Scarlet Night Read Online Free

recognized him, for that matter, except Abel, who was blind at the moment with his own importance. O’Grady tried not to think him a fool. The lad was out of his element. So was Sean O’Grady, but in his case it didn’t matter. He’d not be going this way again.
    He crossed the street, proposing to find his way to the nearest subway, but he paused, seeing a white Porsche at the curb with the license RR: R. Rubinoff. Parked illegally, it squatted like a white toad with an eye in the top of its head. He walked slowly around it trying to overcome a terrible temptation to do it some kind of violence in return for the anxiety the man had caused him. He was fortunate in the discovery of a beady-eyed youngster in tattered jeans watching him.
    “Hello, sweetheart,” O’Grady said.
    She turned her head away.
    He stooped and looked into the car. Driving gloves. Naturally. And a clutch of white strings hanging brazenly from the side pocket to advertise a collection of summonses. He caught the man’s reflection in the car window as he came prancing out of the gallery. O’Grady didn’t know whether to run or stand still.
    “You, there, what are you doing?”
    “Looking,” O’Grady said and stood up to his full height, six foot one. Then he thought, to hell with it: they were going to meet later, why not sooner? “I’m O’Grady,” he said.
    Rubinoff was short and soft, if not fat. He wore a blue silk suit fresh from the cleaner’s, but he looked a bit soiled nonetheless. He stared up at O’Grady, furious, his dark, protruding eyes slightly bloodshot. “What are you doing here?”
    “Wondering if you’d give me a ride uptown, if that’s where you’re going.”
    “We were not to meet until I contacted you.”
    “I felt responsible for what’s in there until your arrival.” O’Grady nodded toward the gallery.
    “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
    “I didn’t like what I seen in there, Mr. Rubinoff. You came near to losing it to the young woman, didn’t you?”
    “What happened in there is none of your business.”
    The little street arab came and stood looking up at them from one to the other, hoping no doubt they would come to blows. And people had begun to come out of the gallery.
    “Get in,” Rubinoff said.
    O’Grady went around the car and when Rubinoff opened the door to him he got in backside first and swung his legs in, his knees just clearing the dashboard.
    Rubinoff opened the roof vent. He started the motor, revved it a time or two, and took off, bouncing from pothole to pothole. After a couple of blocks he pulled over and stopped. He fastened his seat belt, easing it under his belly. He seemed unable to bring himself to even ask O’Grady where he was going.
    O’Grady didn’t like him, but he was well aware that without the next step all that had gone before would be for naught. Or worse. “Look, man. We’re in this together, no matter who’s fore or who’s aft. It’s true, I wasn’t supposed to be there, but it’s a lonely business to be on the waiting end of a thing like this, and damned frightening to see how close it came to disaster.”
    “You simply do not know what you’re talking about. If I had moved any sooner, there are people in that crowd who’d have said I was a shill for Maude Sloan, and that unfortunate young fool would not have sold another canvas.”
    “Are people buying them?”
    Rubinoff ignored the question. “I have a reputation for taste. As it is now, Maude thinks I did her a favor. She knows the boy is an atrocious painter.”
    At least he was talking to him, O’Grady realized. He had never thought much of the pictures himself, but he put that down to his own ignorance. Rubinoff kept riling the motor: the Porsche sounded like a beast growling to be set loose. “I don’t think Ginni had a very wide choice, Mr. Rubinoff. And it was to coax Ginni home that her mother agreed to give him the show.”
    “I know as much as I need to know,”