Duma Key

Dario placed a silver champagne bucket on Jimmy's desk. In it, reclining on a bed of crushed ice, was a bottle of Perrier-Jou t. The stuff they were serving in the gallery was good, but not this good. The cork had been recently drawn; there was still faint breath drifting from the bottle's green mouth. "Does this look like trouble?" he asked. "I would have had Alice ask your family in, as well, but the office is too freaking small. Two people who should be here right now are Wireman and Jack Cantori. Where the hell are they? I thought they were coming together."

"So did I. Did you try Elizabeth Eastlake's house? Heron's Roost?"

"Of course," Dario said. "Got nothing but the answering machine."

"Not even Elizabeth's nurse? Annmarie?"

He shook his head. "Just the answering machine."

I started having visions of Sarasota Memorial. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Perhaps the three of them are on their way here right now," Rosenblatt said.

"I think that's unlikely. She's gotten very frail and short of breath. Can't even use her walker anymore."

"I'm sure the situation will resolve itself," Jimmy said. "Meanwhile, we should raise a glass."

" Must raise a glass, Edgar," Dario added.

"Thanks, you guys, that's very kind, and I'd be happy to have a drink with you, but my family's outside and I want to walk around with them while they look at the rest of my pictures, if that's all right."

Jimmy said, "Understandable, but-"

Dario interrupted, speaking quietly. "Edgar, the show's a sell."

I looked at him. "Beg your pardon?"

"We didn't think you'd had a chance to get around and see all the red dots," Jimmy said. He was smiling, his color so high he might have been blushing. "Every painting and sketch that was for sale has been sold."

Jacob Rosenblatt, the accountant, said: "Thirty paintings and fourteen sketches. It's unheard-of."

"But..." My lips felt numb. I watched as Dario turned and this time took a tray of glasses from the shelf behind the desk. They were in the same floral pattern as the Perrier-Jou t bottle. "But the price you put on Girl and Ship No. 7 was forty thousand dollars!"

From the pocket of his plain black suit, Rosenblatt took a curl of paper that had to have come from an adding machine. "The paintings fetched four hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, the sketches an additional nineteen. The total comes to a little over half a million dollars. It's the greatest sum the Scoto has ever taken in during the exhibition of a single artist's work. An amazing coup. Congratulations."

" All of them?" I said in a voice so tiny I could hardly hear it myself. I looked at Dario as he put a champagne glass in my hand.

He nodded. "If you had decided to sell Girl and Ship No. 8, I believe that one alone would have fetched a hundred thousand dollars."

"Twice that," Jimmy said.

"To Edgar Freemantle, at the start of his brilliant career!" Rosenblatt said, and raised his glass. We raised our glasses and drank, not knowing that my brilliant career was, for all practical purposes, at an end.

We caught a break there, muchacho.

iv

Tom Riley fell in beside me as I moved back through the crowd toward my family, smiling and shaking conversational gambits as fast as I could. "Boss, these are incredible," he said, "but they're a little spooky, too."

"I guess that's a compliment," I said. The truth was, talking to Tom felt spooky, knowing what I did about him.

"It's definitely a compliment," he said. "Listen, you're headed for your family. I'll take a hike." And he started to do just that, but I grabbed him by the elbow.

"Stick with me," I said. "Together we can repel all boarders. On my own, I may not get to Pam and the girls until nine o'clock."

He laughed. Old Tommy looked good. He'd added some pounds since that day at Lake Phalen, but I'd read that antidepressants sometimes do that, especially to men. On him, a little more weight was okay. The hollows under his eyes had filled in.

"How've you been, Tom?"

"Well... in truth... depressed." He lifted one hand in the air, as if to wave off a commiseration I hadn't offered. "It's a chemical imbalance thing, and it's a bitch getting used to the pills. They muddy up your thinking at first - they did mine, anyway. I went off them awhile, but I'm back on now and life's looking better. It's either the fake endorphins kicking in or the effect of springtime in The Land of a Billion Lakes."

"And The Freemantle Company?"

"The books are in the black, but it's not the same without you. I came down here thinking I might pitch you on coming back. Then I got a look at what you're doing and realized your days in the building biz are probably done."

"I think so, yeah."

He gestured toward the canvases in the main room. "What are they, really? I mean, no bullshit. Because - I wouldn't say this to very many people - they remind me of the way life was inside my head when I wasn't taking my pills."

"They're just make-believe," I said. "Shadows."