“Anything for us?” she had asked him, and he said “Yes, one for your husband, from overseas.”
“I’ll take it,” she said, and reached for the envelope.
Matta saw them, and called out, “Let me have it, it’s addressed to me, isn’t it?” He took the letter and disappeared upstairs.
But she had seen the stamp and the postmark, and remembered what they had said about getting the goods to Cartagena—isn’t that in Colombia, where this Carlos person would handle the transport? So it was going ahead after all.
Forty-Two
No sooner had the studio door closed behind them than Matta grabbed Carlos roughly by the arm. His expression was as fierce as his grip, and the sailor flinched, more startled than hurt. He had expected sympathetic concern, not manhandling.
“What have you done?” hissed Matta.
Now Carlos was frightened. My God, he thinks I killed Lam!
“Please, sir, let me explain,” he whispered, not wanting the woman to overhear and not knowing that she didn’t understand Spanish. “I did not kill your friend. I went to his place, like I always do when I am in port, and found him dead on the floor. I swear it by Holy Mother Mary.” How much should I tell him? Carlos asked himself. Just enough so he’ll know I had no reason to hurt Lam. “I would never do such a thing,” he continued. “He was good to me, and he was going to help me. We had some business together.”
Matta grunted. “I know all about your business deal. Who do you think arranged the delivery in Cartagena? I made a drawing of you and sent it to the contact so he would know you by sight.” He grabbed Carlos’s other arm and shook him roughly. “Where is the stuff?”
Carlos was astonished. Why hadn’t he realized that Lam wasn’t in this alone? Of course not. Where would he get the front money? He was usually broke, or close to it. “Please,” he begged, “let me go. I will tell you everything…I mean, everything I know.”
Matta relaxed his grip and Carlos sank into one of the easy chairs. The artist planted himself squarely in front of him, crossed his arms, and scowled down at him. “Let me hear it.”
“The ship was delayed in Cartagena by a storm,” he began. “I had no way to let Lam know that I would be arriving a day late. It was after nine on Saturday when I finally got there, and he was dead. I thought someone had killed him and stolen the payment. I did not know what else to think, and I was afraid someone would tie us together and I would be blamed. So I made the diversion, to point away from me.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Matta. “What diversion?”
“The costume,” Carlos explained, “to make him look like a Surrealist drawing. You know, an exquisite corpse.” He described the embellishments—the mask, the umbrella, the galosh, the chicken foot.
“Jesus fucking Christ, you did what?” Matta lunged at him and gripped his arms again, pulling him up from the chair. Although Carlos was the shorter man, his years at sea had toughened him and made him strong. If he had fought back, he could have overpowered Matta, but he was weakened by guilt and overwhelmed by the artist’s anger.
Matta pulled the sailor’s face close to his. Through clenched teeth, he hissed, “You mean to tell me you tried to incriminate one of us? You little prick!” Disgusted, he pushed Carlos back down in the chair. “No wonder the cop came here looking for clues. Now it makes sense. He did not think it was someone who just broke in. He thought someone who knew Lam killed him.”
Matta backed off and began to pace the room.
Carlos sank back into the chair, held his breath, and grew tense again as the artist turned on him.
“So you assumed someone had taken the money. You had no idea who—it could have been a total stranger—but you tried to pin it on one of the people who went through hell with him. We thought we had found safe haven here. Thanks to you, we are all under suspicion, just like in Europe.” He gritted his teeth. “All except you, that is.”
In two steps, Matta was back in Carlos’s face. He cringed as the artist confronted him. “How do I know it was not you? I have only your word for it. Suppose you killed him for the money and kept the dope?” Matta stood up. “By the way, where is the dope? I do not suppose you delivered it to a dead man.”
Now Carlos had more explaining to do.
Forty-Three
Even though she couldn’t understand more than a few words of their animated Spanish, Anne stood by the closed door and listened as closely as she could to the conversation in the studio. More like a confrontation. She heard Lam’s name and the words Cartagena and muertos. She heard Matta’s furious outburst. Maybe her meeting with Lam had somehow succeeded in killing the deal. Of course Matta would be upset, but what a relief it would be to her!
After she learned that they were going through with the crazy plan, Anne had been trying to think of some way to stop them. She couldn’t prevent the smuggling part of it, but once the drugs were in the country, maybe she could keep them from going any further. From what she had overheard in August, Lam was going to handle the sale. If she could find out how much money was involved, she might be able to make a deal with him. She would have to confront him, find out how much it cost, and offer to pay it.
The price of cocaine was a mystery to her, but she was sure it would be several hundred dollars or it wouldn’t have been worth the effort and the risk. She would have to get it from her parents. On what pretext could she ask for that kind of money? She certainly couldn’t tell them the truth. If she said one of the twins needed medical treatment, they would insist on taking him to the doctor in Darien, or to one of the New York hospitals. It would be the same if she said she was sick herself.
Maybe I could tell them that Roberto has a commission and needs extra money for art materials. He’ll pay them back when he gets paid. Then the commission will fall through. That might work. I’ll figure out the details later, she had reasoned. The important thing, the only thing, is to keep Roberto from becoming a dope smuggler.
On the Tuesday after Columbus Day, Matta had suggested to Anne that she take the twins to Darien for a few days, so she guessed that the shipment was due to arrive. She bought a paper, checked the shipping news, and found a listing for the Princesa, bound for New York from Cartagena, via Mariel, due in port on the evening of Friday the fifteenth. Since Matta had arranged the South American contact, Anne assumed the drugs would be delivered to him that night or early the next morning. Then he’d pass them along to Lam. Her husband wanted her out of the way while the deal went down. She telephoned her parents and made the arrangements.
Bill Clark had driven down to pick them up on Thursday, happy at the prospect of having them visit without Matta, who had made some excuse about being absorbed in his work and needing to concentrate without distractions. Ordinarily, this might have offended Anne, but it fit right into her cock-and-bull story about the commission, so she played along. His lie made her lie all the more plausible.
During their leisurely drive along Route 1, she hinted to her father that Roberto was working on a major project. She mentioned that Peggy Guggenheim had recently commissioned Jackson Pollock to paint an enormous mural for the lobby of her town house—which was quite true, unlike her suggestion that something similar was in the offing for Matta.
On Saturday morning, she asked to borrow the car.
“I won’t park the twins with you for long,” she told her mother. “I just want to spend some time on my own, maybe look in the shops, if you don’t mind keeping an eye on them.”
Her mother took the bait. “Why don’t you go for a drive, Anne? The foliage is so lovely now, and you can find a nice place in the country for lunch. My treat.” She found her purse, extracted a ten-dollar bill, and pressed it into her daughter’s hand. “Take as long as you like. You know I’m happy to have the boys all to myself.” She gave Anne a conspiratorial wink. “Gives me plenty of time to spoil them.”
&nb
sp; With kisses all around, Anne took the car keys and headed into Darien. She did not go shopping or for a pleasant country drive or to lunch at a charming country inn. She parked at the station and caught the next train to Manhattan. In less than an hour, she was in Grand Central Terminal, headed for the downtown subway.
Forty-Four
After Carlos left, Matta sat in the studio for some time. Not only had the drug deal gone sour, but his friend and partner was dead, and thanks to Carlos, he and Hare could both be under suspicion of killing him. Of course there was the possibility that, notwithstanding the false evidence, one of their circle actually was responsible. Who could be so hard up that he would kill Lam to get $300?
Matta went through the list in his mind. Not Breton, he has a job with the VOA. Not Duchamp, he has Peggy. So does Ernst, even if he treats her like dirt. Like Ernst, Tanguy married money—Hare’s cousin Kay Sage, in fact. Tchelitchew has a homo boyfriend to support him. Hayter has his printmaking studio; he can support himself. Dalí, with his commercial clients, is persona non grata, shunned by all the other Surrealists, even Lam. I can rule out Masson; he split from the group long before coming to New York. He got back with us for just one show, Artists in Exile, at Pierre Matisse’s gallery, and then only because it wasn’t strictly limited to Surrealists.
Besides none of them being desperate for money, none of them knew anything about the smuggling scheme. Or did they? What if Lam let something slip? No, Matta couldn’t see that. Even if he had, they would be likely to wish him good luck.
But what about the Americans? Matta continued speculating. Motherwell has family money; his father’s a banker on the West Coast. Gerry Kamrowski has a rich collector, supposed to be a baroness, who buys everything he paints. Bill Baziotes has a wife who works.
Pollock? He’s a rum one. Moody, volatile, certainly capable of violence. He’s been here for group discussions a few times, even played exquisite corpse once or twice. Sympathetic to my ideas about working from the inside out, and he has interesting things to say about Jungian concepts, picked up from that psychiatrist he went to a few years back, even though you have to get a couple of drinks into him before he’ll open his mouth.
But a couple more drinks, and he’s ready to explode at the least provocation. Lee has to watch him like a hawk, especially now that he’s getting ready for his first solo show at Peggy’s.
Oh, wait—he has a contract with Peggy. “My new genius,” she calls him. He’s getting a regular paycheck from her, plus extra cash to buy the materials for her mural. If I had a sweet deal like that, I wouldn’t need to smuggle cocaine.
Matta’s head was beginning to swim again. He realized he hadn’t eaten since Anne fixed him a late breakfast. But he needed to let Hare know what Carlos had told him. They had to cut him loose; he was getting a much better deal uptown, and Lam was the connection to the Chinatown buyer, so they had no way to pass the stuff along even if Carlos could be persuaded to continue supplying.
Besides, they had no leverage. They couldn’t threaten to finger him because, if they did, he would implicate them. Hare would go to jail and I’d get deported, Matta realized. And if Carlos is telling the truth, we still don’t know who actually killed Lam. One of us could be charged with his murder.
What a nightmare, worse than the most bizarre Surrealist fantasy.
Forty-Five
Anne had retreated to the bedroom when she heard Carlos leaving. He and Roberto were still talking heatedly in Spanish, Carlos eager to escape and Matta apparently furious. “¡Vete al diablo!” he had hissed as Carlos bolted for the exit. Then her husband slammed the door behind him, stamped back to the studio, and slammed that door. She decided to let him cool off.
Fortunately he hadn’t agitated the twins, who were awake and ready for their evening feeding. She would go to the kitchen and take care of that chore while Roberto calmed down. She had both bottles going when she heard him emerge from the studio and leave the apartment without a word to her.
Once on the street, Matta headed for the nearest phone booth. Hare was waiting for his call.
“Did you find Carlos?”
“I left the note at his ship, like we agreed, and he came to my place. He just left. Wait until you hear his story.” Matta unloaded the whole sorry tale on Hare, who listened with hardly an interruption. More than one nickel was inserted into the coin slot before the story was finished.
“He said he found Lam dead. He said he didn’t take the money. Do you believe him?” asked Hare.
“I don’t know what to think,” Matta replied. “If he killed Lam, why would he come to see me? My guess is that he thought I wanted to tell him his friend was dead, give him a warning to steer clear. From his reaction, he had no idea I was involved in the deal until I told him. He probably took the money, but there’d be no point in leaving the package, whether or not he killed Lam. So he found another buyer.”
“There’s only one way it makes sense,” reasoned Hare. “Solana already had the uptown deal lined up. He knows there’s three hundred waiting for him at Lam’s, so he goes there, knocks Lam out, and takes the cash. He doesn’t mean to kill him, just double-cross him, but he hits him too hard. When he sees what he’s done, he thinks quick and dresses up the body to throw the cops off. Then he heads up to Harlem and sells the dope for more than what we offered. He gets paid twice, and the cops are looking for one of us instead of him, the double-dealing son of a bitch.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Matta pointed out. “How did he know what an exquisite corpse looks like?”
Hare had the answer. “From hanging around with Lam, of course. Don’t you remember, he was at Breton’s once when we played the game? He didn’t participate, but he watched.”
“So you think Solana is the killer?”
“Who else could it be?”
Matta was still skeptical. “That doesn’t explain why he answered my note. If he did it, he’d want to stay as far away from Lam’s friends as possible.”
Hare had another thought. “What time did he say he found the body?”
“Around nine o’clock last night. The ship was held up by a storm, he said. Didn’t make port until Saturday evening. That’s why he didn’t deliver on Friday as planned.”
“I’m going to talk to Breton, see if he knows what time Lam was killed. Also find out when Solana’s ship actually arrived. If Lam was dead before the ship docked, Solana’s off the hook for the killing.”
“Then somebody else will be on the hook,” Matta reminded him.
Forty-Six
It was late when Hare got to Breton’s apartment, and Jacqueline hushed him as he entered. She threw her arms around his neck and tipped her head back for a kiss, but he did not respond. Realizing he was preoccupied, she withdrew.
“Aube is asleep in the front room,” she told him. “She has school tomorrow. André is in the bedroom, working on a poem. Lam’s death was such a shock. He’s trying to use that feeling in a positive way, to turn it into something creative. He’s been wrestling with it ever since he woke up, except when the policeman came to question me.”
“I must see him, Jacqueline. I have to ask him something important. Please translate for me.”
“Of course,” she said, and led him to the bedroom door. Knocking gently, she opened it to reveal Breton seated at a small desk, his head in his hands, staring at a blank sheet of paper. Several pages covered in his small, precise handwriting were scattered on the floor.
“David is here, André,” she began. “He says it is urgent that he speak to you.”
“Bonsoir, André,” said Hare, exhausting his French.
Breton looked haggard. “What time is it?” he asked.
When Jacqueline told him the hour, he groaned. “I must be at the studio at five a.m. to broadcast live,” he said with a sigh. “I must rest. Perhaps I can sleep for a few hours.”
> “I will only be a moment,” Hare promised, which Breton understood without the need of translation.
He sat on the bed with Jacqueline beside him—not too close, for propriety’s sake, though Breton was well aware of their relationship—and asked his question.
“Do you know what time Lam died?”
“I could not tell precisely. I found him at around half past ten, perhaps a bit later, and he had not been dead for long. There was no rigor mortis,” a term Hare recognized, “but when I returned with Duchamp at eleven, it was beginning to set in, so I would say that he died around eight in the evening. But that is only a guess.”
“Could it have been later, after nine?”
“I doubt it,” said Breton. “Under normal conditions, rigor begins about three hours after death. The body was quite cool, and the apartment was a comfortable temperature. It was not a hot night, so rigor would not have been accelerated.”
Hare absorbed this information in silence. Then he rose, thanked Breton, and turned to leave.
“Un moment, je t’en prie,” said Breton. “May I ask why you wish to know the time of death?”
Hare glanced at Jacqueline as she translated. He would not be able to confirm the time of the Princesa’s arrival until Monday morning.
“I spoke to Duchamp,” he lied. “He told me about the exquisite corpse costume on the body. It points to a Surrealist as the killer. I have a different idea, but I have to put the pieces together. The time of death is one piece. When I have the other, I will answer your question.”
Forty-Seven
Monday morning, October 18
Detective Hector Morales was a big man in several respects. He was six foot three, barrel-chested, beefy without being overweight. His gravelly baritone made a big impression when he questioned suspects and when he reassured crime victims that he would get to the bottom of their cases. He also had a big reputation for doing just that.
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