Man With a Squirrel (25 page)

Hop nodded, standing on one foot, pulling tiny yellow underpants around the other foot. Once Hop was dressed, Fred was going to lose this moment's dramatic advantage. Much of the man's backbone was in his suit.

“At ten Forham Place?” Fred asked.

Hop nodded. The change in his balance caused by the nod almost toppled him. He put on the undershirt—Brooks Brothers, sleeveless, long, and sleazy.

“What time?” Fred asked. “Your parents are traveling?”

“At the opera,” Hop mumbled. “Eight to midnight.”

Marek said, “We were six people who will all deny it.”

Hop put the long socks on, then the shirt—white shirt with a pattern of lines forming a hint of check. Marek scratched his right armpit absently.

Fred told Hop, “Your friend may be in a lot of trouble if you won't come forward.”

Hop pulled on his pants. He shrugged. His flab fell away. He slung a green silk necktie on with a flourish. “Don't call me,” he told Marek, putting on his jacket. He gave Fred an evil look—premature. He was not ready for his exit line, having neglected to put on his shoes. Marek held them up.

“These I will throw out the window unless you tell me good-bye nicely,” Marek announced. He smiled and watched Hop brushing creases out of his suit.

“Who is your ugly friend?” Hop asked Marek.

“An ugly friend of me,” Marek said. “Here, take your shoes. They have been on the street.” Marek dropped them one at a time for Hop to retrieve and put on. They were heavy walking shoes, as British as the suit, and they clumped.

“Don't call me,” Marek said as Hop, shod, flounced out. “He is a homosexual fairy,” Marek explained loudly as they listened to Hop's shoes descending the stairs. “Now, Fred. We will pretend you knew I wanted to talk with you. I am thinking I want to buy some things Oona sold you.”

“You do?”

Marek sat on the chair from which Hop had retrieved his clothes. It was not clear where Marek's clothes were. Closed doors off this room must lead to bathroom, closet, bedroom—or perhaps Marek lived naked. He was at ease in that state.

Fred sat on the green velvet cushion of the piano bench. “What do you want to buy?”

“For three thousand dollars I shall buy the squirrel and the other painting Oona gave you or sold you; or perhaps you did not pay for it, yes?”

“Three thousand dollars,” Fred repeated.

“You will have to trust me,” Marek said. “I shall have the money soon after you give the paintings to me again. I will sign a piece of paper saying I promise you the money.”

Fred said, “The deal is already done.”

“So,” Marek said. “You have the squirrel.”

“You want to tell me what's going on?”

Marek said, “I am not receiving enough money. Three thousand and five hundred more is my last offer.”

“How much is he willing to pay to get them back?” Fred asked.

Marek looked open and secretive. The expression went well with his nudity. “Who?” Marek asked.

Fred told him, “I am not at liberty to say.”

Marek crossed his legs. His genitals lolled across his thigh, a large pet, petulant.

“The person sold these things by mistake,” Marek said. “My offer is six times what Oona paid.”

“You mentioned three thousand five hundred.”

“Three thousand is enough. When you can bring them. After I get my money.”

“No deal, Marek. Listen—the person who wants to buy back these things…”

Marek clenched his lips. “I find a note only in my door,” he said. “I have not seen these person.”

Fred stood. “I want to mention that if Oona was murdered, it could be by these persons. And I think it was.”

“I shall tell you nothing,” Marek announced. “You shall not frighten information out of me the way you did to poor Hop, play-acting you are the big and tough American cop gangster.”

Marek followed Fred to the apartment door. “Mr. Bartholdi says I shall have everything. It is written in her will. But it takes many, many months, perhaps a year, maybe more, before I may touch anything, except the many beautiful presents Oona has been giving me in the past. I cannot open her doors and sell, even, as Hop asks me to do so he may stand behind the desk and stroke my beautiful things.”

“Be careful of these people,” Fred said.

“I must find an appraiser. And I must pay the appraiser. I have no money. It is almost gone. I must eat. I must buy clothing.”

Fred said, “Marek, be careful.”

“When will you bring the painting of the squirrel and that other one I gave you by mistake, when I was stupefied by grief, being offended that Oona was dead in shame and violence?”

“You have a way to reach these people?” Fred asked. He'd offered Manny too much money. He'd played that wrong, making a strong bid, trying to be fair as well as showing Manny enough slack to work with. Manny had decided—or whoever he shared his information with had decided—that the last fragment was worth more if he put the whole thing back together.

Fred said, “Would anyone think I was a fool if I took a chainsaw to a green Lance-Flamme, cut it transversely into steaks, and undertook to market the slices?”

Marek yawned. He picked his gloves up from the piano's top and started putting the left one on, with as much loving care as if he were settling a foreskin.

“These people are dangerous,” Fred insisted.

“I should have told you nothing. You, Fred, who were my friend, will go to them to get more money for yourself, and so leave me in poverty and misery. Therefore, go!”

Fred said, “Tell me if you hear from these people. Will you do that?”

“Ho!” Marek exclaimed. “And ho again, Fred Taylor. I tell you nothing. I am not Oona Imry's blood for no reason. She would not and I will not. Marek Hricsó is not everyone's fool.”

*   *   *

Fred had not intended to stop at Mountjoy Street, but he was uneasy. Marek was covered for the night of Oona's death. Fred was more than uneasy.

Clayton was out. Fred wrote a note on one of Clay's index cards and put it into the mail slot of his front door, the street door, where Clay could not miss it when he returned.

The people who cut the painting want the fragments back. They are dangerous, I believe. In case I am right, stay somewhere else. If they track me they find you. All best, Fred.

29

Fred stood on Mountjoy Street. The sun came out, thumbed its nose, and evaded. The glistening steep slope, lined with brick sidewalks and buildings, ended at the river. This was all Copley's land in its day; a farm not far from Boston Common. It was four o'clock. Fred went back inside to call Molly, since he recalled that he was missing the afternoon's entertainment.

“Byron Ponderosa here,” said a voice Fred recognized, at Molly's number.

“Would you put Molly on?” Fred asked.

“Can't do it,” the cowboy artist said.

“Her sister Ophelia there?” Fred asked.

“Yep.”

“Would you put her on?”

“Don't mind if I do. I put her on all the time.” Fred heard him call, “Yo, Filly!”

“Not much of a party,” Ophelia complained. “Molly took the kids shopping. She's not back. Where are you?”

“Ophelia, where's this rest home of Cover-Hoover's?”

“Not even donors are told that,” Ophelia said. “Only the victims and survivors. She's made so many enemies doing what she's doing—the perpetrators involved in all these things—there's nothing they'd rather know than how to find their victims and stop them talking. Everyone's life is in danger.”

“You believe all this?” Fred asked. He was surprised. Ophelia's general game plan was so cynical he had taken it for granted that she had rejected it. Had Ophelia really bought in?

“I would expect you to deny it,” Ophelia said. “Even though you clearly see how Molly's life has been blighted.”

Fred tried Cover-Hoover's number for the hell of it, but put no message on the machine. An exceedingly warm invitation to do so followed the opening gambit, “This is a safe line.” He tried Kwik-Frame and received no response on a Sunday afternoon. He sat at his desk and drummed his fingers, telling himself, I'm letting this painting get in front of logic. Make the question easy. Most things involving force are easy. If we eliminate Marek as the person who killed Oona Imry, then someone else did it. Then I'm back to the Cover-Hoover crowd. Pretend one of them killed her. Why? Gain? How? Revenge? For what?

How much do they believe their own line? Do they genuinely think people care so much about their fantasies they'll come after the survivor victims?

What about that retired symphony conductor whose son or daughter announces, to the world or any part of it that wants to listen, “My mom used to beat me with a broomstick until my dad would drag me out to be offered up to the full moon and the bats and his poker club.”

This was no joke. This could ruin lives. Suppose the symphony conductor has a gun, and can simplify the reason for the fog of grief and accusation he finds himself in to a single target, and call it Cover-Hoover. Suppose he's lost his son or daughter, his reputation in the world, maybe his wife as well, for this could not make her happy; maybe he's not retired so he loses his livelihood; maybe there's been a suit and the jury buys the story and hits him with a penalty of a half-million bucks. In such a case, Cover-Hoover would do well to watch her back. Pressure like that, a parent could go berserk. I think I understand but I'm no parent. I ought to ask Molly what she thinks.

They don't know I'm connected to Molly, do they?

I'll follow Ann Clarke tomorrow after work.

If they are coming after the parts of the painting they sold, their motives are not purely psycho-healing social work. Among them there's a healthy avarice. They understand there's money to be made.

Manny would have no trouble helping Oona catch that train. Forget the question why, for the moment. He has the size, and the character.

Which of them approached Oona in the first place? Or was it more than one?

*   *   *

Fred was still sitting at his desk, hesitating. He had nothing more than Bookrajian's voice to go by, and Dee's assurance, “He's good.” But it was time to have a look at the next step. He telephoned the headquarters of the Cambridge Police Department and was switched over to the detective's office.

“Ernie Bookrajian's in Atlantic City getting laid the hard way,” Fred was told. “Whatta you want him for?”

“When does he get back?”

“See, he wins a free trip for two on the bus,” his informant went on. “Beyond that he pays meals, hotel, limo, booze, and he's gonna bet, right? And he's gonna hafta let her play too, right? We figure that's about three K it's gonna cost him.”

“When does he get back?”

“What do you want?”

“Bookrajian and I already talked,” Fred said. “Some things we were talking about, you know? It's a continuing conversation.”

“He's on like a witness protection program,” the Cambridge end of the line claimed. That inspired a scuffle of laughter. “Monday morning he'll be here at eight. I was you I'd wait, call about ten.”

“Ask him to call Fred Taylor,” Fred said. He gave both numbers, Molly's and his line in Clayton's office. It was nothing that couldn't wait, what he had to say. What was dead was dead. The Kwik-Frame crowd was not going to destroy the remainder of the painting now. They wanted to put it together as badly, maybe, as he and Clayton did.

Who was the subject of the portrait? Mr. Pix, as he was known to his friends. Fred knew of only one African head in all of Copley's work, but it was painted much later than 1765.

Before he left, Fred wrote another note to drop in Clay's door.

The point is I don't know how badly these people want what they threw away. Call me. F

Fred drove along Commonwealth Avenue looking for signs of incipient engorgement in the buds on the magnolias. All this water should be giving them ideas. There wasn't a hint of the first tingling throb. Too early in the year. The magnolias were closed tighter than Oona's shop.

“Things have their own logic,” Fred said aloud. The statement had the vacuous ring of American pop wisdom, like the recently best-selling title
Wherever You Go, There You Are.
It was just dumb. Even so, his instinct, speaking aloud in a dumb phrase, urged he not push too hard to turn events while he understood so little of what was causing them.

He'd see where Ann Clarke went tomorrow.

He drove along the gray mud of the riverbank until he picked up Route 2 and swung west and north toward Arlington, saying to himself, I ought to hear the rest of Molly's story. He thought of her shopping with the kids, and smiled.

*   *   *

Ophelia and her cowboy painter lover did not ride into the sunset until well after sunset. They left behind them a presentation copy of the fat book, eighteen by eighteen inches, entitled modestly, in letters two inches high,
Byron Ponderosa,
beneath the smaller
Best-Loved Works of.
The picture on the cover was fake, pale, ill-drawn imitation Remington. “It's not a coffee-table book, it's about right for the bathtub,” Molly said, when they were gone.

The only good moment of the evening had been when Ophelia referred to her lover as an ‘old cowpoke' and then tittered and blushed and said, “Oh, mercy, I never thought! I didn't mean it that way!”

Terry loved the Ponderosa book almost as much as she had been awed by the man himself, who called her ‘Podner.' She sat on the couch with the book in her lap, struggling to manage its weight. “He must love horses a lot,” Terry called into the kitchen, where her mother and Fred were cleaning up the aftermath of beer and pizza and a big salad.