Painted Ladies

I followed with a right uppercut, which would have ended it, but he leaned away from it and it missed. My right side was exposed, and Kurt hammered a solid left hook into my ribs. I turned with the punch so I was at right angles to him and came around with my right elbow and hit him in the temple. He staggered again, and I heard his breath exhale in a kind of snort. I had him if I was quick. I went with the flow and followed the right elbow with the left forearm, then a left back fist and a right cross. All in rhythm. Everything was loose now and warm and moving as it should. I hit him with a left hook to the body, right hook to the body. He stumbled backward. I stayed on him. Left to the body, right to the body. His hands dropped. Left hook to the head. Right hook to the head. His hands were hanging at his sides now. It was like hitting the heavy bag. I jabbed him again in the face, and then turned my hip and brought the right uppercut that had missed before. He was too far gone to slip it this time, and it caught him square. He took another step backward. His legs gave out. And he sat suddenly on the floor, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

My hands hurt.

I looked at Ariel Herzberg.

“You think they’ll put my statue outside the Museum of Fine Arts?” I said.

“Kurt is good,” Ariel said. “Which means you’re very good.”

“Keep it in mind,” I said.

“It is a temporary triumph,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can.”

I walked to his desk and took hold of his nose and sort of shook his head for him.

“So far, I like my chances better than yours,” I said.

And I left.

51

We hadn’t had a big, serious snowstorm all winter. It had snowed moderately, and often, and it was doing it again. The cumulative effect of moderate and often was pretty much the same as big, serious. The snow was steady but not dense, and the flakes were small. But it was enough to cover up the compacted dirty snow that had preceded it, and for a little while the city would look clean again.

I walked up Berkeley Street wearing my plaid longshoreman’s cap and a fleece-lined leather jacket. Because I had the jacket zipped up, and people were seeking to do me ill, I had taken my gun off my belt and put it in my side pocket. I also looked around a lot. At Columbus I turned right and went in the big arched door of Shawmut Insurance Company and rode up in the black iron elevator to see Winifred Minor.

She was in the same office I’d seen her in before. The door was open. I knocked on the outer edge of the door opening and stepped in. She looked up at me and saw who it was and stiffened and looked at me some more without speaking. I sat down.

“Hi,” I said.

She continued to look at me silently.

“You never finished your lunch,” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

“How ’bout that snow?” I said.

Silence.

“If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute,” I said.

She looked down at her desk.

“Everybody talks about the weather,” I said. “But nobody does anything about it.”

She looked up from her desk.

“All right,” she said. “Enough. I’ll talk to you. What do you want?”

“Thank God,” I said. “I was almost down to singing ‘Stormy Weather.’”

She almost smiled.

“At least I escaped that,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Know a man named Ariel Herzberg?” I said.

“No.”

“Your daughter does,” I said.

“So?”

“I saw him visiting her at Walford last week,” I said.

“So?”

“He’s killed two people that I know of, and tried twice, so far, to kill me.”

She kept looking at me, and her breathing became harder, as if she was short of breath.

“If she’s involved with a man like that . . .” I said.

“Who did he kill,” Winifred asked.

Her voice was raspy.

“He killed Ashton Prince,” I said. “And the superintendent in my building. Super’s name was Francisco Cabrera.”

“Was that part of the attempt to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Did the super interrupt them?” she said.

“No,” I said. “They interrupted him. Apparently they rang the bell. When he answered, they put a gun on him and forced him to open my door. Then they took him to the cellar and shot him in the head.”

“Did Ariel do this himself?”

“Probably not,” I said. “He probably had people do it for him.”

“And you’ve seen her with him?”

“Missy,” I said. “Yes.”

“And you assume they’re involved.”

“They were people who knew each other,” I said.

“Is there anything I could say . . . or do . . . to make you leave this alone?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“You have an office just down the street,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go there to talk,” she said.

“Okay.”

52

I’d given her some coffee, and she was sitting in a client chair with her legs crossed, sipping it. Her knees were good-looking. She looked past me for a time, out my window, where the small snowflakes fell. They were well spaced and in no great hurry. She didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry herself. That was okay. She hadn’t come here to drink coffee and look at the snow.