Scarlet Night Read Online Free Page B

commission I had once for an organization I belong to.”
    “Shall we leave it at that?”
    “If you like, but they were great days,” O’Grady said and lapsed into silence. All in all, they had been the best days in his life.
    Johnny, or Sean as he signed himself, was the son of Irish immigrant parents who had nothing in common except their determination to make it to America. With that accomplished, and the seed that became Johnny implanted, the old man took off and thereafter showed up every year or so expecting a celebration of his return. Johnny’s chief recollection of him was chasing Ma around the miserable West Side flat trying to get her into the bedroom. Ma generally made it to the kitchen where she kept the bread knife handy. It was a wonder to O’Grady himself that he had not grown up like Rubinoff. He learned his reading and writing from the nuns as well as a love of Irish song and poetry. Everything he knew that was practical he had learned on the streets. When his mother died, their parish priest had been instrumental in getting him the promise of a job on a deep-water vessel and hence his maritime papers.
    O’Grady was thirty-three, handsome in a rough, sandy-haired way except for the cold blue eyes, a feature he could not abide in himself. That his voice was rich and warm was some compensation. From childhood he had been devoted to the cause of a united Ireland, and it was in service to the I.R.A. as a gun procurer that he had met Ginni. She was his Italian-Yugoslavian connection.
    He had made two successful runs. The third ended in disaster, and he had had to dump the entire cache into the Galway Bay. He had told himself, answering Ginni’s call in the present matter, that every cent he made on it would go to the Cause. And so it would. But deep down he knew that wasn’t why he was in it. Ginni had set it up, and he was her pigeon.
    Stopped at a red light, Rubinoff took a long look at O’Grady. “Now that you have satisfied yourself as to my competence, what do you propose to do for the next two weeks?”
    O’Grady overlooked the sarcasm. “Does it have to be two weeks?”
    “At least. The show doesn’t close until a week from Sunday.”
    “I don’t know. I’m damn near broke financing myself.”
    “You’re not to go near the gallery again.”
    “I don’t intend to.”
    “Nor to get in touch with me. When I’m ready I’ll contact you. You ought not to be in the city at all.”
    “It’s my home, man. Where else would I be landside?”
    “I understood you would not be landside, as you call it, until afterwards.” They moved ahead with the traffic. “That understanding was one of the conditions of my agreement.”
    “With who?” O’Grady said.
    Rubinoff kept his eyes on the street. “With whom.”

FOUR
    J ULIE WAS OUT EARLY in the morning. She bought a dozen golden daisies with rich brown eyes, and then, at Pierre’s, two croissants which were still warm from the oven.
    Jeff had dressed and made coffee by the time she got back; his valise was packed and standing at the door. She had either forgotten or not been told that he was catching the shuttle to Washington. She was sure it was the latter; he was sure he had told her, and both of them repeated that it didn’t matter. He’d be gone overnight and, since they were to have dinner the following evening at the Alexanders,’ they arranged to meet there, Jeff not knowing at what hour he would get back.
    Julie opened the shutters on the back windows after he had gone, and looked out over the straggly garden to where the machines were already humming in the factory across the way. A long row of dark Puerto Rican women worked on pieces of fabrics that would turn into some dress manufacturer’s fall line. At lunchtime when the machines were off, you could hear their radios—salsa, calypso, and rock. You could hear their laughter and their harsh, excited voices. Julie thought about Mrs. Rodriguez over the shop on Forty-fourth