The teenaged girl behind the counter had spiked purple hair, lipstick to match, a butterfly tattooed on her neck and a ring through her left eyebrow. Looking at her made not having children of his own easier to bear. She glanced at the letter, then at him; Her jaws stopped masticating a wad of gum long enough to ask, "You're…?"
"Langford Reilly, Dr. Holt's brother."
She looked back down at the letter in her hand and then back at him. "Jesus! I read in the paper… I'm sorry. Dr. Holt was a sweet lady. Bummer."
He had had enough condolences for a lifetime, let alone today. Still, it was nice of the kid. "Thanks. I appreciate that. I'm taking care of her estate. That's why I'm picking up…"
He pointed to the paper in her hand.
"Oh! Sorry! I'll get it for you."
He tracked her progress between the shelves behind the counter by the sound of popping gum.
When she returned, she had a package wrapped in brown paper. "Dr. Holt sent this from Paris, had us frame and appraise it for insurance." She tore off a small envelope that had been taped to the paper. "This is a Polaroid of the painting and the appraisal. You'll want to keep them somewhere safe and we'll keep a copy." She put both envelope and package on the counter and consulted a sales slip. "That'll be two sixty-seven fifty-five, including tax."
Lang handed her his plastic and watched her swipe it through a terminal as he stuffed the envelope into his inside coat pocket. What was he going to do with some piece of religious art? Selling it was out of the question; Janet had bought it in the last hours of her life. He would find a place for it-somewhere.
He signed the credit card receipt, wadded it into a pocket and took the package under one arm. Stopping at the doorway, he let his eyes acclimate from the dark of the shop to the bright spring light outside.
Something out there was not quite right, out of place.
The old sensitivity which made him habitually aware of his surroundings had become so much a part of him that he no longer noticed it, like a deer's instinctive listening for the sound of a predator. His mind noted the doorman of his condo standing on the left instead of the right side of the door, a jalopy in an upscale neighborhood where Mercedes and BMWs belonged.
It took a second for him to realize he had stopped and was staring at the street and another to realize why. The man on the other side, the derelict who appeared to be sleeping off the demons of cheap wine in the paper-and glass-littered doorway of one of the neighborhood's empty' buildings. He sat, facing Lang, eyes seemingly closed. The worn camo jacket, tattered jeans and filthy, laceless sneakers were in character. The man could have been one of the city's thousands of wandering homeless. But how many were clean-shaven with hair cut short enough not to hang below the knit cap? Even assuming this one had recently been released from a hygiene-conscious jail, it was unlikely he would be here so close to noon when the church down the street was giving away soup and sandwiches. Also, he had gone to sleep in a hurry. Lang was certain the bum had not been there when he arrived at the gallery, yet he had found a suitable spot and dozed off in two or three minutes. Even the gut-corroding poison purchased with dollars panhandled from guilty yuppies wouldn't knock him out that quickly. Of course, Lang told himself, he could be mistaken. There were plenty of beggars in Midtown and he could have failed to notice this one. But it was not likely.
Raising a hand as though to shade his eyes, Lang left a space between his fingers, keeping the sleeper in view as he walked to where the Porsche was parked. The knit cap slowly turned. Lang, too, was being watched.
In the car, he circled the block. The man was gone. Lang reminded himself that paranoia doesn't necessarily mean someone really isn't after you.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Atlanta
That afternoon
Lang knew Sara, his secretary, would have alerted him to any emergency in his practice. It was as much as to occupy his mind as to see things for himself that he went to his office, a suite high in one of downtown Atlanta's taller buildings.
She had been full of teary condolences at that morning's funeral, and Lang expected Sara to begin weeping again. She had, after all, known Janet and Jeff well. To his surprise, she greeted him with, "Kennel called. Janet left this number as an emergency contact. The dog, Grumps, been there over two weeks. Want me to pick it up? What kind of a name is 'Grumps' anyway? What ever happened to Spot or Fido?"
"Name Jeff picked out, I guess." Lang had no idea what he was going to do with one large, ugly dog. But Grumps had been Jeff's friend and he sure as hell wasn't going to see the animal sent to the pound. Actually, when he thought about it, having the mutt around might be like having a little part of his family back. "No thanks. I'll pick him up on the way home."
He sat down behind a desk covered with files bearing Post-Its.
Once he had retired from his previous occupation, he and Dawn had agreed the law was an appealing second career. His small pension plus her salary saw him through school. The idea of working for someone else was unappealing. Upon graduation, he set out his own shingle and began working the phones with old acquaintances for clients.
Word spread. His practice became profitable, enabling Dawn to quit her job and open the boutique of which she had always dreamed. No longer subject to the unpredictability of his former work, he was home almost every night. And when he wasn't, his wife knew where he was and when to anticipate his return.
They pretty much had it all, as the Jimmy Buffet song says: big house, money to do what they wanted and a love for each other that time seemed to fuel like pouring gasoline on a fire. Even after five years, it hadn't been unusual for Dawn to meet him at the door in something skimpy or nothing at all – and they would make love in the living room, too impatient to wait to get to the bed.
It had been embarrassing the evening Lang brought a client home unannounced.
The only real cloud on their horizon was Dawn's inability to get pregnant. After endless fertility tests, they arranged for an adoption that had been only months away when Dawn began to lose both appetite and weight. The female parts that had refused to reproduce had become malignant. In less than a year, her full breasts had become empty sacks and her ribs looked as though they would break through the pale skin with the next labored breath. This was the first time Lang realized the same universe that could give him a loving, helpful wife could dispassionately watch her degenerate from a healthy woman into a hairless skeleton in a hospital bed where her breath stank of death and her only pleasure was the drugs that temporarily took away the pain.
As the cancer progressed, he and Dawn spoke of her recovery, the things they would do and places they would go together. Each of them hoped the other believed it. He, and he suspected she too, prayed for speed to reach the end that was inevitable.
Lang suffered in the certain knowledge of her mortality and in the irrational guilt that he was unable to give her comfort. He had more time than anyone would have wanted to prepare for her death.
As he remembered, he wondered which was worse: the torture of certain death or the sudden snatching away of his sister and nephew.
At least for the latter, he could dream of revenge, of getting even with the powers that had caused their deaths. That was a satisfaction he would never have for Dawn.
Over the years since his retirement, he had diminishing need to use his former contacts. How many of his old cohorts remained, he wondered as he groped in a desk drawer. His fingers found the false back and he slid a wooden panel out of place. Behind it was a small booklet which he pulled out and opened on the desk. Who was left? More importantly, who was left that owed him a favor?