Madonna of the Apes (24 page)

Chapter Sixty-three

“I’ll walk you back,” Fred said while Mandy began to get herself together. It was after eleven. He unleashed Bernie’s phone and dialed Clayton’s number.

“Heard the phone ring,” he said. “Couldn’t get to it. You called?”

“I am sleeping,” Clay scolded. “Time enough in the morning.”

“Was it you?”

“I am sleeping,” Clay repeated, and the connection went.

“Give me the number here,” Mandy demanded. “In case I notice I’ve lost an earring.”

She was oddly subdued when Fred left her at her street door, and would not invite him up. “Gotta shift gears,” she said. “Get ready for the next thing.”

“The airplane trip. The wedding. Cleveland,” Fred said. “Sunday night.”

“All the above.”

“Anticipation,” Fred agreed.

The rain had slowed. No one would claim that it had stopped. It was poised, more or less, waiting to increase to a flow you could call rain again.

The telephone was ringing when he let himself into Bernie’s garage. Still ringing when he got upstairs.

“I’m afraid.” Suzette Shaughnessy’s voice, husky, subdued and tense.

Fred said, “Can you talk? Where are you?”

Silence. “He’ll hear me.”

“Who?”

“The man who was there before. Carl. He’s…”

“Where?”

“Same place. I made a mistake, came back.”

“You’re there now? I’ll be…”

“I can’t,” she whispered hoarsely. The connection was gone.

***

Fred eased into the windbreaker again, flexing his arms. He should run, or telephone to get her anonymous help, but all his instincts told him to take it slow. So far, Suzette at her most obvious had invariably been Suzette at her most devious.

What was going on?

Bernie’s number was printed on the face of the phone. She’d picked it off while she was here, while he was talking with Mitchell. Yes. And since he told her it was out of service, she had taken it for granted—being used to the art business—that couldn’t be true.

How long since the first call? Assume it had been Suzette an hour before, after his and Mandy’s late supper, attempting to interrupt the other diversion, and before he walked her home.

He reached the wet sidewalk and started downhill.

That was a long time for one sustained emergency. Or had the first call been to invite him to come with her, hang around, maybe in the background, while she tried her own methods on Carl?

Then failing to raise Fred, she’d set off to try her luck by herself?

If so, by this time she and Carl had undoubtedly concluded that they had a common interest. Just the one project they could work together. She wanted Clayton’s chest. His Leonardo. Which everyone, half-paralyzed with the desire to protect self-interest by prevarication, had agreed, by common consent, simply to call
the chest.
Fred was all she could work on. Also, Fred had seen to it that she be convinced he owned it now. She wouldn’t say so, but she knew it was worth the gross national product of Slobovia. Otherwise none of this made sense. She’d do what she had to.

Half his instincts, stirred by the agonized worry in her voice, told him to run. It was what she wanted him to do. If it was also what she needed him to do, too bad. The winning half of his instincts, almost smugly, counseled a brisk and watchful midnight stroll instead: citizen responding to the Surgeon General’s advice to walk off unnecessary flab after dessert rather than climb into that extra beer. Fred wasn’t far from Pekham Street. He’d get there.

Suppose that by now Suzette and Carl had formed an alliance. Or Suzette and Peaslee, if he was still around. In that case, since she was convinced Fred had the Leonardo, Carl should be waiting in the alley with some persuasion. It must be another honey trap. It was how the opposition thought. The only difference was that, since they’d already tried Fred once, and failed, with sex, this time the trap was baited with the pheromones not of sex, but fear. The damsel in distress. “Which boils down to sex anyway,” Fred grumbled. “She’s not an old man.”

The streets were not without occasional traffic, even of the odd pedestrian dodging rain that had begun to blow in sheets, shaking the dark new leaves on the bristling trees of Beacon Hill and denting new blossoms that seemed to clang with it until Fred shook his head and put the noise where it belonged, into the charged gutters and on the metal tops of trash containers waiting in the side yards.

When he turned onto Pekham Street, maintaining his quick saunter, it was clear that whatever the trap might be, it was already sprung. Five blocks away, downhill, a knot of activity churned there, almost facing Franklin Tilley’s building: the swirling blue lights, the sirens, the officious uniforms in orange slickers, the excess of municipal squad cars, fire trucks, ambulances.

Fred let his pace pick up, as anyone’s would. Suzette’s blonde hair rose in a cloud before him, matted with blood and brains, the back of her skull blown off. Rain pounded onto the black raincoat, bunched under her…no. Carl had been waiting in the alley all right, but in a horizontal posture. That was Carl. Under the streetlights the large hole in his T-shirt leaked diluted blood into the tilted puddles of Pekham Street.

No, that was still wrong. Fred kept walking. Pekham Street was tilted. Puddles don’t tilt. Trick of the eye, that was. Carl, on the folding stretcher, the baggy shorts wet with rain, and without the Nikes, was being loaded into a gaping vehicle. Fred kept walking. No worried Suzette huddled in the shadows, or stood hobnobbing with emergency personnel.

The windows of Franklin Tilley’s apartment were dark. In the other windows of the building, and of the surrounding buildings, dark shapes moved inquisitively in front of dim light. The inhabitants of Beacon Hill would keep their windows modestly lit during what must become an unpleasant tragedy. Nobody who lived in such surroundings would wish to be seen to have a prurient interest.

Fred walked on to Charles Street, swung right toward the subway and was almost there before he remembered, “It won’t be running now. Too late.” He walked on as far as the Ritz, a good half hour, and stood across from it, thinking. Three in the morning. Without causing a commotion from which he and Clayton might never recover, there was no way to learn if Suzette was in her room. The desk wouldn’t ring, they wouldn’t tell him if she was there. Pay that much for a room, they’re not going to let on to a dismal stranger whether you are at home or not. No way was he going to get through the lobby at this time of night, and let himself up to her floor either by elevator or the fire stairs.

She was here; or somewhere else, and healthy, Fred had no doubt. Hell, she could be holed up with Peaslee, in Franklin’s pad.

The very few things Fred knew for certain could be arranged and rearranged a hundred ways.

He started walking again. What stood out was the likelihood that, for whatever reason might be percolating in that elusive brain, Suzette had expected and wanted Fred to find himself involved in the consequences of Carl’s abrupt departure from this vale of tears.

Unless she’d been on the up and up. Even if that was true, Carl was no threat now, was he?

Look Suzette in the eye and ask. That was the only way to learn what lie she’d tell. Find her tomorrow. She wouldn’t go far. She wanted Clay’s
Madonna.
She’d come looking for him. He could rely on that.

Find her tomorrow. Not tonight.

He’d stay by the
Madonna.

Fred let himself quietly into his office on Mountjoy Street, and stretched out on the couch. “They’re getting serious,” he muttered, before he slept.

Chapter Sixty-four

Fred woke, bathed in a sudden sweat, at the sound of Clayton’s foot on the spiral staircase. “It’s noon,” Clayton was saying. Six A.M. by Fred’s watch. He’d gotten onto his feet before Clay reached the room. “London time,” Clay explained. “Being a light sleeper, I heard you come in.”

“Carl’s been killed,” Fred said. “I have to move. Don’t know…”

“I telephoned Miss Dibble at two this morning,” Clay went on. “And gave her…Carl?”

“I mentioned Carl to you,” Fred said. “Played the part of a bodyguard or enforcer over on Pekham Street.”

“Of course I remember. I never had the pleasure,” Clay said. “Killed?”

“Hole in the chest. Gunshot. Suzette’s involved, Shaughnessy.”

“The dealer,” Clay dismissed her.

“Yes. Since I don’t understand where we are, I grabbed a couple hours shuteye. Didn’t want to wake you again. Figured it would wait.”

“She promised to fax me the inventory,” Clay said. “While we’re waiting…? I regret I have no coffee, Fred. It is a stimulant. I shall go for the fax. I shall be glad to bring coffee back for you, if I pass a suitable establishment that is open at this time of day.”

“I’ll go,” Fred said. “You start adjusting your mind. I am going to have to do some version of what you call my civic duty before many more hours have passed. Prepare your mind. Before the day’s out, your house could be filled with cops.”

“I have done nothing…” Clay started.

“They’ll be glad to hear it,” Fred promised him. “Do we hide the
Madonna
or what? If we hide her, it has to be outside the house, and it has to be quick. You be thinking. I’ll go for the fax.”

***

There was no rain. It had so absolutely departed from the dawning sky that there seemed no possible explanation for the wetness of the streets. Fred’s watch read six-fifteen.

Boston is not a large city. Nothing like the City That Never Sleeps—New York. But there are island oases of wakefulness. Fred stopped for coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts and carried it with him to the Kinko’s on Beacon Hill.

“If I’m going to work with this joker,” he remarked, “he has to learn new tricks. Putting in his own fax machine would be a start.”

“Tell me about it,” the girl back of the counter agreed. She was rummaging under the counter for Fred’s order. “Tell him to put in a copy machine while he’s at it. I’ll go home.”

“Let me ask you this,” Fred started. The girl was sullen, tired, bored, and bedraggled. She could use some cheering up. But nothing occurred to Fred to say that might accomplish that mission.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Just a dumb observation I was going to make,” Fred said. “But it’s too dumb to make. And dumb as it is, I can’t even think of it. Six o’clock in the morning, everything’s pretty dumb.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “I’ve been on since eleven.”

“I’ll tell him not to buy the machine,” Fred promised. “This way I get out, see people.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “Also this way I keep my job.”

The city was waking slowly. The air, drowsy with moisture, was clean and fresh and promised all kinds of good things. Lights in the buildings flickered on here and there as early risers found the bathroom switches and reached for the taps. Taxis prowled through the streets, looking for fares on their way to stand in long lines at the airport for early flights.

Fred avoided Pekham Street, but stopped again at the Dunkin’ Donuts to buy breakfast. Coffee and doughnuts. He bought extra doughnuts. Clayton might want an early morning doughnut along with his herbal tea, his Hint o’ Mint or Cinnamon Scam. Possibly nobody had told him that sugar was a stimulant; like anything else that helps you stay alive.

“I am all a-tremble,” Clay said, reaching out for the Kinko’s bag and resisting, with a shuddering smirk of righteousness, the doughnuts’ siren song. “You didn’t look?”

Fred shook his head. “What do we do with the
Madonna?
Hide her?”

“Put her in the racks with the other paintings,” Clay instructed. “Out of the limelight. Move the love seat back where it was. Let the house not proclaim that anything unusual is resident here. I shall be reading the document.”

Fred climbed to Clay’s parlor, wrapped the
Madonna
in the Kashmir shawl from the piano’s top, and carried her down the stairs. What did she weigh, ten pounds? In his arms she was ten pounds of coiled lightning.

“Unwrap it,” Clay instructed, looking up, “so it looks like the others. Be careful, sliding it in. Don’t scratch it. And don’t allow those hinges to scratch anything else.”

“Right,” Fred said. He’d been in and out for three days and, despite Clayton’s invitation, had not had time to survey, much less study, the paintings Clay kept in the racks; not even what must be elsewhere in the house, on the second and third floors. If he stuck around, there’d be a lot to see. He took her shawl off and slid the
Madonna
into a space next to a painting on wood of similar size, a man in evening dress, 1930s, signed Beckman. He put cardboard between them. “Don’t want those two getting up to mischief,” he said.

“Interesting,” Clay was saying to himself at the desk, studying the inventory. “It’s dry as it should be. Facts only. No enthusiasms. Yes, here’s the Bronzino I mentioned, the
Sebastian Transfixed
that sold last year in London, to Agnelli. With a suitable low appraisal. The appraisal for an estate is always low. And here is the Mantegna, so-called. Hah!
Item: A Penitent Magdalene,
it reads, with the measurements.
Italian School, fifteenth century, wood, dirty,
is how it is described. No mention of Mantegna at all. No attribution. Not even a suggestion. That attribution was foisted onto the painting after this appraisal, some time during the last seventy years. We see now what we are dealing with. Yes, here also is the Titian.” He did not look up, continuing his eye and finger’s track down the list Miss Dibble had sent him. “Its condition is noted:
poor.
Thank you, yes, Fred, if you would, put the shawl back as it was. My wife’s photograph on it. And the love seat where it was.

“If we do have the visitors you threaten, let them see no more than what they already expect to see: a quiet home in which are concerned and upright citizens. That is what will be seen unless something is out of place.”

Upstairs in the parlor again Fred replaced the shawl, and the photograph; moved the love seat and the chairs from which he and Clayton had surveyed the
Madonna;
and finally smoothed out the indentation on the love seat’s seat’s pink plush, where the
Madonna
had rested, eliminating all trace of her from the parlor. Then, acting on an impulse he did not know had been growing since the night before, he commandeered the telephone and made it divulge the number for that library in Cambridge in whose outlying park he had been known to camp in the days before the Charlestown place.

“Let me have reference,” he demanded.

“Reference,” a female voice told him, after a wait. “Ms. Riley.”

“Just a minute. No,” the voice said, “for that I’d look in one of those small French literary periodicals from the 1920’s. Try
Le Navire d’Argent,
something like that. That’s where Joyce published the opening of
Finnegans Wake.
We wouldn’t have it here. Try down the road, at Widener. Or the BPL. Sorry, yes?”

“My question,” Fred said, “I want to know, how much was a scudo worth, in Milan, in 1525?”

“Milan, 1525?” Ms. Riley said.

“Yes. Part of the larger question, was twenty scudi, in 1525, worth more or less than the gross national product of Paraguay? No, that’s more than I want to know. Just—how much was a scudo worth, in today’s money, in 1525 in Milan. Okay? I’ll take it from there. Can you do that, Ms. Riley?”

“I don’t know the answer, but I can find out,” Ms. Riley said. “Can you call back?”

“I’ll probably stop over,” Fred said.

“If it takes more than an hour, we have to charge you,” Ms. Riley said.

“That’s Okay.”

“But it won’t take an hour,” she said. “I’m on until five. After that, I’ll leave the information, and the bill if there is one but there won’t be. Your name?”

Clay’s exclamation, below, sounded almost like mortal agony.

“Fred,” Fred said. “I’ll come by this afternoon, maybe tomorrow.”

When Fred reached Clay he was on his feet, aghast, his mouth hanging open, the sheaf of Kinko’s fax paper rustling in his grip.

“Listen to this,” he said, when he could make his mouth work.

“You have my attention. You sounded like the aunt in the third act finding the corpse in the window seat.”

“Listen,” Clay said. He raised the papers and read in a trembling voice, “
Item: One ornamental wooden coffer, The Annunciation, School of Leonardo…
”

“Holy mackerel!” Fred said. “There’s two?”

“
Da Vinci,
” Clayton finished. He let the papers drop to his side and stared. “Fifty thousand pounds, in the appraisal. More than the value they gave the Bronzino, I might add,” he said lamely.

“Cripes,” Fred said. “Brierstone had another Leonardo?”

Clay shook his head, stunned. “It all comes clear,” he said. “I see now. The angels, the gilding. Of course. The top of the box was—
is
—has to be a da Vinci
Annunciation.
An early painting it must be, as we know from the manner of the painting on the corpus of the chest. An early work, done in Florence, before Leonardo departed for Milan in 1489, while he was still apprenticed to Verrocchio’s shop.

“Fred, I’ve been blind. Seeing only what I expected to see, I dismissed what I saw, because the body of the chest did not fit with my
Madonna.
But that is only because my
Madonna
was done a decade later.

“I am in a fever. There is another Leonardo in this city. There are two, and I am in a position to own them both.”