Nina Silver squirmed in her aluminum chair. O.K., it sounded ridiculous. Probably she hadn't done the best job of explaining. But how could she be expected to be cool, organized, thorough? She was panicked. She'd dropped everything, locked the gallery, and ridden her old fat-tire bike as fast as she could to the undistinguished building that served as city hall, police headquarters, and Key West's central firehouse. She'd dashed up the handicapped ramp, sprinted a flight of anciently linoleumed stairs, followed the faded arrows to the police part of the premises. She'd arrived sweating and winded. Instant airtight logic was a little too much to ask on top of that.
"Sergeant," she said, "I'm telling you-that tart was poisoned."
"If we had it we could test it," said Mulvane. "Or if we had the bird."
"I know, I know," said Nina. "But I told you. I didn't think. I threw it away. The housekeeper took the trash out-I checked with him. The garbagemen came. The tart. The bird. They're gone."
Mulvane drummed lightly on his desk with the fingers of one hand. Of all the kinds of people who settle in Key West, not the least numerous are those for whom Key West would seem the most unlikely place on earth, a purgatory almost, and Joe Mulvane was one of these. He had a pale freckled complexion that could not stand the sun. He was thickly built with larded muscle; you could picture him shoveling snow in a T-shirt, and the heat was for him as much a torment as it is to a long-haired dog. He was not a bigot, but nor did he exactly revel in human diversity. He belonged, it seemed, in a blue-collar suburb south of Boston, a place where people had basement workshops and basketball hoops in the driveway; yet he was restless, perverse, and spirited enough to flee where he belonged.
"Look, Mrs. Silver," he said, "I understand you've been under a lot of strain-"
"Don't condescend to me, Sergeant," the former widow cut him off. "I'm not a child. I'm not a hysteric. The fact is there are a lot of people who would profit from my husband's death."
Mulvane pursed his lips and lifted his red eyebrows. When paranoiacs started ascribing motives, it could sometimes get interesting. "Like who?"
"Like anyone who owns one of his paintings. Anyone who wants to see the price go up."
"Ah," said Mulvane. "Someone who's selling."
Nina nodded.
"Okay," said the cop. "So who's selling?"
"I don't know," said Nina. "I don't know if anybody is."
The detective frowned. For a moment it had almost seemed he had a thread. "Let's back up a step. How many people have pictures?"
Nina shrugged and could not quite rein in a quick sigh of frustration. She admired her husband's profligate generosity-and it had often driven her batty. Forget the money; money, they'd always had enough. But here he had a significant body of work, maybe a great body of work, and he was so casual about it, so careless. Almost as if it didn't matter. And that of course was the crux of it. To Augie, it didn't matter, life mattered. The work was incidental, a by-product, a residue.
"In Key West?" she answered at last. "Maybe a dozen. Maybe twenty. Altogether, probably a hundred. Maybe more."
"That's a lot of killers," said Mulvane. "Your husband suspect anyone in particular?"
"He doesn't know," said Nina.
"Doesn't know what?"
"That someone tried to kill him. Look, he's very weak, he's had a heart attack. He can't find out."
Mulvane scratched an ear, let out a bigger breath than it seemed the tiny office could hold. "All right," he said, "all right. Let's start at the beginning. This tart. You don't know who brought it."
Nina said, "That's right."
"You just found it by the door."
"No. I didn't find it. It was brought in to me."
"Ah. Who brought it in?"
"The housekeeper. Reuben. But Sergeant, really-"
"Reuben," said Mulvane. "Cuban?"
There was something a little rancid in the way he said it. "You don't like Cubans?" Nina asked.
"Mrs. Silver, I'm a homicide cop. I don't like anybody."
"All right, then. He's a spick. He's a queer. What else would you like to know, Sergeant?"
Mulvane looked at her. She was artsy but she was prim. The short neat hair. The quiet classy jewelry. She was no longer short of breath and now that she had settled down she was precise and logical as a watch. He leaned forward over her, and in the tiny office the effect was of a mountainous cresting wave about to break. "What else I'd like to know," he said, "is if there is even one small possibly relevant fact besides the fact that it was this queer Cuban who handed you the supposedly poisoned goody."
Nina bit her lip, then shook her head in a defeated no.
Mulvane shrugged, then reached into a damp shirt pocket and produced a slightly soggy business card. "Call me when there is."
"But Sergeant-"
"Mrs. Silver, listen. I'm not unsympathetic, I'm really not. But we don't do preventive medicine here. Real murders, people murders, we take care of those first. Dead parrots-call the ASPCA."
Nina's hands were crossed in her lap. She took a deep breath, then pressed her palms down on her knees and got up from the chair. Grudgingly she took the business card. It was a paltry thing but it was all she had. She said, "Thank you, Sergeant," and she turned to go.
When she was halfway through the open doorway Mulvane spoke again. "That houseboy, Mrs. Silver. He have any paintings?"
24
The razor glinted in the dappled shade beneath the poinciana tree.
Reuben the Cuban held it by the yellowed bone handle and for a moment kept the blade poised a couple inches above Augie Silver's upturned throat. Through the thin skin of the painter's neck, the blue and lightly coursing jugular could be quite clearly seen. The funnel of the windpipe stood out fibrous as the gizzard of a chicken. Augie's breathing was shallow but even, his eyes were trustingly closed. Here and there doves were cooing, a hummingbird blurred against the hibiscus. Reuben held his breath and brought the cool and well-stropped blade a centimeter closer. The artist seemed oblivious to the approaching steel, he gave a slight twitch as though in sleep and a sinew fluttered beneath his ear.
"You sure you want to do this, Augie?"
"Go ahead," the painter said without opening his eyes. "Get it over with."
"But the beard looks good. Makes you look like Papa Hemingway."
"I used to be plenty macho, Reuben. I've caught enough fish and drunk enough alcohol. I don't need to look like Papa Hemingway."
The younger man shrugged and bent over Augie. With his free hand he pulled the skin along the jawbone, and he began to shave his neck. The dry white hair was light as cornsilk, it drifted onto the old sheet in which Augie was shrouded, and some of it continued falling to the ground. Now and then Reuben rinsed the razor in a basin of hot soapy water. He worked in silence for a minute or two, but there seemed to be something on his mind. "Is this what macho is, Augie?" he asked at last. "To catch fish and drink a lot of alcohol?"
Augie smiled and Reuben felt the skin move. "Part of it," the painter said. "Also you have to know how to fix things, cars and such. And you have to fuck a lot of women till it hurts and now and then punch someone in the nose."
Reuben stood poised with the razor and considered. "I am not macho," he confessed.
"Me neither anymore," said Augie. "It's a phase."
The young Cuban went back to his barbering. "You used to punch people in the nose?" he asked.
"No," said Augie. "But not because I didn't want to. Only because I was afraid they'd hit me back."