"It was Nina who figured it out," said Augie Silver.
They were sitting at Clay Phipps's-their home while their own house was being rebuilt. It was a steamy evening at the beginning of July, the air smelled of closed, defeated flowers, and the ceiling fans turned lazily, heavily, seemed at every moment to be winding down. Joe Mulvane, his blue shirt splotched with sweat, leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees. Claire Steiger sat on the sofa with her legs tucked under her; her dandelion hair was round, her face was round, her curled body was relaxed in comfy circles. She was vacationing at the Flagler House, recovering from many disappointments, and yet she seemed serene. Clay Phipps had had his living room painted; gone were the lewd, accusing rectangles where Augie's pictures had been hung; gone with them seemed to be Phipps's penchant for self-blame, the nagging self-disenchantment that led him to do things that were blameworthy.
"Really it was Reuben who figured it out," Nina said. "The way he seemed to know it would come down to that painting."
Augie nodded. There was wonder in his face like the wonder of seeing the full moon lift red and mottled from the Florida Straits. "Yes, that was remarkable," he said. "But the real breakthrough-that was yours."
Joe Mulvane leaned forward a notch farther. "Excuse me," he said, "but I guess the detective's always the last to know: What was the breakthrough?"
Nina paused, savored the moment. She'd gotten younger in the last couple of weeks. Her skin had healed, her husband and her life were safe; she'd been swimming every day and she was full of joy. "You know how it is," she said, "when you lock yourself into a certain way of looking at a problem? The way, after a while, you're stuck with that approach, whether it gets you anywhere or not? Well, we'd been assuming all along that whoever wanted to hurt Augie was trying to drive the prices up, so they could sell. Then, the night of the fire, the timing of Brandenburg's article, it suddenly dawned on me that the plan was to drive the prices down, so they could buy."
" Then sell," put in Clay Phipps.
"At a vast profit," Augie added. "And very soon, so Kip could meet his July first obligations. The choreography had to be quite precise. When Kip set the fire, he timed it so the auction would happen before the news of my death had reached New York. Peter buys low, then I'm dead, and boom, prices go crazy. They turn the pictures over almost immediately."
Mulvane considered. "But at the beginning, with the poison tart-"
"At that point," Augie said, "things were simpler. Kip was working alone then. His plan A was to kill me far enough ahead of the auction so he'd make his money on the pictures Claire had."
The dealer shook her head in self-reproach. "I encouraged him. I'm the one who planted the idea that, handled right, the auction could bring in enough-"
Augie reached over and patted her knee. "Claire, Claire, you're my agent, don't ever blame yourself for jacking up my price… But anyway, when the tart killed Fred instead of me, Kip started getting worried that he was running out of time, that he needed a different strategy. That's when he persuaded Brandenburg to come aboard."
Claire Steiger frowned. "Another thing I did," she said. "Threw the two of them together."
The others let that pass.
"The turquoise ragtop," Nina said. "Kip drove it, but it was rented with Brandenburg's I.D. Brandenburg didn't own paintings, we had no reason to put him on the list of names to check."
"And the picture on the license?" Mulvane said.
"When someone looks as rich as Kip, clerks don't check things very closely," said Claire Steiger. "Besides, there's a more than passing resemblance between them-that same kind of constipated preppy handsomeness. Probably that was part of the attraction."
"Attraction?" said Clay Phipps. "Don't tell me they were an item."
"Oh, God no," said the agent. "Nothing so straightforward as that. But I think there's no question that Kip had him in some crazy kind of thrall. Maybe it was in some way sexual. Probably it was. But who knows what that means between a straight, stiff, married man and a cold-fish eunuch who can't even bear to have a friend pat him on the wrist?"
There was a pause. The ceiling fan turned slowly, heavy air seemed to spiral down from it like something solid. Outside, sagging fronds scratched sleepily against tin roofs.
"I can see it," Claire went on. "Long close talks in the locker room after a good hard game of squash. Kip starts talking about business, about deals-he makes it sound extremely exciting and adventurous, amoral, heroic. I can see Peter being totally mesmerized, aroused in his way, at the idea of dealing with deeds rather than words for a change."
"Not to mention," Augie said, "having Kip bankroll him with borrowed funds so he could finally make some money to go with his clout."
"Yes," said Claire. "I imagine the thrill wears off having one without the other. And if you think about it, Peter and Kip made a formidable team: a critic with an incredible ability to manipulate the market, a wheeler-dealer with an incredible ability to manipulate the critic."
"So say they'd pulled it off," said Joe Mulvane. "What then?"
Claire shrugged. "Peter-who knows? Maybe he'd have run off to Tahiti, the south of France-"
"Maybe he thought," Clay Phipps put in, "that Kip would run off with him."
"He might have thought that," said the agent. "Kip wouldn't be above leading him to think it. But I can't imagine it would've happened. They would've had to hide the partnership, of course. And if Kip had raised enough to buy his way out of bankruptcy, he probably would have had some new stationery printed up and gone back into business."
The mention of bankruptcy made Claire think about her beach house. Her eyes went vague and she stopped talking. But the sadness seemed to pass right through her, she held it no tighter than the sun holds clouds. She'd put herself through this a thousand times and had finally realized, what the hell, it was a wonderful house but it was just a house. She began chatting again as though someone had asked her a question, though no one had.
"And me, I'm starting over. Fresh. The big apartment-gone. The Sagaponack house-gone. I'm moving the gallery to a smaller space, I'm getting rid of all the debt that asshole got me into-"
"But you know, Claire," said Clay Phipps, "some of that debt went for very worthy causes."
"Like?"
The host decided not to mention how much of it had gone toward his own quite affluent retirement. "Like fifty grand of it," he said, "saved Ray Yates's life."
"He paid off Ponte?" asked Joe Mulvane.
Phipps nodded. "After commissions, he came away with forty-five thousand. He paid back the forty he owed-and I think he's already thrown away the extra five. Some people just don't learn."
"Yeah," said Joe Mulvane, "but other people do. Jimmy Gibbs, for one. Maybe I'm a jerk for thinking this, but I think he's really got a shot."
"The deal's done?" Augie asked. "He bought the boat?"
"Made the down payment," said the cop. "Now all he's gotta do is find customers and stay on the wagon."
"Will he?" Nina asked.
"He loves that boat," said Mulvane. "And besides, it's part of the deal that was cut with the car company. He stays sober a year, they'll drop all charges."
Augie shook his head, and said, not without affection, "I never figured Jimmy for a car thief."
"He wasn't one," said Joe Mulvane, "till he gave up believing he'd ever see any money from your painting. Then he got it in his head he owed himself a bunch of cash. Heard about the stolen rent-a-car racket and liked the arithmetic: five grand a car at the loading docks in Jacksonville, a pat on the back and no questions asked."
"How close did he come to going through with it?" asked Clayton Phipps.
"Got about as far as Boca," said Mulvane. "Then he stopped at roadside to pour in some of the extra gas he'd brought-he didn't want to pull into a station and take a chance on getting the tag spotted. That's when he decided he was too old to become a thief. He drove back and confessed."
Augie rubbed his jaw. "Solstice weekend," he said. "The weekend everyone went crazy."
"The weekend Natch went crazy," said Clay Phipps.
"Better crazy than killed," said Joe Mulvane. "To go to Cuban bars in the middle of the night and try to rabble-rouse… Was this guy the last person in the world to figure out there's no more gung-ho American on earth than a refugee Cuban? He comes in and starts sounding like a Communist, like Fidel… He's damn lucky to have landed in a nice cushy private nuthouse and not the morgue." He paused, then added, "But something I don't understand. Supposedly this guy was a struggling poet. How does he end up in such a pricey nuthouse?"
Nina looked at Augie. But Augie didn't want it known that he was funding his deranged friend's treatment. He just said, "Natch isn't a bad person. Just frustrated. Misguided."
"Misguided," hissed Joe Mulvane. He was a homicide cop, he didn't have much use for words that were excuses. "Some are misguided. Some are weak. Or jealous. Or downright evil. You can say some are worse than others, but they kill somebody, dead is dead."
"Fair enough," said Augie. "But I'll tell you something-I'm very grateful for two things. I'm very grateful to be alive, and I'm very grateful it wasn't one of my good friends that was trying to kill me."
"Amen to that," said Clay Phipps.
"And Joe," Nina added, "we're very grateful to you. I'm not sure we've ever thanked you properly for all you did for us."
Joe Mulvane was not especially good at accepting thanks; it was also true that in this instance he believed in his heart that he had utterly failed. "I did nothing for you," he said. "I couldn't prevent an arson, a tragedy…"
The words pushed air out of the room. Eyes stung and for a long moment there was nothing left to breathe. When Augie finally filled his hollow chest it was with the rapture of some great hunger sated, some great gift acknowledged and given thanks for. The air had come to smell of jasmine and dry shells.
"Reuben," Augie said. He said it softly, he shook his head in awe. "What a remarkable person. The only truly unselfish person I have known in all my life."
The remark was aimed at no one, but it made the others squirm.
"He'll be all right?" Claire Steiger asked.
"He'll be all right," said Nina. "He'll have a long recovery, a hard adjustment. But he'll be all right."
There was a silence, a long moment of reflection and regret that could only end in fidgeting and thirst. Clay Phipps cleared his throat and rose. "What say we have some old Bordeaux?"
Augie Silver had remembered how to sweat. He mopped his forehead. "Awfully hot for Bordeaux," he said.
"Awfully damn hot for anything," said Joe Mulvane.
"It is," said Clay Phipps, moving toward the kitchen, "but goddamnit, let's have Bordeaux anyway."