Scarlet Night (28 page)

“There was a mix-up,” he said. “We’re to meet somewhere else for the distribution of funds.”

“No,” Ginni said.

“Yes, God damn it. The money’s down there in the car. Come on now before it’s hijacked.”

That moved her. If only he’d known how to speak to her before, it might all have been different. She lined up the boys. They had already transported their luggage to the Plaza.

O’Grady opened the car door when they reached the street. “You’ll have to sit three across,” he said. “I’ll ride with the driver.”

“Where’s Rubinoff?”

“He’s waiting.”

“I’m going back to Mother’s until I hear from him.”

“You’ll wait a long time then,” O’Grady said. “Come here, my darling.” He took her rudely by the arm and led her to the back of the station wagon where he lifted the hatch door. The light went on. After looking up and down the street, he flattened one of the bags and unzipped it far enough to turn back the flap. It gave him a turn himself to see one eye of Benjamin Franklin staring up at him from a packet of hundreds.

“Lacrima Cristi,”
Ginni said, and went around and crawled in alongside the boys.

The boys helped load the suitcases into the freight elevator at Romano’s.

Alberto opened the door to them, and conducted them through, money and all, to the office. He diverted Michael to the kitchen to free and fetch Rubinoff. Julie and Romano were waiting in the office. Ginni balked at the door, but O’Grady put one arm around her and the other under her flailing legs and carried her over the threshold. He put her down in one of the chairs that had been set out in a half circle. The boys sat on either side of her. Romano waited for Michael and Rubinoff, to whom, when he came in rubbing his wrists, he murmured, “I’m so glad you could join us.”

The Little King took his time. Then he said: “I am Romano and you are my guests. I will not say you are welcome, but you will not be detained long. I understand you were looking for a courier. So am I.” He took three envelopes from the desk. “You will distribute these, Alberto.”

Alberto gave an envelope each to Ginni and the boys.

“You needn’t open them now,” Romano said. “There is enough money in each to cover your expenses for the duration of your stay in America and your plane reservations for ten-forty-five tomorrow morning.” He repeated what he had just said in what sounded to Julie like beautiful Italian. He took a folded sheet of paper from his other pocket and gave it to Alberto to pass on. “I would ask that you sign this, Miss Julie. It is a bill of sale made out to Miss Bordonelli for a painting called
Scarlet Night.
A modest sum, one hundred dollars.

“You will take the painting back to Italy with you, Miss Bordonelli. I don’t think Customs in either country will trouble you, the daughter of Count Bordonelli. But it is a chance you must take.

“I expect to hear in not later than forty-eight hours that a work of art stolen from the Italian people in Venice last March has been safely recovered. Otherwise…Ah, but there won’t be any otherwise.”

Julie signed the prepared document. Her hand wasn’t very steady, but neither was Ginni’s when she accepted it from Alberto.

“There is one last bit of business and then we can adjourn, some of us to meet another day. Please follow.”

Romano moved lightly ahead into the studio which was ablaze with lights.
Scarlet Night
was on the easel, where Romano had put it when Alberto and Julie arrived a scant few minutes before Ginni and the others.

“Alberto, please remove the frame, gently, gently.”

Everyone watched in silence.

The frame removed, Romano turned the canvas around himself, took a palette knife and removed the drawing. He offered it to Rubinoff. “Perhaps you, sir, would like to have this as a souvenir?”

Rubinoff backed away as though this were the greatest horror of his day.

“Come now. Didn’t you notice? Perhaps not with such other weighty matters on your mind. And of course your client wouldn’t, his excess of trust surpassed only by his ignorance…And it is a very good reproduction—of a Michelangelo. It may be that Leonardo himself copied it, but alas, Alberto and I could find no reproduction of the Leonardo. You will understand now, Miss Julie, why we could not risk your going that day to the F.B.I.” He tossed the reproduction into a bin. “Now, Alberto, dear boy, shall we put our unworthy hands to the real thing?”

Alberto went to the case where the Leonardo had been placed on the day Romano revealed its presence to Julie. It had been there ever since.

Romano said, “Miss Bordonelli, you did it once so expertly. Perhaps you will assist again in the preparation of our treasure for international travel?”

“I can’t do it,” Ginni said, probably for the first time in her life.

“Then we must manage, Alberto…Miss Julie.”

O
NE LONG RING AND
two short. Julie waited in the vestibule, her legs still shaky. She did not want to scrabble for the keys in her purse if she didn’t have to.

The buzzer sounded, releasing the lock, a mocking answerback—one long buzz and two short. Two fairly drunken men were waiting for her when she got upstairs. Not sloppy drunk, not Jeff ever. Hilariously drunk.

“Is there a book in it?” Tony wanted to know the minute she came in. And to Jeff: “Listen to me, friend. Your wife is a book writer. That’s the whole problem. She needs space—not a goddamned pica-measured newspaper column. There’s a book in it. Right, Julie?”

She nodded and kissed the top of Jeff’s head. If she’d bent any lower she would have collapsed.

“What do you think would be an appropriate advance?”

Julie counted on her fingers: Romano, Alberto, Michael, O’Grady, and…Julie. Five. “About a hundred and twenty thousand dollars,” she said.

Special to the New York Times

R
OME, JULY 29 — ACTING
on an anonymous telephone call, the Rome police today recovered a priceless drawing by Leonardo da Vinci from a storage locker at the Rome airport. The drawing had been stolen from the Venice Institute of Art last March. It was unharmed except for a slight discoloration on the back where a small amount of adhesive had been applied. The police speculate the thieves had intended to smuggle the drawing out of Italy but abandoned the scheme in view of recent security improvements.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Julie Hayes Mysteries

J
EFF SAMPLED HIS MARTINI
—straight up, no rocks—and approved, which seemed to surprise him. He was even more meticulous about martinis than about most things. Outside the states he travelled with a little vial of vermouth in his inside pocket and always ordered straight gin. The drink judged worthy of the toast, he met Julie’s eyes and proposed: “To your own by-line by this time next year.”

Julie wrinkled her nose and murmured thanks. She turned her glass round and round, an orange blossom that, sooner or later, she would be expected to drink. Finally she lifted it: “To Paris and to you.”

“In that order?”

She grinned. “I’m very fond of both of you.”

The restaurant noises picked up as a party shuffled its seating arrangement. Someone was explaining that the guest of honor must face the door through which, at Sardi’s, the rich and famous were presumably in constant transit.

Jeff scowled and sipped his drink. Sardi’s was not his favorite restaurant, but it was Julie’s the last time he’d asked and he insisted on it. The occasion was more noteworthy for her solid year of employment on the gossip column,
Tony Alexander Says
…, than for Jeff’s departure later that night for Paris. Geoffrey Hayes’
Times
assignments took him to distant and troubled places, Julie’s to where her legs could carry her, so to speak. She suspected he was already half way to Paris and envied him the depth of his work, its significance. “Where do you start when you get there?” she asked.

“I’ll skirmish around a bit and try to improve my contacts. France is a conspirators’ marketplace. I’ll be shopping for discarded loyalties. How’s that?”

“Very fancy,” Julie said.

Jeff laughed aloud.

She conjured a picture of him sitting in a smoky bistro, drinking beer and waiting for someone who would walk past the place twice to get a look at him before going in. She had not questioned whether he would be in danger. Risk was to be taken for granted. So was caution. He was going to do a series on the neo-Fascist movement. “I’d like to be going with you,” she said. “I’d like to work on something that important.”

Jeff made a sound in his throat that suggested satisfaction with things as they were. He neither under- nor over-valued the job of legman for Tony Alexander. It was where he too had started his newspaper career.

She laid her hand on his across the table. The grey in his hair was becoming dominant and made him even more distinguished-looking. The probing dark eyes suggested a worldly wisdom, the firm mouth, self-assurance almost to a degree of self-satisfaction.

“You should work on your French,” Jeff said. “We could speak it at home, couldn’t we? Good for both of us.”

She felt slightly irritated, no doubt because she was self-conscious about her French. His was always going to be so much better. She was on the point of suggesting that it might improve their communication and then held back. They did not communicate well when they were together too much. Their marriage thrived on honeymoons and separations.

He squeezed her hand and released it. “Why do you always look your most enchanting when I’m on my way to the airport?”

She bit back the answer to that one too. “Rhetorical question, right?” But she knew that she took more patience with her makeup and dressed better when he was home. With the job she would keep it up to some extent, but part of her longed to revert to jeans and sneakers and something with pockets. Then almost at once she preferred her present chicness. Maybe the gamin in her was forever banished, and no one would miss it more than Jeff…his little girl, his elf. Let her go. God bless her, but let her go.

“I’m not your only admirer,” Jeff added. “There’s an old boy at a wall table who can’t take his eyes off you.”

“Always the old boys,” Julie said and shifted her position so that she could discreetly glance in the direction Jeff had indicated. “That’s Jay Phillips, the press agent. He was one of the first people Tony sent me to and he’s been great to me ever since.”

“In my day we steered clear of publicity handouts,” Jeff said and took up the wine list. “Tonight you’ll have wine.” He always said it and she always did have wine nowadays. She even enjoyed it, but Jeff had missed the transition. “A roughish Burgundy,” he mumbled to himself. He settled for a Pommard, trusting the importer, a name he knew better than he knew the cellar of Sardi’s. “Pommard is a chancy wine, but very good with duck if you get the right one.”

“And the right duck,” Julie said.

Jeff’s second martini came with their shrimp. He looked at his watch: he was not in that much of a hurry.

“Eight o’clock curtain,” Julie said in defense of the express service.

He ignored the shrimp for the time being and sipped his drink. “Do you like working for Tony, or are you proving something?”

“Both. I’m hanging in there and I like that. And I do like the job and I don’t settle for handouts.”

“Of course you don’t,” he soothed. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m very proud of you.”

“Thank you,” she said, bristling underneath at the fatherliness. There were times she resented Tony for the same reason. The person whose parent-like advice she accepted was Fran, Tony’s wife, who was about Jeff’s age and a lot younger than Tony. She had not seen her for months. “Jeff, why don’t we see the Alexanders socially anymore? Is it because I work for Tony?” She knew Jeff and Tony often met at the Press Club.

“Julie, it’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t say it was.” But she had a habit of taking blame whenever it was available. “I miss Fran. That’s all.”

“Then why don’t you stop at the shop and see her?” Fran owned a flower shop on Lexington Avenue. “Or call her up and take her to lunch. She’d like that. She’s always been very fond of you.”

“Jeff, you’re being—I don’t know what exactly…”

“Pompous?”

“Patronizing.”

“Am I?” he said distantly and pulled the shrimp to where he could spear one of them. “Your friend the press agent is headed this way. He’s sloshed if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re not,” Julie said, not having to look and not unhappy at the diversion. She wondered if what she and Jeff were doing was not a kind of ritual that prepared them for separation. She’d been through it before:
distancing
was the word that came to mind.

Phillips came up to the table, a big man, his face chunky and flushed. He was well known as a Broadway publicist and as a heavy drinker. He stood a moment, almost steady, and finally arrived at what he wanted to say. “I just wanted to tell you, Mr. Hayes, how much I admire your wife.” He enunciated each word carefully. “Can’t read you, I admit, but I do admire your wife.”

“That’s good enough,” Jeff said gallantly.