19

Fred was working the secretaries at Harvard by nine o’clock.

Russell Ennery was indeed a graduate student in the fine arts, studying with people in archaeology as well, doing a thesis on Celtic bronzes in Iberia. Russell was twenty-four and had a home address in Maryland. He had attended New York University as an undergrad. Fred confirmed the address on Pearl Street and jotted down the names of graduate advisers. He couldn’t get access to a transcript but could infer, reading between the lines, that Russell hadn’t qualified to be a teaching fellow. Hence the job at Video King, which paid better and likely gave him access to a better class of people.

Fred now had enough to take over to Pearl Street. He drove to Central Square, the wad of lethal metal itching under his left arm. He’d look like law down here with his sport coat, his necktie, and the bulge.

Fred parked where he could watch Ennery’s building. Pearl Street was busy and multiculturally seedy. Less in the way of blossoms, saying spring, put up a front against generic trash. At about ten, nobody having come out of the building and with nothing else of interest developing, Fred went in. Russell Ennery’s apartment was on the third floor. The stairs were wood and chipped linoleum, smelling of mouse and roach and disinfectant and several varieties of smoke. He reached a dingy hall at the top of the stairs, with brown paint, a flaking ceiling, bike tires in the hallway, and a tray of kitty litter. Some extra had been generally kicked around the floor and squeaked under his shoes.

Fred knocked on Ennery’s door, using a brisk, competent knock, like a narc’s. There was no answer.

Fred called, “Russell?”

No answer. He tried the door. Nothing. He could come back and pop it later if he had to.

Fred went down one flight to the second floor and knocked. He heard movement inside the apartment, a scattering scramble and the sound of a toilet flushing. “Just a minute,” came a hoarse voice from within: female, he thought.

He stood on a green rubber mat that told him he was welcome. He looked at the sprig of dead hemlock on the door at eye level. The toilet flushed again inside. Footsteps came up to the door. A flicker of movement clouded the spy hole hidden in the hemlock. Fred stepped back and smiled. The hoarse voice, definitely female, said from inside, “Who is it?”

“I’m looking for Russ Ennery,” Fred said. “He lives in the building, upstairs. He’s not home.”

The door opened narrowly on a chain, making enough space to reveal a young woman in a green terry-cloth robe. Her black hair was wet, and there were beads of water on her face, hands, and bare legs.

“You have something for Russell?”

“No,” Fred said. He waited.

“A message, anything like that?” the girl asked.

Fred shook his head.

“I can’t help you. Sheila can help you,” the woman said. “Maybe. I’m Dawn. I can’t.”

Dawn shouted, “Sheila,” turning her head. She held the green robe closed. The room behind her was dim. Its furnishings were rudimentary and gave the impression of having been passed from one generation of students to another. The smell of pot was definite but mild; to Fred, from past association, it was the smell of mortal panic.

“Sit down,” Dawn said. “If you want. On the stairs, buddy. A guy looking for Russ,” she shouted into the apartment behind her, closing the door on him again.

Fred sat on the top step, listening.

“Sheila will be out in a minute,” Dawn said, opening the crack in the door again and releasing the chain. “You might as well come in. If you’re a friend of Russell’s. Are you a friend of Russell’s?” She looked doubtful.

“Not yet,” said Fred, following her green robe inside.

The room was sparsely furnished with yard-sale clutter and dingy carpet. A double futon lay in one corner, with a dirty Indian-print spread across it, and tumbled blankets. Clothes were piled next to it in a heap. A closed door on the left had water running behind it. Bathroom. Shower. To the right the room opened into a small passage kitchen, which must lead to another room. Sheila’s bedroom? Aside from a large mirror, there was nothing on the walls at all, other than old tan paint on top of wallpaper.

“My futon’s the only place to sit,” Dawn said. “I don’t care if you don’t. I’m not here much. I’m late.”

“Students, are you?” Fred said.

He sat on an edge of the futon. Dawn raised the blinds on the room’s two windows and let light in—not much of it, since the next building was only an arm’s length away. She held the green robe tightly together when she moved, as if she were naked under it.

“Sheila was, I guess. Maybe still is. I dance,” she said.

“What kind of dance?”

Dawn stood looking down at him, leaning against the wall between the windows. “Modern dance,” she said vaguely. “Like Twyla Tharp? Gestural. Something like that.”

“It’s a hard life, dancing.”

“So life is hard, the man says. What else is new?” Dawn turned toward the bathroom door and called again, “Sheila! I have to go.”

She chose articles of clothing from the heap next to Fred—blue jeans and underpants—and put them on, carefully, primly, under the robe. She turned and let Fred see a glimpse of naked back, dropping the robe and shimmying into a black sweatshirt. She stepped into black boots with high heels.

“I’m leaving,” Dawn shouted. She pulled a shoulder bag out of the heap of clothing and, running out, told Fred, “She’ll be with you in a minute, buddy.”

Fred listened to the shower running, enveloped in the aura of untidy female.

In five minutes Sheila and a cloud of steam came out of the shower. She was the blond girl Fred had seen yesterday talking to Russell Ennery on the sidewalk near Video King.

She had nothing on except for a pink towel wrapped around her hair. She had long legs like a horse’s and reasonable muscle tone, breasts round as fruits, and skin pinker than beige.

“What the fuck…,” she said, seeing Fred. She doubled back into the bathroom and came out again wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a man’s, with blue stripes and a button-down collar. She’d taken the towel off her head and left her long wet hair straggling.

“Jesus Christ,” Sheila said, looking at Fred. “What do you want? Fucking Dawn let you in?”

Fred stood up.

“Don’t touch me,” Sheila said, backing into the door.

“I’m looking for Russell,” Fred said. “That’s all.”

Water commenced staining through the shirt, showing the upper contours of her breasts, and their nipples.

“You want Russ, go to his place,” Sheila said. “Upstairs.”

She moved toward the apartment’s front door.

“I want Russ,” Fred said. “But for now you’ll do, Sheila. Russell’s not home.”

Sheila fidgeted with the bottom of the shirt. “Let me get some pants on, for God’s sake.” She looked skittish.

Fred said, friendly, “As long as I can’t find Russ and you’re his friend, I’d hate for you to disappear before we have a chance to get acquainted.”

“I put pants on before we get acquainted,” Sheila said. “Unless you got a better idea?”

She looked at Fred. Fred waited.

“We’ll both concentrate better,” Sheila said, moving toward the kitchen, the shirttail cleaving to her damp backside. “You couldn’t talk to Dawn? She knows Russ.”

Fred stood to stay next to her, then realized that there was no other way out of here except by the back kitchen door, and Sheila was heading the other way, toward her bedroom.

She turned and said, “Don’t fucking follow me, all right? When I come back, you tell me what you want to know and why I should tell you, and who the fuck you are anyway.”

Fred sat on the futon, watching the kitchen. Sheila came in again wearing jeans with the shirt tucked in, and she stood looking down at him, her eyes narrowed.

“What you want with Russ?” she asked.

“I need to talk with him.”

“Russ took off last night,” Sheila said. “But that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you.”

“Russ is in over his head. He’s going to get hurt.”

“Go on,” she said.

Fred said, “Maybe I can save us wasting time. I don’t have any reason to hurt the guy myself.”

“I thought you were the cops,” Sheila said. She backed across the room and looked Fred over. “You look like a fucking narc. That’s a piece, isn’t it, under your arm?”

Fred nodded.

“What’s the gun for? You want to show me some ID?” Sheila said.

Fred said, “Call me Fred.”

“Okay, Fred,” she said. “Fuck off, Fred.” She opened the apartment door. “About Russ I know from nothing.”

“You looked pretty close to Russ yesterday,” Fred said, “talking together, the two of you, in the street. I’m telling you, Sheila, people could get hurt.” He leaned back against the wall, comfortable, ready for a lengthy visit.

Sheila looked at him a moment, thinking. She closed the door. She crossed the room and squatted on the floor near him. “Tell you what. Let’s us you tell me more and I’ll see if I can help.”

“Russell’s in grad school at Harvard. In art history,” Fred said. “I’m doing research that overlaps a project of his.”

“You’re in art history?” Sheila exclaimed, surprised.

“I’m working on Chase,” Fred said.

“Chase. Cut to the chase. So?”

“Russ needs to know,” Fred said.

Sheila leaned back, arching. Her hair was starting to dry toward silver. She took a brush out of a hip pocket and started brushing it, then said, “I wouldn’t know Russell’s business. You’re wasting your time.”

“Russ knows a painting I’m interested in. By Chase. It’s missing.”

Sheila stopped brushing and looked at him. Her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes stayed carefully uninterested.

“He said that got completely screwed up,” Sheila said. “Whatever it was. How does he get in touch if he wants to, if he calls?”

“It got screwed up, all right. Tell him to call me. Fred. At the Charles Hotel. I’ll write down the number for you.”

“I’ll pass the message on,” Sheila said, “if he calls, or if I see him.”

“Tell him the letter is worth money,” said Fred, standing.

“And you’re connected to that?” Sheila said. “Money. A letter. Right?”

“I might be.”

Sheila said, “If he calls, I’ll tell him. I don’t know if he’ll call.”

“Is there someplace else I might find him?” Fred asked. “Where he might be during the day?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Fred got up and walked across the room toward the apartment door, noting that Sheila did not mention Video King. He wondered what else she was not mentioning.

Sheila stopped him. “How much money we talking? So I can tell him.”

“Why don’t you tell him to call,” Fred said. He grinned in a reassuring manner.

He took the car back to the hotel and parked before walking back to Video King. Russ was scheduled to start work at three. A fat guy with a blond buzz cut and a pink Video King T-shirt chewed gum at him a minute in response to his question, thinking, then looked at the list in back of the desk, said, “He’s finished with his shift at seven,” and chewed some more.

If Russ didn’t telephone him, Fred could come back at three-thirty and talk to him. Unless he’d left town. If he had, this would be harder.

Fred took portable coffee and a paper to his room. Sitting and looking across the river, he started thinking about Smykal’s place on Turbridge Street—Smykal’s place and Smykal’s art and Smykal’s body. He wanted none of it to be his business.

*   *   *

Fred called Molly at the library.

“I have your clothes, Fred. I’ll bring them if you want to do lunch.”

“You’re on.”

“Listen, Fred? Will you call the kids and tell them why you’re not around? They think we had a fight. I know they think so because they won’t say it.”

“I’ll call tonight. Come at noon-thirty. We’ll do lunch in my room.”