Wallflower

10

Broken

Dreams When he phoned Monika and told her what he'd done, she was startled and also a little angry. "Why did you do that, Frank?" "to unnerve her."

"I understand. But look what happened. You also unnerved yourself." "Yeah, well, I think it was worth it."

"Listen to me." Her voice was urgent. "She's a dangerous woman. What if she comes after you?"

"With an ice pick and a pot of glue? Don't worry about that. She's the most contemptible type of criminal, a coward. There's nothing she can do to me now. Without her hatchet woman, she's impotent."

There was a pause at the other end. "I wonder if you aren't too close to this." "Spare me, please, Monika. You sound like Kit."

"Maybe Kit's right. You despise Beverly Archer, don't you?"

"Let's say I don't like her very much." He paused. "Okay, I despise her," he admitted.

"Is that a healthy way to relate to someone you're trying to prove committed a crime?" "I don't know whether it's healthy, Monika. But I assure you I'm under control. Anyway, there's no law that says I can't have feelings about my work."

"No one objects to your feelings, Frank," she said quietly. "I just don't want to see you hurt yourself over this."

On New Year's Day Aaron called from Cleveland: "Time for you to come out here, Frank."

The next morning, the first workday of the new year, Janek flew to the Midwest. Gray skies, a vast frozen lake, plumes of industrial smoke, a furious late-winter storm. His plane circled Hopkins Airport for three-quarters of an hour. Concerned stewardesses with glossy brows and frozen smiles paced nervously. After numerous unctuous announcements from the captain, the plane started down through impenetrable sleet, an endless descent, it seemed to Janek, until finally, unexpectedly, it landed hard. When it jerked to a stop, the relieved passengers applauded and shook their heads. The captain, face red, collar tight, stood nodding at the door. The collected crew wished everyone a happy New Year, a safe continuing journey, and, in the event Cleveland was the final destination, a most pleasant stay.

Aaron was waiting for him by the gate. He hustled Janek into his rental car, then drove into the city on an elevated highway.

"What kind of town is this?" Janek asked, looking down at gas stations, commercial strips, snow-crusted parking lots, endless blocks of drab gray buildings. Aaron pondered the question. Then he looked up. "Mind if I wax poetic, Frank?" Janek laughed. "Be my guest."

"Cleveland," Aaron intoned sonorously, "is a Rust Belt town of broken dreams." I Janek nodded; he liked that. And staring out the window, he also decided he liked the town. Perhaps because of the deliberate lack of any appliqu6 of glamour, he found it oddly glamorous.

Aaron laid out their schedule. He'd arranged three interviews for the afternoon. In his preliminary meetings with the people he hadn't told them much, just that a lieutenant of detectives was coming from New York to ask them questions about Beverly Archer. The case, he'd told them, was important and at this stage, highly confidential. As there were as yet no indictments, informants had been assured their cooperation would be held in confidence.

Something about the way Aaron was talking signaled Janek that he was holding back. "You find something?"

"Yep." Aaron grinned.

"Going to keep it a secret?"

"I think you're going to be surprised," was all Aaron would say.

Their motel, a standard low, sprawling complex, was situated beside a remote shopping mall. Janek checked in, unpacked his stuff, washed his face, then examined himself in the standard motel-room mirror. His tan, acquired in Mexico, had all but disappeared. What he saw was a middle-aged man in an inexpensive business suit with lines in his forehead and bags beneath his eyes. But he noticed something special about this man. He looks like a guy who doesn't give up. The idea of that made him feel good. He descended briskly to the lobby, then out to the portico.

"Okay, Aaron," he said, getting into the car, "I'm ready. Let's toll."

Their first stop was the Ashley-Bumett School for Girls. they drove awhile, entered a posh suburb of impressive homes, then came to an open gate which Janek at first took to be the entrance to a park. A discreet sign pointed the way down a winding, treelined drive. The campus extended on either side, athletic fields and lavish lawns covered with snow, crisscrossed by wellshoveled paths. Finally the school proper came into view, an impressive vine-covered red-brick building with two extended wings.

"This is one ritzy setup," Aaron aid as he drove into the visitors' lot.

"I didn't know real people sent their kids to joints like this."

As they walked to the administration building, Janek could hear the shrill cries of girls and the scampering of little female feet through the windows of what he took to be the school gym.

"How long did Beverly go here?"

"All twelve grades," Aaron said. "Old Bertha Parce was her high school English teacher." He glanced at Janek. "But later Beverly came back. It was just after she got her Ph.D. She spent a year in Cleveland trying to build up a practice. She was just starting out. Referrals were few and far between. to keep herself busy and make ends meet, she wangled herself a part-time job at her old alma mater as student counselor and school shfink." The headmaster's secretary, a pretty young woman in a naw skirt. asked them if they wouldn't mind waiting a few minutes in the reception area.

Aaron sat on a soft leather couch, while Janek inspected the display of school memorabilia on the walls.

There was a glass case full of trophies, most of them for arcane sports such as field hockey and equestrian dressage. There was an ornately framed wooden plaque emblazoned with the words "Head Girl" and the names of young women, student leaders in their respective years. There were also numerous class photographs. Janek asked Aaron what year Beverly was graduated. Aaron checked his notebook. "Class of '68," he said.

Janek found the picture, inspected it closely. Two dozen girls, all wearing the same school uniform of white blouse and blue and red tartan skirt, were posed in two rows before the main building of Ashley-Bumett.

He discovered Beverly in the second row on the end. She was standing slightly apart from her classmates. There was something separate, distant about her, something slightly alienated in her posture. But her face bore the same half-smile he had come to know so well, the thin-lipped half-smile that said "I have superior knowledge" and "Don't get too close."

"Mr. Bramhall will see you now."

Janek turned. The pretty secretary motioned them toward an inner door. Janek and Aaron followed her across polished parquet floors into a spacious creamcolored office. A handsome man in a beautifully tailored tweed jacket rose from behind an antique partner's desk.

"You must be Lieutenant Janek. I'm Jud Bramhall," he said, extending, his hand.

Janek studied @hini while they made small talk about the brutal Cleveland weather. He and Bramhall, he decided, were about the same aae, but there the resemblance stopped. Bramhall had the patrician good looks and arched eyebrows of an affable old-fashioned WASP politician, the kind that can't get elected in an American city anymore.

He had the same kind of old money voice as Stanton Dorance, a voice that spoke of a fine eastern education and all the privileges attendant thereto.

"Sergeant Greenberg tells me you want a briefing on Bev Archer's sojourn here as school psychologist."

Janek was pleased by Bramhall's crisp announcement that it was time to discuss the matter at hand.

"A certain confidentiality implicit in our relationships with former staff precludes my getting too specific. But after counsulting with our attorney, and based on the gravity of the matter, as explained by the sergeant here, I'm prepared to fill you in on a background-only basis. For anything more than that I'll require a subpoena."

Janek nodded. "That's fine. We're just trying to get a sense of what she was like."

Bramhall pulled a pipe from a rack on his desk, stuffed it with tobacco.

Then he leaned back, a signal he was going to be expansive. Watching him, Janek had the feeling Bramhall would tell his tale well.

"It was a strange thing that happened with Bev…

The events he described occurred in 1977. The school, Bramhall didn't mind admitting now, was then a fairly troubled institution. There were drug problems, student pregnancies, a general breakdown in discipline. Nothing that wasn't going on at other independent schools at the time, but he, Bramhall, had been appointed headmaster only two years before, he was the first male head in the history of Ashley-Bumett, and he was anxious to make innovations and turn the school around. So the idea came to him that a trained psychologist ought to be available to any student needing help. He took it to the board of trustees, the concept was approved, and then someone brought up Beverly Archer's name. She was qualified, she had just gotten her degree, and, best of all, as a fairly young alumna she would be in a position to identify with the particular problems of Ashley-Bumett girls, pertaining to the school and also to their social lives outside.

"We are, after all, a fairly special group." Bramhall finally lit his pipe. "We have minority students, and we hope to recruit more as times goes on. But basically our function is to educate the daughters of Cleveland's older families. I make no apologies for that. Ashley-Bumett is an elite school. We consider ourselves the equal of any young women's academy in the East."

He made this last statement with uncondescending pride, a pride Janek could not help admiring. The man carried the torch for a world he must know was increasing irrelevant, yet he did so without apology.

"That first autumn, when Bev came on board, I thought I'd made a pretty smart move. Here was an intelligent, well-motivated young woman eager to help her old school get back on track. And I have to admit that in the beginning at least things did seem to improve. As troubled kids turned to her for guidance, student and faculty morale tilted up. I got some calls from parents, too, always complimentary. A staff psychologist was a reat idea. Why hadn't we thought of it before?"

But then, Bramhall admitted sadly, the euphoria of autumn began to turn.

The winter term was always the hardest, he said, always the low point of the year. Cleveland's harsh climate was partially responsible. The gray skies and miserable cold forced everyone indoors. Kids caught the flu. Corridors resounded with sniffles and coughs. All educators are familiar with the phenom enon, a species of cabin fever that leads inevitably to a lowering of morale. But that particular winter, the winter of '78, seemed worse than usual. There was something indefinably miserable in the air. Bramhall, naturally concerned, called a number of staff meetings. Beverly, he remembered, kept fairly quiet. At the time he attributed that to shyness; she was new to the school and possibly intimidated by older staff. Then one weekend in late February disaster struck. A senior girl, a very popular one, too, hanged herself at home.

The suicide turned what had been a very dark winter term into a totally black one. In such a situation extensive counseling was called for, and Beverly seem to rise to the occasion. But then, ten days later, a second girl hanged herself, this time in the school gym. Her dangling body was discovered by a group of eighth graders, all of them deeply traumatized by the sight. And then the truth came out. Two other girls came forward and admitted to the existence of a "suicide club." Bramhall moved quickly to break it up.

"I still don't know exactly what it was about," he said, relighting his pipe. "Were the two hangings actually suicides or the result of a strange sex practice called autoerotic asphyxia that was then finding its way into various Ohio schools? But what did come out-and to me this was the most shocking aspect of the whole affair-was that not only had the two dead girls been seeing Bev Archer for counseling, but other members of the 'club,' in fact, a majority of them, had been seeing her as well. I want to make something clear. There was an understanding that if a girl wanted to see the quote school shrink unquote, she was under no obligation to tell anyone, nor would Bev report the consultation to either the school or the girl's parents.

Total confidentiality was to apply; that was the whole idea. But I never expected Bev would take the ruleso literally, especially after a girl who was in her charge took her own life. When I found out that both dead girls had been her patients, I couldn't believe my ears. The way it looked, Bev was the common thread in the affair. Bramhall angrily tapped his pipe against the top of his desk. "She might as well have been that damn suicide club's faculty adviser." Janek could see that the shock of that revelation had still not abated, even after so many years.

"Bev was quite broken up by the suicides, of course. 'My fault,' she told me. 'Those girls were in my care, and I let them down.' She wept a lot and beat her breast. I felt she was sincere. But still, with her arrival, it seemed something almost… evil entered Ashley-Bumett. Well, whether she was responsible or not, I couldn't countenance her not keeping me informed. She clearly wasn't up to the job. I told her to take leave and that at the end of the term I'd have to let her go, as, of course, I did…

Bramhall fell silent for a time. Then he opened a file folder on his desk and removed a sheet of paper. "That spring Bev left Cleveland and moved to New York to start her career again. A couple of years later I received a letter from a Dr. Carl Drucker at a psychiatric hospital in Derby, Connecticut. He wrote that Bev had given my name as a reference and asked if I could recommend her for a part-time staff position."

Bramhall handed Janek the sheet he'd been holding. "Here's a copy of my response. I'm ashamed to admit it. Lieutenant. but as you can see. I recommended her."

As they followed a freshly shoveled path back to the visitors' parking lot, they ran into a group of AshleyBurnett students walking the other way. The girls, redcheeked, bundled in goose down coats, their tartan hats powdered lightly with snow, smiled demurely as they passed.

"Aren't they gorgeous!" Aaron exclaimed. "Aren't they the healthiest-looking kids!"

Janek nodded. The girls did indeed look healthy. The thought that Beverly Archer had brought her sickness into this academic Eden filled him with a sad and poignant fury.

Back in the car they didn't talk much. Bramhall's tale spoke for itself. Now they knew about two more young lives Beverly had screwed up. How many others, Janek wondered, could there be?

Aaron's next stop was a handsome slate-roofed, stuccowith-inset-timbers house on the edge of Shaker Heights.

"Beverly's kid sister's place," Aaron explained, as he parked in front.

"Mildred Archer, now Mildred Archer Cannaday. Nice gal. Very informal. Two teenage kids. Local tennis champ. Call her Millie, Frank; she likes that. Her husband's a big shot cardiologist."

Millie Cannady looked so different from her sister that at first Janek couldn't believe that they were siblings. He was persuaded only when he heard Millie speak; then he recognized Beverly's accent.

Millie was a tall, robust, handsome woman in her mid-thirties who moved with the light, liquid grace of an athlete. In certain ways she reminded Janek of Fran Dunning: her relaxed, friendly manner, so unlike the tense guardedness he'd observed in Beverly, and the straightforward way she made eye contact. But above all, there was a pervading aura of good health and of being comfortable within. After only two minutes in her presence, Janek knew that Mildred Archer Cannaday was not and never had been a wallflower. The interview took place in a gracious, wellproportioned sunken living room with tall leaded windows at either end. French doors led out to a terrace with a view over a park behind the house. The furnishings consisted of twin chintz-upholstered couches, dark wood side tables, old-fashioned lamps, framed family photos displayed on the top of a baby grand piano, and fine Oriental rugs spread on a polished chestnut floor. Janek felt he was in the home of successful well-adjusted people, so unlike the effect of Beverly's minimalist office and her medieval bedchamber, dominated by the shrine to her mother.

When finally they settled down and Aaron brought up Beverly's name, Millie Cannaday sadly shook her head.

"Poor Bev. Such a miserable, unhappy woman. When I think of what she could have been… It's been a pretty long time since the two of us have really talked. It's not that we've become estranged. It's just that in the last few years she's become so weird. Oh, we exchange Christmas cards and call each other on our respective birthdays, and she usually remembers my kids' birthdays, too, and sends them a little check, four dollars or something ridiculous like that. I think last year she actually sent each of them five."

Millie's eyes twinkled. "It isn't that she's stingy, you understand. Bev can't help herself She was always tight, ungiving, retentive-isn't that the word? Well, I'm no psychologist, Lieutenant. I don't know the terminology. But I do know what happened to my sister and whose fault it was. Our mother's. Mama was the one who ruined Bev's life."

As Millie Cannady launched into an extended monologue, Janek could feel the interview slipping into the kind of deeply felt reminiscence by which a speaker dredges up old memories and purges conflicts from his past.

"It's sad to say. But I'm afraid it's just that simple. Our mother was a totally self-centered person. Oh, she was beautiful. Everyone thought so. 'Victoria Archer's the most beautiful woman in Cleveland,' people used to say. And talented. Mama was very talented. At her height she was probably the best nightclub singer in town. With the right kind of luck she might have gone on to become a national star. God knows, she had the ambition for it, but I think underneath she was afraid of going up against the best. So she stayed out here, a nice enough place, as I'm sure you've noticed, Lieutenant. We actually have it pretty good in Cleveland. Great orchestra. World-class art museum. Fine university. But still, it's Cleveland, isn't it?" Millie's eyes twinkled again. "We can get pretty defensive about that. We don't like it when our town gets a cheap laugh on a talk show or when someone calls it the mistake on the lake with a knowing little sneer. Mama always said she hated it here. Funny, isn't it, that she stayed here her entire life? She was born here. And this is where she died."

She herself, Millie said, proceeding with her saga, had happily managed to escape her mother's domination.

"I was lucky. I broke away. I didn't need Mama so much, so I was able to stand up to her and make my break. But Bev couldn't do that. She needed Mama desperately. And so she got her, perhaps more of her in the end than she ever bargained for. I think Bev paid an awful price for her need. Mama used her terribly. She twisted and distorted whatever possible chance at happiness Bev might have had. I'll say it again because I believe it's true. Victoria, our mother, truly ruined Bev's life."

There was, Millie said, a kind of bizarre "contract" between her older sister and her mother, a contract which, although unspoken, was as binding and as forceful as if it had been cut in stone. Its basic terms were starkly simple: Victoria would live her life to the hilt, laugh, be beautiful, glamorous, thin, successful, and, most important, a sexually active and satisfied woman. Beverly, on the other hand, would be depressed, unhappy, plain, mousy, fat, mediocre, and asexual so as never to compete. And as in any personal services contract, there was a schedule of compensation: In return for not competing with her mother, Beverly would be "loved." "It was a real lousy deal," Millie said. "The love Bev got was second-rate. Because the only person Mama was capable of loving was-yeah, you guessed it, Mama."

Millie excused herself. When she returned a few minutes later, it was with a tray, several glasses, bottles of beer, and a bowl of nuts.

"Have you met Bev, Lieutenant?"

Janek nodded. "I interviewed her a couple of times."

"How did she strike you?"

"Unhappy, plain, asexual-pretty much the way you just described."

"Well, you may find this hard to believe," Millie said, "but she was quite handsome as a girl. Still, I bet it's been twenty years since she's had a date. See, the more time she spent with Mama, the fatter and plainer she got. Then, when she dyed her hair red, it came out blah rather than glossy like Mama's. When they'd stand together near the end of Mama's life, they looked more like sisters than even Bev and me. Mama had had her face lifted several times, and Bev had really let herself go. Beautiful Vicky and drab Bev-the Archer girls. God!" Millie believed that even though Bev worshiped their mother, she at times also hated her for imposing the awful contract. But every time Bev tried to break away, Victoria would pull her back.

"Can you imagine?" Millie asked. "Can you imagine how wasteful and stupid it is to allow your mother to rule your life?"

It was a rhetorical question, Janek realized; he made no effort to respond to it.

"I think that was Bev's tragedy," Millie said, "that she had a chance to live for herself, and in the end she wasted it."

Their father, Jack Archer, had been a distant figure. He and Victoria had married young and split up early, just after Millie was born. Jack, an engineer, had moved to Chicago, remanied, and started a second family. The girls had had very little contact with him, though Victoria had received substantial child support. Both girls were bright and had no trouble getting into Ashley-Bumett.

Meantime, Victoria launched her career as a singer. Her success was instantaneous.

"Mama had an excellent voice. She was an accomplished singer. But there's plenty of good singers around. What Mama had that was extra was her incredible style. She could take a standard, a song everyone knew, and dramatize it, make it passionate. She knew how to reach people, put a song across. The glamorous nightclub singer-that was her public face. But there was so much more to her than what she showed her fans. Behind all the beauty and glamour there was one very hard-boiled lady. She was a great injustice collector, you know.

Cross her and she'd never forgive. She had a kind of personal code, the gist of which went something like: If someone wrongs you, don't ever forget it. Nurse your anger and your hurt until it turns to bitterness and hate. But (and this was probably her most important tenet) never, never let your hatred show."

Millie sat back on the couch, her arms hanging limply. She had expended great energy describing her sister and mother; now she seemed exhausted.

Janek decided it was time to focus the interview. "Could Bev have inherited your mother's code?"

"Possibly." Millie smiled. "Oh, hell! I've told you this much. Why not the rest? Sure, she inherited it. Mama taught it to her. It became her code, too, for God's sakes."

In the last few years of her life Victoria started going mad. At least Millie thought she did. Beverly did not agree. For all her sister's background in psychology, her training and experience as a therapist, she refused to see what was obvious to all Victoria's friends-namely, that the singer was being eaten up by her hate.

"Eight years ago, when Mama died suddenly of a stroke, she was only fifty-five years old. But in the last five years of her life she carried on sometimes like a lunatic. At the lounge she'd be fine, her glamorous self. But in the afternoons before work she'd lie out on the chaise in her living room at the Alhambra Hotel, ranting and raving at the world. Out of nowhere she'd bring up someone's name, an old ]over maybe or someone else she thought had done her wrong. Then she'd start in.

Curses, pronouncements, spiteful value judgments. 'He's a pfick.'

'She's a shit.' That kind of vulgar talk. And when she said something like that, it was usually about someone who really hadn't done anything particularly wrong. A man might have forgotten to send flowers, or one of her girlfriends might have forgotten to return a call. Trivial offenses to which she had these ludicrous reactions.

It was truly awful to listen to. Meantime, there was Bev flying in from New York practically every weekend, rushing over to Mama's, listening to all her garbage, taking it all in, nodding her agreement.

Sometimes Bev would stop by to see me afterwards. 'Isn't Mama wonderful!' she'd say. 'Aren't we lucky to have such a talented and brilliant ma!' God! The sick way she worshiped that woman, the weird way they fed off each other's madness." Millie peered straight into Janek's eyes. "I guess by now you know that's what I think: that Bev got as crazy as Mama in the end…

The time had come, Janek thought, to put some tough questions to Millie.

"Did your sister ever have a run-in with a teacher at Ashley-Bumett?"

Millie smiled. "Sure. An old spinster English teacher. She was my teacher, too."

"Bertha Parce?" Aaron asked.

Millie nodded. "I'm amazed you know her name."

"What about two men named MacDonald-did she ever have any trouble with them?" "Jimmy and Stu MacDonald? You call them men! they were just boys when I knew them. I think they moved east. That's what I heard anvwav." "What happened?" "God oniv kno%,t-s. lt'*'hate%@er it was. Bev v%-as sensitive about it. Whenever their names came up, she'd start to act real antsy, then try and change the subject."

"Cynthia Morse?"

"Her roommate at Bennington. Yeah, they had a big falling-out. But I don't understand- Lieutenant." Millie smiled curiously. "How do you know about all of these people?"

"Let's hold off on that for now. I want to ask you about some others." Millie nodded. "Do the names Laura and Anthony Scotto fing a bell?" "I don't think so. No."

Janek glanced at Aaron. "What about Wexler-Carla and Robert Wexler?"

Millie shook her head. Then she stopped shaking it. "Wait a minute!

There was a Bobby Wexler."

Aaron smiled slightly. "Who was he?"

"A musician. Mama's accompanist one summer. There were so many of those guys. She went through them pretty fast. But I remember Bobby. It was the summer Mama sang at Cavendish. He was practically a kid. Actually I think he and Mama were involved. She usually screwed her piano players. That's probably why she tired of them so fast. "

"Do you think you'd recognize this Bobby Wexler if you saw him again?"

"I might," Millie said.

Aaron showed her a photograph of the Wexler fwnily taken several months before they were slaughtered. Millie studied it. "Yeah, that's him," she said. "It's been years, but the smile's the same, the old lecherous smile." She looked up at Janek. "Yeah, it's him, I'm sure. Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?"

"While you're at it, show her the picture of the Scottos," Janek gently instructed Aaron.

Aaron showed Millie the picture. they both watched as she studied it. "I may have seen the woman," Millie said. "What's her first name again?" :,Laura." 'And she was married to this guy?" Aaron nodded. "Do you know her maiden name?"

Aaron checked his notebook. "Laura Gabelli."

Millie nodded. "I may have seen her. Around Tufts University, I think. Bev transferred there from Bennington. Did you know about that?" they didn't know. Millie filled them in. It was after the big falling-out with Cynthia Morse. Bev took a year off, came back to Cleveland, took a job as an aide at a psychiatric hospital, then for the next two years attended Tufts, where she majored in psychology. After that she moved back to Cleveland to et her doctorate at Western Reserve.

"Do you know of any falling-out she might have had with this Laura Gabelli?" Aaron asked.

"No. But it wouldn't surprise me. Just like Mama, Bev had fallings-out with damn near everyone." Millie paused. "Look, guys-all these questions about the two of them, then all these old names of people Bev didn't like. You're scaring me a little bit. I think the time's come for you to explain."

She looked to Janek, then to Aaron, and then back to Janek again. There was something so open and vulnerable about her that Janek was hesitant to fill her in. But he knew he had to. He owed her that, and he could see that she was the kind of person who'd rather know the truth, no matter how harsh, then be lied to or kept in the dark.

"Bertha Parce, the MacDonalds, Cynthia Morse an her two daughters, the Wexler family, and the Scotto family all had one thing in commofi," he said. "they all were murdered within the past fourteen months by a woman named Diana Proctor, who also happened to be your sister's patient."

Millie, mouth partly open, gazed at Janek. For a moment she appeared to be relieved. Then, abruptly, she sat up, as if the implications of what he'd said had hit her like a blow.

"But you don't really think-! I mean, you couldn't possibly believe-!" Her forehead creased; her pupils dilated. "You think Bev had something to do with… that Bev may have directed-?" And then: "You do think that, don't you? Yes, I see you do." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh, my God!" Millie Cannaday began to scream. Her shrieks of anguish echoed through the house. they stayed with her until she calmed down. Then Janek explained to her that yes, Beverly was a suspect, although so far no more than that.

He and Aaron had come to Cleveland, he explained, on account of the portrait of her mother, which they'd seen in Beverly's bedroom. Certain objects, taken from the homicide victims, had been arranged in what seemed to be votive offering style before the painting. Thus the question arose as to whether Victoria Archer had in some way been the inspiration for the Wallflower murders. Janek readily admitted that such a theory must seem farfetched; he was certainly not prepared to tell Millie her sister was a murderess. Still, the case remained open. By the way, did Millie know anything about the portrait?

"The full-length one of Mama in her red dress? Sure, I know about it. A man named Peter Aretzsky painted it about twelve years ago.

It took up a whole wall of Mama's bedroom."

"Your sister inherited it?" Millie smiled. "Bev wanted that picture something awful. That, Mama's red dress, her miniature piano, and her big old four-poster bed." Millie rolled her eyes. "Bev always had her eye on the picture. She loved it, said it showed Mama the way she really was. Which is pretty funny… considering. You see, there's a story behind that painting." Millie turned to Aaron. "Are you taking him to see Melissa Walters?" Aaron nodded. "Ask her about the painting, Lieutenant. She can fill you in about that and a lot of other stuff. She was Mama's best friend..

. if in fact, Mama ever had one."

"Shit! She knew Bobby Wexler and Laura Scotto. That's proof she lied to us, Frank. So we got her, don't we?" Aaron hit the steering wheel with delight. "I'm starting to feel good about this case." they were back in their rental car, driving to their final appointment of the day. The snow had stopped falling. Although it was only four-thirty, the sky was already turning dark.

Janek wasn't sure that proof of Beverly's lies quite meant that they'd "got her." But he did think it might be enough to persuade Kit to grant them more time. So far the trip to Cleveland was working out.

Now how the hell am I going to get a confession? he wondered.

The lobby of the Alhambra Residential Hotel was a Moorish fantasy, a pastiche of thick walls, Arab col umns, C6rdoba arches, a central courtyard embracing a fountain, and a rectangular tiled pool stocked with carp.

Built in the late 1920s as a luxury establishment, the hotel was so well constructed that even now, after years of wear, it still emitted an aura of luxury and class. Palms planted in large teffa-cotta pots occupied the comers. Ceiling fans,- still now that it was winter, stood poised to whirl and cool perspiring guests. A creaking elevator, paneled in mahogany and trimmed with brass, took them to the fifth floor. Here they followed a corridor, one side open to the courtyard, until they reached the door to Melissa Walters's suite.

A short old lady opened up, a lady who clearly did not wish her visitors to find her old. Her hair was blued, her forehead was powdered, her cheeks were rouged, her eyebrows were drawn, and her lips were waxed bright scarlet. Melissa Walters showed the soft smile and refined social mannerisms of another era.

It was so exciting to meet real live detectives! Would the gentlemen like something to drink? Port? Sherry? She had some fine old Madeira@ould she tempt them with that? And she had taken the liberty of ordering in some prepared cana@s, as well as a good selection of cookies from Damons, Cleveland's finest bakery.

Melissa Walters settled into her favorite chair.

Oh, yes, she remembered Vicky Archer. My goodness, they'd been the best of friends! Impossible to forget her. A great entertainer, a great personality. She'd been the life of this city for a time. Had the gentlemen been to the Fairmount Club Lounge? Perhaps they should go down there and take a look. Not that the place was anything now but a shadow of its former self. Still, at one time, not too long ago either, the lounge had been Cleveland's premier night spot and Vicky Archer had been its most glittering star. But please forgive her. She was rambling; she knew she was. She apologized for that. She had so few visitors these days, most of her friends having passed away. Vicky had been one of the first. It was tragic the way she died so suddenly and so young. They'd been confidantes even though she, Melissa, was fifteen years Vicky's senior.

Oh, they'd had some great times together, wonderful times…

What? What was that they were asking? The painting, Aretzsky's painting? Of course, she remembered it! She'd seen it practically every day. Whenever she visited Vicky's suite, just two doors down the hall. A story? Oh, yes, there was a story about that picture, a scandal if they wanted to know the truth. Oh, they did, did they? What sly devils they were! Well, certainly, she'd tell them about it. In fact, it would be a pleasure. But would the gentlemen take a glass of Madeira first…?

Janek and Aaron accepted her glasses of Madeira. they even licked their lips over her delicate canap6s and grinned foolishly as they nibbled on her tasty little cookies. Anything to keep the old lady talking.

Janek, who'd conducted thousands of interviews over the course of his career, recognized that Melissa Walters was a potential gold mine of information. If there was a secret about Beverly and Victoria, a secret even deeper than what he and Aaron had managed to dig up so far, this lady might reveal it if she were handled carefully enough. The way she sang Victoria Archer's praises suggested a profound ambivalence.

He had picked up on undertones of anger, envy, even dislike.

"Aretzsky! Ha!" Melissa's scarlet painted lips parted in a smile. "He was smitten by her, of course. Utterly smitten! He would come around the lounge every night just to see her, watch her move, listen to her sing, perhaps be so fortunate as to be the recipient of one of her ravishing smiles. He was an excellent painter as it happened, probably Cleveland's best. But so temperamental! He'd refuse to paint a person he didn't like. He lost out on a lot of lucrative corporate work on account of that little peccadillo. Still, Aretzsky was your first choice if you wanted your portrait done. That's how he got Vicky's attention… although he didn't hold it very long." Melissa asked if she could refresh their drinks.

When they shook their heads, she shrugged and poured herself a double.

"I remember the night Aretzsky presented her with some drawings, quick little sketches he'd made of her right there in the lounge. She liked them, of course. She was no fool. And when he told her he wanted to paint her in oil, big, life size, maybe even bigger than life size, she certainly did not refuse him although she may have pretended to waver a little bit. Well, then he had her; at least he thought he did, the idiot! She began going to his studio to sit every afternoon. That dreary dump he lived in, near the lounge down at Camegie and One Hundred Fourth, up four flights to a big, undusted room with his easel and messy paints at one end and his awful, smelly unmade bed at the other. they made love on that bed, of course.

Vicky always knew how to inspire a man! I know he made nude sketches of her. She showed them to me once. But the big painting was the thing. Vicky in her red dress surrounded by a halo of reddish light. That's how they always lit her down at the lounge, you see. Oh, he made her look terrific-vibrant, bursting with energy and life. She was always glamorous, but he doubled her glamour. He idealized her. It was a picture painted by a lover. You couldn't look at it and fail to see that."

Melissa spread her arms. "Poor Aretzsky! That ugly, little, shrunken waif of a man with his bad skin and little wisp of a mustache@id he really think he was good enough to hold the interest of the Great Victoria Archer? Poor idiot! She ditched him, of course, soon as she got her mitts on his painting. Then he was hearthroken, or perhaps worse-a man destroyed. He started to become a nuisance, too. Long, reproachful, beseeching stares at the lounge. Silent phone calls to her suite in the middle of the night. He must have sent her fifty letters drenched in tears. She didn't bother to open them; just a glance at the envelopes and she'd toss them in the trash. I remember seeing him hanging around the stage door at the lounge or here, in front of the Alhambra, hoping to beg a precious moment of her time.

And of course, the deeper he humiliated himself, the more disgusted she became, and the greater her disgust, the more cruelly she behaved. For make no mistake about it, gentlemenVicky Archer could be a real bitch!"

But, Melissa explained, there was a second act to the story, the scandal that arose later on. Aretzsky, hearthroken, disdained and scorned, turned bitter and took to drink. And, as is so often the case, the excesses of his infatuation were equaled by the intensity of his disillusionment. After several months, unable to rid himself of his obsession, he began work on a second portrait of Victoria far different from the first. It was the same size: enormous. She was in the same pose: singing. She wore the same clothes and jewelry: her diamond necklace and scarlet dress. But there the resemblance stopped.

Instead for the heroic, idealized features he had painted the first time around, the features in the second picture were deeply characterized. That second,portrait, painted out of hearthreak and bitterness, purported to show her as she really was: spiteful; selfish; mean.

"I have to hand it to Aretzsky," Melissa said. "He caught something, no question about that. It wasn't the face Vicky showed the world, but it was a face I'd seen a couple of times when she was off her guard. Maybe it wasn't the real Vicky, but it did show a hidden side of her, particularly around the eyes and mouth. Aretzsky put everything he felt into it. It was truly a picture informed by hate. That's what people who saw it said. And people did see it!

Aretzsky saw to that! He had a show at the Howard French Gallery at Shaker Square, and his big new picture of Vicky was the first thing you saw when you walked in.

"Well, she was furious! Who can blame her? Still, I think if Aretzsky's second portrait hadn't contained a certain amount of recognizable truth, she might have been able to laugh it off. But the way she went around expressing her outrage only made people eager to see it for themselves. And when they did, they began to talk.

People were fascinated. The subject came up at dinner parties:

Which picture showed the true Vicky, the first or the second? There were people who even reread that old Oscar Wilde story The Picture of Dorian Gray and then expounded on the parallels. And there was talk, too, that ugly though the second picture was, it was also, because of its passion, Aretzsky's greatest work. I remember Vicky coming in here at the time, sitting in the very chair you're sitting in now, Lieutenant, looking at me, shaking her head. 'Oh, Lisa'-she always called me that-'why did I ever let him paint me in the first place?' Why?"

Melissa turned to Janek, widened her eyes. Clearly she reveled in the effect of her tale.

"The answer, of course, was her insatiable vanity, which Aretzsky was more than happy to requite. But she didn't really want to know the answer to her question, so I kept my thoughts to myself. She did, however, try to do something about that second picture. She approached certain of her wealthy admirers and begged them to buy the portrait so she could have the pleasure of seeing it destroyed. From what I understand some fairly substantial offers were actually made. But no matter how much he was offered, Aretzsky refused. The man simply wouldn't sell. And why should he? Think about it. That picture was his revenge. You don't sell out your revenge, do you, Lieutenant? At least not if you feel wronged the way Aretzsky did…"

Peter Aretzsky, as it turned out, died just a year after Victoria Archer. In Melissa's judgment, he never recovered from his obsession with the singer. The second portrait? Melissa had no idea where it was. The scandal subsided long before Vicky died.

Wasn't it always like that? Melissa asked. People couldn't get enough of something, gossiped about it endlessly, then, a year later, wondered why they ever cared.

"Bev? Of course, I remember Bev. She's a psychoanalyst in New York, isn't she? Oh, just a therapist. Well, it's all the same to me. I don't know much about that kind of thing, but I know Vicky did a real job on the girl. The way she scampered around after her beloved 'Mama' like there was an invisible leash and collar around her neck! You had to wonder what she got out of it. The honor of being Vicky Archer's daughter, I suppose. Still, everyone thought it was pretty peculiar, but no one dared say a word. 'Oh, Bev's just going through an awkward stage right now'-that's what Vicky would say if you gingerly brought the matter up. A 'stage'! 'Right now'!

You had to laugh! Vicky kept Bev awkward from the day she was born.

I sometimes wondered if she kept her that way to make herself look better by contrast. Because, you know, the other daughter, Millie, wasn't drab at all. That's the way it is sometimes: One daughter serves the mother while the other strikes out on her own. I've seen it happen again and again. I just hope Bev has straightened herself out. Sometimes you can't do that, you know. You get twisted, and then, after the person who twisted you passes away, it's to late to change and have a normal life… 11 Janek decided to let her ramble on. Better that she reminisce at random, he thought, and add her little homilies about life than for him to question her too closely about Beverly and then be forced to explain why he was interested.

"How good a singer was Vicky Archer? You're really putting me on the spot, Lieutenant. Let's just say she was very good. Did you know she was on network TV once? The Carson show, I think. After that she played a club date in New York. But she wasn't quite good enough to make it there, so she came back here, where she could be sure she'd always be a star. And for a few years, at least, she had this city at her feet. Well, maybe I exaggerate. But you have to understand, the Fairmount Club Lounge, where she hung out and sang, was a kind of mecca for a number of us. Vicky was a goddess there."

Melissa shook her head. "If I close my eyes"-she closed them-"I can still see her standing in that cone of red light they always put on her, sultry, sexy, her hair red like a flame, crooning those great old songs, 'Black Coffee,' 'My One and Only Love,' 'Don't Smoke in Bed."' Melissa opened her eyes again. "So, how good was she? Still want to know? Let's say she was Cleveland's answer to Peggy Lee. But let's face it, even at its height the Fairmount Club Loun e was no Pe 9 rsian Room. Cleveland just isn't New York, is it? I'm afraid not," Melissa added crisply, a ripe smile signifying a slightly mean satisfaction at finally being able to pin her old friend a little lower on the board of talent than perhaps old Vicky would have liked.

It was past seven when they got back to their motel. Aaron, who'd bought a Cleveland restaurant guide and had been eating his way through it since the day he'd arrived in town, wanted to try a highly recommended Chinese restaurant in a shopping center not far away. they drove there, ordered dinner, but didn't like it much. Every single dish was sweet.

Back at the motel Janek watched TV for a while, then went to bed. At 1:00.k.m. he was awakened by his phone. It was Melissa Walters. She sounded slightly frantic and very drunk.

"Sorry to wake you, Lieutenant, but I had to call. Something's been preying on me ever since you left. Then, when I phoned Millie Cannaday and found out why you're here, I just couldn't rest easy until we spoke." was she a crazy old lady, or did she really have something for him?

"About what?" Janek asked.

"About Bev. I don't think anyone else knows it except for me.

Anyone else living, that is."

"Knows what?"

"It has to do with her being a wallflower. It's a terrible thing, Lieutenant. I'd rather not discuss it on the phone if you don't mind."

She suggested he join her for breakfast the following morning at a coffee shop around the corner from the Alhambra. She would explain everything then, she promised. Again she apologized for waking him up.

He had Aaron drop him off, feeling this was one interview he might handle better on his own. Melissa Walters was waiting for him, ahrady sipping coffee. No powder, eye shadow, lipstick, or rouge was on her face that day. It was a ravaged old lady who sat across from him. Two plastic place mats, doubling as breakfast menus, decorated the table, along with a single rose lying on a dainty plate.

Janek ordered toast and coffee. Then he turned to Melissa.

"Well?" he asked.

"There was something Vicky told me once, back years ago. She was drunk when she said it. I'm sure she didn't remember afterwards."

Melissa paused. "It was a terrible thing, Lieutenant. A truly terrible thing…"

It concerned the two MacDonald boys, Stuart and James. The brothers, it seemed, had had some kind of crush on Victoria. they came around to the lounge all the time, gazed at her intently, mesmerized by the way she sang. Vicky always liked young men, liked their fresh young bodies, but the MacDonalds, still in their teens, were too young even for her.

Still, Vicky was not a woman to waste a pair of infatuated boys. She'd been worried about Beverly at the time, feeling the girl was socially retarded, too shy with males, frightened even by the notion of sex. Her prescription for that was simple. "All Bev needs is a really good lay," Vicky said.

In the end that was how she decided to employ the MacDonaids: as studs to initiate Beverly into the rites and rituals of physical love.

"to use a couple of kids enamored of you to get your own daughter hot and bothered-it was a rotten idea, and I think deep down Vicky knew it was." Melissa shook her head. She seemed highly disturbed by her story, a sign to janek that it was probably true. "But once she got the notion into her head, she couldn't let it go. I don't know what happened exactly, except that there was a formal dance and she chose that occasion to sic the boys on to Bev. The whole thing went sour, as it was bound to do. First, there were two of them, which was crazy on its face. And second, the MacDonaids were just a pair of horny kids, not to mantic at all. they made some kind of crude, clumsy pass, Bev got hysterical (at least that's what the boys reported to Vicky; Bev apparently never said a word), and the end result was just the opposite of what Vicky intended. Instead of learning what sex was about and how great it could be, Bev discovered it was horrible and never wanted to engage in it again.

"When Vicky told me what she'd done, she was practically in tears. She'd botched it, she admitted, and now she didn't know how to make things right. Even now I can remember her words: 'I didn't want her to be a goddamn wallflower, Lisa. Now I'm afraid that's what she's going to be."' That was what Melissa wanted Janek to know. She probably wouldn't have thought of it if Millie Cannaday hadn't mentioned that the MacDonalds had been murdered and their sex organs glued up by Beverly's patient. Then, when Millie mentioned the wallflower signature, the pieces just fell together in Melissa's mind. As he listened, Janek couldn't help feeling sickened by the tale even as he was exhilarated by the knowledge that he had finally found a motive for a least one set of Wallflower killings. He thanked Melissa, paid the breakfast check, and went out to walk the cold, windy streets of Cleveland Heights.

He wandered aimlessly. The story haunted him. Everything about it rang true-except for Victoria Archer's tears. He could give no credence to her regrets. On the basis of everything he'd learned about the woman, he believed she probably did want Beverly to be a wallflower, and that was the real reason she'd set her daughter up.

Monika would understand, Janek thought. She would analyze it clearly.

She'd say that although Victoria may have thought she was sorry about the outcome, deep down in her subconscious she was pleased by it. Very pleased.

So Beverly had sent Diana Proctor out to kill and glue the MacDonalds in revenge for what they'd done to her after a dance years before. And the two toothbrushes Diana had brought back as trophies to be offered up to the image of Victoria on the wall-were they the symbols of the brothers' sex organs, sources of their mutual offense?

It was vile and sick, Janek thought, and also totally wrong. For, even if one believed in revenge, it was not the MacDonalds who deserved to be glued. It was Marna. That, Janek thought, was the ultimate irony in the whole grotesque and monstrous affair- that Beverly, the avenging wallflower, should have offered up trophies to the very woman who caused her to become a wallflower in the first place.

Janek made his way down to the University Circle area, then phoned Aaron at the motel. While he waited to be picked up, he was struck by a powerful idea. He pulled back from it; it seemed too perfect. Then he slowly brought it out again, rotated it, examined it, looked at it from every side. Perhaps, he thought, there was a way to break Beverly, induce her to confess.

There they were, two Manhattan cops in a strange Midwestern city, looking for a picture painted by an artist who had died seven years before.

"How do we find it? We go classic, Frank," Aaron said. And that's just what he did.

Although it was a textbook example of investigative work, later Janek would marvel at the elegance and speed with which Aaron brought it off.

He went straight to the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, where, after some mild flirting with one of the clerks, he obtained the estate file for Peter Aretzsky. Aretzsky's sole heir and executrix turned out to be one and the same person, his sister, a Mrs. Nadia Malkiewicz, who, as it happened, was conveniently listed in the Cleveland telephone directory. Aaron called her. Yes, she was Peter Aretzsky's sister. Yes, she had inherited all his unsold work. Yes, she had the big picture of Victoria Archer. Yes, she would be willing to show it to the detectives. When they would like to see it? Now?

Fine, they could come right over. The entire process took Aaron just one and threequarters hours.

Mrs. Malkiewicz, a widow, lived in Ohio City, a historical section on the west side of Cleveland which, after years of neglect, was in the midst of heavy gentrification. As Janek and Aaron drove in, they could hear the sound of sawing and hammering around the neighborhood. they saw Dumpsters on the street filled with the entrails of houses being gutted for renovation.

The MaiMewicz residence was the worst-looking house on its block, a narrow wood frame structure with peeling siding and an unshoveled path leading to a badly disintegrating front porch.

Nadia MaMewicz looked as miserable as her house. A pale, drawn white-haired woman in a cheap, shapeless housedress, she had a bitter, puckered mouth and the beginnings of a mustache on her upper lip. Her greeting, too, was a good deal less effusive than Aaron expected after talking with her on the phone. Janek understood her transformation.

A shrewd look in the old lady's eyes told him she saw them as vultures looking to pounce upon her late brother's work.

He also quickly understood something else: Mrs. Malkiewicz had contempt for said work. There were no original Aretzsky paintings displayed on her parlor walls, although there were pictures of another sort, including a large black velvet banner bearing a cloying reproduction of da Vinci's The Last Supper.

"Yuk! That woman!" was Mrs. Malkiewicz's reaction when Aaron asked her about Victoria Archer.

"She ruined my brother's life, not that he had much of one. A failure and a drunkard was what he was! What's Worse, tell me, than a failed drunken painter? Slapping paint on burlap all day long-is that any kind of life? My late husband, bless him, was a hardworking man. Fortyfive years sweating it out on the flats. And what did he have to show for it when they laid him off Nothing! Not even his promised pension. 'Sorry, we're bankrupt,' the company said. So that's what you get in this great United States of America… they listened to her bitter gripes for half an hour before they could get her to escort them to the basement, where the treasure trove of art was stored.

The paintings, Janek could see at once, were being kept under appalling conditions. Forty or fifty canvases were piled, unevenly against a rough stone cellar wall. Moisture oozed along the floor, and an old oil-burning forced-air furnace roared on the other side of the room.

When they began to pull the pictures out-the one of Victoria, being the largest, was at the bottom of the stack-he saw that many of the frames were warped and that there were mouse droppings in between.

Still, Janek found the work impressive. No matter that Peter Aretzsky had lived a miserable life, his drawing was authoritative and his palette was vibrant. When, finally, they pulled out the big portrait and set it up, Janek could tell at once that it was the artist's masterpiece.

Melissa Walters had been right: Aretzsky had put great feeling into it.

His sense of his subject leaped off the canvas and struck the viewer hard. But it was not the painter's hatred that Janek felt so much, nor his bitterness and disillusionment. Although Victoria was harshly chafacterized, Aretzsky showed a good deal more of her than mere cruelty. It was, Janek thought, a portrait of an extremely unhappy woman, a woman ravaged by a vast and insupportable inner pain. Yes, she was mean, yes, she was selfish-the glare in her eyes and the set of her mouth made that clear enough. But what Aretzsky showed was a victim, a real human being in distress. And although Janek understood why Victoria had hated this picture and had wished to see it destroyed, he also understood how very wrong she'd been. Compared with the painting he had seen in Beverly's bedroom, the painting that had haunted his dreams, this was a mature work of art. That first portrait was a poster. This second one was a truly tragic image. As Janek continued to gaze at the picture, many things became clear. He understood why Beverly had coveted the first picture and built her bedroom altar around it. It was a portrait of her mother as Beverly needed to remember her, while the second picture was too complex to inspire adoration. The Victoria Archer in the second picture was a woman who could make a wallflower of her own daughter. It was that true a likeness, Janek thought.

Later, upstairs, he and Aaron tried to strike a deal with Mrs.

Malkiewicz, but the old lady wouldn't bargain. She acknowledged she'd been unable to sell a single one of her brother's canvases and admitted freely that he and Aaron were the first people to come around and express an interest in his work. Still, she held firm. Her price was nonnegotiable. Ten-thousand-dollars-take-it-or-leave-it.

Not a penny less.

Why? they asked her. She couldn't explain it. She just knew the picture was valuable and she wasn't going to sell it cheap. But we're cops, they reminded her, civil servants; we don't have that kind of dough. Well, maybe not, she said. But ten thousand was still the price.

Janek understood even before Aaron that there was no point in further discussion. We'll think about it, he told Mrs. Malkiewicz politely. We'll let you know tomorrow.

Back in the car Aaron was explosive.

"You crazy, Frank? You'd even consider paying that? Screw her! And to hell with the picture!"

"Trouble is I want it," Janek said. He explained to Aaron his conviction that the reason Mrs. Malkiewicz set the price so high was that she didn't really want to sell.

"Sure she needs the money. And sure she acts like Aretzsky's pictures are shit. But the truth is she loved her brother, and his pictures are the only things of his she's got. to sell one off is to lose a part of him. Even if we agree to pay her price, I'm not sure she won't back out."

Aaron shrugged. "So what's the point?"

"The point is I need that goddamn picture. So I'll just have to get hold of the money, then handle her very carefully."

"Where're you going to get that kind of bread?"

"I think I know where I can raise it."

Aaron looked at him skeptically. "You're not thinking of Kit?"

"No, not KiL" Janek said. "I've got someone else in mind."

Back in the motel he dialed Stanton's office in New York. Mr.

Dorance was in a meeting, his secretary said. Could he get back to Janek later on? "No. Tell him it's an emergency." A minute later a breathless Stanton came on the line. "What's the matter, Frank? What's going on?" "I need ten thousand dollars." "Is this a joke? I'm kind of busy." "No joke, Stanton. I'm out in Cleveland. I'm on the trail of the person who put that girl up to all those killings, including Jess's.

I can't go into the details. It's a complicated case. The bottom line is that there's a painting out here I think I can use to put this person away. It'll cost me ten thousand dollars."

"'Think' you can use?"

"Yeah, well, it's a long shot. But it's the only thing I got going.

You said I should call you if I needed anything. I'm calling. This is what I need to catch Jess's killer."

A long pause. He knew what Stanton was thinking: Yes, he'd made that commitment, but ten thousand was a lot of money. was there any way he could wriggle out of this? was Janek off his rocker?

"You're sure the painting's worth it?"

"No. But that's what it's going to cost."

"Maybe you should have it professionally appraised?"

"Screw that. I need it now."

Another pause. "You're really calling in my marker?"

"I guess you could say that, Stanton, yeah." "I didn't expect this. Not so soon."

"Neither did 1. Believe me, if I had the money, I'd buy the damn thing myself."

"Well, all right. How soon do you need it?"

"Yesterday."

"I'll FedEx you a check. You'll get it tomorrow morning."

"No check," Janek said. "The seller's nervous. The only way I can close the deal is put cash down on the table.

"I can wire you the money, I suppose. to a local bank out there."

He could hear the exasperation in Stanton's voice. "Jesus, Frank! I just hope you know what you're doing! "

"Yeah. Well, I'm just doing the best I can," Janek replied.

The following morning at eleven they were back at the Malkiewicz residence with ten banded packs of fresh hundred-dollar bills and a rented van big enough to transport the painting.

Mrs. MaMewicz met them at the door. She looked at Janek nervously. "I didn't expect you back so soon."

"I've got the money. We're here to take the picture."

He knew the way to do it was to move as quickly as possible, ignore any hesitancy on her part, count out the cash bill by bill while Aaron wrestled the portrait out the door. That way, if she happened to have second thoughts, it would be too late; the transaction would be complete.

It worked out. Mrs. Malkiewicz didn't say a word, although Janek couldn't help noticing her despair. He knew she'd get over it. Ten grand was enough to fix up her house. And she still had a thick stack of Aretzsky paintings rotting in her cellar.

That afternoon they found a carpenter who agreed to crate up the picture in time for the first flight the following morning to New York. Janek and Aaron would escort it back, the fruit of their investigation.

After the plane took off, Janek stared out his window at the sprawling city below. The sky was gray, broken by a few plumes of industrial smoke. Cleveland looked huge and flat, blocks of bleak gray buildings, a grid of ironcolored streets. The Cuyahoga River, famous for once having caught on fire, was crusted with snow, and Lake Erie seemed a vast white frozen waste. It was a strange and fascinating place, he thought, this city Aaron had described as a Rust Belt town of broken dreams. Here for many years iron and coal had been forged into steel, and here, too, the pathology of Wallflower had been forged.

The

Portrait The crucial move, Janek knew, would be the delivery of the portrait.

Bungle that and he could botch his entire case.

He and Aaron war-gamed the problem. Since they couldn't break into her house and switch the new painting with the old (their preferred solution), they'd have to take their chances on a straight delivery. The trick, they agreed, would be to get Beverly to accept it.

"How about two guys in deliveryman uniforms. 'Parcel, Ms. Archer.

Just sign here, please, ma'am."' "Yeah," said Aaron, "then they bring in this enormous box. 'Hey,' she yells, 'I never ordered this. Get this stinking thing out of here.' See, Frank, it's not like you want to send her a valentine that all we got to do is slip it under her door. That picture's fucking humongous."

"So there's only one solution," Janek said. "Deliver it ourselves."

"What if she won't take it?"

"We'll leave it on the stoop."

"So she ignores it. Or has it hauled away. There's no guarantee she'll look at it, even if she does take it inside."

"You're right," Janek said. "There's no guarantees about any of it.

But if we deliver it to her in the proper context, our odds will improve. By a lot."

He called Monika, filled her in on his trip to Cleveland, outlined his plan, then asked her what she thought. "Strange, a bit morbid, certainly daring," she said. She sounded less excited than he'd expected. "You say you want to shock this woman into a confession. But there's also a chance you'll shock her into a psychotic state. Have you considered that?" "It's occurred to me," he said. "Frankly, the idea doesn't break me up. She goes to prison or she goes to the funny farm. I win either way. A third possibility is that she laughs the whole thing off. That's the one I'd just as soon not think about."

"Sounds to me like you're out for blood, Frank."

Why was she reproaching him? "Wasn't blood what she was out for?"

He imagined Monika shaking her head. "This is difficult for me. My profession is to heal, not to wound."

Suddenly he was irritated. "You say I sound like I'm out for blood-I'm not sure what that means. I'm certainly not about to pick up an ice pick and stick it in her ear. But if you mean tearing the mask off her face, then I guess you're right."

"Oh, Frank… I'm just not sure I can help you with this anymore." But it wasn't her help he wanted now; it was her approval. And that, it seemed, she was not about to give. He didn't understand. She had told him to look to the past, that he would find the secret there. What secret, he wondered, did she expect he would find-the cure to Beverly Archer's disease?

"Look," he said, "she's a vicious, manipulative, dangerous murderess. My job is to put her away."

"Of course," she said sadly. "Of course…"

He felt awful when he put down the phone. Would Monika now hold this against him? She said she understood, but did she? He was a detective, not a therapist. Now he had to do his job.

After much discussion and many rehearsals, he and Aaron agreed that since there was no way of knowing how Beverly would react, their best approach would be the simplest and most direct. No big dramatic production at the door. Just walk up the front steps picture in hand, ring the bell, offer to place it in the hall for her, then let the chips fall where they may.

Figuring she'd be tired and thus more vulnerable at the end of the day, they parked their van across from her house a little after 6:00 P.m.

There they waited until 6:45, when her last patient left. they had uncrated the picture earlier; it was now covered only with a sheet. they pulled it out of the van, picked it up, and together carried it across the street.

Aaron pushed the buzzer. It was a while before Beverly answered on the intercom.

"Who's there?" "Janek."

A short pause. "Go away. I'm not in the mood today. "

"I brought you something." He spoke cheerfully. "Something from Cleveland." He tried to entice her with his tone.

"Oh, really Her voice was lethargic. She certainly didn't sound upset.

"Open the door and I'll show you," he said. He paused again; he was getting into the rhythm of the thing. "You won't be sorry, Bev."

Aaron gave him a thumbs-up as they heard the lock mechanism being turned. Then the door opened and Beverly stood in the archway, hands planted on her hips. 'She looked a perfect little butterball as she stared at them and then at the sheet-covered picture in between.

"Is that great big thing for tiny little me?" She spoke with a sarcastic lilt.

Janek nodded. "Want us to bring it inside?"

"I don't know that I'm going to accept it. Remember the old saying: 'Beware Greeks bearing gifts."' "What're you afraid of? Think it's a Trojan Horse?" She stared at the picture curiously. "What is it anyway?" "A painting."

"What kind of painting?"

"Aretzsky's second portrait of your mother," Janek said.

She tut-tutted him. "Oh, Janek, you're so tiresome. I know all about that second portrait."

"Sure, you know about it. But did you ever look at it?, I "No. And I don't intend to."

As she started to close the door, he felt his case begin to slip away.

Do something! Razz her! Don't let her close you out!

"Scared to look, Bev?" he taunted.

She hesitated. "No, I'm not scared to look."

"There are things in this picture you won't see in the one upstairs."

She nodded. "I know the story. A drunk old painter's revenge."

"Maybe something deeper than revenge, Bev. Maybe something true."

"All the truth went into the first portrait. The second was painted on the rebound. That's the way I heard it."

He shook his head. "You heard wrong. The first time Aretzsky was blinded by love. The second time his eyes were wide open." She glared at him. "You're an ass, Janek." Again she tried to shut him out.

This is it, he thought. Go for broke!

He blocked the door with his shoe. When he spoke again he used no taunts nor was there any trace of sarcasm in his voice.

"The MacDonaids were a mistake, Bev. You sent I)iana out to kill the wrong boys. Sure, they gave you a hard time. But it was your mother who put them up to it." He snatched the sheet off the picture, tilted it so she could see Victoria's face. "Look into her eyes. Check out her mouth. See the cruelty, the depravity, the selfishness? This is the lady who set you up. She told Melissa Walters she didn't want you to be a wallflower. But when you look hard at this picture you have to wonder if she meant it. Because that's what you are, Bev. A wallflower. Now and for the rest of your life." He thrust his finger at the painting. "And this is the lady who made you one. Not the MacDonalds. Her!"

He nodded to Aaron. they turned and walked away. The plan was not to look back, not to give her a chance to answer, or gesture at them, or show her contempt by slamming the door in their faces. By the time they heard it slam they were already at the curb. And still they walked. It was only when they reached the other side of the street and got into their van, that Janek turned and looked and saw with satisfaction that the door to the house was closed and the picture they'd left was no longer on the stoop.

Give her the night with her new mama, Janek thought. Let them cook together, heat each other up. Then, maybe, butterball will be ready to talk.

It was out of his hands now. It was between the Archers. Nothing for him to do but wait. He went home, ordered in some Chinese, watched a hockey game on TV, then retired early to bed. He did not sleep well. He tossed and turned, worried that Beverly would not take his bait, worried that if she did Monika would forever think less of him, because, as she'd put it, he'd gone for blood.

In the morning he spoke briefly with Aaron, who'd spent the night watching Beverly's house. Nothing yet, so Janek set to work methodically cleaning his apartment. He mopped his kitchen, vacuumed his rugs, waxed his furniture, and scrubbed his bathroom floor on his knees. He didn't clean up the place very often, but this day he did so with a vengeance. Perhaps, he thought, it was a way for him not to think about Monika, not to deal with the feelings she'd conveyed, the way she'd distanced herself after he'd revealed his plan.

A little after ten he received a call from a young lawyer, an associate at Stanton's firm, who was representing him on the Rusty Glickman assault suit.

"Glickman's got no case and Streep amp; Holster know it," the attorney said. "I told them: All you've got is a bunch of phony charges brought by a man Janek put away years ago. Unfortunately there wasn't any give, so my strategy now is to go into court and move for summary judgment. It may take a while but I'm pretty sure we'll get it. Then the whole @srable business will be done with."

Janek thanked him. The moment he set down his phone it rang again.

He snatched it up. It was Aaron. "Something's going on here, Frank.

Beverly's not seeing her patients."

"What do you mean?" "they show up on time, go to the door, ring, and stand there a while. When nobody answers the intercom, they sort of droop and slouch away."

"You're sure she's there?"

"Positive. I would have seen her come out. I tried to call her a minute ago. All I got was her answering machine."

He thought of what Monika had said, about the possibility Beverly could be shocked into psychosis. Maybe, just maybe, the portrait was having its effect.

"I'll be right over," he told Aaron. "Better get a police locksmith there, too."

He would never forget the scene that confronted them when they finally got inside the house. The painting he and Aaron had delivered, at least what was left of it, stood in tatters in the front hall just inside the door. The image had been desecrated. The eyes, the cruel scheming eyes, had been stabbed straight through the pupils. The selfish mouth had been slashed across so that the lips hung in loose folds. The breasts, too, had been assaulted with a scissors or perhaps a knife. But by far the worst and most fiendish violations had been committed against the area between Victoria Archer's legs. That portion of the picture bore numerous stab wounds, a "pattern of fury," as medical examiners refer to a configuration of knife thrusts so rapid and vigorous that all vestiges of the reproductive organs are obliterated. Janek and Aaron rushed up the stairs. At the bedroom door they stopped. The spectacle before them was so stunning and bizarre they could only stand before it and gape The room was bathed in reddish light. The original portrait, removed from its niche, lay flat across the great four-poster. Beverly, in the same scarlet dress her mother had worn in both paintings, lay upon the picture very still. There was blood on the canvas and the bed.

"I think she's dead, Frank," Aaron said. "It looks like she slit her wrists."

Janek walked forward and touched Beverly's forehead. The skin was cold as ice. He tried to lift her arm to check for wounds, but found he could not move her. Then he understood. She was stuck to the painting. She had glued herself to it.

"Jesus!" Aaron said. "Maybe she was trying to screw the picture. Do you think?"

Janek shook his head. He was sure that that was not what Beverly had been trying to do when she opened her veins, then glued herself to her mother-pelvis to pelvis, hands to hands, breasts to breasts. What she had attempted, he felt certain, was a terminal act of bonding. But then, perhaps in her last moments, she had writhed against the image, engaging in a final failed life-anddeath struggle for release.

He circled the bed, and, when Bev's face came into view, Janek felt his rage subside. Her frozen expression, a mixture of panic and yearning, filled him with pity and terror.

He turned to Aaron. "Call the morgue," he said.

After Aaron went downstairs, Janek spotted an ivoryhandled knife, blade open, on the floor. He picked it up, clasped the blade shut, then pushed a chrome button on the side. The blade sprang forward in his hand. It was the knife Bev had used to kill herself-Jess's knife, the knife that had haunted his dreams.

He looked back at Beverly, met her dead eyes headon.

"What can I do for you?" he whispered.

The moment he heard his own voice, he knew the answer. He would use Jess's knife to cut the dead woman loose.

He imagined her screaming: "Cut, Mama! No!" But to cut them apart, he knew, was the only way. He straddled Bev, then sliced into the picture. How appropfiate, he thought, that he was now separating her from the phony image she had worshiped. The painting was thick but the knife was sharp. The canvas parted before the blade like silk.

Beverly had been mad, of course, functional but mad, perhaps as far back as her girlhood. Confronted finally by the true nature of her mother, her madness had engulfed and destroyed her.

He waited until the medical examiner arrived, waited until the assistants carried Bev's body out. He sat alone for a while in the strange dark bedroom. And then it was time to leave.

Downstairs Aaron was standing before the damaged second portrait in the hall.

"Funny, isn't it, Frank, how now the two pictures look almost the same?"

Janek understood. The cuts he'd made in the idealized version upstairs matched almost perfectly the cuts Beverly had made in the cruel version before him.

"Too bad she killed herself," Aaron said. "It would have been a hell of a trial." He paused. "I wonder if she would have confessed in the end."

"She did confess," Janek replied. "She just didn't do it with words."

Aaron grinned at him. "Well, you got her, Frank. You nailed her."

"Yeah…

"Do you think Kit would say you did it straight?"

Janek shrugged. "Sometimes, when they're as crooked as this one," he said, "you have to use a slightly crooked nail."

There was, at first, a feeling of fulfillment. Having broken and destroyed the monster, he was no longer possessed by anger. There was the satisfaction, too, that came with understanding another person, adding another quantum to his store of knowledge of human beings and their mysterious capacity for evil.

But these good feelings fled quickly. The letdown descended within a day. It was like the Switch case: as soon as it was over, the passions that had fueled the quest began to die. And then he was left with himself, to ponder the meaning of his life-to wonder what Wallflower had meant to him, and whether it had cost him Monika's love.

He knew the case had changed him. He would never forget his horror as he felt the steel plunge into his throat, would never forget his conviction that he was going to die. But as he reexamined that moment, he recalled that it was not fear of death that had seized him, but a terrible frustration that he did not know who was attacking him or why. Now that he had solved all that, he was left with his grief for Jess, a grief he knew he would always carry with him, though hopefully without the intensity of the past few months. Redemption? He wasn't sure he'd achieved it. The seeds of his melancholy had been planted years before. There would be times throughout his life, he knew, when he must harvest their bitter fruit. And if, as he believed, he had driven Beverly Archer to suicide… well, he would have to live with that.

His cases always haunted him. Sometimes he felt as though his mind was filled with overlapping images from old homicides and the echoes of confessions of killers he had tracked and caught through the years. Now Wallflower, too, would become part of that montage. to be haunted, he understood, was the price he must pay for daring to explore the back alleys of tormented souls.

For two days after Wallflower was closed he walked the streets of New York. It was the second week of January, the coldest time of year.

He felt himself buffeted by piercing winter winds.

On the afternoon of the second day he noticed something in the steamy window of a little antique store on Charles Street. He stopped before it, shivering, hesitated, then walked inside.

A small bell attached to the door tinkled as he entered. A bespectacled old man in a tattered gray sweater glanced at him from behind a battered desk. It was a warm, cluttered little shop, filled with sparkling objects. Janek nodded to the proprietor, then went straight to the object that had caught his eye. He picked it up, held it in his hand, stared at it, amazed. It was an almost perfect duplicate of the glass Monika had found for him in Venice.

He bought it at the old man's asking price. Surely finding such a glass was a wonderful omen that he must not spoil by haggling over cost.

He hurried home, set the glass beside the one Monika had given him, and then peered into the pair as they broke the afternoon light into colors and stars, crystal fire.

The magic of Venice flooded back. In that enchanted city he had found himself a lover; in her arms he had found ecstasy and joy. After Jess was killed, Monika became more than his lover-she became his therapist and adviser, too. But when he'd come back from Cleveland and told her of his intention to break Beverly with her mother's picture, Monika had responded coolly. She was a healer, not a wounder, she'd said. She'd told him she didn't think she could help him anymore.

He had gone ahead anyway, done what he had to do, and now that it was finished, he wanted desperately to be with her again. For a week he'd wanted to call her, but he'd hesitated. Would she still be reserved with him? Would she deny him her love?

Now, as he stared at the two glasses and the afternoon waned, he knew the time had come to call.

She sounded cheerful, said she was happy to hear his voice. they exchanged notes on the weather: Hamburg was chilly; that very evening a light snow had begun to fall. She was thinking about taking a week off, she said, perhaps driving down to Austria with some friends to ski.

And how was he doing? When she hadn't heard from him, she wasn't sure what she should think. As her voice trailed off, he began to speak.

The Wallflower case was over, he told her. Beverly Archer was dead by her own hand. He wanted Monika to know that he owned up to his responsibility in the matter. He knew what he had done and why. He would not flinch from it; he felt no shame on account of it. Could she, Monika, accept him as he now accepted himself, for the person he was, without reservation or regret?

"Oh, Frank," she said, "how can you even ask?"

Suddenly his tension was eased. He felt he could step out from behind his detective's mask and speak to her as a man. He told her he wanted to tell her a story. He had been out walking that afternoon… had passed this little shop… had seen this glass… had bought it… it was nearly identical… "You know what this means?" he asked. "Tell me, Frank."

"It means I want to be with you," he said, his longing for her pouring out through his voice. "Will you meet me in Venice? In three days? In two?" There was a brief silence before she answered.

"Oh, yes," she said, and, as her words reached him, he imagined the sparkling affirmation in her eyes. "Oh, yes! Yes!" she said, and he could feel the glow of her warming him from across the icy sea.