Scarlet Night

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “Have you no tongue?” he shouted, trying to get his feet into his slacks. “Hold your bloody horses till a man gets his clothes on.”

  He unlocked the door and threw it open. There in her green-eyed, auburn-haired glory stood Ginni, laughing at him.

  “Holy God, what are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Johnny.”

  He retreated before her advance into the room. “Yes, well, hello.”

  “I got bored waiting. My God, you look awful. Were you in a brawl?”

  “I had a bit of a tumble, an accident, never mind. I can’t believe my own eyes.”

  She cast a critical look around the room. “Don’t you even have a bedroom?”

  “It was my mother’s.”

  “But she’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “Aye, but I don’t like sleeping in there. It’s…it’s crowded. I still can’t believe it. I’m going to wake up in a minute…”

  “I hope so,” Ginni said. “I feel about as welcome as a cockroach.”

  “Ah, love, give me a minute in the bathroom and I’ll welcome you proper.” He threw the coverlet over the daybed on his way to the bathroom, which was off the kitchen. Lucky he was to have one of his own. It wasn’t the case with every family in the building. He paused at the kitchen door. “Have you seen your mother yet?”

  “Why?”

  She had the look of long-distance travel about her: the knit dress and the sandals, the elegant purse. She’d have perked up his neighbors coming up the steps. “I was wondering. She’ll be surprised to see you, that’s all.”

  “She knows I’m coming. You’re the one that’s surprised. Johnny, is anything wrong?” She was advancing again.

  “Nothing fatal. I’m going in here or I’ll bust. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  It was going to take more than a minute to sort out the implications of her arrival—to say nothing of what she was to be told. She’d find out from her mother if he didn’t tell her that Scarlet Night had gone astray, and it wouldn’t bode well for him if she got it there first. Was he glad to see her? He wasn’t sure. Something had retarded the customary leap of hot blood in his veins at the sight of her.

  The look at himself in the mirror was a shock. He resembled a sick raccoon, his eyes in heavy circles from the bang on the back of his head. Which reminded him of where he had lost his pocketknife. He had always said the best days of his life were with Ginni, but he saw no way of making this day one of them.

  He turned on the water in the fixture he had built for himself over the tub, and then called out, his mouth to the crack in the door: “I’m going to take a quick shower to wake myself up.”

  If she answered, he didn’t hear her, and when he went out a few minutes later, there was no sign of her. “Are you playing games with me?” He went from room to room, all three of them. It wasn’t as though there were closets or places to hide. He looked in the wardrobe and while there selected a shirt he could wear open. Ginni loved to twiddle with the hair on his chest. He opened the front windows and looked out. The air was muggy and getting hot. No sign of her below. His watch showed one o’clock. Rubinoff had said he would call him by noon.

  O’Grady picked up the phone and started to dial. He put it down when he heard a clatter in the hall and giggling. His first thought was that she was moving in with him; his heart gave one leap and stopped dead, or so it seemed: if he couldn’t sleep in his mother’s bed, he certainly couldn’t do anything else in it. Ginni, with her father’s mansion and her mother’s loft, and her goddamned love of the working class.

  The door opened the width of a head. Ginni poked hers in, looking toward the kitchen. She murmured a word to someone behind her. The door opened wide. She saw O’Grady then, and he saw the two companions she was whispering with: they were young, good-looking, and male, dressed in flashy new suits and grinning at him. They dropped their suitcases inside the door and came forward to shake his hand while Ginni spouted to them in Italian and to him in English, introducing them as Tommy and Steph.

  “Tommy and Steph,” he said, looking at her after letting them shake his hand. He had a sick feeling that he already knew who they were.

  “The whole bloody family,” he said. Not only had she come over herself, she had brought the two who had made the museum snatch.

  “Not quite. Only us kids,” Ginni said. “When the circus closed for the season last week and they were looking for something to do, I thought, why not? They’d never been to America.”

  “Ginni, we’re going to have to have a serious conversation, you and I.”

  “They don’t speak English.”

  “I don’t know whether that’s bad or good.”

  “Don’t just let them stand there, Johnny. Where’s your Irish hospitality?”

  “With O’Leary in the grave,” he muttered blasphemously. Then: “Tell them to take off their coats. I’ll see if there’s anything cold in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, God, it’s hot,” Ginni said, following him. She ventilated herself by plucking at the see-through knit that clutched her breasts. Then in one swoop, she crossed her arms and pulled the top to her dress over her head. Topless. Stark.

  “Not in front of them, for God’s sake. I’ll get you one of my cotton shirts.”

  “They’re in show business, Johnny…You’re such an old puritan.” She followed him to the sink. “How’s Ralph?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.” He ran water over the tray of ice cubes to loosen them.

  “Did he sell any pictures besides…?”

  “Will you wait a minute, damn it. There ought to be some easy way…”

  “Mother has a refrigerator that just coughs them out…I’ll bet Ralph’s living with her, right? She’s always been passionate about my rejects. The trouble was when I lived with her, she didn’t wait for me to reject them.”

  “You shouldn’t talk that way about your mother even if it’s true.” He filled the pitcher with water and plopped in the ice cubes. “Bring some glasses there.”

  The boys had not only removed their coats, they had hung them in the wardrobe. He put the pitcher on the table and got her one of his two professionally laundered shirts.

  “If the show closes Sunday, how long do you think it’ll be after that? The boys are terribly broke.”

  “Who isn’t? Wouldn’t it have been better for all of you to have waited over there the way we planned?”

  “No. I’ll tell you what happened, Johnny: I went with Papa to his bank one day, and I sat in the cage and watched them counting—American money, twenties, fifties, and one-hundred-dollar bills—and I realized a weakness in our plan. You could not possibly manage alone. And I thought of the horror, what if you had to sink some of it in the Bay of Naples?”

  “That’s not fair, casting up my one failure to me. It’s to be safe money and I’d have converted some of it into larger denominations.”

  “You couldn’t. Not over a hundred. They don’t print them anymore and the banks are taking those left out of circulation. Isn’t this so much easier? We’ll spend what we need and buy what we want and have a simply marvelous time.” She darted from one of the boys to the other, the shirttail flying behind her, and whatever it was she said in their language, the glisten of greed came into their eyes. It was plain to see she had grown out of the revolutionary stage of her development. “A few days, Johnny?”

  “Something like that, but there’s something you’d better stop and listen to right now, Ginni: That painter boy of yours was not the most reliable choice. He had a falling-out with your mother and pulled out on her the night after the show opened. He’s probably ruined his chances for life and damn near ruined the rest of us. He took his pictures out of her gallery and burned them.”

  “What?”

  For a few seconds, while he took a gulp of cold water himself, he enjoyed the shock that gave her. “All save the one.”

  “God damn you, John O’Grady, I’ll cut out your heart if you ever do anything lik
e that to me again.”

  He had to believe she could do it, too. “Yes, well, he decided without a by-your-leave from your mother to give Scarlet Night to a woman who’d tried to buy it at the show. We’ve been trying since to get it back from her.”

  “She still has it?”

  He drew a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “And you dared say to me I should have stayed in Naples?” Her eyes were green flame, volcanic. “One step at a time, Johnny: how did it happen?”

  The boys had gone pale at the sight of her wrath and O’Grady wondered if he hadn’t as well. He could not bring himself in the end to tell her of the last night’s misery, only that he had broken into the Hayes woman’s shop to discover she had removed the painting, probably having taken it home with her.

  “You don’t know that,” Ginni said.

  “I don’t. That’s the truth.”

  She picked up the phone and handed it to him. “Get Rubinoff for me.”

  “You’d better watch yourself with him. He isn’t starving like some of us, and it’s his client, you know.”

  While he dialed she spoke to the boys, soothingly, as he had all but forgotten she once spoke to him. He’d have been better not to have put the shirt on her, for she left it open and it was a terrible thing watching them pop in and out and not be able to care. Rubinoff’s secretary answered and said she would see if he could come to the phone. The wonder of it: a normal day in the office of Rubin Rubinoff.

  “Johnny, how are you?”

  “I’m all right, well. Look, man…”

  He got no further, Rubinoff interrupting. Ginni put her head next to O’Grady’s to listen. “I can’t talk to you now, Johnny. I’m flying to Buenos Aires with a client this afternoon. I’m sorry to tell you I’ve decided to let Scarlet Night go. I no longer consider it a viable operation.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I no longer believe the acquisition to be in the best interests of my client.”

  Ginni took the phone from O’Grady’s hand. A clarion voice. “Mr. Rubinoff, this is Gianina Bordonelli. Will you please hold on for a moment while I get something from my purse?”

  O’Grady began to look for the purse for her. She signaled him to forget it, but let another second or two pass. Then: “Here we are. Shall I read it in Italian or translate?”

  He would have said to translate, for she began in English and carried on with the perfect intonation and hesitancy of the translator, and quite as though the message stood written in front of her: “I assure you there will be no defection at the top. I have myself authenticated three works I know to be in the cabinet of this same collector—which—if I were to correct my earlier attribution—would greatly weaken his collection and destroy his faith in our colleague.” Then, “It’s signed, of course, by Edmund Schoen.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “IT WILL TAKE ALL our powers of concentration, Miss Julie, all the technology available to us, and a degree of guile on your part I fear will not come easily.”

  “Don’t count on that. I have a lot of guile.”

  Romano’s gaze was solemn. “And you did study at the Actors Forum.”

  Alberto looked around from where he was going through one volume after another of the International Auction Records making notations. Romano, with a flick of his finger, directed the younger man to stay with his task.

  “I am sure we are all qualified for what we must do. Our major problem is time. We must move quickly, but once we do move, we start the whole machination forward, and if we move before we are well enough prepared, we may lose everything. We must go back far enough to enable us to go forward, but not further; we must ask questions that will gain information without giving information. We must be extremely careful not to awaken the Italian government too soon. It is very complicated. But I will tell you what we have learned that makes me suppose we may well succeed. By sheer accident, I may have discovered the roots of the Ginni caper. I am almost certain the grand design was entirely hers.

  “Here we go: among the unsolved art thefts which occurred in Italy in the past year is a fourteenth-century sculpture from the collection of Count Ricardo Guido Bordonelli.”

  “Ginni’s father.”

  Romano nodded. “The count is a banker and a modest collector with two or three pieces of medieval art in his collection. Of questionable provenance, but valuable. The police in their investigation interviewed the guests who attended a dinner party at the Bordonelli villa a few days before the theft was discovered. Where the investigation went thereafter I have no idea. But early this morning, Alberto and I were able to obtain the names of those who attended the dinner party. Aside from the host and his daughter there were ten guests, only one of whom I think concerns us—an art dealer named Schoen who has offices in Rome and Zurich.

  “Now, I have a marginal acquaintanceship with Edmund Schoen. There was a time I hoped to acquire a particular Guardi. I have since gone in a different direction. I was advised in a back-door manner that since my collection is more private than most, and since I am what is known as a patient collector—Mr. Schoen might be able to help me. I did not pursue the matter, but I understood that he would be arranging a purchase the export of which the Italian government would not allow, but which Mr. Schoen could deliver nonetheless.

  “I shall sketch quickly now, for much is speculation. I suggest that Schoen admired the sculpture, probably to Ginni, and may have mentioned a price he would pay for it, having in mind of course a likely customer or—as they call them in this business of gentlemen—a client. The theft—from her father’s house—almost certainly was arranged by Ginni. Whatever occurred paved the way for the Leonardo job. She is a wild young thing, this girl, with some nasty political associations. One has to sympathize with her father.”

  Julie said a very quiet, “Yeah.”

  “In any case, there came the point when Schoen said, in effect, If you can deliver the Leonardo drawing that’s in the Venice Institute of Art to a safe drop in the United States, it’s worth, say, five hundred thousand.

  “Now, whether the collector is Schoen’s contact or simply Rubinoff’s client on behalf of whom he was in touch with Schoen, I don’t know. But I think it’s safe to assume a longstanding relationship between Rubinoff and the collector. A great deal of trust has to go into such a commitment. This Rubinoff-collector relationship is very important to us. There are patterns in collecting. You must not think that because a man will pay an enormous amount of money for a stolen painting his collection contains other stolen art. It is much more likely that whatever the pattern of his collection, he feels it lacks only the Leonardo to become perfect. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I think so,” Julie said.

  “Leonardos are simply not available: he is going the only possible route to obtain one. The question is, has Rubinoff bought for him before? Has he represented him at auctions? We must assume so.

  “I am trying to put myself in the collector’s place, Miss Julie…Go back to work, Alberto. Alberto is checking Italian Renaissance drawings which have come to auction in the past three years. It is information we may not have time—or the means—to use, but we must prepare. A buyer rarely buys blind: almost always, his dealer will take him to the gallery to view the work coming to auction. You understand—all transactional information is confidential. The public learns where auctioned works are going only after they have arrived and if the collector chooses to give out the information. It becomes of course part of a work’s provenance and must become public before the picture can be sold again. We cannot wait.”

  Julie said: “The police would not have any trouble getting this information, would they?”

  Romano looked deeply offended. “Even they would have to know what they were looking for.”

  “I just want to understand things.”

  “I give you my word, if at any point the drawing itself is in jeopardy, I will withdraw and send you to the police. I have a feeling you would be more com
fortable in collaboration with them.”

  “I am rather conventional,” Julie said. “But wait. Wouldn’t the same thing hold for something that was going to be stolen? Wouldn’t the collector want to see that in advance, too?”

  “I think we may assume he has seen it. Or something quite in its line. Leonardo is a class unto himself.”

  “I was wondering if he’d sign the visitors’ book—if there is one—at the gallery in Venice.”

  Romano closed his eyes and thought about it. He sat, his hands folded over his belly. “There is one,” he said, blinking, “but I cannot decide whether or not I’d have signed it if I were in his shoes. No, no. Of course not. But wait: suppose he was there before the suggestion of theft?

  “Alberto, let’s have someone check the visitors’ book for Rubinoff or Schoen—a two-year span before the theft. If their names appear, get those signing in immediately before and after. It would also be useful to follow the same procedure if there’s a special sign-in arrangement for drawings. It’s often the case.”

  “That’s going to take time, Mr. Romano, unless we go to the police.”

  “No police at this stage.”

  “I don’t have any relatives that I know about in Venice.”

  “Find some. We shall need the list by noon tomorrow.”

  Alberto whistled softly, marked his place in the book, and went from the room rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully.

  “How much time do we have: a question, isn’t it?” Romano said. “When did Rubinoff call you?”

  “Monday.”

  “And the shop was broken into last night. They are already impatient.”

  “Maybe because Ginni is coming.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a chance that the break-in is coincidence and not related to the painting?”

  “I don’t think we ought to count on that, Mr. Romano, although I must admit, I don’t see Rubinoff hoisting himself in through my bathroom window.”

  “I hadn’t supposed that ever,” Romano said. “There has to be at least one other working member of the gang on this side of the Atlantic. You did say Rubinoff phoned you at home? Then how many people knew the painting was at Forty-fourth Street?”