Another pause to think. Jesus, discretion and plenty of it. “You’re sure you’ve got it so far?” Roger asked.
“Yeah. I mean, what’s to get?”
“The name of the painting, for example.”
“My garden.”
“Oh garden, my garden,” Roger corrected.
“Whatever.”
Silence descended for some miles. The Merrimack appeared, frozen but snowless, the color of the low clouds overhead. Whitey occupied his mind with the lyrics of Metallica’s “Harvester of Sorrow,” those he could remember. He ate the last of the Reese’s. No Reese’s on the inside, for some reason; he realized how much he’d missed them.
They crossed to the west bank of the river, left it behind. Roger spoke at last. “Do you know the word provenance, Whitey?”
“Providence?” said Whitey, thinking of the girl on the bus, the snake between her breasts, her breasts themselves.
“Provenance,” Roger said, a little slower.
“Sort of.”
“No matter,” said Roger. “It’s a technical term, specific to our business. The reference is to the chain of ownership of a given work, establishing authenticity, you see. In the case of oh garden, my garden, the chain has been broken.”
“Yeah?” said Whitey. He pictured a thick gold chain, the kind pimps wore. A diner came into view. It had a red neon sign-Lavinia’s-and an old Bronco parked out front. “Still haven’t had that coffee,” Whitey said.
“Perhaps on the way back,” Roger said. “I’d like to beat the weather.”
Whitey glanced up at the sky. “No snow till tomorrow,” he said.
But it made no difference. Roger passed the diner by, took a back road, then another, came to a gate in the middle of nowhere. He got out, unlocked the gate, then drove on, crunching snow on a track thawed and refrozen, up a long hill. He stopped at the crest. Below lay the river, frozen but snow-blown clear by the wind, with an island in the middle and a single cottage on it, sheltered by trees. A stone jetty jutted from the near bank, two dinghies tethered to it, caught in the ice. Roger sat there in silence, waiting for-what? Whitey didn’t know.
At last Roger made a sound, a kind of laugh, maybe. “Ever been married, Whitey?”
“Nope.”
“Not unwise, in the final end. But without marriage, we’d be out of business.”
“We would?”
“The dissolution of marriage leads to conflict when it comes to the ownership of material objects. Take our little painting, for example. Its rightful owner is our client, a woman who lives in Rome.” Roger nodded toward the island in the river. “Whereas this little retreat now belongs to her former husband. Not enough for him, apparently- he made off with the painting, too, sometime in the past, oh, few weeks, say. According to information we’ve developed, he intends to secrete it away in the cottage. Do you see where this is headed?”
“Sure,” Whitey said, opening the door. “Won’t take five minutes.”
Roger grabbed Whitey’s arm, held on to it hard; Whitey didn’t like that at all. “Intends, Whitey. I said intends.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Whitey said, shaking free of Roger’s grip.
For one moment, Whitey saw a strange look in Roger’s eyes, as though he was about to take a shot at him or something. Cold wind blew in the open door. Roger covered his eyes with his hand, rubbed them hard, and the look was gone. “My apologies, Whitey. This business can be… intense at times. Perhaps it’s led me to be unclear somehow. What I’m saying is that the painting in question is not at present in the cottage. Not now, at this moment.”
“No?”
“No.”
Whitey closed the door.
“But it will be there tomorrow,” Roger continued, “if we can rely on our information.”
“Coming from where?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This information,” Whitey said, “where’s it coming from?”
Roger stared at him for a moment, then smiled and answered, “Rome.”
“Good enough,” Whitey said. “Then tomorrow I go in and get it.”
“You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you?”
“Well…”
“Yes, you go in, but not until night, at six-fifteen precisely.”
“’Cause of the darkness, right?”
“Partly. And partly because that’s the earliest the painting will be there in an unguarded state.”
“It’s coming in a Brinks truck?” Whitey asked. Yes, he was sharp, couldn’t remember ever being sharper.
“Nothing like that-this is just a domestic dispute. But why court acrimony?”
That made sense-Whitey wanted nothing to do with guards or courts. “You’re telling me,” he said.
“We’re agreed, then. You go in at six-fifteen, not a moment before, not a moment after. And this is very important, Whitey: you arrive by taxi.”
“Taxi?”
“Available at the bus station in Nashua. Have the driver drop you at the gate-and get a receipt.”
“What for?”
“Reimbursement, of course.”
Meaning? Whitey wasn’t quite sure. “But what about the driver?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“Making me in a lineup or something.”
“Lineup! What an imagination you’ve got, Whitey. This can never become a legal matter. The painting belongs to the woman in Rome. The ex-husband has no standing to pursue it. Any law enforcement agency would laugh him off, I assure you.”
Silence.
“Understood?” Roger said.
Was it? A lot of blah-blah but basically it came down to six-fifteen, taxi, painting. “It’s not complicated,” Whitey said.
“You may have a real future in this business,” Roger told him.
Whitey grunted.
“Once beyond the gate,” Roger went on, “you cross the river and enter the cottage.” He handed Whitey a key. “Don’t turn on any lights. You’ll need a flash. Save the receipt. Upstairs are two bedrooms. The one on the right is not made up. The painting will be hidden somewhere inside it. I’ll be told the location at exactly six-thirty. There’s a phone on the bedside table and I’ll call from the car and tell you where it is. Then you simply collect it, recross the river, and return here, where we are now. I’ll be waiting. Any questions?”
It was a snap; Whitey grasped the whole scenario, even the parts he hadn’t been told. “The woman-she’s going to call you from Rome, right?”
“No putting anything past you.”
“And the place used to belong to her-that’s how come you have the key.”
“Another bull’s-eye.” Roger punched him softly on the shoulder. “And one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“She doesn’t want the frame.”
“How come?”
“How come?” Roger drew a deep breath. “I believe it was chosen by the mother-in-law.”
“I get it.”
“And since she doesn’t want the frame,” Roger continued, “you’ll have to cut the painting out.”
