Harmony In Flesh and Black by Nicholas Kilmer Read Free Book Online Page B

of it, but he didn’t offer Clay any since Clay did not approve of stimulants. It was barely nine o’clock.
    Clay tapped his fingers on Fred’s desk, waiting for Fred to rise to the challenge in his questions. “Whatever the trouble that man claims, I must have that letter.”
    Fred did not normally lie to Clay without good reason. But given that there’d been nothing on the radio concerning Turbridge Street, he couldn’t count on Clay to act the part of innocence unless he was kept ignorant.
    â€œForget that either of us has ever heard of Smykal. It’s important, Clay. Smykal did not answer his door,” Fred said. “I sat out front in my car, watching the street for his return. Suspicious activity began around his building, which I thought might generate a crowd and involve me and therefore us and our business. Smykal’s dangerous, and you are going to be hurt if we get caught near him. We must keep a low profile. So I left. The main thing is the Heade. Let’s not compromise that.”
    â€œSpeaking of trouble, I might as well tell you,” Clayton Reed said. “It’s all I can concentrate on in any case. We are in trouble. Serious trouble. We are about to lose the main objective. I cannot think about that horrible man, not now. As far as the Heade is concerned, the sharks are gathering.”
    Fred took a drink of his coffee and waited. Things were going to keep getting worse now, as he had feared.
    â€œAlbert Finn is in town,” Clay said.
    â€œShit,” Fred said. “Sir Albert.”
    Finn’s presence so close to their quarry could represent disaster.
    â€œI ran into him at the Ritz bar after you and I talked by telephone,” Clay said. “I called you from the Ritz, if you remember? I was obliged to drink with the man, at his expense. I am certain Finn is onto something. He wouldn’t come up just for the affair at the Gardner.”
    â€œDid Finn mention the Heade?” Fred asked.
    â€œOf course he didn’t mention the Heade,” Clayton said, exasperated. “Any more than I would signal interest in it myself. Finn says he’s here for the Gardner benefit, to help console them for their carelessness in having all those paintings stolen. You know his cheery laugh.”
    March 18, 1990, had been a black day in Boston’s cultural history, when thieves in uniform, after gaining access to the museum by appealing to the humane sympathies of its guards, had made off with a select group of paintings, including a Manet—the best piece in the collection—two of the three Rembrandts, and Vermeer’s The Concert. There wasn’t a Vermeer left in town now, other than the one Clayton suspected lay waiting for him, asleep in the hay.
    â€œMakes sense that he’d come for the benefit,” Fred said. “He loves an admiring crowd of the unknighted.”
    â€œThen he said that if I was going to the preview at Doolan’s this afternoon, he had nothing important to do, and if I wouldn’t drive on the wrong side of the road, he’d ride with me and keep me company.”
    â€œWhoops,” said Fred.
    â€œI couldn’t say I didn’t care what was at Doolan’s,” Clay said. “That would tip him off. So I must take him with me and trust he’ll get so mired in admirers that I can look surreptitiously at the Heade. I’m not happy about this. I don’t know how one of Finn’s hangers-on could miss the reference you discovered, Fred, in the archives, which any fool could find—that is, I mean to say, the archives’ microfilms exist in duplicate in all the major cities in the country. It’s not as if we have exclusive access.
    â€œThe man’s no scholar. He’s a showman,” Clay continued.
    Whereas Clayton Reed studiously cultivated the art of the low profile, Sir Albert Finn accomplished his ends through a mastery of self-promotion. Clay