"You want me to negotiate on your behalf," Griffith said, "as though you're the thieves who took the paintings in the first place."
'That's right. In the meantime, I want you to go to the lodge, pack them all up—I can't trust that to anyone else—get them ready to go. Because this is the other part of it."
When Marino leaned closer to him like that, eyes intense, Griffith understood there was more to come, and that what was to come would be even worse.
Marino said, "What I'd like to do, Horace, is ship them all to you in Dallas as though they were just minor paintings, no importance at all, and you can store them in a normal way. Then, when the time comes to turn a few over to an insurance company or a museum, you've already got them."
Griffith swallowed. "And the rest?"
"Eventually," Marino said, as though it were all simple and casual, "you'll ship them to wherever I set up a new gallery."
"In the meantime, I hold on to them."
"Sure."
Millions of dollars of stolen artwork, in my vaults, Griffith thought. Famous paintings that any professional would recognize at once, stored in the safe rooms under my display space. I am suddenly deeper into this darkness than I've ever been before. But what can I do? I can't refuse. I got here by easy stages. Very easy stages.
Marino gave him a keen look, and then smiled, feeling better because Griffith was feeling worse. "I know," Horace," he said. "Life is gonna get tricky for both of us for a while. But it's going to come out okay. We've got the touch, you and me. This is a little patch of rough road, and then it's smooth again."
"Smooth," echoed Griffith.
Standing, Marino said, "Give me your glass, you need a refill. Then let's see what's happening with those steaks. I'm starved."
2
Pam Saugherty carried the ice cream and the milk in a plastic bag. D'Agostino's would deliver the rest of the groceries in half an hour or so. She crossed Abingdon Square, turned right onto Bleecker Street, and did one of those sidewalk dances with a man coming the other way, both of them moving to her left, then both reversing, then he stopping dead so she could choose for herself how to go around him.
"Excuse me," she murmured, with an embarrassed smile, knowing it was her fault. He nodded, not quite looking at her, and walked on.
She'd gone another five or six steps when his face became familiar. She'd seen that face before, bony, large, the eyes cold and uninterested, the jawline like a rock. She looked back and he was crossing the street at a diagonal, tall, big-boned, dressed in black, moving with a determined stride that made her surprised now he hadn't merely walked on over her when she'd gotten in his way. He strode around the corner into Bank Street, and out of sight, and Pam turned back toward home, frowning, weighed down much more by the elusive memory than by the plastic sack.
She knew that face. Reaching 414, she unlocked the street door, then paused to look back, across the street, at that corner of Bank Street. Something menacing in the memory, something frightening.
The mail had been delivered while she was out, pushed through the slot in the outer door onto the floor inside. Letting the door snick shut, she stooped to pick up the mail, mostly bills and catalogues, then unlocked the inner door.
It was the sight of the wheelchair that brought him back. The wheelchair to the left of the staircase that Matt so seldom used these days, the track for the riding chair built into the right side of the stairs for those rare trips Matt did take to the outside world. Seeing them both reminded her at last of the man, and the only time she'd ever seen him before, a time she usually managed not to think about at all.
Years ago, a hundred years it seemed, in another life, another world. The kids had still just been kids then, Bob, the oldest, only ten. She'd been married to Ed Saugherty, who had a good white-collar job with a computer company in Philadelphia, and they'd lived in a good brick house in a green suburb west of the city.
But Ed had a wild friend from his high school days, a man named George Uhl, who had brought trouble into the house, in himself and in a suitcase that had to have had something valuable in it, though nobody would ever find it now. Because Uhl was dead, and these other two, Paul Brock and Matt Rosenstein, had invaded the house, looking for the suitcase.
Matt intended to rape her, soon after they broke in, and when Ed tried to stop him Matt turned on him, beating him with a cold violence that was terrifying. The other one, Paul Brock, had tried to stop Matt, but he couldn't be stopped, until poor Ed was beaten into a dead thing on the floor. Then Matt had done what he wanted with Pam, and kept her and the children tied and gagged in their bedrooms while they waited for Uhl or the suitcase or whatever it was they wanted.
That part had seemed to go on forever, and only ended when another man broke in, even faster and harder than Matt. He'd shot both Matt and Paul, knocking Paul down the basement stairs. Then he had come in to where Pam was imprisoned, and untied her, without softness or sympathy, just methodical, uncaring, and saying only the one thing to her, once her hands and mouth were free: "You know what to do." Then he was gone.
She knew what he'd expected her to do, and what at first she'd expected of herself as well. Revenge herself on Matt Rosenstein to begin with, somehow, some painful way. Then call the police to come take this filth out of here, out of her house, so she could get back to the person she'd been before they'd invaded her world.
But there was no getting back. Ed was dead, and nothing would change that. She had seen evil, and been subjected to its whims, and nothing would ever let her forget that.
When, wearing nothing but the robe she'd just pulled on after the man had freed her, Pam had moved through this alien war zone that had once been her house, the first thing she'd found was Matt unconscious on the living room floor, near the kitchen doorway, a bloody gash on his forehead. And next was Paul, conscious but hurt, on his back on the basement floor, at the foot of the stairs.
She'd gone down those stairs, and Paul had called, his voice as faint as though it were coming from deep in a tunnel, "Help me!"
"Help you!" Rage caught at her and she loomed over him, ready to kill, ready to maim, wanting revenge on these terrible people.
But he stared up at her, meeting her eye, gasping, "I tried to stop him! You know I did, I tried to stop him, but I never could! Is he ... alive?"
"I don't know," she said, reluctant, but having to answer, drawn by the intensity of his stare.
"Parker said his back was broken. Is he in pain?"
"He isn't conscious. He has a cut on his head."
"Oh, don't let him die!" Brock pleaded, and started to cry. "I know we don't deserve it, I know it's terrible, it's all gone so wrong, but please don't let him die!"
Baffled, caught by him despite herself, she'd said, "But... you're hurt, too. What about you?"
"I love him!"
She'd recoiled from that wail, and she recoiled now in memory, then started up the stairs, carrying the mail and the grocery bag, remembering that strange conversation in the basement of the house outside Philadelphia.
All Brock had cared about was his love for Matt Rosenstein. The intensity of it, the nakedness of it, even the selflessness of it, had cut through her anger, her need for revenge, her natural revulsion at the kind of love Brock was revealing to her.
But what to do? What could be done?
"I'll pay," Brock promised. "Keep Matt alive, I swear to you, I'll pay you whatever you need, I'll pay for your children, I'll pay for everything, only keep Matt alive!"
Her husband was dead. There was almost no insurance, she was a housewife with three children and no work history, no marketable skills. Rosenstein had been horrible, brutal beyond belief, but Brock had never been cruel, had tried to stop Rosenstein, had shown her decency in the middle of the horror. Now the reality of her situation pressed in on her while she listened to him, but what could she do? Rosenstein was unconscious up there, maybe dead already.