Man With a Squirrel (27 page)

Fred told him, “Can't talk now. Got to keep moving. You're OK there?”

“I shall try the MFA library tomorrow,” Clay said. “I must look deeper into this Copley puzzle. You did say it is signed?”

“It's OK on that front.”

He'd forgotten Billy, at the reference desk, who was said to be the one who had talked to someone on the telephone about a picture signed I. S. C. Pix. He went back in and asked Molly, “Did you check with Billy?”

“I'll go through his pile. He's gone to lunch early.” She fingered through the clip of pink memo slips until she found the one with the right date and message; she read the phone number to Fred.

“Shit. It's Kwik-Frame. That's no surprise. I wanted the number at their secret hideout. Gotta go. Be careful.”

Molly said, “Don't look like that.”

31

Fred drove to Walden Street and parked near the railroad bridge. He took his necktie off and tossed it into the backseat. It still wasn't raining. It felt like a different land. It was twelve-thirty, and not warm. Fred was wearing a sweater under his tweed jacket, but no coat. He looked down at the tracks. The police caution tape had been taken away. Oona had been dead about a week—time enough to begin to know the ropes wherever she had landed in the hereafter.

Fred walked to Mass. Ave. and crossed it so as to see into Kwik-Frame from the far side. The view was good enough for him to make out Boardman (Manny) Templeton and Ann Clarke inside, talking at the counter. If Ann Clarke left for lunch he'd follow her and initiate a conversation. If Manny went to sacrifice unnecessary protein to his pectorals, Fred planned to amble into the store and apologize to the despondent woman in red curls for his recent hasty departure. He picked up a sandwich and ate it on the sidewalk, keeping an eye on Kwik-Frame's entrance; upstairs-office windows offered signs that read
MARTIAL ARTS
and
REAL ESTATE
.

Manny came out, loosening his shoulders in a black hooded sweatshirt he'd thrown on over Mickey Mouse. He looked like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Scimunito, named after a justly ill-known painter of the Italian Renaissance. Fred waited, giving Manny time to decide which direction to go to seek his prey. The framer turned toward Porter, crossed the street, and went into the subway entrance. Depending where Manny was headed, Fred might have more than an hour.

Fred finished his eggplant sub. When he walked into the store, Ann Clarke was on the pink counter phone, telling it, “I know.” She made a signal to Fred that meant, I'll be through in a minute, or, Your order is ready. She said once more into the phone, “I know,” then, “I will. Yes. I'll be careful.”

She hung up, looked past Fred, and read the empty words graven upon the far side of the universe;
Wherever You Go, There You Are.
Oona's spirit had read the words already, spat into the elephant leg provided by the management for that purpose, and exclaimed, “I come all this way to learn garbage like this?”

“Your order,” Ann Clarke said. “I'll get it.”

Fred waited at the counter while Ann Clarke drifted back to Manny's workspace and found his yard of cloth, now stretched to thirty-four inches square and framed in fake black bamboo. She looked the question at him whether it would do. The little fish or sparrows cavorted in a strained way on the rack.

“Perfect,” Fred said, tapping his manila envelope on the counter.

“I'll wrap it then.”

Fred pulled out cash to pay her. She put the cardboard corners on, then wrapped his purchase in brown paper and fastened it with tape.

“You got rid of those Mexican frames,” Fred said.

“At that price people couldn't resist them.” She handed Fred his change from the two twenties he'd given her.

“Too bad,” Fred said. “I thought I could use one for this—here, I'll show you.” He pulled out the full-face picture of the dead man with his mouth gaping.

Fred had been prepared to run around the counter and catch her, in case sudden collapse under stress was a family trait. She did not move or change color, but stood looking down at the Xerox, which was as clear as the photograph from which it had been taken. Her eyes became wider. Aside from that there was no flicker of life or emotion on her face. “Satan sent you,” Ann Clarke said. She stood like a discarded Victorian marble statue commemorating an unhappy virtue like Forbearance. Fred asked, “What did you expect?”

Ann Clarke gaped at the picture of her father. She walked to the front of the store and locked the door. She turned the light out. Fred had stayed with her in case she was heading for the street. “What does he want?” Ann Clarke asked.

Fred took a guess. “Mr. Pix.”

Ann Clarke kept nodding. Otherwise she did not move. The moment was hypnotic. She resembled the crouching plastic dog in the back window of the car in front of you, its head moving as if it were interested in the passing world in the mildest way.

“Is it here?” Fred asked. “Does Boardman Templeton have it? Does your sister? Or Cover-Hoover?”

Ann Clarke shook her head and told him, “I am lost.”

“Look,” Fred said. “I don't have all day.” He pointed down at his picture. “That's your dad, right?”

“He was disowned.”

“I'll say. He was disowned but good. But he was living with you, right? You tell anyone he was missing?”

Ann Clarke shifted mental gears and focused. “My father was not missing. He was gone. Disowned a long time ago. He was replaced by something else, a shell.”

“I'm worried about your sister,” Fred said.

“Keep out of my sister. Kill me now. The others are safe.” For the first time her face assumed an expression, which was spite. “I will tell you nothing. Kill me. How will you do it?”

Fred said, “Why don't we go someplace and talk this over; maybe sit down?” Ann Clarke took off her apron. She went into the back of the shop and grabbed a lined tan raincoat from a hook, putting it on over the navy pants and brown sweater she was wearing. She said, “I'm ready.”

“Oh, the painting,” Fred reminded her. “That's in the shop? Mr. Pix? You remember?”

She shook her head. “Somewhere else,” she said.

“Let's go then,” Fred said. He followed her to the door, which she unlocked and locked again once they were on the street. Fred carried his wrapped frame job. Ann Clarke carried the envelope with the pictures of her disowned old man. Fred walked her to where he'd left his car on Walden Street. He had gotten a ticket for parking in a spot intended only for residents of Cambridge. He wondered, What happened to Oona's car? He put Ann Clarke in his passenger seat and the framed cloth in the backseat before he sat next to his captive.

“Where will you kill me?” she asked. She showed no surprise, displeasure, or impatience with her situation. She didn't seem drugged, or crazed; just absurdly passive.

“Shall we pick up Sandy?” Fred tried.

“She's safe. Are we waiting for a train?”

Fred's back crawled. “Let's sit somewhere else,” he said.

“That woman was trying to find us,” Ann Clarke said as Fred started the car. “Now you have found me.”

*   *   *

Fred started driving. If Molly were available he would take this zombie to the library to see if Molly's sense could straighten her out before the kingdom of shrinkdom bent her worse. If he delivered her to Bookrajian in this state she'd likely be committed to Cambridge City Hospital's psycho ward, one of whose top docs was continually in the news and TV talk shows for his best-selling published therapeutic work with victims of UFO abductions.

The best spiritual advice Fred had ever heard was from an old cowpoke who suggested, “Lift your tail when you shit.” Most other advice he'd heard, however much anyone paid for it, he could pass up. But Ann Clarke was beyond heeding the cowpoke's wisdom. The loving-caring had driven her up to the eyes into her own asshole. No wonder she acted like someone in a dark place.

Fred made up his mind and turned right, toward Boston.

“I said we should destroy him,” Ann Clarke said. “Manny wouldn't.”

“Mr. Pix?”

“Now I will be destroyed.” She folded her hands in her lap. “He will win.”

*   *   *

Fred found an empty slot on Chestnut Street and put the car into it. He came around, opened Ann Clarke's door, and helped her out. He took the woman inside. Teddy was at the desk. Teddy was settling down more, rational most of the time. Ann Clarke saw Teddy and nodded. “Mr. Pix,” she said.

Teddy looked a question at Fred. They had only a few rules for the house, but those included No Women and Mind Your Business. Teddy even dressed coherently now. Today, for the desk job—some of the guys couldn't rest unless there was a sentry working—he was wearing jeans and a red flannel shirt and a yellow neckrag. His Afro was modified to where, if he had to, he could get work in a bank. He'd remember his last name pretty soon, go back to Atlanta, and pick up whatever he had been studying before he joined the spooks.

Fred told Ann, “This is a friend of mine. He's not Mr. Pix, and he's no relation. Nobody wants to hurt you here, not even me.

“Teddy, this woman's name is Ann. Do you mind if she sits with you till I come back?”

“Sure. Hello, Ann.”

“Nobody in the back room?” Fred asked. “If she needs it?” The back room, provided with its own john, could be locked from the outside and enjoyed soundproofing and no windows. They'd put it in for when somebody went off the deep end.

“Sure,” Teddy said. “The lady's fine with me till you get back. Suppose she wants to talk to pass the time, is there a subject that interests her?”

Fred went into the kitchen of their building, modified from apartments to its original status as a rooming house. He took a chair and brought it back to the front hall so Ann Clarke could sit across from Teddy. “She may think the devil is trying to get her.”

Teddy inclined his head. “I can understand that,” he said. “That is one place I been.”

*   *   *

He'd thought, driving over, following more or less the Red Line's path, So Manny is taking the T somewhere? Fred did not want to spend so much quality time with Ann Clarke that he lost sight of everything else. She really was safe now, with Teddy—safer than she'd been for many years.

Fred put his car next to Clayton's in the space off Mountjoy Street, and walked down the hill and along Charles to Oona's. The shop was dark, and the old Closed sign Oona had used was hanging in the door, behind the glass. But light shone in the back room. Fred rang the buzzer and, in a few moments, opened the door. No bell rang. It had been ripped off the door. The door had not been locked. Marek always locked it. Fred locked it himself and brushed through to the back room, calling, “Marek?” The room was empty of human life, though filled with its byproducts—which were noticeably fewer in number.

There was nothing here alarming other than the scent of fresh alarm—and the light burning for no reason, and the front door unlocked. Fred took the back stairs up, searched fast through Oona's apartment, calling, “Marek!” Her rooms already had the despondent feel of an abandoned church. Fred ran up the last flight. The silence was wrong. He opened the door and saw Marek stretched on the floor on his back, his arms out, wearing only the black jeans and gloves, his bare feet tied with a black thing on the far side of one of the Steinway's legs. He didn't move; was dead or, no, not conscious. Fred tore off the gag made of the white shirt the pianist had been wearing.

Fred was puzzled. If the intention was to immobilize the guy, he'd just untie his feet when he came to—but then Fred understood the state of Marek Hricsó's hands inside the gloves. The fingers, even the thumbs, were bent and swollen into blobs. They looked like Mickey Mouse's gloves, but on this man were stuffed with a pain that would be horrifying both as physical fact and for its implication. Marek's hands lay on the Oriental rug without a twitch. The guy was unconscious for good reason. Manny Templeton had stopped by to do lunch.

32

Fred watched Marek return to consciousness. It was slow and exceedingly painful. He'd untied his feet immediately, and covered Marek with blankets he took from the ormolu cheesecake of a mad Bavarian prince's wet dream bedroom he found behind one of the doors off this room. Into his bedchamber Marek had crammed everything gilt and curly he could find in Oona's shop: five-foot-tall candlesticks and all. Fred had been obliged to go down to Oona's kitchen looking for brandy or whiskey, but had to settle on slivovitz.

Marek needed medical attention right away. Nice sense of humor Manny had, tying the feet together with their long black socks, leaving the man no hands to free them. When Marek surfaced he was dazed by pain. He choked against the second dose of Oona's slivovitz, and swung his head back and forth on the carpet to look at his extended hands: grotesques in their strained leather. His eyes filled with tears. He opened his mouth and gave a long sob of despair.

Fred said, “There are good hand people.”

Marek sobbed again. He gagged and puked next to the right side of his face. Fred slid him gently from the pool. He said, “I'll take you to the best person there is. I called her to expect you, on Oona's phone downstairs.”

Marek shook his head. “A clock smashed with a hammer, that is not fixed. Take me anywhere. He is coming back to kill me after he decides I have nothing more to tell him.” Marek tried to sit and failed. His face went gray again. The muscles in his arms and chest jerked. Marek lay still. He said, “After you leave that day, I start to think what I am thinking while you are here making Hop hop. I think that one who wrote the note, or you, Fred Taylor—one of you is the one who killed Oona. First I think it is you. Therefore I will not tell you anything in case I must kill you. But now I know it is this other one. And I can do nothing to him with these hands. Help me stand.”