The World's Finest Mystery Part 35

Ringerman had not worked out with weights for more than four months but his body was still firm and he did do a half hour of push-ups and sit-ups every morning and at night.

The doorbell rang.

He examined himself once more, brushed back his hair with his hands and went through the door. He had one more thing to do in his bedroom and living room.

The doorbell rang.

Finished with what he had to do, he moved across the wooden floor to the heavy, metal-reinforced door he had installed when he moved in. One of his conditions, which the landlord of the building accepted because he was having difficulty renting in this rapidly declining district, was that Ringerman could put on a new door and install bars on the windows.

Since the apartment was on the fifth floor, the tired-looking landlord in the crumpled suit, head balding, tinged with sweat, agreed. He had nothing to lose. When Ringerman left, the landlord, whose name was Gentry, would use the bars and reinforced door as inducements for a possible tenant.

The doorbell was ringing again as Ringerman opened it after looking through the peephole. On the wall across from his door in the corridor, Ringerman had installed two mirrors three feet apart at angles. The mirrors were small, un.o.btrusive and allowed him to see to the end of the corridor both right and left. There was no one outside but a woman looking back at him.

He opened the door.

"Robert Miles Ringerman?" she asked.

She was as tall as he, dark of face as he was, and definitely pretty. Her hair was short and blond. Her dress was dark and fashionably expensive. She looked as if she were no more than thirty-five. He was certain she was older, close to his age. She was holding something in her hand.

"Yes," he said standing in the doorway.

"Here."

She handed the wallet to him.

"You dropped it in the Jewel, near the deli counter."

He took the wallet.

"Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome. You going to count the money, check the credit cards?"

Her smile showed perfect white teeth.

"No, I'm not going to count the money or check the credit cards."

"Then it's all right?" she said.

"Yes, thank you. It's fine."

"Then I'll go."

"Can I offer you? ..."

"No," she said with a smile. "I... no, but thank you."

"Please come in. Just for a minute. Let me get you something to drink or..."

She looked at the thin gold watch on her left wrist and puckered her full lips in thought.

"A minute," she said.

He stepped back and she entered. Ringerman closed the door behind her. It clicked shut, metallic, firm. He threw the dead bolt.

She looked at the door, unafraid.

"You're careful," she said.

"Paranoid," he said. "If you're afraid..."

He reached over to open the door again.

"No, no."

He nodded and said, "Coffee. Can I offer you coffee?"

"Coffee would be nice. Black."

She smiled nervously, looking around the room.

Ringerman didn't smile.

"I'll have it ready in a minute or two," he said. "Have a seat, please."

She nodded and gave a careful smile.

He went through a door to his right and out of sight.

She looked around the room, glanced at the barred windows. It was late afternoon. The sun was still shining. She looked at the furniture and the polished wood floor. When he moved in, Ringerman had pulled up the dirty carpets and found good oak underneath. He had polished it into respectability. The furniture was simple, consignment, two armchairs, a sofa. They were a rough fabric, gray with a series of black stripes. A small television stood on an oak cabinet against the wall near the door he had gone through. There were three floor lamps and a handmade bookcase about three feet wide and reaching to the ceiling. The shelves were filled with neatly lined-up books.

But what really drew her were the paintings, twenty of them, all in simple black frames, some horizontal, some vertical, all of them the same size, about two feet by two and a half feet.

She heard him moving around the kitchen as she moved to the wall, drawn by the paintings. The paint was thick on the first ones to her left, thick, heavy, dark standing out in three dimensions like irregular mountain ridges. She thought she felt anger in what she saw. As she moved down the line, the paint was laid on less thickly. The colors were brighter. They moved from left to right from abstraction and darkness to sunlight and portraits of men, women, children.

The first six paintings of darkness were of the same room, a room without windows and no people, just furniture. The furniture was simple. There were different angles of the room.

The next set of paintings was less dark but more abstract. The one that held her longest was of a simple balance scale, grayish white against a background of blue. The scale was tipped to the right because the left plate of the scale was empty and the one on the right held a red scorpion, its tail raised, ready to strike.

She moved quickly past the rest of the paintings of people, mostly men, tired men, smiling men, and finally to the portraits of women, four of them, all beautiful, all, she could now see, were of the same woman. The woman's hair was short and blond in one painting, long and dark in another, piled dark and red in the third, and hanging in an almost white ponytail over her right shoulder. She was smiling in all of the pictures. These were followed by another set of four children, each different, ages from perhaps five to twelve.

He was still moving around the kitchen. She moved to the bookcase, pausing to examine the scorpion on the scale for a moment. The painting held her till she forced herself to look away and step toward the high bookcase.

There was no pattern to the books. There was a book on Inuit art, a history of Peru, a thin book on learning to play the banjo, a book on diplomatic relations with India, biographies of movie stars, authors, soldiers, a book on clocks and clock repair, and novels, Mickey Spillane, Tolstoy, Joyce Carol Oates, James Fenimore Cooper, Hans Helmut Kirst, Albert Camus, Roald Dahl, Louis Lamour, Borges, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

She was holding a book on astrological signs in her hand when she sensed him in the kitchen doorway across the room. She turned slowly, book in hand.

"You read all of these?" she asked looking at the rows of books.

He stood with two mugs, identical, blue, in his hands. He was wearing a long-sleeved b.u.t.ton-down denim shirt now.

"Yes," he said.

She carefully returned the book to the shelf and moved toward him to take the warm cup. Their fingers touched.

"Your taste is certainly..."

"Eclectic," he said. "I read whatever comes to me."

"Have you ever seen The Manchurian Candidate?"

"Sinatra? Yes."

"After he's been brainwashed he reads everything, anything, book after book, piled up all over. He meets Janet Leigh and he stops the manic reading."

"I remember," he said. "Saw it a long time ago on television. Guy is brainwashed into killing some friends. Then he kills his girlfriend and her father and then his stepfather and mother."

"You're right. Does he kill any brothers or sisters?"

"He didn't have any," Ringerman said.

"And you?"

"Brothers or sisters?"

"Yes," she said. "Wife, children, mother? father?"

"Mother and father are dead," he said. "I have one sister, a twin. I'm not married."

"Are you close? I mean you and your sister?"

"Very," he said. "You?"

"Yes," she said stepping back to sit on the sofa. She held the mug in both hands. Her long red fingernails formed a jagged pattern. "I have a husband, a fourteen-year-old son, and a brother."

"Are you close?" he asked.

"With my husband and son? Yes. With my brother, not really. I'd say 'no'. These paintings. Yours?"

"Yes," he said, still standing, looking toward the paintings.

"You've done more?"

"Yes."

"Many more?" she asked.

"About eighty more. Some of them went to friends. I've got other ones stored."

Something clattered outside, maybe a truck. They could hear it far away through the closed and barred windows and down five floors. Ringerman and the woman paused.

"That one," she said pointing toward the wall when the clatter had stopped. "The one with the scale and the scorpion. Before you put your shirt on I saw..."

"Scars," he said.

"Yes," she answered. "Scars and what looked like that scale tattooed on your left arm, right by the muscle."

"Libra," he said. "I'm a Libra."

"Your only tattoo?"

She sipped her coffee.

"Yes," he said.

"Coincidence," she said.

"What? You're a Libra?"

"No," she said, "Scorpio."

She put her mug down on a Time magazine on the table in front of her and kicked off her left shoe, looking up at him as she did it. She turned her foot so he could see the very small tattoo just below her ankle bone.

"It's a scorpion," she said. "I'm a Scorpio."

"Your only tattoo?"

"Yes," she said kicking off her other shoe. "That's a scorpion on the scale in the painting."

"Yes," he said looking at the painting.

"You know a Scorpio?"

"I'm not really into astrology," he said. "That was done a long time ago. A roommate of mine was a Scorpio."

"A roommate. That room in the paintings," she said. "You were in jail, weren't you? It's none of my business, but it looks like a cell."

"Prison," he said. "I was in prison. That's where I got the tattoo. When I first went in. If I flex the muscle, it tips the scale."

"Which way?" she asked with a smile.

"Whichever way I want it to go. You want to leave?"

"No," she said. "No. I haven't finished my coffee. You want to get rid of me?"

He looked directly at her.

"No," he said.