Madonna of the Apes Read online

“Excitement leads to emphatic expression. I said ‘Bulgaria.’”

  “Okay. If that is true anyone, even you, needs to know that the man who sold it to you acted…”

  “You think I am living in Cloud Cuckoo-Land?” Clay broke in. “We placed him under no duress. I acted in good faith. You are my witness.”

  “His ignorance makes me wonder if he had clear title,” Fred repeated. “I don’t care if he collected the Commonwealth’s five percent sales tax…” Clayton blushed. “I’m talking about, Did the box belong to the man?” Fred persisted. “Can Tilley prove it? All that stuff in that place…If not, if he had no right to sell it; if it was hot, for example. Stolen, that is to say…you might as well know it. Supposing I sell you the Brooklyn Bridge…”

  Clayton had risen to walk with Fred as he moved toward the front door. He held up his hand impatiently.

  “So that I could see how there might be an advantage to your going over there. At the same time, I wonder, where’s all that stuff from, and where is it headed? It isn’t here by accident, and to me it looks like it’s here in a mighty quiet and, shall we say, informal way.”

  Clay interrupted, “He strongly implied that he had inherited the collection.”

  “And you believe it? Enough said,” Fred said, “on that subject. As I say, it’s your business.”

  “This will afford me years of study,” Clay said, changing the subject abruptly.

  Fred said, “The Madonna looks to me like Leonardo’s woman with the weasel. The one in the portrait in Krakow.”

  “It’s an ermine.”

  “An ermine is a weasel.”

  “Painted in Milan,” Clay said. “In 1489, maybe 1490. After he had departed Florence. Under a cloud. And disappointed. Yes, I agree with you. Do you think I’ve been sitting on my hands the last two days? You think I am not studying the situation? Considering my painting from every possible angle? I must know everything. There are thirty-one paintings existing in the world that are known to be by Leonardo, or mostly by Leonardo. That’s if you don’t count the Mona Lisa in the Vernon collection, and I don’t. The Vernon collection’s Mona Lisa is a copy, and the copy is not by Leonardo.”

  “For what it’s worth, Franklin Tilley will look for you tomorrow afternoon at three,” Fred said. “He’s convinced you’re a patsy. He’s got more to sell you, including the big thing that’s coming, he said. The big mystery painting. Most of all, he wants to follow you home.”

  “Let him wait,” Clay said with a dry chuckle.

  “I think you should go. And you should have someone with you,” Fred said, “as backup.”

  “Backup?” Clay said. “I am unfamiliar with the term. It sounds unpleasantly medical.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “If ever I’ve seen a blind eye,” Fred grumbled, on Mountjoy Street again, “that man has it in spades. He’s dazzled by his Leonardo, and he’s dazzled by his own success, and he’s dazzled by an intractable worldly ignorance. Like everyone else in the world, he won’t see what he doesn’t want to see.”

  He gazed around at the world and it did not please him. It was unfinished, damp, and dangerous.

  “We’ve got hold of the loose end of a crime that did happen, or is happening, or is on its way,” he said. “Peter Pan. Cloud Cuckoo-Land, did he say? The guy’s in Never-Land.”

  Thinking of something else, he’d left his sack of laundry back at Bernie’s, and his grumbling walk took him in that direction, to pick up the sack, hoist it over his shoulder, and walk it back downhill on Pekham Street, toward Charles.

  Tilley was coming out of his building. Wardrobe had given him a blue suit to wear, a distant cousin to the one Clay Reed was wearing. The package he was carrying was the right size to be one of the smaller paintings from his walls. His eye fell on Fred, studied him, discounted the laundry bag, and he rushed down to the sidewalk to cut him off.

  “You’re the other guy,” he said.

  “Many have said so,” Fred agreed.

  “The other guy, who was here Sunday night. What was his name?”

  “Search me,” Fred said. “You mean the guy you set up to mug?”

  “A sales technique, and it worked. Too well, maybe. Now I’m looking all over for him. Where did he go when he left?”

  “Taxi is all I can tell you,” Fred said.

  “I’ve got to find him,” Tilley said.

  Fred swung his bag to the sidewalk and sat on a stair. “Maybe I’ll see him,” he said. “What’s the problem? In case I see him.”

  Franklin Tilley studied Fred for thirty seconds before he said, “I want my chest back.”

  “You want the chest back,” Fred said. “Just like that.” He shook his head. “You took his money. He took the chest. The money’s yours. The chest is his. Transaction complete. That’s how it works.”

  “I have his money.” Franklin reached into the suit jacket’s right breast pocket and brought out a fat envelope, which he waved more or less under Fred’s nose.

  Fred gestured to the space on the stair next to him. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “Tell me about it.” That wouldn’t do, of course. If Franklin adopted a posture of relaxation he’d lose the edge of his urgency, which he apparently hoped might give him an advantage.

  “That sale isn’t binding,” Franklin said. “You threatened me. For another thing, I changed my mind. And for a third thing, I’ll raise him five thousand. For ten thousand I’ll take back the chest. That’s fair.” A woman wearing a red raincoat and walking a dog, uphill, on the far side of Mountjoy, stopped to watch. On Beacon Hill transactions of any consequence are seldom executed in such a public way, not even in the stores.

  Fred held up a finger and said, “Your first point, you’re wrong. The second, if it’s a point, and if it’s valid, you’d have to demonstrate in a court of law. Your third point I grant you. You changed your mind. I see that. The lady across the street can see that. Also her dog.” The woman and her dog resumed their exercise. “But that third point, though true, doesn’t necessarily lead to action. And it is trumped by my response to your next point. You offer ten thousand, but we don’t want to sell.”

  Franklin shook his fist. The envelope clenched in the same fist waved. Under his other arm the small rectangular package, in its brown paper, crackled. “We?” Franklin exclaimed. “‘Us’ again. What do you mean, ‘We’? It looked like, you turning up the other night, that was an accident,” he said.

  “You’ve been telling yourself that,” Fred said. “Of course you have.” He shook his head.

  “I want the chest back.”

  Fred shook his head again. “You sold it to us and, so far, we like it.”

  “‘Us’ again. You hardly opened your goddamned mouth. How did I know you were in it? Unless, what did you do, horn in on the deal later? I’ll do business with the other man, Reed something. Tell him I’ve got his money.”

  “Food for thought,” Fred said. “If I get it for you, what’s it worth?”

  “I’ll talk with Reed,” Tilley said. “Fuck you. I’ll find him. I’ll find him.”

  “I don’t think you will.” Fred stood, dusting his hands. Franklin, below him, moved a couple of steps down the sidewalk.

  “I can pay…” Franklin started. Fred shook his head. Up the hill, on this side of Pekham, a couple was approaching, a man and a woman, probably in their thirties, probably courting, probably recovering from lunch. They were both dressed for the rain that had long since gone.

  “Our business is done,” Fred said, “as far as the chest goes. I can explain as we walk.” He took Franklin’s left arm by the elbow and started him down the hill. Tilley, smaller and having no better plan of action, reluctantly went along. They fell in behind the courting couple.

  “What’s that, the Cézanne? Never mind. The thing is, about Reed,” Fred explained, “he’s unusual. And the kind of unusual he is, once he makes up his mind, he doesn’t change it. You and I, being reasonable, understand how the world work
s. But he, being unusual, feels he can disregard…well, for example, would feel he can disregard your offer. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “So you and this Reed are friends, now, are you? I’m not finished,” Franklin Tilley said. He shoved the envelope into the left breast pocket of his blue suit.

  Fred told him, “My advice is, when you see him tomorrow—you made an appointment with him, didn’t you?—If you see him tomorrow, don’t mention the chest. That’s the best thing. All the paintings you have you might sell him, concentrate on those other things, is my advice. The big new thing you’re going to get, that’s going to knock his eyes out. Did that come in?”

  “Fuck you,” Franklin Tilley said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Fred walked Franklin Tilley to the bottom of the stairs leading to the Charles Street subway, which at that stage of its run was above ground. The evening was getting chilly. Good weather for the trees to put on leaves and flowers. Good weather for tulips and daffodils to poke their buds out of the earth in the little spaces allowed, between pavements, for such activities. Folks on the street were prospecting for a drink before dinner.

  “Laundry to do,” Fred reminded himself.

  He chose a machine in the Nite-Rite Wash-n-Dry and sat in one of the chairs provided. It was not a bad vantage point from which to observe his fellow citizens. They came in all colors, shapes, ages, and sizes. What they had in common was that they did not live in places that had washing machines. You’d say, you’d assume, that the odds were anyone in an all-night Laundromat on a late Tuesday afternoon was single; but across from the washing machines a young man at a dryer was folding tiny pajamas and laying them into a red plastic laundry basket.

  “Damned thing broke,” he told Fred, catching his speculative eye. “Tamara won’t wait for Sears. She can’t leave the kids. Doesn’t want to—she’s tried it—bringing Jenny with her—that’s the youngest—but this is a hell of a place to nurse a kid, and it’s a lot to carry. The kid, the basket. Besides, there’s something on she likes to watch, hospital program, and this gets me out of the house. I don’t mind. It’s not like there’s diapers to do. The man who invented Pampers, he’s the guy that should get the Nobel Medal of Freedom in my book. Or the woman. And you’ll say the next Nobel Medal of Freedom goes to the guy that invents a way to dispose of the disposable diapers, which I don’t disagree with you. Or the woman.”

  He folded a little yellow dress, manipulating it on the table as if it were a man’s dress shirt. Was that how a woman would do it? The dress, now a neat square, went into the basket.

  “How old’s the oldest?” Fred asked.

  “Three,” the man told him, patting the dress. He untangled three brassieres and tried to fold them, gave up, and crammed them into the basket in a state of abandon. “I’ve got one three, one two, and then Jenny. Jenny’s the youngest. She was born last New Year’s day. We missed the exemption by twenty-three minutes. It’s how I knew she’d be a girl.”

  He paused for Fred to say something he couldn’t think of.

  “She was twenty-three minutes late,” the man said. “You have kids?”

  “I guess not,” Fred said. “Not that I know about.”

  The young man thought of an answer that he kept to himself.

  ***

  She came in carrying a blue plastic laundry basket. Tabitha? Jasmine? Stella? “Hey,” she said, putting it down beside him. “Fred. Here you are all of a sudden, all fuzzy and domestic!”

  Daniella?

  She was wearing her wet hair in dark curls. A large green sweater covered the snake tattoo. “I’m starving,” she said, leaving a kiss in the vicinity of his face. “But more important, I’m going to be arrested if I don’t get some laundry done.”

  Marie? Marianne? Mary Anne? Anne-Marie? Mary? Frances? Bertha? Annie? Ann?

  “The truth is, I forgot your name,” Fred said. “I’ve been beating my head to a pulp.”

  “That’s Okay. It’s not a symptom of anything, or anything. There’s a lot of things I forget too,” she reassured him. “I’ll be Anonymous. It could be fun.”

  “Then when we’ve finished our laundry, we’ll eat,” Fred said.

  “How about Charlie’s?”

  “That’s your name? Charlise?”

  “God no. To eat. Three blocks away. You know it? I’ll show you. No, my name I’ll keep under advisement.”

  Fred strung out his operation as long as he could, but still there was waiting time before her drying cycle was done. When it came time for her to fold the sheets, Fred gave her a hand.

  “I like a fresh bed,” she said, “don’t you?”

  Side by side they carried their laundry to the antique and whatnot shop over which she lived. She balanced the blue plastic basket while she fished for her keys in the pocket of her jeans. Leading the way up the stairs she suggested, “And if you want, before dinner—after, I’m busy—we can have anonymous sex. At least you can.”

  Her apartment was no bigger than it had been, and no more comfortable. The only way there was room in it for two people was if at least one of them was in the bed.

  “I can’t keep calling you Anon,” Fred said.

  “I like it. It’s like being in New York. Everyone knows your business but nobody knows you.” She put her basket down and Fred dropped his bag next to the door. “But I see what you mean. It doesn’t sound like a girl’s name. Call me Amnesia.

  “First we’ll have coffee,” she said, taking off the big green sweater and throwing it onto one of the stuffed chairs. The snake tattoo had slid easily, head first, from under the sweater, though its head itself remained under the shoulder of the pink T-shirt she was wearing underneath, above jeans that had seen a better day. “When I get to this outfit, I know it’s time to do laundry,” she said. “You like yours black I hope. I’m out of milk.”

  “Black’s fine.” Fred sat in the available chair and watched her work.

  “We’ll have coffee. Then we’ll take off our clothes and make my bed.” She kicked off her shoes and, busy with mugs, without looking, shoved them backward under the chair Fred was sitting in. She curled onto the foot of the bed, a lanky woman, needing a lot of bed. The instant coffee steamed well, but it was not good. “From previous conversations, although our name has slipped our mind, we know that I teach Math,” she said. “Maybe you told me, but I didn’t listen: What do you do, Fred, while you’re not picking girls up in the Nite-Rite Wash–n-Dry?”

  “Security,” Fred told her.

  “What, like in a store?”

  “In a store you sit there and wait for it to happen,” Fred said. “You’d have to say I’m more active than that.”

  “So, private,” she concluded. She sipped from her mug. “You carry a gun?”

  Fred nodded. “Not now.”

  “You’ve killed someone?”

  Fred took another drink of indifferent coffee. She looked at him speculatively and bit her lower lip, shaking her head. “Given your size,” she said, “and given how hard you look, I guess when it comes to making people pay attention, you don’t need the gun. In class I sometimes think I could use a gun. Some of the kids we get…”

  Chapter Sixteen

  She stood, put the mug onto the table, and slipped the T-shirt over her head. The action roiled her hair, which she shook consciously. Her generous breasts swung, but more slowly, less consciously, and in a narrower arc.

  “You don’t need a gun either,” Fred said, standing to put his mug down next to hers.

  “Wait.” She held up her hands to keep his distance. “We do this in order. First we make the bed. And before we do that, we take our clothes off. In the light this time. It was dark last time. I haven’t really seen you. You first, Fred.”

  She gasped as his shirt hit the floor. He’d forget, sometimes, the number and complexity of the scars visible on his body, until someone reminded him. Her consternation gave him cover while he went through the routine of stepping out of his loafers an
d, more clumsily, getting the sequence of pants both off his body and onto the floor, next to the shirt and shoes.

  “Okay,” Fred said. “So far so good. When do you tell me about the snake?”

  She was looking him over with frank interest. If she heard his question, she didn’t let on. “Look what I get,” she said. “God, you’ve been through some rough country, haven’t you?” She stepped out of her jeans and was left in a narrow pair of pink underpants decorated with strawberries. “A gift,” she said. “Another signal that it’s laundry time. I didn’t know you were coming. No,” she discouraged his reaching arms; stepped out of the underpants and left them in the heap of clothing Fred had thought of as his. “Let’s make the bed, remember?”

  She rooted in her basket until she found the white sheets she and Fred had folded not half an hour ago and, one on either side of the bed, they started to unfold the bottom one.

  “See, the part I love most, Fred,” she said, “and don’t get me wrong, because the whole thing’s a blast—you’ve got some protection, yes? For when it’s time—the best part is the anticipation. Like buying stock.”

  “Buying stock,” Fred repeated. It was a fitted sheet, the reason it had been hard to fold earlier. He got the elastic of the top corner on his side in place.

  “Yes, like my uncle said, the best time to sell stock is right before the big event everyone is waiting for. People buy hope. They love anticipation.”

  “Like my guy and his box,” Fred agreed. He moved to the bottom of the bed and tucked in his share of that end. Their heads came close. She smelled of instant coffee, or he did, or both of them did.

  “I’m not following,” she said.

  “I was doing security for a guy,” Fred told her.

  “I’ll turn off the phone,” she said, brushing past him to get to the night table on what must be her side of the bed. “For him or for the box? The security,” she asked.

  “For him, I guess. But he has this box to look forward to.”

  “And I have you,” she said. “Hold this pillow while I get the case around it.”