“Are we far enough away?” I asked.
“If we go too far,” she said, “we’ll miss the fun part.”
She got out of the car and dialed a number on her phone and the van exploded in the distance. Callie remained out of the car until she felt the wind from the explosion wash lightly over her face.
“You’re insane,” I said to Callie.
“It’s done,” I said to Victor.
Victor said, “Good. I… have… two more… jobs… for you.”
“Already?” I retrieved a small notebook and pen from my duffel and wrote down the information. The names, ages, occupations, and addresses were so different, it seemed as though they’d been plucked out of thin air. I asked Victor, “Do you even know these people?”
“All… part… of a… master… plan,” he said. I covered the mouthpiece and said to Callie, “I take back what I said before, about you being insane.” Then I said to Victor, “Are there many more?”
“Many,” Victor said in his weird, metallic voice. “Real… ly… Mr.
… Creed… evil is… every… where… and… must… be pun… ished.”
CHAPTER 9
“I must see the Picasso,” Kathleen said.
“Then you shall,” I said.
“And the maitre d’,” she said. “They have one, right?”
“They do indeed.”
“Is he stuffy? I hope he’s insufferably stuffy!”
“He will be if I don’t tip him,” I said. We were in the Seagram Building on East Fifty-Second, in the lobby of the Four Seasons restaurant.
She touched my arm. “Donovan, this is really sweet of you, but we don’t have to eat here. I don’t want you to spend this much on me. Let’s just have a drink, see the painting and maybe the marble pool. We can share a pizza at Angelo’s afterward.”
“Relax,” I said. “I’m rich.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
The Four Seasons is famous, timeless, and the only restaurant in New York designated as a landmark.
“Do you mean really, you’re rich,” she said, “or that you’re really rich?”
“I’m rich enough to buy you whatever you’d like to have tonight.”
She laughed. “In that case, I’ll have the Picasso!”
Did I mention I liked this lady?
I gave my name to the maitre d’ and led Kathleen to the corridor where the Picasso tapestry had hung since the restaurant opened back in 1959. The twenty-two-foot-high Picasso was in fact the center square of a stage curtain that had been designed for the 1920 Paris production of The Three Cornered Hat. When the theater owner ran out of money, he cut the Picasso portion from the curtain and sold it. Now, with the economy in distress, Kathleen had heard the tapestry was about to be auctioned for an estimated eight million dollars. This might be her only chance to see it.
“Oh my God!” she said, her voice suddenly turning husky. “I love it!”
“Compared to his other work, the colors are muted,” I said. “But yeah, it’s pretty magnificent.”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “Impress me.”
“It’s a distemper on linen,” I said.
“Distemper? Like the disease a dog gets?”
“Exactly like that.”
She gave me a look. “Bullshit!”
“Well, it’s spelled the same way. Actually, it refers to using gum or glue as a binding element.”
She made a snoring sound. “Boring,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, “forget that part. Here’s what you want to know: Picasso laid the canvas on the floor and painted it with a brush attached to a broom handle. He used a toothbrush for the detailed work.”
Kathleen clapped her hands together. “More!” she said.
“It took three weeks to paint.”
She looked at me expectantly.
“He wore carpet slippers so he wouldn’t smudge the paint.”
I struggled to remember what else I’d read about the thing. I shrugged. “That’s all I’ve got,” I said.
Kathleen smiled and nudged up against me. “You did well,” she said.
We had a drink at the bar. Among the small crowd waiting for tables, Kathleen spotted Woody Allen, Barbara Streisand, and Billy Joel. I said, “See those two guys by the palm frond? That’s Millard Fillmore and Jackie Gleason!”
She sniffed. “At least the famous New Yorkers I’m lying about are still alive.”
A number of seasonal trees surrounded the white marble pool in the main dining room, and the head waiter sat us beneath one of them. Spun-metal curtains hung in rows against the walls, undulating softly as the air fl ow from the vents teased them.
“This is fantastic,” she said, looking around the room. “Everything is so elegant, especially the breathing curtains!”
“Especially those,” I said.
I tossed back a shot of bourbon and watched Kathleen sip her pomegranate martini. The waiter had brought us drinks and given us time to study the menus. Now he returned, ready to take our order.
“Of course I’ve never been here before,” Kathleen said, “so you’ll have to order for me.”
I nodded. “We’ll start with the crispy shrimp,” I said.
“Oops. No shellfish,” Kathleen said.
“Sorry,” I said. “How about the foie gras?”
“Goose liver pate?” she said. “Ugh!”
“Peppered quail?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Meat product.”
“Perhaps you should just pick something,” I said. She may have detected some annoyance in my voice.
Kathleen burst into a hearty laugh. “I’m just messing with you, Donny. I’d love some crispy shrimp.”
The waiter and I exchanged a glance.
“She might very possibly be insane,” I said, and Kathleen laughed some more.
Then she told the waiter, “Watch out for this one. He’s very grumpy in restaurants.”
The waiter left to place our order.
“Donny?” I said. I huffed a bit, and she placed her hand on mine.
“Okay, I won’t call you Donny,” she said. “But if we’re going to start seeing each other, I’m going to want a pet name for you.”
We looked at each other, and I rotated my palm so I could hold her hand. She cocked her head slightly and raised an eyebrow.
I said, “I have to admit there’s something special about you… Pablo!”
“Oh, God,” she said and laughed some more. “Okay then, no nicknames!”
I tried to remember the last time Janet and I shared a laugh.
“Something about me,” Kathleen repeated. Her eyes hinted amusement. She winked at me and sipped her cocktail. “Mmm,” she said. She touched the napkin to her mouth. You could add up all her looks and mannerisms and never total gorgeous, but you’d get to adorable pretty quick, and that was enough for me. Hell, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“Something’s bothering you. I can see it in your eyes.”
She twitched her mouth to one side and held it there, a sort of half-frown. “I don’t want to ruin the moment,” she said.
“The moment will survive.”
“Okay then, brace yourself.”
I took my hand away from hers and grabbed both sides of the table and pretended to hold on tight. “Let ’er rip!” I said.
She took a deep breath. “Last night at Starbucks, you told me about Janet and Ken dating. You were worried about his temper, what he might do to her if they decide to get married.”
I kept quiet.
“Do you still love her?” she asked.
“No. But I don’t want my daughter’s mother to marry a wifebeater.” She made a face, and I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you.”
Kathleen was wearing the same cloth coat she’d worn the night before. She’d been cold and hadn’t wanted to surrender it to the coat check girl downstairs. But now she stood and removed it and folded it over the back of her chair, revealing a white blouse, a tan faux suede skirt, and a wide brown belt with two gold buckles. She wore very little makeup, or maybe it hadn’t been freshened up in a while, since she’d come straight from work. It didn’t seem to make her uncomfortable the way most women would be. She sat back down and surprised me by taking my hand in hers and kissing it.