Rose Madder Page 10

  Bill Steiner nodded. "You have a point."

  She barely heard them. She was rooting through her purse, hunting for the twist of Kleenex with the ring in it. Finding it took her longer than it needed to, because her eyes kept wandering back to the picture on the counter. Her picture. For the first time she thought of the room she would be going to with real impatience. Her own place, not just one cot among many. Her own place, and her own picture to hang on the wall. It's the first thing I'll do, she thought as her fingers closed over the bundle of tissue. The very first. She unwrapped the ring and held it out to Steiner, but he ignored it for the time being; he was studying the picture.

  "It's an original oil, not a print," he said, "and I don't think it's very good. Probably that's why it's covered with glass--somebody's idea of dolling it up. What's that building at the bottom of the hill supposed to be? A burned-out plantation-house?"

  "I believe it's supposed to be the ruins of a temple," the old guy with the mangy briefcase said quietly. "A Greek temple, perhaps. Although it's difficult to say, isn't it?"

  It was difficult to say, because the building in question was buried almost to the roof in underbrush. Vines were growing up the five columns in front. A sixth lay in segments. Near the fallen pillar was a fallen statue, so overgrown that all that could be glimpsed above the green was a smooth white stone face looking up at the thunderheads with which the painter had enthusiastically filled the sky.

  "Yeah," Steiner said. "Anyway, it looks to me like the building's out of perspective--it's too big where it is."

  The old man nodded. "But it's a necessary cheat. Otherwise nothing would show but the roof. As for the fallen pillar and statue, forget them--they wouldn't be visible at all."

  She didn't care about the background; all of her attention was fixed upon the painting's central figure. At the top of the hill, turned to look down at the ruins of the temple so anyone viewing the picture could only see her back, was a woman. Her hair was blonde, and hung down her back in a plait.

  Around one of her shapely upper arms--the right--was a broad circle of gold. Her left hand was raised, and although you couldn't see for sure, it looked as if she was shading her eyes. It was odd, given the thundery, sunless sky, but that was what she appeared to be doing, just the same. She was wearing a short dress--a toga, Rosie supposed--which left one creamy shoulder bare. The garment's color was a vibrant red-purple. It was impossible to tell what, if anything, she was wearing on her feet; the grass that she was standing in came almost up to her knees, where the toga ended.

  "What do you call it?" Steiner asked. He was speaking to Robbie. "Classical? Neo-classical?"

  "I call it bad art," Robbie said with a grin, "but at the same time I think I understand why this woman wants it. It has an emotional quality to it that's quite striking. The elements may be classical--the sort of thing one might see in old steel engravings--but the feel gothic. And then there's the fact that the principal figure has her back turned. I find that very odd. On the whole ... well, one can't say this young lady has chosen the best picture in the joint, but I'm sure she's chosen the most peculiar one."

  Rosie was still barely hearing them. She kept finding new things in the picture to engage her attention. The dark violet cord around the woman's waist, for instance, which matched her robe's trim, and the barest hint of a left breast, revealed by the raised arm. The two men were only nattering. It was a wonderful picture. She felt she could look at it for hours on end, and when she had her new place, she would probably do just that.

  "No title, no signature," Steiner said. "Unless--"

  He turned the picture around. Printed in soft, slightly blurred charcoal strokes on the paper backing were the words ROSE MADDER.

  "Well," he said doubtfully, "here's the artist's name. I guess. Funny name, though. Maybe it's a pseudonym."

  Robbie shook his head, opened his mouth to speak, then saw that the woman who had chosen the picture also knew better.

  "It's the name of the picture," she said, and then added, for some reason she could never have explained, "Rose is my name."

  Steiner looked at her, completely bewildered.

  "Never mind, that's just a coincidence." But was it? she wondered. Was it really? "Look." She gently turned the picture around again. She tapped the glass over the toga the woman in the foreground was wearing. "That color--that purply-red--is called rose madder."

  "She's right," Robbie said. "Either the artist--or more likely the last person to own the picture, since charcoal rubs away fairly rapidly--has named the painting after the color of the woman's chiton."

  "Please," Rose said to Steiner, "could we do our business? I'm anxious to be on my way. I'm late as it is."

  Steiner started to ask once more if she was sure, but he saw that she was. He saw something else, as well--she had a fine-drawn look about her, one that suggested she'd had a difficult go of it just lately. It was the face of a woman who might regard honest interest and concern as teasing, or possibly as an effort to alter the terms of the deal in his own favor. He simply nodded. "'The ring for the picture, straight trade. And we both go away happy."

  "Yes," Rosie said, and gave him a smile of dazzling brilliance. It was the first real smile she had given anyone in fourteen years, and in the moment of its fullness, his heart opened to her. "And we both go away happy."

  5

  She stood outside for a moment, blinking stupidly at the cars rushing past, feeling the way she had as a small child after leaving the movies with her father--dazed, caught with half of her brain in the world of real things and half of it still in the world of make-believe. But the picture was real enough; she only had to look down at the parcel she held under her left arm if she doubted that.

  The door opened behind her, and the elderly man came out. Now she even felt good about him, and she gave him the sort of smile people reserve for those with whom they have shared strange or marvellous experiences.

  "Madam," he said, "would you consider doing me a small favor?"

  Her smile was replaced with a look of caution. "It depends on what it is, but I'm not in the habit of doing favors for strangers." That, of course, was an understatement. She wasn't even used to talking to strangers.

  He looked almost embarrassed, and this had a reassuring effect on her. "Yes, well, I suppose it'll sound odd, but it might benefit both of us. My name is Lefferts, by the way. Rob Lefferts."

  "Rosie McClendon," she said. She thought about holding out her hand and rejected the idea. Probably she shouldn't even have given him her name. "I really don't think I have time to do any favors, Mr. Lefferts--I'm running a little late, and--"

  "Please." He put down his weary briefcase, reached into the small brown bag he was holding in his other hand, and brought out one of the old paperbacks he'd found inside the pawnshop. On the cover was a stylized picture of a man in a black-and-white-striped prison outfit stepping into what might have been a cave or the mouth of a tunnel. "All I want is for you to read the first paragraph of this book. Out loud."

  "Here?" She looked around. "Right here on the street? In heaven's name, why?"

  He only repeated "Please," and she took the book, thinking that if she did as he asked, she might be able to get away from him without any further foolishness. That would be fine, because she was starting to think he was a little nuts. Maybe not dangerous, but nuts, all the same. And if he did turn out to be dangerous, she wanted to find out while the Liberty City Loan & Pawn--and Bill Steiner--was still within dashing distance.

  The name of the book was Dark Passage, the author David Goodis. As she paged past the copyright notice, Rosie decided it wasn't surprising she'd never heard of him (although the title of the novel rang a faint bell); Dark Passage had been published in 1946, sixteen years before she was born.

  She looked up at Rob Lefferts. He nodded eagerly at her, almost vibrating with anticipation ... and hope? How could that be? But it certainly looked like hope.

  Feeling a little excited
herself now (like calls to like, her mother had often said), Rosie began to read. The first paragraph was short, at least.

  "It was a tough break. Parry was innocent. On top of that he was a decent sort of guy who never bothered people and wanted to lead a quiet life. But there was too much on the other side and on his side of it there was practically nothing. The jury decided he was guilty. The judge handed him a life sentence and he was taken to San Quentin. "

  She looked up, closed the book, held it out to him.

  "Okay?"

  He was smiling, clearly delighted. "Very much okay, Ms. McClendon. Now wait ... just one more ... humor me ..." He went paging rapidly through the book, then handed it back to her. "Just the dialogue, please. The scene is between Parry and a cab-driver. From 'Well, it's funny.' Do you see it?"

  She saw, and this time she didn't demur. She had decided Lefferts wasn't dangerous, and that maybe he wasn't crazy, either. Also, she still felt that queer sense of excitement, as if something really interesting was going to happen ... or was happening already.

  Yes, sure, you bet, the voice inside told her happily. The picture, Rosie--remember?

  Sure, of course. The picture. Just thinking of it lifted her heart and made her feel lucky.

  "This is very peculiar," she said, but she was smiling. She couldn't help herself.

  He nodded, and she had an idea that he would have nodded in exactly the same way if she'd told him her name was Madame Bovary. "Yes, yes, I'm sure it seems that way, but ... do you see where I want you to start?"

  "Uh-huh."

  She scanned the dialogue quickly, trying to get a sense of who these people were from what they were saying. The cab-driver was easy; she quickly formed a mental picture of Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden in the Honeymooners reruns they showed on Channel 18 in the afternoons. Parry was a little harder--generic hero, she supposed, comes in a white can. Oh, well; it was no big deal either way. She cleared her throat and began, quickly forgetting that she was standing on a busy streetcorner with a wrapped painting under her arm, unaware of the curious glances she and Lefferts were drawing.

  " 'Well, it's funny,' the driver said. 'From faces I can tell what people think. I can tell what they do. Sometimes I can even tell who they are ... you, for instance.'

  " 'All right, me. What about me?'

  " 'You're a guy with troubles.'

  " 'I don't have a trouble in the world,' Parry said.

  " 'Don't tell me, brother,' the driver said. 'I know. I know people. I'll tell you something else. Your trouble is women.'

  " 'Strike one. I'm happily married.'

  Suddenly, just like that, she had a voice for Parry: he was James Woods, nervous and high-strung, but with a brittle sense of humor. This delighted her and she went on, warming to the story now, seeing a scene from a movie that had never been made inside her head--Jackie Gleason and James Woods sparring in a cab that was racing through the streets of some anonymous city after dark.

  " 'Call it a two-base hit. You're not married. But you used to be, and it wasn't happy.'

  " 'Oh, I get it. You were there. You were hiding in the closet all the time.'

  "The driver said, 'I'll tell you about her. She wasn't easy to get along with. She wanted things. The more she got, the more she wanted. And she always got what she wanted. That's the picture.' "

  Rosie had reached the bottom of the page. Feeling a strange chill up her back, she silently handed the book back to Lefferts, who now looked happy enough to hug himself.

  "Your voice is absolutely wonderful!" he told her. "Low but not drony, melodious and very clear, with no definable accent--I knew all that at once, but voice alone means very little. You can read, though! You can actually read!"

  "Of course I can read," Rosie said. She didn't know whether to be amused or exasperated. "Do I look like I was raised by wolves?"

  "No, of course not, but often even very good readers aren't able to read aloud--even if they don't actually stumble over the words, they have very little in the way of expression. And dialogue is much tougher than narration ... the acid test, one might say. But I heard two different people. I actually heard them!"

  "Yes, so did I. Mr. Lefferts, I really have to go now. I--"

  He reached out and touched her lightly on the shoulder as she started to turn away. A woman with a bit more experience of the world would have known an audition, even one on a streetcorner, for what it was and consequently would not have been entirely surprised by what Lefferts said next. Rosie, however, was stunned to temporary silence when he cleared his throat and offered her a job.

  6

  At the moment Rob Lefferts was listening to his fugitive wife read on a streetcorner, Norman Daniels was sitting in his small office cubicle on the fourth floor of police headquarters with his feet up on his desk and his hands laced behind his head. It was the first time in years that it had been possible for him to put his feet up; under ordinary circumstances, his desk was heaped high with forms, fast-food wrappers, half-written reports, departmental circulars, memos, and other assorted trash. Norman was not the sort of man who picks up after himself without thinking about it (in just five weeks the house which Rosie kept pin-neat across all the years had come to look quite a bit like Miami after Hurricane Andrew), and usually his office reflected this, but now it looked positively austere. He had spent most of the day cleaning it out, taking three large plastic garbage bags full of swill down to the waste-disposal site in the basement, not wanting to leave the job to the nigger women who came in to clean between midnight and six on weekday mornings. What was left to niggers didn't get done--this was a lesson Norman's father had taught him, and it was a true lesson. There was one basic fact which the politicians and the do-gooders either could not or would not understand: niggers didn't understand work. It was their African temperament.

  Norman ran his gaze slowly across the top of his desk, upon which nothing now rested but his feet and his phone, then shifted his eyes to the wall on his right. For years this had been papered with want-sheets, hot-sheets, lab results, and takeout menus--not to mention his calendar with pending court-dates noted in red--but now it was completely bare. He finished his visual tour by noting the stack of cardboard liquor cartons by the door. As he did so, he reflected how unpredictable life was. He had a temper, and he would have been the first to admit it. That his temper had a way of getting him in trouble and keeping him in trouble was also something he would have freely admitted. And if, a year ago, he had been granted a vision of his office as it was today, he would have drawn a simple conclusion from it: his temper had finally gotten him into a jam he couldn't wiggle out of, and he had been canned. Either he had finally piled up enough reprimands in his jacket to warrant dismissal under departmental rules, or he had been caught really hurting someone, as he supposed he had really hurt the little spick, Ramon Sanders. The idea that it mattered if a queerboy like Ramon got hurt a little was ridiculous, of course--Saint Anthony he was not--but you had to abide by the rules of the game ... or at least not be caught breaking them. It was like not saying out loud that niggers didn't understand the concept of work, although everybody (everybody white, at least) knew it.

  But he was not being canned. He was moving, that was all. Moving from this shitty little cubicle which had been home since the first year of the Bush Presidency. Moving into a real office, where the walls went all the way up to the ceiling and came all the way down to the floor. Not canned; promoted. It made him think of a Chuck Berry song, one that went C'est la vie, it goes to show you never can tell.

  The bust had happened, the big one, and things couldn't have gone better for him if he'd written the script himself. An almost unbelievable transmutation had taken place: his ass had turned to gold, at least around here.

  It had been a city-wide crack ring, the sort of combine you never get whole and complete ... except this time he had. Everything had fallen into place; it had been like rolling a dozen straight sevens at a crap-table in Atlantic City and dou
bling your money every time. His team had ended up arresting over twenty people, half a dozen of them really big bugs, and the busts were righteous--not so much as a whiff of entrapment. The D.A. was probably reaching heights of orgasm unmatched since cornholing his cocker spaniel back in junior high school. Norman, who had once believed he might end up being prosecuted by that geeky little fuck if he couldn't manage to put a checkrein on his temper, had become the D.A.'s fair-haired boy. Chuck Berry had been right: you never could tell.

  "The Coolerator was jammed with TV dinners and ginger ale, " Norman sang, and smiled. It was a cheerful smile, one that made most people want to smile back at him, but it would have chilled Rosie's skin and made her frantically wish to be invisible. She thought of it as Norman's biting smile.

  A very good spring on top, a very good spring indeed, but underneath it had been a very bad spring. A totally shitty spring, to be exact, and Rose was the reason why. He had expected to settle her hash long before now, but he hadn't. Somehow Rose was still out there. Still out there somewhere.

  He had gone to Portside on the very same day he had interrogated his good friend Ramon in the park across from the station. He had gone with a picture of Rose, but it hadn't been much help. When he mentioned the sunglasses and the bright red scarf (valuable details he had found in the transcripts of Ramon Sanders' original interrogation), one of Continental's two daytime ticket-sellers had hollered Bingo. The only problem was that the ticket-seller couldn't remember what her destination had been, and there was no way to check the records, because there were no records. She had paid cash for her ticket and checked no baggage.

  Continental's schedule had offered three possibilities, but Norman thought the third--a bus which had departed on the southern route at 1:45 p.m.--was unlikely. She wouldn't have wanted to hang around that long. That left two other choices: a city two hundred and fifty miles away and another, larger city in the heart of the midwest.

  He had then made what he was slowly coming to believe had been a mistake, one which had cost him at least two weeks: he had assumed that she wouldn't want to go too far from home, from the area where she'd grown up--not a scared little mouse like her. But now--