Still, Vicky was not a woman to waste a pair of infatuated boys. She'd been worried about Beverly at the time, feeling the girl was socially retarded, too shy with males, frightened even by the notion of sex. Her prescription for that was simple. "All Bev needs is a really good lay," Vicky said.
In the end that was how she decided to employ the MacDonalds: as studs to initiate Beverly into the rites and rituals of physical love.
"To use a couple of kids enamored of you to get your own daughter hot and bothered—it was a rotten idea, and I think deep down Vicky knew it was." Melissa shook her head. She seemed highly disturbed by her story, a sign to Janek that it was probably true. "But once she got the notion into her head, she couldn't let it go. I don't know what happened exactly, except that there was a formal dance and she chose that occasion to sic the boys on to Bev. The whole thing went sour, as it was bound to do. First, there were two of them, which was crazy on its face. And second, the MacDonalds were just a pair of horny kids, not romantic at all. They made some kind of crude, clumsy pass, Bev got hysterical (at least that's what the boys reported to Vicky; Bev apparently never said a word), and the end result was just the opposite of what Vicky intended. Instead of learning what sex was about and how great it could be, Bev discovered it was horrible and never wanted to engage in it again.
"When Vicky told me what she'd done, she was practically in tears. She'd botched it, she admitted, and now she didn't know how to make things right. Even now I can remember her words: 'I didn't want her to be a goddamn wallflower, Lisa. Now I'm afraid that's what she's going to be.' "
That was what Melissa wanted Janek to know. She probably wouldn't have thought of it if Millie Cannaday hadn't mentioned that the MacDonalds had been murdered and their sex organs glued up by Beverly's patient. Then, when Millie mentioned the wallflower signature, the pieces just fell together in Melissa's mind.
As he listened, Janek couldn't help feeling sickened by the tale even as he was exhilarated by the knowledge that he had finally found a motive for at least one set of Wallflower killings. He thanked Melissa, paid the breakfast check, and went out to walk the cold, windy streets of Cleveland Heights.
He wandered aimlessly. The story haunted him. Everything about it rang true—except for Victoria Archer's tears. He could give no credence to her regrets. On the basis of everything he'd learned about the woman, he believed she probably did want Beverly to be a wallflower, and that was the real reason she'd set her daughter up. Monika would understand, Janek thought. She would analyze it clearly. She'd say that although Victoria may have thought she was sorry about the outcome, deep down in her subconscious she was pleased by it. Very pleased.
So Beverly had sent Diana Proctor out to kill and glue the MacDonalds in revenge for what they'd done to her after a dance years before. And the two toothbrushes Diana had brought back as trophies to be offered up to the image of Victoria on the wall—were they the symbols of the brothers' sex organs, sources of their mutual offense?
It was vile and sick, Janek thought, and also totally wrong. For, even if one believed in revenge, it was not the MacDonalds who deserved to be glued. It was Mama. That, Janek thought, was the ultimate irony in the whole grotesque and monstrous affair: that Beverly, the avenging wallflower, should have offered up trophies to the very woman who caused her to become a wallflower in the first place.
Janek made his way down to the University Circle area, then phoned Aaron at the motel. While he waited to be picked up, he was struck by a powerful idea. He pulled back from it; it seemed too perfect. Then he slowly brought it out again, rotated it, examined it, looked at it from every side. Perhaps, he thought, there was a way to break Beverly, induce her to confess. . . .
There they were, two Manhattan cops in a strange mid-western city, looking for a picture painted by an artist who had died seven years before.
"How do we find it? We go classic, Frank," Aaron said. And that's just what he did.
Although it was a textbook example of investigative work, later Janek would marvel at the elegance and speed with which Aaron brought it off.
He went straight to the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, where, after some mild flirting with one of the clerks, he obtained the estate file for Peter Aretzsky. Aretzsky's sole heir and executrix turned out to be one and the same person, his sister, a Mrs. Nadia Malkiewicz, who, as it happened, was conveniently listed in the Cleveland telephone directory. Aaron called her. Yes, she was Peter Aretzsky's sister. Yes, she had inherited all his unsold work. Yes, she had the big picture of Victoria Archer. Yes, she would be willing to show it to the detectives. When would they like to see it? Now? Fine, they could come right over.
The entire process took Aaron just one and three-quarters hours.
Mrs. Malkiewicz, a widow, lived in Ohio City, a historical section on the west side of Cleveland which, after years of neglect, was in the midst of serious gentrification. As Janek and Aaron drove in, they could hear the sound of sawing and hammering around the neighborhood. They saw Dumpsters on the street filled with the entrails of houses being gutted for renovation.
The Malkiewicz residence was the worst-looking house on its block, a narrow wood frame structure with peeling siding and an unshoveled path leading to a badly disintegrating front porch.
Nadia Malkiewicz looked as miserable as her house. A pale, drawn white-haired woman in a cheap, shapeless housedress, she had a bitter, puckered mouth and the beginnings of a mustache on her upper lip. Her greeting, too, was a good deal less effusive than Aaron expected after talking with her on the phone. Janek understood her transformation. A shrewd look in the old lady's eyes told him she saw them as vultures looking to pounce upon her late brother's work.
He also quickly understood something else: Mrs. Malkiewicz had contempt for said work. There were no original Aretzsky paintings displayed on her parlor walls, although there were pictures of another sort, including a large black velvet banner bearing a cloying reproduction of Da Vinci's The Last Supper.
"Yuk! That woman!" was Mrs. Malkiewicz's reaction when Aaron asked her about Victoria Archer.
"She ruined my brother's life, not that he had much of one. A failure and a drunkard was what he was! What's worse, tell me, than a failed drunken painter? Slapping paint on burlap all day long—is that any kind of life? My late husband, bless him, was a hardworking man. Forty-five years sweating it out on the flats. And what did he have to show for it when they laid him off? Nothing! Not even his promised pension. 'Sorry, we're bankrupt,' the company said. So that's what you get in this great United States of America. . . ."
They listened to her bitter gripes for half an hour before they could get her to escort them to the basement where the treasure trove of art was stored.
The paintings, Janek could see at once, were being kept under appalling conditions. Forty or fifty canvases were piled unevenly against a rough stone cellar wall. Moisture oozed along the floor, and an old oil-burning forced-air furnace roared on the other side of the room.
When they began to pull the pictures out—the one of Victoria, being the largest, was at the bottom of the stack—he saw that many of the frames were warped and that there were mouse droppings in between.
Still, Janek found the work impressive. No matter that Peter Aretzsky had lived a miserable life, his drawing was authoritative and his palette was vibrant. When, finally, they pulled out the big portrait and set it up, Janek could tell at once that it was the artist's masterpiece.
Melissa Walters had been right: Aretzsky had put great feeling into it. His sense of his subject leaped off the canvas and struck the viewer hard. But it was not the painter's hatred that Janek felt so much, nor his bitterness and disillusionment. Although Victoria was harshly characterized, Aretzsky showed a good deal more of her than mere cruelty. It was, Janek thought, a portrait of an extremely unhappy woman, a woman ravaged by a vast and insupportable inner pain. Yes, she was mean, yes, she was selfish—the glare in her eyes and the set of her mouth made that cl
ear enough. But what Aretzsky showed was a victim, a real human being in distress. And although Janek understood why Victoria had hated this picture and had wished to see it destroyed, he also understood how very wrong she'd been. Compared with the painting he had seen in Beverly's bedroom, the painting that had haunted his dreams, this was a mature work of art. That first portrait was a poster. This second one was a truly tragic image.
As Janek continued to gaze at the picture, many things became clear. He understood why Beverly had coveted the first picture and built her bedroom altar around it. It was a portrait of her mother as Beverly needed to remember her, while the second picture was too complex to inspire adoration. The Victoria Archer in the second picture was a woman who could make a wallflower of her own daughter. It was that true a likeness, Janek thought.
Later, upstairs, he and Aaron tried to strike a deal with Mrs. Malkiewicz, but the old lady wouldn't bargain. She acknowledged she'd been unable to sell a single one of her brother's canvases and admitted freely that he and Aaron were the first people to come around and express an interest in his work. Still, she held firm. Her price was nonnegotiable. Ten-thousand-dollars-take-it-or-leave-it. Not a penny less.
Why? they asked her. She couldn't explain it. She just knew the picture was valuable and she wasn't going to sell it cheap. But we're cops, they reminded her, civil servants; we don't have that kind of dough. Well, maybe not, she said. But ten thousand was still the price.
Janek understood even before Aaron that there was no point in further discussion. We'll think about it, he told Mrs. Malkiewicz politely. We'll let you know tomorrow.
Back in the car Aaron was explosive.
"You crazy, Frank? You'd even consider paying that? Screw her! And to hell with the picture!"
"Trouble is I want it," Janek said.
He explained to Aaron his conviction that the reason Mrs. Malkiewicz set the price so high was that she didn't really want to sell.
"Sure she needs the money. And sure she acts like Aretzsky's pictures are shit. But the truth is she loved her brother, and his pictures are the only things of his she's got. To sell one off is to lose a part of him. Even if we agree to pay her price, I'm not sure she won't back out."
Aaron shrugged. "So what's the point?"
"The point is I need that goddamn picture. So I'll just have to get hold of the money, then handle her very carefully."
"Where're you going to get that kind of bread?"
"I think I know where I can raise it."
Aaron looked at him skeptically. "You're not thinking of Kit?"
"No, not Kit," Janek said. I've got someone else in mind."
Back in the motel he dialed Stanton's office in New York. Mr. Dorance was in a meeting, his secretary said. Could he get back to Janek later on?
"No. Tell him it's an emergency."
A minute later a breathless Stanton came on the line.
"What's the matter, Frank? What's going on?"
"I need ten thousand dollars."
"Is this a joke? I'm kind of busy."
"No joke, Stanton. I'm out in Cleveland. I'm on the trail of the person who put that girl up to all those killings, including Jess's. I can't go into the details. It's a complicated case. The bottom line is that there's a painting out here I think I can use to put this person away. It'll cost me ten thousand dollars."
"'Think' you can use?"
"Yeah, well, it's a long shot. But it's the only thing I got going. You said I should call you if I needed anything. I'm calling. This is what I need to catch Jess's killer."
A long pause. He knew what Stanton was thinking: Yes, he'd made that commitment, but ten thousand was a lot of money. Was there any way he could wriggle out of this? Was Janek off his rocker?
"You're sure the painting's worth it?"
"No. But that's what it's going to cost."
"Maybe you should have it professionally appraised?"
"Screw that. I need it now."
Another pause. "You're really calling in my marker?"
"I guess you could say that, Stanton, yeah."
"I didn't expect this. Not so soon."
"Neither did I. Believe me, if I had the money, I'd buy the damn thing myself."
"Well, all right. How soon do you need it?"
"Yesterday."
"I'll FedEx you a check. You'll get it tomorrow morning."
"No check," Janek said. "The seller's nervous. The only way I can close the deal is put cash down on the table."
"I can wire you the money, I suppose. To a local bank out there." He could hear the exasperation in Stanton's voice. "Jesus, Frank! I just hope you know what you're doing!"
"Yeah. Well, I'm just doing the best I can," Janek replied.
The following morning at eleven they were back at the Malkiewicz residence with ten banded packs of fresh hundred-dollar bills and a rented van big enough to transport the painting.
Mrs. Malkiewicz met them at the door. She looked at Janek nervously. "I didn't expect you back so soon."
"I've got the money. We're here to take the picture."
He knew the way to do it was to move as quickly as possible, ignore any hesitancy on her part, count out the cash bill by bill while Aaron wrestled the portrait out the door. That way, if she happened to have second thoughts, it would be too late; the transaction would be complete.
It worked out. Mrs. Malkiewicz didn't say a word, although Janek couldn't help noticing her despair. He knew she'd get over it. Ten grand was enough to fix up her house. And she still had a thick stack of Aretzsky paintings rotting in her cellar.
That afternoon they found a carpenter who agreed to crate up the picture in time for the first flight the following morning to New York. Janek and Aaron would escort it back, the fruit of their investigation.
After the plane took off, Janek stared out his window at the sprawling city below. The sky was gray, broken by a few plumes of industrial smoke. Cleveland looked huge and flat, blocks of bleak gray buildings, a grid of iron-colored streets. The Cuyahoga River, famous for once having caught on fire, was crusted with snow, and Lake Erie seemed a vast white frozen waste. It was a strange and fascinating place, he thought, this city Aaron had described as a Rust Belt town of broken dreams. Here for many years iron and coal had been forged into steel, and here, too, the pathology of Wallflower had been forged.
11
THE PORTRAIT
The crucial move, Janek knew, would be the delivery of the portrait. Bungle that and he could botch his entire case.
He and Aaron war-gamed the problem. Since they couldn't break into her house and switch the new painting with the old (their preferred solution), they'd have to take their chances on a straight delivery. The trick, they agreed, would be to get Beverly to accept it.
"How about two guys in deliveryman uniforms. 'Parcel, Ms. Archer. Just sign here, please, ma'am.'"
"Yeah," said Aaron, "then they bring in this enormous box. 'Hey,' she yells, 'I never ordered this. Get this stinking thing out of here.' See, Frank, it's not like you want to send her a valentine that all we got to do is slip it under her door. That picture's fucking humongous."
"So there's only one solution," Janek said. "Deliver it ourselves."
"What if she won't take it?"
"We'll leave it on the stoop."
"So she ignores it. Or has it hauled away. There's no guarantee she'll look at it, even if she does take it inside."
"You're right," Janek said. "There're no guarantees about any of it. But if we deliver it to her in the proper context, our odds will improve. By a lot."
He called Monika, filled her in on his trip to Cleveland, outlined his plan, then asked her what she thought.
"Strange, a bit morbid, certainly daring," she said. She sounded less excited than he'd expected. "You say you want to shock this woman into a confession. But there's also a chance you'll shock her into a psychotic state. Have you considered that?"
"It's occurred to me," he said. "Frankly, the
idea doesn't break me up. She goes to prison or she goes to the funny farm. I win either way. A third possibility is that she laughs the whole thing off. That's the one I'd just as soon not think about."
"Sounds to me like you're out for blood, Frank."
Why was she reproaching him? "Wasn't blood what she was out for?"
He imagined Monika shaking her head. "This is difficult for me. My profession is to heal, not to wound."
Suddenly he was irritated. "You say I sound like I'm out for blood—I'm not sure what that means. I'm certainly not about to pick up an ice pick and stick it in her ear. But if you mean tearing the mask off her face, then I guess you're right."
"Oh, Frank . . . I'm just not sure I can help you with this anymore."
But it wasn't her help he wanted now; it was her approval. And that, it seemed, she was not about to give. He didn't understand. She had told him to look to the past, that he would find the secret there. What secret, he wondered, did she expect he would find—the cure to Beverly Archer's disease?
"Look," he said, "she's a vicious, manipulative, dangerous murderess. My job is to put her away."
"Of course," she said sadly. "Of course. . . ."
He felt awful when he put down the phone. Would Monika now hold this against him? She said she understood, but did she? He was a detective, not a therapist. Now he had to do his job.
After much discussion and many rehearsals, he and Aaron agreed that since there was no way of knowing how Beverly would react, their best approach would be the simplest and most direct. No big dramatic production at the door. Just walk up the front steps picture in hand, ring the bell, offer to place it in the hall for her, then let the chips fall where they may.
Figuring she'd be tired and thus more vulnerable at the end of the day, they parked their van across from her house a little after 6:00 P.M. There they waited until 6:45, when her last patient left.
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