“I need to talk to you about your father’s work.”

Jake thought about the bloody portrait splattered onto the hospital wall. “Dad’s not making a lot of sense on any level, David. The old Jacob Coleridge is on a permanent vacation.”

Finch pointed at the Chuck Close through the window, the eyes gone. “Jacob Coleridge would never do this to a Close. Cy Twombly maybe—maybe. But a Close? Rome could be burning and he’d be the guy defending the museum with an axe.”

“It’s Alzheimer’s, David—not a German opera. Jacob Coleridge is not coming back.”

Finch’s head swiveled in an angry jerk. “I know you and your father haven’t exactly been simpatico, Jake, but I know your old man; we’ve been friends for almost fifty years. We’ve stuck by one another when the going was tough and both of us had plenty of opportunities when we should have taken up other offers in the interest of our careers. But we didn’t because we were a good team. And that only happens when you know someone. Know them intimately. And Jacob Coleridge could be drunk off his ass with his cock falling off from a bout of syphilis and be using someone else’s liver because his was out being dry-cleaned and he’d never lay a finger on a Chuck Close. Too much respect. Too much professional admiration. Never. Ever. No way.” Finch turned back to the painting.

Jake followed his gaze, then looked beyond the painting into the kitchen. Kay and Jeremy were gone. Maybe down on the beach for a walk. He saw his own reflection staring back at him. “If you say so.”

“Did your father have any work in the studio?” The gallery owner asked, the unmistakable lilt of greed in his voice.

“It’s empty. It was filled with crap and most of it’s gone.” It was a lie but Jake didn’t feel like having an argument with Finch. If the sycophantic little fuck had his way, he’d be peeling up the paint-splattered floor in the studio and selling it by the square foot at Sotheby’s in their spring sale of important American art.

Finch stared into Jake’s face for a second. “Jake, you do know that I am your father’s sole representative. We have a lifetime and beyond contract.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Jake’s patience was running out. His old man had fried his hands off and this parasite was here to sniff out a commission.

“That means that I have proprietary rights on his paintings in reference to sales. No one—and that means you, too—can sell a Jacob Coleridge.”

Jake crossed the space that had developed between them in a long-legged stride that would have made Hauser proud. “David, you and my father may have been friends but as far as I’m concerned, you’re a smarmy little bloodsucker who would do anything for his wallet. Do you remember the night I showed up at your house when I left here?”

Finch sunk into himself, brought his head down. Said nothing.

“I was seventeen years old, David, and I was alone on the streets of New York. I came to you because you were the only person I knew in the city. The only one. And do you remember what I asked for?”

Finch shook his head but it was clear from his expression that he did.

“I asked for some food, David. I asked for a meal and thirty-one bucks. I didn’t ask for too much because I didn’t want to jeopardize your relationship with my father—I knew he’d get rid of you if you helped me. So I asked for very little.” Jake’s hands hung loosely at his sides and Finch’s eyes kept looking at them, something about the way they hung limply more threatening than if they had been rolled into tattooed fists. “You said no. Do you know what I had to do to eat? Do you, David?”

Finch shook his head slowly, keeping his eyes on Jake’s hands.

“I had to blow some guy, Dave. I know that’s your kind of thing, but it’s not mine. I was seventeen and alone and I had to suck some stranger’s cock so I could get something to eat. Nice, huh? So if you’re thinking about threatening someone, you’re picking on the wrong guy. Not only will you never see another of my father’s paintings, but I may just burn them.”

Finch gasped like he had been kicked in the pills.

“I can use them for fucking target practice.” He pulled out the big stainless revolver and placed it to Finch’s head. “You know what I do for a living, David?” Finch would have looked into it before coming out here—he was the kind of man who liked to cover all his bases.

Finch nodded. It was a frightened, skittish action.

“Then you know I don’t have a squeamish bone in my body.” Jake cocked the hammer on the pistol and pressed the heavy barrel into Finch’s temple, denting the skin. “I could empty your head all over this deck for trespassing and no one would think twice about pressing charges. So don’t you fucking threaten me, you little sack of shit, because I passed don’t-give-a-shit about ten years back and have become comfortably ensconced in don’t-give-a-fuck. Are we clear?”

“What about your wife? Your child?” Finch asked, his voice half an octave from hysteria.

“Was that a threat, David?” Jake’s other hand came up and locked on Finch’s larynx in a Ranger chokehold. “Because if it is, you are a dead man.”

Finch shook his head, coughed, brought his hands up to the tattooed vise fastened to his throat. “No. No. I didn’t—. I—. I—. Let go—!”

Jake pulled his hand away and Finch fell back against the railing. It creaked in protest.

“I think you better leave, David. Before I start getting angry.”

Finch opened his mouth to protest but his jaw froze. There was an instant of indecision as he made whatever calculations he thought necessary, then he turned and walked away.

Jake followed him off the deck, around the house, and watched him open the door to the big silver Bentley GT Continental. He stopped again, turned to face Jake, and said, “Not that it makes a bit of difference, Jakey, but I’m sorry. I always was. About everything. Your father’s drinking. Your mother’s murder. All of it.”

“Don’t ever contact me again, David. You’re dead as far as I’m concerned.”

Finch got into the big sedan, closed the door, and slipped out of the drive onto the Montauk Highway. Jake watched the Bentley until it was out of sight, then turned and walked back to the studio.

30

The wind had picked up considerably over the past few hours and the ocean was hazed over with low-slung blue clouds and the jagged dance of whitecaps kicking up. For a few minutes he stood leaning against the railing, knowing that something was off but not being able to localize it. Something felt odd, eerie—then he realized that the ever-present shorebirds had disappeared; there were no plovers, sandpipers, or gulls milling about the beach or riding the stiff wind coming in off the water. What do they know that I don’t? Jake wondered.

He stood on the deck, sipping what felt like the hundredth coffee of the day, watching the truck pull to a stop in front of the garage, beeping like a gargantuan alarm clock. One of the carriers stood at the truck’s flank, directing the driver with the lazy movements of a man who trusts the guy behind the wheel. He was dressed in gray workman’s Dickies with the telltale bulge of a sidearm pressing the fabric each time he raised his arm.

Jake stepped off the weathered wood planking and walked over to the big Hino. The twenty-four-foot covered flatbed was one of the bureau’s “clean” trucks, a boxed-in van that shielded evidence vehicles from the elements as well as peripheral contamination. The driver was simply that but the second man, the one who had directed the truck with the airfield hand gestures, was a technician, here to make sure that as little evidence as possible was disturbed.