Private Eyes

“For her. She needs to get away. From this place. It’s so- It’s a world to itself. All her needs met, everything done for her. That can be crippling.”

“Sounds like you’re afraid that if she doesn’t leave now she never will.”

She sighed.

“Despite all this,” she said, taking in the room, “all the beauty, it can be malignant. A house with no doors. Believe me, I know.”

That startled me. I thought I’d concealed it, but she said, “What is it?”

“The phrase you just used- a house with no doors. When I treated her, Melissa used to draw houses without doors and windows.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, my.” Touching the pocket that held the inhaler.

“Did you ever use the phrase in front of her?”

“I don’t think I did- that would be terrible if I did, wouldn’t it? Putting that image into her head.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. Hear ye, hear ye, the great yea-sayer cometh. “It gave her a concrete image to deal with. When she got better she started drawing houses with doors. I doubt this place will ever be for her what it was for you.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“I can’t be sure of anything,” I said gently. “I just don’t think we need to assume that your prison is hers.”

Despite the gentleness, it wounded her. “Yes, of course you’re right. She’s her own person- I shouldn’t see her as my clone.” Pause. “So you think it’ll be okay for her to live here?”

“In the interim.”

“How long of an interim?”

“Long enough for her to get comfortable about leaving. From what I saw nine years ago, she’s pretty good at pacing herself.”

She said nothing, gazed at a ten-foot grandfather clock veneered with tortoise shell.

I said, “Maybe they decided to go for a drive.”

“Noel hasn’t finished his work,” she said. As if that settled it.

She got up, walked around the room slowly, staring at the floor. I began taking a closer look at the paintings. Flemish and Dutch and Renaissance Italian. Works I felt I should have been able to identify. But the pigments were brighter and fresher than any I’d seen in museum Old Masters; some of them bordered on lurid. I remembered what Jacob Dutchy had said about Arthur Dickinson’s passion for restoration. Realized how much of a dead man’s aura remained in the house.

House as monument.

Mausoleum sweet mausoleum.

From across the room, she said, “I feel terrible. I meant to thank you. Right off, as soon as we were introduced. For all you did years ago, as well as what you’re doing now. But we got into things and I forgot. Please forgive me. And accept my disgracefully belated thanks.”

I said, “Accepted.”

She looked at the clock again. “I do hope they get back soon.”

***

They didn’t.

A half hour passed- thirty very long minutes filled with small-talk and a crash course in Flemish art delivered with robotic enthusiasm by my hostess. Throughout it all I kept hearing Dutchy’s voice. Wondered what the voice of the man who’d taught him sounded like.

When she ran out of things to say, she stood and said, “Maybe they did go out for a drive. There’s no sense in your waiting around. I’m so sorry for wasting your time.”

Pushing myself up from the quicksand cushions, I followed her on a furniture-strewn obstacle course that ended at the front doors.

She opened one of them and said, “When she does come home, should I get right into it with her?”

“No, I wouldn’t push it. Let her behavior be your guide. When she’s ready to talk, you’ll know it. If you want me to be there next time you have a discussion, and that suits Melissa, I can be. But she may be angry at me. Feel I betrayed her.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to spoil things between you.”

“That can be fixed,” I said. “What’s important is what goes on between you.”

She nodded. Patted her pocket. Came closer and touched my face, the way she’d touched her husband’s. Gave me a close-up look at her scars- a white brocade- and kissed my cheek.

***

Back on the freeway. Back on planet Earth.

Sitting in the jam at the downtown interchange, I listened to the Gipsy Kings and tried not to think about whether I’d screwed up. Thought about it anyway and decided I’d done the best I could.

When I got home I phoned Milo. He picked up and growled, “Yeah?”

“Gee, what a friendly greeting.”

“Keeps away scambags trying to peddle bullshit and geeks taking surveys. What’s up?”

“Ready to get to work on the ex-con thing?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it, figure fifty an hour plus expenses is reasonable. That going to sit okay with the clients?”

“I didn’t have a chance to get into the financial details yet. But I wouldn’t worry- there’s no shortage of funds. And the client says she has full access to plenty.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“She’s only eighteen and-”

“You want me to work for the kid herself, Alex? Jesus, how many cookie jars we talking about?”

“This is no ditsy teenager, Milo. She’s had to grow up fast- too fast. And she has her own money, assured me payment would be no problem. I just need to make sure she realizes exactly what it entails. Thought I’d get to it today, but something else came up.”

“The kid herself,” he said. “Do I look like Mister Rogers or something?”

“Well,” I said, “I know you like me just the way I am.”

He said, “Jesus,” again. Then: “Tell me more about this. Who, exactly, got damaged and what kind of damage.”

I started describing the acid attack on Gina Ramp.

He said, “Whoa. Sounds like the McCloskey case.”

“You know it?”

“I know of it. It was a few years before my time, but it was a teaching case at the academy. Interrogation procedures.”

“Any particular reason?”

“The weirdness of it. And the guy who taught the course- Eli Savage- was one of the original interrogators.”

“Weird in what way?”

“In terms of motive. Cops are like anyone else- they like to classify, reduce things to basics. Money, jealousy, revenge, passion, or some sort of sexual kink sums up ninety-nine percent of your violent-crime motives. This one just didn’t fit any of those. The way I remember learning it, McCloskey and the victim had once had a thing going, but it ended friendly, half a year before he had her burned. No pining away on his part, no poison pen or love letters or anonymous phone calls or any of the harassment you typically see in an unrequited passion situation. And she wasn’t going out with any other guys, so jealousy seemed out of the question. Money wasn’t a strong bet because he had no insurance out on her, no one discovered any way he’d made a dime off the attack, and he actually paid out plenty to the yog who did the dirty work. In terms of revenge, there was some speculation that he blamed her for his business going bad- he had a modeling agency, I think.”