Owen leaned back against the headrest of his seat and closed his eyes. He pressed the phone against his ear and replayed the message for the third time. He’d listened to it in the first go-around on the car’s hands-free connection. He’d been making use of the driving time to clear out his voice mail. All boring stuff. But he’d pulled over into a neighborhood swimming pool’s parking lot and sent this particular message back into the handset once he’d realized, in the first ten seconds, who had called.
“Mr. Haig, my name is Jonathan. You may remember me. We only met once, a few years ago, but it was kind of a standout experience. I have to think it was for you, too. A sale . . . hit a snag at the last possible minute. It was unfortunate. I’ll be honest, I still don’t know what to think.
“You and your employer probably hold me responsible. But considering all that happened, you might understand why I’ve been reluctant to reach out. Our mutual friend, what happened to her, well, I’ve had a hard time moving past it, myself. It was easy to think it was you, but, to be fair, I didn’t know her all that well. I wouldn’t have thought she would do anything like that. But I just don’t know. Either way, I trusted too much—you or her. That’s my own fault. It kills me that I’ll never know. I’ll never hear her side of it. So . . .”
The pause cut down to a silence that was clean enough to have Owen thinking it was the end of the message.
But then the guy started up again after a sharp, resigned breath, in and out. “Yeah. So. Things being what they are, I’m in a strange position. The item is still available. Of course, there would be a lot to talk about. And I would need much better assurances than I had last time. I realize that this ship may have sailed. Your employer may not want to acquire this piece anymore. And really, it might be better, safer, for me to simply start all over.
“But after everything, this thing seems . . . cursed. Not that I believe in that sort of stuff. But if that doesn’t bother them, or you, I’d prefer to be rid of it. I don’t know, maybe the history of it is a deal breaker. That’s fine, too. In light of everything, I just thought I’d extend the first gesture. Maybe to try to set things right. If you want to talk about it, call me back at this number. I look forward to hearing from you.”
Owen closed the voice mail app, his fingers firm on the edge of the case so as not to accidentally hit a delete command out of habit. He’d be listening to that message again. He was sure of it.
What the fuck was this guy playing at?
Jonathan, the Jonathan, put his head up like a prairie dog in the middle of all of this shit and acted as if Marcelline had died at the scene. He seemed completely unaware that Owen knew, firsthand, that she hadn’t. Which, if he wasn’t lying, would only mean that he hadn’t spoken to her since that night. And that meant she’d been telling Owen the truth. She and Jonathan weren’t partners.
The air felt thick in Owen’s throat.
The other possibility was that perhaps she’d not made it far after her little joyride in the Mercedes. Maybe she’d tried, but never made it back to Jonathan and their plan. Maybe she died of a blood clot or sepsis as a fevered Jane Doe in some undiscovered place, and Owen had for years been looking for someone who didn’t exist anymore. It would explain some things.
He caught himself gripping the seat’s edge in his fist. He flexed the painful lock out of his knuckles and blew out a big deep breath. Now what?
There was no coincidence that Jonathan had surfaced after all this time, ho-humming aloud—today—if Owen knew that the painting was still available. You’re a ham-handed little asshole sometimes, aren’t you, Jonathan?
The delivery of the message had been smooth enough, but the real question still blared out around the polished edges. This wasn’t simply about what Jonathan wanted Owen to think of him. This was about what Jonathan wanted to know. Had Owen seen the video? Jonathan wanted to know what kind of trouble he was in, and then how to get out of it.
And what kind of trouble was he in from Owen?
The Anningers had cooled toward Owen considerably after what had gone wrong that night. Blue blood had stripped cunning from them as surely as it had dialed up the sensitivity in their asses for a pea under a stack of mattresses. Their punishments were blunt and unsophisticated. Petty. They rolled their eyes at him and had relegated him to a series of dull special projects that made him want to break jaws just to keep himself awake.
He had an ear and an eye for the structure of it all, why they were the way they were. But he never had a reason to talk about it outside the few conversations he’d had with Marcelline. He’d lost himself in that connection, in those exchanges that brushed the line of what was not okay to say about the people they both worked for.
The image of her, of Marcelline looking up from her paperwork, eyes smiling at him from under her long lashes, it pulled him awake on the pillow so many mornings, still after all this time.
A tingle climbed the rungs of his ribs. Everything else could burn. He cared a lot about this one.
This Jonathan character had said way more than he meant to in his message, perhaps mistaking Owen for a simple gamecock that could be useful to him, if only Owen could be convinced to believe the right things.
The leather on the steering wheel of Owen’s C63 had an irregular dark patch at about two o’clock, right where the smooth-grain leather wrap gave over to the grippy padding. A similar smudge was at the edge of the center console, rubbed nearly invisible by the people who had detailed the car after he got it back. A few of the white stitches in the cover on the gear selector weren’t cream colored anymore. The dealership had wanted to reupholster the stained trim, but Owen had declined.
Marcelline had bled a little in her flight. He never knew how to feel about that.
So Jonathan wanted something from Owen that was probably as simple as a lot of money and to be rid of an item that could land him in quite a bit of trouble. It would be nothing for Owen to make that happen. It was his job to do just that.
If Marcelline was in fact dead, all that was in it for Owen was the chance to know what had really happened, to maybe finally be sure whether she’d set him up. And if she wasn’t dead, it was the same thing, but with even more potential.
He scanned the dashboard, a beautiful thing, really. He admired the mellow sheen of his trouser leg. The fine, carefully crafted things in life. He thought of Marcelline, who never got closer than his guest bed.
He keyed back into his voice mail and listened to the message again.
She was there in Jonathan’s script. The bit about the curse of the painting and all the Br’er Rabbit dissembling over how the bad history of the piece might be a problem for the Anningers. Please don’t throw me in that briar patch. Owen could practically feel her smirking.
Jonathan had known her better than he let on. Or he’d been paying better attention than he wanted to admit, as any straight man would in her presence. Either way, she’d left enough of an impression to write lines for him to speak when he wanted to wield her influence, even all this time later.
But the I’ve had a hard time moving past it, myself was pure, pointed fabrication. Owen knew what it meant to have a hard time moving past Marcelline. He knew exactly how it felt to not make much progress toward not thinking about her, in wondering if she was a conniving bitch who had found him disposable. And for nothing more than money. He knew what that feeling would sound like in someone’s voice. But it wasn’t there in Jonathan’s message. They were not brothers in disillusion, no matter that the man thought it was a coin for him to spend.
Owen had only a few images of Jonathan in his mind: the blandly handsome, stoic mask at the handshake; the hooded interest in the formalities of the exchange, trying not to look on high alert, as if he weren’t counting the number of steps to the exits.
But the image of him prying Marcelline’s hand off her neck, her mouth in a shocked little O and the quick lurch of blood as he pinned her arms down, that was vivid. Had Jonathan been helping her or hurting her? He’d looked over at Owen, unreadable.
There were things yet to know.
Goddamn, the Anningers’ silly wants were so boring.
Owen watched across a lane of parking spaces. Beyond the chain-link was a line of boys daring one another into the deep end, nudging, close to shoving, heads swiveling to take the measure of the others. Everything they knew about the world was obvious in the curve of their spines and the tension in their shoulders. But in that half-naked lineup you couldn’t tell what they would become. The short, skinny little twerp might be due for a growth spurt. The fat one might discover offensive tackle or physics. The one who stood a half step away, straight as a soldier, might find luck and opportunity that took him to places he’d never imagined but cost him his soul.
Owen took up his phone and tapped into the service’s message details for Jonathan’s number. He wouldn’t pick up. Of course he wouldn’t. He’d want to hear Owen’s tone on his own turf. He’d want to analyze Owen’s words and inflections to know whether to destroy his disposable phone or to roll the dice and take his next turn elsewhere.
Owen put his hand over the stain on the steering wheel’s leather and squeezed. Marcelline.
“Jonathan. Good to hear from you. Of course, I remember you. Who forgets something like that? You’re right in that there’s still interest and much to talk about. But I think it’s better, for everyone, if we talk in person. If you give me twenty-four hours, I can be wherever you’d like. You say where, you say when, I’ll make it happen. Text me the particulars, if that’s easier.”
Owen paused, then gave Jonathan the least of his own sentences back.
“I look forward to hearing from you.”
Owen closed the call and cranked the Mercedes’s engine back to life. He didn’t want to love the car. It had an axle in both worlds—too showy in one and too humble in the other. He felt weak in that, at his heart, the car was in the same category as his rain-shower fixture in his bathroom and his underwear and his bedsheets and the occasional woman who touched his naked skin. The car was something intimate, a beautiful chain to the world that other, lesser people seemed to enjoy.
He thought of wacky, economy-class Charlie and the day he’d first seen the painting in the video. Something somersaulted inside him—then and again now.
He dropped the Mercedes into gear and pulled out into the mild suburban traffic.
He’d told Jonathan to give him twenty-four hours notice to meet up. But Owen didn’t need twenty-four hours. He probably didn’t need twenty-four minutes. He’d been in town for a day and a half, not knowing whether the girl, whom he’d watched walking home from school with her friends, deep in conversation punctuated in the occasional wild, uncontrolled gestures of youth, was heading to the plain little house that linked back to Marcelline, Jonathan, or some unknown and unlucky soul who would eventually tell Owen, with a last breath if need be, what he wanted to know.