Good Lord, Deliver Us (37 page)

Red and white. Black and blue -- shiny
black, shoulder-length hair framing her rich blue eyes. Inside her
generous mouth were lovably uneven teeth and the sweetest tongue
.........

Normally, Sunday wasn't a good day to go to
the gallery. Too many elegantly dressed people there, showing off
expensive wardrobes while pretending to look at the Nelson's
collection, too crowded for a hard-scrabble guy like Z to get more
than a peek at what he needed most in his weary life: beauty!
Still, the day had less to do with drinking in art than it did with
drinking ... life.

A disappointment was that
the ancient room was closed to the public, a sigh saying that a
major renovation was going on, the "renovation" posting called for
when a new director needed to shift the collection to justify his
job. Z did recall an article in the "Arts" section of the
Star
. A piece saying the
4th-century, life-sized Athenian lion that, to the delight of
children, padded about the Ancient room on marble-soft paws, was in
need of restoration. Something about its iron skeleton eroding; the
beast needing a new, titanium core. (Z wished
his
old bones could be swapped that
easily. As well as the flesh that dripped from them.)

A crowd. Young and old. ...... But mostly
old.

The smells were of eternity and cleaning
polish, leather shoes and dignified perfumes.

Because "Antiquities" was closed, Z and
Susan went straight through Kirkwood's twin rows of widely spaced,
sixty-foot-tall, highly polished, black granite columns, pillars
whose six feet in diameter cylinders soared like a sable forest,
each streaked with veins of purest white. Standing close, the
columns reminded Z of wild summer nights, when chain lightning
laced through rainy skies.

At hall's end, they passed empty suits of
antique armor; ghost-knights the appropriate guardians of the long
dead past.

In the South Vestibule, they turned left to
flank the Loan Exhibition room. Hooking left again at the end of
the long hall, they drifted through the Georgian and French Regency
rooms, then angled left once more; were now about to enter a room
displaying European painting.

As for their location in
the vastness that was the Nelson, they'd U-turned back to the front
of the 30's building -- the massive, multiple-storied structure
built with the fortune willed for that purpose by William Rockhill
Nelson, the Kansas City
Star's
turn-of-the-century newspaper mogul. At least Z
had always
taken
the north expanse of the Nelson to be the front of the
building since it was the side that art-goers entered. Others,
might consider the front of the gallery to be beyond Kirkwood Hall,
a sweeping width of steps outside the building overlooking a grassy
vista where the Kansas City symphony gave "pop" concerts on summer
nights.

It was then, strolling hand in hand like the
lovers they would soon be again, that Susan asked the question he'd
hoped never to hear. "Who's Jamie Stewart?"

Turning her head, Susan arched an elegant
eyebrow.

"Who?"

"Jamie Stewart."

"I know a number of ...."

"
Do
you? Since when do you know
a
number
of Jamie
Stewarts?"

Mistake!

Z had spoken before thinking, something he
rarely did. (A constant complaint of Susan's was that Z kept his
feelings to himself; refused to talk to her about his work, about
his life.)

Blundering into saying
something off the top of his head, it was a time for
thinking
not for
talking
.

"Jamie? I thought you said Jimmy."

"Jamie." For emphasis, Susan squeezed Z's
hand. "She called a week ago last Wednesday. I didn't want to
bother you while you were sick."

"Oh."

"So -- who is she?"

In spite of the forever-chill of the
thick-stoned gallery, Z had begun to sweat. Could it be he wasn't
as well as he'd thought? Could he even have a little fever? Z put
the palm of his free hand on his forehead ... felt ... nothing.

"A ... girl."

"I figured that out for myself."

As a general rule, one of the things Z liked
about Susan was her wit, but ......

"Called?" To the unnatural heat rising in
his neck and face, Z could add chills, fingering his spine.

"That's right. She called to ask how to get
in touch with you." Since he and Susan were in a public place --
Kansas City's gentility sauntering past -- Susan was speaking more
quietly than she might have in private. Another thing Z liked about
Susan was her passion. ... Ordinarily

"I don't know why she'd want to do
that."

"She
said
to see if you got your money.
She said she'd been working on a case with you."

"That's it? That's all she said?"

"Yes."

Major
relief!

"So I told her," Susan continued, with that
relentlessness she sometimes showed, "that you were in the
hospital."

"Right." Z swallowed hard.
Plunged on. "
Now
I remember. She
did
have something to do with a case. A long time
ago." It certainly
seemed
a long time ago, anyway. While Z's personal code
was always to tell the truth, it did allow him to "bend the facts"
in matters of survival. "
So
long ago I'd forgotten all about it." To his
other symptoms, Z now had to add a sore throat from all this
talk.

As for Susan, she didn't
seem to be as pleased as he'd hoped she'd be with Jamie's
teleportation to the remote past. "What
I
want to know is how she got
my
home phone
number."

"What?"

"My home number. It's
unlisted, you know." Although time seemed to be passing slowly, Z's
mind -- like a frantic rat dashes this way and that to escape a
maze -- was scurrying furiously. "She
had
to have gotten it from
you."

"Oh."

"Oh,
what
?"

If Susan had a fault, it was being so damned
bright, Z feeling that, in girlfriends, a little dumbness was
acceptable.

Fortunately for Z, they now had to pause so
two well-heeled matrons could cross the corridor in front of them,
each with identical white hair, styled just so, one dressed in
black, one draped in blue, silk crepe. A single strand of genuine
pearls graced the black. A gold chain on the blue. Both with
sensible, but expensive, shoes. The kind made for tramping through
the alpine woods or ambling down the long halls of the gallery.

Never
, had Z been so appreciative of just how many cultured folks
the city could cough up at the Nelson on a Sunday
afternoon!

Barely inside another painting-hung room,
Susan stopped. Turned. "I'm waiting."

Z noticed that somewhere back there in the
corridor, Susan had stopped holding his hand. Not a good sign.

"Waiting?"

"Waiting to hear how this Jamie Stewart
person knew my private phone number."

How
had
that little minx gotten Susan's
number? Z surely hadn't given it to her; you didn't give your
girl's phone number to another girl -- even big, ugly, and
assuredly dumb Bob Zapolska wouldn't do
that
.

Thinking back, remembering -- hoping Susan
wouldn't notice him blush -- Z had the kind of revelation
symbolized in comic strips by a light bulb switching on!

Jamie must have found
Susan's phone number the time Jamie -- in her role as dip -- had
picked Z's wallet. That
had
to be it. Rifling Z's billfold was how Jamie
found Susan's picture. The question was, did that photo have
Susan's phone number on the back? .... Yes! As a kind of joke,
Susan had put her phone number below her signature -- to remind Z
to call her. A gentle hint in the days when they'd just started
"dating," that he didn't call her often enough.

"I didn't
give
her your number.
She must have seen it when I showed her your picture."

"You ... what!?" Though much too polite to
raise her voice in the gallery, Susan was clearly shocked.

Nothing to do but ride it out.

"Showed her your photo." By this time, Z's
voice had been reduced to its whisper-purr. If this interrogation
kept up much longer, he might lose his voice entirely.

On reflex, Z dug out the small aspirin
bottle he always carried; crunched down a few pills just for
luck.

"Why would you do that? Show my picture to
someone you claim you didn't even know very well?"

I good question.
Why
would
Z flash
a picture of Z's girl at someone he didn't know? ....... Ah! ......
"I guess, because I show your photograph to ... everyone. I can't
help it. You're so ... beautiful.

Funny, how the feeblest of lies could make
the greatest impact on a woman, this fib impressive enough to get
Susan to smile and take Z's hand again.

So they were off. Around that room, then
down the hall into the less-crowded 18th-century area: one of the
gallery's smaller rooms, few people looking at what were actually
pretty boring paintings. (No one said "boring" in the Nelson, of
course. Except children. The old Latin saying about "Truth being in
the wine" paled before truth as told by an innocent.)

Z and Susan were now looking at, "Augustus
the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland." (1656-1746.)

Portrayed in shiny armor, a pleased look on
the Elector's well-fed face, Mr. Strong was pointing at a
smoldering city he'd just had his troops raze. Another ho-hum day
at the office, king-wise.

Z and Susan moved on. To, "Portrait of a
Lady Holding a Dog."

Z liked the dog.

Side-stepping, they viewed
what was called, "Jupiter in the Guise of Diana and the Nymph
Callisto." A favorite of Z's, this was a picture of Jupiter
preparing to ravish a lush and
very
naked nymph, the painting causing Z to return to
thoughts of Jamie Stewart.

Z hoped he'd heard the
last of her, in
particular
, hoped she'd sent
him
all
the
photographs she'd taken. (Whoever said, "You can't get too much of
a good thing," hadn't met Jamie Stewart, girl ghost
hunter!)

If the Jamie-genie could just be coaxed into
its bottle, this whole, mostly horrible, episode would end .....
except for one thread of "ghost house" fabric that wouldn't ... tie
off.

Could Z be having uneasy thoughts because he
and Susan had paused again, this time in front of a painting
titled: "The Beheading of St. John the Baptist -- Terbrugghen --
(1622?) -- northern follower of the Italian painter,
Caravaggio."?

Terbrugghen? Interesting. ..... But in
another time -- in another case.

The painting was of a young girl (the dancer
Salome) silver tray in hand, ready to receive the hacked-off head
of John the Baptist, her spiteful mother requesting the Baptist's
head from King Herod Antipas. Disgusting!

Staring at the outlandish scene, Z had the
feeling the painting's theme was compelling him to snap in the
remaining puzzle-facts of the Smith-Ruble picture.

Moving on, Z and Susan now stood before a
big oil titled: "Judith with the Head of Holofernes -- Simon Vouet
-- (1590-1649?)

In the painting, the Jewish widow, Judith,
had just chopped off the head of the Babylonian general,
Holofernes.

What was this fascination with
beheadings?

Seeing two too many severed heads got Z to
thinking about Ruble's tendency to kill people by knifing them.

Another free floating bit of information now
entered Z's mind: Addison saying Ruble had escaped from a New York
Asylum no more than a month ago.

Z's instinct was now telling him something
was wrong about the timing of Ruble's escape. ..... But what?

As Z and Susan left the Baroque room,
continuing to sift through murmuring gallery-goers, Z's next
thought was about ... guns. About how practically everybody in the
U.S.A. was armed like old time pirates. Men had guns. Women had
guns. Children had guns. Criminals had guns. Lunatics had guns.

Z realized he'd gotten tired, his mind
pinwheeling like it did when he was feverish.

So many people had weapons
that everyone
else
wanted a gun for self-defense from people who already
had
one. And what had
all that "self-protection" accomplished? A higher murder rate than
any civilized nation on the face of the earth! It seemed,
sometimes, that Americans were about to "defend" themselves to
death.

Mr. Smith had a gun. Still
did, Z giving it back to him. Smith had said
Mrs
. Smith had a pistol, one he
claimed she used to shoot at him when he was gardening.

A gun
had
been found in the Smith house,
on the bed beside the slain woman.

Thinking of the latter gun (the police
typing it to be the piece used on the vagrants,) Z was certain it
was also the small-bore weapon that killed the boy.

Of course,
guns
don't kill
people,
people
kill people.