'Yes. How sure are you?'
'Well, I've only been on it since this morning. I may be missing something; but you can do a lot with a phone and a cab in a day.'
'Okay. Any other ideas?'
'I haven't got any ideas. But I have something interesting.'
'I'm sure, but you won't let me see it.'
'And you said not over the phone.'
'Sorry.'
'Uh-huh. Anyway, listen. You know how art galleries work? On commission? Well, the normal commission is ten to fifty percent of the price of the work—the lower
the sale price, the higher the commission. Artists who feel a gallery is taking too high a percentage will go with another gallery, if someplace else will take them. Okay?'
'Okay,' I said. 'And?'
'Eva Nouvel's work is very, very high priced. Any gallery in town would love to handle her, but she's been with her gallery—Sternhagen—since she first started to show in New York, close to forty years ago. Bill, they take seventy percent.'
'Umm,' I said. 'How do you know that?'
'My brother Elliot? You know his wife's an art consultant. She has a friend who has a friend who used to work at Sternhagen.'
The Chin network. I said, 'You believe her?'
'Him. Yes.'
'Lydia, I didn't ask you to check on Eva Nouvel.'
She paused for a moment. 'No, that's true. But I was waiting for some people to call me back and I got curious. What's the problem?'
I rubbed my eyes. 'No, nothing. It's okay.'
A slight chill crept into her voice. 'It might be better if I knew what was really going on.'
'What do you mean?'
'Oh, if I knew who the client was,' she said. 'If I knew why six valuable paintings were sitting around a storeroom in cow country. If I knew why you took a case up there at all. If I knew things like that, maybe I wouldn't make dumb mistakes.'
'You never make dumb mistakes.'
'I might if I don't know what's going on.'
The windows I'd opened had made it cold in the bar. Back where I was, by the phone, the floor was empty, all the tables and chairs crowded together in the other half of the room as though something were wrong back here.
I rubbed my eyes again; that did about as much good as it had done the first time. 'Jesus,' I said to Lydia. 'Look: you're right, and I'm sorry. But it's been a long day. Can we do this tomorrow?'
'We can do this whenever you want. You're the boss.'
'That's not—'
'Apparently it is.'
'Lydia—'
'Should I keep on it?' she asked, brusque and professional.
'Yes,' I said. 'Please.'
'Talk to you later, then.'
The phone clicked, and she was gone.
I walked around the silent room shutting the windows I'd opened. Then I went through the swinging doors into the kitchen, lifted Tony's jacket off the hook there, brought it to him. 'Come on, buddy,' I said softly, leaning down. 'Time to go home.' He looked at me as if he didn't know me. He rose unsteadily, pushing on the arms of his chair. I gave him his jacket. It took him some time to get into it. I didn't help, just stayed close enough to catch him if he needed that. He didn't.
I shut the lights and locked the place and we went out into the parking lot, crunching through it to the road. The night was dark and damp and foggy. It wasn't the up-close kind of fog where you couldn't see your own hand if you held your arm out straight. It was a soft film you didn't notice if your focus was close, where everything was clear and sharp and normal, what you expected. It was only when you tried to look around, to get your bearings, that you noticed that five yards away in all directions there was absolutely nothing at all.
Chapter 8
I left Tony inside his front door without a word. I waited on the porch just long enough to see him get a light on; then I headed down the steep stone steps and across the mud to my car.
The fog was thickening along 30 as I drove toward my place. I kept my speed down. I was hungry, exhausted, and in spite of Tony's bourbon I could feel all my nerve ends twitching.
The car slipped in and out of silvery patches of fog. I half expected with each one to come out somewhere
