Kisser

13

STONE WALKED FROM EGGERS’ S OFFICE in the Seagram Building, up Park Avenue, and took a left on East Fifty-seventh Street. On the way he pondered his friend’s information about Carrie and decided to discount ninety-five percent of it as the rant of a rejected husband, but he was not entirely sure of which five percent to believe.

His reverie was interrupted when he arrived at the Parsons Gallery, a wide building with a gorgeous Greek sculpture of a woman’s head spotlighted in the center of the window. Stone approached a very beautiful and impossibly thin young woman who was seated at a desk thumbing through a catalogue.

“Good morning. Can I help you?” she asked.

“My name is Stone Barrington. I believe Mr. Parsons is expecting me.”

She consulted a typed list of names on her desk. “Yes, Mr. Barrington,” she said. “Would you take the elevator to the fourth floor?” She pointed. “Someone will meet you.”

Because she was so beautiful, Stone thanked her and did as he was told. He was met on the fourth floor by an equally beautiful but less bony woman in her thirties, he judged.

“Mr. Barrington? I’m Rita Gammage. Good morning. Please come this way.”

Stone followed her down a hallway to an open door, where she left him. Inside the office a man who was talking on the telephone waved him to a chair on the other side of his desk.

Before sitting down, Stone made a slow, 360-degree swivel to look at the walls. He recognized a Bonnard, a Freud, a Modigliani, and two Picassos among the work hanging there. He sat down and turned his attention to the man on the phone.

He appeared to be in his early sixties and was handsome in a tweedy sort of way. He was wearing a cashmere cardigan over a Turnbull & Asser shirt, and he needed a haircut, or, perhaps, he had had it cut in such a way as to seem to need a haircut.

The man hung up and stood, extending his hand. “I’m Philip Parsons,” he said. “I expect you’re Mr. Barrington.”

Stone stood and shook the hand, then sat down again. “It’s Stone, please.” He waved a hand. “I think this is the most extraordinary collection I’ve seen in someone’s office.”

“Thank you,” Parsons said, seeming pleased with the compliment.

“Are these part of your inventory or your own collection?”

“These are all mine,” Parsons said. “Occasionally, I tire of a piece and sell it, but most of these things I bought many years ago, when an ordinary person could still do that.”

Stone wondered how Parsons defined ordinary. “You’re fortunate to have them.”

“Yeesss,” Parsons drawled, but then went quiet.

“Bill Eggers suggested I come and see you,” Stone said unnecessarily, but somebody had to get to the point. “How may I help you?”

Parsons gazed out the window at the facade of the Four Seasons Hotel across the street and finally mustered some words. “I’m sorry if I seem halting,” he said, “but I find it difficult to speak about my daughter.”

“Tell me a little about her,” Stone said.

“She was a beautiful child, looked extraordinarily like her mother, who died when she was six. I’m afraid I may have relied too much on help to raise her.”

“I expect being a single father is difficult,” Stone said.

“Well, I was building this gallery, and it took nearly all of my waking hours traveling, searching for good work; cultivating artists and buyers; evenings spent at openings, my own and others. You seem to have a good eye. Do you know art?”

“My mother was a painter,” Stone said. “I spent a good deal of my youth in museums and galleries.”

“What is her name?”

“Matilda Stone.”

“My goodness, what a fine painter. She’s not still alive, is she?”

“No, she’s been gone for many years.”

“Twice I’ve had paintings of hers to sell, and they both went very quickly. I think I must have asked too little.” He turned and looked at Stone. “Do you have any of her work?”

“I have four oils-village scenes.”

“She was renowned for her Washington Square pieces.”

“Yes, we lived near the square.”

“I’d love to see them some time.”

“I’d be happy to show them to you,” Stone said. “You must come for a drink.”

“Where do you live?”

“I have a house in Turtle Bay.”

“I will make a point of it,” Parsons said, then turned to gaze at the hotel. “Hildy’s troubles began, I suppose, with the onset of puberty. I don’t know if all girls have such a hard time with the transition, but she certainly did. Her grandmother, who never really thought I should have been allowed to raise her, was scandalized, and she found that Catholic school to send her to. It was far too rigid an environment for a free spirit like Hildy, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“How old is Hildy now?” Stone asked, hoping to bring him to the present.

“Twenty-four. She’ll be twenty-five in three months, and she will then have free access to her trust, which came to her from her grandmother through her mother. I fear that three months after that, it will all be gone if she continues to see this man.”

“What is his name?” Stone asked.

Parsons rummaged in a drawer and came up with a single sheet of paper. “Derek Sharpe, with an e,” Parsons said, “né Mervin Pyle, in some squalid border town in Texas, forty-six years ago. No education to speak of; four marriages, three of them wealthy, though not when they were divorced. One of society’s leeches, born to the task-trailer trash with a thin veneer of sophistication. I was appalled when I met him.” He shoved the paper across the desk to Stone.

Stone glanced at it. “May I have this?”

“Yes. It was put together by a fairly seedy private detective for only twelve thousand dollars.”

Stone scanned the document. “He got virtually all of it from the Internet; it cost him less than a hundred dollars. Is the man still on the case?”

“No, something about Mr. Derek Sharpe frightened him, I think. He took his money and ran.”

“You should know that I’m not a private investigator but an attorney,” Stone said. “However, I have access to good people who provide more and better value than this.” He held up the paper.

“Yes. Eggers told me that,” Parsons said.

“What would you like done?” Stone asked, and he steeled himself for the reply.”

“If I could hire you to shoot him in the head, I would,” Parsons said. “Forgive me, I know you’re not in that business, and I would probably shrink from the task, if I met someone who was.”

“Of course.”

“I suppose what I want is for him to go away,” Parsons said, “out of Hildy’s life, never to see her again. But I don’t know how to accomplish that. I’ve thought of trying to buy him off.”

“I think that effort might be fruitless,” Stone said, “unless you offered him a great deal-more than Hildy’s trust fund-and maybe not even then. Does he know about her impending wealth?”

“I’m sure he does,” Parsons said. “Hildy is not the sort to be closemouthed about anything.”

“Perhaps we could begin by my meeting Mr. Sharpe,” Stone said.

“Perhaps so,” Parsons replied. He pushed a card across his desk. “I have an opening this evening on the second floor for a painter named Squires, who is very good. Hildy will be there, and I’m certain Mr. Sharpe will be tagging along.”

Stone stood and put the invitation and the information on Sharpe into a pocket. “Then I’ll come,” he said, “and we’ll see where we go from there.”

The two men shook hands, and Stone departed the gallery. Why, he wondered as he walked home, had most of the women he knew been abused by men?