Ellman turned east on Sixty-eighth Street to Madison Avenue. Then he walked downtown for two blocks and unlocked and entered
the Gotham Gallery of Fine Art.
Gianni stopped walking and pretended to window shop. He saw the cop cross Madison Avenue and get into a gray sedan parked
at a meter just opposite the gallery. Then the detective lit a cigarette and settled in for his day of watching.
The gallery was in a small, three-story building on the corner of Madison and Sixty-Sixth Street. Gianni walked past it and
turned the corner. When he was out of the watcher’s sight, he went down through a basement entrance, climbed a
single flight of stairs and rang a bell beside the gallery’s service door.
It was just 8:15. Marty would be alone until the place opened at 10:00 and his staff arrived.
“It’s Gianni.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then locks and dead bolts clicked, the door swung open, and they stood looking at each other.
Marty Ellman’s myopic eyes went wide behind thick lenses. He stared at the gray hair, moustache, and glasses. Then he focused
on Gianni’s eyes, which were unchanged.
“What in God’s name… ?”
“You alone?”
Ellman nodded dumbly, a slender man with a pink, unreasonably youthful face. “I’ve been calling you since the night of the
reception. Where on earth have you been? And what’s with the trick-or-treat hair?”
Gianni Garetsky closed and locked the metal fire door behind him. Then leading the agent into his own office, he settled tiredly
into a chair. He had been on his feet for a long time.
“You’ll never believe it, Marty.”
“Try me.”
Under the much brighter lights of the office, Ellman had his first good look at the artist’s face and went pale.
“What the hell have you done? Gone back with the mob?”
“Nothing that good.”
Reciting the words almost by rote at this point, Gianni gave Marty Ellman the heart of it. He told no more than was necessary
for the purpose of his visit. But even this brief recital made him feel as if he were spilling his own seed, weakening some
vital part of his future. Had death itself already invaded him? Unfair. Especially with Marty, who had literally changed his
life, who’d had enough faith to stay with him when the art world was passing him by. His only real problem with Marty, he
often thought, was trying not to kiss him too much in public.
Unable to hold himself still through it, Ellman had begun to pace. His pink face glistened with sweat by the time Gianni finished.
“I can’t believe it,” he said flatly. “This is the United
States of America, for God’s sake! The land of apple pie and chicken soup.”
“OK. So we’ve got a few dead cockroaches floating in the soup.”
“But you’re talking
FBI,
not
KGB.
Hell. Not even the Russians dare pull that kind of nonsense anymore.”
Garetsky was silent. He found something oddly comforting in Marty’s reaction.
Like a crazy man,
he thought,
being assured it’s really the rest of the world that’s crazy, not him.
Ellman mopped his face with a handkerchief. “You took a big chance coming here. They could be watching me.”
“They are watching you. I followed one of them all the way from your building. He’s in a car on Madison Avenue right this
minute, smoking himself to death. I’d have called, but I’m sure your phones are tapped.”
Ellman left the office and walked to the front of the gallery. When he returned, his lips were tight.
“That gray Ford across the street?”
“That’s the one.”
“Marvelous. Absolutely superb.”
Shaking his head, the art dealer took a bottle of Dewars from a liquor cabinet, filled a couple of old-fashioned glasses,
and took a solid belt from one.
“It’s 8:30 in the morning, Marty. Besides, you’re Jewish.”
“When it comes to scotch, I’m Irish.”
Gianni allowed Ellman a moment to settle himself. Like Vittorio and Angie, the dealer had been part of the same boyhood group
at art school. But in the end, he had found his juices flowing more toward the marketing of art than the creation of it. “I
was lucky” was how he enjoyed explaining his career choice. “I discovered it early. I was simply too Jewish to ever be a major
talent. Meaning, I wasn’t self-absorbed enough, and I enjoyed eating too much.”
“All right,” he grumbled over his drink. “Now that you’ve got all the really good stuff out of the way, what else have you
got for me? Cancer?”
“Just a few questions, Marty. When was the last time you spoke to Vittorio?”
The art dealer shrugged. “Hard to say. Had to be at least nine or ten years ago.”
“How did it come about? Did you just run into him? Did he call about something? Or what?”
“He called. Said he wanted to come over and talk. Which surprised me. I hadn’t spoken to him in years before that. He was
strictly big-time mob by then.”
Without thinking, Gianni picked up the scotch Ellman had poured for him, took a swallow, and made a face. “I was still in
Italy at the time. So what did he want to talk about?”
“Nothing in particular. He came to see me here at the gallery and just sort of wandered around for a while, looking at the
paintings and asking questions about them.”
“What sort of questions?”
Ellman locked on Gianni’s eyes. “Art questions. You know… style, technique, subject matter. What was most popular with the
public? Which brought the highest prices and why? What percentages the gallery took? Things like that.”
“You mean as if he might be thinking about going into the art business himself?”
“Exactly. In fact, I even made a joke about it. At least I hoped it was a joke. I asked him if Don Donatti was thinking of
branching out into gallery protection.”
Gianni leaned forward in his chair. “And then he asked you some of the same things about the European art markets?”
“How did you know?”
Gianni felt a sudden warmth. “I guess I’m just fucking psychic.”
Prof. Eduardo Serini still lived in the same building in Little Italy that had once housed the Serini School of Art. It was
on the Lower East Side’s Mulberry Street, and Gianni Garet-sky walked past the building four times, twice in each direction,
and spotted nothing suspicious.
Then Gianni went up on the roof of a five-story walk-up directly across the street from Serini’s house. From there he studied
the action on the block for a full half-hour. Still, he saw nothing to bother him.
Even so, when he finally entered Professor Serini’s tene
ment, it was from across several adjoining rooftops, where he had played Follow the Leader as a boy.
He slipped into the stairwell from the roof entrance and caught an instant whiff of cigarette smoke. It came floating up from
below in a blue-gray spiral, and Gianni stood absolutely still, listening.
He heard a dry, hacking cough. When it stopped, Gianni eased down the stairs, his steps silent in rubber-soled running shoes.
Then leaning as far as possible over the banister, he saw a man sitting and smoking on the fourth-floor landing. Professor
Serini lived on the floor directly below the smoker.
The man was reading a newspaper. His jacket was off and he wore a hip holster that held a .38 caliber police special. A pair
of handcuffs hung from his belt.
Gianni pulled back from the banister and thought it through. When he had it all clear in his mind, he removed his hairpiece,
moustache, and glasses, and carefully stowed them in his pockets. If the cop caught a glimpse of him before he was knocked
out, he didn’t want him remembering his disguise when he came out of it. Then Gianni drew his automatic and started down the
stairs. This time he walked normally, letting his steps be heard.
The watcher, evidently assuming he was hearing just another tenant coming downstairs behind him, leaned to one side to allow
passing room. He never bothered to glance back as Gianni swung the butt of his automatic against the side of the cop’s head.
Making only a soft grunt, the watcher went over like a tree with rotten roots.
Gianni began moving quickly.
Kneeling, he got his shoulder under the unconscious man’s middle and wrestled him up to the roof. Once there, he stuffed a
handkerchief into his mouth, cuffed his hands behind his back, and tied his ankles together with some clothesline. Then he
dragged him behind a ventilator and a pile of roofing equipment and went down to the third floor.
Prof. Eduardo Serini opened his door on the second ring, an old man with liver marks, a thousand wrinkles, and a full head
of shining white hair. He squinted at Gianni with rheumy eyes and smiled with all his own teeth.
“
Benvenuto,
Gianni.
Avanti.
Come in, come in.”
Half leaning on Gianni’s arm, the old man took him into the kitchen, where he’d been reading an Italian paperback. For years,
Gianni had made a point of dropping by at least once a week, so Serini showed no surprise. Gianni took his usual chair at
the kitchen table, and the professor poured some espresso.
“So what did you do with the stupid
poliziotto
waiting for you upstairs?” Serini asked.
Gianni slowly shook his head. “He’s sleeping up on the roof. You still know everything, eh,
Professore?”
“Why not? What else have I got to do?”
“Then you were questioned?”
“That’s their job. They don’t protect people. They ask them questions.”
Serini squinted at Gianni’s battered face. “I see they questioned
you
pretty damn good.”
“Did they hurt you?” Gianni asked.
“Nan. They wouldn’t lay a finger on me. I’m too old. All I’d do for them if they touched me is die. Besides, I have
un posto nel loggione.”
This last meant a seat among the gods, and was characteristic of the old man’s speech, a patois of English and Italian that
he’d developed and honed over the nearly seventy years he’d been in America.
II professore
had arrived in New York on his honeymoon with his bride of two weeks and top honors from the Royal Academy of Art in Rome
and never left. The honeymoon trip had been his graduation prize for painting, and the winning canvas itself still hung in
his living room. Gianni could see it from where he sat, a huge somber oil of an actual shipwreck in which hundreds had died,
including Serini’s parents and sister. It gave off a bad mood.
“What did the police ask?” said Gianni.
“Where you and Vittorio were. And since I didn’t know, it was a very short conversation.” Serini sighed. “So what are you
here to ask me?”
“The same things the police did.”
“You don’t know where you are, Gianni?”
“Not really,
Professore.
And it looks like I’m not going to find out unless I find Vittorio.”
“What makes you think I know where that crazy
assassino
is?”
“Didn’t we just agree you know everything?”
The old man nodded as if that was really an answer. Then he remained silent for several moments over his espresso.
“I’ll be honest,” he said. “I hear Vittorio’s name and all I want to do is vomit.”
“Why?”
“Because he had it all… everything… the best. And he turned himself into a first-class piece of shit.
Veramente prima classe.
I got no patience for that. I mean, I look at you. I see what he could have been. And I just get sick.”
“We’re two different people.”
“That’s garbage. You were like one. Brothers. And you both started in the same toilet. Only you got out, and he’s still floating
with the turds.”
“That’s where I’ll end up, too, if I don’t find him,
Professore.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just take my word for it and help me. Will you do that much?”
Eduardo Serini looked off somewhere. Finally, he nodded.
“I think Vittorio came to see you for the last time about ten years ago,” said Gianni. “Is that true?”
“
Si.”
“And what did he want?”
“To show me a painting.”
“Whose?”
“His own.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There’s not much to tell. Besides, I don’t see—”
“Please,
Professore.
Just tell me what happened.”
The old man allowed himself several moments to put it together.
“A surprise is what happened,” he said. “Vittorio shows me this painting he says he’s just done, and wants to know if I think
it’s any good. I tell him, yes, it’s good.‘Good enough to sell?’ he asks. And again I tell him, yes.”
Serini looked at the artist across his kitchen table. “So, he says, it’s the first painting he’s done in years and am I sure
I’m not just trying to make him feel good. And I tell him I’ve got no reason to want to make a murdering prick feel good,
that it’s a stinking sin against God for a Christ-given talent like his to be wasted on shit like him, and to get the hell
out of my goddamn house before I throw him out.”
“And then?”
“Then the crazy
bastardo
starts laughing and kissing me on both cheeks. He says he’s always loved me, too, and he’s real sorry he’s been such a murdering
prick all these years, but maybe there’s still a little time left so he can change.”
“That was it?”
The professor nodded.
“And you never saw him again?”
“No.”
They sat there over their black coffee.
The professor stirred himself.
“Vittorio did call me once,” he said.
“When?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t think it could have been more than maybe two, three years ago.”
“What did he call for?”
“Just to say a long-delayed
grazie.
Also, to tell me he had a son who was gifted with a true
talento
for
la bella arte
and wouldn’t waste one fly speck of it like his murdering prick of a
padre.”
“Where was he calling from?”
“He never said. But it must have been a long way off.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it was a pay phone and he dumped in a pile of money.”