Scarlet Night

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  That was it, Julie thought: a Mary Ryan production.

  Fritzie poked his head out beneath the curtain that partitioned the room, yapped, and vanished behind it again.

  “Look at him, right at home,” Mrs. Ryan said.

  By the time Julie had closed the front door, O’Grady, no doubt so directed by Mrs. Ryan, was holding aside the curtain, and the older woman was sailing through. Julie followed but adjusted the curtain herself while the others hovered near the chairs. “Do sit down,” she said. “Will you have a cup of tea? I’m afraid I don’t have milk for it.”

  “Nothing at all, dear. It’d spoil our suppers.” Mrs. Ryan gave O’Grady a nudge and pointed to the book on the table.

  “The first thing I noticed,” he said, “Willie Yeats.”

  Willie. All right.

  Mrs. Ryan settled herself in a chair whose every joint squeaked. She removed her hat.

  O’Grady waited for Julie to sit, and then seated himself, facing the door. He noticed the painting and let a small grunt escape. Mrs. Ryan turned to see what he was looking at.

  “Isn’t he the observant one?”

  “It took me by surprise, the one picture in the room,” he said. “It’s a colorful thing.”

  Julie shot him a brief glance. He didn’t seem able to quite control his lower lip—a sensual mouth, but hardly strong. She wondered if he might be an ex-priest, but that was the association with Miss Brennan. She had the feeling of having seen him before, which was easily possible in the neighborhood. “It is colorful,” she said, utterly lost for small talk.

  Mrs. Ryan said, “Julie brought it from Paris. She’s just back a few days.”

  She might have told them the true story: it would have been something to talk about, but she doubted it would hold their interest. “It’s a grand city, Paris,” O’Grady said. “I’ve been there a time or two, but the prices are perishing.”

  “What do you do, Mr. O’Grady?”

  “I’m a merchant seaman, but that’s not how I got to Paris. It’s the rare occasion you can ship out to where you’d want to go.”

  “And where would you want to go?”

  He looked at her and away and back again while he mused, as though well aware that his eyes put people off. “Well, now, I’m partial to the coast of Italy—you can name the ports—Genoa, where Columbus sailed from, but you know that without my telling you, Naples and around to Brindisi—the Isle of Corfu which is a gem set in an azure sea…and I’ll go to Ireland, any port at all. I’ve business there now and then.”

  Julie could almost hear the singing heart of Mrs. Ryan, for his voice was indeed musical and he did have a way with words. And you knew from the way he narrowed his eyes what he meant when he said of Ireland: I’ve business there now and then. The I.R.A. He wanted you to know that.

  “I was telling Johnny about your father, I hope you don’t mind. None of the personal things, mind, only that you hadn’t seen him since you were an infant and him having to do with the Irish government. Johnny is well connected over there. Was it the U.N. he was at, Julie?”

  “It was not the U.N.,” Julie said, furious with the old gossip. “And I do mind.”

  “Ah, I’m a blathering old woman. We’ll say no more about it.”

  “Ireland wasn’t admitted to the United Nations until 1955,” O’Grady said, “with them holding her and Spain hostage you might say for countries the Russians wanted in. Have you ever been in Spain, Mrs. Hayes? There’s a wild country for you. They’ve still got gypsies camping around.”

  “Are there none left in Ireland?” Mrs. Ryan wanted to know.

  “A few in the west, but they’re called travelers now. In my mother’s day they were tinkers. If you call them that now they take grave offense. ‘If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no use for tinkers’ hands.’ I used to wonder what the devil she meant by that.”

  “What did she mean?” Julie asked.

  “The tinkers went around in their caravan from village to village mending the pots and pans.”

  “Oh.”

  “Shall we go, Mary Ryan? We’re keeping the girl from whatever she was doing.”

  “There used to be a gypsy woman in this very shop before Julie and I discovered it empty. Do you remember the day, dear?”

  “All too well.”

  Mrs. Ryan pursed her lips and lowered her eyes. She groped around her legs for the dog’s leash. Julie almost regretted her sharpness. But not quite.

  “When I grew up here on the West Side,” O’Grady said, “It was nearly all Irish. You had to go to Harlem to find a Hispanic.”

  “I’d have thought you were born in Ireland, Mr. O’Grady.”

  He leaned forward and said, with a self-deprecating smile, “I’m a professional Irishman.”

  Julie had to laugh, something that cheered Mrs. Ryan considerably.

  “I should never have taken off my hat, but I can’t hear well with it on, and I didn’t want to miss a thing you two would have to say to each other.”

  “You can only rehearse yourself, Mary Ryan, unless you’re going to write a script.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? You never know what people are going to say. But I’m glad you got on.”

  Had they got on? Mrs. Ryan was always a step ahead in her manipulation. A nice Doctor word. Julie got up before Mrs. Ryan could change her mind about going.

  O’Grady gave a sharp whistle for the dog. He could have saved his whistle, for all the attention Fritzie paid it: he was a city dog, born and bred.

  “If I invited you to one of my readings, would you come?” O’Grady said. “The New Irish Theatre probably, and there’d be some Yeats in it.”

  Déjà vu. Only it was Pete Mallory speaking. Julie said, “It will depend, I’m afraid, on whether my husband and I have an engagement that night.”

  He looked taken aback and Julie regretted saying what she had: it was full of air.

  “I’m glad to have met you in any case, Mrs. Hayes.”

  “I didn’t say just what I meant, Mr. O’Grady, and it sounded rude. But there are occasions when Jeff commits us far ahead. If I’m free, I’d love to come.”

  “Bring him along if you like. If his name is Hayes he can’t be that far from the old sod.”

  “All right.”

  Mrs. Ryan looked as though she had bitten into a lemon. Obviously she had not mentioned the husband, much less ever thought of his joining them. “You need more lights in here, dear. It’s terribly dreary.”

  “I like it,” Julie said, at a loss for the moment for a stronger touch of venom.

  “All you need, well,” O’Grady said, nodding at the picture, “is the touch of color and a bag of poems.”

  THIRTEEN

  O’GRADY ASKED THIS QUESTION and that of Mary Ryan; then as soon as he got out of her sight went home as fast as his legs would take him. He called Rubinoff. “I found her, Rubin! By God, I found her. And I saw the picture with my own eyes hanging in her shop on Forty-fourth Street.”

  “I knew you could do it, Johnny. I never doubted for a moment.”

  “The queer thing is I could have met her before this.” He told him about Mary Ryan and her conniving to bring them together.

  “It’s a small world,” Rubinoff said.

  “She’s married to the columnist Geoffrey Hayes. Do you read the Times?”

  “That’s not very good news, Johnny. We shall have to be most circumspect. Did she wonder where she had seen you before?”

  “I don’t think she saw me at the gallery. It hit me like a flying fish, seeing the painting there. But I covered myself. It’s a colorful bit of paint.”

  “Has she other paintings? What sort of a place is it?”

  “It’s a hole in the wall, the ground floor of a tenement with a practicing prostitute overhead. She must think it has atmosphere, the way Ginni does the working-class streets of Naples. To hear Ginni talk of the proletariat makes me roar with laughter.”

  “I asked about othe
r paintings, Johnny.”

  “There are none. There’s an electric plate, a typewriter, and a crystal ball. Make something of them, if you will.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “With her husband you mean? Down near the Village, the old lady says. It’d be in the book, I wouldn’t wonder.”

  “Then what’s the painting doing on Forty-fourth Street? I’d like to know what’s between her and Abel. You don’t buy a painting for five hundred dollars and hide it away with a hot plate.”

  “Maybe she’s only keeping it for him. Maybe she’s supposed to turn it over to you, Rubin. How about that?”

  “That’s brilliant of you, Johnny, if it’s true. And it sounds right. As long as it’s safe, let’s give the matter some thought over the weekend.”

  “I don’t like sitting around waiting, not after what I’ve been through.”

  “Look at it this way, Johnny: we are ten days ahead of schedule. There was never any thought of my taking possession until the show closed.”

  “But the show is closed, Rubin, and if you saw the place, you wouldn’t be so damn sure the painting was safe.”

  “You’re letting your nerves victimize you, Johnny.”

  “It’s my stomach as well and the need to pay my rent while I’ve still got a roof over my head.”

  “Then you must find gainful employment, however temporary. Let me ask you a question: suppose I crashed up in the Porsche tomorrow, what would you do?”

  “I’d be at your bedside praying that with your dying breath you’d tell me where the picture was going.”

  Rubinoff laughed. “Have a lovely weekend, Johnny.”

  “It’s only Thursday, man,” he said, but into a dead phone.

  FOURTEEN

  IT BEGAN TO RAIN as Julie stepped into a bus that would take her across the park. She had worn her raincoat. She always felt invulnerable in raincoat and sneakers. Someday it might not work, but on her present mission she enjoyed the feeling of security the outfit gave her. Except that she wasn’t wearing sneakers. Sandals, and beneath her raincoat beige slacks and a blue tunic with a tasseled belt.

  She tried to think of the questions she would ask him if she got the chance. Not a one came to mind. She had tried to do her homework as Jeff would have, but it didn’t work for her. If Romano answered her with one syllable, she’d be stuck with one syllable. The great improviser. At least there was one thing about this assignment—she wasn’t fantasizing the results, she wasn’t dreaming of Julie Hayes, investigative reporter, she wasn’t imagining Tony taking Jeff by the arm at the club and saying, “By God, the girl is good!” She wasn’t hearing Jeff say, “I must admit, Julie, I hadn’t expected…” She wasn’t?

  As soon as she gave her name to the doorman, a good-looking young man with sad dark eyes came to her and said, “Mr. Romano is expecting you, Mrs. Hayes.”

  They rode up in the elevator without a word. He wore a spotless white shirt, open at the throat, the cuffs turned up.

  Romano himself opened the door of the penthouse apartment. He dismissed the younger man with a “Thank you, Alberto.”

  The blue eyes did not seem as remote as she had remembered them; the round soft face which looked freshly scrubbed and shaved was cherubic—like one of his porcelain sculptures come to life. He too was wearing blue silk, but ornamented with lizards. “How nice of you to come and see me again, Mrs. Hayes.” He held his hands high and limp, waiting to take her coat. They weren’t out for the shaking, certainly. “May I?”

  She couldn’t very well keep it on through lunch although she would have liked to. “Thank you.”

  “You’ve been in Europe, I understand.” An Actors Forum informant, probably.

  “With my husband,” Julie said.

  “A distinguished member of the fourth estate.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that. Julie looked around the foyer while he hung her coat. Some of the paintings she remembered, some she had forgotten, or more specifically, she’d forgotten where she had seen them.

  “I have something I must show you,” he said as they stepped down into the living room with its vast skylight on which the rain now fell with a soft patter. “You were kind enough to admire my Vuillard. Do you like Edvard Munch?”

  They came up to a stark Munch woman, blacks and grays and only a little color, a whisper of red. Out of the depths.

  “Oh, yes,” Julie said with fervor. She did like it.

  The little caesar beamed. “Isn’t it splendid? I have been over five years acquiring it.”

  Just that brief escape from herself into the Munch and Julie felt more at ease.

  “I wish I could understand suffering,” Romano said.

  Julie glanced at him: it seemed an odd thing to say.

  “Does it seem strange to you, my curiosity?”

  “A little.”

  “Think of all the Pietàs in the world. How do you think the artists prepared themselves?”

  “By substitution maybe, the way an actor does?”

  “Hurt for agony? A pinprick for the stigmata?”

  “I think most of us have suffered a little more than pinpricks,” Julie said.

  “Ah-ha, you include yourself.”

  Julie felt herself blushing. “I was speaking generally, Mr. Romano. Actually, I was thinking of you.”

  “How intuitive of you. My life is one great substitute for living. Perhaps at this stage one might call it sublimation, but there is nothing sublime about it. Well, we’ve made an earnest start to our visit, haven’t we?”

  “I’d better tell you why I’m here, Mr. Romano. I’ll feel a lot better.”

  He motioned her toward the same chair she had sat in before and drew the same one he had sat in at an angle to it and seated himself. The old man in the Vuillard painting looked down on them.

  “I’d like to do an article about you for Tony Alexander’s column in the Daily News.”

  He blinked his eyes. Nothing in his expression betrayed either pleasure or dismay. He sat quietly and folded one small plump hand into the other. “What would you like to know?”

  “At this very minute? I’d like to know what happened twenty years ago that you haven’t touched a human being since. You told me that yourself and I’ve thought a lot about it. I mean the way you touch sculpture—with love, like something alive…”

  He was looking at his hands, turning them palms upward. Then he looked at her. “This is information you would like to put in a column in the Daily News?”

  The blood rushed to Julie’s face again. “It isn’t something I planned to ask you, Mr. Romano. But when you said, ‘What would you like to know?’ that’s what came to the top. I’m not very tactful, maybe, but I am discreet. I don’t think you’d have to worry about my saying something in print that you wouldn’t want me to.”

  “But my dear, those are the very things Tony Alexander would want to know—the source of my wealth, the number of people I’ve had rubbed out, to speak in the vernacular, where I stand in the Family hierarchy…and what ever happened to Mack the Pimp. Come now, can you tell me honestly that you have come here not wanting to know what happened to him?”

  “I did wonder, it’s true.”

  Romano folded his hands again and massaged them gently. “Shall I tell you he is alive and well in Costa Rica?”

  “Okay.”

  “Alive, in any case. I didn’t know you were a newspaper woman, Mrs. Hayes.”

  “Let’s say I’m an apprentice. Tony is a friend of my husband’s and I got up my courage the other day and asked him for a job. I’ve gotten to know some pretty colorful people lately.”

  “And do you think I’m colorful?”

  “Yes. But I also think that Munch painting is colorful. A lot of people wouldn’t say that.”

  “You are clever.”

  “What I thought we might hang the story on is your art collection.”

  “Is Mr. Alexander interested in art?”

  “
No. Collectors, yes, if they’re famous.”

  “Or infamous. We must give the matter further thought.”

  “I won’t have more than five hundred words,” Julie said.

  “Yes, but I shall want the last one, and I doubt Mr. Alexander would consent to that.”

  “He might—as long as he has the first ones, you know—things like Mr. Romano is the alleged…he is reported to be…things like that.”

  “Leaving you the second act in which to discourse on the part of Romano which bears public scrutiny.” He glanced over his shoulder and Julie looked around to see Alberto in the doorway, now wearing a white coat. “Shall we have lunch and talk of old friends? I hope you like trout. They came out of the stream at dawn this morning.”

  Consommé with a thin lemon slice, the trout broiled just to the point where the skin was spotted with brown and cracked. Alberto showed them the fish and then boned them at the end of the table. Asparagus, an endive salad, and a cheese more delicate than brie. Espresso. Jeff would have approved. Julie resolved to open the article, if she ever got to write it, describing the luncheon, the silver, and the deeply polished, knife-scarred wood of the refectory table at which they sat. The wine was a Soave. Julie wished she liked wine better. Jeff wished it too and she kept trying.

  Mostly they talked of Pete Mallory and Laura Gibson, the actress both men had loved, the Actors Forum, and theater as Romano remembered it. He was a lot older than he looked. His best memories were of the 1930s and 1940s, which made Julie wonder if he had got his start in the underworld during Prohibition. She hoped so. Nostalgia. She realized that he was saying things he did not mind her quoting, and for a few seconds when she realized this, anxiety took over and she missed part of what he was saying. He was talking about Shakespeare.

  “I do believe,” he said and paused, his hands folded on the table almost as though he were posing, “that I am among the few moderns who can accept Othello as completely believable.”

  Julie merely nodded.

  “I thought you would understand,” he said, and at that moment she was struck with what he might be telling her. Othello’s problem was jealousy and he wound up strangling his wife. Killing her with his own hands anyway…Surely not.