False colors (13 page)

"Besides," Nancy said, sniffing, "I doubt that she would have resisted."

"After we bought off Miss Raymond," Sheldon said, "she told the policeman in the room that it must have been a burglar, and that you must have frightened him away."

"I'm willing to tell you that story, too," I said. "But I didn't think you'd believe it."

Sheldon said, "Could Miss Raymond have faked the whole thing? She knows you're coming to visit her. She wants to get something on you, so she can blackmail you for that painting. So she takes an eyebrow pencil and marks up her throat as if she had been strangled and—"

"It wasn't makeup," Nancy said. "I would have spotted that."

"Then she made real marks on her throat."

Nancy shook her head. "I don't think a woman would do that. Especially not one who considers herself attractive. Did you see any trace of a burglar, Pete?"

It was my turn to nudge her with an elbow. "No trace."

We reached Nancy's house on Delancey Place, and she invited us in for a drink. I had never been in the Vernon house before, and it impressed me. There was a nice highboy in the living room with its original brasses intact, and a set of Chippendale chairs that William Savery wouldn't have been ashamed of making. Around the walls were portraits of assorted Vernons and Van Rensselaers, looking as stern as if somebody had just said New York was a better place to live than Philadelphia.

Nancy pointed out a liquor cabinet to Sheldon and suggested that he go to work on the drinks, and asked me to come into the kitchen to help her get the ice.

I followed her to the kitchen, and said, "Where's William? I feel I ought to meet him."

"He got worn out keeping an eye on me while Sheldon was here, earlier this evening. He doesn't approve of Sheldon."

"I gathered from the pokes in the ribs that you didn't tell Sheldon the whole story."

"I didn't tell him about that copy of a Van Gogh we found under the top painting. And I don't want you telling him."

"Why not? Afraid Sheldon might go around talking about it?"

"Well, he might. The fewer people know about the trouble Nick is in, the more chance he has to get out of it."

"Don't bet on his chances," I said. "You know who was at Kay Raymond's when I got there? Nick."

Nancy studied my face, and said finally, "You don't like Nick but I know you wouldn't make that up. Tell me about it."

I gave her the whole story, including the reasons why I was sure Nick hadn't been the one who choked Kay.

When I finished, she said breathlessly, "Oh but Pete, this is getting serious!"

"Yeah. I figured that out a while back."

"But was it really meant to be a murder?"

"All I know is that it was meant to be a frameup."

"Poor Nick."

"You mean poor Pete. I was the one who ended up framed."

"Poor Pete. Now do you feel better?"

"No. By the way, while we were walking here, you said you didn't think Kay staged the thing. I'm not so sure of that."

"Well, I'm not either, now. But when I said that, I didn't know Nick was involved. Kay wouldn't have made a lot of ugly marks on her throat to frame you, Pete. She would rip her dress off one shoulder and let out a yell. But she might have to go to more trouble to frame Nick, since he didn't know her."

Sheldon came out just then to see why we were taking so long, and we got the ice and returned to the living room. I had a Scotch on the rocks, and Sheldon had a plain Scotch, and Nancy poured a tiny splash of rye into a highball glass and filled it with ice and ginger ale. I couldn't help wondering what Philadelphia debs were coming to; in my day they would have put in a tiny splash of ginger ale and filled the glass with rye.

"Let's settle a few tilings about this painting," Sheldon said. "Nancy told me that, at the Clothesline Art Exhibit, Ludwig Lassiter acted as if he wanted to buy the thing. Do you really think he wanted it, Pete?"

"I'm not sure."

"If he wanted it, he had a good reason," Sheldon said. "I've bought a lot of stuff through Lassiter. He doesn't make mistakes."

"Maybe he didn't want it, though."

Sheldon studied the amber color in his glass. "You know what?" he said genially. "I think you two are holding out on me. You have a nice little mystery and you want to keep it private."

"It isn't much of a mystery," Nancy said.

"Come on, now," Sheldon said. "An absolutely top dealer shows an interest in buying the picture and then walks off when you two come along. The artist raises hell when he finds you're giving his pictures a one-man show. A very clever woman steals the painting, and then after you recover it, she pulls a blackmail trick to get it again. Not much of a mystery?"

"Why would you want to bother with it?" Nancy asked.

"The chase element gets me," Sheldon said. "I like hunting things, especially if there's enough danger to make it interesting. Did I ever tell you about the hunting I did in Africa?"

"Yes," I said, hoping to head it off.

"The hell with you, Pete," he said cheerfully. "Sit back and be polite."

I sat back glumly, and off we went on safari. It was quite a story and he told it well. The worst part of it was, it was probably all true. If you thought he exaggerated the size of the animals he had killed, you could go look at them in the habitat groups he had given to the Academy of Natural Sciences. After the war he had been restless and had gone hunting in Africa for excitement. Stalking animals was fun, but shooting them at a couple of hundred yards was too easy. The real fun was coaxing animals to stalk you. For instance, a wounded Cape buffalo in high grass could be quite entertaining. Twice he had deliberately wounded a buffalo instead of bringing him down, just to get a little excitement. But even that became boring at last. After all, there was no way the animal could win if you didn't make a mistake.

The moral of all this was that in hunting, the more risk, the more fun. A hunt involving people could produce more risk than any other kind. So Sheldon would like to get in on our hunting expedition.

Nancy had been quite taken by darkest Africa, but I saw she was doubtful about letting Sheldon help us. Probably she was afraid he might decide that the most interesting person to chase was Nick Accardi. "I wish there was a way you could help," she said, "but we've told you everything we know."

"Well, I'll be hanging around if you find out anything more," Sheldon said. "How about it, Pete, shall we let Nancy get a little sleep tonight?"

I said okay, and we left the house together. His car was parked in a garage on the way to my apartment and I walked there with him. He was in high spirits and I knew why. He wasn't really interested in our game of cops and robbers. He had a hunt of his own under way and, thanks to the opening I had given him that evening, he had sneaked up fairly close to the quarry. He was still chasing Nancy. If he got her it would be over my dead body.

Of course, considering what had happened to me lately, maybe someone would arrange that for him.

11.

After leaving Sheldon I walked back to my place on Walnut Street. It has adjoining doors, one leading into the shop and the other opening to stairs leading up to my apartment. Both doors are set back in a small entry. As I turned into the entry a shadow moved. I started to duck, and a guy grabbed me and pasted a hand over my mouth.

"It's okay," he said softly. "It's me, Nick Accardi. Relax." He took his hand away from my mouth.

I swallowed a couple of times, and said, "I usually pick other ways to relax than having guys jump at me around corners."

"You're in a game where you better watch how you turn corners. If you're smart you'll take them wide. Can we step inside a minute?"

I unlocked the door to the stairway and we went inside and I asked him up to the apartment.

"Let's talk here," he said. "I only got a couple things to say. Look, I'm sorry I went for you with that knife. Only how was I to know you were leveling with me? I asked the woman who runs my rooming house and she backed up your story. What I want to know is, why did you give me back my knife and let me beat it?"

"I thought you were being framed. You went to Miss Raymond's place because of a phone call. The way you wrote down her address proved you hadn't been there before, and maybe you didn't even know her. I didn't think you'd use a silk scarf if you wanted to knock somebody off."

"You know who that phone call was from?"

"Your landlady said it was a man."

Nick said grimly, "He said his name was Peter Meadows."

"I couldn't have made it."

"Now wait. You could have made it. But you didn't, or you would have followed through on the frameup. You'd have set the cops on me."

"How do you know I didn't?"

"I hung around for two hours across from where I live, watching for them. Cops always do the natural thing first. When they want a guy, they go to his home. Maybe you know I'm on parole. They have my address. Well, the cops didn't show, so you didn't tell them."

"What did this guy who telephoned say to you?"

"He said he was in his girl friend's apartment at the Ritten-house Arms and that he'd gotten back the painting of mine that was stolen and he'd give it to me if I came up. He said to use the stairs instead of the elevator and that the door would be

unlocked. So I walk in dumb as anything and look what's lying on the floor. How did that dame come through?"

"She's all right."

"Did she get a look so she could describe me to the cops?"

"She knew who you were. But she didn't tell the cops."

"Jeez," he said, "this is quite a deal, isn't it?"

"Yes. And all from the bottom of the deck."

"What happened after I left?"

I tried to study Nick's face. In the light seeping in from the street his face looked gaunt as a portrait by El Greco. I couldn't tell how far he could be trusted. It might be a good idea to run a home-made lie-detector test on him, and see if he was playing straight with me.

"Before we go into that," I said, "what's the story on that painting of yours? Why are people after it?"

"You don't know, huh?"

"How would I know?" I said carefully. "The first time I ever saw your work was at the Clothesline Art Exhibit. Nancy bought your stuff and asked me to give you a one-man show."

He seemed to brace himself. "I always liked fooling around with crayons and water color even in school," he said. "While I was doing time, we had a good Joe of a warden who gave me some oils and brushes and canvas. When I got out on parole I went to art school. I didn't have any way to make dough except in the ring, and I didn't make much. So I was just scraping along. About four months ago I was at the Parkway Museum, copying a Van Gogh they got of a woman and a baby. You know it?"

" 'Madame Roulin avec son bebe! He did it at Aries."

"That's the one. I always liked Van Gogh, see? The guy had drive. I guess I'd picked up a lot of his style, like the way you pick up some of a good fighter's style by working with him in the gym. So while I was doing the copy, just for practice, see, a man comes up and starts talking. He thinks I got Van Gogh's style down pretty good. He says he knows a guy who owns a Van Gogh and would like a copy made, so he can give it to a friend, and tells me to drop around if I'm interested."

"Who was he?"

"I'm not gonna tell yon."

"Okay," I said. "Go ahead."

"Well, I dropped in at his place and spent a few days doing a copy of this Van Gogh. Jeez, it was a beauty—the Van Gogh, I mean. Wheat fields in real hot sunlight. After I did the copy he paid me fifty bucks. But he said the copy wasn't good enough and would I try again. And he began showing me how to make it better, like grinding paints the way Van Gogh did and all that. I made two more copies. Each was better and he paid me each time. But they still didn't suit him. I started a fourth and it began looking real sharp and all of a sudden I realized it wasn't a copy at all. It was a forgery. It was getting to be too good. On top of that, the canvas and stretcher looked just like what Van Gogh had used."

I laid a little trap, and said, "So you walked out, huh?"

"No," Nick said, "I didn't. To start with, this guy I was working for had found out about me. How I had done time and was on parole and all that. He knew I had sneaked out of town for a couple fights, without an okay from the Board of Parole. He hinted he might turn me in, if I walked out on him."

"You were in a tough spot."

"I'm not making excuses. I could have walked out if I'd had the guts. But this guy also waved five hundred bucks in front of me. I wanted that dough. And he told me I was a dope not to play ball. He said Van Gogh hardly made a nickel out of painting while he was alive. He said maybe nobody would buy my stuff until after I starved to death. He said if a dealer ever did take me on, the dealer would get all the dough and I'd get peanuts. He said not to be a sucker. So I went ahead with it."

"You're not the first guy to fall for that line."

"Well, toward the end I took the thing back to my room so I could work steadily on the finishing touches. You know, putting in cracks with a needle and aging it with colored varnish and all that. Only the more I worked the more I got a funny tight feeling in my gut. Like in a fight when you're up against one of these cuties that jab and dance and that you can't hardly

touch. It got so bad one morning a few days ago that I picked up all the paint I could reach and threw it on the thing and sloshed it all over the canvas. It made me feel good. Like I had trapped the cutie in a corner and could get to him with hooks."

"I think I know the rest of it," I said. "The guy who hired you came around that night, and when he saw what you'd done there was quite a row. Afterward the landlady came up to squawk about the noise and to ask for the back rent, and you turned all the pictures over to her. Right?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"At that one-man show we gave for you, why did you run away?"

"Run away?" Nick said. "I thought I was chasing somebody. You and me are tangling on the floor, see? The lights go out. Right off I had the idea somebody was swiping the painting. So I break away fast and feel around the walls until I find the thing. And it's been cut off the stretcher. I figure whoever did it must be slipping away, so I barrel out to the street. I chase after one guy who looks suspicious and it's a bad guess. I head back for your place again and the lights are on and all of a sudden I think, jeez, they'll say I took it. So I beat it. What did happen to the painting? Did you ever find out?"