have a little fun?”
“Perish the thought.”
“Then come on.”
When Mary Lambert left my condo that night, lipstick smeared, but most of her clothes intact, I was a little lightheaded. I hadn’t had a good make-out session since my freshman year at Brooklyn College. Back then, making out used to leave me more frustrated than anything else. I was feeling a lot of things as I watched Mary’s car pull away. Frustrated wasn’t one of them.
THIRTEEN
I woke up feeling a little less giddy than I had when I went to bed. Not because I wasn’t still into Mary Lambert. On the contrary, a night of sleeping on the memory of the way her skin warmed to my touch and how the scent of her perfume changed as we kissed, and the way her nipples stiffened when I brushed my hands across the front of her silky blouse, had done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for her. But too much expensive wine on a hot dog and french fry stomach wasn’t a prescription for a happy morning. I used to be able to drink, but these days hangovers didn’t just vanish with a few sips of water and a fistful of aspirins. Clint Eastwood stars in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Aspirins. Ah, the joys of growing older.
Just after I crawled out of bed, breakfasted on two bottles of water, Pepto, and painkillers, the house phone rang. House phone, now there’s a quaint idea about to go the way of the front yard water pump and the transistor radio. No one I knew under the age of thirty even had a house phone.
“Yeah.”
“Prager. Detective McKenna.”
“I don’t usually date men who blow me off when they promise to call.”
“Very funny.”
“What’s up?”
“You got anything?”
No beating around the bush with this guy. He asked the big questions right away. The thing is, I didn’t want to answer. If he found out about where I was going with Nathan Martyr, McKenna might step in and do things his way. And while the detective didn’t strike me as a hard-ass or strong-arm type of cop, there was a girl missing for over three weeks now and his patience was probably at low ebb. Hard-ass or not, I doubted McKenna would approve of my agreeing to Martyr’s extortion demand. Paying off a no-talent, scumbag junkie with the last painting of a lost girl whose abilities he ridiculed and reviled was utterly perverse, but there was a kind of twisted symmetry to it. I just didn’t want to waste time by trying to make McKenna see it. I also doubted he would have thought much of my manipulating Candy to get the extra paintings. He would think that what I planned to do with them was beside the point. Again, I didn’t want to waste time convincing him it wasn’t.
“Nothing, not really. Just reinterviewing people you’ve already spoken to. How about on your end?”
He wasn’t buying. “That’s it? You got bubkes?” Only in New York did people named McKenna speak Yiddish.
I didn’t want him to pursue this any further, so I played one of the two cards I still had in reserve and said, “I got a feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“Max and Candy aren’t telling us something. It’s something big, but I don’t know what it is.”
“I’m with you on that, Prager. But I don’t think they’re lying. More like they’re-”
“-holding back,” I finished his sentence.
“Exactly. That’s it. From day one, I felt there was a part of the puzzle they had that they weren’t showing me. Any ideas?”
“Not really.”
“You’re an old friend of the mother’s. Work on her.”
“I will. How about you?”
“It’s cold out there, very cold and very fucking dark. Three weeks and counting…”
“Okay. If I get anything or make any progress with Candy, I’ll let you know.”
He didn’t bother with goodbye. That worked for me. My head and gut were feeling a little better, but McKenna’s words stayed with me. We needed to make some progress soon or the real mourning would soon begin.
I went back to bed thinking that it would be a waste of time. Wrong. I woke up three hours later with the phone trilling at me like a pissedoff cricket.
“Mr. Prager?” It was Wallace Rusk. “Are you quite all right?”
“Sorry, I’m not feeling great today.”
“You left a message…”
“I did. I don’t know if you’ll be able to help, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”
“Ask?”
“I might need some paintings authenticated,” I said.
“That’s not an issue. I’d be glad to recommend someone and if she’s not to your liking, any of the major auction houses-”
I cut him off. “They’re Sashi Bluntstone’s paintings.”
“Oh, I see. That is a bit more problematic. Let me think… Okay, yes, I have someone for you. His name is Declan Carney. Wait, let me get you his number.”
“Is he any good?” I asked, scribbling down the number and address. “For what you want, yes, the best, but I should warn you his services will not come inexpensively and he’s a bit… let us say… idiosyncratic.”
“I don’t care if eats mosquitos on toast for lunch as long as he can do the work.”
“Now, Mr. Prager, if that is all…”
“One last thing.”
“Yes.”
“Is Nathan Martyr a liar?”
There was a sudden and profound silence on the other end of the line and it spoke well of Wallace Rusk. He was actually thinking about the question and not dismissing it out of hand.
“I don’t think very highly of his work and I think he’s a detestable human being, but in my thankfully limited dealings with the man I have never known him to lie or renege on his word. Why do you ask?”
“He’s promised me something and I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t being jerked around.”
“Very well then. Good morning to you.”
I liked Wallace Rusk in spite of himself. I didn’t think we’d be going to a sports bar to catch a Jets’ game together any time soon, but he seemed an honorable sort. Old-fashioned as it may be, I admired that in a person. Honor seemed to be a commodity in very limited supply these days.
FOURTEEN
Candy said she had the paintings for me, but didn’t exactly sound happy about it. Tough shit for her, I thought. Besides, a little anger never hurt anyone and stuffing her guts with feelings other than guilt, panic, and grief would do her good. I didn’t question her about how she managed to get the paintings because I didn’t care about how. Nor did I ask her if there was any fallout from my telling her that Max knew about her affair. No matter how any of this turned out, even if we somehow managed to find Sashi alive and relatively well, their world was never going to be the same. Whether they chose to blow it apart or to plow it over and begin again was up to them and them alone. But when I told Candy I would be over in an hour or two to collect the paintings, she said I should get them from the gallery, that Randy Junction had them wrapped and ready for me. She hung up on me before I could ask why he was involved. That was just as well.
