The Burnt Orange Heresy

I closed the books, all of them, and returned them to the crate. I lit a cigarette and moved to the window. The buttery sunlight of Palm Beach scattered gold coins beneath the poinciana tree outside my window. The dark green grass in the apartment-house courtyard was still wet from the sprinklers the yardman had recently turned off. The pale blue sky, without any clouds, unpolluted by industrial smoke, was as clear as expensively bottled water. I wasn't fooled by the air-conditioning of the room. It was hotter than hell outside in the sun.

But my work was over. Debierue had triumphed over everyone, and so had I. There would never be another Jacques Debierue, not in my lifetime, and I would never want to meet another one like him if one ever did come along. There was no place else for me to go as an art critic. How could I top myself?' Not in this world.

But what about Berenice Hollis?' Could I pass the test?' In a cigar box in the bottom drawer of my dresser, together with a picture of my father, taken when he was seven years old, and a dry, rough periwinkle shell (a reminder, because I had picked it up on the beach as a kid, that I was born in Puerto Rico), was Berenice's dried finger, wrapped in a linen handkerchief. I unrolled the handkerchief and looked at the shriveled finger. The blood-red Chen Yu nail varnish was dull, and some of it had flaked off. I looked at the finger for a long time without feeling fear, pain, or remorse.

Debierue, and his achievement, had been worth it, and there was nothing else left for me to do. Somebody else, another critic, could cover the unveiling of Cassidy's only signed Debierue at the Everglades Club. The time had come for me to pay my dues for the death of Berenice Hollis.

I showered, shaved, and put on my tailor-made suit, together with a white shirt, a wide red-white-and-blue striped tie, black silk socks, and polished cordovan shoes.

Taking my time, strolling, I walked through the late afternoon streets to the Spanish-style Palm Beach police station. No one else would ever know the truth about Debierue, and no one, other than myself, knew the truth about my part in his apotheosis. And I would never tell, never, but I had to pay for Berenice. The man who achieves success in America must pay for it. It's the American way, and no one knows this fact of life any better than I, a de-islanded Puerto Rican.

There were a sergeant and two patrolmen inside the station. One patrolman was going on duty and the other was going off, but they both looked so clean and well groomed it would have been impossible to tell them apart. All three policemen were looking at a copy of Palm Beach Life, the slick, seasonal magazine that covers Palm Beach society. The policeman going off duty had his picture in it-a shot of a group of women on a garden tour, and he was smiling in the background.

"Good afternoon, sir," the sergeant said politely, getting to his feet, "may I help you?"

I nodded. "Good afternoon, Sergeant," I replied. I unfolded the handkerchief on the table, and Berenice's finger rolled out. "I want to confess to a crime of passion."