Harmony In Flesh and Black

by Nicholas Kilmer

  “I know delicate objects,” Harriet said. “I’m in the picture business. Sit tight. I’ll see what I can do.

  “By the way,” she went on, “while I have you, what can you tell me about a collector by the name of Arthur Arthurian? Sounds Armenian. I never heard of him.”

  “I wish I never had either. The person I want to reach is likely the one who wants to know about Arthurian.”

  “Stay there,” Harriet said. “I’ll get on it. You’ll be at your phone?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  26

  Fred called LIVE ** MODELS again and got the machine. Then he called Mangan’s number.

  He had nothing to read. To occupy his mind with white noise, he turned on the TV and watched a painter working—an educational painter. He did a whole picture in a half hour, a 1990s version of the landscapes Harriet sat in front of in her Providence gallery, though hers had taken longer to make. A thick round bush of hair grew on this educational painter. Fred wanted to rub the painter’s hair in the art he was making. You’d get a nice little effect that way, on both the canvas and the hair.

  The painter with the hair blessed the world and disappeared. Fred did not want to learn how to build a new antique table out of a condemned barn using only seven thousand dollars’ worth of power tools. He turned off the set.

  Clay had Proust in his prison.

  What was Russ reading? Had he been carrying something with him when they picked him up? Was that where he’d been a couple of nights ago? In Providence? Or had he been hiding from them, too?

  Fred called Sheila’s again. His phone didn’t ring until almost five. It was Clayton, wanting to know, “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. I have to keep the phone free. I’ll call you when I have something.”

  Five-twenty. Telephone.

  “Fred.” It was a man’s voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a minute. You got more name than that? These guys balls everything up.” There was whispering on the other end.

  Fred waited, holding the phone to his ear. He couldn’t make out any words.

  The voice tried again: “This the Charles Hotel, Cambridge?”

  “Yes,” said Fred.

  “You want to talk about some money we are missing?”

  “A painting,” Fred said.

  “Got in too deep, didn’t you, asshole?”

  “I know where the painting is,” Fred said.

  “Wait a minute.”

  More whispering.

  “We don’t want the fuckin’ thing. We want our money. You want to bring it down?”

  Fred said, “Let’s talk a minute and see if we’re going to be able to put a deal together.”

  “Put together a what?” The voice was offended, outraged. “Put our money together and bring it, that’s what you put together. The fuckin’ pitcher, do what you want.”

  “Let me talk to Mangan,” Fred said.

  “He’s out,” the voice said.

  Fred said, “The money. How much you missing?”

  “Twenty-five grand, asshole.”

  Smykal had done a silent auction. Offered twenty-five thousand by Russell’s pet shark Mangan, he had told Clayton the price was thirty. Then Clay had paid him thirty-three: a quick profit of eight grand over the first offer. But apparently the money on Mangan’s end had actually been delivered as well.

  “Look,” the voice went on. “I’m standing in a fucking gas station talking on the fucking telephone and you want to play fucking guessing games? You going to deliver the fucking money, or not?”

  Fred said, “Maybe I can. There are a couple of other things I’ll need to talk over, Mr.—do you want to give me a name?”

  “Do you want to eat your own fucking nuts? Fuck you. What else you got to say?”

  “Two things,” Fred said. “There’s a guy I want to see, maybe you can help me with, who’s been detained.”

  Pause.

  “Oh, the kid. I hear you. No problem. We have the money, we don’t need him for anything.”

  “And I want the letter.”

  There was an exclamation of amazed disgust. “He wants a fucking letter? Personal visit isn’t enough? Phone call won’t do it for him? What am I, the fucking federal government, put my business on paper? You fucking crazy?”

  “The kid knows about the letter,” Fred said. “Or ask Mangan.”

  Pause. Whispers. Was Mangan in the room, next to the voice Fred could not see?

  “Mangan knows about it,” Fred said. “Maybe he has it.”

  Another pause.

  “Have to call you back.”

  “Hold it,” Fred said.

  “Have to talk to a guy. Talk to another guy. That’s gonna maybe take time.”

  “I have to go out,” Fred said. “I’ll be out for an hour at least.”

  “Listen,” the voice said. “Wait a minute. I was you, I’d wait a few hours, maybe someone calls you. If you don’t hear by eleven, I didn’t reach him. Then I’ll call you tomorrow morning, set something up, okay?”

  “Everything cool until then?” Fred asked.

  “Stay near your phone.”

  “Okay,” said Fred.

  “We’ll get someone to fix your car. So you can drive down tomorrow.”

  Fred said, “It’s your business, but your guys—you think they can change a tire?”

  “Fucking comedian. I’ll tell them take it one step at a time,” the voice said. “Talk to you, if I don’t get back tonight, in the morning. First thing.”

  “What time is first thing?” Fred asked.

  “Like ten, ten-thirty, eleven. In there.”

  Fred stood up and stretched. Stay in his room, the guy had said, the voice of Providence. Wait for the phone.

  They didn’t want answers. They didn’t want the painting. They wanted their money back. That would have to come from Clay. It was going to cost an additional twenty-five thousand to get that letter. He’d have to see how Clay felt about it.

  27

  Nothing stirred in the corridor when Fred edged out at midnight. Clay had called back five times, furious, confused, perturbed, exasperated, repentant, even intrigued. Why was it going to cost so much? Why, when Fred didn’t know who had the letter or where it was or even if he could get it for certain?

  Fred had explained as well as he could without bringing in Mangan’s name; there was no point in starting Clay thinking in terms of turf wars. The extra money amounted to ransom, but since Clay wouldn’t see any reason to buy back a kid he hadn’t met and didn’t want, Fred did not emphasize that argument. Instead, he reminded him of the value of the painting of Conchita Hill.

  “If you get that picture for a total of fifty-eight thousand, you’re stealing it, Clay. You’re buying it at a third of its market value at auction. Personally, I’d estimate it higher, wouldn’t you? A Chase that good, that early, of that subject? Having the letter with it, and the story, and the provenance?”

  “It’s not a story we’re going to publish,” Clay had said.

  Clayton had kept insisting that the painting’s monetary value was beside the point. Why should he buy the letter twice? It was the principle of the thing.

  Fred had given up. “Tell you what,” he had said. “I’ll give you till tomorrow morning at eight to make up your mind. Smykal’s dead, and your deal died with him. If you don’t buy the letter, I will. You’ll have first option to purchase it from me at cost. Let me know by eight. It’ll take time to put the money together.”

  And by God, he had realized as he hung up, he’d do it, too, though at the moment he had not the faintest idea how. He had no money of his own put away. He was not comfortable living like that, keeping things. What money he had he’d put into the house in Charlestown. He could sell his share of it—but not fast. He’d manage something.

  He’d still not had an answer or a call back from the phone at Sheila and Dawn’s. Mangan’s phone did not answer. Waiting in his room, he h
ad been planning, once the midnight deadline was past, to go down, change his tire, and drive to Cohasset to look at Mangan’s place. But it would be more prudent not to make a stir anywhere around the outskirts of a business most of which he did not understand. There was nothing more he could do about Russ tonight without adding to the kid’s danger. He’d see what the opposition’s bid was in the morning, “first thing”—around noon.

  In the meantime, his disquiet was growing at the lack of response at the women’s Pearl Street apartment. Fred put his sweater on under his jacket, changed his tire, and drove to Pearl Street. The same old lady slept in her nook under the stairs. He knocked on the second-floor door and got no answer. He waited and listened to the building’s creaks and silences before he let himself in.

  * * *

  Fred was sitting cross-legged in the darkness on Dawn’s futon when Sheila came in at two. She didn’t see him and was moving through Dawn’s room toward the kitchen. She was dressed in black—jeans and a black jacket—her blond hair swinging and a black leather bag over her shoulder.

  “Russell’s in trouble,” Fred said.

  Sheila jumped, gasped, backed against the wall, and turned to run. Fred, up fast, took her wrist.

  “It’s Fred,” he said. “Be smart. Where’s Dawn?”

  Sheila said, “I know fuck-all about Dawn. She let you in? Let go, will you?” She pulled against him until she remembered that she knew him already.

  “Russell’s in trouble with ugly people,” Fred said.

  Sheila dropped her bag on the floor and looked defiant. She stared around the room. Fred released her wrist.

  “Dawn fucking took off?” she said, noticing that the majority of Dawn’s things were gone. Fred had reached the same conclusion.

  He sat on Dawn’s futon again. Sheila gazed down at him, her hands on her hips. She was simultaneously bleary- and bright-eyed, high on something.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

  Fred waited.

  “I’ve fucked with worse people,” she said.

  Fred waited.

  “I’m going to smoke some weed,” Sheila said, kicking her sandals off and closing the apartment door. “So I can think.”

  Fred nodded for her to go ahead.

  “I can sell you a joint if you want,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” Fred told her.

  Sheila smoked. She dropped her ashes onto the mangy carpet and rubbed them in with her bare foot.

  “The people Russ is in trouble with,” she said, “was something he’s doing on his own, giving Dawn and I the runaround. As far as Russ is concerned, we’re just rental pussy.”

  Fred watched the red glow work against the ash. The smell was that of before dawn, while you wait for them to come for you from the other side of the clearing. The fools around you, frightened, numb their senses to trick the death they fear toward pleasant adventure.

  He said, “Dawn told me Russell said their troubles—his and Dawn’s—would soon be over. What did he mean?”

  Sheila thought. Her lean face focused on the operation of the joint until she finished it, then she stood and went to find a saucer in the kitchen to stub it out in. She dropped the charred end into a tin from her bag.

  “I guess Russ has something going with Dawn,” she said, “is what it sounds like.” She shrugged her shoulders and came back and sat on the far end of the futon. “Whatever you want, let’s do it. I’m tired.”

  “Tell me about Smykal’s operation.”

  “Oh, God,” Sheila said. “That’s why Dawn ran off. You’re taking over. Fuck you, Fred. I’m finished. That bastard screwed us blind. Fifty bucks an hour? To let the geeks and creeps crawl all over you, taking their pussy pictures? I’m through, unless we’re talking a real different financial arrangement.”

  She giggled and went on, “God, the creeps they rounded up. Lean over, honey, get that effect there of the flash, abstract, you know, I just thought of something. Let’s grease it, make it shine; there’s twenty extra if you let me do it myself.

  “And all the while that geek Smykal’s filming from the next room, with video. A secret hole he has. He’s getting tapes of the geeks sweating and fumbling, maybe drinking, doing lines—he sells them coke if they want it, makes them feel like studs, they need all the help they can get—and trying to get lucky; getting lucky sometimes with some girls, it’s up to us, we want a bonus, if the guy doesn’t look sick.

  “Jesus, men are ugly.”

  Fred sat and waited. He had no argument at the moment, though he’d be inclined, himself, to broaden the subject of her sentence to include a larger segment of humanity.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “Suppose I take over, run it better.”

  “You kill the old man?” Sheila asked, studying Fred. She started to tremble. “You’re shitting me.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Smykal’s thing—the models and art photos—was a scam. The deal for the girls was setting up the marks, see, because Smykal would choose a mark and follow him to the precious little home in Belmont, or the sacred glass office on Beacon Street with the view, or the vestry at Old North Chapel—whatever—and he’d offer to sell his film, which, Jesus, half the time the guys aren’t doing anything.”

  “A honey trap,” Fred said.

  “That’s me,” Sheila said. She stretched her limbs and yawned. “All honey.”

  Fred said, “How does Russ fit in?”

  “Sweet Russell’s the fucking pimp,” Sheila said. “Smykal was too much of a fucking artist.”

  “Smykal met Russ at Video King,” Fred said. “Around the corner from his apartment. Right?”

  Sheila nodded. “That’s where Russ recruits the marks. Which Smykal called unfulfilled talent. Russ pulls them in, and we fulfill them. The people who rent porn, you know, they want to do porn, do all that stuff they rent to look at, but they’re scared. Smykal provides a setup they think is safe. Russ has their address and credit-card number and phone number, work number, everything, from the Video King computer, which he sells to Smykal.”

  Sheila scratched the inside of a thigh and lay back on the futon. “Fifty bucks an hour,” she said. “A bonus if we get the guy’s little dick out of his breeches to where Smykal can film it, and the guy’s face showing so Smykal can nail him—dicks being pretty much alike—and the girl. That’s all we normally do. Smykal took it from there. Sometimes, though, he’d put one of us on the phone.”

  “Lights, cameras, action,” Fred said. “That was Dawn’s voice.”

  “A girl’s voice on the phone at the guy’s house, Sunday morning—‘Hi, I’m Dawn, remember me? Is this a bad time to call? Who’s that answered the phone? Is that your wifey?’—sometimes that got results. A girl’s voice on the phone, or a girl’s pants coming off—these guys sometimes go to pieces.” Sheila giggled.

  “So what are we gonna do about this, killer?” she asked Fred. She ran her fingers through her hair, starting underneath and moving upward, fanning it outward.

  “It figures Smykal was killed by one of his marks,” Fred said.

  “He never hit them for all that much,” Sheila said. “You can see from how the guy lived. The asshole kept us all poor. Still, some of the geeks he got—you never know. Maybe one of the girls. So you can do better? If you can, maybe I’m interested, and maybe I’m leaving for Omaha in the morning.”

  She looked at Fred in sudden, tardy, genuine alarm. “What happened to Dawn, anyway? Where’s Russ?”

  “Where did Smykal keep the answering machine?” Fred asked. “I didn’t see it at his place; it’s not here; it isn’t upstairs.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Dawn said. “Upstairs? You’ve been upstairs?”

  “I gave myself a house tour while I waited for you. Russ had Smykal’s file box of records,” Fred said.

  Sheila stood poised, off-balance, on the futon. “Russell has Smykal’s records? You serious?”

  “Had,” Fred corrected her. “I’m
taking them, and his computer disks. In case he has stuff on them I want.”

  “Jesus,” Sheila said. “Fucking Dawn, she told you her and Russell’s troubles are over? She and Russ cleaned him out? Russell? They popped him? Russell was going to run the business for himself?”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Fred said.

  Sheila stooped, picked up her bag, and started toward her bedroom. “They played me for a fucking fool,” she said.

  Fred reached out and held on to the bag.

  Sheila tugged, but without much energy or hope. “Oh, what?” she said, disgusted.

  “Take your clothes off,” Fred said. He kept holding the bag.

  “Shit, are you kidding?” Sheila said. She pulled harder at her bag. Fred stood up.

  Sheila turned red, then gray, with anger.

  “Put your clothes on the floor. Come on,” Fred said. “I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of time.” He pried the bag out of her fingers and dropped it behind him. Sheila stared.

  “Or you’ll take them off,” she said. “Right?”

  Fred nodded.

  “Take off the clothes,” he said. “I’m searching you, that’s all.”

  “Jesus,” Sheila said. “Right. What’s the big deal, another rape. Don’t hurt me, do you mind?”

  “Do my best,” Fred said.

  Sheila peeled the black sweatshirt over her head. Champion, it said. Under it she was wearing nothing but a narrow gold chain around her neck. The skin on her upper arms rose in goose bumps. Her breasts were as round and firm as if they had been painted in about 1450, by the Master of Flemalle, to be offered one at a time to a large-headed baby.

  “I don’t have anything,” Sheila said. “Whatever there was, Dawn and Russ have it. Now you. Russ wouldn’t have the balls to do it, but I guess Dawn has enough for both of them. I mean doing Smykal.”

  She dropped the sweatshirt and opened her belt buckle, businesslike, slid the jeans down, and stepped out of them. Then the black lace underpants, designed for show: young body, tired, with hints of flab establishing a toehold at belly and buttocks.

  “Turn around,” Fred said.