Man With a Squirrel

by Nicholas Kilmer

  Sandy Blake stood, angry. “I will show you his mark,” she threatened.

  “That’s OK,” Fred said. He had moved somewhat toward her, following her into the room, attracted as to an accident victim it is equally dangerous to help as to abandon by the road.

  “You raped me,” Sandy Blake said.

  The woman was pure trouble, the loosest of loose cannons. He’d seen as much as he wanted, and turned to go.

  “I’ll tell them how you raped me,” Sandy Blake warned, behind him. He heard what sounded like a woman’s clothes being removed or disarranged. But he stood fixed in his own paralysis, transfixed by what met him when he turned. It was the head: the head he wanted. He stared. It was pinned to the wall next to the door—a loose oblong of canvas with a raw lower edge.

  Back of him was the sound a woman’s denim dress makes crawling angrily over her head. He stared at the last portion of the Copley. It could not be by anyone else’s hand; the head and shoulders of a young man of great beauty, in three-quarter view. No wig. No window.

  “You raped me,” Sandy screamed behind him. Fred swiveled. She was down to her skin, hissing, standing, balling her fists, shaking the long dark lashes of her hair from side to side as if they could work on him like serpents. She came at him, screaming and clawing at her full breasts and her cheeks.

  * * *

  “It wasn’t a moment I could tarry and ask, ‘Do you want to give me a price on what’s left of that painting?’” Fred told Molly.

  “What did you do?”

  “Picked up my hod-carrier’s hat and my coat and hit the stairs,” Fred said. “We like to keep a low profile, Clayton and I, which was starting to seem hard. So I know now where the rest of the painting is, and I’d rather walk blindfold into a pit of wolves than go into that place again; though I’ll go back in a minute if I can figure a way to do it. That’s an important picture. We’re right about the date. But it’s the sitter! The sitter is a young black man. There’s nothing like it in the early Copley.”

  Fred had walked back to Porter Square for his car, called Molly on the way, and learned he was not expected and he might as well pick up something to eat on the way home if he was hungry. He’d grabbed a sub and was eating it now, with a carrot from Molly’s fridge, while sitting with her at the kitchen table. The kids were already upstairs.

  “So that’s my day,” Fred concluded. “I made my offer to Cover-Hoover’s henchperson; I followed him and his boss to the house of my new friend, or friends, Sandy Blake, who’s more fun than a snake in heat; I found the remainder of a painting Clayton would rather have than be appointed Baron of Beacon Hill, and I doubt I’ll get near it again; I learned the Cambridge cops think Oona’s nephew killed the lady; and I have eaten the left half of an excellent meatball sub, which you would qualify as a contradiction in terms. Tell me about your day.”

  Molly, sitting across from him, was wearing her red terry-cloth wrapper, and her brown curls were wet, which rendered them almost black. She’d been in the shower when he returned.

  “I read the rest of Cover-Hoover’s book,” Molly said. “The book is full of platitudes couched in go-go phraseology designed to impress today’s nonreading public. It begs the central question whether Satan is real, because it’s devil worship that’s the crime, and the crime depends not on the devil but on the worshipers.”

  Fred said, “So many blasted, blighted middle-class lives.”

  “It’s the blasted and blighted families I notice,” Molly said. “It’s wicked. The whole thing.

  “The problem is,” she continued, wrapping her hair in a towel she’d been carrying with her, “since yesterday, talking to that woman, I feel absurdly filthy, infected outward from the inside. It won’t wash off. It’s amazing you found the painting. The Blake woman’s a patient, I suppose—recovering.”

  She got up, unwrapped the towel, and dropped it on the floor.

  “Not much of a recovery, is it?” She went for the stairs. “See you in the morning, OK?”

  21

  Fred, drinking coffee in Molly’s kitchen next morning while the kids noodled over their Flix and Tweetos and Molly ate toast and eggs, telephoned Clay at the Carlyle at seven-thirty, when he would be up but not out.

  “You took the whole list and Xeroxed it, didn’t you?” Fred asked him. “All the names of the sitters for the American portraits from Prown’s book?”

  “There’d be no point committing such a list to memory. I am not preparing an invitation list for my niece’s wedding.”

  Sam grabbed the Flix box from Terry, who had been studying its backside. “I’m not finished reading,” Terry screamed.

  “I’m not finished eating,” Sam declared, winning.

  Fred said into the phone, “Does the name Blake crop up anywhere?” Excitement fluttered at Clay’s end. Hope is the thing with feathers. Suppose it squawks and shits, there’s still something about the clap of its wings on an early morning that lifts the spirits.

  “You found it,” Clay said. “That is excellent.”

  “It will be a major problem to get hold of it,” Fred said. “I’ll describe the situation to you in due course. But yes, I found it. I’ve seen it. What the next step is I don’t know, but…”

  “Don’t let it escape us, Fred. The elements must be remarried.”

  “I’m with you,” Fred said. “Also the avalanche must be diverted.”

  “When you begin talking of avalanches, Fred, or other natural phenomena, I do not follow. No matter. I shall return to Boston. Do nothing before we confer. Expect me by the first convenient train.”

  “Meantime,” Fred reminded him, “for the sake of argument, is there a Blake on your list?”

  “I am searching as you catalog your avalanches. I wish you had said Oliver. Since we talked yesterday I began to consider the possibility of Peter Oliver. A Miss Ware of Cambridge, in 1892, was said to own a full-length portrait of that Chief Justice, which is not located—but no, he is in his scarlet judicial robes. It would not be our painting.”

  “Our man is African,” Fred said. “Or African-American.”

  The hope at Clayton’s end of the line screeched like a phoenix scenting camphor and sandalwood. “Amazing and unheard of,” Clay whispered. “It is signed, then?”

  “Can’t say.” Fred waved the children out, listening to Clay’s distant pause of aghast dismay.

  Clay ventured, sipping orange juice and Perrier at the Carlyle, “I am surprised at you. But perhaps there were reasons, Fred, why you did not examine the object closely enough to discover a signature?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Fred said. “What Blake do you have?”

  Molly went upstairs to dress. Fred poured more coffee into his mug.

  “I am looking for Blake as a maiden name among the female sitters,” Clay said, “endeavoring to be thorough. I shall occupy myself with that on the train. Meanwhile the only Blake in the record is an oil on copper, five by four inches, of Joseph Blake, painted between 1765 and 1767, which is last recorded as being owned by Winthrop Gardner Minot of Greenwich, Connecticut. I am not familiar with this member of the Minot family.”

  “Undoubtedly an impostor,” Fred said.

  “What was that?”

  “It’s the right date, anyway,” Fred agreed. “Copley could have done a three-quarter-length portrait at the same time, except, well, we still want to factor in the wild card of the sitter’s color. And as we both know, there’s no reason an unlocated Copley portrait would not also be unknown—unrecorded.”

  “Don’t make an offer on it until we discuss it in Boston,” Clay said. “I must dress.”

  * * *

  Fred drove into town, thinking. For today he would leave Manny to make the approach to Sandy Blake. He reasoned that the day before, Manny, attracted by the prospect of ten thousand dollars, had consulted with Cover-Hoover, the boss of his moonlighting operation, and told her whatever he told her; and the two of them had gone to collect the final fra
gment from Sandy Blake, who, as Molly had concluded, had to be a patient or former patient or aspiring acolyte of Cover-Hoover.

  That was an awful lot of stuff in Sandy Blake’s apartment, some of it looking like real value. Nothing Sandy Blake had said—it dawned on Fred, Oh, that was a multiple-personality disorder manifestation act I was witnessing, was it? Right there on Hay Street?—none of it could be relied on in any way.

  His only firm conclusion of this morning was that he could not hope to accomplish anything by presenting himself again at Sandy Blake’s door. If Manny failed him, could he send Clay, or perhaps Molly, to make an offer on the keystone of the violated portrait? If Oona were alive …

  That was another element he should not allow to disappear from his field of vision. Sandy Blake had volunteered vague, ominous, gelatinous hints about death by violence, suggesting some “them” or “him” meant to do her harm. Who wouldn’t? The lady ought to select one personality and go with it.

  Fred hadn’t been in touch with Marek for a day or two. Finding a free meter not far from Oona’s, he docked his car and dropped in quarters. There was no movement back of the glass door, and no response when Fred pressed the buzzer. Marek had taken down the homemade “Closed” sign, replacing it with Oona’s usual one. Fred went to the nearest pay phone and called the store’s number. It rang without being answered. The shop phone had an extension in Oona’s upstairs apartment; if Marek was there he was not answering. On a hunch Fred called Information and got a residence number for Imry, Oona, on Charles Street. “Madeleine, I am almost dead with longing to hear your voice,” Marek said, answering sleepily on the sixth ring.

  Fred said, “It’s Fred. I want to see you, Marek.”

  * * *

  Marek looked bleary and tousled and hungover. He was wearing black jeans and a black sweater, and the gloves. “I cannot get warm,” he said. “I am not nourished properly without poor Oona to cook for me. She will be desolate to see me suffering. Come in, Fred. You have found him?”

  Fred entered the store. Marek locked the street door, wincing at the bell’s habitual ching, and complaining, “It is off pitch.”

  “Why don’t we go upstairs?” Fred suggested.

  “Not in Oona’s apartment,” Marek said.

  Oona’s back room was definitely less crowded. “They will not let me burn her,” Marek mourned. “Therefore her ghost is here. Why will your law not allow me to burn her?”

  Fred sat in his usual chair. Marek paced in the small space allowed between the desk and the objects Oona had been keeping for special clients. He said, “They think you killed her. Who’s Madeleine?”

  “An old lady who is an Old Lady of Boston,” Marek said, simpering. “I have learned the young women of America offer no variety. They are all the same, never surprising. On the other hand, those who are seasoned…”

  Fred asked, “Where were you the night Oona was killed? With Madeleine? Playing for invited guests in her living room?”

  “We refer to such a chamber as a salon,” Marek corrected him. He limbered his fingers in their thin gloves.

  “I cannot get warm,” Marek complained. “Not Ravel nor Chopin can these fingers kiss this morning. If what you claim is true and the police believe I killed the pelican from whose very breast I have been fed—that prevents them interfering when you go to kill him for me. Who is the person, Fred Taylor?”

  “I regret our laws do not permit us to kill this person if we find him,” Fred said. “Also it is for the police to find this person. It is for us to do the things we do.”

  If Marek found all American women to be bland and unsurprising, maybe he’d appreciate an introduction to Sandy Blake. If the fellow were not himself such a wing nut (“genius,” as Clay would put it), Fred would suggest Marek visit the Blake apartment, identify himself as Oona’s partner or successor, and ask to buy the remaining piece of the puzzle.

  What was the rest of the treasure she was using to air her underthings on? And how did she come to have it?

  Fred had wanted to sit in front of Marek one more time in order to ask himself if there was any useful function he could execute. But Marek’s priorities were too narrowly focused. “I have nothing to tell you,” Fred told Marek. “Beyond, Good luck with your piano playing.” He left Marek gaping, locking the street door behind Fred while reaching to silence the off-pitch insult to his ears.

  Mountjoy Street was cold and wet and grim. Clayton would be back later in the day and Fred wanted to think, before he reported, about what he had seen tacked to the wall in Sandy Blake’s bed-storeroom. First, on an impulse, he checked for the name Blake on Oona’s Rolodex. Nothing. Kwik-Frame was not listed either.

  Fred started looking through Clayton’s Copley books. He would not try Manny until this afternoon.

  * * *

  Molly was not at the library when he called to see if she would have lunch with him.

  * * *

  He drove to Arlington to see if she’d left Cover-Hoover’s book next to her bed. There was no sign of it. He wondered how much of his momentary preoccupation with Cover-Hoover was based on her presence on the outskirts of the portrait’s head, and how much on the fact that she had managed to interpose her offices between himself and Molly Riley. Molly’s distress, and her instinctive distrust of the doctor’s self-appointed mission, had made Fred spend more time than he normally would have with Cover-Hoover’s Power of Darkness the night before. She sounded like a guru adding class and definition to a fringe fad Fred wouldn’t have thought worth worrying about: something that catered to people with enough wealth or prospects they didn’t have to worry about the next meal; dogs without fleas who are going to damned well keep on scratching until they open a sore.

  Since Molly had asked for it, Fred tried the bookstores in Harvard Square for copies of Cover-Hoover’s first book, Culture of Abuse. It was out of print. None of the used-book stores had it either; and Widener Library’s copy was withdrawn by an officer of the university and not due back on the shelf for six months.

  Fred drove down Hay Street and checked Sandy Blake’s windows. If he trusted her madness—it was too self-indulgent to be real—he might risk trying her door in the hope she would not recognize him. But he was not going to fool with that now. He watched her house for a while. What was it about the irrational that made it so attractive, and so infectious?

  * * *

  Fred stopped at the Cambridge Quilt Company (“Formerly Tumbleweed”) in Harvard Square and picked out a yard of patterned cloth Terry might like. It was decorated with eccentric animals resembling goats or lizards. He had it with him in a bag when he went into Kwik-Frame at four-thirty. The discouraged red-haired woman in the ticking apron was not evident. Fred did not need the cloth in order to explain his presence. Manny walked toward him out of the work area.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Fred said.

  “I see you,” Manny said. He glared. The muscles in arms and neck and jaw bulged and frisked around the smiling Mickey on the pink T-shirt.

  “Ten grand worth of Mexican food is a big pile,” Fred reminded him.

  Manny crossed his arms, saying, “You want to tell me why she’s worth that kind of money to you? You want to tell me who’s willing to pay that kind of money to find her? You think I’m dumb enough to listen to this shit about a painting? You think I’m pissing crazy?” Manny bounced on the balls of his feet like someone who has seen and believed many films about martial arts. “I’m warning you. Leave her alone.”

  “Leave who alone? I want the rest of a picture I bought. I’m not looking for anybody. Good luck to you if you find her.”

  Manny started bulling toward Fred, using his overinflated chest as a battering ram. The man displayed the kind of bulk that is grown to match the fantasies of solitude. It was comicbook stuff.

  “I’ll stop back some time when you’re not busy,” Fred promised. “The offer of ten thousand is good, but it is not for a person. Your clients are your business. The offer is
for a painting.”

  “This painting means fuck-all to me,” Manny said. “I don’t know squat about it. Don’t come back. I’m warning you.”

  22

  Fred met Molly as she was coming out of the library at five o’clock. “I have my car, Fred,” she said. “Or did you want a ride?”

  “I have wheels. Just wanted to say hello.”

  “Hello, then.” Molly wore Sam’s red coat with the hood down, so the cold drizzle beaded in her dark curls. Fred looked for the green of her eyes to reflect in the drops of water falling between himself and Molly.

  “I have to meet with Clayton,” Fred said. “I don’t know when I’ll get back.”

  “You can sleep in Charlestown,” Molly said. Fred walked beside her to the parking lot next to the library, where their cars were parked across from each other. “If you’re embarrassed or hurt sleeping downstairs.” She opened her car door, which she would never lock, and got in.

  “Why don’t I sit with you a minute and visit?” Fred suggested.

  “A minute. The kids expect me.”

  Fred folded his body into the front seat next to her. “If we’re having a fight I wish you’d clue me in. I don’t know where to start. I can sleep on your couch, or the couch in my office, or uproot whoever is squatting in my room in Charlestown, or under a bridge as far as that goes. I’d rather be in your bed.”

  Molly stared out the windshield at the traffic on Broadway, and at people maneuvering in and out of the grocery store on the opposite side of the street. “I’m willing to fight if you tell me what we’re fighting about,” Fred went on.

  “There’s no fight, Fred. You’re posturing and I am being irrational. Put that aside a minute. Do you know Cover-Hoover’s operation has been accepted by the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a nonprofit foundation? Not only tax exempt, but capable of receiving charitable donations?”

  “It figures,” Fred said. “So they have a board and the rest of it? You’ve been looking into the corporation?”

  “Cover-Hoover’s the executive director, as well as president of the board. She draws a salary. That’s in addition to whatever Holmes College pays. And the income from her books.”