25

After they’d eaten, Molly called work and told them, “Something came up.”

“Cute,” said Fred. “Clever. Original.” He was wishing he still smoked.

Molly waved him quiet. She kept on with the phone, saying she’d be late getting back.

Fred was in the bed. Molly fidgeted around the room, worrying. She was pleasant to look at after rough exercise had scared some thugs back to Providence, and while you were waiting for a telephone call concerning, perhaps, ransom demands on a worthless kid who had betrayed you.

“I don’t like violence,” Fred said. “Although I’m good at it.”

“I’m going to take a shower,” Molly said. “I’m sure yours is better than mine at home.”

“I like yours better, though it’s worse,” Fred said. “Please be my guest.”

Molly said, “Want to call down for coffee while I scrape off?”

Fred tried Mangan’s number first. No answer.

*   *   *

With Molly there, Fred organized things in his mind. He laid out as much as he knew. Molly listened, wrapped in the hotel’s towels, sitting by the window, drinking coffee.

“So you figure,” she said, “Mangan has the letter Clay wants?”

“It makes sense if Smykal tried to sell the package twice, giving the painting to one buyer and the letter to the other as an opening gambit. It would be very stupid, but he probably had no inkling who he was dealing with. Having seen only Clay, how could he guess Fred? And if on the other side only Russell was visible, it must have looked like child’s play.”

“Mangan or his backers want the painting.”

“Right.”

“Russ, whose hide you hope to save, in order to save the same miserable hide told his pals in Providence—sorry, fucking Providence—that you could help them with their problem. Because first Russ, then Mangan, concluded you hijacked the picture.”

“I guess so.”

“Mmm,” said Molly. “I’m not sure I like it, any of it. Except I liked the painting.”

“It is a good picture, isn’t it?” said Fred. “All this hoorah, you forget.”

“If it’s the mob behind Mangan, why would the mob buy a painting?” Molly asked.

Fred said, “You can launder money that way, but this particular painting seems an odd choice, being unsigned and all.”

“Unless they have the letter.”

“Yes.”

“Which apparently they do.”

“Right.”

“Let me think about this,” said Molly. “How does it work? The laundering?”

“You have cash that you can’t afford to account for but you want to be able to. Otherwise, anything you buy with it, if you’re nailed on a RICO, goes to the government. If you buy something of value for cash under the table—like a painting you might have inherited or picked up at a yard sale for nothing—and then you sell it on the open market, that transfer generates income you can be seen with. You can buy cars and dancing girls or whatever,” Fred said.

He sat by the window with his coffee. Molly, finished with hers, was putting herself together, heading for work again. She was dressed in black stockings, a blue jumper and a white blouse, and the red knitted cardigan: her housewife-librarian outfit. She looked very sexy in it, her brown curls still damp, drying. The room was festooned with wet white towels.

“You should see Clayton’s room,” Fred said. “He makes as much impression on it as a ghost.”

“Obviously you’re planning a straight trade,” Molly said. “The painting for the kid. The kid doesn’t deserve you, Fred.”

“If I can get through to that attractive nuisance Buddy Mangan,” Fred said.

“Good luck with your phone calls,” Molly said. “Call if there’s something I can do. Or if…” She faltered. “Or if you plan to go somewhere.”

“I’ll call,” Fred said. “And thanks. For not saying it again.”

“Not saying what?”

“‘Don’t be an asshole,’” Fred said.

“I felt that went without saying,” Molly told him.

*   *   *

It was three-fifteen.

Suppose Russ Ennery deserved whatever they were doing to him? Fred couldn’t calmly let it come. Even though it was not his business, because a life was at stake and salvageable, Fred’s instinct was, as Molly had guessed, to engineer a straight trade: La Belle Conchita for Ennery. But Mangan didn’t answer his phone, and the anonymous friend from Providence was not calling. Fred would find another way to float a message down.

You think of those cartoons where there are twelve little fish swimming, and in back of them six bigger fish with their mouths open, teeth; behind those are three bigger ones looking really hungry, and behind them, the biggest, smiling, lazily swimming, keeping track.

You want to get word to the big guy without having the messenger get eaten.

Fred was friendly with a couple of people in the art business in Providence. The smartest of them, and the one he liked best, was Harriet Raskin, who had a one-person operation downtown. Fred called and found her.

“Look, Harriet,” he said. “I’m working on something and I want to talk it over.”

“You want to come down?” Harriet asked.

He could see her, lean as an ostrich, smoking continually, sitting in her little gallery in a cloud of blue smoke, a bunch of nineteenth-century landscapes on the walls, with the tree, maybe the cow, the piece of water, the mountain, the sky.

Two bullterriers slobbered beside her.

“Let me just talk a minute, Harriet.”

“You want to give me a general idea of what you want to talk about?” Harriet asked. Fred heard her cough and strike a match.

He said, “There’s been a mix-up up here.”

“Has there?” said Harriet. “What kind, if you want to say?”

“Apparently a person in your part of the country arranged to buy something that didn’t get delivered. Something in your field.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Harriet said.

“I didn’t think you would. This person is naturally disappointed, and I may be able to assist.”

“Yes or no: do you know who you want to talk to?”

“I thought, asking around, you might find out and let me know.”

“I can ask. Is it urgent?”

“I get the idea the person is pretty disappointed,” Fred said.

“Let me see what I can stir up,” Harriet said. She asked how she could reach him.

Fred gave her his number at the Charles. “Don’t stir too hard,” he said. “There are delicate objects involved.”

“I know delicate objects,” Harriet said. “I’m in the picture business. Sit tight. I’ll see what I can do.

“By the way,” she went on, “while I have you, what can you tell me about a collector by the name of Arthur Arthurian? Sounds Armenian. I never heard of him.”

“I wish I never had either. The person I want to reach is likely the one who wants to know about Arthurian.”

“Stay there,” Harriet said. “I’ll get on it. You’ll be at your phone?”

“I’ll be here.”