Johanna swallowed as slowly as she could so that it would not be visible, realizing too late that this probably exaggerated the motion by giving him time to register it.
He went on, “But you’re right. I don’t think you bashed that goddamn rodent’s head in. You’re tall, that’s for sure, but you don’t look that strong.”
“Maybe I would surprise you.”
“Not your style, anyway. You’d be all about premeditation. You would have poisoned him or at least brought a knife. More than likely you would have covered your tracks much better. The police wouldn’t even know it was a murder. Anyway, I bet you evacuated before the storm. I’d guess you’d be more than willing to take your chances against the wind and water, but you’d be afraid of the men who stayed behind.”
Now his words froze her, and she could not even swallow.
“I hit on it, didn’t I? You weren’t even in town when our Czech friend hit his final wall, and yet you’d let me think you were a murderer. So now I ask myself why. At any rate, I’ve assumed for some while now that it was Clayton who lost his cool. No doubt in my mind that you were the reason for it. Probably thought he was protecting you. Maybe you can return the favor and see that that painting lands in my hands so that I can get it where it needs to go and he can keep leading his sordid little life. Truth is, I’m quite curious to have a look at that particular piece of artwork before I do. Anything that generates so much interest has to be worth a gander.”
She considered avenues of protest and knew it was too late to take any of them. “As I implied, I will see that the painting gets to you if you will give me the name of the man you plan to return it to.”
He winked at her — a clear act of aggression. “Let’s play it this way instead: You get me that painting, and I won’t tell him your name.”
Marion
The vinyl felt cold through the thin smock, but otherwise she was comfortable, finding the pain more fascinating than unpleasant this time — not erotic like the pain Clay delivered yet revelatory in its own way, each tiny bite into her skin a clue to who she was.
This time, too, she had a mental image of the result, could feel her wings or fins or wing-fins spreading across her back. She relaxed and listened to the loud Mozart string quartet, the satisfying hum of Eddie’s gun, the low beads of his voice when he talked, which wasn’t often or for long.
How strange it must be to work on skin rather than canvas, to make art on an object that moved. The canvas just sat there, stony in its silence, never talking back, never resisting but never cooperating, either — its own form of resistance, really, in its refusal to participate.
“Did you hear about those kids in the warehouse?” Eddie asked after a while. “I’ve been worrying it was that couple with all those dogs that are always parking themselves outside. I feel bad because I wished they’d go away, but that’s not how I meant it. Six people died, and four dogs. They were just trying to stay warm.”
Marion’s shoulder blade tensed under Eddie’s hand, and he asked her what was wrong, his voice gentle. “My brother,” she whispered under the music and the noise, and he stopped, laying a cool hand flat on her back.
Dressed, shirt covering her now-itching back, Eddie told her what he’d heard and she told him about her brother’s return, their last conversation.
“Don’t worry until you know,” Eddie told her. “The odds are against him being there.”
Perhaps Henry had been right about family connection because the possibility that he was dead sat metallic in her stomach. She’d always assumed they could repair their relationship later, much later. Her vision of it was vague, and in it their hair was gray, their faces fallen or pinched, but still it was something she held in her mind as a piece of her future.
Eddie reiterated, “The odds are against it, and even if he was there, some who were made it out.”
Marion nodded, but her throat constricted with her effort not to cry.
“You got to work later, right?”
Marion nodded.
“Let’s walk you down there and get you a drink. Maybe folks will be there who know something.”
Marion nodded again and let him lead her down Decatur toward Molly’s, grateful to be told what to do.
The dark-haired bartender from the lounge across the street was peering into Johanna’s workshop’s windows, white towel hanging out of the back pocket of his jeans. He turned to them as they approached. “I saw some guy come out of here earlier — just didn’t look right. Johanna didn’t come across for lunch today, either.”
“Maybe she just had a visitor, you know,” Eddie said.
“Something about the guy didn’t look right, the way he looked around when he left. And who comes down here in a suit anymore? Anyway, I knocked hard and I rang the bell and she didn’t answer. Place is locked up and looks okay, so I guess all is fine. Kind of saw it out of the corner of my eye, anyway, while I was serving a table.”
“You hear about the warehouse fire?” Eddie asked him.
“Yeah, bad thing, really bad thing.” But, no, he hadn’t heard anything about the identity of the kids involved other than that they were homeless, or something similar, who’d come to New Orleans, and that they’d had dogs with them. “Some people got out,” he said. “If any good can come out of such a bad thing, maybe it’ll inspire some of these kids to go home and make peace. Or at least do something if they’re going to stay here, you know?”
Marion tried to remember the faces of the couple often squatting on Decatur but couldn’t. The girl had blond dreadlocks and was pretty filthy-looking, but Marion’s memory would fill in no more detail. A couple of the dogs she remembered, though: a black-and-white border collie mix and a tan terrier-type dog with wiry fur.
“You didn’t do any work on them, did you?” she asked Eddie.
He shook his head. “Nah. That couple with the dogs came in once and asked about prices, but they never came back. She had some nice ink on her already. One of them I recognized because no one except this guy in Copenhagen draws like that. Never travels over here, so she went to him. The guy’s tats were pretty run of the mill. You know, you could create a chronology of trends by working up from his ankles or wrists. Tribal first and then all that followed. Tribal, my ass.” Eddie’s laugh was small and disdainful, but the disdain didn’t seem to run deep. “But her — she’d shown some originality. Plus the money to back it up.”
Eddie walked Marion to Molly’s. “I’m going to come back and get you at the end of your shift, okay?” He waited for her to nod. “So you stay here until I get here. And you call me if you hear anything.” He took her phone, flipped it open, and pressed buttons. “I’m 7 on your speed dial, for good luck. You make yourself a drink before you make one for anyone else.”
Inside the girl with pin bangs was working the bar. “We’re both on — finally got enough business. Which half you want?”
Marion shrugged, trying to remember her name. “Hey, Suzette?”
“Yeah?” The girl raised her plucked eyebrows higher.
“You hear anything about that warehouse fire?”
The eyebrows lowered and knitted slightly — an expression of sympathy Marion was unused to. “Sorry, but no.”
The shift wasn’t busy, but it was steady. Marion kept moving, glad to have time passing. Occasionally she and Suzette met in the middle, but mostly Marion worked the back and Suzette the front half of the bar and the window orders. That meant that Suzette had higher turnover, Marion had more locals and heavy drinkers, and they each earned their half of the tip jar.
“It’s nice not to have the whole stretch for a change,” Suzette said while they were splitting the cash. “And you’re good.”