The Right Jack

VASSILY IVANOVICH had been on his way out of his apartment near the UN when Elaine Albee and Alan Knight caught him. The big Russian invited them back inside for a glass of rose.

'No more vodka or slivovitz,' he apologized. 'Now I am having to watch my blood pressure.'

He explained he was on his way to the hospital. 'Molly Baldwin and me, we have long talk yesterday and she explains to me so much foolishness for her job. She cries very hard when I tell her it is foolishness. All is understood now and last night they let me see T. J. This morning I go, and tonight I go. Next week I go home.'

'To Russia?'

'Da. To Russia. My delegation here is finished.'

He did not take offense when they questioned him again about his movements

Sunday morning. It was almost as if he did not realize he could be seriously considered for the murders. Asked why he was late getting back to the tournament after the break, he said he'd made a phone call to a member of his trade delegation and had been put on hold for longer than he'd anticipated.

It was not something they could easily check, but Elaine remembered another possibility, the theft of the cribbage board, and asked, 'Did you work on Thursday, Mr. Ivanovich? Between noon and three, say?'

'Thursday? Da. We meet with export group from Georgia. We have same state. In our south, too,' he beamed at them. 'They want to sell us new fish they make there. Crawdudes.'

'I think you mean crawdads,' said Alan Knight with a perfectly straight face.

'We meet at ten, have lunch at one, make first agreements at four.'

'And that's something I can check out,' said Knight as he and Elaine left Ivanovich's apartment in Tudor City, that enclave of pseudo-French-Gothic buildings on the East River across from the UN.

They strolled north along a tree-lined street that was so quiet they might have been in one of the outer boroughs of the city. Lights glowed softly behind the leaded glass windows around them and midtown bustle seemed far away. As they paused on the bridge above Forty-second Street to watch the early evening traffic pass below them, the night breeze off the river was cool with a lurking undertone of coming winter.

Alan bent his fair head to Elaine's and his drawl was as warm as a summer night in Georgia. 'I know a little place down in Chelsea where they make a shrimp tempura that's almost as good as chicken-fried shrimp back home. Do you like Japanese food?'

'Ye-ess,' she said slowly. 'But what?'

She looked at her watch. 'I half-promised Jim Lowry-'

'If it's not a whole promise by five, it doesn't count.'

'Is that the way it works down South?' she dimpled.

'Oh, we're much more formal in the South. Half-past three's the cutoff point for half-promises.'

***

'Tell the kids I like the pictures,' Tillie said, looking at the crayoned drawings taped to the wall beside his bed.

'You sound better tonight,' said Marian's warm voice in his ear.

He positioned the phone more comfortably on the pillow beside his head. 'I am. I ought to be. Sleeping through your visit this afternoon. You should have waked me.'

The three older kids got on the phone then and talked a few minutes-Chuck about football, Shelly about a drawing she would make of Chuck in his uniform, and Carl about Halloween, still two weeks away. At three, this would be his first real trick-or-treat experience and he was both fearful and excited about the scary costumes and all the candy he could eat.

One-year-old Jenny hadn't quite got the hang of telephones yet, but Marianr eported that she was smiling after he'd spoken to her and he could hear her 'Da-da-da-da!' in the background.

'Get a goodnight's sleep darling, and I'll see you tomorrow,' said Marian.

'I will,' he promised and hung up.

Not sleepy yet, he reached for the folder Lieutenant Harald had brought the day before.

* * *

Piers Leyden stood in front of one of his large figure paintings regaling critics from Art News and The Loaded Brush with his scatological anecdotes. This one was about a reclining female nude painted larger than life size which somehow wound up sharing a rotunda at Vanderlyn College with a retirement tea for a dean's secretary.

'So the president's secretary called the art department's secretary and said my picture would have to go. The only place their refreshment table would fit was against the same wall and they didn't want to chance pubic hairs falling in their silver punch bowl!'

Sigrid had heard the story earlier, in the spring when she investigated that murder in the Vanderlyn art department, but she laughed again with the rest because Leyden had a lusty delivery.

Leyden 's work was nowhere near as firmly established as Nauman's, but a growing interest in the 'new realism' had jammed his opening with fellow artists, critics, dealers students, friends, and groupies. There even seemed to be a serious collector or two in the crowd. His dealer had talked him into hanging a coupe of already-sold works which they had red-dotted as a sort of pump-priming tactic, and several other pictures already sported little red dots of their own.

An orange-haired woman in a short blue dress, oversized olive sweater and army boots stood talking to a platinum blonde with black lipstick and black fingernail polish and a thin young man, closely shaved and barbered, who wore an immaculate white dinner jacket and matching white sneakers trimmed in rhinestones.

'Buntrock at the Friedinger told me they were ready to make a move towardt he new realism soon and that I'd better get in while I could,' the orange-haired woman announced importantly.

'I told you that months ago,' retorted white sneakers with a covetous glance at Leyden 's wonderful 'Nude on a Cerise Rug,' which his friend had just purchased. 'If you'd acted when I told you, you could have picked that up for two thou less.'

Sigrid found herself swept on and pushed up against a chalk drawing on pale blue paper. Amid curved lines vaguely suggestive of rounded blue clouds was a single small dark circle with soft lines radiating from the center, rather like a child might draw a starburst. Stylized stars? From a realist like Piers Leyden?

'You have to step back a few feet to get the full impact,' said Nauman's voice behind her.

Obediently Sigrid stepped back and it became immediately obvious that the small dark circle was an anal view from pointblank range.

'Oh,' she said, and turned to Nauman with a smile.

'You cut your hair.'

She felt self-conscious again. 'Yes.'

'Earrings, a real dress, even silk stockings.'

'They tell me gentlemen prefer Hanes,' she said, striving for lightness.

'Very nice,' he said, but there was an odd quality in his voice.

'Don't you like it?' she asked, puzzled.

'Oscar Nauman!' cried a jovial little Frenchman. 'Tell me mon frere, what do you think of Kissie Riddle's new abstracts?'

'Innocuous awning stripes,' Oscar said sourly. 'Vuzak.'

They passed into the gallery's crowded middle room where Doris Quinn, Leyden 's inamorata, presided over the wine punch and toasted brie with a proprietary air. Lovely as ever, she wore a russet-colored jumpsuit and lots of heavy gold bracelets and chains. (In the picture behind her, she knelt on an oriental rug her late husband had given her for an anniversary present and wore nothing except a knowing smile.)

'Lieutenant Harald?' she exclaimed. 'Why, I almost didn't recognize you. You look stunning!'

Praise from Caesar was praise indeed, thought Sigrid. She accepted a glass of the wine punch with murmured thanks while the little French gallery owner continued to badger Nauman for a kind word about the show he had currently mounted.

All around them swirled the darting glances, the languid handshakes, the empty kisses, the knowing faces