He looked at me incredulously, 'you like that kind of stuff?'
'Sometimes.'
'Too bad. If they knew they had a buyer, they might of stayed in business to accommodate you.'
'They might. Will you sell me two half-pints of Tennessee whisky?'
'Why not a whole pint? It's cheaper that way.'
'Two half-pints are better.'
VII
On my way uptown I stopped at the art museum, intending to ask for Fred. But the place was closed for the night.
I drove on up to Olive Street. Darkness had spread like a branching tree across the lawns and yards, and lights were coming on in the old houses. The hospital was a great pierced box of light. I parked near the gabled house where the Johnsons lived and made my way up its broken steps to the front door.
Fred's father must have been listening on the other side of the door. He spoke before I had a chance to knock: 'Who is that?'
'Archer. I was here earlier today, looking for Fred.'
'That's right. I remember.' He sounded proud of the feat.
'May I come in and talk to you for a minute, Mr. Johnson?'
'Sorry, no can do. My wife locked the door.'
'Where's the key?'
'Sarah took it with her to the hospital. She's afraid I'll go out in the street and get run over. But the fact is I'm completely sober. I'm so sober that it's making me physically sick. She's supposed to be a nurse, but little does she care.' His voice was fogged with self-pity.
'Is there any way you can let me in? Through a window, maybe?'
'She'd crucify me.'
'How would she know? I've got some whisky with me. Could you use a couple of snorts?'
His tone brightened. 'Could I not. But how are you going to get in?'
'I have some keys.'
It was a simple old lock, and the second key that I tried opened it. I closed the door behind me, moving into the cramped hallway with some difficulty. Johnson's thick body crowded mine. In the light of a dim overhead bulb, I could see that his face was working with excitement.
'You said you had some whisky for me.'
'Hold on for a minute.'
'But I'm sick. You can see that I'm sick.'
I opened one of my half-pint bottles. He drained it in one continuous shuddering swallow, and licked the mouth of the empty bottle.
I felt like a pander. But the strong jolt of whisky didn't seem to bother him at all. Instead of making him drunker, it seemed to improve his diction and delivery.
'I used to drink Tennessee whisky in my palmy days. I drank Tennessee whisky and rode a Tennessee Walking Horse. That is Tennessee whisky, is it not?'
'You're right, Mr. Johnson.'
'Just call me Jerry. I know a friend when I see one.' He set down the empty bottle on the first step of the staircase, put his hand on my shoulder, and leaned his weight on it. 'I won't forget this. What did you say your name was?'
'Archer.'
'And what do you do for a living, Mr. Archer?'
'I'm a private investigator.' I opened my wallet and showed Johnson a photostat of my state license. 'Some people in town hired me to trace a painting that they lost. It's a portrait of a woman, probably by a well-known local painter named Richard Chantry. You've heard of him, I suppose.'
He scowled with concentration. 'I can't say I have. You should take it up with my son Fred. That's his department.'
'I already have. Fred took the picture and brought it home.'
'Here?'
'So he told me this afternoon.'
'I don't believe it. Fred wouldn't do a thing like that. He's a good boy, he always has been. He never stole anything in his life. The people at the art museum trust him. Everybody trusts him.'
I interrupted Johnson's alcoholic flow of words: 'He claims he didn't steal it. He said he brought it home to make some tests on it.'
'What kind of tests are you talking about?'
'I'm not sure. According to Fred, his idea was to find out how old the picture was. The artist who was supposed to have painted it disappeared a long time ago.'
'Who was that?'
'Richard Chantry.'
'Yeah, I guess I have heard of him. They've got a lot of his pictures in the museum.' He rubbed his gray scalp as if to warm his memory. 'Isn't he supposed to be dead?'
'Dead or missing. One way or the other, he's been gone for twenty-five years. If the paint on the picture is comparatively fresh, he probably didn't paint it.'
'Sorry, I don't quite follow that.'
'It doesn't matter. The point is that Fred brought the picture here, and he says it was stolen from his room last night. Do you know anything about that?'
'Hell, no.' His whole face wrinkled as if old age had fallen on him suddenly. 'You think I took it?'
'I don't mean that at all.'
'I hope not. Fred would kill me if I touched any of his sacred things. I'm not even supposed to go into his room.'
'What I'm trying to find out-did Fred say anything about a painting being stolen from his room last night?'
'Not that I know of.'
'Did you see him this morning?'
'I certainly did. I dished up his porridge for him.'
'And he didn't mention the missing painting?'
'No, sir. Not to me.'
'I'd like to take a look at Fred's room. Would it be possible?'
The suggestion seemed to frighten him. 'I don't know. I don't think so. _She_ hates to have anybody in her house. She'd even like to get rid of me if she could.'
'Didn't you say she's gone to the hospital?'
'That's right, she went to work.'
'Then how would she know?'
'I don't know _how_ she knows, but she always does. I guess she worms it out of me or something. It's _hard_ on me, hard on my nerves.' He giggled shamefacedly. 'You wouldn't have any more of that Tennessee walking whisky?'
I got out the other half-pint and showed it to him. He reached for it. I held it away from him.
'Let's go upstairs, Jerry. Then I'll leave this with you.' I put it back in my pocket.
'I don't know.'
He glanced up the stairs as if his wife might be there listening. She wasn't, of course, but her invisible presence seemed to fill the house. Johnson was trembling with fear of her, or with desire for the whisky.
The desire won out. He switched on a light and led me up the stairs. The second floor was in much poorer condition than the first. The ancient paper on the walls was discolored and peeling. The carpetless floor was splintered. A panel was missing from one of the bedroom doors, and had been replaced with the side of a cardboard carton.
I had seen worse houses in the slums and barrios, places that looked as if a full-scale infantry battle had passed through them. The Johnsons' house was the scene of a less obvious disaster. But it suddenly seemed quite possible to me that the house had hatched a crime; perhaps Fred had stolen the picture in the hope of improving his life.
I felt a certain sympathy for Fred. It would be hard to come back to this house from the Biemeyers' house, or from the art museum.
Johnson opened the door with the missing panel and switched on a light that hung by a cord from the ceiling. 'This is Fred's little room.'
It contained an iron single bed covered with a U.S. Army blanket, a bureau, a torn canvas deck chair, a bookcase almost full of books, and in one corner by the blinded window an old kitchen table with various tools arranged on it, hammers and shears and saws of varying sizes, sewing equipment, pots of glue and paint.
The light over the bed was still swinging back and forth, its reflection climbing the walls alternately.' For a moment, I had the feeling that the whole house was rocking on its foundations. I reached up and held the light still. There were pictures on the walls, modern classics like Monet and Modigliani, most of them cheap reproductions that looked as though they had been clipped from magazines. I opened the closet door. It contained a jacket and a couple of shirts on hangers, and a pair of shiny black boots. For a man in his early thirties, Fred had very few possessions.
I went through the bureau drawers, which contained some underwear and handkerchiefs and socks and a high school senior class picture for the year 1961. I couldn't find Fred in the picture.
'This is him,' Johnson said at my shoulder. He pointed out a teen-age boy's face that from this distance in time looked touchingly hopeful.
I looked over the books in the bookcase. Most of them were paperbacks on art and culture and technology. There were a few books about psychiatry and psychoanalysis. The only ones I had read myself were _The Psychopathology of Everyday Life_ and _Gandhi's Truth_-unusual background reading for a thief, if that's what Fred was.
I turned to Johnson. 'Could someone have gotten into the house and taken the picture from this room?'
He lifted his heavy shoulders and dropped them. 'I guess anything is possible. _I_ didn't hear anybody. But then I generally sleep the sleep of the dead.'
'You didn't take the picture yourself, Jerry?'
'No, sir.' He shook his head violently. 'I know enough not to mess with Fred's stuff. I may be an old nothing man but I wouldn't steal from my own boy. He's the only one of us with any future, in this house.'
'Just the three of you live here-you and Fred and Mrs. Johnson?'
'That's correct. We had roomers at one time, but that was long ago.'
