The Gun Runner's Daughter by Neil Gordon Page B

sitting with a cup of coffee at the big dining room table, had just dialed her father’s
lawyer’s home on Long Island. There was a pause, which she spent fingering the keys on her PowerBook.
    “Bob? Alley Rosenthal here.”
    Stein’s booming voice was so loud that it could be heard in the room. Bob was, Allison thought, trying to smooth over their fight, and her apology, with his loud friendliness.
    “Alley girl! How are you, honey?”
    “I’m fine, Bob. You?”
    “Fine, doll. Margey was just talking about you. You in the city?”
    “No, I’m on island still.”
    “Well, when you get back down we want to see you. What’s up?”
    “Bob, who’s Nicholson Dymitryck?”
    His reaction was immediate.
    “Dymitryck? What’s up with him?”
    After the briefest of pauses, Alley answered: “Uh, Sally at Dole Realty told me he was poking around, asking questions. She handles—used to handle—the rentals.”
    “He spoken to you?”
    “No, not at all.”
    “Tried?”
    “No.”
    “Okay.” But Stein still sounded nervous. “Look, honey, keep away from him. Okay?”
    “Okay, but what’s he want?”
    “Oh, God, who knows? Come on, doll, it’s hardly the first time a reporter’s been after you. I promise you, we’ll get rid of him.”
    Grimacing, she spoke. “Please do, Bob. He scares me.”
    She listened to Stein’s assurances and, the moment he was done talking, hung up.
    Standing, stretching, she thought: that should do for Nicholson Dymitryck. Bob was probably speaking to her father already, and her father would have Falcon security kick Dymitryck off-island by
lunch.
    She could not afford him seeing Dee.
    She bent over the desk and wrote a quick note in case Martha came over. She stepped out of the house, locked the door, and put the key under a flagstone. Then she walked to her bicycle, donning
her helmet as she went. When was the earliest Dee could be back? Not, she thought, before eleven. She could go up to Menemsha for breakfast, then take the ferry, loop up through Gay Head, and be
back home by then. She taped the note to the shingled wall of the carport, and in moments was pumping up the road, in the still slightly dripping air, leaving Ocean View Farm in peace.
    It’s no surprise, perhaps, that on this unusually fast-paced Sunday morning, it was not a peace that lasted long.
    Nor should it be a surprise that the man who broke it, approaching the house over the dunes from the beach, in a gray raincoat, walking carefully, then stooping to reach the key out from under
the flagstone, opening the door and replacing the key, was Nicholson Dymitryck of the
North American Review.
    3.
    Inside the house, the temperature fell several degrees, but smells of occupation—a wood fire, perfume—lingered faintly in the chill air. Dymitryck entered and
crossed the room silently, seeming to put his weight on the balls of his feet, ear cocked to the cavernous silence under the high ceilings. To his left was the liquor cabinet, above which hung a
still life of flowers and wine on a white-clothed table. This he examined with some attention; particularly the lower right-hand corner of the small canvas, holding the signature. Soutine. The
painting that Rosenthal had bought for some astronomical sum at Christie’s right after Iran-contra, boasting to the press that he’d paid for it with a check drawn on the Bank of
Teheran. Satisfied with his identification, he turned, and slowly regarded the room in a long arc.
    The kilim was, of course, authentic, its dyes rich and weave nearly saturnine with age. On such walls as this open room possessed, there were bookshelves, save the wall that held a white-brick
chimney and a massive open fireplace. The furniture was low, leather and chrome Eames and Saarinen, and the dining room table was clearly a Greene and Greene.
    With a low whistle the man inspected the table, circling it entirely, bending slightly to look at the legs. He wore a gray Burberry raincoat with a