The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [56]
From inside I heard the kind of rustling that squirrels make when they get into a pile of autumn leaves, and then some heavy, slow footsteps moved toward the door. The footsteps stopped, and there was a long pause, accompanied by heavy breathing that I could hear even in the hall. Finally, a deep, rich voice what was at once slow but a bit skittish asked:
“Stevie?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
A lock was undone, and as the door was pulled away from me a large form moved in to fill the opening. I made out the beard first, then the high, glowing forehead, and finally the eyes, the color of which—light brown or blue—I could never quite figure.
I moved inside with a salute. “Hellooo, Pinkie!” I announced, marching past the piles of books, newspapers, and just plain trash in his front room toward the back of the flat, where his studio—and the kettle of stew—were located.
He smiled in his particular way, what Dr. Kreizler always called “enigmatically.”
“Hello, young Stevie,” he said, wiping his paint-covered hands on a rag. For all that he’d lived in New York for years, there was still much of the old-time New Englander in the way he spoke. “What brings you to these reaches at this hour?”
“The Doctor’s following me up,” I said, moving between walls covered with unframed canvases that, to the untrained eye, would have looked like finished pictures: beautiful golden landscapes, stormy dark seascapes (or what the art crowd called “marines”), as well as scenes from the poetry, drama, and myths what fascinated old Pinkie. He was quite a poet himself, and, like I say, his interpretations of “The Forest of Arden” or “The Tempest” would’ve looked to anybody else like they were ready for shipping. But it was near impossible for Pinkie to consider a painting done, ever, and he fussed and fidgeted with them, as Mr. Moore had said, for years before he’d release them to the usually exasperated patrons what had paid for them long ago.
Grabbing a wooden spoon, I helped myself to a nice scoop of Pinkie’s hearty lamb stew, which he’d sweetened with some fresh apples. Then I took a turn around the studio. “Quite a crop, Pinkie,” I called to him. “How many of them are sold?”
“Enough,” he answered from the front room. Then I heard the Doctor’s and Miss Howard’s voices and raced back put, so that I could witness the ritual that Pinkie went through anytime a woman came to his hideaway.
Making a deep bow, he said, “I’m deeply honored, miss,” with rumbling sincerity. Then he held out a hand. “Please …” Next he started to quickly clear a path through all the garbage in the room to the one easy chair he owned, a beat-up but comfortable old thing that sat by the front window. As he finished clearing the floor in front of the chair, he grabbed a small oriental throw rug and spread it out so that Miss Howard could rest her feet on it once she’d sat down, like a Bohemian queen on a throne. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have been a woman to go for such treatment; but coming from Pinkie, such things were just so sincere and so peculiar as to make anybody suspend their usual reactions.
“Well, Albert,” the Doctor said cheerfully, “you look well. A bit swollen, perhaps, in spots. How is the rheumatism?”
“Always lurking about,” Pinkie answered with a smile. “But I have my cures. May I offer you both something to eat? Or to drink? Beer? Water?”
“Yes, I’ll have a glass of beer, Albert,” the Doctor answered, looking to Miss Howard. “It’s a pleasant night, though not as cool as I’d expected.”
“Yes, beer would be lovely,” Miss Howard said.
Pinkie held up a long finger, indicating he’d only be a moment, then started for the back of the flat. As he went, I noticed that his feet were making little squishing sounds. I looked down to see that he was wearing oversized shoes filled with straw and what appeared