Before showering, and while Alan made the call to Hiram’s apartment three floors below, Gerry went back to the living room simply to drink in the atmosphere for a moment; the reassurance of one’s own nest. Coming in from Kennedy in the cab through the evening rush, smears of wet dirty snow beside the roadway, Gerry had yearned to be home, and now at last here he was, in his own living room.
On a basic motif of French Empire gilded furniture, Gerry and Alan had overlaid an eclectic mix of other items, all a little outrageous, and yet all coming wonderfully together, like a perfect little ragout. The nineteenth century English rhinoceros horn chair, for instance, made a blunt masculine statement that eased somewhat the overly pompous and delicate Napoleonic pieces, while the heavy window treatments of fringed green velvet against the slightly darker green of the lacquered walls created an inferiority, a hereness saved from claustrophobia by the leopard skin casually thrown on the Aubusson rug. The dark Coromandel screen in the corner served as a focus for the room’s objets; teakwood Balinese demons grinning at brass many-armed Indian goddesses under the baleful gaze of English cathedral stone gargoyles and medieval icons, lit by Tiffany lamps.
Home!
Actually smiling, for the first time in who knows how long, Gerry went on through to the bedroom, hearing the murmur of Alan on the phone in the office, and if the eclectic living room had soothed him the bedroom, designed for comfort and solace, made him almost weep with pleasure. The pattern here was English pastel flowered chintzes, basically in soft pinks and blues on a setting of cream. The king-size bed stated the motif, with a chintz spread tossed with lacy pillows, each in its own patterned cover reflected elsewhere in the room. The walls were sheathed in the softest and most delicate of cloth, with a slightly stronger statement made by the thick chintz window draperies sweeping the floor, backed by lacy sheers. The only strong note in the ensemble was a brass-legged glass table, flanked by low broad armchairs, very overstuffed beneath their chintz covers, soft and squishy and wonderfully comforting to sit on.
Gerry and Alan hadn’t gotten around to doing the bathroom yet, unfortunately — they wanted to get it exactly right before calling in the workmen — so it still reflected the taste (for lack of a better word) of the landlord. Still, the shower was as wonderful and restorative as anticipated.
Thirty minutes later, wearing a black muumuu decorated with dragons, and carrying a fresh Scotch and water in a wide, heavy-based glass, Gerry answered the doorbell to let in Hiram Farley, a tall barrel-chested balding happy man, an important local magazine editor, which means a man who found it impossible to take life seriously. “Gerry, my darling, you’re tanned!” Hiram said, grabbing Gerry by both cheeks and tilting his face down so he could be kissed on his tanned brow. “How beautiful you are,” Hiram said, “and how beautiful that drink looks.”
“No soda, I’m afraid. Plain water all right?”
“Fish fuck in it,” Hiram said, “but on the other hand birds fuck in midair.”
“Hiram,” Gerry said, “was that a yes?”
“The day I say no to a drink,” Hiram said, “any drink, that’s the day for you to arrange for the six black horses, and the six good men well- hung and true.”
Hiram’s words generally went by Gerry like traffic; in the pauses, he crossed the conversational street: “I’ll make your drink.”
“Thank you, sweetness.”
They bifurcated, Gerry moving kitchenward, Hiram toward the living room, Gerry saying, “Alan will be right in, he’s just finished his shower.”
When Gerry returned to the living room, in fact, carrying Hiram’s drink as well as his own, Alan was already there, dressed in his black- sashed white kimono and seated crosslegged on a white-and-gold chair. Hiram had, as usual, settled his bulk onto the chair framed in rhinoceros horn, which made him look like the white villain in a Tarzan movie. Gerry’s spot was the Madame Recamier.
“To your happy return,” Hiram said, raising the glass Gerry had handed him.
“Here, here,” said Alan, and everybody took a ritual sip.
Hiram smiled hopefully at his hosts. “And to a successful trip?”
“Not entirely,” Alan said.
“Not at all,” Gerry said. “In fact, a disaster.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Alan said. “We know a lot more about how it’s done. You’re too pessimistic, Gerry.”
“The tapes are gone!”
“Hold on,” Hiram said. “Do what the King of Hearts told Alice to do, and what I tell writers every blessed day, ink-stained wretches, prose from amateurs, talentless bastards.”
Gerry blinked. “Pros from amateurs?”
Hiram leaned forward, assuming a pedantic yet royal posture. “‘Begin at the beginning,”’ he quoted, gravely, “‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”
Alan said, “Everything seemed fine until the very end.”
“And then it wasn’t,” Gerry said.
“No, no,” Hiram said. “Listen more carefully this time. ‘Begin at the beginning—’”
“Oh, Hiram!” Gerry said, at wit’s end. “The tapes are gone, okay?”
Alan said, “Wait a minute, Gerry. Hiram’s right.” Turning to Hiram he said, “From the beginning, then,” and went on to give a mostly coherent account of their time in Belize, fictionalizing only their reaction to the presence of the mobster at their hotel, and finishing, “Now, obviously somebody knew we’d made those tapes, and guessed we’d try to sneak them out in our Walkmans.”
Hiram nodded, thinking about it. “Galway, do you think?”
“I just don’t know,” Alan said. “There wasn’t the slightest hint of such a thing, he doesn’t seem the type to be able to dissemble that well, and yet, who knows, really?”
“Oh, it was Galway, all right,” Gerry said. “He’s very devious, that one.”
“Well,” Hiram said, “if Galway has those tapes, that’s that.”
Alan said, “Must it be? We remember exactly what he told us, the whole method to smuggle everything out and all that, what he’s going to do to that poor temple—”
Gerry said, “I was a bit tempted, I must say. Just go ahead and do it; we could make a lot of money.”
Alan gave him an arch look. “Yes, I could tell what you were thinking.”
“Well,” Gerry said, “after all, we could, couldn’t we? I mean, we’re not police, are we?”
“You’re good citizens,” Hiram told him. “Remember how sickened you were when I showed you those pictures of the looted graves?”
Gerry laughed, with a negative hand-wave. “Oh, I don’t mean I was seriously tempted,” he said. “Just a little bit.”
“Anyway,” Alan said, “we still have the facts, even if we don’t have the tapes. Wouldn’t that be enough?”
Hiram shook his head. “Your unsupported word,” he said. “Even if the lawyers would let us publish, I wouldn’t. It’s just hearsay, puffed up. If we don’t nail a villain, we don’t have a story.”
“It’s too bad, really,” Alan said. “I was rather enjoying being a spy.”
Hiram looked as wistful as a large heavyset bald man can: “An exposé of illegal art smuggling, leading right here to New York. What a nice change of pace that would have been. I can’t tell you guys how tired of it all I get. The fifty-seven best pizza parlors in the Hamptons; your guide to a chiropractor on the West Side; questions raised about real estate developers. And here we had something real for once: antiquities, villains, airplanes, clandestine meetings in cornfields—”