know what alarm systems might be in place. Once she unlocked the door, she might set off a motion sensor. The doorman might have the alarm codes, but she didn’t. If this happened, she was prepared to sprint through the apartment to see what she could find and let herself out the emergency exit. They were relatively certain no one was home, but not absolutely. They’d called at various times of day from pay phones, noting when Kasson picked up and when he didn’t. They had even called right before they arrived. The call to Kasson’s home went unanswered.