"At least they'll know you're in danger."
Augie tossed his head on the pillow. "So what will they do? Put a patrolman at the door? Keep me under house arrest for my own protection? For how long? There's only so much-"
"Augie," said Nina, and there was a letting-go in her voice, a half-groan like muted thunder very far away. "I've been so afraid. I've been so afraid for so long now."
She leaned against him and he held her. The only comfort he could offer was the attempt at comfort, and in giving it he could almost forget that he was terrified as well. But then another thought occurred to him. He pictured Reuben, odd, shy, swishy Reuben, streaking across the path of the speeding car, his own young body perhaps three feet from its fender as it throttled toward them. "And Reuben? Reuben knew?"
"He knows," said Nina. "I had to tell him."
Augie slowly shook his heavy head. "Reuben is amazing."
Joe Mulvane was a man who knew how to fill a doorway. His broad shoulders in their out-of-place suit jacket nearly brushed against both sides of the frame, his thick thighs prevented any light from slicing in between his legs, and his mordant posture made it clear that he did not appreciate being called with a paranoid tale at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning and asked to pay a mercy visit.
Nina Silver greeted him, looking prim, composed, not obviously hysterical. She led him in and offered him coffee, which mollified him somewhat. He leaned against the kitchen counter as she poured him a mug. He jerked a thumb toward the living-room walls. "These your husband's paintings?"
Nina nodded, then braced herself. People always felt obliged to make some comment. It was a nuisance.
"They're big," said Mulvane.
"Yes," said Nina Silver. She handed him his coffee, led him through the living room and out the French doors to the pool.
Augie was sitting there, an untouched slice of melon and a plate of mango muffins set in front of him. His color was bad, a yellowish gray, and his skin hurt, his body throbbed like a headache all over. "Darling," said his wife, "this is Sergeant Joe Mulvane."
The painter didn't rise, just held out a hand. "Hi,
Joe," he said. "Augie." He said it with the same sort of utterly disarming informality that had allowed him to sit on Nina Alonzo's office desk the first time they had met. People should rest when their feet were tired. They should call each other by easy names. Why not? Mulvane seemed to understand. He slipped off his jacket and took a chair without waiting to be offered one. He drank his coffee.
"Have a muffin, Joe," said Augie, offering the plate. "I'm not hungry."
Mulvane, a Bostonian, knew from muffins, although they didn't have mango way up there. He broke off a piece and appraised its texture.
"Joe, listen," Augie went on. "I'm sure my wife was right to call you, but I can't help feeling we're wasting your time. There's so little to go on. I didn't see the driver or if he was alone. I didn't see a license plate. Neither did Reuben."
Mulvane swallowed a piece of muffin, looked quickly for a napkin, then discreetly licked his fingers. "But both of you-you and Reuben, I mean-are sure it was intentional?"
"The guy sneaked within thirty yards of me and floored it."
"And it was one of those turquoise ragtops?" the detective asked.
"Spanking clean," said Augie.
'That's a renter," said Mulvane. He blinked his sandy eyelashes, looked around the Silvers' yard. The swimming pool and plantings reminded him how perilously enviable the well-to-do Key West life could be. "And you're not aware of any enemies?"
Augie shook his head.
The detective thought back to his first conversation with Nina. "But you have a lotta friends," he said.
Augie looked down, his color went a shade more sallow, his deep blue lighthouse eyes went dim. "Yes," he said, "I do. And in some crazy way, that's what bothers me more than anything. That it could be a friend."
Mulvane dove into his coffee. He was a homicide cop; hurt feelings did not come very near the top of his list of human tragedies. Yet there was something in Augie's pain that got to him. An intimate betrayal was itself a kind of murder. "Well, let's not assume-"
Nina cut him off, following her own insistent train of thought. "What else could it be? The paintings. The prices."
The artist recoiled at the words but could not deny them. Murder, after all, generally came with a motive.
The cop had a piece of muffin in his hand and realized suddenly that he had lost his appetite. He put it back on the plate. "Maybe you should call the auction off," he suggested.
"Impossible," Augie said. He wore a look Nina was not sure she had ever seen in him before, a look not exactly of helplessness but of sour despairing. 'There's this huge machinery already cranked up. Sotheby's. Advertising. Sellers. Buyers. My agent."
"Agent?" said Mulvane. "What's he do?"
"She," said Augie. "Shows the work. Publicizes. Coordinates."
"Takes a cut?"
"Of course."
"She's in New York, this agent?"
"Based there," Augie said. "She was here a couple of days ago."
Seemingly from nowhere Mulvane produced a small and crumpled notebook and a cheap and capless pen. "What's her name?"
Augie squirmed in the heightening sun as though he himself had suddenly come under suspicion. "Joe, really-"
"Claire Steiger," Nina said. "S-t-e-i-g-e-r. She was here with her husband, Christopher Cunningham. Goes by Kip. They were staying at the Flagler House."
"Did they rent a car?" the detective asked, the butt of his pen against his freckled lower lip.
Nina looked at Augie. Augie shrugged. Neither had noticed how their visitors arrived.
"When did they leave town?"
Augie shrugged again. 'They might still be here, for all I know."
Mulvane took a last pull of his lukewarm coffee, held the ear of the mug with the pen and pad still twined between his fingers. Then he slid his chair back and got up.
"Sergeant," said Nina, rising with him and trying to keep her tone free of panic, "are you going to help us?"
Mulvane made an involuntary sound that was halfway between a sigh and a growl, the gruff and weary complaint of one who always seemed to end up caring more than he wanted to and doing more than he told himself was worth it. "Officially, no," he said. "We have two open murders and a suspicious suicide on the books. I go to the chief, he's gonna tell me no crime has been committed, leave it alone. I'll do what I can. But quietly."
"Thank you," Nina said.
The beefy detective waved the gratitude away like a fly. "First thing," he said, reaching for his jacket, "make a list. Anybody here in town who has paintings-"
"They're friends," said Augie. "The pictures were gifts. They wouldn't be selling…"
Mulvane didn't want to be around while Augie dragged himself to the bitter end of that line of reasoning. He kept on talking to Nina. "I don't care how much you think you trust them-I want the names. Call me later. We'll check car rentals. After that…"
He hunched his shoulders, and the movement made him realize that his cop-blue shirt was already damp, another sweaty day in Key West had begun. He squinted toward the sun, it rudely pawed its way like hot hands between palm fronds and through the gaps in branches. He glanced at Augie and Augie met his eyes but didn't say a word. A lousy thing, thought Joe Mulvane, to be bumped off by a friend; and since he didn't have anything to say to make it seem less lousy, he walked unescorted through the Silver house and back into the relentless sunshine on the other side.
34
The way it worked, the cars were put in neutral and then hooked one by one to a conveyor chain. The chain ran under a metal groove that was like a knife gash in the earth. There was an electric eye that started the water when the cars pulled even with the washing frame. Then the jets hissed all around, above the cars and on both sides. The water came out hot but went lukewarm almost instantly as it vaporized. It vaporized into little fuzzy globes like dandelions, and sometimes rainbows cropped up in it; the vapor moved but the rainbows hung in space where they had started. After that the brushes came down, they squeezed in softly but insistently like a fat aunt's arms and didn't let go till they had felt the car all over.