Scarlet Night (21 page)

“You could drive through here if they’d let you.”

“I think park vehicles do come this way. They’d have to in case of fire.”

“Look,” he said and touched her arm. They had come to a clearing where the grass was tall but such trees as there were were only seedlings and no higher than the grass. It was as though a road had been started years before and then abandoned. Beyond lay the river jeweled with the lights of water craft, and beyond that, the Westchester shoreline with two trains approaching each other along the water’s edge. “Watch out!” O’Grady said as the engines raced toward one another. They passed, a few seconds of strobed light, and continued on and out of sight.

A road angled into the woods on the far side of the clearing, much more pronounced than the footpath, which was all that was left from there on of the trail on which they had come.

“Would this be a service road to the estate, would you say?”

“I doubt it,” Julie said. It showed little sign of use.

“For emergencies maybe. Come on.”

Julie followed along, ashamed of her inclination to hang back. What impelled him? Did he know something by intuition? Or was it a lark—like a small boy’s daring on Halloween?

“I was right,” he whispered. “Can you see the fence on either side? And the lights of the house, can you see them now?”

“Yes.”

They were considerably closer to the house than they had been when outside the front gate.

The back gate, matching the cyclone fence, was chained and padlocked. O’Grady called her attention to the barbed wire which was strung along both gate and fence. “The barbarian,” he said with contempt. He reached up and touched the wire. “I’m surprised it isn’t electrified.”

“It’s not?” Julie said, wanting to be sure. She wanted such information as she could take back to Romano to be accurate.

“I’d have found out soon enough if it was. Suppose I could find a gap in the fence—or a place we could go over without tearing ourselves to shreds, would you be game?”

Julie hesitated, much as she wanted to take up the challenge. “I can’t, Johnny. I can’t take the chance of our being caught.”

“I suppose not, but it’s a pity.”

She didn’t say anything.

“It’s a handicap, isn’t it, being married to a man of fame?”

“In this case, yes. Jeff has colleagues who live in Maiden’s End.”

“Well, do we go back now or what?” He was irked at having to abandon his tilt with the fence.

“I’d be willing to go down to the shore by way of the clearing if it goes that far.”

They returned to the broad stretch open to the sky. The long grass bent toward them as though combed by the wind, with a narrow path beaten down to one side. They walked single file, Julie ahead. She paused and tested his mood: “What’s golden by day and silver by night?”

“I give up.”

“A wheat field. I remember a poem with something like that in it. Then it goes, ‘…As if a thousand girls with golden hair might rise from where they slept and go away.’”

They came to a narrow plateau, a huge flat rock. Beyond it the ground cover became a mass of twisted scrub and bramble among the rocks which had been tumbled ahead by bulldozers when the clearing was opened.

“Isn’t it curious,” Julie said, “that they stopped here?”

“It’s where all those girls with golden hair got up and went away. Look down there now. See the lights shimmering in the water?”

“And the boat,” Julie said. “It’s a cabin cruiser with people aboard. See the dinghies?”

“We could have roamed the place at our leisure and not been discovered at all.”

“You’re bolder than I am, Johnny.”

“But not bold enough.”

They stood for a moment. Muffled laughter and the sound of voices wafted up from the anchored boat.

“Is he as much older than you as the old lady says he is?”

He was speaking of Jeff, Julie realized. “He’s fifteen years older. It’s not so much.”

“It’s a fair difference. Why did you marry him?”

“Because I loved him.”

“That’s a good reason.” Then: “Do you still love him?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’d better turn back now. I’m only flesh and blood and you’re a very attractive woman.”

“Thank you,” Julie said and started up the hill at once.

I
T WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT
when they got back to the Willoughby. Julie waited in the car while O’Grady went upstairs with Mrs. Ryan and brought down the fan.

“There’ll be more noise than air circulating from this,” he said, maneuvering the fan into the back seat.

“It must go back to before air conditioning.”

“Before the windmill.”

The place where O’Grady was able to park on Forty-fourth Street was almost identical to where he had left Rubinoff while he broke into the shop. He dreaded going in there again, much as he was drawn to the company of the girl, and much as he loathed the thought of going home. “Will you have a beer with me afterwards at McGowan’s? It’s a family place.”

Julie laughed and said, “We’ll see.” She laughed, but she was on tenterhooks herself. She opened the door and lit the way through while he brought the fan. He closed the door behind him with his heel.

“In here on the desk, for now,” Julie said.

“It’s better on the floor tilting up. And you must never touch it while it’s running.”

“Any place,” Julie said.

He set it on the floor alongside the desk. He was caught then looking at the wall where the picture had hung. “You’ve moved the painting.”

Julie nodded. She opened the chest drawer and brought his knife to him.

“It showed up after all,” he said.

Julie wiped her hands in the towel before throwing it in the wastebasket, a gesture not lost on him. He could begin the lies now and swear the knife must have been stolen, and commiserate with her if she told him the place had been broken into. But she knew. He could tell from her eyes when she caught him looking at the empty wall. He did not want to demean himself, telling lies she would know were lies. But how much did she know? Ginni had said on the phone she was giving the picture to Rubinoff. Ginni had said she was having a drink with her to see the painting before she gave it up. He longed to be free of the whole thing, aye, even the money. And especially Ginni. But he had a tiger by the tail.

Instead of pocketing the knife, he set it down on the coffee table, and sat down himself, his hands between his legs, and just looked at it.

“Shall I put on some water and make a cup of tea?” Julie said.

“That would be a great kindness.”

He turned his chair where he could watch her. He began to feel that she knew everything, just the calmness of her, and maybe the kindness. But she couldn’t: a woman like her, and with a husband in the position hers was, would have long since gone to the F.B.I. What she knew was the painting only, not the drawing. What she knew was derogatory only of Johnny O’Grady. A tremor of anger. With himself for not knowing false in a woman from true. And if he didn’t know that, how did he know she hadn’t already gone to the F.B.I. and was maybe now working in concert with them? When she went to the desk and twisted the neck of the lamp to focus it as though about to begin an inquisition, fear sent a cold chill over him.

But Julie turned the lamp to where it would not shine in either of their faces, and sat down across the table from him. “Johnny, I wonder if you know the story of a painting that was stolen from the National Gallery in London by an Irishman many years ago. I think he was a member of the I.R.A. He wanted to take it back to Ireland where he believed it belonged.”

“You’ve got it wrong,” he said, and had to pause to overcome that instant of fear. He took a deep breath and then dredged his memory for the incident she was talking about. “He got into the gallery all right, but they caught him before he got out. And the painting’s still there, for all the agitation there was to make them restore it to the Irish people. It’s a story I heard a long time ago and I may have it wrong myself, but that’s the gist of it. You might trust me to remember the derogatory part.”

She gave him a little twist of a smile. “Is the Dublin museum called the National Gallery of Ireland?”

“It is. A lovely old building. I remember the white staircases going up and around.”

“And the collection?”

“What would I know about the collection, Julie? I was there for a patriotic occasion. What are you getting at, girl?”

“The same thing as the I.R.A. man—how rich the London Gallery was in comparison.
Is
in comparison.”

“There can’t be much comparison. Ireland’s a poor country altogether.”

They sat in silence, looking at one another and then away, until Julie said, “Shall we talk about your knife and how it got here and why?”

“I’d rather not.” Then, after a second or two: “Is the place bugged?”

Julie shook her head. “Not to my knowledge.”

“They wouldn’t tell you, well.”

By
they
she assumed he meant the F.B.I. He was so close to an admission. Or was he? A wrong word now would be disastrous. But she was so far out on the tightrope, she could not now get safely back either. “Or about Ginni? We could talk about Ginni. She called me. I’m invited to the party at her mother’s on Saturday night. I intend to go. She’s very clever.”

“Too clever by far.” His eyes narrowed.

“I’d hate to have her for an enemy,” Julie said. “I’m not smart in the way she is.”

“You know, I’ve never seen her in the company of another woman.”

Julie’s hands were moist with the tension. He had admitted knowing Ginni. The building was very quiet. Somewhere overhead a toilet flushed. O’Grady’s eyes, starting at the ceiling, seemed to follow the sound to where it finally died in the depths beneath her own bathroom. Julie looked around at the kettle as it came to life on the electric plate.

O’Grady, too, looked around. “My mother used to say, ‘Johnny, will you go and see if the kettle has started to sing?’”

Julie was halfway across the room when she swung back. “Suppose the National Gallery of Ireland had a very important work of art which was stolen and smuggled out of the country to someone willing to pay a lot of money just to have it for himself. And suppose you found out about it, what would you do?”

He ran his tongue over dry lips, only there was no spittle in his mouth either. “Give us the tea, girl, for Christ’s dear sake.”

“What would you do?”

“If it was in my power I’d see that it went back safe.”

Julie poured the water over the teabags in the two mugs and brought them to the table.

“And I’d want to punish the perpetrators.”

“Skip that part,” Julie said.

He plunged the bag up and down in the mug. Julie took the bag from him and threw it along with her own into the wastebasket. O’Grady took a mouthful of the scalding tea. He set the mug down carefully. “Are we talking about this fellow at Maiden’s End—Campbell?”

“Are we?”

He shrugged. “You know more than I do, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Johnny, if we could get the drawing back safely to where it came from—listen to me carefully now—and if we could get the money as well—I’d be willing to give my share to the National Gallery of Ireland—anonymously. Oh, boy. I do mean anonymously. But if we could do that, would you be willing to help?”

“Do you mind saying that whole thing over again?”

Julie repeated the proposal in much the same way.

“Who is
we?”

“I can’t tell you that, but I give you my word it is not the police or the F.B.I. It’s not any law-enforcement agency at all.”

“Aren’t you taking a bit of a chance, telling me this?”

“You bet. But you’ve been taking chances too.”

“Haven’t I? And mucking up on one or two.”

“I know.”

“Then why take chances with a
gobeen
like me?”

“I’m not sure myself,” Julie said. “We’ll figure that out later.”

“After all I went through getting the bloody thing out of one country and into this,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ve never done anything like it before—except for the guns and that was different—and won’t ever again, to be sure, if I get out of this alive.”

“How come this time?”

“Well, I told myself it was for one thing, the money for Ireland, but it wasn’t altogether that by any means. I don’t think I want to be naming names. I’d feel queer about that. And I’ve two hulking lads in the house with me now I never seen before. They’re over here to collect their share. I don’t suppose they meant great harm, but they’re greedy bastards. All the same, I’d like to see them get home safe.”

“And Ginni?”

“I’d like to see her safely in hell, if you want the truth.”

“Everybody gets home safe,” Julie said, and then laughed at what she had said; and in relief.

He grunted and took a great mouthful of tea. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How did you get onto it?”

“I took
Scarlet Night
to a man I knew who collects paintings to see what he thought of it, and the first thing he asked was if he could reframe it.”

“He didn’t like the frame.” O’Grady was amused, or as close to it as he had been for a while: Ginni who prided herself on her taste. “It must have been quite a shock to him to discover the…thing.”

“It was a shock to me too.”

“Can you think what it would do to that poor benighted fool, Ralph Abel?”

“The almost forgotten man,” Julie said.

“Isn’t there a fairy tale about the little tailor who killed seven at one blow, is it?”

Julie nodded.

O’Grady said: “Suppose I blew the whistle on the whole thing and Rubinoff backed out before the last step?”

“Then I
would
have to go to the F.B.I., and the only one standing clear would be the man who was willing to pay five hundred thousand dollars for a stolen drawing.”

“Six hundred thousand dollars. Does it look worth it to you? An illuminated manuscript I could understand, the Book of Kells, say…”

“Johnny, I was going to use the Book of Kells as an example to try and persuade you.”

“If anyone laid a hand on that I’d turn Arab and chop it off. All right then. Tell me where, when, and what I’m to do.”