Peter said, “I got friends all over. On vacation, just hangin’ out.”
“Hell of a note,” Tillery said. “Lookin’ to chill, relax with some good-lookin’ pussy, next thing you know you’re in Mass General with eighty-four stitches.”
“She was real good with that, what’a’ya call it, stiletto?”
Sal said, “So, Pete. Want to do your statement now, or later we come around after your nap? As a courtesy to a fellow shield. Who seems to be goddamn well connected where he comes from.” Sal looked around as if for a place to spit.
“I’ll come to you. How’s Silkie?”
“Plastic surgeon looked at her already.
There’s gonna be some scarring they can clean up easy.”
“She say she knew the perp?”
Tillery and Tranca exchanged jaundiced glances. “About as well as you did,” Sal said.
“Well, you enjoy that dark meat,” Tillery said. He was on the way out when something occurred to him to ask. He turned to Peter with his cynical grin.
“How long you had your gold, Pete?”
“Nine months.”
“Hey, congrats. Sal here, he’s got twenty-one years on the job. Me, I got eleven.”
‘Yeah?” Peter said, closing his eyes.
“What Frank is gettin’ at,” Sal said dourly, “we can smell a crock of shit when it’s right under our noses.”
FOURTEEN
Echo was putting her clothes back on inside the privacy cubicle in John Ransome’s studio when she heard the door close, heard him locking her in.
“John!”
The door was thick tempered glass. He looked back at her tiredly as she emerged holding the sweater to her bare breasts and tugged at the door handle, not believing this.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was muffled by the thickness of the door. “When it’s done—if it’s done tonight—I’ll be back for you.”
“No! Let me out now!”
He shook his head slightly, then clattered down the iron staircase like a man in search of a nervous breakdown while Echo battled the door; still unwilling to believe that she was locked up until Ransome decided otherwise.
She glanced at the nude study he had begun, only a free-flowing sketch at this point but unmistakably Echo. She then demonstrated, at the top of her voice, how many obscene street oaths she’d picked up over the years.
But the harsh wind off a tumbled sea that caused her glass jail to shimmy on its high perch wailed louder than she could hope to.
Peter woke up with a start when Silkie MacKenzie put a hand on his shoulder. He felt sharp pain, then nausea before he could focus on her.
“Hello, Peter. It’s Silkie.”
He swallowed his distress, attempted a smile. The right side of her face was neatly bandaged. “How you doin’?”
“I’ll be all right.”
“What time is it, Silkie?”
She looked at her gold Piaget. “Twenty past three.”
“Oh, Jesus.” He licked dry lips. There was an IV hookup in the back of his left hand for fluids and antibiotics. But his mouth was parched. With his heavily wrapped right hand—how many times had Taja cut him?—he motioned for Silkie to lean her face close to his. “Talk to you,” he whispered. “Not here.
They may have left a device. Couldn’t watch both of them all the time.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Wouldn’t be admissable in a courtroom. But they don’t trust either of us, so they could be fishing—for an angle to use during an interrogation. Walk me to the bathroom.”
She got him out of bed and supported him, rolling the IV pole with her other hand. He had Silkie come inside the bathroom with him. All the fluids they’d dripped into Peter had him desperate to pee. Silkie continued to hold his elbow for support and looked at a wall.
“Today wasn’t the first time Taja came after you,” Pete said.
“No. Five months ago I was in Los Angeles. I had a commercial, the first work my agent was able to get for me after I’d finished my assignment with John. But John didn’t want me working, you see. My face all over telly. That would have destroyed the— the allure, the fascination, the mystery he works so hard to create and maintain.”
“So keep the paintings, destroy the model. I’ve seen Anne Van Lier and Eileen Wendkos.”
Silkie looked around at him; she was close enough for Peter to feel the tremor that ran through her body.
“Then I had a glimpse of Taja, at a restaurant opposite Sunset Plaza. She pretended not to notice me.
But I—all of my life I’ve had premonitions. There was suddenly the darkest, angriest cloud I’d ever seen pressing down on Sunset Boulevard. So I ran for my life. Later I hired private detectives. I was very curious to know what had happened to my—my predecessors? I found out, as you did. And once I talked to Valerie, I understood what my sixth sense had always told me about John. I believe he may be insane.”
“We have to get out of here. Now. 1 have a rental car if Cambridge PD didn’t impound it. But I’m not sure how much driving I can do.” He bumped her as he turned in their small space; weakness followed pain, and it worried him. “Silkie, help me pull this IV out of my hand, then bring the rest of my clothes to me.”
“Where are we going?”
“The nearest airport to Kincairn Island is in Bangor, Maine.”
“I don’t think the weather is good up there.”
“Then the sooner we leave, the better. Get my wallet and watch from the lockbox. Use my credit card to reserve two seats on the next flight Boston to Bangor.”
“I’m not so sure I want to do that. I mean, go back there. I’m afraid, Peter.”
“Please, Silkie! You gotta help me. My girl’s on that island with that sick son of a bitch Ransome!”
The owner and chief pilot of Lola’s Flying Service at Bangor airport was going over accounts in her office when Peter and Silkie walked in at ten minutes to eight. Snow particles were flying outside the hangar, and they had felt sharp enough to etch glass.
Lola was a large cockeyed jalopy of a woman, salty as Lot’s wife. Peter explained his needs.
“Chopper the two a ya’s down to Kincairn in this freakin’ weather? Not if I hope to achieve my average life expectancy.”
Peter produced his shield. Lola greeted that show of authority with a lopsided smile.
“I’m Born Again, honeybunch; and I surely would hate to miss the Rapture. Otherwise what’s Born Again good for?”
Silkie said, “Please listen to me. We must get there. Something very bad is going to happen on the island tonight. I have a premonition.”
Lola, looking vastly amused, said, “Bullshit.”
“Her premonitions are very accurate,” Peter said.
Lola looked them over again. The bandages and bruises.
“I had my tea leaves read once. They said I shouldn’t get involved with people who show up looking like the losers in a domestic disturbance competition.” She picked up the remains of a ham on whole wheat from a takeout carton and polished it off in two bites.
Silkie patiently opened her tote and took out a very large roll of bills, half of which, she made it plain to Lola, were hundreds.
“On the other hand,” Lola said, “you have any premonitions about what this little jaunt is gonna cost you?”
“Name your price,” Silkie said calmly, and she began laying C-notes in the carton on top of a wilted lettuce leaf.
Echo’s immediate needs were met by a chemical toilet; a small refrigerator that contained milk, a wedge of Jarlsburg, bottled water and white wine; and an electric heater that dispelled the worst of the cold after sun-down. There was also a large sheepskin throw to wrap up in while she rocked herself in the only chair in John Ransome’s studio. Physically she was fine. She had drunk the rest of an already-opened bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, ordinarily enough wine to put her soundly to sleep. But the wind that was hitting forty knots according to the gauge outside and her circumstances kept her alert and sober, with an aching heart and a sense of impending tragedy.
If it’s done tonight, Ransome had said forebodingly. What did he know about Taja, and what was he planning?
Every few minutes, between decades of the rosary that went everywhere with her, Echo jumped up restlessly to pace the inner circumference of the studio, then stopped to peer through the shutters in the direction of the stone house three hundred yards away. She could make out only blurred lights through horizontal lashings of snow. She’d seen nothing of Ransome since his head had disappeared down the circular lighthouse stairs. She hadn’t seen anyone except Ciera, who had left the house early, perhaps dismissed by Ransome. In twilight, on her way across the island, Ciera’s path had brought her within two hundred feet of the Kincairn light. Echo had pounded on the glass, screamed at her, but Ciera never looked up.