Outcasts

Chapter 3 - Wounds

Sykes was slumped on the ground next to the bridge, alone now, face in his hands, trying to keep the blood that was running out of his nose from getting all over his clothes. He'd been out of prison for what, not even a full day, and already they were on him.

He'd honestly thought he could make the gallery thing work, before somebody finked to the fraud squad that the paintings he'd used as collateral with Zekov, and had tried to sell to some others, were fakes. No one would have known otherwise. Hell, there was a painting of his in a museum in Brussels that had been switched in a robbery for a famous Manet that everybody still thought was the original.

All of this was going around in his head when he heard somebody calling his name.

"Mr. Sykes...?"

He looked up, trying to focus his eyes that were fast becoming shiners from the head-butt, squinting toward where the voice was coming from. Could see a woman on the walkway over by the trees. Something familiar about her but she was too far away for him to tell who it was. But then she came closer and he could see that it was the woman he'd seen earlier at the museum, in Tierney's office. He'd heard Tierney call her Helen when they were leaving.

"What happened?" Helen Carty said as she got closer. And then she saw the blood and ran over and crouched down beside him. "My God..."

"I'm okay," Sykes said.

"No you're not. Here..." She dug around in her shoulder bag, took out some tissues and dabbed at the blood. "This is terrible. I'll call EMS."

"No," Sykes said, "just give me a hand."

He held some tissue against his nose with one hand and, with Helen's help, used the other to push himself up onto his feet. Stood there for a moment getting his balance.

Helen said, "Why don't you let me at least..."

"I'll be fine, please, no problem."

"Well then here, come sit."

She turned him toward the walkway by the trees, toward a park bench that they went over to and sat down on.

Half an hour later they were still there, Sykes still dabbing at his nose with a tissue, though the flow had subsided, while he filled her in. "... I thought we needed some buzz for the gallery. I tried to pass it off as a lost masterpiece, which I'm sure you heard about."

He balled up the tissue and Helen handed him a fresh one.

"I heard somebody blew the whistle," she said.

"A guy from a former deal he thought he got screwed on was working with the cops. That opened the whole can of worms." Sykes thinking no reason he couldn't level with her, his aptitude for duplication no secret.

"And now?"

"Now..." He shrugged, not having the slightest idea what was next. "What are you doing in the park, anyway?"

"I walk home through here every day after work. I do special events at the museum. I work from my apartment most afternoons." She handed him another tissue. "How do you know Philip?"

Sykes smiled with irony. "We were at art school together, we had a thing for nudes." He shook his head and looked away. Looked down the walkway to where a hot dog vender had stopped his cart near a group of young mothers who were watching their kids play on the swings. "You hungry?"

"No, but you go ahead."

Any other time he would have, the smell of the franks drifting up to them. "No, I'm good."

"Excuse me for saying, but you don't look it."

"Really?"

"I'm sorry, I just meant that maybe you should eat something."

He said maybe in a little while, was about to change the subject when, from the opposite direction on the walkway, a hollow rumbling made them turn.

It was a skateboarder, the kid Sykes had seen earlier from the car, who had that fantasy artwork on his board. The kid sailed by, Sykes noticing paint smeared on his jeans, a working artist, he thought. Got up and called after him.

"Hey!"

The kid glanced over his shoulder, did a one-eighty and stopped.

Sykes said, "C'mere a minute."

The kid checked him out – bloody nose, bloody shirt, two black eyes – and pushed off.

Sykes called after him, "Hey, wait!"

But the kid kept pushing, gaining speed on that board with its mystical tribal figure, Sykes watching him disappear.

Helen came up beside him. "What was that about?"

Sykes kept staring in the direction the kid had disappeared in. "I'm not sure."

~~~~~~

The taxi swung out of the Tenth Avenue traffic and pulled over to the curb. The back door opened and Sykes climbed out, ducked his head back inside and gave a battered smile to Helen. "Thank you. I'm sorry I took you out of your way."

"Don't forget what I said about ice."

"I won't. You take care."

He pushed the door shut, thinking he wouldn't mind seeing her again, her having mentioned she'd been married and was divorced now, seemed to keep herself in nice shape and had the kind of face that looked good even without much makeup. He crossed the sidewalk to his hotel, glanced up at the cracked and peeling façade and thought that at least she wouldn't have the impression that he was a spendthrift.

He took the creaky elevator up to his floor, let himself into his dingy room and hung his rumpled sportcoat on the closet doorknob. He'd already gotten rid of his blood-spattered tie, took off his shirt now and checked his ribs, the abrasions and bruises. Went into the bathroom and turned around and looked at his back in the mirror, at where he'd taken that kidney punch, and saw a nice purple remembrance there.

He turned on the tap and scooped water onto his face, wincing. Leaned on the sink and looked in the mirror, staring into his two black eyes and repeating what Zekov's parting words had been when he left him in the tunnel.

"One month, Rembrandt."

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