"Don't you have any family?"

"Not real close. I have a cousin who bought out my father's shop from me when my father died. But he thinks I'm crazy."

"There are worse things-I mean than having a cousin think that. I have cousins with whom I pretend I'm crazy so they'll leave me alone. Not that I have to pretend all that hard. Where's the tailor shop?"

"Keokuk, Iowa."

"I like that."

"What's your name, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Julie Hayes."

"You're married, aren't you?" He pointed to her ring.

"Yes."

"I'll bet your husband is a professor. I'll bet he teaches electronic engineering or computer programming."

"You're way off. Jeff's a newspaperman."

"That's great. And you?"

"Well, let's say I'm a proletarian poet."

"I lived with the proletariat in Italy," he said, serious to the core. "I did a lot of life sketches, if you'd like to see them sometime."

"I would. I really would."

Julie had been edging toward the door. She came suddenly face to face with a sleek-looking woman on the far side of forty. She took one look at Julie and then ignored her. "Give me a hand with the wine, Ralphie. Why in the name of G.o.d didn't you turn on the air conditioning?"

Julie slipped out and away. She walked down Greene Street, wanting to urge everyone to come to Ralph Abel's opening. The street was a crazy mix of factories, businesses, and art galleries. There were remnant shops and garment shops, a thread mill, makers of bra.s.s fittings. The cobbled, potholed street supported tons of trash and pale-faced youngsters sorted through it for the stuff of their make-believe. New locks shone on rusty doors, and there were flowering plants and laundry hanging in the windows of the upper lofts. Among the ravaged storefronts, every third or so had entered on a new life, and the posters out front advertising the galleries deep inside were gay as poppy fields, noisy hawkers of tomorrow's Oldenburgs and Riverses.

At a quarter past five, having had an Italian ice on Wooster Street, Julie returned to the Maude Sloan Gallery. Wherever the people had come from, the place was jammed. Julie edged her way through to have another look at Scarlet Night. n.o.body was talking to or about Ralph Abel. They were all talking about themselves. And the uptown galleries. And money. But Abel, his face flushed and streaming with honest sweat, didn't seem to notice that part. He wriggled around groups that ignored him until he reached Julie, smiling as though his face would burst.

"See," Julie said, "somebody came."

"How about that? I'd like you to meet Mrs. Sloan-if you still want to, that is."

"All right." Not that she had ever wanted to, but she allowed the tall, loose-jointed Abel to haul her to the desk. He had to lean over Mrs. Sloan to make himself heard.

Maude Sloan reached up and brushed a ta.s.sel of golden hair from his forehead. Her fingers were still moist from his sweat when she offered them to Julie. "Isn't it a marvelous show?"

"Great," Julie said.

Mrs. Sloan plucked a mimeographed sheet from a stack on the desk, a price list. "Perhaps you'd like one of these?"

"Thanks." Julie tried to think of something to say. It didn't matter.

Mrs. Sloan gave her a get-lost look and turned to her protege. "You've got to mingle, Ralphie. It's important for you."

He looked out over the crowd, dubious.

Julie found a spot where she could look at the price list. Scarlet Night was down at five hundred dollars. Which could be a lot or a little. She went back and tried to see the canvas through Jeff's eyes. That didn't work very well. She thought she knew why she liked it, but she wasn't sure why Jeff wouldn't like it. Only fairly sure that he wouldn't. But suppose he said, "All right, Julie. If you like it, I'm quite willing to make the compromise..." If Jeff said that, she knew as she stood before Scarlet Night, she would not want to buy it. Which probably had more to do with the psyche than with art. The picture was in a heavy but plain gilt frame that wouldn't quarrel with the Victorian setting. Nor would the painting quarrel...much. In any case, she was not going to buy a painting until Jeff saw it. Besides, it wouldn't cover the white spot, unless she hung it on its side.

Again she caught Ralph Abel watching her. He came over, bringing her a gla.s.s of punch.

"I can't afford to buy a painting, Mr. Abel. Besides, I've promised my husband..." Well, Julie thought, it's true.

"I understand. You both have to live with it."

"And each other."

"That price list isn't the last word," Abel said. "Maude would kill me for saying it, but I know. She says so herself."

"Look. I'll try and get Jeff to come down with me tomorrow and see it. Okay?"

"The next day. We're closed tomorrow. Mrs. Hayes, I don't want you to buy it for my sake. I want you to buy it for you. Are you feeling sorry for me?"

"If I buy it, it will be for me. It has meaning for me, but whether it will also please my husband, I can't say. That's something we'll have to find out."

"But you do like it?" he persisted.

"Yes! I wouldn't be here if I didn't." A nice, forthright lie.

"Please don't be mad. I was thinking: couldn't we put half a star on it? It wouldn't commit you to buy it, you know. But n.o.body else could buy it until you had a chance to think about it-and talk it over with your husband."

It was going to be a lot easier to put the star on than to take it off, she felt. But there was something in it for Ralph Abel too. To be sure, it was early, but n.o.body was running around looking for stars or even half stars. As a theatrical agent used to say to Julie when she was trying to make it as an actress, all you got to do is get that first olive out of the jar.

"Okay, let's do that," Julie said.

Maude Sloan was busy running the punch bowl, but Julie was sure the woman saw Ralph take the tiny star from a box and cut it in half. In fact she stretched her neck to see where Julie was. Julie avoided her eyes. It didn't help. She felt even more committed.

Abel returned and licked the half star, but before he got it on the t.i.tle card, a hand caught his.

"Hold on, young fellow." With an air of boredom, the plump man held onto Abel's arm but spoke to Julie. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, miss, but I've made arrangements with Mrs. Sloan to buy this canvas." He let his eyes shift languidly toward Maude. With a message, Julie felt. Okay. Fine.

"Who are you?" Abel demanded, which was no way to speak to a customer.

"I doubt you would know if I told you."

"I'm sorry, sir, but I just promised this lady..."

Julie tugged on his arm. "It's all right." It was more than all right. "Hey, congratulations!"

It didn't work.

"It's not all right," the painter said, "I want you to have it."

"But I'm not even decided and this gentleman is."

The gentleman, who Julie didn't feel sure was one, put his hand on Abel's shoulder, which was at about his eye level. "Let's have Mrs. Sloan settle it," he said, as though it was all too ridiculous.

Maude was waiting for them, smiling hard. It made all the wrinkles in her face get together. "What's the matter, Rubin?"

"Tell this young genius of yours that we just closed the deal on Scarlet Night."

"Aren't you proud, Ralphie?" She didn't even bother with the intermediate step. "Mr. Rubinoff buys with excellent taste."

"And somebody else's money most of the time. You're going to a very distinguished collector, young man."

Abel was still glowering in spite of his good fortune. Julie had never felt more hung up. Or wiped out: that was closer. All she wanted now was to get out. "Well, it's been nice meeting everybody. Good luck, Mr. Abel." She offered him her hand.

He caught it and hung onto it fiercely while he appealed to Mrs. Sloan. "Don't I have anything to say about my own paintings?"

"Not at the moment," she said amiably, and finally threw a few words Julie's way: "Some of the other paintings are just as important, Mrs. Hayes. There's a lovely little circus theme, number eight..."

Julie shook her head. "I'll watch for your proletarian sketches, Mr. Abel," she said and got her hand away from him.

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Hayes," Rubinoff said. "I know what it's like in this business when somebody outflanks you."

"I don't feel outflanked," Julie said and pushed her way through the crowd. She tried to hold back the tears until she could reach the street. Anger and frustration...and relief?

Her ardor for looking at pictures had cooled considerably. The next move was up to Jeff. When he had an hour or an hour and a half to spare.

THREE.

SEAN O'GRADY WAS NOT supposed to be there. He was, in fact, supposed to be on the high seas. But blind trust did not come easy to O'Grady. He had been beggared by it more than once in his life. But in the few minutes before the painting was sold he had paid dearly for his curiosity. He had thought at first that the blond girl was to be his connection when the time came and that confused him: he had expected a man. Which was the way it turned out in the end, a man of sorts. While the squabble went on at the desk, O'Grady had looked in the guest book on the table by the door. He had noticed the slick, dark, pudgy fellow sign in with a flourish and wondered then if he wasn't the one: R. Rubinoff.

Who the girl was he had no idea: she had not signed the book. An innocent bystander. He was sure of it, her going out with tears in her eyes. There would never be tears in an operation contrived by Ginni. Nor surrender. He went outdoors after her, the sweat cold on his back, and watched how she carried herself going down the street. She knew how to walk, her head high and her limbs loose. Cla.s.s. He was glad all the same that the fate of Scarlet Night was not in her hands. She hailed a cab at the corner.

He intended to go then. No one had noticed him. No one would have recognized him, for that matter, except Abel, who was blind at the moment with his own importance. O'Grady tried not to think him a fool. The lad was out of his element. So was Sean O'Grady, but in his case it didn't matter. He'd not be going this way again.

He crossed the street, proposing to find his way to the nearest subway, but he paused, seeing a white Porsche at the curb with the license RR: R. Rubinoff. Parked illegally, it squatted like a white toad with an eye in the top of its head. He walked slowly around it trying to overcome a terrible temptation to do it some kind of violence in return for the anxiety the man had caused him. He was fortunate in the discovery of a beady-eyed youngster in tattered jeans watching him.

"h.e.l.lo, sweetheart," O'Grady said.

She turned her head away.

He stooped and looked into the car. Driving gloves. Naturally. And a clutch of white strings hanging brazenly from the side pocket to advertise a collection of summonses. He caught the man's reflection in the car window as he came prancing out of the gallery. O'Grady didn't know whether to run or stand still.

"You, there, what are you doing?"

"Looking," O'Grady said and stood up to his full height, six foot one. Then he thought, to h.e.l.l with it: they were going to meet later, why not sooner? "I'm O'Grady," he said.

Rubinoff was short and soft, if not fat. He wore a blue silk suit fresh from the cleaner's, but he looked a bit soiled nonetheless. He stared up at O'Grady, furious, his dark, protruding eyes slightly bloodshot. "What are you doing here?"

"Wondering if you'd give me a ride uptown, if that's where you're going."

"We were not to meet until I contacted you."

"I felt responsible for what's in there until your arrival." O'Grady nodded toward the gallery.

"I don't like it. I don't like it at all."

"I didn't like what I seen in there, Mr. Rubinoff. You came near to losing it to the young woman, didn't you?"

"What happened in there is none of your business."

The little street arab came and stood looking up at them from one to the other, hoping no doubt they would come to blows. And people had begun to come out of the gallery.

"Get in," Rubinoff said.

O'Grady went around the car and when Rubinoff opened the door to him he got in backside first and swung his legs in, his knees just clearing the dashboard.

Rubinoff opened the roof vent. He started the motor, revved it a time or two, and took off, bouncing from pothole to pothole. After a couple of blocks he pulled over and stopped. He fastened his seat belt, easing it under his belly. He seemed unable to bring himself to even ask O'Grady where he was going.

O'Grady didn't like him, but he was well aware that without the next step all that had gone before would be for naught. Or worse. "Look, man. We're in this together, no matter who's fore or who's aft. It's true, I wasn't supposed to be there, but it's a lonely business to be on the waiting end of a thing like this, and d.a.m.ned frightening to see how close it came to disaster."

"You simply do not know what you're talking about. If I had moved any sooner, there are people in that crowd who'd have said I was a shill for Maude Sloan, and that unfortunate young fool would not have sold another canvas."

"Are people buying them?"

Rubinoff ignored the question. "I have a reputation for taste. As it is now, Maude thinks I did her a favor. She knows the boy is an atrocious painter."

At least he was talking to him, O'Grady realized. He had never thought much of the pictures himself, but he put that down to his own ignorance. Rubinoff kept riling the motor: the Porsche sounded like a beast growling to be set loose. "I don't think Ginni had a very wide choice, Mr. Rubinoff. And it was to coax Ginni home that her mother agreed to give him the show."

"I know as much as I need to know," Rubinoff said. "I only hope your Ginni has not been too clever for her own good-for the good of all of us."

"Her calculations have worked till now."

"So it would seem." Rubinoff sighed and turned in his seat as though he could finally bear to look at him. "Sean O'Grady, is it?" He offered his hand, a wet sponge that O'Grady wrung lightly.

"Most people call me Johnny. Sean's my professional name."

Rubinoff put the car in motion. "Where do you want to go?"

"I'm going to McGowan's Bar and Grill on Forty-fifth and Ninth, but you can drop me anywhere midtown."

They turned north on Sixth Avenue.