Florian's Gate (13 page)

“Okay.” He took a breath. “The truth is, I don't even know where to say my family is from. My dad was with IBM. I remember when I was six years old he came home one day, and he and my mom got all excited because he'd been put on the fast track. I didn't have idea one what they were talking about, but I still remember how happy he was and how proud my mom got. From then on, we never spent two full years in one place.

“I've lived in eleven different cities in seven states. I went to four junior high schools. We finally settled in Jacksonville when I was seventeen, and we've been there ever since.” Another deep breath. “We had to stay there. My brother got . . . sick.”

“I thought you told me you didn't have any brothers or sisters.”

His face was set in rigid lines. “I don't.”

Her eyes rested on him in silent watchfulness. “And you want to start a relationship with me.”

“This has nothing to do with it.”

She slid from her seat, rose to her feet, said, “I think it's time you took me home, Jeffrey.”

“Why?” He did not try to remove the harshness from his voice. “Because I won't talk about things that don't matter?”

“Are you going to take me home or should I walk by myself?”

He paid and guided her from the restaurant. On the street he realized that he faced a final farewell, and he found himself unable to raise his hand and flag a taxi and open the door and say the words and watch her leave his life. Instead, he took her arm and led her across the street to where the thinnest tip of Hyde Park separated them from a pair of monstrously modern hotels, the Hilton and the Inn on the Park, which in turn backed up onto the Shepherd Market corner of Mayfair. He realized he was simply putting off the inevitable, and that as soon as they left behind the park's leafy confines and reentered the rushing nighttime traffic, she would step into a waiting taxi and be gone. No matter how ready he was to end the futile struggle, the thought left him helplessly wounded.

She appeared to enjoy the evening's cool mist, and walked beside him in a silence of her own. Then she gave a little cry, slipped off the path, bent down and crooned at something he could not see. Jeffrey started to make some comment about the elves of Mayfair when she straightened and lifted cupped hands toward him. He leaned forward and saw it was a baby bird.

Because it was the closest refuge, they took the bird back to his apartment, a five-minute walk. It was the first time Katya had ever agreed to come up.

She gave a cursory glance to the apartment's pastel carpets and glass-topped dining table and light-stained Scandinavian furniture and garishly expensive mirror mural on the living-room wall. “This is not at all what I expected.”

“I rented it furnished.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “Bring the bird in here.”

“Do you think it will live?”

“I don't have a lot of experience with baby birds,” he replied, looking down at the shivering little form and the wide-open upthrust beak. “What do we feed it?”

“Maybe just a little warm milk to start.” She rubbed one finger along the blind little body. “He can't be more than a day or so old.”

Jeffrey lit the stove and set down a pot with a smidgen of milk. He thundered down the stairs to his bathroom, reappearing a moment later bearing a eyedropper. He washed it thoroughly, filled it with warm milk, and dropped a bit on his wrist. “Feels okay.”

“You do that like a real professional.”

The baby bird liked it immensely. Jeffrey dropped the milk in as carefully as he could, but the body did not have strength to keep the head steady. He chased the tiny weaving body around and in the process painted its entire form with a warm white covering. Finally he managed to get three drops on target, enough to turn the gaping little mouth into a tiny white lake. The bird took the milk with a swallow that shook its entire frame. There was a moment's pause; then the head raised back up and again begged for more.

The baby was gray and covered with a dusting of scraggly hairs over wrinkled yellowish skin. Its wings were mere nubs of featherless quills, its head a skull covered with translucent skin, its beak bigger than its head. Its claws were feathery wisps that could not close. It trembled continually, even after it accepted the last convulsive swallow, then curled up in Katya's palm and breathed in little gasps that shook its entire meager form.

Jeffrey went out and returned with a pair of clean dish towels. He lined a cereal bowl, then guided Katya's hands over and helped settle the tiny body. He watched her coo and caress the form for a moment. “Katya, I'm not sure it's going to last the night.”

She replied with a nod, refusing to take her eyes off the baby. “We have to try,” she said. “What will we do with him?
I can't take him to classes, and I can't get back home to feed him every hour.”

“I'll keep it with me here and take it to the office,” he said, and amended silently, if it survives. “You can take care of it there.”

She raised her head and gave him her vulnerable look. “You still want me to come in and work with you?”

“I wasn't so sure earlier.” He fought to keep his voice calm. “Katya, I care too much for you to be able to go on like this.”

“You've got to be honest with me,” she replied.

He nodded. “But I need the same in return.”

She lifted one hand up from the bird and stroked his cheek with a feather-soft touch. “It's been difficult for you, hasn't it?”

“Horrible.”

Her gaze turned inward. “I wish I knew what to do,” she murmured. “It's all so confusing.”

“What is?”

She focused on him, real fear in her eyes. “I'm trying, Jeffrey. I really am.”

“What is it that makes it so hard for you to open up with me?”

She started to say something, then changed her mind and dropped her eyes back to the little bird. “If I tell you, it won't work.”

“I don't understand, Katya.” He refrained the urge to pull out his hair by the roots. “If you don't tell me, how am I supposed to figure it out?”

“I don't know,” she said to the sleeping little bundle. “But I pray that you will, Jeffrey. Every night I pray.”

The Audley Pub stood on the corner of South Audley and Mount Street and maintained a charm reminiscent of a Victorian gentleman's library. Leather-lined booths ringed both the bar and the smaller, more stately saloon. Windows with diamond-shaped panes were set in the polished-wood walls.
A trio of crystal chandeliers reflected the cheery light from the saloon fireplace. The clientele came from every walk of society; taxi drivers rubbed shoulders with city gents and foreign tourists avoiding the scalper's prices of West End hotel bars.

The first person Jeffrey spotted upon entering that night was Sarah, the gallery owner who had acquired his Musin boat scene the day before. He sidled up next to her, said, “That was a nice painting you picked up yesterday. I'll miss having it around.”

She turned around. “Oh, hullo, Jeffrey. That was yours, then, was it? Pity about the masked bandit on the phone. Thought I had myself the buy of the century.”

“So did I.”

Her gaze turned penetrating. “That wasn't just a bit of fancy footwork on your part, was it?”

Jeffrey's shock was genuine. “I'd never do that.”

She searched his face a moment longer before permitting herself a hard smile. “No,” she replied. “You wouldn't, would you?”

“I don't even know who that other bidder was. Honest.”

“Honest, yes, that's such a pleasant word.” She patted his hand. “The world needs a few more like you, young Jeffrey. Come on then, you can use a bit of your honest killing and buy me a drink.”

When Jeffrey entered the circle of dealers, Andrew gave him a smile of approval and the words, “You must be celebrating something special to be out on the prowl like this.”

“He most certainly is,” Sarah replied for him. “He made an extra eighty thousand pounds off me yesterday by the skin of his teeth.”

“Sounds like a good story, that,” Andrew said.

The venomous little trader named Jackie slid from the booth, “I don't have time for such rubbish. Some of us have to work for our living.”

“Don't be daft, Jackie. It could have just as easily been you.”

“What rot.” He tossed off the last of his drink, gestured angrily at Jeffrey with the empty glass. “He's got a handle to the royal family, gets them coming and going, buying and selling the royal seat warmers. By rights it ought to stay in British hands.”

Sarah turned to Jeffrey. “Seen much of the Queen Mother lately, dear?”

“Not since I stopped by the palace for tea last week,” Jeffrey replied.

She turned back to Jackie. “That eliminates your little theory, Jackie.”

“Rubbish. You don't think he'd tell us, do you? Nobody's that daft. Not even a Yank.” Jackie wheeled around and stormed from the bar.

“Rude, if you ask me,” Sarah said. “Sorry, Jeffrey. Guess I'll have to apologize for him.”

“It's okay.”

“He's right in a way,” Andrew said mildly. “That's basically how all Mount Street got its start, you know. Catering to the carriage trade during the social season. Word was, a visit to the Kensington High Street shops would mean too long a time between martinis.”

“Jackie's losing his shop,” grumbled a dealer Jeffrey knew only by sight. “You can't expect him to pat this successful young lad on the head and say, ‘Well done.' ”

“He's dug his own grave, Tim,” Andrew replied. “I'm sorry to say.”

“No you're not,” Sarah said. “Sorry, I mean. You positively loathe the man and always have.”

“That may well be, but it's beside the point. If he'd had the slightest shred of business acumen, he'd have spent more time building allies and less ripping off anyone who came within arm's length.”

“And I suppose you've always handled your affairs with white gloves.”

“Don't be silly. Of course not. But what I mean to say is with Jackie you were positively certain that he'd do his level best to turn a dirty trick whenever possible.”

“At least you knew where you stood with him,” Tim replied.

Sarah set down her glass. “I didn't see you leaping up to help him in his hour of need.”

“I don't deal in his sort of goods, though, do I.”

“Jackie's problem,” Andrew persisted, “is that he's like a chess player who can't see but one move ahead. He's only interested in making an extra quid, honest or dishonest, regardless of who might be hurt. I told him that, too. Quite a few times, actually.”

That raised eyebrows around the table. “I never thought Jackie would allow anyone to tell him anything,” Sarah said.

“Oh, he always denied it.”

“He would.”

Jeffrey asked, “Why did you bother?”

“Because, lad, Jackie and his kind hurt us all. It serves no one in the end, especially not Jackie.”

“What did he do?” Jeffrey asked.

“Yes, Andrew,” the stranger drawled. “Do be so kind as to give the boy a few pointers.”

“We'd have to turn him over to you for that,” Sarah replied acidly.

“Nothing that a thousand other dealers haven't done,” Andrew replied. “Passing rubbish off as authentic antiques, disguising repairs with a new coat of varnish, calling it a genuine article and pricing it accordingly.”

“Buffing new silver and stamping it with an old mark,” Sarah added.

“Jackie's problem was that he did it too much and too openly,” someone else offered.

“He cut his own throat,” another agreed. “Drove off all
the good dealers, and couldn't get his hands on any decent wares.”

“A visit to Jackie's store was like a trip to Alice in Wonderland,” Sarah added. “You were certain that nothing you saw was real, and everything Jackie said was utter nonsense.”

“And all the while he'd be doing his level best to convince you it was a steal.”

“That reminds me of a good one I heard the other day,” Andrew said. “Seems a chap read in the local paper up in Glasgow that there was a genuine Louis XIV commode going for a quid.”

That brought a laugh. A commode was a sort of ornate chest on legs, much like what in America would be called a dining room sideboard. The going rate for an authentic Louis XIV commode would have been at least thirty thousand pounds.

“The local dealers had quite a good chuckle over that one,” Andrew went on. “Strange thing, though. Nobody actually bothered to check up on it but this one chap I know.”

“You're not expecting us to believe this,” someone said.

“This is the truth, I tell you. No one even bothered to ring up the number.”

“I'm not the least bit surprised,” Sarah told him. “I can just hear it now. You give them a ring and find yourself chatting with a fellow recently imported from Sicily. At no extra charge the lucky buyer finds, stuffed inside the commode, a body in perfectly good working order, save for quite a small hole in the middle of his chest.”

“That wasn't it at all,” Andrew replied. “Anyway, this chap I know called and the woman on the other end said, yes, she had this commode for sale, and yes, the price was one pound. So he figured it was worth at least driving by. Which he did. And the lady was quite correct. The article was both authentic and in mint condition.”

“Someone's putting you on.”

“They're not, I tell you. It was exactly what she said it was.”

“For a quid.”

“One pound exactly,” Andrew agreed.

“Go on, then. What's the catch?”

“There wasn't one. Well, not for the buyer. It turned out her husband had recently passed on, and left instructions in his will for the commode to be sold and all proceeds to go to his secretary. The trouble was, you see, his wife knew all about the little affair he and his secretary had been having.”