Man With a Squirrel (28 page)

Fred thought, The guy has Oona's blood and spirit in him, holding out while that vicious bastard snaps every finger, and—Jesus Christ—the thumbs. If you want a mind-altering experience, try that one.

Fred said, “I don't think you can move yet. I'll go downstairs and call some medics in. I can't splint your hands any better than the gloves are doing now. You're lucky he did not take them off.”

Marek shook with agony, realizing what would be laid bare when someone cut the leather off him. “No medics,” Marek said. “We must go before that man returns to kill me, who am innocent!”

“You got aspirin?”

“These drugs are no good for you.”

It was cold outside, and there was no way Fred could think of to get Marek's upper body into clothes. He made a poncho by cutting a slit in a blanket with his pocketknife, then got him standing. The blood pushed down into his hands by gravity made Marek groan and totter. The man stood with one arm around Fred's shoulder to keep his balance and, raising his right foot, used it to lower the Steinway keyboard cover with a crash.

“We'll put on your shoes downstairs,” Fred said. “I don't want you skidding on the way down.”

At the shop door, after Fred had got Marek's feet into their loafers, Marek showed him where to find the key and how to set the alarm. “People will steal my things,” Marek said. He looked speculatively around the shop, weaving in anguish. “Ignorant persons who are rich pay well for beautiful things,” he said. “And I am friends with such people.”

Fred walked Marek slowly to his car off Mountjoy Street and put him in the passenger seat. Marek, groaning, balanced the ugly nonsense Manny had made of his hands on the poncho rucked up on his thighs.

“I want to take you to this hand surgeon I found,” Fred insisted. “She is the best; people fly in from Europe…”

“I do not play again. Never,” Marek said. “The instrument is closed. I shall sell it. I cannot be what I was; therefore I shall be another thing. Take these hands to a place that will fix them fast and cheap. From this time on I need these fingers only to pick my nose, clean my backside, and fondle the genitalial parts of my friends—and to count the money I shall make in my antique store on Charles Street in Boston, which I shall call Marek. It is the name Oona would want.”

Fred started driving. “Marek, tell me about the man. You told him nothing?”

“Are you crazy? He says he will break my fingers! I tell him everything so he will not hurt me, but he will not believe. He says I am trying to find the place they are hiding some children. He is terrible, terrible nonsense. He says I have a picture of a squirrel and another picture and am using them with spells to find where the children hide. He says I am a friend of the devil. I am the devil. I tell him no, it is you, Fred, doing all these things.

“Only then does he start breaking my fingers. I scream. He ties my mouth and I cannot scream. Each time he says something he breaks … he breaks.… Let them fix my hands and I will help you kill him.”

“It doesn't work that way,” Fred said, but Marek had fainted. Fred took him to the walk-in clinic in Charlestown and showed him how to get to the place on Chestnut Street after he was finished. “Wait for me there.”

It was four-thirty and he wanted to tell Molly that in case he was a bit after five, don't worry, he had not forgotten his promise to take her home. He stopped into the place to use the phone.

“Molly took some personal time,” he was told, by whomever was at the reference desk. “Unexpected errand. She left you a message. You want to come by for it or shall I read it to you? It's sealed.”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Where is she?”

Teddy looked over at him, worried at the tone in his voice, and said, “She's sleeping in the back room.” For an instant Fred thought he meant Molly. The needle registering hope shot up, then plunged. He had forgotten Ann Clarke.

*   *   *

He drove carefully, keeping his anxiety at bay, and had Molly's envelope in thirteen minutes, tearing it open as he made for the library's drafty vestibule.

Fred, here's the best I can do. Copley married Susanna Clarke, as you and Clayton know. She is the daughter of Richard Clarke, a Tory who received most of the tea into his warehouse that didn't go into the harbor and get wasted symbolically. You know how I feel about symbols.

Copley sailed to England in 1774. His wife's family came later, but before the fighting started. You can believe they took as much as they could of what they owned. We have names for brothers and sisters of Susanna—Mary, Sarah, Isaac, Hannah, Jonathan. But that's the white brothers and sisters. The black ones, we don't know.

In Boston before—also after—the Revolution, a person was slave or free depending on the legal status of the mother. Though you could bear your father's name and be a slave. Suppose Susanna's father (or brother—but let's keep it simple) had a son by an African woman who was enslaved to him; and that this man had children in due course, and a sequence of marriages ensued of the offspring of these unions with persons who were of European background, until there was nothing visible left of the African heritage, only the remnant of the slave name to proclaim a nominal identity to this root. What do I know?

Copley went to England and did well. He had a son, and the son died and his things were sold, including paintings he had inherited from his artist father. Among them—do you know the Copley portrait in the Detroit Museum, called
Head of a Negro?
It's the same head, a sketch, and was sold out of the son's collection in 1864. Here's how it was described in the sale catalog: “Head of a Favorite Negro. Very Fine.” I think your portrait is of a brother of Copley's wife, and, who knows, maybe part of her dowry. Isn't that an awful idea? I think part of the Clarke line stayed in, or came back to, the New World, after the Revolution; and that those women—Alexandra and Ann Clarke—are descended from the man in the portrait, who bequeathed them their slave name: which I fear was wasted on those jokers.

Molly

P.S. Don't forget your birthday tomorrow.

Fred half-read Molly's note while using the vestibule's pay telephone to call Molly's house. He let it ring until he concluded there was nobody home—though the kids should be there. Alarm percolated in him. He'd hoped the note would tell him where she was, not go on about Clayton's problems. He tried Ophelia's number and got Terry. No, her mom was not around, but Ophelia was. Did Fred want to talk with Ophelia?

“Get her.”

“What's wrong?”

“Terry, just put her on.” Fred drummed his fingers on the wall. Ophelia took the Lincoln end of the line, saying, “I'm holding the fort, Fred. I told Molly I'll feed the kids and take them to her place, and sit in case she is late, so nobody worries.”

“Where is she?”

“Doing research for me. I decided to change my approach to one of investigative reporting. What I see now is more along the lines of the exposé. Apparently, I have discovered, this group…”

“Don't fuck around, Ophelia! These people are dangerous. Where's Molly?”

“She's getting a look at what they call their safe house. We arranged she would lead them to believe she wants sanctuary, and they bought her act. We're going to pull the rug out. She'll call when she can and one of us, you or I, Fred, will pick her up. Where this safe house is nobody knows until I tell the world.”

Fred put his sick fear to one side. He telephoned Kwik-Frame. No answer. Manny, at large somewhere, could be with Molly. He telephoned Cover-Hoover's secret unlisted number. After three rings her voice answered, “Yes?”

“Put Molly Riley on,” Fred said. His fingers stopped drumming. He felt the silence lengthen.

“I am good at voices,” Cover-Hoover said. “We've met. You were looking for a painting. Now, apparently, you have involved yourself with another of my patients. She fears you.”

“Put her on.”

“Mrs. Riley—that is her slave name—has placed herself in my sanctuary. She is safe. She has reached a critical stage. It is especially critical, I would say, now that I know of your … attachment to her.”

Fred said, “You may be surprised how little you know about critical stages.”

“I hear your concern. Thank you for sharing it with me. Mrs. Riley wishes privacy and I may not ethically violate her wish. I can do no more than to assure you, and her loved ones, that she is safe.”

“Ann Clarke is safe too,” Fred said. “And she's talking.”

He listened to the silence turning colder on the line. “Ah?” Cover-Hoover prompted. “Perhaps we can discuss these feelings in my office.”

Fred said slowly, “Wait there. Feelings aside, if anything happens to Molly, you are dead meat.”

*   *   *

Fred put the car in the lot under the Charles Hotel and walked to Brattle Street. He took the stairs to Cover-Hoover's floor and pressed the buzzer.

“Yes?” came Cover-Hoover's fragrant, patient voice.

“No games,” Fred said into the voice slot.

The door opened to a click. Manny sprang at him with the beginning of an Asiatic roar, very martial arts. Fred met his chin with a head butt that knocked the man out, watched the large mass sliding down, and broke both the bodyguard's arms back quickly at the elbows. He laid him on the anonymous gray carpet of the waiting room before he closed the door into the hall. Manny snorted the deep snore of the suddenly unconscious. When the big man resurfaced he was not going to be cutting paintings apart for a while, or breaking fingers.

With his arms out, Manny would have no further stomach for cute kicks, though he could still make noise. Fred glanced around the waiting room, noticing the two chairs and the pair of closed doors Molly had described. He thought back to the moment on the street, looking up at the third floor. He recollected where the staircase must fall, and the elevator shaft next to it, and how the windows were laid out. The bank of three in a row would be the office, on the left as you looked up. The single, separated by a space of brick, would have to be the bathroom.

Fred opened the door on his left, discovering an antiseptic john with a Japanese decorative theme, into which he propped the snoring Boardman Templeton. Manny's black Ninja sweatshirt rode up, exposing a stretch of tummy as well as the mouse smiling on a green field. Fred had worked in silence, even cutting off Manny's Asiatic roar before it got more than an inch out of his throat. He pushed the privacy lock and closed Manny inside.

Eunice Cover-Hoover was either wondering what had developed in the silence of her waiting room, or she was confident the treasurer of Adult-Rescue, Inc. had accomplished his mission.

Fred opened the second door.

33

Cover-Hoover was at her bank of windows, lowering the blinds, saying, “It will help you feel safe,” to the young woman on the couch who started panting and turning green at Fred's entrance. “Don't mind me,” Fred said. “Please continue.” Cover-Hoover continued turning. The young woman continued fainting, falling sideways on the couch, and slipping softly to the floor. Cover-Hoover remained in her window, the blind half closed. She was wearing a green dress of nubby linen, its color matched by a silk scarf that was keeping her hair up.

“You are not safe,” Fred told her. Cover-Hoover's eyes flicked toward her telephone. “I wouldn't,” Fred advised. The youngster on the floor moaned. She'd been small sitting, and was much smaller on the gray carpet, in her gray skirt and gray lambswool sweater and gray pallor.

“You are shattering a confidential dyad,” Cover-Hoover said. She raised her eyebrows and asked, “Did you notice my colleague?”

“No.”

Cover-Hoover studied him a moment before she looked down at her patient.

“Let's go,” Fred said.

“I have a responsibility toward my…”

“Can it.”

“… people,” Cover-Hoover continued evenly. “Many of them are deeply affected by their traumatic disturbances. The abrupt entrance of a stranger into their sanctuary…”

“We don't have time for the crap.”

“… may cause them to try desperate measures.” This last phrase was spoken with such sweet resignation Fred received it with a chill of worry.

The patient on the floor whispered, “Victim of Darkness, child of Light.”

“That's right, dear,” Cover-Hoover soothed her. “We have been interrupted by a former patient of mine. His need is pressing. You may go when you are strong enough. I will be here for you tomorrow.” The patient stared at Fred with such a grimace of anxiety Fred wanted to strangle someone. Who had done such damage to this person? Cover-Hoover watched him closely.

“I have class at seven,” the patient said. “Boardman will take me?”

“Do you mind waiting in the next room?” Cover-Hoover suggested.

“Better she waits here,” Fred said. “I don't mind including her in our confidential dyad. Here's what I have. Your people killed Oona Imry, an antiques dealer from Boston, also a friend of mine, for reasons I have yet to appreciate. You or your people sucked an old man dry before you killed him—you got his house, and somewhere around a million bucks…”

“I accept no payment from my patients,” Cover-Hoover broke in. “Pay no attention, Candace. He is upset.”

“You, Adult-Rescue, Inc.,” Fred said. “Now you claim your patient-adult-victims are prepared to defend their safe house or some damned thing?”

Cover-Hoover spread her hands and sighed.

“You study at Mass Art,” Fred told the student. Her mouth opened with surprise. “What's your major?”

“Art ed.”

“Contradiction in terms. Never mind. Your family rich?” Fred asked. “How much does your dad make?”