Stone left, still feeling unendangered.
13
STONE WALKED FROM EGGERS’ S OFFICE in the Seagram Building, up Park Avenue, and took a left on East Fifty-seventh Street. On the way he pondered his friend’s information about Carrie and decided to discount ninety-five percent of it as the rant of a rejected husband, but he was not entirely sure of which five percent to believe.
His reverie was interrupted when he arrived at the Parsons Gallery, a wide building with a gorgeous Greek sculpture of a woman’s head spotlighted in the center of the window. Stone approached a very beautiful and impossibly thin young woman who was seated at a desk thumbing through a catalogue.
“Good morning. Can I help you?” she asked.
“My name is Stone Barrington. I believe Mr. Parsons is expecting me.”
She consulted a typed list of names on her desk. “Yes, Mr. Barrington,” she said. “Would you take the elevator to the fourth floor?” She pointed. “Someone will meet you.”
Because she was so beautiful, Stone thanked her and did as he was told. He was met on the fourth floor by an equally beautiful but less bony woman in her thirties, he judged.
“Mr. Barrington? I’m Rita Gammage. Good morning. Please come this way.”
Stone followed her down a hallway to an open door, where she left him. Inside the office a man who was talking on the telephone waved him to a chair on the other side of his desk.
Before sitting down, Stone made a slow, 360-degree swivel to look at the walls. He recognized a Bonnard, a Freud, a Modigliani, and two Picassos among the work hanging there. He sat down and turned his attention to the man on the phone.
He appeared to be in his early sixties and was handsome in a tweedy sort of way. He was wearing a cashmere cardigan over a Turnbull & Asser shirt, and he needed a haircut, or, perhaps, he had had it cut in such a way as to seem to need a haircut.
The man hung up and stood, extending his hand. “I’m Philip Parsons,” he said. “I expect you’re Mr. Barrington.”
Stone stood and shook the hand, then sat down again. “It’s Stone, please.” He waved a hand. “I think this is the most extraordinary collection I’ve seen in someone’s office.”
“Thank you,” Parsons said, seeming pleased with the compliment.
“Are these part of your inventory or your own collection?”
“These are all mine,” Parsons said. “Occasionally, I tire of a piece and sell it, but most of these things I bought many years ago, when an ordinary person could still do that.”
Stone wondered how Parsons defined ordinary. “You’re fortunate to have them.”
“Yeesss,” Parsons drawled, but then went quiet.
“Bill Eggers suggested I come and see you,” Stone said unnecessarily, but somebody had to get to the point. “How may I help you?”
Parsons gazed out the window at the facade of the Four Seasons Hotel across the street and finally mustered some words. “I’m sorry if I seem halting,” he said, “but I find it difficult to speak about my daughter.”
“Tell me a little about her,” Stone said.
“She was a beautiful child, looked extraordinarily like her mother, who died when she was six. I’m afraid I may have relied too much on help to raise her.”
“I expect being a single father is difficult,” Stone said.
“Well, I was building this gallery, and it took nearly all of my waking hours traveling, searching for good work; cultivating artists and buyers; evenings spent at openings, my own and others. You seem to have a good eye. Do you know art?”
“My mother was a painter,” Stone said. “I spent a good deal of my youth in museums and galleries.”
“What is her name?”
“Matilda Stone.”
“My goodness, what a fine painter. She’s not still alive, is she?”
“No, she’s been gone for many years.”