“You’re a bit late, Whitey.”
Back under George Washington, temperature falling, refreezing the snow below snowball-making range, condensing the breath that rose from Roger’s mouth with his words.
“Got a little lost,” Whitey said, playing it smart.
Roger looked at him for a moment, thinking. For the first time it occurred to Whitey that his boss might not be the brightest. Talked fancy sometimes, but that didn’t make him bright.
“Thought that was your point,” Whitey went on, “for me to get a little lost.” That was pretty funny, and he laughed at his own joke.
Roger did not laugh, clearly didn’t get it; for sure, not the brightest. He licked his lips, his tongue bright red in contrast to the cold chalk color of his face and lips. “Remember how we spoke of discretion, Whitey? How important it is in this business?”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m sure you realize that competition is a factor in all businesses.”
“Like McDonald’s and Burger King.”
“So you won’t be taken aback to learn that I have competitors, too.”
“In the art recovery business?” Whitey said. Just to nail it down, that that was the business.
Roger smiled. “Sharp today, Whitey, are you not?”
At least Roger had the brains to see that. Whitey shrugged. “No more than usual.” Roger’s smile broadened. Whitey wondered whether this was too soon to ask for a raise.
“That’s why I hired you,” Roger said. “But wouldn’t it be foolish to show every card to the competition?”
“That guy on the street’s a competitor?”
“He thinks so.”
“And I’m one of the cards?”
Roger put his gloved hand on Whitey’s shoulder. “You’re my ace in the hole.”
Roger’s car was parked nearby.
“What tunes have you got?” said Whitey as they drove along the expressway in light traffic.
“None.”
“With a CD player like that?”
Roger said nothing. Whitey flipped on the radio.
“-Ned Demarco, reminding you we won’t be in our usual time slot tomorrow, but please tune in for the annual Christmas-”
Roger jabbed at the control buttons. Metallica came on, “The Shortest Straw,” one of Whitey’s favorites. “That’s more like it,” he said, glancing at Roger with surprise; he wouldn’t have taken him for a metal fan. Roger stared straight ahead.
They got on 93, followed it northwest through the suburbs, toward New Hampshire. After a while Roger turned down the radio and said, “Can you take care of yourself, Whitey?”
“Take care of myself?”
“This business has rough edges sometimes.”
“The art business?”
“Any business where big money’s involved.”
“Big money?”
Roger glanced at him. “I may have an assignment for you, Whitey. Its successful execution would most probably lead to a substantial escalation in your salary.”
Execution? Escalation? Whitey kept mum, playing it safe.
After a period of silence, except for the radio-White Zombie doing “Warp Asylum,” another favorite-Roger said, “A raise, Whitey. Of sizable proportions.”
“Big, you mean?”
“I do.”
How big was big? Whatever it was, he deserved it, was worth every penny. Watching the scenery go by, very cool, very something else he couldn’t remember the word for, started with “non,” Whitey said, “What’s this, like, assignment?”
“We’ll get to that, but first-are you hungry?”
“Nope.”
“Thirsty?”
“No.”
“Need to use the bathroom?”
“Soon.”
Roger nodded. “After that we’ll talk.”
Pit stop. Roger gassed up, Whitey took a long piss, picked up some Reese’s on the way out, a little hungry after all. Back on the highway, Roger switched off the radio.
“Listening, Whitey?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I’m going to describe a painting to you.”
“Shoot.”
“It’s called oh garden, my garden.”
“About hockey?”
Roger’s eyes shifted toward him. “Why would you think that?”
“No reason.” Except for Boston Garden, now gone. It made a kind of sense, didn’t it? But maybe not the kind he could get across to Roger. They’d faced Xaverian the only time he’d skated on Garden ice, and Whitey had scored their only goal, before being ejected in the third period for spearing.
“… grapes,” Roger was saying, “and in the background, or more accurately the middle ground, a girl on a skateboard. Can you visualize it so far?”
What was this? Grapes? Skateboard? Girl? “What’s she wearing?” Whitey said.
Roger paused, and again Whitey reflected that he might be a little slow. What the girl wore would have been the first thing he himself would have noticed. “I’m not certain,” Roger said. “Perhaps a tunic of some sort.”
Tunic? What the hell was he talking about? At that moment it was clear to Whitey that Roger was a little out of touch, and he made a decision, then and there: he was working for Roger, yes, would follow orders, but-would use his own… discretion! Discretion. Wasn’t that what Roger was always going on about, the importance of discretion in this business? Everything was coming together.
“Tunic,” Whitey said. “Gotcha. Anything else?”
Another pause to think. Jesus, discretion and plenty of it. “You’re sure you’ve got it so far?” Roger asked.
“Yeah. I mean, what’s to get?”
“The name of the painting, for example.”
“My garden.”
“Oh garden, my garden,” Roger corrected.
“Whatever.”
Silence descended for some miles. The Merrimack appeared, frozen but snowless, the color of the low clouds overhead. Whitey occupied his mind with the lyrics of Metallica’s “Harvester of Sorrow,” those he could remember. He ate the last of the Reese’s. No Reese’s on the inside, for some reason; he realized how much he’d missed them.
They crossed to the west bank of the river, left it behind. Roger spoke at last. “Do you know the word provenance, Whitey?”
“Providence?” said Whitey, thinking of the girl on the bus, the snake between her breasts, her breasts themselves.
“Provenance,” Roger said, a little slower.
“Sort of.”
“No matter,” said Roger. “It’s a technical term, specific to our business. The reference is to the chain of ownership of a given work, establishing authenticity, you see. In the case of oh garden, my garden, the chain has been broken.”
“Yeah?” said Whitey. He pictured a thick gold chain, the kind pimps wore. A diner came into view. It had a red neon sign-Lavinia’s-and an old Bronco parked out front. “Still haven’t had that coffee,” Whitey said.
“Perhaps on the way back,” Roger said. “I’d like to beat the weather.”
Whitey glanced up at the sky. “No snow till tomorrow,” he said.
But it made no difference. Roger passed the diner by, took a back road, then another, came to a gate in the middle of nowhere. He got out, unlocked the gate, then drove on, crunching snow on a track thawed and refrozen, up a long hill. He stopped at the crest. Below lay the river, frozen but snow-blown clear by the wind, with an island in the middle and a single cottage on it, sheltered by trees. A stone jetty jutted from the near bank, two dinghies tethered to it, caught in the ice. Roger sat there in silence, waiting for-what? Whitey didn’t know.
At last Roger made a sound, a kind of laugh, maybe. “Ever been married, Whitey?”
“Nope.”
“Not unwise, in the final end. But without marriage, we’d be out of business.”
“We would?”
“The dissolution of marriage leads to conflict when it comes to the ownershi
p of material objects. Take our little painting, for example. Its rightful owner is our client, a woman who lives in Rome.” Roger nodded toward the island in the river. “Whereas this little retreat now belongs to her former husband. Not enough for him, apparently-he made off with the painting, too, sometime in the past, oh, few weeks, say. According to information we’ve developed, he intends to secrete it away in the cottage. Do you see where this is headed?”
“Sure,” Whitey said, opening the door. “Won’t take five minutes.”
Roger grabbed Whitey’s arm, held on to it hard; Whitey didn’t like that at all. “Intends, Whitey. I said intends.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Whitey said, shaking free of Roger’s grip.
For one moment, Whitey saw a strange look in Roger’s eyes, as though he was about to take a shot at him or something. Cold wind blew in the open door. Roger covered his eyes with his hand, rubbed them hard, and the look was gone. “My apologies, Whitey. This business can be… intense at times. Perhaps it’s led me to be unclear somehow. What I’m saying is that the painting in question is not at present in the cottage. Not now, at this moment.”
“No?”
“No.”
Whitey closed the door.
“But it will be there tomorrow,” Roger continued, “if we can rely on our information.”
“Coming from where?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This information,” Whitey said, “where’s it coming from?”
Roger stared at him for a moment, then smiled and answered, “Rome.”
“Good enough,” Whitey said. “Then tomorrow I go in and get it.”
“You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you?”
“Well…”
“Yes, you go in, but not until night, at six-fifteen precisely.”
“’Cause of the darkness, right?”
“Partly. And partly because that’s the earliest the painting will be there in an unguarded state.”
“It’s coming in a Brinks truck?” Whitey asked. Yes, he was sharp, couldn’t remember ever being sharper.
“Nothing like that-this is just a domestic dispute. But why court acrimony?”
That made sense-Whitey wanted nothing to do with guards or courts. “You’re telling me,” he said.
“We’re agreed, then. You go in at six-fifteen, not a moment before, not a moment after. And this is very important, Whitey: you arrive by taxi.”
“Taxi?”
“Available at the bus station in Nashua. Have the driver drop you at the gate-and get a receipt.”
“What for?”
“Reimbursement, of course.”
Meaning? Whitey wasn’t quite sure. “But what about the driver?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“Making me in a lineup or something.”
“Lineup! What an imagination you’ve got, Whitey. This can never become a legal matter. The painting belongs to the woman in Rome. The ex-husband has no standing to pursue it. Any law enforcement agency would laugh him off, I assure you.”
Silence.
“Understood?” Roger said.
Was it? A lot of blah-blah but basically it came down to six-fifteen, taxi, painting. “It’s not complicated,” Whitey said.
“You may have a real future in this business,” Roger told him.
Whitey grunted.
“Once beyond the gate,” Roger went on, “you cross the river and enter the cottage.” He handed Whitey a key. “Don’t turn on any lights. You’ll need a flash. Save the receipt. Upstairs are two bedrooms. The one on the right is not made up. The painting will be hidden somewhere inside it. I’ll be told the location at exactly six-thirty. There’s a phone on the bedside table and I’ll call from the car and tell you where it is. Then you simply collect it, recross the river, and return here, where we are now. I’ll be waiting. Any questions?”
It was a snap; Whitey grasped the whole scenario, even the parts he hadn’t been told. “The woman-she’s going to call you from Rome, right?”
“No putting anything past you.”
“And the place used to belong to her-that’s how come you have the key.”
“Another bull’s-eye.” Roger punched him softly on the shoulder. “And one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“She doesn’t want the frame.”
“How come?”
“How come?” Roger drew a deep breath. “I believe it was chosen by the mother-in-law.”
“I get it.”
“And since she doesn’t want the frame,” Roger continued, “you’ll have to cut the painting out.”
“With what?”
“Something sharp,” Roger said.
Whitey knew what was coming, beat Roger to the punch. “Save the receipt?” he said.
Roger shook his head in admiration.
23
“Sleep well?” Roger said.
Monday morning. Francie, who hadn’t slept at all, came downstairs to the kitchen and found Roger standing at the stove, glancing up from a cookbook to smile at her over his reading glasses, doing something with eggs.
“Yes, thanks,” Francie said, trying and failing to recall any previous time he’d done something with eggs.
“Good,” said Roger, “good, good. Take a pew-chow’ll be down in a jiff.”
Take a pew? Chow? Jiff? Francie took another look at him, saw exhilaration in the flush on his face, in the sprightliness of his movements. “More news about the job?” Francie said.
He paused, steel whisk poised above the blue gas flames. “Job?” he said.
“In Fort Lauderdale.”
“Oh, that. Promising, as I believe I mentioned. More and more promising all the time.”
There was one place set at the table. He gestured to it with the whisk.
“Aren’t you eating?” Francie said.
“I already have. Up betimes.”
Francie sat down, although she wasn’t hungry at all. Roger bustled over with a plate of eggs and toast. He watched her, beaming, as she tasted the eggs.
“Delicious,” she said. They were. Why was this talent emerging now, after so many years spent anywhere but the kitchen? “You can cook, Roger.”
“Much like a chemistry experiment,” he said. “And you never know when it might prove useful.”
Lauderdale: that was his way of telling her it was going to happen, that he’d soon be cooking for himself in some one-bedroom condo on a waterway, that what was left of their marriage would fade to a civilized end. But it was too late for her and Ned. She had proved to herself that she could cheat-the word people used, as Nora said, no point avoiding it-proved she could make a mockery of Swift’s Marriage Service from His Chamber Window, but she couldn’t do it with Anne’s husband. A long, confused night of thought and counterthought had boiled down to that: not with Anne’s husband. She was surer of that than anything she’d been sure of in her life. All that remained was telling him so in person, at the cottage in-she checked her watch-a little more than ten hours.
Roger went to the cupboard, returned with a jar of Dundee’s. “Last of the marmalade,” he said, spooning some-too much-onto the edge of her plate. “You might as well finish it off.” Then he poured coffee for both of them and sat across the table. Francie managed two forkfuls of eggs and half a slice of toast; her body had its priorities, wanted no food until she had done the right thing.
“Ever been to the Empire State Building, Francie?” Roger asked.
“With my father, when I was ten. Why?”
“Or China?”
“You know I have-on the NEA trip. What are you getting at?”
“Getting at? Nothing, really. Maybe we should do more traveling, that’s all. Think of all there is to do and see, had we but world enough and time, et cetera.”
Francie sipped her coffee. It, too, was excellent, better than hers.
“Possibly with another couple,” Roger went on.
She put do
wn her cup.
“Anne and Ned, for example,” he continued. “A pleasant evening, didn’t you think? Although I can’t say much for the restaurant.”
Francie said nothing.
Roger tilted his cup to his face, revealing those white nose hairs-it hadn’t been her imagination-then set the cup carefully down in the saucer, as though the object were to make no clinking of porcelain on porcelain. “Does he play tennis?”
“Who?”
“Who? Ned, of course. Ned Demarco.” He watched her. “You’re not ill, are you?”
“I don’t know if he plays.”
“No? I thought Anne might have mentioned it.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Because if he does, I might pick up the old racquet again myself. How does a week of mixed doubles in the Algarve sound? Or possibly Sardinia.”
“I didn’t think we were in the financial position for that sort of thing.”
Roger’s eyes left hers. He picked up the empty marmalade jar. “Perhaps not at this moment,” he said, carrying it to the sink.
Francie rose. “I’d better get going.” She paused at the door that led down to the garage. “I may be late tonight.”
Roger opened the cabinet under the sink. “As you wish,” he said, and dropped the jar in the trash.
A dark day, the clouds so low and thick that the streetlamps of the city remained lit for the morning commute, and headlights glowed from every car. Dark, too, in Francie’s office, where the phone was ringing as she came in the door. She picked it up.
“Francie?”
“Nora.”
“Thought you might call yesterday,” Nora said. “Maybe to explain that teary little scene in the locker room.”
“Anne was upset, that’s all. About losing.”
“And what about you, babycakes?”
“Me?”
“Were you upset about losing, too?”
A Perfect Crime Page 19