Madonna of the Apes by Nicholas Kilmer

Street and turned right, covering the four blocks to the garage over which Bernie had established his small but ungainly apartment. The garage was the reason Bernie had chosen the space, a garage being at a premium in this part of town. Bernie’s cars were important to him, and this garage would hold four of them, although only one was here now, and that under tarpaulins. The apartment proper, on the second floor, had to be entered through the garage, via a circular staircase in back, next to the crusty workbench that held tools from another era, designed for purposes that might or might not be related to the carriage trade.
    The living space was the size of the garage below, barely large enough for the ugly couch, the single bed, the table, and a minimal kitchen. The only extravagance Bernie showed on this floor was in the elaborate sound equipment, which was too complex for Fred to worry about using, even if he had a yen to do so. Unless he had hidden them somewhere in the walls or under the floor—and he likely had—there were no signs of Bernie’s occupation. He was an international courier whose interests, Fred believed, were legal, although he did not know what they were.
    Fred dropped his kit and the bag of laundry, then found a place on Charles that would sell him a reasonably straightforward hamburger and fries, and bought an apple next door to eat on his way to Mountjoy. He paused at the doorway next to the antique store’s window. Miranda? Sheila? But there were no names posted next to the bells.
    It looked as if Clayton Reed must occupy his entire building. When you stood on the sidewalk the walkway, between pads of ivy, gave you a choice between mounting stairs to ring the bell at a formidable black front door that also offered a knocker, or to follow the path by which they’d carried the chest to the downstairs office space. “Tradesman’s entrance,” said Fred. He climbed the stairs to the entrance designed for the Prince of Wales, and rang.
    A mockingbird sang somewhere, probably in the magnolias across the street. A shadow flickered back of the peephole set under the knocker. Fred rang again and the shadow remained, watchful. “Let’s not play games,” Fred said. Then, louder, “Clayton, it’s Fred.” He used the knocker. The door opened on a chain, allowing a view of Clay’s wild tangle of white hair, and a face pinched with alarm.
    “You could be anyone.”
    “That’s debatable. But it is an interesting concept.”
    “Are you alone?” Clayton’s voice was tight with pressure.
    “Rhetorical question,” Fred said. “You see I’m alone. I prefer a question that actually wants information. You don’t have to open the door. Then again, here I am.”
    The man was struggling. His breeding wouldn’t let him ask baldly, What do you want?
    “The answer to your unspoken question is, That chest I have forgotten is bothering me. I’ve been thinking about it. I’d like to see it again.”
    Clay closed the door far enough to let him take it off the chain and get it open.
    “I’m paralyzed,” he said. “I have to trust someone.”
    “I don’t,” Fred said, strolling in. “But I won’t argue with you.”
    “The chest is where we left it. I can’t move it,” Clay said. He walked down a hallway whose floor was softened with prayer rugs. Its walls were hung with Japanese paintings on unfurled scrolls: here an iris by moonlight; next to that an armored warrior unsheathing his saber; next to that a bold and extraordinarily graceful exercise in calligraphy alone. The place seemed neither a museum nor a home, and you wouldn’t call it a temple either. Open doorways led into what seemed a library on one side, and on the other a living room—what would he call it, a parlor?—dominated by a huge Hopper painting of roofs and balconies and an ominous summer sky.
    Clay led the way down the spiral staircase Fred had seen before, from the other end.

Chapter Twelve
    “I can’t have anyone in,