Firebreak

thoroughly, and they're the kinds of people who wouldn't know a Rembrandt from an Elvis on velvet. But the point is, after we got the mess cleaned up, the mess they made going in, and after we added more security measures, expensive I might say security measures, this other thing came up, the realization I shouldn't be spending more than usual, I should be spending less than usual. Or liquidating a few assets, to tide me over. And I thought, there are crooks out there, they know there's something in that place, in the lodge, and a couple of them got away. I don't expect them to come back, but who knows, they could spread the story, go to prison for some other crime, tell their friends on the inside. So I was thinking I should move them anyway, sooner or later, and then it came to me, why not sell off some of them? Solve this temporary problem that way, at the same time I'm protecting myself against the crooks.'

Griffith's glass was empty, but he felt he shouldn't ask for more. He said, 'What do you want me to do, Pax?'

'You must have a list of them,' Marino said. 'The things I've got stashed out there.'

'In code,' Griffith said.

'Well, sure, in code. The thing is, choose three or four of them, your choice, whichever ones you think would be easiest to move. Go to the insurance companies, the museums, wherever. Say the thieves have been in touch with you.' Then Marino stopped, sat back, gave a surprised laugh. 'Which they have been, in a way, haven't they?' he said.

'You want me to negotiate on your behalf,' Griffith said, 'as though you're the thieves who took the paintings in the first place.'

'That's right. In the meantime, I want you to go to the lodge, pack them all up—I can't trust that to anyone else—get them ready to go. Because this is the other part of it.'

When Marino leaned closer to him like that, eyes intense, Griffith understood there was more to come, and that what was to come would be even worse.

Marino said, 'What I'd like to do, Horace, is ship them all to you in Dallas as though they were just minor paintings, no importance at all, and you can store them in a normal way. Then, when the time comes to turn a few over to an insurance company or a museum, you've already got them.'

Griffith swallowed. 'And the rest?'

'Eventually,' Marino said, as though it were all simple and casual, 'you'll ship them to wherever I set up a new gallery.'

'In the meantime, I hold on to them.'

'Sure.'

Millions of dollars of stolen artwork, in my vaults, Griffith thought. Famous paintings that any professional would recognize at once, stored in the safe rooms under my display space. I am suddenly deeper into this darkness than I've ever been before. But what can I do? I can't refuse. I got here by easy stages. Very easy stages.

Marino gave him a keen look, and then smiled, feeling better because Griffith was feeling worse. 'I know,' Horace,' he said. 'Life is gonna get tricky for both of us for a while. But it's going to come out okay. We've got the touch, you and me. This is a little patch of rough road, and then it's smooth again.'

'Smooth,' echoed Griffith.

Standing, Marino said, 'Give me your glass, you need a refill. Then let's see what's happening with those steaks. I'm starved.'

2

Pam Saugherty carried the ice cream and the milk in a plastic bag. D'Agostino's would deliver the rest of the groceries in half an hour or so. She crossed Abingdon Square, turned right onto Bleecker Street, and did one of those sidewalk dances with a man coming the other way, both of them moving to her left, then both reversing, then he stopping dead so she could choose for herself how to go around him.

'Excuse me,' she murmured, with an embarrassed smile, knowing it was her fault. He nodded, not quite looking at her, and walked on.

She'd gone another five or six steps when his face became familiar. She'd seen that face before, bony, large, the eyes cold and uninterested, the jawline like a rock. She looked back and he was crossing the street at a diagonal, tall, big-boned, dressed in black, moving with a determined stride that made her surprised now he hadn't merely walked on over her when she'd gotten in his way. He strode around the corner into Bank Street, and out of sight, and Pam turned back toward home, frowning, weighed down much more by the elusive memory than by the plastic sack.

She knew that face. Reaching 414, she unlocked the street door, then paused to look back, across the street, at that corner of Bank Street. Something menacing in the memory, something frightening.

The mail had been delivered while she was out, pushed through the slot in the outer door onto the floor inside. Letting the door snick shut, she stooped to pick up the mail, mostly bills and catalogues, then unlocked the inner door.

It was the sight of the wheelchair that brought him back. The wheelchair to the left of the staircase that Matt so seldom used these days, the track for the riding chair built into the right side of the stairs for those rare trips Matt did take to the outside world. Seeing them both reminded her at last of the man, and the only time she'd ever seen him before, a time she usually managed not to think about at all.

Years ago, a hundred years it seemed, in another life, another world. The kids had still just been kids then, Bob, the oldest, only ten. She'd been married to Ed Saugherty, who had a good white-collar job with a computer company in Philadelphia, and they'd lived in a good brick house in a green suburb west of the city.

But Ed had a wild friend from his high school days, a man named George Uhl, who had brought trouble into the house, in himself and in a suitcase that had to have had something valuable in it, though nobody would ever find it now. Because Uhl was dead, and these other two, Paul Brock and Matt Rosenstein, had invaded the house, looking for the suitcase.