Long Gone

“Yet another piece of Schuler’s gimmick. Every buyer gets one of these stupid thumb drives. Everything you could possibly want to know about Schuler is then uploaded to the buyer’s computer.”

She unplugged the gallery’s own computer, a slim Mac laptop, and resumed her seat next to Jeff. “I guess if customers want to know more about him, I’ll just refer them to the thumb drive and his Web site.” She pulled up a familiar bookmark.

Jeff moved closer to get a look. They’d known each other so long that his knee against hers, his arm around her shoulder—they weren’t signs of passion or romance, but a level of familiarity and physical intimacy that remained between them regardless of where they were in their on-and-off experimentations with coupledom. “Not much of a site if that’s going to be his only venue.”

The home page was a stark black screen with Schuler’s name in white block letters, along with three links: New Work, Galleries, and Bio. She clicked on each link so Jeff could get the idea. The New Work page featured thumbnails of the photographs now surrounding them in larger proportions. The Galleries page referred to the Highline Gallery, with a promise of “additional venues to be announced.” The bio, supposedly a short version, listed training at an art school in Germany, some group exhibitions around Europe, and even a few grants.

“Someone gave him money to support this garbage?”

Maybe Jeff did have some skeptical bones in his body.

“Oh, who knows? Those grants could all be coming from our mutual benefactor, for all I care.” She gently clicked the laptop shut.

There was a moment when neither of them filled the silence of the empty space. When his knee was still against hers. The arm still around the shoulder. Eye contact.

“Look, I know you’ll be fine, but just be careful not to make any affirmative representations to your customers about his background. Limit your talk to his work. If anyone wants to know his credentials, steer them back to the art itself.”

“Well, for a seven-hundred-dollar photograph, I doubt I’ll be getting the third degree about his bona fides.”

“I just don’t want to see you get sued for fraud.”

“Got it, counselor.”

The moment between them had passed. She slipped the thumb drive into her jeans pocket. Retrieved their coats from the back-room. Tucked the tiny laptop into her gigantic purse. Took in the majesty of this space—her space, sort of—one last time before flicking each of a long row of light switches like dominoes, rendering the cavernous room dark but for the hints of street light fading through the front glass.

Jeff held the door open for her. “You’re lugging that laptop around with you?”

“It’s a hundred times faster than my dinosaur. A perk of the job.”

“You’re excited, aren’t you?”

“Of course.” She managed her tone of voice as if the gallery opening were no big deal, but inside she felt the same way she had as a child, clicking her knees together in the dressing room as her mother instructed her to sit still for the nice makeup lady. Something big was about to happen. And she’d be at the center of it.

CHAPTER NINE

Thanks to the radio station’s Two-for-Tuesday playlist, Hank lost track of time tapping on the steering wheel to the beat of “Satisfaction,” followed by “Shattered.” Sha-doo-be. Shattered, shattered.

He was pulled back into reality as the DJ with the corny voice introduced a block of Steve Miller Band. All he needed was to have “Abracadabra”—the worst song in history, by his ear—stuck in his head for the rest of the day. He switched off the radio, looking up for a double take at the redhead cruising up the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. She wore those oversize Jackie O shades women went for these days, the heavy collar on a peacock blue coat flipped up around her face. Sky-high black stiletto pumps, the kind that look French and expensive. She might be a real bow-wow beneath it all, but she was rocking a look all right. Classy but with a little edge.

He looked at his watch. Crap. He’d been parked here for over twenty minutes, waiting with his camera for something worth photographing. Stupid. He could be spotted. Or someone downtown might wonder why he had so much solo fieldwork this week. Or, thanks to his little gas stops, Tommy in the garage might eventually notice that Hank was getting some damn good mileage out of the Crown Vics.

Hank had told himself four days earlier that the afternoon drive to Newark was a onetime deal, a harmless peek to make sure he could find the man if necessary, just in case. But this was his fourth detour in as many days. During yesterday morning’s drive, he’d sworn it would be the final drop-in. And Hank really believed he had meant it. But then he saw the car. A BMW. As in Big Money Wagon. Granted, it was a 3-series, not one of the super-high-end ones. Still, it was a better ride than this scumbag should be sporting.

He’d seen the guy—he didn’t like to use his name, not even mentally—walk from his crappy building to the apartment complex parking lot. But then instead of the man’s familiar blue Honda, he’d headed for the gray BMW. Hank had hoped to follow him. He’d even been willing to miss an eleven o’clock debriefing if necessary. But the guy had simply opened the driver’s side door and then closed it again, forgotten iPod in hand.

When Hank got the skinny on the plates, he’d felt a familiar rush of adrenaline—that feeling he experienced whenever he was in the hunt. The BMW’s registration came back to Margaret Till of Clifton, New Jersey. Maybe the guy’s new mark. Maybe Hank could warn her before she fell too deep.

When he finally gave up on the apartment yesterday, he’d buzzed by the woman’s address in Clifton instead, eager to learn Margaret Till’s connection to the man in Newark. He’d spotted her in the front yard, tending to begonias off the brick walkway with a tiny shovel and lime green canvas gloves, accepting a peck on the top of her head from the man of the house, still pulling on his suit jacket, late for work. A freckled girl with two missing teeth played jacks on the sidewalk. And beyond the girl was a gray BMW sedan, parked in the driveway next to the Lexus coupe that the happy husband was crawling into.

With one look at the car, Hank knew Margaret Till was not the man’s latest mark. It wouldn’t have been the first time a Mrs. Wholesome June Cleaver type stepped out on her family, but the problem was the BMW’s license plate: he recognized it, but it wasn’t the one that belonged on Margaret Till’s BMW. Last time he’d seen that combination of numbers and letters was two months ago, on the bumper of that scumbag’s blue Honda.

When Hank returned to the man’s apartment complex today, his BMW was still parked in the lot, adorned with Till’s stolen license plates. The switched plates probably meant the car was hot. Hank was tempted to drop the dime on the guy with an anonymous call to the locals, but car theft was chump change. Hank wasn’t about to risk exposure of his unauthorized stakeout missions for some chippy Class C felony that would get bumped down to probation on the county criminal docket.

Now he’d wasted twenty minutes parked on the street in a white Crown Vic in full view. This wasn’t exactly the hood, but someone might still make a federal agent on the lookout. He was about to call it a day, maybe even for good this time, when he noticed the redhead again. Big shades. Blue coat. Looking great. Making her way up the steps with that same confident stroll she’d owned on the sidewalk. Right to his guy’s apartment door.

He ducked even lower in his seat.

Knock, knock, knock. The door opened. A quick kiss on the lips, and then the redhead walked inside.

Figuring a woman like that would hold a man’s attention for the near future, he stepped from his car, walked through the apartment complex parking lot to the BMW, and searched for the vehicle identification number through the front window. A folded copy of New York magazine blocked his view of the dash.

He thought about trying the door, but knew in his gut it would be locked. It was all about the risk-reward ratio. Low odds of reward. Medium to high risk of setting off a car alarm. Basic math told him to let it go for now.

He made his way back to the Crown Vic. Felt his pulse beat quicker than expected as he imagined a nosy neighbor calling 911 about the stranger near the BMW. Kept the key in the ignition just in case he needed to roll.

Nothing happened for the next forty minutes.

Nice car. Pretty girl. He’d spent so much time thinking about this man over the last seven months that he fancied himself something of an expert about his fundamental nature. And his expertise was telling him that his time watching Travis Larson had not been wasted. There was something here after all.

CHAPTER TEN

Alice remembered a time when the sultry baritone of her mother’s determined voice could cut through a crowded room like a diamond through glass. She didn’t know whether a woman’s voice simply faded with age, or if changes in a woman’s life somehow worked their way into vocal cords, but now she found herself leaning in to hear her mom over the din of the busy restaurant.

“You should have seen our girl, Frank. She was just wonderful. The way she talked about the artwork, she had those people in the palm of her hand.”

Alice had no problem making out her father’s booming words from across the table. “Alice has always been good at anything she tries her hand at. I’ve told her that from the time she was born.”

“Still, you should have been there to see it firsthand.”

Alice caught her mother’s eye and gave her a quick shake of the head, but it was too late.

“Obviously I would have liked to have been there, Rose, but our baby girl’s all grown up. She doesn’t need her father looking over her shoulder all the time. Wouldn’t want to make it all about the old man now, would we?”

Tonight had been the official opening of the new Highline Gallery, and Alice was celebrating at Gramercy Tavern with Jeff and her parents. To anyone overhearing the conversation at their table, they would have sounded like any normal family, two proud parents fawning over their daughter, the mother taking a shot at the father’s absence from the main event.

“Of course you could have gone, Papa.”

Frank Humphrey had never wanted to be called Daddy or Dad. In fact, Alice suspected he had never even wanted children or a marriage. His habit of casting, and then bedding, his leading ladies probably could have kept him content for life. But he’d managed to knock up the acclaimed up-and-comer Rose Sampson during the production of their second film together, In the Heavens.

These days, unwed pregnancies were a Hollywood norm, but in 1969, even the film crowd still followed the traditions of the old nursery rhyme—maybe not about first-comes-love necessarily, but certainly about marriage coming before the baby carriage. When Frank Humphrey and Rose Sampson wed, Life magazine pronounced America’s most sought-after young director and the actress he’d twice directed to best actress nominations “The King and Queen of New Hollywood.” Five and a half months later, Alice’s older brother, Ben, was born.

Where was Ben? Alice now wondered. He’d been a no-show at the gallery, texting her that he’d meet them at the restaurant. Fifteen minutes into cocktails, his seat at the table remained empty. She tried to write off the pit in her stomach as a byproduct of his past.

“We’re so proud of you, dear.” Her mother patted her gently on the shoulder as she spoke, but with her gaze still directed at her husband. The silence that followed was awkward.

Luckily, Jeff was there to fill it.

“Great turnout tonight. Did you sell much?”