Red Dragon, Page 29

  “Son of a bitch.”

  He made it halfway across the room before the phone stopped ringing. Maybe that was Molly trying to reach him.

  He called her in Oregon.

  Willy’s grandfather answered the telephone with his mouth full. It was suppertime in Oregon.

  “Just ask Molly to call me when she’s finished,” Graham told him.

  He was in the shower with shampoo in his eyes when the telephone rang again. He sluiced his head and went dripping to grab the receiver. “Hello, Hotlips.”

  “You silver-tongued devil, this is Byron Metcalf in Birmingham.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ve got good news and bad news. You were right about Niles Jacobi. He took the stuff out of the house. He’d gotten rid of it, but I squeezed him with some hash that was in his room and he owned up. That’s the bad news—I know you hoped the Tooth Fairy stole it and fenced it.

  “The good news is there’s some film. I don’t have it yet. Niles says there are two reels stuffed under the seat in his car. You still want it, right?”

  “Sure, sure I do.”

  “Well, his intimate friend Randy’s using the car and we haven’t caught up with him yet, but it won’t be long. Want me to put the film on the first plane to Chicago and call you when it’s coming?”

  “Please do. That’s good, Byron, thanks.”

  “Nothing to it.”

  Molly called just as Graham was drifting off to sleep. After they assured each other that they were all right, there didn’t seem to be much to say.

  Willy was having a real good time, Molly said. She let Willy say good night.

  Willy had plenty more to say than just good night—he told Will the exciting news: Grandpa bought him a pony.

  Molly hadn’t mentioned it.

  41

  The Brooklyn Museum is closed to the general public on Tuesdays, but art classes and researchers are admitted.

  The museum is an excellent facility for serious scholarship. The staff members are knowledgeable and accommodating; often they allow researchers to come by appointment on Tuesdays to see items not on public display.

  Francis Dolarhyde came out of the IRT subway station shortly after 2 P.M. on Tuesday carrying his scholarly materials. He had a notebook, a Tate Gallery catalog, and a biography of William Blake under his arm.

  He had a flat 9-mm pistol, a leather sap and his razor-edged filleting knife under his shirt. An elastic bandage held the weapons against his flat belly. His sport coat would button over them. A cloth soaked in chloroform and sealed in a plastic bag was in his coat pocket.

  In his hand he carried a new guitar case.

  Three pay telephones stand near the subway exit in the center of Eastern Parkway. One of the telephones has been ripped out. One of the others works.

  Dolarhyde fed it quarters until Reba said, “Hello.”

  He could hear darkroom noises over her voice.

  “Hello, Reba,” he said.

  “Hey, D. How’re you feeling?”

  Traffic passing on both sides made it hard for him to hear. “Okay.”

  “Sounds like you’re at a pay phone. I thought you were home sick.”

  “I want to talk to you later.”

  “Okay. Call me later, all right?”

  “I need to . . . see you.”

  “I want you to see me, but I can’t tonight. I have to work. Will you call me?”

  “Yeah. If nothing . . .”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll call.”

  “I do want you to come soon, D.”

  “Yeah. Good-bye . . . Reba.”

  All right. Fear trickled from his breastbone to his belly. He squeezed it and crossed the street.

  Entrance to the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesdays is through a single door on the extreme right. Dolarhyde went in behind four art students. The students piled their knapsacks and satchels against the wall and got out their passes. The guard behind the desk checked them.

  He came to Dolarhyde.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  Dolarhyde nodded. “Painting Study, Miss Harper.”

  “Sign the register, please.” The guard offered a pen.

  Dolarhyde had his own pen ready. He signed “Paul Crane.”

  The guard dialed an upstairs extension. Dolarhyde turned his back to the desk and studied Robert Blum’s Vintage Festival over the entrance while the guard confirmed his appointment. From the corner of his eye he could see one more security guard in the lobby. Yes, that was the one with the gun.

  “Back of the lobby by the shop there’s a bench next to the main elevators,” the desk officer said. “Wait there. Miss Harper’s coming down for you.” He handed Dolarhyde a pink-on-white plastic badge.

  “Okay if I leave my guitar here?”

  “I’ll keep an eye on it.”

  The museum was different with the lights turned down. There was twilight among the great glass cases.

  Dolarhyde waited on the bench for three minutes before Miss Harper got off the public elevator.

  “Mr. Crane? I’m Paula Harper.”

  She was younger than she had sounded on the telephone when he called from St. Louis; a sensible-looking woman, severely pretty. She wore her blouse and skirt like a uniform.

  “You called about the Blake watercolor,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll show it to you. We’ll take the staff elevator—this way.”

  She led him past the dark museum shop and through a small room lined with primitive weapons. He looked around fast to keep his bearings. In the corner of the Americas section was a corridor which led to the small elevator.

  Miss Harper pushed the button. She hugged her elbows and waited. The clear blue eyes fell on the pass, pink on white, clipped to Dolarhyde’s lapel.

  “That’s a sixth-floor pass he gave you,” she said. “It doesn’t matter—there aren’t any guards on five today. What kind of research are you doing?”

  Dolarhyde had made it on smiles and nods until now. “A paper on Butts,” he said.

  “On Thomas Butts?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve never read much on him. You only see him in footnotes as a patron of Blake’s. Is he interesting?”

  “I’m just beginning. I’ll have to go to England.”

  “I think the National Gallery has two watercolors he did for Butts. Have you seen them yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Better write ahead of time.”

  He nodded. The elevator came.

  Fifth floor. He was tingling a little, but he had blood in his arms and legs. Soon it would be just yes or no. If it went wrong, he wouldn’t let them take him.

  She led him down the corridor of American portraits. This wasn’t the way he came before. He could tell where he was. It was all right.

  But something waited in the corridor for him, and when he saw it he stopped dead still.

  Paula Harper realized he wasn’t following and turned around.

  He was rigid before a niche in the wall of portraits.

  She came back to him and saw what he was staring at.

  “That’s a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington,” she said.

  No it wasn’t.

  “You see a similar one on the dollar bill. They call it a Lansdowne portrait because Stuart did one for the Marquis of Lansdowne to thank him for his support in the American Revolution . . . Are you all right, Mr. Crane?”

  Dolarhyde was pale. This was worse than all the dollar bills he had ever seen. Washington with his hooded eyes and bad false teeth stared out of the frame. My God, he looked like Grandmother. Dolarhyde felt like a child with a rubber knife.

  “Mr. Crane, are you okay?”

  Answer or blow it all. Get past this. My God, man, that’s so sweeeet. YOU’RE THE DIRTIEST . . . No.

  Say something.

  “I’m taking cobalt,” he said.

  “Would you like to sit down for a few minutes?” There was a faint m
edicinal smell about him.

  “No. Go ahead. I’m coming.”

  And you are not going to cut me, Grandmother. God damn you, I’d kill you if you weren’t already dead. Already dead. Already dead. Grandmother was already dead! Dead now, dead for always. My God, man, that’s so sweeeet.

  The other wasn’t dead though, and Dolarhyde knew it.

  He followed Miss Harper through thickets of fear.

  They went through double doors into the Painting Study and Storage Department. Dolarhyde looked around quickly. It was a long, peaceful room, well-lighted and filled with carousel racks of draped paintings. A row of small office cubicles was partitioned off along the wall. The door to the cubicle on the far end was ajar, and he heard typing.

  He saw no one but Paula Harper.

  She took him to a counter-height worktable and brought him a stool.

  “Wait here. I’ll bring the painting to you.”

  She disappeared behind the racks.

  Dolarhyde undid a button at his belly.

  Miss Harper was coming. She carried a flat black case no bigger than a briefcase. It was in there. How did she have the strength to carry the picture? He had never thought of it as flat. He had seen the dimensions in the catalogs—17⅛ by 13½ inches—but he had paid no attention to them. He expected it to be immense. But it was small. It was small and it was here in a quiet room. He had never realized how much strength the Dragon drew from the old house in the orchard.

  Miss Harper was saying something “. . . have to keep it in this solander box because light will fade it. That’s why it’s not on display very often.”

  She put the case on the table and unclasped it. A noise at the double doors. “Excuse me, I have to get the door for Julio.” She refastened the case and carried it with her to the glass doors. A man with a wheeled dolly waited outside. She held the doors open while he rolled it in.

  “Over here okay?”

  “Yes, thank you, Julio.”

  The man went out.

  Here came Miss Harper with the solander box.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Crane. Julio’s dusting today and getting the tarnish off some frames.” She opened the case and took out a white cardboard folder. “You understand that you aren’t allowed to touch it. I’ll display it for you—that’s the rule. Okay?”

  Dolarhyde nodded. He couldn’t speak.

  She opened the folder and removed the covering plastic sheet and mat.

  There it was. The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun—the Man-Dragon rampant over the prostrate pleading woman caught in a coil of his tail.

  It was small all right, but it was powerful. Stunning. The best reproductions didn’t do justice to the details and the colors.

  Dolarhyde saw it clear, saw it all in an instant—Blake’s handwriting on the borders, two brown spots at the right edge of the paper. It seized him hard. It was too much . . . the colors were so much stronger.

  Look at the woman wrapped in the Dragon’s tail. Look.

  He saw that her hair was the exact color of Reba McClane’s. He saw that he was twenty feet from the door. He held in voices.

  I hope I didn’t shock you, said Reba McClane.

  “It appears that he used chalk as well as watercolor,” Paula Harper was saying. She stood at an angle so that she could see what he was doing. Her eyes never left the painting.

  Dolarhyde put his hand inside his shirt.

  Somewhere a telephone was ringing. The typing stopped. A woman stuck her head out of the far cubicle.

  “Paula, telephone for you. It’s your mother.”

  Miss Harper did not turn her head. Her eyes never left Dolarhyde or the painting. “Would you take a message?” she said. “Tell her I’ll call her back.”

  The woman disappeared into the office. In a moment the typing started again.

  Dolarhyde couldn’t hold it anymore. Play for it all, right now.

  But the Dragon moved first. “I’VE NEVER SEEN—”

  “What?” Miss Harper’s eyes were wide.

  “—a rat that big!” Dolarhyde said, pointing. “Climbing that frame!”

  Miss Harper was turning. “Where?”

  The blackjack slid out of his shirt. With his wrist more than his arm, he tapped the back of her skull. She sagged as Dolarhyde grabbed a handful of her blouse and clapped the chloroform rag over her face. She made a high sound once, not overloud, and went limp.

  He eased her to the floor between the table and the racks of paintings, pulled the folder with the watercolor to the floor, and squatted over her. Rustling, wadding, hoarse breathing and a telephone ringing.

  The woman came out of the far office.

  “Paula?” She looked around the room. “It’s your mother,” she called. “She needs to talk to you now.”

  She walked behind the table. “I’ll take care of the visitor if you . . .” She saw them then. Paula Harper on the floor, her hair across her face, and squatting over her, his pistol in his hand, Dolarhyde stuffing the last bite of the watercolor in his mouth. Rising, chewing, running. Toward her.

  She ran for her office, slammed the flimsy door, grabbed at the phone and knocked it to the floor, scrambled for it on her hands and knees and tried to dial on the busy line as her door caved in. The lighted dial burst in bright colors at the impact behind her ear. The receiver fell quacking to the floor.

  Dolarhyde in the staff elevator watched the indicator lights blink down, his gun held flat across his stomach, covered by his books.

  First floor.

  Out into the deserted galleries. He walked fast, his running shoes whispering on the terrazzo. A wrong turn and he was passing the whale masks, the great mask of Sisuit, losing seconds, running now into the presence of the Haida high totems and lost. He ran to the totems, looked left, saw the primitive edged weapons and knew where he was.

  He peered around the corner at the lobby.

  The desk officer stood at the bulletin board, thirty feet from the reception desk.

  The armed guard was closer to the door. His holster creaked as he bent to rub a spot on the toe of his shoe.

  If they fight, drop him first. Dolarhyde put the gun under his belt and buttoned his coat over it. He walked across the lobby, unclipping his pass.

  The desk officer turned when he heard the footsteps.

  “Thank you,” Dolarhyde said. He held up his pass by the edges, then dropped it on the desk.

  The guard nodded. “Would you put it through the slot there, please?”

  The reception desk telephone rang.

  The pass was hard to pick up off the glass top.

  The telephone rang again. Hurry.

  Dolarhyde got hold of the pass, dropped it through the slot. He picked up his guitar case from the pile of knapsacks.

  The guard was coming to the telephone.

  Out the door now, walking fast for the botanical gardens, he was ready to turn and fire if he heard pursuit.

  Inside the gardens and to the left, Dolarhyde ducked into a space between a small shed and a hedge. He opened the guitar case and dumped out a tennis racket, a tennis ball, a towel, a folded grocery sack and a big bunch of leafy celery.

  Buttons flew as he tore off his coat and shirt in one move and stepped out of his trousers. Underneath he wore a Brooklyn College T-shirt and warm-up pants. He stuffed his books and clothing into the grocery bag, then the weapons. The celery stuck out the top. He wiped the handle and clasps of the case and shoved it under the hedge.

  Cutting across the gardens now toward Prospect Park, the towel around his neck, he came out onto Empire Boulevard. Joggers were ahead of him. As he followed the joggers into the park, the first police cruisers screamed past. None of the joggers paid any attention to them. Neither did Dolarhyde.

  He alternated jogging and walking, carrying his grocery bag and racket and bouncing his tennis ball, a man cooling off from a hard workout who had stopped by the store on the way home.

  He made himself slow down; h
e shouldn’t run on a full stomach. He could choose his pace now.

  He could choose anything.

  42

  Crawford sat in the back row of the jury box eating Red-skin peanuts while Graham closed the courtroom blinds.

  “You’ll have the profile for me later this afternoon, I take it,” Crawford said. “You told me Tuesday; this is Tuesday.”

  “I’ll finish it. I want to watch this first.”

  Graham opened the express envelope from Byron Metcalf and dumped out the contents—two dusty rolls of home-movie film, each in a plastic sandwich bag.

  “Is Metcalf pressing charges against Niles Jacobi?”

  “Not for theft—he’ll probably inherit anyway—he and Jacobi’s brother,” Graham said. “On the hash, I don’t know. Birmingham DA’s inclined to break his chops.”

  “Good,” Crawford said.

  The movie screen swung down from the courtroom ceiling to face the jury box, an arrangement which made it easy to show jurors filmed evidence.

  Graham threaded the projector.

  “On checking the newsstands where the Tooth Fairy could have gotten a Tattler so fast—I’ve had reports back from Cincinnati, Detroit, and a bunch from Chicago,” Crawford said. “Various weirdos to run down.”

  Graham started the film. It was a fishing movie.

  The Jacobi children hunkered on the bank of a pond with cane poles and bobbers.

  Graham tried not to think of them in their small boxes in the ground. He tried to think of them just fishing.

  The girl’s cork bobbed and disappeared. She had a bite.

  Crawford crackled his peanut sack. “Indianapolis is dragging ass on questioning newsies and checking the Servco Supreme stations,” he said.

  “Do you want to watch this or what?” Graham said.

  Crawford was silent until the end of the two-minute film. “Terrific, she caught a perch,” he said. “Now the profile—”

  “Jack, you were in Birmingham right after it happened. I didn’t get there for a month. You saw the house while it was still their house—I didn’t. It was stripped and remodeled when I got there. Now, for Christ’s sake, let me look at these people and then I’ll finish the profile.”