Face on the Wall (41 page)

Homer gasped with pleasure. “No kidding! Well, congratulations, Chief. My God, whatever happened to McNutt?”

“Turned out he had an unfortunate connection with Frederick Small. They were in that real-estate scam together. McNutt knew Pearl was dead all along. And he knew it was Small who was in that Albany hotel with a blond hooker. He knew Small sent that postcard to himself.”

“Jesus, Bill, how did you find that out?”

“No problem. After those kids discovered Small's body at the gravel pit, the pathologist let me look through his clothes, and I found a slip of paper with the name of a storage warehouse in Northtown and a bunch of numbers. It looked to me like a combination, and sure enough, that's what it was, the combination to the lockup where he stored his stuff—you know, when he moved out of his house before it was torn down. So I went over there with a search warrant, and the combination worked, and of course Small's rented compartment was full of chairs piled on tables and bedsprings jammed against the wall. And there was a very interesting-looking desk in one corner. In one of the drawers I found a couple of letters. Delightful letters, nicely incriminating the two of them, Small and his buddy McNutt.”

“How charming! My God, how could Small have been so careless as to leave letters lying around?”

“Oh, Homer, there aren't any really crafty felons out there. The smarter they think they are, the dumber they behave.”

“Except—don't forget, Chief—the really clever ones are never discovered. They may indeed exist, but we don't know whether they do or not. It's a logical enigma. It's like a blind spot in the center of the retina—the more you look, the more you don't see.”

“Well, sometimes, Homer, I suspect the smartest ones aren't wily and clever at all. They don't think about anything, they just bash you on the head and take the swag and keep their mouths shut.”

Joseph Noakes was one of those who keep their mouths shut. He did not tell Homer Kelly about the fatal morning in Pearl's house when he burst into her bedroom in Southtown to find her husband standing over her body. Most unsaid of all, most carefully filed away in the deepest, most grieving place in Joe's memory, was Pearl's attempt to protect herself, to kill her husband with the handgun Joe had given her. Instead—Joe would never forgive himself for not guessing what would happen—Small in his overpowering strength had snatched it away and used it against her.

Joe Noakes did not tell Homer Kelly either of these things. His reticence was a perfect example of Homer's theory about the blind spot in the center of the retina. There was Joe in person, entirely visible, busying himself around Annie's place, making himself useful, helping her move into the old part of the house, moving in with her, marrying her maybe—who could tell what those crazy kids would do? Anyway, there he was in the flesh, and yet somehow he was partly invisible. He was a blind spot in the exact center of Homer's eye.

But Joe did tell Homer about Robert Gast.

“You knew about him, is that right?” said Homer. “You knew he was working for Small? You knew he was helping to turn Pearl's land into house lots? That's why you came to Annie's place, because Gast was living there?”

“No, no,” said Noakes, laughing. “I came to Annie's place because of Annie.”

“Because of
Annie!
”

“Well, of course because of Annie. I knew her work, I heard her give a talk, I worshiped at her shrine already. Of course it was because of Annie. Gast didn't move in until later, and then I didn't know he had anything to do with Small until I happened to be in his study one day when he was out, and I—”

“Never mind,” said Homer, holding up his hands. “I don't want to know.”

Later on, Homer explained it to Mary. “I should have guessed about Flimnap. I knew his name rang a bell. Flimnap's the treasurer of Lilliput. He counts the sprugs.”

“Sprugs? Oh, I remember now.” Mary laughed. “Lilliputian money.”

“Poor old Annie, what's she going to do for sprugs from now on? Her books are out of print and Jerry says the Gasts are bankrupt. They can't pay her back. What's going to happen to her wall?”

“Well, she can make more books. So can Joe. They'll be okay.”

Homer looked doubtful. “Do you trust him? I worry that he's some kind of will-o'-the-wisp. Think about it! He's been lying to her the whole time.”

Mary looked at Homer dreamily. “Not lying. Making up stories. He's a storyteller. So is she.” Mary waxed sentimental. “That ex-husband of hers, Grainger Swann, and the other two, Burgess and Jack, you know what they were?”

“No, what?”

“Wind-up birds, that's all. Wind-up birds like the one in that wonderful story by Hans Christian Andersen.”

Homer threw up his hands. “Story? What story?”

“Oh, you know, Homer, the one about the nightingale. The wind-up mechanical bird and the nightingale in the forest, singing its heart out.” Mary beamed at Homer. “That's Joseph Noakes. He's the real nightingale, the one with the song that saves the emperor's life. He'll save Annie's. You'll see.”

“Well, I don't know,” said Homer grimly. “Don't say I didn't warn you.”

Chapter 62

“W
hy, Joe?” whispered Annie. “Why did you keep me in the dark? Why did you paint those faces on my wall?”

They were lying on the bed in Annie's old room at the southeast corner of the house, the original old house, the one she had rented to Robert and Roberta Gast. Instead of answering her question, Joe began talking softly about his childhood, about what it had been like to grow up with his sister Pearl.

“We weren't like other kids. We never played outdoors. We stayed inside, making things with hammers and nails and paste and beautiful white paper.” Joe gazed at the ceiling, remembering. “I had a paintbox. I used to dip my brush in the glass and watch the water turn cloudy with cobalt blue or crimson lake.”

“Or cadmium yellow,” said Annie eagerly, because she had been like that too. “But, Joe—”

He held up his hand. “Wait.” Turning, he kissed her ear, and then after a moment he began again. “We built a puppet theater. We made the puppets and the sets and acted out the stories on our small stage—The Ugly Duckling, The Bremen Town Musicians, The Three Little Pigs, Beauty and the Beast. I suppose you could say we were obsessed, but we didn't think about it at all. We were lost in it. We were just two pairs of hands cutting and pasting and painting. We went to school, but school meant nothing. Our real life was at home. It was more important than breathing, more important than food or sleep. Well, of course our parents didn't like it. Our mother was a sensible woman with both feet on the ground.”

Annie wanted to ask if the bond between sister and brother had perhaps become too close. She had heard of sibling attachments that had turned abnormal, incestuous,
weird.
Cautiously she said, “But then you both grew up. What happened then?”

“Oh, for me it was all right. I kept right on with the paintbox and the beautiful white paper. I turned the stories into books.”

“But what about Pearl?”

Joe's face darkened. Bitterly he said, “She married Frederick Small.”

“Of course,” said Annie sadly. She had heard Pearl's terrible history from Aunt Mary and Uncle Homer. Now she stroked Joe's face and said no more. The poor guy was grieving for his sister.

But then Joe's voice softened, and he drew Annie closer. “When I saw what you were doing on your wall, it was like going back in time. It was our own lost world all over again, and right away I knew I had to paint her there. It was a sort of memorial, I suppose, as though I could send her back where she belonged.”

Annie was dumbfounded. “And to think that I—” She stopped, because her own selfish feelings didn't matter, not now, not beside the tragic loss of Joe's beloved sister. Her old disappointment wasn't important, her bafflement when Joe had not seemed to notice what she was doing, as though her wall meant nothing to him at all. Then Annie forgot her wounded vanity and asked another question. “And the horrible faces, what about those terrible faces?”

Joe's arm around her stiffened, and he gripped her shoulder. “Your wall was wrong, you see, Annie, it was all wrong. I could see at once that it was too pleasant, too gentle. A lot of the old stories are bitter and bloody. Your cheerful images show only half the truth. The rest is all hanged men and dismembered children, and women hacked to pieces in cold blood.”

Bluebeard,
thought Annie. The awful faces had been portraits of the Bluebeard who had killed Joe's sister Pearl. The savage part of the truth had found a place on her wall after all. “But darling Joe, why didn't you tell me? Why did you pretend you had nothing to do with them?”

Joe threw his legs over the side of the bed and began walking up and down, talking convulsively, hardly stopping for breath. Annie sat up in bed, astonished.

“I was afraid. I knew he was out there somewhere, looking for me. I had a waking nightmare—one day I'd come around the corner of the house and there'd be a blast from the bushes, and that would be the end. I didn't dare tell you. I didn't dare tell anyone. If you were to discover who I was, it would soon be common knowledge, and then he'd find me. I was like an escaped convict with the dogs barking at my heels. I was afraid of him, and yet at the same time I was haunted by him. Somehow I had to get him before he got me. I didn't know how it would happen, I only knew it had to happen. Oh, Annie, I was too eaten up with loathing and fear to tell you. I couldn't tell you and I couldn't love you.” Joe sat down again on the bed and leaned over. “But I can love you now, if you'll let me,” and Annie let him.

Chapter 63

T
he wall was finished. Noakes had filled in the last piece of bare plaster with the face of Eddy Gast. So it was all done, Annie's condensed history of the human race from the delirious perspective of Edward Lear and Mother Goose.

Still, perhaps some of the details could be improved. Annie walked back and forth in front of the wall and decided to tone down the giddy orange of the pumpkin coach and ginger up the Secret Garden with scarlet flowers. Hans Christian Andersen looked down at her mildly, Aesop stooped to watch the dozing hare, the emperor paraded in his underwear, Mother Goose took flight, and Scheherazade told one more of her interlocking tales, warding off death for yet another night.

The stories of the last year of Annie's life were interlocking too. They were a set of nested tales growing out of one another, beginning with the appearance of Flimnap like a prince in disguise, and ending with the dragon-like machines that had nearly gobbled up her storytelling wall. Real life was as fantastic as Wonderland, and Joe was right, it was just as dangerous. The Red Queen never stopped shouting
“Off with her head!”
and the wolf kept right on munching the bones of Little Red Riding Hood. All over the world the carcasses of Bluebeard's wives piled up in forbidden rooms. And the Mad Tea Party happened every day, everywhere, in a bewildering slop of tea and nonsense and spilled milk and the crash of breaking china.