big rush, this afternoon sometime…'
'He's sitting in a bar,' the dispatcher said. 'He's taking calls there, if you want the number…'
'Sure.' Lucas took a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, the Xerox of the painting of the one-eyed giant, and scribbled down the number. When he called, a bartender answered and put Del on. He could meet Lucas at four o'clock. As they talked, Lucas looked at the giant peering at the sleeping woman. The creature had a nearly round head, like a basketball, and thin, wide twisting lips. Where…?
When he finished talking to Del, Lucas pulled out the phone book and called the rare-book room at the university library.
'Carroll? Lucas Davenport.'
'Lucas, you haven't been coming to the games. Zhukov is about to go after the Romanians north of Stalingrad…'
'Yeah, Elle told me. She said you needed Nazis.'
'No fun for the Nazis from here on out…'
'Listen, I need some help. I've got a picture of a one-eyed giant. He's looking over a mountain at a sleeping woman and he's got a club. It's a painting and it's kind of crude. Childlike, but I don't think a kid did it. There's something good about it.'
'It's a one-eyed giant, like a cyclops from The Odyssey?'
'Yeah, exactly. Somebody said it's a troll, but somebody else said that technically it's a cyclops. I'm trying to figure out what book it came from, if it came from a book.'
There was a moment of silence, then the book expert said, 'Damned if I'd know. An expert on The Odyssey might, but you'd have to get lucky. There are probably about a million different illustrations of cyclopses.'
'Shit… So what do I do?'
'You say it's crude but good. You mean slick-crude, like a Playboy illustration, or…'
'No. The more I look at it, the more I think it might be famous. Like I said, there's something about it.'
'Huh. Well, you could take it over to the art history department. There's a good chance that nobody will be there, and if there is somebody there, he might not talk to you unless you've got a fee statement.'
'Hmpf. Okay, well, thanks, Carroll…'
'Wait a minute. There's a painter, over there in St. Paul-actually, he's a computer genius of some kind-and he comes in here to look at book illustrations. He's pretty expert on art history. I've got a number, if you want to give him a ring.'
'Sure.' Lucas heard the receiver being laid on a desk, then a minute of silence, then the receiver being picked up again.
'The guy is a little remote, out in the ozone, like painters get. Use my name, but be polite. Here's the number… And come on back to the games. You can be Paulus.'
'Jeez, I don't know what to say…'
When he got the book expert off the line, Lucas dialed the number. The phone rang five or six times and he was about to hang up when it was answered. The painter sounded as though he'd been asleep, his voice gruff, cool. An edge of wariness entered it when Lucas explained he was a cop.
'I got your name from Carroll over at the U. I've got a question that he said you might be able to help on…'
'Computers?' Wary. Lucas wondered why.
'Art. I've got this picture of a giant, a painting, weird-looking. Kind of strong. I need to know where it came from.'
The artist didn't ask why. Again, Lucas thought that was odd. 'Is the giant biting the head off a dead body?'
'No, he's…'
'Then it's not Goya. Has the giant got one eye?'
'Yeah,' Lucas said. 'Big mother, one eye, looking over a mountain…'
'At a nude woman in the foreground, lying on the mountainside. Like one of those saints on a Catholic holy card.'
'That's it,' Lucas said.
'Odilon Redon. The painting's called The Cyclops. Redon was French, mostly did pastel. Painted the cyclops around the turn of the century. The nude's got her back to the cyclops, so you're looking right at her…'
'Yeah, yeah, that's it. What kind of book would that be in? I mean, obscure, or what?'
'No, no, there are any number of books on Redon. He's in vogue right now. Or was. The library would have something. He's not exactly a household name, but anybody who knows about painting would know about him.'
'Hmph. Okay. So probably a book.'
'Or a calendar. There are dozens of art calendars around, and art postcards and art appointment books. Depends on what size it is.'
'Okay, thanks. That's about what I needed. You say that you'd have to know something about art…'
'Yeah. If you want some kind of index, I'd say maybe one percent of the people walking around on the sidewalk would know about Redon, would know his name. Of those, one in five could tell you a picture he painted.'
'Thanks again.'
'Always delighted to help the police,' the artist said. He sounded like he was smiling.
Del was not smiling. Del was twisting his hands.
'Jesus Christ, it's not hard,' Lucas said, squatting beside him. Del sat in the metal folding chair on the visitor's side of Lucas' desk. 'You just tell her you've been thinking about her. You say, 'I want to apologize for the way I acted, you seem like a really nice woman. You got nice eyes.' Then she'll ask, sooner or later, 'What color are they?' And you say, 'Hazel.' '
'How do I know they're hazel?' Del picked up the phone receiver in one hand, holding down the hang-up button with the index finger of the other.
' 'Cause they are,' Lucas said. 'Really they're brown, but you make it sound nice when you say hazel. She knows she's got brown eyes, but she likes to think they're hazel. She'll think you care more if you say hazel… Christ, Del, when was the last fuckin' time you asked a woman out?'
' 'Bout twenty-two years ago,' Del said, his head hanging. There was a moment of silence; then they both started to laugh. Del said, 'Ah, fuck me,' and started punching phone numbers. 'Does it have to be tonight?'
'Sooner the better,' Lucas said, moving behind the desk. He wanted to be where Del could see his face, in case he needed coaching. The phone rang six times and Del reached out to hang up, when Cheryl Clark answered.
'Ah, is this, ah, Miss Clark?' Del stuttered. Twenty-two years? Lucas shook his head. 'Ah… this is the cop who was over there with the other cop, I'm the one with the headband. Yeah, Del. Listen, uh, this is got nothing to do with the investigation, you know, but, uh, I been thinking about you, and I finally decided to call… I don't know, you seemed like a pretty nice chick, uh, woman, you know, shit, you had real nice eyes… Uh, huh… yeah, kind of, if you'd like to, I was wondering if you'd be interested in a cup of coffee. Un-huh, okay.' He turned away from Lucas, hiding his eyes, his voice dropping. 'How about Annie's over on the West Bank? Uh, huh. I'll pick you up, is that okay? Uh. Forty-one. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, why, they're hazel, really pretty, you know… Yeah. Okay. Listen, about six- thirty? Get something to eat, a couple burgers? Okay?' By the time he hung up, Del's face was running with sweat.
'Forty-one?' Lucas asked, grinning. 'Who the fuck is forty-one?'
'Get off my ass, Davenport,' Del said, collapsing in his chair. 'I fuckin' did it, okay?'
'All right,' Lucas said, turning serious. 'Now what'll you talk about?'
'How the fuck do I know? Bekker, of course…'
'No. Not about Bekker…'
'But why…?'
'This woman has been used all of her life. She's the type, and she'll be very sensitive to it. She lets herself be used because that's the only way she can find relationships. She keeps hoping for something real, but she doesn't believe it's going to happen,' Lucas said. He was leaning on the desk, talking rapidly, eyes narrowed, voice urgent,
