“I’d like that,” Pascal said, smiling at Rick across the scarred Formica table.
“Great!” said Rick. “Then you’ll come with me next Saturday? The day after Christmas?”
Pascal’s smile faded and his fork explored a raisin. “Mrs. Beardsley won’t like it.”
“Mrs. Beardsley doesn’t own you, Pasc. You own yourself. Just like I own myself.”
“But you’re not a dummy,” Pascal blurted, his blue eyes miserable. “People may not like me in your town. Your mother won’t like me.”
“Sure she will. And you’ll like her. I called her last night and told her all about you and she said I could bring anybody home I wanted to. And besides, as soon as we’re earning enough money, we could move into a place of our own. Maybe even out in the middle of nowhere where nobody’ll bother us and you can play your jazz tapes as loud as you want.”
The thought of open country was bewildering to someone who’d only known the city, but Pascal had never had a friend like this, someone who did not merely put up with him but actually seemed to like him unconditionally and as he was. The lure of that friendship and the fear of losing it were irresistible and outweighed any nebulous fears about Louisiana ’s alien landscape.
Pascal put out his hand and shyly touched Rick’s. “Okay,” he said.
When Sigrid got home at five-thirty, she was surprised to find Nauman and Elliott Buntrock wrestling with an eight-foot Christmas tree in her living room.
“I thought you had a summit meeting at the gallery,” she said.
“You didn’t hear what happened with Thorvaldsen?” asked Nauman, holding the tree perpendicular while Buntrock crawled around under the lower branches, tightening the screws of the stand.
“No,” said Sigrid.
“One of his ships sailed today.”
She nodded. “I know. Two of my detectives rode out into the bay and then came back with him in his launch.”
“They should have stayed on a little longer,” said Nauman. With his foot he nudged aside a large, much-taped cardboard box so that Buntrock would have more space for his flying elbows. “The Coast Guard was waiting for it just beyond the Verrazano Bridge.”
“What?”
“They took down some of the bulkheads in the engine room and found over six million dollars in fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. A lot of them marked so they could be traced, according to the news bulletins we heard at the gallery. Drug money. On its way to buy a fresh shipment in the Caribbean.”
“They confiscate speedboats and fishing boats when they’re involved in drug deals,” said Buntrock from somewhere beneath the tree. “Do you suppose they’ll confiscate the Sea Dancer?”
The telephone rang out in the kitchen and Roman Tramegra stuck his head around the corner a moment later. “Ah, Sigrid, my dear. I thought I heard you come in. Telephone.”
“Lieutenant!” came Albee’s breathless voice. “Did you hear about Thorvaldsen? The feds have arrested him.”
“So I just heard,” said Sigrid.
“This must be what he meant when he said he went back to the Breul House because he didn’t want Shambley to cause any controversy right now. Wow!”
Sigrid waited until Albee ran out of steam, then observed, “It’s certainly interesting, but I don’t see that it affects Shambley’s murder. Do you?”
There was a moment of silence, then Albee admitted that she was probably right and rang off.
As Sigrid hung up the kitchen phone, it finally registered on her that Roman was surrounded by take-out cartons, plastic containers, and green-and-white grocery bags from Balducci’s. He seemed to be arranging a long snakelike creature on his largest platter.
“What in God’s name is that?” she asked.
“Smoked eel. Neapolitans always have eel at Christmas, but I wasn’t sure what to do with a fresh one, so I got smoked. Isn’t it sumptuous? I know it should be skinned and cut it into perfect little ovals, but then we’d lose the effect.” He straightened the tail. “I thought a bed of red lettuce with strands of alfalfa sprouts for seaweed? What do you think?”
“Roman, are we having a party tonight?” she asked.
“A tree-trimming party. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No,” she said mildly.
“Oh, my dear!” he rumbled. “I’m so sorry. I was certain-” He curved the eel around a mound of tortellini salad and paused to consider the result. “It’s such a little party-hardly worth calling it a party at all-but we do want to celebrate our first Christmas tree, don’t we? I’m such a child about Christmas! See what you think of my wassail.”
He filled a glass from a nearby bowl and passed it to her across the cluttered counter. Sigrid sipped cautiously. Roman might be a child about Christmas but this was no child’s drink. She tasted tart lemon juice tamed by sugar, rum, and some sort of fruity flavor. “Peach brandy?”
“Do you like it?”
Sigrid nodded, beginning to feel slightly more festive. “Who’s coming?”
“Just family, so to speak. Oscar, of course. And, as you see, he brought along his friend. Amusing chap. A bit too fey though.”
Sigrid almost choked on her drink at this pot calling the kettle black.
“And Jill Gill and-”
“What about ornaments?” Sigrid interrupted. “I don’t have any. Do you?”
“I bought new lights and fresh tinsel.” He smeared two crackers with pate and handed one to her. “Goose liver.”
“Umm.”
“And your mother sent down that enormous box out by the tree. She said it hadn’t been unpacked in her last eight moves, but she’s sure it’s tree ornaments.”
Since Anne Harald averaged three moves per every two years, no amount of unopened boxes would surprise Sigrid. She refilled her glass and wandered back out to the living room, where Elliott Buntrock had emerged from the shubbery. He wore black jeans and a black shirt topped by a white sweatshirt that bore the picture of a large yellow bulldozer and the words “Heavy Equipment Is My Life.”
“My glass is empty,” he complained and headed for the kitchen.
Roman had decked their halls with bayberry candles but he hadn’t yet lit them, so the woodsy smell of the fresh pine tree filled the room as Nauman turned to her and, with a flat, deadpan Brooklyn accent, said, “Hey, lady, where’s yer mistletoe?”
She smiled and went into his arms.
Even without mistletoe, it was a very satisfactory kiss.
“What happens to your show now that Thorvaldsen won’t be underwriting it?” she asked.
“Elliott had already decided I’m not postmodern enough for the Breul House. He’s talking about using Blinky Palermo or someone like that to put the place back on New York ’s cultural map.”
“Blinky who?”
“Don’t ask.”
“But what about you?”
“I let Jacob and Elliott talk me into a three-gallery midtown extravaganza,” he admitted, “and Francesca’s going to line up a new set of sponsors. It’s starting to sound like a cross between Busby Berkeley and Pee-wee’s Playhouse. I may go to Australia for the year. Want to come?”
She laughed as the buzzer went off in the entry hall announcing the arrival of Anne Harald and Jill Gill at her outer gate.
The next hour was a happy jumble of untangling light cords, testing bulbs, and running extension cords from badly placed outlets, helped along with generous servings of Roman’s wassail.
Jill Gill had brought with her a selection of Christmas records ranging from Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Norman Luboff Choir to Gregorian chants; and Sigrid took a bittersweet trip down memory lane when Anne opened the carton of ornaments and lifted out a crumpled tinsel star. All at once she was three years old again and her father was holding her up in his strong young arms to place that same star on the very top of their Christmas tree.