“And if I can’t comply with those two stipulations?” asked DuVol.
Stortini’s man lowered his eyes. “I don’t really have to answer that do I, Mr. DuVol? Before these repercussions at the race track, you were only a delinquent account. You’ve now graduated to the category of a criminal liability. I think you know the answer to your own question, Mr. DuVol.”
“I can leave the state immediately,” said DuVol, “but the nine thousand — he has to give me some time on that.”
“Mr. DuVol. It’s the continued contact with you Mr. Stortini is trying to eliminate. Letters, phone calls, meetings for payments — these create unwanted risk. Call in your debts, Mr. DuVol. These furnishings. Good-looking stuff. Sell it. All of it. Mr. Stortini doesn’t care how you do it, as long as it gets done. Don’t get up, Mr. DuVol. I’ll let myself out.”
DuVol sat quietly alone for several minutes. He began to feel much smaller than the volume of space his body occupied. It was now 1:15 p.m. He had a little over eight hours to save his life.
He picked up the telephone and dialed a Glendale number, let it ring twice and then broke the connection. His own telephone rang almost immediately.
“Was that you?” said the caller.
“It was,” said DuVol, grateful that Sonny Gorst could at least remember his instructions concerning names mentioned over a telephone. “I’m calling in regards to the art work you have on consignment. I’m not pleased with any of the work submitted and I’d like it destroyed.”
Sonny Gorst spent a moment considering the implications of the remark DuVol had just made. Then he said, “All of it, sir?”
“All of it,” said DuVol. “I have some new works. I feel my outlook deepening. Can you drop by for a look at some canvases? Say around four o’clock this afternoon?”
“Y-yes, I can do that,” said Sonny Gorst. “At your studio? Is it in the same place?”
“The same place,” said DuVol and hung up.
At two o’clock a representative of Jaid Galleries came to Quentin DuVol’s apartment. He wore a pinched black suit and ugly, wide-oval, Elton John spectacles.
“You wish to sell some pieces, Mr. DuVol?”
“Yes. Everything. I have discovered some opportunities out of state. I can’t afford the time a move would take.”
“I understand, Mr. DuVol.”
The man from Jaid Galleries began wandering the rooms of DuVol’s apartment, an appraiser’s guide open on his chest and a dainty, gold ballpoint pen at the ready. He disappeared and then reappeared, like a fast-shifting fog uncertain of its existence.
He spent fifteen minutes at it and then returned to a seated position on a couch of no particular distinction.
“You have many fine pieces, Mr. DuVol,” he began, sifting back over his notes. “You must understand, however, that the Jaid Galleries deals essentially in estate collections.”
“Of course,” said DuVol, sensing some distance being created between them. “You have separates. Elegant separates, to be sure. But separates. We prefer groupings, thematic groupings.”
“I will accept any reasonable price,” DuVol hedged. “I must sacrifice at a loss.”
The small, reserved eyes widened at that remark. The man plunged back into his notes again. When he came up again, his face was lit with a promising smile. “I find several of your pieces to be exquisite, Mr. DuVol. The armoire, for instance, is of a fine French period. And the Spanish trestle table and sideboard and chairs. Fine crushed gold upholstery, very fine. And the English Regency chairs here and the cherry Chippendale tea table, with the Ethan Allen chairs. Georgian Court collection. Very, very fine pieces.”
DuVol held his breath.
“Yes — the gold crushed velvet on the Spanish dining table chairs,” the little man hummed. “Very difficult to come by. For the pieces I have mentioned, Mr. DuVol, I can offer two thousand — if that figure meets with your approval.”
If it met with his approval! The man was talking less like a respected appraiser and more like a common fence. But DuVol could not presently argue the worth of his life; it simply had to be bought back at any price.
“Yes,” DuVol said, hiding his embarrassment and indignation, “that figure is acceptable to me.”
The man hastily made out a check. He rose abruptly, and snapped his appraiser’s guide closed with a loud slap to indicate symbolically a sale finalized. “May our men pick up this afternoon, sir?”
“Before six p.m., yes. I have evening appointments.”
“Very good, Mr. DuVol. And don’t worry. We’ll find just the environment for your pieces, rest assured.”
At four o’clock Sonny Gorst showed up while two burly movers were busy muscling the pieces of furniture DuVol had sold. DuVol took him into the bedroom and closed the door behind them.
“What’s all this with the moving?” he said to DuVol, his little otter’s face quivering with the scent of trouble.
“A development has — developed,” DuVol told him. “Have you sold the jewelry from the Parkington heist?”
“I’m dickering with three fences, Mr. DuVol. I mean, we got some good stuff in that haul. Two diamond pendants, the platinum ensemble of the wife, the bars of silver we found in the safe. The pendants, they’re the key. I could get maybe two thousand apiece for them if I find the right fence with an immediate market.”
“I want the lot sold to Driscoll, down on Mission Street. This afternoon.”
“Driscoll? He’d take any reasonable offer for his own mother! He has backlog, he says. He says.”
“Sell it all,” said DuVol, sharply. “Accept the first offer Driscoll makes. Then cash this check. I want you back here within the hour.”
“Sure, Mr. DuVol.” Sonny Gorst looked at DuVol with the eyes of a spaniel whose mother had just been struck down by a passing car, a tragedy witnessed by the son. “Does this mean we’re terminating the operation, Mr. DuVol? I mean, I’d hate to see that. You and me and Hunk been working out good, you steering us to the marks and me and Hunk cleaning them out.”
“Let us just say we are taking a vacation. Keep your same residences. I’ll be contacting both of you soon.”
The movers left at four-fifteen and Sonny Gorst returned at five.
“The best deal I could get for the Parkington stuff was $3,000 cash. The good thing about Driscoll, he’s a cutthroat but he don’t ask questions and he don’t keep records.”
“You owe me $300 for the car,” DuVol told Sonny Gorst. “I’ll take two thousand. You can split the other thousand up with Hunk and we’ll call it square. That is the way it cuts.”
Ex-convicts on parole lived on nickels and dimes and borrowed time. Like Driscoll the available fence, they too did not ask questions. Mildly terrified by what he did not know and what might put him back in prison, Sonny Gorst left then, with a quick handshake and without a backward glance.
Alone in a nearly denuded apartment Quentin DuVol counted the tribute that would keep him alive. He still had the $190 he’d won from old man Parkington at the athletic club. Two thousand for the furniture, two thousand for the jewelry. That toted $4,190. He was nearly halfway out of his grave.
He took his $975 sedan to a used car dealer whose lot was not strung with bunting and balloons; to a lot, in fact, that was located directly across the street from the new-car agency where his sedan was originally purchased.
“I’ll need your payment booklet and title to establish your equity, Mr. DuVol,” said the polite young man in a coco-brown suit and dark brown tie, without peacocks or wild flowers.
The young man had to cross the street to establish equity. DuVol waited alone in a lonely lot, degradation feeding on his dignity like sharp-toothed piranha. When the young men returned, it was with a check for $500. DuVol signed over the sedan’s title, shook his hand without grip or sensation and left the lot without speaking a word. He suddenly felt like a man who was being stripped and stoned by every human with whom he came in contact.