Dead Sleep Read Online Free PDF Page B

either. It’s that exclusive. This guy will skip a sale just because he doesn’t like the buyer. Are you somewhere I can call you?”
    â€œNo. Can I call you tomorrow? I’m going to sleep for a while.”
    â€œI’ll have it for you then.”
    â€œThanks, Ron. I owe you dinner at Lutèce.”
    â€œLet me choose the place, honey, and you’re on. I hope you’re not sleeping alone. No one I know needs love more than you.”
    I glance around the first-class cabin at a rumpled platoon of businessmen. “No, I’m not alone.”
    â€œGood. Tomorrow, then.”
    The fog is descending so fast now that I can barely get the Airfone back in the armrest. Thank God for drugs. I couldn’t bear to be alert right now. When I wake, the museum will seem like a bad dream. Of course, it wasn’t. It was a door. A door to a world I have no choice but to reenter. Am I ready for that? “Sure,” I say aloud. “I was born ready.” But deep down, beneath the brittle old bravado, I know it’s a lie.

3
    TWO HOURS BEFORE the Cathay Pacific jet landed in New York, I surfaced from my drug-induced dive, stumbled to the restroom and back, and asked the flight attendant for a hot towel. Then I called Ron Epstein and got Christopher Wingate’s number. It took an hour of steady calling to get the art dealer on the phone. I had worried that I might have to mention the Sleeping Women to get Wingate’s attention, but Epstein’s hunch proved correct: Wingate was intrigued enough by my modest celebrity to see me at his gallery after hours without explanation. I couldn’t tell much about him from his voice, which had an affected accent I couldn’t place. He did mention my book-in-progress, so my guess is that he hopes I’m looking for a dealer to sell my photographs to the fine art market.
    Meeting Wingate alone is a risk, but my work has always involved calculations of risk. Photographing wars is like commercial fishing off Alaska: you know going out that you might not come back. But on an Alaskan boat, it’s you against the ocean and the weather. In a war zone there are people trying to kill you. Going to see Christopher Wingate could be like that. I have to assume he’s heard about the scene at the museum by now. He won’t have my name, but he will know that the woman who caused the disturbance in Hong Kong looked exactly like one of the Sleeping Women. Does he know that one of the Sleeping Women looks like the photographer Jordan Glass? He knows my reputation, but it’s unlikely that he’s seen a photo of me. I haven’t lived in New York for twelve years, and my work wasn’t nearly so well-known then. The real danger depends on how involved Wingate is with the painter of the Sleeping Women. Does he know that the subjects in the paintings are real? That they’re missing and probably dead? If so, then he’s willing to turn a blind eye to murder in order to earn a fortune in commissions. How dangerous does that make him? I won’t know until I talk to him. But one thing is certain: If I go on to Washington now and meet the FBI, they’ll never let me close to him. Every piece of information I get will be secondhand, just like it was after Jane disappeared.
    After I clear customs at JFK, I roll my bags to the American Airlines gate, collect my e-ticket to Washington, and check my bags on that flight. Then I walk out of the airport and hire a cab. I don’t like letting my cameras go to Washington without me, but later tonight, when I tell Daniel Baxter I got sick and missed my plane, he’ll be more likely to believe me.
    Before going to Lower Manhattan, I have the cabbie take me to a pawnshop on Ninety-eighth Street. There, for $50, I buy a can of Fortified Mace to carry in my pocket. I’d prefer a gun, but I don’t want to risk it. The NYPD takes weapons violations very seriously.
    When the cab pulls up