A Paradise for Fools Page 12

  “That’s good,” Molly said. “Try Braudel. I don’t know when I’ll get a chance although, with the kids away, I have free time, especially when I stay at Mom’s. I do her mail and her plants. I meant to get to Widener. They allow me through the gate as a fellow librarian. But I don’t know when—Mom’s traveling. This is me.” They’d reached the library’s entrance. “Sorry what I did to your paper. Give it five minutes’ sun. I enjoyed…”

  She didn’t finish the thought.

  “I did too,” Fred said. “I’ll try Braudel. If you write the reference I’ll pick it up next time I come by? Right now I have to figure my approach to point D. May I come by again?”

  Molly’s smile made the sun pale.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Kim’s at lunch,” Fred was told by a middle-aged male stylist from whom the scent of powder wafted across the intervening fifteen feet of space. The man was working on a customer, as was Claire, Fred’s operative of two days ago. She looked at him with a blank recognition that could be either recognition or blankness or both at once.

  Fred had stopped at the empty Welcome podium at Cut - Rate - Cuts to ask the shop, since she was not visible, “Is Kim around?”

  “I’ll wait or come back,” Fred said. “Unless you know where I can find her?”

  “She mentioned Grendel’s Den,” Claire said. Her customer was so concealed under drapes that he or she might be expecting surgery or childbirth. “They do a salad,” Claire said. “Grendel’s Den. It’s a place, it’s around, you go…”

  “I know Grendel’s Den,” Fred said.

  The man said, “You don’t find her, we’ll tell her…a message…”

  “If I don’t run into her this time, I’ll catch up later. It’s not important.”

  ***

  Grendel’s was enough of the place to be this lunchtime that a line was backed up on the sidewalk next to the dirty little park the city maintained on the corner lot next to it. Fred told the hostess, “I’m meeting someone,” and strode past. Kim’s white-blonde hair was easily spotted across the crowded area in the central dining chamber. She was holding her own at a small round table most of which was occupied by a confabulation of vegetation that replaced nourishment with colorful fiber. Against that Kim was pitting what looked to be a no-nonsense chocolate milkshake.

  “Is this seat taken, Kim?” Fred asked, sitting in the uncomfortable café chair across from her. Kim looked up from her meal with practiced outrage and interest. The flutter of concern she made provoked the attention of a waiter.

  “Coffee,” Fred instructed. “And bring me the lady’s bill, when she’s ready. If you don’t mind,” he added to Kim. Kim’s mouth had been hanging open until she closed it, looking severe and discouraging, but curious.

  “Something about you,” she said hesitantly. “I almost recognize…” She was startled by this large man’s intrusion, wary, but not, apparently, feeling vulnerable in so public a place. She reached her fork into her salad and speared a slice of beet. She was pretty enough that she had to have learned long since how to fend off unwanted advances.

  Fred said, “Background check.”

  She stared at him, the pink coloring of her face flickering as if it might sink away.

  “Tippy Artoonian,” Fred continued.

  Denial struggled against Kim’s lips, but did not pass them while she was thinking. If she had hoped to be in hiding, this close to her home town, and relying only on a change of name to conceal her, she had to be struggling to confront the fact that she’d been found, and also that her discovery was only tangential to this large stranger’s purpose. But there was no reason to assume that she thought she was in hiding. All Fred knew was that she was presently going by a name she preferred to the one she had been known by in Nashua.

  She temporized. “Tippy Artoonian,” she said, as if the syllables were familiar, but in a different arrangement. Fred waited while her attention shifted to a deep swig from the milkshake.

  “You don’t use Ruthie Hardin any more,” Fred said. “I understand. We’re asking around, people who know Ms. Artoonian.”

  “What did she do? Or, no. She wants to borrow money, like that?” Kim asked. She was shaking her head, perhaps involuntarily. She added, “Rent an apartment? Credit check? I’m not saying…She gave me as a reference? Tippy? Tippy wouldn’t…”

  Fred said, “We have to keep this confidential. I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch.” He paused significantly while the waiter clicked his coffee onto the table and left them alone again. “I didn’t want to bother you at work.”

  “Or, no. What’s Tippy done?” Kim asked, her curiosity tardily getting the better of her caution. At the same time she continued to stare at Fred, half canny, half bewildered.

  “Normal background check. She’s not accused of anything. Another name,” Fred said. “Zoltan Zagoriski.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Kim exclaimed, pushing her chair back. Their neighbors looked toward them. “What are you…?”

  “Let’s keep our voices down, OK?” Fred said.

  “A thing of beauty is a joy forever, for a few weeks,” Kim said, gazing bitterly across the room. “Him, I can’t help you. I haven’t seen…”

  “I don’t want to upset you. Maybe you hadn’t heard.” Fred laid this morning’s Nashua Sentinel face up next to Kim’s colorful salad.

  Kim’s face went pale as ash. She said, “I know you from somewhere. Where do I know you from?”

  She reached over and took the paper from him, turned it around, staring at the photograph and the headline. “Who did he kill?” she asked then, before she took the time to set her interpretation straight, reading the sub-head and skimming the article. “Mr. Z,” she said. She worried at the salad with her fork. “Poor Mr. Z.” She looked up and across at Fred now, squinting, allowing her features to settle into an expression both cheap and canny. “Who are you with again? It doesn’t matter. Tippy,” she said. “It’s not like I ever saw her after graduation. Never did trust her. Where do I know you from? Do I know you? What’s your name?”

  “Fred.”

  “No. That’s not it.” She took a big bite of her salad and chewed it, regaining her composure and letting the color rise to her cheeks again. “First thing I heard, I mean, when I see the headline, Local Man in Hit and Run, I figured Z must have run over somebody. But you could never catch him with a bottle. In class, in the hallway. That hair. Mr. Perfect. Double Z. An accident, the way he drinks. What else? So everyone thinks Tippy…?”

  She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt of thin white fabric that barely allowed you to see, if you knew to look for it, the decorations swirling on the skin of her arms and upper chest, above the opacity caused by the T-shirt underneath. The shop she worked for probably had a policy against the aggressive display of body modifications and décor.

  “So they want to talk to her since I heard she finally moved in with him,” Kim asked finally. “Tippy. Is that what this is about? Who are you, cops?”

  Fred said, “Let’s change the subject. I’m going to repeat something I heard the other day, see if it means anything to you. I think I can get it exactly. ‘But then I saw what he had kicking around there, like a dirty old wooden painting, and he and I fell in love at the same time. With the idea.”

  Kim gaped at him.

  “The dirty old wooden painting interests me.”

  “Shit. You’re that guy,” Kim said.

  “Tippy might be part of the story,” Fred said.

  “The guy there when I was practically taking off my shirt. Claire said after you left, ‘That guy can have your job, he wants to, showing your skin, your tats, showing your, practically, your tits.’ Mister, I’m sorry.” She’d had the presence of mind to let her voice drop by the end of her protest, almost to a whisper. The whisper, if anything, caused grea
ter interest from their neighbors than voices raised in outrage might have.

  “You could get me in big trouble,” Kim said. “And I’m already…the thing is…there’s the big windows and everything. And we got talking. What do you really want? And don’t think, because you…”

  Fred said, “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m not here to push you around either, though you must feel like that’s what I’m doing. Sorry about that. I think you could help. What we could do—I bet these folks wouldn’t mind freeing up a table—let’s ask them to package the rest of your lunch to go, we’ll take it outside, maybe find a bench, talk where we can be more private. I’ve muscled in and interrupted your lunch. The least I can do is pay.”

  “No strings?” Kim demanded, waving toward their waiter.

  ***

  They claimed a bench from a bunch of sparrows and pigeons who were sharing the remains of someone’s boxed lunch as gracefully as Serbs and Croats. Kim had exchanged her metal fork for a plastic one. She set to work again, checking her watch nervously and talking through the vegetation.

  “Listen, the thing is—Fred?—that’s your name?…management, when you apply for a job, they can’t make you, like, strip. But they ask do you have, like, tattoos, and that? Piercings? And of course I said, wanting the job, no. Because the reason they would ask, you figure out—the only reason they would ask, is if you say ‘Yes, I do,’ they say, ‘We’re not interested.’ Go fish. Not my favorite game since I turned six. So you haveta lie. They make you. Then the lie’s down on their form, they keep the form somewhere, central office wherever it is, forever. It’s a chain? I think Tampa? If they like you, you want to move, say, Phoenix, you build up seniority one place, Cut - Rate - Cuts here in Cambridge, they call ahead. Say, Phoenix. One of our people is moving there, see what you can find for her. Hair. Facials. Massage. Pedicures, nails. Receptionist. It depends where in the country. New England the women don’t. Other places where most of the year your feet are out in the weather. Like in the Southwest, since I plan to move west. It’s my dream. I get the money together.”

  It was as if, for her, talking was as efficient a way of getting food started along the alimentary canal, as chewing was for other people. A time-saver. Even though talking had not become for her an efficient way to process ideas.

  Kim said, “So if anyone was to tell them….”

  Fred said, “It isn’t fair to you. We both know I am in a position to hurt you. It isn’t fair that it looks as if I could force you to do something by making you afraid that I could cost you your job. Hell, it isn’t even fair that I’m bigger than you.”

  “Then here you come out of the bushes with Tippy Artoonian, out of the blue, I never even saw you before that one time…and this terrible…newspaper. Mr. Z. It happened last night? It’s a shock. I have to get back!”

  Grendel’s had transferred her milkshake to a cardboard cup from which she drank before making a decision. “Listen, whatever you want, whoever you are, whatever you think you know, you’re wrong. It’s not like that. Before you do anything, listen, I’m not off till four.”

  “I’ll meet you at the shop,” Fred said.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Claire’s coming too,” Kim announced defiantly, joining Fred on the hot sidewalk at four-fifteen. “She’s finishing up. Old lady, can’t make up her mind what she wants, like getting your hair cut is a entertainment. Some people.”

  “Fine,” Fred said.

  “What I’ve been thinking.” Kim had a large green cloth bag she carried over her shoulder. She was wearing long white slacks and sandals. “We’ll go to my place. As long as Claire is with us.”

  “Fine,” Fred said.

  “Whatever you want,” Kim said, “you’re not law, to start. Claire’s my friend. She’s going to stick around. Don’t try anything. You got that?”

  “Fine,” Fred said.

  “As long as that’s clear.”

  “You got it,” Fred said. “Whatever you want.”

  “Show me that paper again.”

  Fred handed the Nashua Sentinel over. If anything, Zagoriski looked worse than he had that morning. Coffee will do that, and being picnicked on, and riding around under a person’s arm on a hot day. Kim studied the photograph and what there was of the article, her lips moving, while pedestrians pushed past. An elderly woman came out of the shop looking as if she had made seven kinds of mistake at the same time, all of them applied to what was left of the pinkish hair curled limply against her scalp.

  “Next week, then, Mrs. Glamerty.” Kim gave the woman a practiced smile.

  “Of course, dear. Heidi will be back as usual?”

  “That’s a promise.”

  “I don’t like the other girl. She doesn’t make up my mind.”

  “Heidi will be here,” Kim promised, moving to tuck Fred’s newspaper into her bag.

  “I’ll keep the paper.” Fred reached to take it back.

  Claire emerged from the shop. She gave Fred a healthy glare and said nothing. She was coming along as the heavy.

  “I’m not far,” Kim said. “I lucked into a place. Sublet. Hot, but it’s cheap. I take care of the cat. Plants. The guy…one the advantages…Cut - Rate - Cuts…people all the time…you hear…and then the next guy…and, but we’re unisex, you don’t want to pay women’s prices. You’d never find, place like this…afford…”

  She walked them briskly, babbling along as if, for her, talking were also a form of locomotion. Their direction was parallel to the river but not in sight of it until they came to a large three-decker in indifferent shape on Mount Auburn Street, in an area that was dominated by the hospital.

  “He’s a investment lawyer or like that, is what I think.” Kim keyed open the heavy front door. “Or financier-type mogul. He has money but he doesn’t have anything. Wait while I punch in the code.” She stepped into the hallway leaving Fred in the company of a vigilant Claire. Claire, minus the shop’s regulation pink long-sleeved smock, was dressed for the weather in a thin red skirt that ended above the knees, and a pink cotton shirt that buttoned tightly across a minimal foundation garment.

  They climbed to the third floor, Fred following Kim, and Claire, alert as Nemesis, keeping the rear. Kim said, “The jerk, there’s another box for the apartment also, you have to punch in. Which is a pain in the ass, except it’s the same code. The guy’s birthday. Weiner. Ernest Weiner. Wait while I do it.” She concealed the panel with her body while she punched numbers and, on the mouse-like signal, keyed that door open and eased in, saying, “The cat. Give me a minute.”

  “Man has a cat,” Claire said, “I say forget it.”

  Kim reappeared, holding firmly a cat that exhibited more long white hair than Zagoriski had owned, though with less lacquer. It struggled to make a break through the open doorway. The apartment, under the building’s flat roof, was very warm.

  “Cheap bastard says, ‘Use the air conditioning all you want. You pay the electric.’ Ernest Whiner I call him. Sit down. I gotta…” Kim dropped the cat, motioned toward a bleak living room into which a good deal of money had been thrown in the form of matching gray armchairs, similar things on the wall, a couch, and a setup where you could simultaneously watch television and listen to music and mix a drink—all oversized—before windows that overlooked the river. The cat surveyed the available personnel, made a decision, and went to lie under the couch. “I’m going to change,” Kim said, and wandered away again.

  “He’s in Hong Kong,” Claire said. “Kim lucks into stuff. Like she lucked into you, if you can call that luck. If it’s true you randomly happened in. Which Kim doesn’t…” Claire took over the couch, putting her back to the river and the daylight. “My experience, a single man with a cat, you can’t get more single than a single man with a cat. I told Kim, forget it.”

  Fred said, “You live near
by?”

  Claire arranged her bag at her feet. She wore white sneakers, like a nurse. She did not respond.

  “Let’s open a window,” Fred suggested. “It must be eighty-five degrees in here.”

  Claire shook her head. “Fucking cat,” she said. “Claws the screens.”

  “Open them at the top,” Fred said.

  “Fucking cat jumps up there,” Claire said. “We tried that.”

  “Maybe an inch?”

  “Leave it,” Claire said.

  When Kim came in she was Hieronymus Bosch all over. She’d thrown off the fetters, the nunly purdah of her working day, and was mostly clothed in tattoos: arms, legs, belly, upper chest, and what could be seen of the back on the areas not covered by the bright green halter top. She wore short denim cut-offs low on the hips and high on the thighs. The swirls of intricate color reached from under the shorts almost to the ankles—she was barefoot. The designs reached around her arms, down to the wrists. Color was missing on the arms and torso, front and back, the whole upper body in fact, where Arthur still had significant tracts of vacant skin waiting for decoration. But there was no possible doubt now, none at all.

  If you insisted on thinking about it in these terms, this girl was wearing evidence of a lost painting that should be worth millions.

  Fred had taken the time to study. Nobody else could have painted them. These figures all must come from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch—and it wasn’t a painting anybody in the art world knew or had published. There weren’t that many known paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, and Fred had studied them all.

  What Kim was walking around in—she a work in progress—was an unknown version of Bosch’s best-known painting, the Prado triptych known as The Garden of Earthly Delights.

  Not that Fred cared about money—but he did take notice. In today’s market, if you had control of a credible original painting by Hieronymus Bosch, even a small one, you could count on selling the thing, if you wanted to sell it, for five million dollars at the least. If the provenance was solid, a good deal more. Museums would fight against each other for it, as would the dealers and the big collectors, some of whom would bid either for or against the same museums whose boards they served on. These silly children—to look at the situation from the financial point of view, they were playing with fire.