Innocence

They were postmodern abstracts that I found not merely ugly but also depressing. I admit that I don’t understand art that isn’t in the least representational. But I feel no need to understand it.

“I know where Goddard lives,” Gwyneth said. “But I’m drawn to this place.”

She pulled away from the curb, turned left at the corner, and turned left again into an alleyway that led behind the stores that faced the avenue. The back door of the gallery stood wide, and a man in a long overcoat shoved a large carton through the open tailgate of a Mercedes SUV.

Free of his burden, he turned toward us. He was tall, stout, and totally bald. From a distance, I couldn’t determine his age, only that he might be somewhere between forty and sixty. A lot of men, even the young, had embraced baldness for many years; and it wasn’t easy to tell who earned the look and who faked it.

Gwyneth braked twenty feet short of him, put the Rover in park, doused the headlights, switched off the engine. “That’s him. That’s Goddard.”

“What now?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

We got out of the Rover and approached Goddard, and he said to Gwyneth, “There’s nothing here for you, girl.”

“I’m looking for Simon.”

As we closed the distance between us and him, he drew a pistol from a coat pocket and aimed it at her. “That’s far enough.”

I had no illusion that we could win a duel with Mace and Taser against a pistol, and neither did Gwyneth. She said, “You wouldn’t shoot me and put your swanky life at risk.”

“If you give me the slightest reason,” he said, “I’ll shoot you and your mysterious friend, and I’ll piss on your corpse.”

52

THE ALLEYWAY WAS LIT ONLY BY A FEW WIRE-CAGED security lamps above the back entrances to some of the businesses, and the one above the door to the gallery had been extinguished. The blanket of snow didn’t brighten the way, for the flanking walls of the six- and eight-story buildings crowded close and blocked the ambient light of the city. Along the length of the alley were strange and tortured shadows, though I thought they must be only the shapes of things and not the things themselves.

Far enough from Goddard to feel certain that he was not able to see my eyes within my hood, I stared directly at him, but I still couldn’t guess his age. Fat smoothed out whatever lines time might have carved in his face. His voice had sounded as though he lived entirely on mayonnaise and butter but never quite cleared his throat of them; and even in this poverty of light, he had about him an air of dissolution.

“I’m looking for Simon,” Gwyneth repeated. “Will you pretend you don’t know who I mean?”

Goddard waved the gun in a dismissive gesture but at once brought it back on target. “I’m past all pretense. What would be the point now? He’s not here.”

“Where are they holding him?” she asked.

“Why should I bother to tell you? It’s over now, all of it, even if Telford refuses to see.”

“Simon has no idea how to find me. There’s no point in hurting him.”

“There’s no point in any of it, anymore,” Goddard said, “but I don’t care enough about your Simon to tell you anything. Unless…”

“Unless what?” she asked.

“I’m leaving the city. You should, too, if you want to live.”

“I think I’ll stay awhile.”

“I’ve got a private island, everything I need.”

“Except integrity.”

His laugh was wet and low. “Integrity isn’t a survival trait, little girl.”

“You said ‘unless.’ Unless what?”

“You might not think so, but I can be sweet,” Goddard said. “I’m a man of culture, of highly refined taste and much experience. Out of this rat race, with nothing more to win or lose, you’ll find that I’m quite compatible. You might even find, after all, that you don’t mind being touched.”

I had begun to wonder if he and Gwyneth were not talking about precisely the same thing. There seemed to be implications in his words that didn’t quite relate to Simon and Telford. Now his proposition was so outrageous that I thought he must be to some degree unhinged.

He said, “Leave the city with me, and on the way, I’ll call Ryan Telford and tell him we’re both out of it, you and me, there’s no reason for him trying to squeeze information out of your artist friend Simon. It’s all over now. It’s wasted effort.”

For a moment, the quality of her silence suggested that she might be considering his proposal, but then she said, “You’d only take me to Telford.”

“Little girl, tender as you are, if you came with me, I’d betray a hundred Ryan Telfords. I’d shoot a hundred of them dead for you, and my own mother if she were still living.”

In this gloom, the falling snow was not as bright white as it was elsewhere, and in the shelter of the buildings, the wind proved not as fickle as before, so that the night seemed less chaotic. And yet, listening to their conversation, I felt as if everything was cockeyed, and I wouldn’t have been much surprised if the buildings suddenly tilted at precarious angles or if the pavement rolled like a ship’s deck under my feet.