Harmony In Flesh and Black

by Nicholas Kilmer

  “Where is he?” she asked. “Where’s his collection? Albert knows, but I hate him to think I’m ignorant.”

  “I can only tell you what I’ve heard, and none of it may be true. I only tell you in strictest confidence,” Fred said. “Because what Arthurian owns—the paintings alone, when I tell you—naturally you are familiar with La Gioconda.”

  “Of course,” Ophelia said. “Just … remind me.”

  “The Mona Lisa.”

  Ophelia nodded and smiled. She loved that. “Yes, by da Vinci. The mystery smile!”

  “Its companion piece, her husband, facing toward her—L’Arcigno—that belongs to Arthurian.”

  “My God. Will he let us film it?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Fred said.

  “Where is he to ask him?”

  “He travels.”

  “Would your boss know?” Ophelia asked.

  “He stops in Boston when he can,” Fred said. “I gather he was here last week. He was to leave for Kansas City, by train. He travels only by train.”

  “He was in Boston last week?” Ophelia repeated.

  “That is what I heard. It may not be true.”

  23

  Fred drove into Boston.

  He would not assume indefinitely that Clayton’s home and office must remain a no-man’s land. There had been no sign that any connection had been made between Clay and his snow-balling imaginary friend Arthurian. If the police had put the two together, they’d also know the way to Clayton Reed was through Fred, who was not hard to find.

  Fred, ever since he’d picked up the gun, had been watching his back, as a matter of old habit. Nobody seemed to care about him. The day was clear and would be warm again, spring already waning. There was no traffic to fight. Rush hour was over except for executives starting late.

  He parked a couple of blocks from Clayton’s and walked over, looking for unusual interest in the house and finding none. He went in, picked up the mail, and put it on his desk to take to Clay later.

  Fred pulled out the Chase and looked at La Belle Conchita. He hadn’t had a chance to enjoy the painting since identifying its author. It was Chase all over. As to La Belle Conchita herself, she looked an energetic kid, amused at her own daring, knowing herself in the hands of a young master, in the company of Goya’s Maja, Titian’s Danaë or Venus (whatever their names were), Courbet’s and Whistler’s Jo.

  When Chase had finished work and washed his brushes, had Conchita rolled over, hopped up, and said, “Okay, Will, my turn. I want to do you. Drop trousers and recline. Allow me a long gaze at that precious fanny. Or no, face me. We’ll see if my brush can catch the indigo accent on the testicles against the crimson of your waving thingy!”?

  How had they talked to each other of such things in those days? The painting, as formal in its way as conversation recorded in novels of the day, drew down the curtain of discretion before the slippery moments started.

  The painted nude of the period had not much to do with sex and rather more with monuments. It allowed a stripping-away of evanescent fashion, a concentration on what was permanent: a form that a succession of humans continues to fill. It was unlike the pornographic photo torn out of Penthouse in that pop pornography, to maintain its narrow focus, must exhibit a contrary fillip of current fashion. The boots, the smile, and the hat in the photograph all emphasize the thesis that the sum of a woman is smaller than her parts.

  The telephone rang. Fred left it. He’d let Clayton continue to be unreachable since that was the plan. When it stopped, as long as he was here, he called Clay at the Copley. Was there anything he could do? Feed the cat, take in the milk, water the plants? It wasn’t that kind of house. Nothing was alive in it but Clay, when Clay was home; and Fred, and the paintings.

  “Thank you. As long as I have Proust, I want for nothing. You might collect the mail, in case of something urgent. I called the Ritz, by the way, and learned that Albert Finn remains in town. Therefore he has his eye on the Heade, either as a Heade—in which case I shall outbid him—or because he knows what we suspect.”

  “I’ll come over,” Fred said. “We can talk about it. Not only is he in town, but Ophelia says he’s talking about writing an introduction to the catalog for the Arthurian collection.”

  “There is no Arthurian collection,” Clay protested.

  “We’ll talk about it,” said Fred. “I’ll be right over.”

  Normally he would have enjoyed walking to Copley Square, but he’d stick with the car today, not knowing where he would have to go next. This part of Boston looked nice in the spring. Trees were putting on heavy green. Daffodils, tulips, and magnolias were established in the small plots of yard allotted to the old buildings. In a week all bloom would be gone from the magnolias.

  “What’s this about Finn and the Arthurian collection?” Clay asked as he let Fred in. Fully dressed and groomed, he had a green volume of Proust—in French—closed on his finger, so he would not lose his place. “Is it a joke? I do not feel like joking. I don’t relish living away from home. I own a new painting I have barely seen. I don’t wish to be Mr. Whistler. Proust I can enjoy equally well in my own flat, except for the distractions. I begin to think of this, Fred, as my period of exile.”

  Fred sat in one of the armchairs. Clay kept his room so neat you could barely tell it was being occupied. Suitcases had been emptied into drawers and closets, the cases themselves sent down to the baggage room to be stored until he was ready for them. Nothing was left lying on chairs or tables. The New York Times, already read, was folded again.

  “It’s no joke,” Fred said. He handed the pack of mail to Clay as he sat in the chair, the two of them on either side of the round table in front of the window. “No joke. Finn heard of Arthurian, possibly from someone who read your advertisements. More likely he read it himself in yesterday’s paper and is itching to learn about this potential pigeon. In any case, Ophelia—you recall Molly’s sister, Ophelia?”

  Clay shuddered. Ophelia had made a determined play for him at that disastrous Christmas party at Molly’s. “It’s not that I fail to appreciate women,” Clay had confessed later, apologizing for his precipitous departure, “it’s just—I am preoccupied with other matters, and they are so complex!”

  “Ophelia,” Fred continued, “came to see me at the hotel to pump me for information about Arthurian.”

  “You told her nothing, surely?” Clayton needed to be reassured.

  “She’s no wiser about Arthurian than she was,” Fred said. “The thing is, I don’t know if Finn sent her to ask me.”

  “You think Arthurian is definitely after the Heade, then, do you?” said Clay.

  “Clay, climb out of the Proust a minute. You are Arthurian, remember? There is no Arthurian.”

  Clay said, “Did I say Arthurian? I meant Heade. I mean Finn.”

  Fred said, “The police want Arthurian to help their investigation. Ophelia’s in on the act, with Finn. Do you think it may be time to simplify this? Break cover, tell the cops who you are and what’s going on?”

  He had decided not to mention Mangan. That can of worms, as long as he himself did not know whether to look into it, could be opened later if it had to.

  “What day is it?” Clay asked.

  “Thursday.”

  “Stay with the plan. Sit tight until the sale. I cannot think about two things at once. Finish one thing first, Fred. The main objective.”

  Clay crossed his legs and held the stack of mail in his right hand, gesturing with it. He went on, “The stakes are high. Sitting in this room, having time to contemplate—and let me tell you, Proust is a great aid to contemplation—I have been looking at the Vermeer. Let me show you.”

  He rose and went to the desk supplied by the hotel, set in a window overlooking Copley Square, with its churches, parks, and homeless. He opened the top drawer and pulled out the catalog of Doolan’s sale. The Heade, placed late in the sale—a tactic to keep the buying audience present and alert throu
gh the doldrums of the earlier part of the sequence—was illustrated in color. An oblong almost square, 26 × 27 inches, it sat on its long side. A landscape by Heade should be more horizontal, so as to take advantage of its shape and lead the eye out to the horizon on both sides.

  Clay brought the catalog over to the window and held it sideways. The Heade was now tipped on its side, so that the haystacks pointed east, like the breasts of Renoir’s Wertheim Baigneuse. Beside it Clay held the photocopy of the drawing made from the Vermeer when it was shown at the Mass. Mechanics Hall in eighteen-whatever.

  Clay said, “Heade wouldn’t have had time to lay down a coat of white lead to obscure the earlier painting. The work was done on the spur of the moment, and white lead would take a week to dry. Heade had to paint directly onto Vermeer’s image, on top of whatever dirt and varnish had accrued, which will be our good fortune.

  “He’d have known that over time his oil paint must become more transparent and allow the underpainting to show through. Contrary lines would appear from below, challenging his forms. And so, where possible, he let his new forms correspond to the design on his support.”

  Clay gestured with the eraser of a yellow pencil, tracking the lines on the two images. “See here? The line at the base of the haystack corresponds to the vertical edge of the window. This shadow-line falls along what would have been the bottom edge of the window. Those hard edges would be the most difficult to conceal.

  “But the shoulders of the principal haystack, here—do you see?—adapt the curve of the woman’s arm, down to the table, and a river line in the map, and so on. I’ve studied the two, and the fit is quite extraordinary.”

  “It’s a convincing argument,” Fred said. He held the color print from Doolan’s and the drawing together and looked at them.

  “I think of those two young people,” Clay said. He sat down again and gazed out the window. “Young townspeople, full of life and hope, on the brink of great adventure, condemned to a century of bucolic obscurity.”

  He was talking about the characters in the picture, the fine, flat smudges and glazes of oil and light: the hours of careful edging, the slow resolution of harmony and contrast. He thought it was a puppet show.

  “And,” said Clay, “naturally I think about Vermeer also: his work held hostage. Look at the Heade, for heaven’s sake! Any moment a cow could splash through that swamp!”

  “If Heade could draw it,” Fred said.

  “Of course Heade could draw it! Someone who can do a magnolia that delicate?”

  “A joke, Clay.”

  “In poor taste,” Clay said.

  “But you plan to dissolve the Heade, don’t you?” Fred asked.

  “If it comes to that, I will make a determination based on the higher good.”

  “Survival of the preferred.”

  “Something like that,” Clay said, immune to irony.

  “I’ll be off,” Fred said, rising.

  “Yes, of course,” Clay said absently. “I leave this in your hands, Fred. Wait, look at this.” He pulled a note out of an envelope. Fred had leafed through the mail and noticed the envelope addressed simply to Clayton Reed, without stamp or address—therefore delivered by hand. It was this that Clay had opened.

  “It is from Albert Finn. Listen, Fred. The man covers the world, like a miasma.”

  Fred had undergone a surfeit of Proust.

  Clayton read, “‘Dear Clayton, you are evidently out of town—in search of something wonderful, I trust?—because the telephone fails to raise you. I must postpone my departure from Boston a few days and wonder if you might care to visit about a matter of common interest? Albert Finn.’

  “On a sheet of Ritz notepaper, as you see. That tears it,” Clay said. “Finn wants to do a deal. You talked too much, Fred. He knows what’s under the Heade.”

  “You won’t know unless you talk with him.”

  “Talk with that pirate again? I’m out of town. I cannot receive his missive.” He snorted. “No talks. No deals. No quarter. I’ll call my bank and see how much we can allocate to the Heade. We’ll not compromise.”

  Fred left Clay preening in his dove gray suit, sitting in the window, the Proust falling open again to where his finger marked it, his eye picking up where he’d left off.

  24

  Fred drove back to Cambridge. He had decided, after reflecting on it, to keep Russ in his sights. He hated to go near this again after hearing Dawn’s voice on the recording. It smelled like the edge of a rat’s nest. But someone ought to watch Russ.

  As he reached the second floor of Russell’s building, the door of the apartment opened and Dawn came out dressed as he’d seen her last, in jeans and sweatshirt, the sweatshirt pink today, her big green bag swinging.

  “Fred,” she said. They were old friends now. “They told me that’s your name. Russ said he talked to you. He came back last night. He’s out again, but he wants to meet you at your hotel. The Charles? Same place as yesterday. About eleven, he said.”

  “Right.”

  It was almost eleven now.

  “He called your hotel, he said.”

  “Right. Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

  “My mom said don’t go in a strange man’s car,” Dawn said. “Especially one as big and sexy as you.”

  She gave a brilliant grin, excellently crafted.

  “Not even if they want to talk about Live Models?” Fred said. “Lights—Cameras—Action?”

  “Oh, shit,” Dawn said, leading him down the stairs to the sidewalk. “You’re one of them. Pussy photos. Shit. I should have known. Okay, buddy. What’s your game?”

  “Where you headed?” Fred asked.

  “I’m not crawling into any fucking car with you,” Dawn said. “You think I’m crazy?”

  They paused while an old woman carrying groceries passed between them on the sidewalk.

  “Your voice on the tape. How did the rest of it go? Tell me about Smykal,” Fred said.

  “Oh, fuck,” Dawn said. “That cheap asshole. Jesus, that man was worse than he smelled.” She shuddered and looked at Fred, the two of them standing on the Pearl Street sidewalk, traffic trudging past, dirt blowing around their ankles.

  “Smykal died,” Fred said.

  “He couldn’t smell worse now,” Dawn said. “So what if he used my voice? What’s your angle, buddy? Everyone’s got an angle. Crotch shots.”

  “Not on the sidewalk.” Fred opened the passenger door and held it.

  “Fucking gentleman,” Dawn said, climbing in.

  “I’m going up to the T.” She locked her door. “Ride me to Central Square. Say whatever you want on the way. You don’t have to threaten me. I’m ahead of you, buddy.”

  “I need information, that’s all,” Fred said. “So I understand how it works.” He started the car and eased down toward the river, Pearl being one-way heading away from the square.

  “You don’t fucking know? Central Square’s the other way.”

  “If you have time,” Fred said, “we could sit somewhere. And talk. You and Russ and—was Sheila in this thing?—you are looking at a lot of trouble.”

  “That jerk-off Russ, what did he tell you?”

  “Why don’t we talk it over with him?” Fred suggested. “We’ll pick him up at the Charles. If you have nothing better to do.” He looked sideways and saw the sweat of consternation on Dawn’s face as she thought. Reaching the river, he turned upstream, toward Harvard and the Charles Hotel.

  “Shit,” Dawn said. “Fucking Russ. He promised me our troubles were almost over.” She stared out Fred’s window, across him, at the river and the cherry trees blooming along the bank.

  “I can help fix it for you,” Fred said. “If it’s fixable. But first I have to know what’s going on.”

  “Shit,” Dawn said again. “What do we do, talk in your fucking room?”

  “Maybe that’s good,” Fred said.

  “With your cock in my mouth, right? So I enunciate better?”
/>   “Why don’t we not bother shocking me with the frank intimacies, Dawn? I’m serious,” Fred said. “Get Russ in the Quiet Bar and bring him up. I’ll park the car.”

  It was almost half past eleven.

  Fred dropped Dawn at the front of the hotel.

  “I’ll bring him,” she said, slamming the door.

  Fred watched her sail past the doorman. If only Ophelia could see that long, athletic stride, the young woman with the dancer’s body climbing out of Fred’s car at the Charles Hotel. That would offer a year’s supply of grist for her salacious mule.

  Fred drove down into the hotel’s garage and parked the car, and two large men started beating the shit out of him as he was halfway out.

  They were big. They were ready, seasoned, and able. One grabbed Fred’s left arm as he opened the car door and stepped out. He pulled while the other chopped, punched, and jabbed Fred around head, shoulders, and kidneys. His right arm free, Fred whirled, grabbed the ear of the second man, twisted, jabbed his eyes, and punched at the face of the first while kicking shins and knees. He ducked and twisted in a flurry of fists, crimson, sweat, and cologne.

  He felt his left arm gripped so hard he had to twist and dive to avoid the hammerlock and get his arm back. He got a good punch in on the nose of the first man—thin and dark, with long hair—and saw blood. Then he tried for the eye and connected. Harvard jacket on him, crimson: veritas.

  The gleam of a blade showed the knife in the hand of the second guy. The blade moved flat, low, side-to-side, held to stab upward. It was a big, ugly camper’s knife. The lights of the garage ceiling winked off it. The man knew what he was doing. You look at the blade first, swinging, then at the man—large redhead, black clothes, big arms; smell of cologne coming off that one. The other one, the dark-haired one, then, was carrying the old sweat smell.

  “We have questions, buddy,” the knife said. The first was going for the gun under Fred’s arm. Fred ducked, his hand there first. He motioned the skinny man back, his hand under his arm, ready.

  “Just questions. Don’t worry about it, buddy. No big deal,” the knife said, swinging to make that paralysis of fear a knife likes to establish in its victim, if it can, before it chooses a spot.