Lost Art Assignment (27 page)

Morgan sat beside Gerry Cartellone at his ebony dining room table. The two men sat silent, listening to muted Coltrane, sipping 18-Year single malt Scotch whiskey and staring down at two colorful tableaus. A boy riding a bicycle. A girl walking on a city street. No frames held them, but they didn't seem out of place with their corners secured by salt and pepper shakers, an ashtray and a sugar bowl.

The chandelier above the paintings highlighted every nuance, every brushstroke in the artwork. Morgan had not felt this tranquil in a long time, and he knew it was a shared experience. The figures on the canvas were as serene as their viewers. Cartellone wiped something from the corner of his eye.

“As I understand the story, you paid quite a price to recover these.”

“They didn't belong where they were,” Morgan said. “We brought them home.”

“And I appreciate that.” Cartellone glanced at his guest. “And this man who betrayed you. You never suspected him?”

“It was an unusual situation,” Morgan replied. “I've usually got a pretty good instinct for who is a threat. But this man expected others to do us harm, so he himself was never a danger until he doubted others would do the job. No matter. He will never threaten anyone else.

Cartellone shared Morgan's smile for a moment, before his eyes returned to his paintings. After a time he asked, “Where is your partner? I'd like to thank her too.”

“Felicity decided to stay in New York for a while,” Morgan said. He didn't elaborate.

After a long pause, Catellone said, “Thank you seems so completely inadequate.”

“You're a client. We did our job. You paid our fee. That's really all there is to it.”

“There's a hell of a lot more to it, my friend,” Cartellone said. “You didn't know where you'd end up when you followed that trail. It could have ended a lot worse.”

“You're missing it,” Morgan said, swirling his glass before swallowing the last fiery drop of Irish gold. “Look at those two. On the move. But where are they going?”

Catellone shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Exactly,” Morgan said. “The paintings say it all. It's about the journey.”

“I don't think I'll need to be coming back here again.” Felicity pulled at the hem of her skirt. She had never worn a skirt this short before just for fun. She wasn't sure yet whether the mechanics were worth the fashion.

“When does your plane leave?” The man across from her seemed to be trying not to notice her struggle with the limited material at the top of her thighs.

“I leave JFK at midnight. I appreciate all you've done for me, but I think it's time I got back on my own again.” She decided the skirt was winning and stood, trying to appear casual as she wandered the room. Besides, he always kept it just a little too cool in there, and she wanted to move around to warm up.

“We can leave the files open. You know to call if you need me.”

She flashed a smile in his direction that said there would be no phone call. She turned back to face the wall, carefully studying the Aboriginal bark painting she always stopped at when she roamed this room. She had committed every line to memory over the past six months. It seemed so out of place in an otherwise simple room. The dark rust and black painting blended well against the cream colored walls. It was the surrealistic lines that didn't fit with the orderly arrangement of everything else in the room. The only other objects on the walls were neatly framed and arranged in a symmetrical pattern. The natural edge of the
bark made a sharp contrast.

“Does Morgan know you're on your way?” The Therapist watched her closely. She thought he had said Morgan's name just to see if it brought any reaction. She spoke after only a slight pause.

“I talked to Morgan this morning. He'll be picking me up at the airport. I think he's gotten over me kicking him back to Los Angeles.”

“Do you think your relationship has suffered for it?”

“No, once he finished being mad I think Morgan realized he was smothering me. Not that I wasn't asking to be smothered then. Do you have to make notes on everything I say?”

Dr. Rogers looked up from the paper in his lap and met her eyes.

“It's part of why you're leaving tonight. Every time we meet, I can go back and see the changes going on. You can see them if you like.”

She thought for a few seconds and then shook her head.

“No, no turning back. Straight ahead from here.”

“Just a little turning back. We were talking about you and Morgan. When you first came here, you thought you had lost your independence because of Morgan. Do you still feel that way?”

“I guess a little, but I know now that I didn't lose it, I gave it away. It was nice having someone to share the decisions with after so long on my own, but I gave up too much of myself in the process.”

She perched on the edge of the chair facing Rogers and rested her forearms on her thighs. This way she could be eye level with him without worrying about modesty. She watched him continue to write.

His face was always so serene. It must be nice to have
control over your emotions.

Rogers looked up and smiled at her. Felicity watched him for a minute, wondering if she was doing the right thing breaking away so soon. She realized she hadn't really looked at him before. She had always talked to the wall, or the floor, avoiding his eyes. She noticed now that they were soft gray, not quite blue. His easy smile was nice, even buried under the scruffy beard he wore. She almost laughed when she thought how Morgan would react to him, sitting here in his blue jeans and flannel shirt, one booted foot resting easily on his knee. Morgan would have classed him a hippie, despite the man's wall full of degrees.

Rogers endured her inspection for a minute, then spoke.

“I'm already getting more than a penny for your thoughts, so let's go on. What about the link? Can you deal with it now?”

“That's a hard one. I want to say yes, but there's still so much I don't understand. It's so frustrating sometimes. Morgan wants to just accept it and drive on, as he says. I want to know how and why it works and what limits we can push it to. I told you about how it's helped us, but it also makes us so close I'm afraid it's part of why I've lost my edge.”

“Is losing that edge so bad? Some people would want the closeness you two have. You resent it.”

She hadn't attached the word ‘resent' to her feelings before. Leaning back in the chair, she pulled a coin from her jacket pocket. While her mind wandered the coin slid smoothly across her knuckles, weaving between her fingers.

“You know, at first I thought that was a nervous habit.” Rogers watched the pattern closely. “I've now come to believe you have no nervous habits. So why…?”

“It's a magician's exercise. Good prep for sleight of hand, and pickpockets use it too, to keep their fingers flexible.” The pattern never wavered as she spoke. “A leftover from what I did for a living before I met Morgan. In those days I always sat right on the edge of getting caught. That was a special kind of rush. Morgan calls it ‘being on the jazz'. He felt it too, every time he did a job as a mercenary. We were both getting older and tired of being alone, so we decided to merge and create the security agency. We were going to settle down and be normal.”

She paused for a minute, the coin mesmerizing them both. Rogers prompted her gently by saying, “So how's normal?”

“Normal has turned into a nightmare. I've been in contact with terrorists in my own land, drug dealers, psychopaths, and each of them has brought death … painful bloody death. I think I would mind less if the deaths were all the bad guys, but good people have died, too, sometimes because of me. What I resent is that this never happened when I was the criminal. I travelled the world with the cream of society. I stood next to kings trying to nick their crown jewels. And I was always the one who was in control.”

Rogers glanced at the clock.

“My time running out?” she asked.

“My schedule's fairly light today. I can afford a few extra minutes if we need them. You know it was hard for me to understand, and then to accept the connection you evidently have with your partner. Do you think this psychic link gives Morgan control over you?”

The question, she admitted to herself, startled her. She stopped maneuvering the coin and leaned forward again.

“I know I blamed Morgan for everything when I first
came to you. Even Paul's actions were somehow his fault. Now, I know that he had no more control than I did. He didn't force me into my relationship with Chuck. He stood back and let me fall on my own. He wasn't even there when Anaconda cut me.”

She cast a sideways glance at her jacket. A slow smile spread across her face.

Rogers caught the glance.

“What about Ross?”

“Ross was what made me wake up to how vulnerable I had become. To let him con me…ME…the expert at pulling cons. That's a scar inside me that won't heal any faster than the one on my breast. But I've dealt with both of them so I won't soon forget what losing control can do.”

Rogers watched her set her shoulders. He made a few more notes and stood. She stood next to him, sensing he found her disconcerting at eye level.

“I think you're right, Felicity. You're ready to go home. I'm curious, though. You said you've dealt with both scars. How?”

She laughed.

“I thought psychiatrists weren't allowed to be curious. I've had the scar on my breast tattooed. Would you like to see?”

She watched the blush rise from Rogers' neck straight to his hairline. She had broken his reserve, and suspected he hated it.

“No, I'll take a rain check.”

They both laughed and she gave him a true bear hug. They said good-bye as she picked up her purse and headed for the door. As she turned the knob, Rogers spoke.

“Wait, you explained the outer scar, how did you deal with the inner one?”

She turned back, a truly wicked grin on her face now.

“The tattoo. You should have said yes when I offered to show it to you. It will always remind me not to be conned again.”

“The tattoo?”

“Right along the scar. A long stemmed red rose.”

Austin S. Camacho is the author of the Hannibal Jones Mystery Series and the Stark and O'Brien adventure series. His short stories have been featured in four anthologies from Wolfmont Press, including Dying in a Winter Wonderland–an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association Top Ten Bestseller for 2008- and he is featured in the Edgar nominated African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey.

He is also a communications specialist for the Department of Defense. America's military people know him because for more than a decade his radio and television news reports were transmitted to them daily on the American Forces Network.

Camacho was born in New York City but grew up in Saratoga Springs, New York. He majored in psychology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. After three years, he enlisted in the Army as a weapons repairman but soon moved on to being a broadcast journalist.

During his years as a soldier, Camacho lived in Missouri, California, Maryland, Georgia and Belgium. He also spent a couple of intense weeks in Israel during Desert Storm, covering the action with the Patriot missile crews and capturing scud showers on video tape. In his spare time, he began writing adventure and mystery stories set in some of the exotic places he'd visited.

After leaving the Army he continued to write military news for the Defense Department as a civilian. Today he handles media relations for DoD and writes articles for military newspapers and magazines. Camacho is a past president of the Maryland Writers Association, past Vice President of the Virginia Writers Club, and is an active member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.

The Camacho family has settled in Upper Marlboro, MD with Princess the Wonder Cat and their dog, The Mighty Mocha.