Now what? The door was opening and light was spilling out into the snowy dark. A voice was speaking, Victor was grinning and replying, Victor was crossing the threshold, smiling and gesturing for Dortmunder and Kelp to follow. They did, and entered another world.
The stocky man who shut the door behind them remarked, genially, "Terrible out there tonight," but Dortmunder paid no attention, absorbing the interior of the store. In its most recent commercial manifestation it had apparently been a women's clothing boutique, the long narrow space separated into sections by platforms of various heights, all edged with elbow-high black wrought-iron railings, each platform covered in carpeting of another color, all shades of blue or gray. With the walls covered in burlap painted dark blue and the plate glass windows painted black, the final effect was somewhere between a garden and a garret, flooded in moonlight.
Probably when the platforms had borne racks of skirts and sweaters and jumpsuits the garden effect had been predominant, but now the feeling was much more of a garret, helped by the bits of clothing and old rags draped carelessly over most of the railings. The nearest couple of platforms featured ratty pieces of living-room furniture, while a platform toward the middle bore several plain wooden kitchen chairs and an old trencher table. Toward the rear were two easels, a high stool, and a library table covered with the impedimenta of painting: tubes of color, water glasses full of slender brushes, rags, palette knives. Unframed canvases were stacked in corners and hung on the walls. Above the easels, the standard shop ceiling gave way to a recess containing a domed skylight.
The store was warm after the snowy night outside, and despite its narrow length and endlessly shifting levels, it was somehow cozy. People lived here, you could see that, and had made a place of their own in what had once been a desert of impersonality.
People. Two of them, one a girl of about twenty curled up on the sofa, with an old plaid throw rug draped across her legs. She was slender, but with roundness and softness, like the world's tastiest peach, and her smile made her cheeks plump and delectable. Dortmunder could have gone on looking at her for thirty or forty years, but he forced himself to give some attention to the other person as well.
This was the man who had let them in. He was a roly-poly sloppy man of about fifty, wearing bedroom slippers, paint-stained dark corduroy trousers, a mostly-green plaid shirt and a dark green ratty cardigan sweater with leather elbow patches. He hadn't shaved today, and it was possible he hadn't shaved yesterday.
Victor was making the introductions, announcing each name as though that person were a particular discovery of Victor's own: "Griswold Porculey, I'd like you to meet my uncle, Andy Kelp, and his friend, Mister John Dortmunder."
"W'r'ya," Dortmunder said, shaking Porculey's extended hand.
"How do you do. How do you do. Victor's uncle, eh?"
"His mother is my older sister," Kelp explained.
Porculey gestured at the girl on the sofa, saying, "And this is my friend, Cleo Marlahy, an ever-present comfort."
Throwing off the throw, Cleo Marlahy uncurled her legs and sprang to her feet, saying, "Coffee? Tea? Wine?" Then doubtfully, to Porculey, "Do we have any liquor?"
"We might have vermouth."
"I'd love some coffee," Kelp said. Dortmunder said, "Me, too."
Victor said, "May I have wine? I'm older than I look."
Porculey said, "Red or white?" "Red, please."
"Done," said Porculey. "We don't have any white."
.The girl was wearing black velvet pants and a white blouse. She was barefoot, and her toenails were painted an extremely dark red; the color of drying blood. She bounded away on these feet like the little mermaid, while Porculey directed his guests into chairs and himself dropped with a grunt into the sofa.
Kelp said, "This is quite a place. Very clever idea."
"Only rent I could afford," Porculey said, "to get this much space and north light." He gestured toward the skylight. "They gave me a good rent," he went on, "because they had so many empty stores, and because I agreed to make one or two turns around the place after the shops all close. Sort of a night watchman. Cheaper for them, cheaper for me. I'm a night bird anyway, and I walk anyway, so it's no hardship. We took down the partitions in the changing rooms, put our bedroom back there. Only problem's the lack of a kitchen, but we don't need much. Couple of hot plates, little refrigerator, use the sink in the lay. Perfect, really. They give more heat than any landlord in my experience, there's no nosy neighbors to poke and pry, and any shop I want is right outside that door."
Cleo returned, with a mismatched pair of white mugs for Dortmunder and Kelp, and an empty jelly glass for Victor.
Distributing the mugs, she then picked up a gallon jug of Gab Hearty Burgundy from the floor beside the sofa, half filled the jelly glass, gave it to Victor, and said, "Porky? More wine?"
"Don't mind if I do. Don't mind if I do."
Porculey drank from a tapered pilsner glass meant for beer, in which the dark red wine looked like something in a laboratory experiment. Cleo's glass, which she rescued from way under the sofa, was a small glass stein which had originally held mustard. She filled it to the top with hearty burgundy, plopped onto the sofa next to Porculey, raised her stein, and said, "Absent friends."
"May they rot," said Porculey, lifting his pilsner glass in the toast, and took a healthy swig. Then he said, looking at Dortmunder, "I understand you folks have a problem."
"We do," Dortmunder agreed. "We helped a fellow fake an art theft, to get the insurance. He wants the painting back, but we don't have it any more. It got lost. Kelp seems to think you could run up an imitation and we could give that back to the guy instead of the original."
Kelp said, "We'd make it worth your while, of course."
Porculey grunted in amusement. "Yes, I should think you would," he said. The hand not holding the pilsner glass had strayed over to Cleo's near thigh and was massaging it gently. The girl sipped wine and smiled comfortably to herself. Porculey said, "What painting is this?"
"It's called Folly Leads Man to Ruin, by somebody called Veenbes."
"Veenbes." Porculey put his head back, gazing up toward the corner of the ceiling. His hand stroked and stroked. "Veenbes. Folly Leads Man to Ruin. Mm, mm, possibly. Book," he decided, all at once, and released Cleo's leg in order to heave himself out of the sofa and onto his feet.
Book? There were any number of books in sight, though no bookcases. Paperbacks were heaped up in corners and under tables, while large hardcover volumes were stuck between uprights of the railings along platform edges. It was to these that Porculey went, carrying his wine, muttering under his breath as he ran his free hand along their spines. Then he stopped, pulled out one book, set the pilsner glass on the floor, thumbed through the volume, shook his head in annoyance and shoved the book back again.
This might take some time. While waiting, Dortmunder looked around, absorbing this weird dwelling place and noticing here and there on the dark walls unframed paintings, presumably Porculey's. They were all different, and yet they were all the same. In the middle foreground of each was a girl, either naked or wearing something minimal like a white scarf, and in the background was a landscape. The girls were mostly seen full length, and they were always very absorbed in what they were doing. One of them, for instance, sitting on the grass with some ruined castles behind her, plus in the distance a couple of trees and a small pond at which two deer drank, was studying a chess set laid out on the grass in front of her. Another showed a girl on a beach, leaning over the gunwale to look inside a large stranded rowboat, with a huge storm way out at sea in the background. (This was the girl with the scarf.)