William Lashner - Marked Man

It was Rochester. What the hell do you think?

“I TOLD YOU on the phone I had nothing to say to you,” said Serena Chicos. She was a small dark woman, fifty-some years of age, pretty and slim, with the sharp eyes and tense mouth of someone who had become used to giving directions and having them followed.

“I hoped if I came in person,” I said, “you’d appreciate the seriousness of my inquiry.”

“You hoped in vain,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have much work.”

“I can assure you, Ms. Chicos, that everything you say to me will be held in strictest confidence.”

“But I don’t choose to be in your confidence. As I told you repeatedly, I am simply not willing to discuss my tenure at the Randolph Trust.”

“Is there a reason?”

“It is ancient history. It is a part of my past that I have chosen to put behind me.”

“Do they know about it?” I said, gesturing toward the hallway. “Do they know what happened while you were there?”

I was standing in the doorway of her rather small office. We were on the second floor of an impressive granite building with a huge bell tower, the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. She was in the curatorial department. Just down the hall was the director’s office, which was noticeably larger.

She smiled a tense smile. “I have been at this museum for twenty years, Mr. Carl. The administration here is no longer concerned about my qualifications.”

“So the answer is no.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint, but you will not be able to blackmail me into talking with you. My job as associate curator at the Randolph Trust was my first after I left school. It is clearly indicated on my curriculum vitae. In fact, it was Mr. Randolph himself who helped me attain this position just shortly before he died.”

“That’s interesting, since I heard you were a suspect in the robbery at his trust.”

“Who told you that?” she said sharply, but not before involuntarily glancing behind me to see if anyone was listening in.

“Maybe we could discuss this whole situation somewhere more private?”

She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment and then shook her head. “No, Mr. Carl. I will not talk about the Randolph Trust no matter what vile rumors are being spread about me. I’m sorry you wasted your time. If you want, I can give you a pass for the gallery. The collection is actually quite good.”

“But not as good as at the Randolph.”

“No. The collection at the Randolph is… astounding.” She sat quietly for a moment, as if remembering it painting by painting. “Is that all,” she said finally, “because I really do have work.”

“It was Mrs. LeComte who implicated you in the robbery.”

An eyebrow rose. “Oh, was it, now? And how is the old bat?”

“Old. But still frisky and still there, on her throne. She said you had checked out certain blueprints just before the crime.”

“It wasn’t true.”

“She said there were fingerprints.”

“A mistake was made.”

“She also said your tastes were slightly vulgar.”

“My tastes? Have you seen the height of her heels?”

“And that your neck was too long.”

“There are thirteen masterworks by Modigliani at the Randolph.”

“What you’re telling me, I suppose, is that Mr. Randolph admired long necks.”

Her hand started to rise involuntarily to her throat, and then she caught herself. A man and a woman, deep in some conversation, both peered into the office as they passed in the hallway. Serena Chicos fiddled with her hands and then sighed.

“Where are you staying, Mr. Carl?”

“The Airport Holiday Inn.”

“I can give you a few minutes after work.”

“Splendid,” I said. “I’ll be waiting.”

HIS GIVEN name was Samuel Glickstein. Jewish, of course, which was certainly a significant part of Mrs. LeComte’s little dig. She was still rooted in that musty age in Philadelphia when to be a Jew was considered something sordid, like being a sloppy drunk or having a predilection for young boys, nothing to lose your job over, but still. Why, you’re a regular Sammy Glick . Yes, I was, wasn’t I? Little Shmelka Glickstein of the Lower East Side, whom we first spy as a copyboy at the fictional New York Record . “Always ran,” writes the narrator. “Always looked thirsty.” Sammy Glick.

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg was quite the celebrated novel when it appeared in 1941. You know Schulberg, he’s the guy who wrote On the Waterfront as a justification for naming names to the House Un-American Affairs Committee in the fifties. “I could have had class. I could have been a contender.” Sammy Glick’s shady maneuverings as he claws his way to the top made Sammy rich and Budd Schulberg famous.

While I was waiting for Serena Chicos at my hotel, I followed Sammy’s meteoric rise from copyboy to columnist, from columnist to Hollywood screenwriter, from screenwriter to producer to head of the movie studio, married to a rich redhead with flawless beauty. You go, brother. Sure he had to cross a few lines and step on a few toes, screw a few writers out of credits and help smash the union, but nothing he did through the whole of the book was worse than what your basic U.S. congressman commits before breakfast. And Sammy had better taste in shoes.

And yet I found the novel troubling. The problem wasn’t that I identified with Sammy Glick, the problem was that I didn’t, at least not enough, and not in the way I wanted. All my life his was the path I had expected to tread, the ruthless march to wealth and success, not to mention the redhead. But somehow I couldn’t pull it off. There was a weakness in my soul where in Sammy Glick’s there was only steel. If there was a curse in my life, it was that I didn’t have what it took to take what I wanted in this world. The great men and women in history all had that steel. If you think Gandhi was a pushover, you never tried to give him a ham sandwich.

And here again, in that crummy hotel room in Rochester, it was playing out. In my desk drawer back at the office there was a pile of gold and jewels just waiting to be appraised and sold. And Lavender Hill was offering a king’s ransom if I could just convince Charlie to sell the Rembrandt and sail off into the sunset. I was in the golden land of either/or, where I couldn’t lose, but instead of taking care of business, I was off on some quixotic quest to find a missing girl. You know what I was? I was a sap, pure and simple, and I felt it all the more keenly as I read about Sammy Glick’s rise up the Hollywood ladder toward a success that I would never match.

But I wasn’t reading the novel only to make myself feel blue, or to suss out the depth of Mrs. LeComte’s insult, or even just to pass the time, though I was accomplishing all three. No, I was reading the novel because Mrs. LeComte’s comment hadn’t been as offhand as she made it seem, and I couldn’t help feeling that maybe, just maybe, somewhere in the book was a clue that would help me discover what really happened to Chantal Adair twenty-eight years ago.

And damn if I wasn’t right.

“I WAS FRAMED, Mr. Carl,” said Serena Chicos, and perhaps she heard the inevitable sigh I sigh whenever anyone tells me he has been framed, because she added, as if compelled by that very sagging of my shoulders, “No, but I was. Really.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know for certain, and I am not one to cast aspersions.”

“As they were cast upon you.”

“Precisely.”

“But why would this person want to frame you?”

“To divert attention, to scuttle a career. When Mr. Randolph was alive, the Randolph Trust was like Versailles, a snake pit full of courtiers vying for the king’s attention.”