Scarlet Night

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Alberto put his arms around her awkwardly and held her for a moment. “I don’t think he’d have done it.”

  Julie knew differently, but she got hold of herself.

  O’Grady stood gaping at them. “What the hell’s happened?”

  “It’s all right,” Julie said.

  “The suitcases are in the hall,” Alberto told him. “Better load them quickly.”

  They were all three on the steps when the sirens began to wail in the distance.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” O’Grady said and grabbed two of the suitcases.

  Alberto returned to the study, Julie paused at the door.

  Michael ordered: “You, fat boy, put your hands behind your back. Do it slow.”

  Poor, quivering Rubinoff took his hands from the wall, clasped them over his head like a clown in a ballet, and brought them down as far as he could behind his neck.

  “For Christ sake, put your hands on your rump,” Michael shouted at him. He handed Alberto a set of handcuffs.

  The sirens persisted.

  The phone on the desk started to ring as Alberto put the cuffs on Rubinoff. It kept ringing, four, five, six, seven…

  “Where’s O’Grady?” Michael wanted to know.

  “Loading the car,” Julie said.

  “You get out of here, miss,” Michael said. “Get in the car and stay there.” To Alberto he said, “What’s the sirens about?”

  Campbell answered him. “They’re coming for you, man. You’ll never make it.”

  “Shut up, you.” To Alberto, about to give him the other set of handcuffs, Michael said: “Answer that phone like you were a servant or something.”

  Alberto picked up the phone: “Mr. Campbell’s residence.”

  The message was cryptic. No questions. Alberto said, “Yes, sir,” a couple of times.

  O’Grady came up to where Julie lingered in the doorway.

  Alberto hung up the phone and said, “The police want the grounds evacuated. They suggest by boat instead of using cars. They want to keep the road open for emergency equipment. There may be more dynamite.”

  Silence.

  Then O’Grady said, “Oh, Jesus Christ.” In his mind’s eye he saw the two youngsters running, as for their lives, past the spot of the previous demolition. “It’d be a false alarm, I think,” he said, his voice a croak. “I was taking a pee and some kids saw me run for the car when the gate opened. I scared the hell out of them.”

  Campbell’s hands slipped on the wall as his shoulders heaved. The man was laughing.

  “I wouldn’t laugh, mister. Get in the vault,” Michael said. “O’Grady, get him in there. See if you can do that right.”

  Alberto got out of the way, coming out to Julie. “Nobody’s going to get hurt,” he said.

  Julie shook her head. What in hell had she expected?

  There were other sirens now, coming closer. But anyone trying to get through the main gate would have trouble until someone opened it from within the grounds.

  O’Grady and Michael came out of the study. “You’re supposed to take orders, Miss Julie.”

  Julie glanced into the study. The room was empty, the vault closed. She said, “Michael, where’s the painting?”

  The scar all but disappeared when his face went white.

  Julie said, “You and O’Grady go. We can make it by the river. Please, Michael. I know what I’m doing. We’ll meet at the penthouse.”

  Michael offered his revolver to Alberto. “Do you want this?”

  Julie answered for him. “No.”

  Michael limped out after O’Grady and a few seconds later the Pontiac took off for the park.

  Alberto found the vault combination in the desk drawer.

  “I hope it works,” Julie said, but she had more in mind what she intended to say to Campbell.

  Alberto repeated the combination aloud as he twisted the dials with trembling fingers. He pulled the great door open. The light inside lit automatically when the door opened. Campbell came out blinking, Rubinoff after him, his hands still cuffed behind him.

  “Please stand where you are and listen to me,” Julie said. “We want to take Scarlet Night and the drawing with us. If we can do that, Mr. Campbell, and borrow your boat to get away in, nobody will ever know that G. T. Campbell intended to pay six hundred thousand dollars for a stolen Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing will go back where it came from in Italy.”

  Campbell pulled at an ear while he thought about it. He glanced at Rubinoff, hunched beside him. The sweat had plastered his hair down, exposing the bald spot. To Julie he looked like a tonsured monk. Campbell said, “What do I get for my six hundred thousand?”

  “A live dog.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  MICHAEL DROVE AS THOUGH the woods would explode behind him.

  “I keep telling you it’s a false alarm,” O’Grady shouted. The car would collapse beneath them if he kept it up. “And they’ll be stopping back by the stone gates maybe, waiting for the explosives experts. It’s a terrible thing I’ve put them through for nothing.”

  Michael said, “You want to stop by police headquarters and tell them all about it?”

  O’Grady looked at him by the light of the dashboard. ”You don’t have to be so damned sarcastic. If the girl and him don’t get the picture, where’ll we be then?”

  “Costa Rica,” Michael said, slowing down a bit. “The boss won’t monkey around.”

  “Mr. Romano?”

  “Yeah, Sweets Romano. Did you never hear of Sweets Romano?”

  “Holy God. Is that who he is?” You couldn’t grow up on the west side of New York without having heard the name. He might even own the building O’Grady lived in.

  At a curve in the road they came in sight of the highway. It was jammed, cars bumper to bumper, with the whirligig lights of police cars flashing over their roofs. Michael stopped and put out the car lights while he thought for a moment. “What we’ve got to do, Johnny, is cooperate with the police. Tell them Campbell opened the back gate for their emergency vehicles. Tell them they can get through that way. You can say we work for him. Isn’t that what you went to them for in the first place?”

  “Don’t rush me, Michael. I’m a slow learner, but I keep what I know. What about the girl and him back there?”

  “It’s better them than us—with what we got in the back seat.”

  And him with a gun, O’Grady thought. “What’ll we say’s in the suitcases if the police look in and ask?”

  “Papers! Important papers Campbell doesn’t want around with this dynamite business again. You’re an Irishman. The cops’ll believe you.”

  “Drive on,” O’Grady said. “I’ll be better able to talk to them than to you, sure.”

  They pulled up to the pole at the park entrance. Dead ahead, on the other side of the barrier, an officer was standing outside his patrol car.

  “Get the gate open,” Michael said to O’Grady. He beeped his horn at the cop, motioning him to move the car.

  O’Grady hopped out, turned his back on the officer, and with one hard twist of the cutter nipped the hasp through which the padlock hung. He pocketed the cutters and hauled the pole out of the way.

  The cop moved his car and Michael drove out. A fire truck, crawling along the shoulder on the wrong side of the road, pulled alongside the Pontiac. O’Grady spoke to the cop and the fireman who jumped off the truck. “You can go back rough the park there and get in by the Campbell gate. He’s ordered the place opened up to you.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” the fireman said, “as long as we can get through there.” He ran back and instructed his engineer.

  “You work for Campbell?” the cop wanted to know.

  “Aye. We’re taking out some papers he wants safe in New York.”

  “You’re better off using the Tappan Zee bridge than trying to get through this way.”

  “Why are all the cars backed up?” O’Grady said.

  “There’s a jam at the traf
fic light. We’re trying to pull everybody out of Maiden’s End till the Ordnance boys go through the woods back there.”

  “What if it’s a hoax?”

  “Better safe than sorry, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, I agree. Much better.” O’Grady got into the car and Michael drove north, the road wide open in that direction. O’Grady remembered the Mustang they had left in the driving-range lot. “What about the other car, Michael?”

  “You got a key for it?”

  “I don’t. Alberto would have it.”

  “I’ll tell you what I got the key for,” Michael said. “The handcuffs on that Rubinoff fella.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  CAMPBELL DID NOT LOAN them the cruiser. He took them downriver himself and put them ashore at the Seventy-ninth Street marina. Julie stepped onto the dock first. They had reassembled Scarlet Night in the cabin. Alberto handed it up to her.

  It was more of a problem landing Rubinoff, his hands still cuffed behind his back, but hidden beneath a raincoat of Campbell’s. The coat was buttoned at his throat and, on him, ankle length. “I wouldn’t care if you dropped him overboard,” Campbell said, “if it wasn’t for the publicity.”

  Before casting off, Campbell spoke to Julie. “You know, little lady, I got to hand it to you. I’m just a country boy from Texas and you slickered me proper.”

  While Alberto watched for a cab, Julie called Romano.

  He had just heard from Michael. They had made it across the Tappan Zee bridge.

  “You do have Scarlet Night?” Romano said.

  “You bet.”

  “You had better bring Rubinoff along. Michael will be able to liberate him.”

  “Mr. Romano, we had to leave the Mustang at the driving range.”

  “So Michael said. You do seem to have come home in bits and pieces. I shall arrange for the rental company to pick it up. Good-bye, Miss Julie.”

  In the cab, riding the jump seat, Rubinoff whimpered all the way across town, “Ruined, ruined, ruined.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  IT WAS A QUARTER to ten when O’Grady went up the stairs to his apartment, where Ginni greeted him a little less than tenderly.

  “There was a mix-up,” he said. “We’re to meet somewhere else for the distribution of funds.”

  “No,” Ginni said.

  “Yes, God damn it. The money’s down there in the car. Come on now before it’s hijacked.”

  That moved her. If only he’d known how to speak to her before, it might all have been different. She lined up the boys. They had already transported their luggage to the Plaza.

  O’Grady opened the car door when they reached the street. “You’ll have to sit three across,” he said. “I’ll ride with the driver.”

  “Where’s Rubinoff?”

  “He’s waiting.”

  “I’m going back to Mother’s until I hear from him.”

  “You’ll wait a long time then,” O’Grady said. “Come here, my darling.” He took her rudely by the arm and led her to the back of the station wagon where he lifted the hatch door. The light went on. After looking up and down the street, he flattened one of the bags and unzipped it far enough to turn back the flap. It gave him a turn himself to see one eye of Benjamin Franklin staring up at him from a packet of hundreds.

  “Lacrima Cristi,” Ginni said, and went around and crawled in alongside the boys.

  The boys helped load the suitcases into the freight elevator at Romano’s.

  Alberto opened the door to them, and conducted them through, money and all, to the office. He diverted Michael to the kitchen to free and fetch Rubinoff. Julie and Romano were waiting in the office. Ginni balked at the door, but O’Grady put one arm around her and the other under her flailing legs and carried her over the threshold. He put her down in one of the chairs that had been set out in a half circle. The boys sat on either side of her. Romano waited for Michael and Rubinoff, to whom, when he came in rubbing his wrists, he murmured, “I’m so glad you could join us.”

  The Little King took his time. Then he said: “I am Romano and you are my guests. I will not say you are welcome, but you will not be detained long. I understand you were looking for a courier. So am I.” He took three envelopes from the desk. “You will distribute these, Alberto.”

  Alberto gave an envelope each to Ginni and the boys.

  “You needn’t open them now,” Romano said. “There is enough money in each to cover your expenses for the duration of your stay in America and your plane reservations for ten-forty-five tomorrow morning.” He repeated what he had just said in what sounded to Julie like beautiful Italian. He took a folded sheet of paper from his other pocket and gave it to Alberto to pass on. “I would ask that you sign this, Miss Julie. It is a bill of sale made out to Miss Bordonelli for a painting called Scarlet Night. A modest sum, one hundred dollars.

  “You will take the painting back to Italy with you, Miss Bordonelli. I don’t think Customs in either country will trouble you, the daughter of Count Bordonelli. But it is a chance you must take.

  “I expect to hear in not later than forty-eight hours that a work of art stolen from the Italian people in Venice last March has been safely recovered. Otherwise…Ah, but there won’t be any otherwise.”

  Julie signed the prepared document. Her hand wasn’t very steady, but neither was Ginni’s when she accepted it from Alberto.

  “There is one last bit of business and then we can adjourn, some of us to meet another day. Please follow.”

  Romano moved lightly ahead into the studio which was ablaze with lights. Scarlet Night was on the easel, where Romano had put it when Alberto and Julie arrived a scant few minutes before Ginni and the others.

  “Alberto, please remove the frame, gently, gently.”

  Everyone watched in silence.

  The frame removed, Romano turned the canvas around himself, took a palette knife and removed the drawing. He offered it to Rubinoff. “Perhaps you, sir, would like to have this as a souvenir?”

  Rubinoff backed away as though this were the greatest horror of his day.

  “Come now. Didn’t you notice? Perhaps not with such other weighty matters on your mind. And of course your client wouldn’t, his excess of trust surpassed only by his ignorance…And it is a very good reproduction—of a Michelangelo. It may be that Leonardo himself copied it, but alas, Alberto and I could find no reproduction of the Leonardo. You will understand now, Miss Julie, why we could not risk your going that day to the F.B.I.” He tossed the reproduction into a bin. “Now, Alberto, dear boy, shall we put our unworthy hands to the real thing?”

  Alberto went to the case where the Leonardo had been placed on the day Romano revealed its presence to Julie. It had been there ever since.

  Romano said, “Miss Bordonelli, you did it once so expertly. Perhaps you will assist again in the preparation of our treasure for international travel?”

  “I can’t do it,” Ginni said, probably for the first time in her life.

  “Then we must manage, Alberto…Miss Julie.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  ONE LONG RING AND two short. Julie waited in the vestibule, her legs still shaky. She did not want to scrabble for the keys in her purse if she didn’t have to.

  The buzzer sounded, releasing the lock, a mocking answerback—one long buzz and two short. Two fairly drunken men were waiting for her when she got upstairs. Not sloppy drunk, not Jeff ever. Hilariously drunk.

  “Is there a book in it?” Tony wanted to know the minute she came in. And to Jeff: “Listen to me, friend. Your wife is a book writer. That’s the whole problem. She needs space—not a goddamned pica-measured newspaper column. There’s a book in it. Right, Julie?”

  She nodded and kissed the top of Jeff’s head. If she’d bent any lower she would have collapsed.

  “What do you think would be an appropriate advance?”

  Julie counted on her fingers: Romano, Alberto, Michael, O’Grady, and…Julie. Five. “About a hundred and twenty thousand
dollars,” she said.

  Leonardo Drawing Recovered

  Special to the New York Times

  ROME, JULY 29 — ACTING on an anonymous telephone call, the Rome police today recovered a priceless drawing by Leonardo da Vinci from a storage locker at the Rome airport. The drawing had been stolen from the Venice Institute of Art last March. It was unharmed except for a slight discoloration on the back where a small amount of adhesive had been applied. The police speculate the thieves had intended to smuggle the drawing out of Italy but abandoned the scheme in view of recent security improvements.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Julie Hayes Mysteries

  ONE

  JEFF SAMPLED HIS MARTINI—straight up, no rocks—and approved, which seemed to surprise him. He was even more meticulous about martinis than about most things. Outside the states he travelled with a little vial of vermouth in his inside pocket and always ordered straight gin. The drink judged worthy of the toast, he met Julie’s eyes and proposed: “To your own by-line by this time next year.”

  Julie wrinkled her nose and murmured thanks. She turned her glass round and round, an orange blossom that, sooner or later, she would be expected to drink. Finally she lifted it: “To Paris and to you.”

  “In that order?”

  She grinned. “I’m very fond of both of you.”

  The restaurant noises picked up as a party shuffled its seating arrangement. Someone was explaining that the guest of honor must face the door through which, at Sardi’s, the rich and famous were presumably in constant transit.