‘I’m too young to get married.’
‘You’re damn near too old to reproduce.’
‘We haven’t even had a date yet.’
‘Do that first.’ Bonar swerved to avoid the remains of raccoon on the road. ‘I heard the “yet,” by the way.’
Halloran slid down in the seat and closed his eyes.
‘I went by Danny’s folks’ tonight to pay my respects.’
Halloran opened his eyes.
‘They said you were over there this morning. Drove them to the funeral home, helped them make all the arrangements.’
‘I had some time.’
‘Bullshit you did. You’re a nice guy, Mike. Suck it up.’
Halloran closed his eyes again. Yeah. That’s what he was, all right. A nice guy. Helped the grieving parents of a kid he’d gotten killed get ready to put him in the ground. What a prince.
‘They said the funeral’s Monday.’
Halloran nodded. ‘Danny’s sister is in France somewhere. She couldn’t get back until Sunday.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Monday funeral.’
‘I wish to God we didn’t have to go to this one.’
36
Diane hurried away from a cluster of admirers when Grace, Harley, Roadrunner, and Annie entered the art gallery, gliding toward them on a cloud of white silk.
She embraced them all, then took both of Grace’s hands in hers and stepped back, smiling. ‘You dressed up.’
‘Only for you.’ Grace smiled back.
‘Huh?’ Harley frowned at Grace’s trademark black jeans, T-shirt, and duster. ‘What are you talking about? That’s what she wears every day.’
‘Harley, you are such a cretin,’ Diane scolded him.
‘I keep telling him that,’ Annie said.
‘She’s wearing the Moschino T-shirt,’ Diane pointed out. ‘And if that isn’t dressing up I don’t know what is.’
Harley leaned over and peered at Grace’s T-shirt. ‘Looks like Fruit Of The Loom to me.’
Diane shook her head in bemused exasperation, then looked from one to the other. ‘You didn’t have to come tonight. I know how bad things have been.’
‘Sugar, are you out of your mind? Have we ever missed one of your openings?’ Annie asked. ‘Besides, this is just what we needed.’
Roadrunner nodded. ‘Yeah. Especially after the thing at the mall today.’
Diane took his hand and squeezed it. ‘Just let that all go for a couple hours. And I have something that I think will help.’ She raised her hand and a uniformed waiter came over with a tray of champagne.
‘I love this woman,’ Harley said, taking a glass from the tray and draining it, then grabbing another. ‘Where’s that sack-of-shit husband of yours?’
Diane waved a hand vaguely toward the crowd at the buffet table. ‘You know Mitch. Doing what he does best. When I left he was selling the most expensive piece here to some poor man who bought his last painting in a gas station parking lot.’ She sighed and glanced fondly over at Mitch. ‘It’s distracting him, anyway. He needed that.’
She turned back to them with a regretful smile. ‘I have to go mingle now, but please stay as long as you’d like. Eat, drink, be merry, and leave when you have to. It means the world that you all came tonight.’
She held Grace back when the others made an immediate beeline for the buffet table. ‘How are you holding up? This has to be worse for you than anyone else.’
Grace reached out and gave her a hug. ‘I get by with a little help from my friends,’ she quoted the Beatles. ‘Just like always.’
Gino and Magozzi parked in a pay-box lot and walked the last block in the cold, looking like a couple of B- movie mobsters in their flapping trench coats.
The Acton-Schlesinger Gallery was housed on the top floor of yet another renovated warehouse very much like the Monkeewrench building, and only a few blocks away. A brass plaque at the entrance of the building informed visitors that this had once housed a clothing manufacturer that specialized in men’s undergarments.
Gino was sullen and defensive as he and Magozzi entered the vacuous downstairs foyer, no doubt anticipating the pretentious snobbery and general nostril-gazing he was certain he would be subjected to from the crowd upstairs.
‘With that kind of attitude, you
‘You just wait and see, Leo. I’ve been to stuff like this before with Angela and if you aren’t pale as a ghost, emaciated, and dressed head to toe in black, they won’t give you the time of day.’
‘You’re going to see what you want to see,’ Magozzi sighed. ‘Me, I’m just looking forward to seeing what kind of woman married a neurotic mess like Cross.’
The gallery space was vast and spartan, with gleaming blond floors and vaulted bare-beamed ceilings that glowed with soft track lighting. Abstract art hung from steel partitions that were arranged in labyrinthine fashion throughout the space. Elegant patrons with elevated chins and ennui-filled eyes milled through the maze like well- dressed rats, sipping pink champagne from crystal stemware.
An attractive young woman dressed in the requisite black uniform greeted them with a tray of champagne flutes. Her face had a fresh innocence to it despite the generous application of white powder, and the smile was demure, although the effect was mostly lost behind blood-red lipstick. To her credit, she didn’t bat an eye at their rumpled suits that were beginning to look slept in. ‘Welcome, gentlemen. May I offer you some champagne?’
Magozzi and Gino looked at each other. The prospect of an alcoholic beverage had them both salivating.
‘Billecart-Salmon,’ she enticed.
‘I guess that’s supposed to be good, huh?’ Gino asked her.
‘Better than good.’
He looked back at Magozzi. ‘We on duty?’ he whispered.
Magozzi bit his lower lip. ‘Not in an official capacity, I don’t think.’
Gino beamed at the young woman and took two flutes. ‘You are an angel from heaven. Bless you, my child.’
Her demure smile broadened to a grin. She seemed grateful to have found two patrons who wouldn’t have apoplexy if she broke character. ‘Anytime. I’ll keep my eye out for empties.’
‘You know, this place ain’t so bad after all,’ Gino said, smacking his lips and surveying the surroundings. ‘Best-tasting champagne I ever had, even if it is pink.’
Magozzi savored the glowing warmth of carbonated alcohol hitting his bloodstream fast. The feeling was vaguely familiar to him – he’d experienced it once or twice about a thousand years ago – it was called relaxation. He took another sip. ‘I suppose we should make the rounds.’
Gino drained his glass. ‘I like it here on the periphery. Let’s just stay here and get bombed, let Halloran take over when he gets into town.’
They indulged their wishful thinking for another minute, then entered the fray, pausing briefly at the first wall of Diane Cross’s paintings, all distinctively styled black-and-whites like the abstract in Mitch Cross’s office, and the ones hanging in MacBride’s living room.
Magozzi nodded to himself, understanding that marriage and friendship would explain the display of such works, much as a parent hangs the crayoned renderings of a beloved child on the refrigerator, but not understanding at all an entire exhibit of such careless starkness in a gallery as prestigious as this.
He apologized mentally to Vermeer and van Gogh, masters of light and color, for a world that now paid homage to chic over genius.
