Transgressions by Stephen King & John Farris

“This is a big night for Mr. Ransome. Isn’t it? I’m surprised he’s not here.”

Cy said smoothly, “But he is here, Peter.”

Pete spread his hands and smiled inquiringly as Echo’s expression soured.

“It’s only that John has never cared to be the center of attention. He wants the focus to be solely on his work. But let John tell you himself. He’s wanted very much to meet you both.”

“Why?” Peter said.

“Peter,” Echo said grimly.

“Well, it’s a fair question,” Peter said, looking at Cy Mellichamp, who wore little gold tennis racket cuff links. A fair question, but not a lob. Straight down the alley, no time for footwork, spin on the return.-

Cy blinked and his smile got bigger. “Of course it is. Would you mind coming with me? Just in the other room there, my study-Something we would like for you to see.”

‘You and Mr. Ransome,” Peter said.

“Why, yes.”

He offered Echo his arm. She gave Peter a swift dreadful look as she turned her back on him. Peter simmered for a couple of moments, took a breath and followed them.

The study was nearly dark. Peter was immediately interested in the array of security monitors, including three affording different angles on the small gallery where the newest Ransome paintings were on display Where he had been with Echo a few minutes ago. The idea that they’d been watched from this room, maybe by Ransome himself, caused Peter to chew his lower lip. No reason Cy Mellichamp shouldn’t have the best possible surveillance equipment to protect millions of dollars’ worth of property. But so far none of this—Taja following Echo around town, the special invitations to Ransome’s showing—added up, and Peter was more than ready to cut to the chase.

There was a draped, spotlighted easel to one side of Mellichamp’s desk. The dealer walked Echo to it, smiling, and invited her to remove the drape.

“It’s a work in progress, of course. John would be the first to say it doesn’t do his subject justice.”

Echo hesitated, then carefully uncovered the canvas, which revealed an incomplete study of—Echo Halloran.

Jesus, Peter thought, growing tense for no good reason. Even though what there was of her on the canvas looked great.

“Peter! Look at this!”

“I’m looking,” Pete said, then turned, aware that someone had come into the room behind them.

“No, it doesn’t do you justice,” John Ransome said. “It’s a beginning, that’s all.” He put out a hand to Peter. “Congratulations on your promotion to detective.”

“Thanks,” Pete said, testing Ransome’s grip with no change of expression.

Ransome smiled slightly. “I understand your paternal grandfather was the third most-decorated officer in the history of the New York City police force.”

“That’s right.”

Cy Mellichamp had blue-ribbon charm and social graces and the inward chilliness of a shark cruising behind the glass of an aquarium. John Ransome looked at Peter as if every detail of his face were important to recall at some later time. He held his grip longer than most men, but not too long. He was an inch taller than Peter, with a thick head of razor-cut hair silver over the ears, a square jawline softening with age, deep folds at the corners of a sensual mouth. He talked through his nose, yet the effect was sonorous, softly pleasing, as if his nose were lined with velvet. His dark eyes didn’t veer from Peter’s mildly contentious gaze. They were the eyes of a man who had fought battles, won only some of them. They wanted to tell you more than his heart could let go of. And that, Peter divined in a few moments of hand-to-hand contact with the man, was the major source of his appeal.

Having made Peter feel a little more at home Ransome turned his attention again to Echo.

“I had only some photographs,” he said of the impressionistic portrait. “So much was missing. Until now. And now that I’m finally meeting you—I see how very much I’ve missed.”

By candlelight and starlight they had cheeseburgers and fries on the terrace. And they were damn good cheeseburgers. So was the beer. Peter concentrated on the beer because he didn’t like eating when something was eating him. Probably Echo’s star-struck expression. As for John Leland Ransome—there was just something about aging yuppies (never mind the aura of the famous and reclusive artist) who didn’t wear socks with their loafers that went against Peter’s Irish grain.

Otherwise maybe it wasn’t so hard to like the guy. Until it became obvious that Ransome or someone else had done a thorough job of prying into Echo’s life and family relations. Now hold on, just a damn minute.

“Your name is given as Mary Catherine on your birth and baptismal certificates. Where did ‘Echo’

come from?”

“Oh—well—I was talking a blue streak at eighteen months. Repeated everything I heard. My father would look at me and say, ‘Is there a little echo in here?’ ‘

“Your father was a Jesuit, I understand.”

‘Yes. That was his—vocation, until he met my mother.”

“Who was teaching medieval history at Fordham?”

‘Yes, she was.”

“Now retired because of her illness. Is she still working on her biography of Bernard of Clairvaux? I’d like to read it sometime. I’m a student of history myself.”

Peter allowed his beer glass to be filled for a fourth time. Echo gave him a vexed look as if to say, Are you here or are you not here?

Ransome said, “I see the beer is to your liking. It’s from an exceptional little brewery in Dortmund that’s not widely known outside of Germany.”

Peter said with an edge of hostility, “So you have it flown in by the keg, something like that?”

Ransome smiled. “Corner deli. Three bucks a pop.”

Peter shifted in his seat. The lace collar of his tux was irritating his neck. “Mr. Ransome—mind if I ask you something?”

“If you’ll call me John.”

“Okay—John—what I’d like to know is, why all the detective work? I mean, you seem to know a h— a lot about Echo. Almost an invasion of her privacy, seems to me.”

Echo looked as if she would gladly have kicked him, if her gown hadn’t been so long. She smiled a tight apology to Ransome, but Peter had the feeling she was curious too, in spite of the hero worship.

Ransome took the accusation seriously, with a hint of contrition in his downcast eyes.

“I understand how that must appear to you. It’s the nature of detective work, of course, to interpret my curiosity about Echo as suspicious or possibly predatory behavior. But if Echo and I are going to spend a year together—”

“What?” Peter said, and Echo almost repeated him before pressing a napkin to her lips and clearing her throat.

Ransome nodded his point home with the confidence of those who are born and bred in the winner’s circle; someone, Peter thought resentfully, who wouldn’t break a sweat if his pants were on fire.

“—I find it helpful in my work as an artist,” Ransome continued, “if there are other areas of compatibility with my subjects. I like good conversation. I’ve never had a subject who wasn’t well read and articulate.” He smiled graciously at Echo. “Although I’m afraid that I’ve tended to monopolize our table talk tonight.” He shifted his eyes to Peter. “And Echo is also a painter of promise. I find that attractive as well.”

Echo said incredulously, “Excuse me, I fell off at that last turn.”

“Did you?” Ransome said.

But he kept his gaze on Peter, who had the look of a man being cunningly outplayed in a game without a rule book.

With the party over, the gallery emptied and cleanup crews at work, John Ransome conducted a personal tour of his latest work while Cy Mellichamp entertained Stefan Konine and a restless Peter, who had spent the better part of the last hour obviously wishing he were somewhere else. With Echo.

“Who is she?” Echo asked of Ransome’s most recent model. “Or is that privileged information?”

“I’ll trust your discretion. Her name is Silkie. Oddly enough, my previous subjects have remained anonymous at their own request. To keep the curious at arm’s length. I suppose that during the year of our relationships each of them absorbed some of my own passion for—letting my work speak for itself.”

“The year of your relationships? You don’t see them any more?”

“No.”

“Is that at your request?”

“I don’t want it to seem to you as if I’ve had affairs that all turned out badly. That’s far from the truth.”

With her lack of expression Echo kept a guarded but subtle emotional distance from him.

“Silkie. The name describes her perfectly. Where is she from?”

“South Africa. Taja discovered her, on a train from Durban to Capetown.”

“And Taja discovered me? She does get around.”

“She’s found all of my recent subjects—by ‘recent’ I mean the last twenty years.” He smiled a bit painfully, reminded of how quickly the years passed, and how slowly he worked. “I very much depend on Taja’s eye and her intuition. I depend on her loyalty. She was an artist herself, but she won’t paint any more.

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