“First off,” Richie said, “what’s your goal?”
“I’ve been sort of making it up as I went along,” I said. “I’m not sure I’ve set a goal.”
“Well, let’s set one,” Richie said.
“Saving Millicent,” I said.
“From?”
“From Kragan, from Antonioni, if he’s part of it, from her parents, from herself.”
“The full bore, all out, hundred and ten percent save,” Spike said. “Save her from everything.”
“If I can.”
“Would the first step be to take out the people who are trying to kill her?”
“Yes,” I said, “and maybe, find out along the way if her parents are as bad as they seem.”
“You assume they want to kill her because Kragan knows she overheard him and her mother planning to kill a guy.”
“Yes.”
“And because it would lead, if she talked, maybe to implicating Kragan and Antonioni and their participation in her father’s gubernatorial ambitions,” Richie said.
“Yes.”
“So if we remove the motive, we remove the threat to the kid,” Spike said.
“What would you like to do, Sunny?”
“I’d like to blow the whole thing out of the water,” I said. “The sex, the murder, Patton’s run for governor, Antonioni, Kragan, all of it. Boom!”
Richie nodded slowly. He looked at Spike.
“How good are you,” he said.
Spike grinned at him. “About as good as you,” he said.
“That’s very good,” Richie said.
“I know.”
Richie looked at him some more.
“You want him in?” Richie said to me, staring at Spike.
“I trust him like I trust you,” I said.
“Well,” Richie said, “he’s got the build for it.”
“How sweet of you to notice,” Spike said.
“One rule,” Richie said, and he started to grin sooner than he wanted to. “There’ll be no kissing.”
Spike held his look for a minute and then he, too, began to smile.
“Damn,” Spike said.
Richie looked at me. Then at Spike. Than back at me. He raised his glass. We raised ours.
“Boom!” he said.
Chapter 50
There was an exhibit of Low Country realists at the Museum of Fine Arts, and, on the assumption that Kragan’s button men didn’t normally hang out there, I took Millicent to see it.
“Why do I want to look at windmills and cows and people dressed funny?” Millicent said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“But I mean, why would you? Why would anyone?”
“I like to look at them,” I said.
“Why? Look at this picture of this woman, why is that better than a photograph?”
It was a painting by Vermeer.
“Sometimes I like to look at photographs, too,” I said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes,” I said, “I do. For a minute there I was doing my grown-up shtick. Avoiding the question by sounding wise.”
Millicent smiled.
“You didn’t sound so wise to me,” she said.
“But I was successfully avoiding the question.”
“‘Cause you don’t know the answer?”
I laughed.
“You know your grown-ups, don’t you.”
Millicent sensed an advantage and bored in. “So why do you like this stuff,” she said. “Because you’re supposed to?”
“No, I’m past doing things because I’m supposed to. I like it. I like the way the painting seems so luminescent. I like the tranquility, I like the way the thing lays out, everything so balanced — space and containment. I like the expression on the woman’s face, the details of the room.”
“You could get that in a photograph.”
“Well, not of this woman,” I said. “It was done in the seventeenth century; they didn’t have photographs.”
“So this would be the only kinds of pictures there were.”
“That’s right,” I said. “The only way they had to fix anything in time, so to speak.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Well, one of the reasons to look at stuff is to learn what things mean.”
“I don’t have to like stuff I don’t like.”
“No,” I said, “you don’t. But it’s probably better to base your reaction on knowledge than on ignorance.”
“What difference does it make? Whether I like it or not?”
“The more things you like, the more opportunities to be happy.”
By now we were sitting on a little bench, and so intent on our conversation that we had stopped looking at the paintings.
“Okay,” Millicent said, “that’s what I asked you before. Why should I like that picture?”
“There’s no should here. I am pleased by how well Vermeer did what he did. But if you’re not, once you’ve looked at it thoughtfully, then you’re not.”
“Well, you’re a painter, so maybe it means more to you.”
“Probably does. But I’m also pleased when I see old films of Ray Robinson, or listen to Charlie Parker, or read Emily Dickinson.”
“I don’t know who any of those people are.”
“Yet,” I said, “but now you know who Vermeer is.”
Millicent shrugged. We sat for another moment, looking at the painting.
“You love Richie?” Millicent said.
“Jesus,” I said, “what is this, your morning for impossible questions?”
“Well, either you do or you don’t,” Millicent said. “What’s so hard about that?”
“I do,” I said, “I guess.”
“You act like you do,” Millicent said. “You and him ever have sex?”
“Since the divorce?”
“Yeah?”
“No.”
“How come?” Millicent said.
“It sends the wrong message, I think.”
“But you’d like to?”
I could feel myself blushing.
“I don’t know why, but this is embarrassing me,” I said.
Millicent smiled happily.
“So you’re not so perfect.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I said.
“You having sex with that cop?”
“Brian?” I said.
“Yeah, Brian whatsisname.”
I felt myself blushing more. It was annoying. Why didn’t I want to talk about this?
“I guess that’s between me and Brian,” I said.
“How come you won’t tell me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to.”
Millicent was radiant with triumph.
“You’re always asking me stuff,” she said.
I took in some air.
“I have never slept with anyone I didn’t care for,” I said. “Like most adults I have sex with people I do care for.”
“So you care for Brian the cop?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So...?”
I smiled.
“You won’t allow me my modesty, will you.”
“You have had sex with him.”
“I guess you’ve got me,” I said.
Millicent was still intense.
“Say so,” she said.
“Yes, I have,” I said.
Millicent looked relieved. The tension went out of her shoulders. I felt like there had been a test. I wondered if I’d passed. Did she need to know I’d tell her everything? Was she trying to take me down a peg? I felt as if I needed another take on this conversation, as if I had botched most of my lines on the first take. But it was over, and the quality of satisfied closure in Millicent let me know that going over the same ground wouldn’t do her any good. I’d noticed in the last few years that getting it said just right didn’t do much for anybody but the sayer. What she had gotten was my genuine reaction. Revision wouldn’t help. Help with what? I wished some sort of supershrink would leap out of a phone booth and explain to me just what the hell was going on. But none did. They never do. The bastards.