Artist's Proof (27 page)

“Of course. The Russian's. Where the girl was killed. I'd have remembered a car anywhere along that stretch of road. But there wasn't none. I told Scully that.”

“You did. You had passed me on the beach at around seven
A.M
. or a little after, and Chuck was trying to find out if anyone had been staying overnight in that house. What he forgot to ask—and that's why I came back to see you—was whether you saw any cars there on your way
back
from fishing. Someone who might have shown up between your going out and coming home.”

“On my way back? Yeah, sure, there was a vehicle then.”

Bingo. Gently, I said, “Don't you think you should have mentioned that to Scully?”

“Why?” Gently or not, he knew when he was being criticized. “The paper said the girl was killed after nine o'clock, when she came in to work. I was back home from fishing way before nine. Couldn't have been as late as eight-thirty when I walked past that house. And the vehicle I saw had already pulled out of the driveway, heading toward the village.”

“How can you be sure all of this didn't happen after nine?”

“Because on my way home I dropped off a bluefish—I only caught the one—next door at Al Bolger's. He was still home and he leaves for work the very latest a quarter to nine.”

“Still, Harry,” I said, “didn't you think it worth mentioning that you saw a car at the Sharanov house the morning of the murder?”

“Not a car, a truck. Hell, no. I figured it was out on a service call and the driver had been given the wrong address.”

“A service call?”

“That's right. I only caught a glimpse of it as I cut across the dunes. It was already well down the road, but I'm pretty sure it was a tow truck out of Huggins Service Station.”

*   *   *

I
PULLED UP
at a rambling frame house, probably built in the twenties, that sat on a wide street with shade trees of the same vintage. I had wangled the address from one of Paulie Malatesta's coworkers at the Huggins Service Station. It turned out that Paulie didn't work on Saturdays.

The bony man putting down mulch in his foundation planting was sixty-something, his children probably grown and out, so renting a room to a bachelor made sense. He greeted me pleasantly, said no, Paulie wasn't at home. He didn't hang around on his day off, and who should he say had been asking for him?

I gave my name and said I knew Paulie mainly through his girlfriend—the teenager who was murdered last week?—and that I'd come around to express my condolences.

“A terrible, terrible thing,” the man said, and laid his rake aside. “The boy's been a wreck all week. We're the Hamiltons, by the way.” His ruddy complexion flushed a deeper red when he volunteered his name; he didn't want to seem forward.

I acknowledged the introduction and said, “Paulie's been living with you for some time?”

“Since he moved to the village. Eight or nine months. The irony is, he came out here to get away from big-city violence. He'd seen enough, he said, to last a lifetime. And yes, he'd found himself a lovely girl. Full of life. Sixteen? I was surprised when I read that. She seemed older.”

“You knew Cassie?”

“Met her briefly, two or three times. We'd vanish, leave them alone, the wife and I.” So there'd be no misunderstanding he added, “In the front room, downstairs. They were entitled to their privacy. I learned that much raising boys of my own.”

“I was very fond of Cassie. Do you think he loved her?”

“I do. I really do. Oh, they fought, sometimes like tigers, but people in love fight, don't they? It shows they care.”

“I didn't know they fought. What about?”

“I wouldn't know that. It's true, sounds do carry in this house. If my wife sneezes in the attic I'll say ‘Bless you' in the basement. But you can't make out words. All I got from those two was the tone when their voices rose. Angry. Does it matter? They cared for each other.”

“I'm glad to hear that. It helps. Do you have any idea where Paulie went today, or what time he might be back? Did he maybe go into the city to see his family?”

“I don't believe he's got any kind of family. He never spoke of one. And no, I wouldn't know where he's gone. Not far, because what he drives is a Huggins tow truck.”

“He keeps it here?”

“He's on call, that's the deal. He's got a car phone. And they'll phone him here at night if there's an emergency, and he'll go right to it. It's a gypsy life. Sad, but I don't think the boy's ever known any other kind.”

T
WENTY-FIVE

W
HENEVER SARAH CALLED
—and she didn't call often—it was always on a weekend, when the phone rates dropped. She had left a message on my machine:

“Dad, hi. I'm sorry I missed you. Listen, I know you're having trouble meeting the tuition, and this is getting silly. I don't have to go to Bennington next year, I really don't. I'd probably be just as happy at a state school, maybe happier. Can we talk about this? I love you.”

And that was it, short and sweet.

I called her back; naturally she wasn't in. I hated myself for failing her. Bennington was the only thing Sarah had ever in her life asked of me. She was pitching in with two part-time jobs that paid slave wages, she had a full-time job with Gayle lined up for the summer, and her mother was coming up with her half of the tuition. (Lonnie would have lent me my half in a minute; I'd sooner choke.)

If I could sell even a small painting and put off paying Tony Travis until sometime early in the next century I might be able to lift my end of the load. It would help even more if I nailed Paulie Malatesta for Cassie's murder before the weekend was up. That would allow me to achieve one of my current life ambitions—firing Travis by Monday morning.

My unassailable integrity, my pose as an artist whose personal vision made no allowance for the marketplace, had once again gotten me in trouble. The hubris had piled up like horseshit. I would have to make good on my promise to Lonnie to grow up and do some work I could
sell.
Pretty beach scenes, charming village landscapes, portrait commissions.

Something perverse had been at work in me. I had even destroyed the marketability of my one sure-fire salable painting—my sexy portrait of Gayle,
Green and Brown Morning.
On impulse one afternoon I had aged Gayle forty years on the canvas and turned the work into a statement on the vanity of youth.

I was too old to be a free spirit, I had too many responsibilities. I looked up at
Large,
and at that moment I hated it. I saw a self-indulgent, show-off acre of canvas and pigment. The cost of the paint alone would have covered a measurable portion of my children's education.

I needed to find Paulie Malatesta. If he was in the area, that tow truck would stick up like a schoolboy's cowlick. I went out looking for him.

*   *   *

I
T DIDN'T TAKE
long to find him. The village cemetery, where the jumble of graves went back to the seventeenth century and some stones were as thin as shirt cardboards, had gone standing room only decades ago. The annex across the road was larger, brighter, more in touch with the living; flowers, real and artificial, nestled at the base of some of the newer stones. I spotted the Huggins tow truck parked at the curb from two blocks away.

The cemetery's Catholic section was toward the rear of the annex, half a football field away. As I approached it along the narrow path that ran down the center I made out Paulie sitting cross-legged in front of the still raw earth that covered Cassie's grave. His back was to me, and he was so deep in thought he never heard my footsteps.

I stopped a couple of paces away. Rather than intrude on his somber meditation I waited for him to become aware that he wasn't alone.

After a long minute he sensed my presence and turned. I didn't know whether I had expected him to register guilt, embarrassment, surprise, or what. He was perfectly calm, as if our meeting here was the most natural thing in the world. He acknowledged me with a nod and a small sad smile. This was a subdued, contemplative Paulie I hadn't seen before; maybe it was the Paulie that had attracted Cassie.

“Oh, hi,” he said.

“Hello, Paulie.”

“So you came to see her too,” he said mournfully. “It helps, doesn't it?”

So that was why he had accepted my presence so readily. “I hope it will,” I said. “Have you been here long?”

“Have I? I don't know.” He looked at his watch. “Wow. Yeah, I didn't realize.”

I sat down next to him on the cold earth. I said, “I'll bet that after you've been here a while you start telling her the things you never got a chance to say when she was alive. Things you were saving for just the right moment.”

Warily, “Something like that.”

He fell into a reverential silence, and I followed his lead. Or pretended to. Grave sites don't especially stir me to thoughts of the deceased; those are as likely to sneak into my head while I'm brushing my teeth or crossing a street. I had been thinking of Cassie off and on all week; what I was thinking of at this moment was that opening up Paulie Malatesta in this place wasn't going to be easy. He would probably talk more readily somewhere else, away from that ton of fresh-turned earth pressing on his sweetheart's casket.

While he meditated I stole glances at him. Nice profile, well-defined chin. He was good-looking, all right, well fed and well fleshed. But there was an underlying tone of want around the mouth and in the eyes, as though he had been brought up on junk food and cold love, both doled out in small portions.

Cassie had looked for father substitutes. (Me? Sharanov?) In a boyfriend she may have wanted someone she could take charge of. And Paulie was a grown-up waif, still needy, still short of nourishment. Had he been angered to murder when Cassie began to withdraw her support?

After we sat quietly for a while I could see that the mourner was restless. He was becoming self-conscious about sharing this private time with me. Finally he murmured, “I have to go” and scrambled to his feet.

I quickly followed. “I'll walk out with you,” I said.

After one last hungry look at the grave, he turned and we started back toward the gate. I felt I ought to fill the silence. “She'll be missed,” I said.

“She'd have
been
something,” he said savagely.

“I agree. She was well on her way. You should have heard the praise from people at the wake. I'm sorry you weren't there. You really think you'd have upset her mother?”

“The boyfriend who was nine years older? And Italian? Are you kidding?” He kicked at a pebble. “The sad part…” And he stopped.

“Yes?”

He had to say it; it was a matter of pride. “The sad part, Cassie
did
finally agree to bring me home. After all those months of no way, she was going to introduce me to her old lady.”

“What made her promise that?”

“I don't know. She was mad at her mother, had been for weeks. She wouldn't say what it was about, but it was a first; she worshipped that woman. And that's when she said she would take me to see her. She insisted. We were going to do it that weekend. She was looking forward to it.”

“Out of spite, you think?”

“Tell me. She was like spitting in her old lady's eye and I was the spit, right?”

“That sounds about right. I'm sorry, Paulie. It must have hurt.”

“What do you think?”

“Did it make you angry at Cassie?”

“No. No way could I get sore at Cassie.”

“Really? How come some of the Hamiltons' neighbors”—why finger poor Hamilton himself?—“say they could sometimes hear you arguing in the front room?”

He stopped walking, his face suddenly flushed. “They did? Somebody said that?”

“Yes. What was that about?”

His jaw tightened as he realized where this was heading. He faced me angrily. “You still on that kick? You and Chuck Scully can't find a way to arrest that creep Sharanov, so you're looking to lay Cassie's death on me? You think I cut the throat of the only person in my whole life I ever cared about?”

He started walking again, more quickly now. I stayed with him, and took his arm. I shook it reassuringly.

“Easy does it, Paulie. Nobody's accusing you of anything. What're you steamed about? That people heard you and your girlfriend arguing? That true love didn't run absolutely smooth? It hardly ever does. Join the club.”

“We didn't argue. We had nothing to argue about,” he said grimly. His truck was now just a few yards ahead and he was trying to pull away from me.

I dropped his arm and let him distance himself while I delivered a measured shot across his bow. “I thought maybe you'd had a fight with her the night before the murder and were looking to make up. And that's why you drove over to Sharanov's house Friday morning.”

He had one foot in the truck, but he took it back out and turned to me, startled. “Who said I was there that morning?” His voice was tight.

“A fisherman who was cutting across the dunes from the beach saw your truck pulling out of the driveway.” I tried a strategic lie. “At nine-something
A.M
.”

That roused him to action. “No! It was nothing like nine. More like eight-thirty. Maybe earlier. I have to punch in at work by eight forty-five. Huggins docks you when you're late.” He was so indignant about what time he was at Sharanov's that he hadn't wasted time denying he was there.

I said, “What were you doing at the Sharanov house at all?”

Now he was rattled, and he took a moment. “What do you think? I was looking for Cassie. I thought I might catch her for a couple or three minutes. Because I wouldn't see her all day. I rang the bell, knocked on the door, but she wasn't there. So I left. That was it.”