Stained Glass (12 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Stained Glass
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Amy Gorman was darned if she was going to play the role of duenna, but the constant presence of Fulvio in the house made her feel like a beady-eyed middle-aged woman. It didn't help that she had often thought how nice it would be if something developed between her Paul and Susan. It had been through Paul that she had met Susan, but soon it seemed to be the mother rather than the son that interested the aspiring young artist of such interesting genealogy. Susan had become a constant visitor after Paul went off to war again.
“I'm an orphan, you know,” she told Amy.
Amy had laughed. The famous Devere family made such a claim silly. Even so, not having a mother doubtless did affect Susan, and the girl's affection was welcome to Amy. God knows she saw little enough of Paul, off in Iraq on a second tour. Did he have a death wish? She was proud of him, though. He was so like his father, who had fallen in an earlier war.
Fulvio Menotti looked like Michelangelo's David with clothes on. When Susan told Amy that Fulvio was sitting for her as an artist's model, doubts had arisen. What a narcissistic occupation. What had happened to the boy who posed for Michelangelo? Amy had rather pointedly remarked that her son was fighting in Iraq.
“Good for him,” Fulvio said. “I figure that my time in the merchant marine counts.”
“Merchant marine.”
“For four years. It's as bad as being in the navy, but I loved it.”
What a smile. What a charmer. And a sailor besides. It was on a freighter that made half a dozen unscheduled ports of call and carried a few passengers that he had met Margaret Ward.
“On a freighter!”
“Don't kid yourself. There's only one class on a freighter, first class.”
“How long did that trip last?”
Fulvio thought, working his lips. Amy wanted to reach out and touch them. “Two and a half months.”
“Margaret Ward was stuck on board that long?”
“She could have left the ship any number of times if she had wanted to. She said she was on a kind of retreat.”
“How did you get to know her?”
“I tripped over her deck chair. She had set it up where she shouldn't, and I didn't see it. I helped her get it out of there. She seemed to enjoy being chewed out.”
“I don't suppose she gets much of that.”
“I had no idea who she was until afterward. All we talked about was fiction. She had a suitcase full of New American Library editions. She put me onto
The Rise of Silas Lapham
. Do you know it?”
Amy didn't know the novel. Susan didn't either.
“It's by William Dean Howells.”
Amy and Susan just looked at him. Then Susan said, “Some kind of right-wing stuff, I suppose.”
Fulvio laughed. Susan could never prod him into controversy.
“I'm surprised you haven't thought of becoming a writer,” Amy said.
Instead it was sculpture at which Fulvio worked in a corner of
Susan's studio. Amy found herself fascinated by the way he fashioned clay, often not even looking at what he was doing, as if his mind's eye were on what he intended to shape. When Amy came from the office, Fulvio often joined them for supper, which was junk food sent in if she didn't get there in time to make a decent meal. It was usually about nine that Fulvio left.
“Where does he live?” Amy asked Susan.
“I don't know. Not with his father. Oil and water. I may offer him your room when you leave.”
“I wouldn't do that.”
“Leave?”
“Susan, I know I am taking advantage of your hospitality, but I can't go back to that house.”
Susan threw her arms around her. “Stay here, Amy. Sell the darned house. You can never go back there. You shouldn't.”
“Would you buy a house that had a murdered woman hanging in its garage?”
“Who knows what went on in this house before I bought it.”
 
 
“You back in your house yet?” Emil asked. He moved around the office in his chair, since getting all of himself into or out of it was a task.
“I may sell it.”
Emil looked at her. “In this market?”
It had taken all the nerve Amy had to drive her car out of the garage, wondering whose hands had been on the wheel. Why had he left the motor running?
“Maybe he thought his victim was still alive,” Agnes Lamb had said.
“What a monster. How I wish you would find him.”
“So do I.”
So she remained with Susan, wondering about her relationship with Fulvio.
Margaret had told Fulvio about her niece and urged him to look up Susan, whom she had described as politically illiterate.
“I told her we'd make a good pair,” Fulvio said.
Amy looked at Susan to see what effect this had on her. Apparently none. Maybe with a father as handsome as hers, Susan had gotten used to male beauty. Even so, offering a room to such an Apollo would be the height of imprudence. Not that she could put it that way to Susan. It would have provided motivation.
“Do you see your grandfather often?” Amy asked him.
“He told me I should have stayed in the merchant marine.”
“He disapproves of your becoming a sculptor?”
“You wouldn't want to hear him on what has become of the arts.”
Susan said, “I think my grandmother Jane had a crush on him.”
Fulvio grinned. “I think it was mutual.”
Fulvio's father was a nature nut who lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He had been an instructor in economics at the University of Chicago, a Milton Friedman fan. Susan groaned.
“I don't know anything about economics,” Fulvio said.
“Neither do I.”
“Why should you? You're loaded.”
“This is my first glass of wine,” Susan protested.
“You know what I mean.”
“Don't rub it in.”
Susan had told Amy of her Franciscan dream, to give it all away and embrace poverty. Did that include the house in Barrington?
“I have to have a studio.”
“Of course you do.”
Susan was determined that she would make it as an artist. If not, she would take up—maybe economics. “I certainly wouldn't
want to just hang around and make a business of the work of others.”
As it had before, that led to talk about Susan's bête noire, Carl Borloff, the affected parasite, the alleged expert on religious art. “Everything about religion interests him except faith. The whole thing is aesthetic with him.”
“You don't know that.”
Amy had been edified by Susan's Sunday Mass going. It shamed her back on track herself.
“Photographs of stained glass windows! Anyone can do it.”
“Have you tried?”
For answer, Susan got out her camera and showed the shots she had taken of the windows at St. Hilary's.
Carl Borloff was browsing in the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Dirksen Boulevard, checking to see how many of the ten copies of
Sacred Art
he had on display there were sold. He closed his eyes and prayed as he let his fingers move over the shrink-wrapped copies. Ten! The giant of despair had its feet on his shoulders and was pressing him down. How in the name of heaven could customers resist the magazine? Seen from several paces back, it leapt to Carl's eye, easily the most aesthetically designed and striking of any of its companions in the rack. Perhaps if he ran naked through the store flourishing a copy attention would be paid. Undeniably, simply having
something available for readers, even in such a much visited bookstore as this, was not enough.
He took a deep breath, suppressing a sigh. Just think of what his depression would be if it were not for the book of Angelo Menotti's windows. Then, before his spirits could rise, he had a terrible vision. A magnificent book, a superlative book, a book that any knowledgeable person would praise, and there it languished on the shelf like these copies of
Sacred Art.
Someone beside him reached out and took a copy of
Sacred Art.
Carl was frozen in place, scarcely breathing. Would the same hand return the copy to its nine companions? There was the sound of tearing, and Carl turned. The man was removing the shrink-wrap from the magazine.
“Now you'll have to buy it,” Carl said, hardly recognizing his own voice.
“I intend to.” The man was turning the pages. “I've never seen this before. It seems excellent all around.”
“I am the editor,” Carl said. At least he formed the words, but they issued silently from his constricted throat. “And publisher.” These words were audible.
“I beg your pardon?
The young man seemed more amused than put off by Carl's incomplete sentence.
“I said I am the editor and publisher.”
“Here to monitor sales?” An engaging smile. The young man reminded Carl of a Leonardo sketch.
Carl laughed. “That's right, and yours is the first.”
“Let me pay for this and give you a cup of coffee.”
Watching the man hand over his credit card, then sign the slip and take the magazine, Carl's spirits rose.
The young man put Carl at a table and then went to fetch the
coffee. He had left the issue of
Sacred Art
on the table. Carl turned it so passersby could see it. The man returned with their coffee.
“I am Carl Borloff.” He held out his hand.
Before taking it, the man sat, opened the cover of the magazine, and checked. “How do I know you are Carl Barloff? Perhaps you lurk here impersonating editors.” He said it so gently, it would have been impossible to take offense.
Carl got out his driver's license and handed it to the man. After a moment, they were shaking hands.
“And you are?” Carl asked.
“You can call me Charles Ruskin. Actually, I am here on the same mission as you.”
“How is that?”
“I am a publisher, and I'm gratified to say that our entire allotment has been sold.”
“Congratulations.”
Charles Ruskin picked up the copy of Carl's magazine and might have been weighing it in his hand. “This excellent publication represents perhaps ten percent of the task. Warehouses are full of wonderful books, books that will never have readers. At least the copies in the warehouse won't. Other books, books of far less ambition and accomplishment, fly off the shelves, in the phrase. What is the difference?”
“Luck?”
Ruskin nodded. “Of course luck is a factor, it always is. There is good and bad luck, though. It is unwise to trust to luck in either of its forms. The artist will find it vulgar, the poet winces, but novelists as a rule are less likely to fight the truth that ninety percent of their success is due to salesmanship. Hustling, as they say, to save their pride. A small example. Your magazine sits on a shelf among how
many other competing publications? Only a discerning eye would notice it.” He smiled away the autobiographical implication. “My books are in display cases in the aisle, impossible not to notice and, as I have just gratefully learned, and not for the first time, impossible not to buy.”
“Are you located in the Chicago area?”
“In the area, yes.”
“What is the name of your firm?”
“Argyle House.” He studied Carl, his blue eyes twinkling. “Don't say you've heard of it.”
“I'm afraid I haven't.”
“That is because there is no need to know the publisher. The publisher is selling not himself but his authors. Perhaps you find all this irrelevant to your own efforts?”
Carl thought for a moment. What harm could there be in telling this man? He was a publisher; he seemed to be immersed in the world of books. “I am preparing a book myself.”
If he had expected surprise, if he had imagined delight, if he had sought for interest, he would have been sorely disappointed. Ruskin looked away. “I suspect that every other customer in this store has a similar project.”
“Mine is subsidized. It will be done and it will be published.”
Ruskin sat back with a pensive expression. He turned over the copy of
Sacred Art
. Then he smiled. “The Devere Foundation!”
“How did you know?”
“I make it a practice to study the reports from foundations. Yes, yes, I remember the item. I thought your name was familiar. Tell me about it.”
Carl hunched over the table, and words poured from him. Suddenly he was eloquent, authoritative, a man who knew exactly what he was talking about. He had Ruskin's undivided interest now. No
need to conceal the amount of the grant that Jane Devere had given him. This man would already know. Carl spoke of his interviews with possible photographers, his visits to pastors in whose churches Menotti windows were to be found.
“I hope you don't intend to publish it yourself.”
“I haven't gotten that far yet.”
“A self-published book, even if the self is an entity such as this.” Again he lifted the copy of
Sacred Art
from the table. “A self-published book is like a letter to oneself. Even so special a publication as you no doubt plan becomes, when you are done, a commodity. Then other skills and expertise must be called into play. Let me recommend an exercise. Go to the section of remaindered books and look at all the art books there. You will find many excellently done, yet there they are, discounted, humbly asking to be taken for a pittance. That need not have been.”
“Has Argyle House ever published art books?”
“If we had, I can assure you they would not end up as remaindered books.” He sipped his coffee. “Each of our products—no, that is an exaggeration. Put it this way, the majority of our products represent ventures into territory we have never before occupied. The correct answer to your question as to whether we have published art books would be, not yet.”
A silence fell over the table. The conversation had reached a critical point. Ruskin took out his billfold and extracted a card, which he handed to Carl, rising as he did so. “I am so delighted to have met you.”
Carl half rose, but Ruskin had turned and started away. “Wait. You forgot this,” Carl said urgently.
“Good heavens!” Rudolph cried, taking the copy of
Sacred Art
. “Our conversation has distracted me.”
 
 
Fifteen minutes later, Carl still sat at the table, holding Ruskin's card. Kenosha? Well what difference did that make, he chided himself. Once publishers had clustered in New York or elsewhere on the East Coast. Now they were scattered across the country. What a tremendous piece of luck. Of course, Ruskin had not made any overt remark, but it seemed clear that he could become interested in the Menotti book.
His coffee had cooled. He put down the container. Then dark thoughts came. How accidental had his meeting with Ruskin been? The man had known of the Devere grant. Had he read it with the eye of a predator? Even to formulate the thought was sufficient to dismiss it. So far as Ruskin knew they might never meet again.
 
 
The next time they met was in Kenosha. “Welcome to Argyle House,” Charles said. “You see, it actually is a house. Unlike Random House.”
They went around a corner of the porch to another entrance. The interior was humble, but there were books everywhere and piles of what must be manuscripts that would compete for the interest of the publisher. Charles led him to a desk where a woman sat. A nameplate before her read J. J. RUDOLPH. She smiled away apparent annoyance at being interrupted. Charles said, “And this is Jo Jo. Jo Jo, did I mention running into Carl Borloff in a Chicago bookstore?”
“The art book?” She was perhaps fifty years of age, heavyset, her hair cut closely to her head. Large liquid eyes looked up at him over her half-glasses. “I have yet to do an art book.”

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