19 Purchase Street (30 page)

Under other circumstances the Baby would not have been Ponsard's first-choice weapon. He had never relied solely on it, carried it only as a backup. However, he was skilled with it, and its deadliness had served him efficiently three times in the past. It would do. He released its clip, checked that it had eight hollow-nose cartridges, rammed the clip home and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

Ponsard was a very experienced killer, an expert at art and death. He'd been extensively initiated at the age of nineteen during the Algerian revolution when the French soldiers seemed to be creating new, excruciating ways for people to die. With that behind him, Ponsard became a middleman in the system when he was twenty-five. His profession and his slightly fatuous manner were a perfect cover, helping him to fill orders in almost every major city in Europe.

Without a hitch.

Until now.

Ponsard turned to leave.

Gainer was standing in the doorway.

How long had he been there? Had he seen the Baby? Ponsard had to assume not. He smiled, “You've been exploring on your own.”

Gainer nodded twice, thought he should return the smile but couldn't.

“I thought we would start upstairs,” Ponsard said, “perhaps with the bedroom where Monet used to sulk whenever he disliked his work or whenever the asparagus was overcooked.”

Ponsard passed Gainer, nearly brushing him, then led him through the salon and up the main stairs, all the way chattering on the subject of Monet. How the artist always began his day at four in the morning with a cold bath, how when success came to him he was not loyal to the art dealer Durand-Ruel who had subsidized him through the many desperate years, how overcome with doubt he would often pile his paintings in a corner of the garden and burn them.

At the door to Monet's bedroom Ponsard stopped and gestured for Gainer to precede him. Gainer stepped into the room, scanned it perfunctorily, turned to Ponsard.

Ponsard was not there.

Nor was he in the hall.

Gainer went from room to room. No Ponsard. Why would he disappear like that? Gainer looked out a closed second story window. Below, off to the right were Leslie and Astrid, strolling between beds of snapdragons. Gainer saw them pause and lean over to put their noses into some blossoms. He saw Leslie's lips move, saying something. Leslie offered her hand. Astrid took it. They were like a pair of excited youngsters as they ran down the path, across to the gate and out to the road. Gainer watched them drive off in the Bentley.

Good. Thank you, Leslie.

Which was also Ponsard's thought, as he observed the same tableau from a small round ventilating window in the attic area. Now he could more easily cope with the situation, with this amateur. And the woman later. His plan included the river that ran close by Monet's pond—a body in the Eure would be taken to the Seine in an hour. The Seine, with its increasing width and undercurrents, would carry it to the sea, never to be found. It had, after all, happened to cows.

Gainer went to the far end of the second story hall, found a narrow stairway down to the kitchen. He peeked into the adjacent dining room. The large table in the center of the room was set with blue and yellow Limoges porcelain on pale yellow linen, everything, including tiny-footed open salt cellars, in its place, as though any moment Monet and friends Clemenceau, Rodin, Cezanné, Renoir and Sargent would be taking their chairs for a meal. It was a little eerie, Gainer thought.

He went out the east end of the house, where a sort of sideyard open area was punctuated by several lime trees. On the lookout for Ponsard, he passed through the shade of the trees and entered Monet's main studio.

The afternoon sun was striking through the skylights. Gainer stood in a trapezoidal block of it, scanned the huge room. It was immaculate, not even a cobweb in the lattice of steel beams that supported the roof. In the center of the room was a soft sofa and a long hard bench, the two of them back to back. Here, according to his mood, the old Monet had rested his legs and fixed his failing but painfully critical eyes on his
Decorations des Nymphéas
, those nineteen oversize panels were his final important work.

Gainer sat on the bench. Felt the wood of it warm on his buttocks. As though Monet had just risen from the spot. Gainer told himself it was either the sunlight or his imagination. Actually, the sun wasn't hitting there. Gainer sat for a long moment. Part of him said he was wasting precious time, but it seemed he was bound to the bench.

Don't worry, Norma, he whispered.

He stood up abruptly and went out to the long path that ran parallel with the front of the house. At once he saw Ponsard at the opposite end of the path, about a hundred and fifty feet away.

Gainer did his best to appear as though he was merely strolling, relaxed. He kept his eyes on Ponsard.

Ponsard waved to him with his left hand, his right hand in his jacket pocket. He started walking toward Gainer.

Wait, Gainer told himself, as he advanced. Wait for a sure shot. At fifty feet, forty, it was difficult for him to resist the ASP. He could see Ponsard's fixed smile, the lock of Ponsard's eyes. The smile was not in the eyes. The eyes were changed, cold, etching into him.

Thirty feet.

Gainer's street mind and legs came suddenly into accord. He jumped aside, off the path. Heard a cracking report. Felt a burn across the back of his left shoulder as though a hot wire had been drawn across it. Rolled twice over in the packed dirt of that adjoining path and lay prone, concealed behind the density of tall marigolds. The ASP was in his hand, although he didn't remember having taken it out.

A second cracking shot.

A bullet cut through the leaves and stems a foot away. Another missed by more.

Ponsard was firing blind. He was on his knees two paths over, peering through the flowerbeds, hoping to make out the contradictory gray that would be Gainer's suit. Directly in front of Ponsard was a profusion of pink roses, enormous blossoms. He remained absolutely still, taking shorter, quieter breaths, certain that Gainer would make the nervous amateur's mistake of moving. Ponsard had his Baby ready for that moment. He listened for Gainer, heard only the summer afternoon sounds, predominantly the humming of the wings of the bees busy in the flowers of Monet's garden.

One particular bumblebee queen was working very hard, lifting the overlapped petals of a half-opened rose to reach its center. The black and yellow bumblebee queen rubbed her hairy body over the rose's stamen until she was covered with pollen. This was a fresh rose. No bee had been there before her and there was so much pollen she would have to make several trips. She squeezed between the tighter inside petals, made her way out, paused, perhaps to get her bearings so that she would be able to locate this particular blossom among so many. She started her wings and took off, intending as direct as possible a flight to her nest beneath the tool shed. However, she had flown only ten feet when the concentration of rose fragrance attracted her. The attar of rose so strong it was as though a hundred blossoms had opened at once and were blowing their sweet breaths at her.

She lighted on the back of Ponsard's hand, the one he had used to apply his cologne. His gun hand.

He felt a tickle. Saw the bumblebee, fat and black. Tried to brush the bumblebee off, but its legs had been in nectar and they stuck. Distrubed, the bumblebee bent its four front legs, straightened its two hind legs and jabbed its barbed stinger into Ponsard's flesh and, as it did so, into a superficial nerve end.

Under other circumstances Ponsard would have yelped, but now he stifled it so that it came out guttural, more of a growl. He could not, however, stifle the pain that shot up to his shoulder and down his fingertips. His fingers lost their grip, went rigid.

Baby was flung into the air and down into the rose bushes.

There it lay, on the ground among fallen petals, the blue-black of the Browning .25 caliber automatic, its business end pointed directly at Ponsard. He got down on his stomach, reached for it, was unable to avoid the thorns. The more he stretched the more the thorns pierced him. He put his shoulder to the bushes on the perimeter, but they were meshed, would not give enough. He looked at Baby, only about a foot out of reach. His right hand was going numb and swelling from the bee sting. His wrist and knuckles were bleeding from the rose thorns. The damned garden had become his enemy. He'd be lucky to get out of there alive.

The gate.

If he could make the gate, run to the nearest neighbor's house about five hundred feet down the road, he'd be all right. Unlikely Gainer would shoot him with anyone as a witness. Otherwise he'd have done so before, Ponsard reasoned. He sucked hard on the bee sting. Took four deep breaths. Got into a crouch and ran down the path.

Gainer heard movement before he saw the man. Saw through the gladiolas and hollyhocks the gray of the top of Ponsard's head bobbing as he moved. Gainer didn't know what to make of it for a moment, and then he realized Ponsard was making a try for the gate.

Gainer figured he was a dozen years younger and seventy pounds lighter. He went full out, made up for Ponsard's head start, was first to reach the end of the paths where the front wall was interrupted by the gate.

Ponsard knew he was cut off. The gate was impossible now. The only way to go was the tunnel, which was just to his right. He made a zigzagging dash for it.

Gainer stopped and got the flat of Ponsard's back in the aim of the ASP, but when he squeezed the shot off he did not have him, and the bullet chipped into the wall beyond. Ponsard was at the mouth of the tunnel. Another shot by Gainer apparently did not hit anything because in his hurry he had jerked it.

Gainer paused, tried to take stock. Ponsard was now across the road and railway tracks somewhere in the area of Monet's pond. From what Gainer remembered of it, that meant Ponsard was cornered. Unless he swam the river, and Ponsard didn't impress him as the swimming type.

We've almost got him, Norma.

The back of Gainer's left shoulder throbbed as though it was a separate, hurt part crying out for attention. He touched the place, felt the sponginess of the fabric of his jacket and brought his hand down red. How bad was it? He flexed the shoulder to test it, realized the wet that was running from his armpit down his left side wasn't entirely perspiration. His shirt was sticking to him there, the blood already turning gelatinous.

I'm okay, Norma.

He entered the tunnel, proceeded slowly and kept flat against its wall. He did not know Ponsard had lost his gun, and when he reached the opposite opening of the tunnel, he slipped out in one swift motion, keeping low. Surely Ponsard had been watching the tunnel. Better move. He used some thick azalea bushes to go off to the left, careful with every step, putting his weight down only where the ground was soft. Every moment expecting to confront Ponsard, he worked his way around the upper shore of the pond, all the way to the sluice at the eastern end. Near there he crawled to the edge, remained concealed behind a huge patch of iris. Belly down, he parted the tall green blades for a view of the pond. With the concentration of a hunter, he scanned its banks for any giveaway sign of Ponsard, could not see clearly the opposite end of the pond where the Japanese bridge was located because the sun was now partially west and reflecting off the surface of the dead calm water. The water lilies seemed to have spectral images rising from them, undulating in the brilliance.

Gainer decided to press on. With the same care, he moved around the lower edge of the pond, going from iris to agapanthus to petasites, thankful for their cover but aware of how little protection they provided from a bullet. Close to midway above the lower edge at a rose tree, he flushed a bird. A female wild canary that made a fuss as it flew up.

Ponsard was in the thicket of black bamboo at the western end of the pond, had been there all the while, remaining still, moving only his eyes. He had a professional's patience. (Once in an apartment in Brussels he had stayed put in a small utility closet for eighteen hours until conditions were right for filling an order.) From his vantage in the bamboo he had seen Gainer come from the tunnel but had lost sight of him after that. Now, a bird had given Gainer's position away.

Ponsard estimated his advantage was about a hundred feet. He was that much nearer than Gainer to the Japanese bridge. It was enough for him to cross the bridge, get through the tunnel and out of the gate. However, with his opponent coming on, the longer he waited the less his advantage would be. Fortunately the man wasn't much of a shooter.

He stood up, broke through the bamboo, ran for the bridge and was encouraged when he felt the hard wood of it under his feet. The bridge was a gently arching span constructed of boards butted laterally with similar narrower boards evenly spaced on it for treads. Wooden railings wound by wisteria vines duplicated its curve on both sides.

Ponsard was halfway across.

He stopped short.

The woman. She was on the other side of the bridge.

Ponsard's impulse was to run right through her, except she had an automatic pistol held out by both hands straight at him, and her squared-off, wide-legged stance told him she knew how to use it, and her eyes said she would.

Ponsard turned quickly.

As he did, the heel of the shoe on his right foot slipped on one of the bridge's raised treads, caught on it. His right leg stiffened, locked while the rest of his body continued turning. He grasped for the railing for balance but couldn't get it. Like an overweighted top he was spun once and then half again around, and he saw in succession the pond, the trees, the sky, the woman, the trees, the pond and now—the man with gun in hand at the other side of the bridge.

Ponsard's rump smashed against the railing, struck it at precisely the spot where wisteria vines over the joint of two sections concealed a bolt that the weather had corroded and weakened. The wood rail creaked in overture to a loud cracking as it gave way. The wisteria vines could not hold Ponsard.