Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  And what of Mallory’s perceptions of this strange onesided romance? He wondered if she didn’t see him as a large and friendly, slightly shaggy dog in a three-piece suit.

  As if in answer to his innermost thoughts and fears, she patted him on the head and told him to get out of her chair.

  He had only closed his eyes for a moment, and then he had fallen into a deep sleep. In the next moment, his head exploded.

  “ANDREW!” screamed the voice from hell.

  Emma Sue?

  Oh, no. She had her own bullhorn. If there really was a God in New York City, how did He coexist with Emma Sue Hollaran? The woman’s normal speaking voice had the unholy pitch of a cat set on fire. Now she was electrified, insanely amplified. And for the first time in years, he was not fortified to withstand it. This time, he was sober and all soft underbelly.

  Brain asloshing, moving slowly, minding the pain, he crept to the short wall at the edge of the roof.

  “GOOD MORNING, ANDREW!”

  His body jerked back, the involuntary motion of a man whose head has been struck by a grenade. He ventured a second glance over the side. Another woman was taking the bullhorn away from Emma Sue.

  Oh, thank you, thank you, whoever you are.

  She must be from the haute couture police, for Emma Sue was dressed in the most awful rag. It had to be some wardrobe relic from the days when she was allowed to dress herself without his advice. Well, if this alone did not demonstrate his indispensability. The dress was a bright pink billboard plastered on her meaty frame, advertising choice cuts of bovine flesh, thick flanks and overhanging rump. And what was she doing here? He had only wanted her to handle a simple press release.

  He picked up his bullhorn and aimed at her like a gun. Oh, would that it were a gun. “Emma Sue, go inside and have someone dress you. Now, before someone sees you.”

  She was going inside. And he knew it would be a while before she dared come back. Wasn’t he brilliant? Oh, she must be seething. How secure was the roof door?

  “Mr. Bliss,” said the more civil woman now in possession of the bullhorn. “I’m Harriet Marcan. Women’s Wear!”

  “Call me Andrew. What may I do for you?”

  “I’d like to interview you, Andrew. May I come up?”

  “Not possible, I’m afraid. The stairs are torn away from one door and the other is barricaded. You simply can’t get here from there.” Annie had joined the reporter on the sidewalk. “But of course,” he continued, “I have no objection to the interview.”

  “It’s a bit awkward, isn’t it?” With one hand, Ms. Marcan tossed off the flyaway gesture of You’re kidding, right?

  “I can fix that,” said Andrew. “Annie, have an armchair and a table brought down from Furniture on the fifth floor. And arrange a champagne brunch for our Ms. Marcan.”

  Across champagne glasses and through dueling bullhorns, Andrew explained his modus operandi to the reporter from Women’s Wear. Fashion terrorism was the only way. She could see that, couldn’t she? For terrorism was horribly effective, wasn’t it? And who could fail to notice, in a daily perusal of the Times, that it worked best when there was a base of genuine and justifiable outrage. The world might not approve the methodology, but they did sit up and pay attention. And they became, against their collective will, aware of wrongs done.

  So now there was a homeland for the beautiful people. Nothing fancy, just the one square block of Bloomingdale’s. And tomorrow? The entire island of Manhattan.

  “Sorry, I’m digressing. Terrorism will out. You’ll see.”

  J. L. Quinn followed her through the door with a few minutes’ distance between them. When he entered the Koozeman Gallery, it took him another minute to locate Detective Mallory among the bustle of art handlers, a tour group and the television crew.

  Mallory stood by the entrance of the main gallery, removing the yellow strips of tape which had marked the crime scene. The television crew poured into this room as the last tape was stripped away, and she stood aside.

  Oren Watt, confessed murderer in a dark suit, was leading the parade of cameras, women with clipboards and men with sound equipment and lights. The flesh of Watt’s head shone through the stubble of close-cropped brown hair. His dark glasses only concealed small, ordinary eyes, and could not begin to disguise him. His most prominent feature was an overlarge mouth, which made a long, thin-lipped line across the lower face, as if someone had drawn it there, and drawn it badly. The small ears were another odd feature, only half finished in their details. Perhaps his mother had pushed him out of the womb before her work was quite done. Watt’s child-size pug nose fit well with this theory.

  When the trample of feet had come to rest in this room, Oren Watt was approving the placement of his artwork. The rather bad drawing of a dismembered foot was held to the wall at different levels and locations by a young woman in the art handler’s uniform of black jersey and jeans. The confessed murderer shook his head and waved the drawing farther along the wall and higher. The art handler was quick to follow his instructions, for this was the Monster of Manhattan, wasn’t it? The gallery worker was so young-Oren Watt had probably been the bogeyman of her childhood nightmares.

  Mallory was the only one in the room who seemed bored by Watt. Quinn watched her as she turned her back on the Monster of Manhattan, and walked along the opposite wall, where the drawings were lined up awaiting the hanging process. Her face gave Quinn no clue to her thoughts as she scanned the artwork. Perhaps she was wondering which of the body parts belonged to his niece, the dancer, and which to Peter Ariel, the young artist who had died with Aubry. The sketches were all so badly drawn, there was no gender differentiation.

  The sidewalk tour gathered at the entrance to the room. Two of the party snapped photographs. None of them needed their tour guide to tell them this was Oren Watt. One man nudged another to whisper that Watt was even uglier than his television image. The entire tour group stared at the strange-looking man as though he were a zoo specimen, and by Quinn’s lights, this was close to the truth.

  Quinn kept track of Mallory as she wandered out of the main gallery and into a smaller room where the real art was hung. He followed her, wondering what he might say to make this meeting seem accidental.

  The tour group was pulled away from the spectacle of the monster and led into the smaller room by the guide-cum-art-maven, who was babbling banalities. Twelve pairs of feet trooped up to the drawing Mallory was admiring. Conversation stopped as the group’s leader rambled on about the lines of the work, the texture of the paper and the artist’s intention-as if he had a clue.

  Quinn appeared on the far side of the group. Respecting the etiquette of the docent’s lecture, he kept his distance and his silence, and never looked at Mallory directly or acknowledged that he was aware of her. The tension between them was strung across the baffle of words and a score of tourists.

  He studied her now, as she studied the minimalist piece on the gallery wall. What held her attention was a soft embossing of three delicate lines of paper. The strokes were exquisitely feminine, as were the lines of a dreaming nude. There was no frame. It was fixed to the wall with four pins. The stock was pristine ivory and the embossing was visible only in reflective light, so faintly were the lines raised. He would later return to the gallery and buy it. Later still, he would put it away in a dark portfolio because it reminded him too much of Mallory.

  Her head turned slightly, and for a few minutes they did the children’s dance of the eyes, each stealing glances at the other. And so their conversation began before they ever said hello.

  Emma Sue Hollaran pulled the ball gown out of her closet. She held the hanger at arm’s length and studied the formfitting sheath, which was not intended for dancing beyond the confines of the box step. Before she even tried on the gown, she knew the long zipper would be a problem over the thighs and buttocks.

  And she was right.

  A full-length mirror of three panels afforded a global view of her body.
The zipper held, but oh, what it held. The fabric was straining over large bumps and accentuating lumps.

  She reached out to the telephone and tapped out the clinic’s telephone number, a number she knew by heart. After the frustration of dealing with the receptionist, who had no time slots left to give her, she screamed, “He’ll see me, or I’ll turn him in! I’ll burn his ass!”

  And indeed she could send the plastic surgeon to jail if she chose to. He’d done procedures on her after four other surgeons had turned her down. Once he put her near death-never mind that it was at her own insistence. He had taken out more fat than her buttocks, stomach, arms and double chin could safely part with at one session with the high-tech vacuum cleaner.

  The thighs had been left undone in the doctor’s haste to change her skin color from blue to something more like live flesh. After that near-death experience, she had been wary of having her thighs done, but now she had no choice, did she? And the buttocks had grown back to their former substantial proportions. Now that was definitely a breach of contract. Liposuction promised svelte forever, and lied.

  When the receptionist returned to the phone, an opening had magically appeared in the doctor’s schedule.

  “Where is Mallory?” asked Charles, freshly barbered- styled, actually-and smiling.

  Riker was seated at the desk in Mallory’s office. “She’s out.” Now he looked up and whistled. “That’s a great haircut, Charles.”

  Charles agreed. He was very pleased with himself today. Mallory’s hairstylist had convinced him that giving more volume to his hair would call attention away from his large nose. The man had cut his locks with the skill of a sculptor, and the effect was striking. Charles thought it highly unlikely that his nose could be minimized by a blow dryer, but he had managed to sustain this fairy tale all the way from Fifty-seventh Street to SoHo. And he had yet another reason for good spirits. He had something to contribute to the case.

  “But where did Mallory go? I have good news.”

  “She’s at the Koozeman Gallery.” Riker removed a carton from the desk and settled it to the floor. “The mayor ordered us to take down the crime-scene tapes. Seems they were getting in the way of the television crews. God forbid a homicide investigation should hold up a television shooting schedule. Get this, they’re doing a documentary of the old murders, and Oren Watt is the technical advisor. They want to reenact it in the Koozeman Gallery.”

  “What uncanny timing.” Charles was staring at the cork wall. It was a bizarre combination of Mallory’s ultraneat positioning and Markowitz’s sloppy handwriting, interspersed with bloody photographs of footprints and articles of clothing. It was almost a chessboard.

  “Yeah, those television jackals move fast,” said Riker.

  “But it’s the wrong gallery. The murders were in the East Village location.”

  “Charles, it’s only television. No one expects real. So what’s the good news?”

  “I found Andrew Bliss.”

  “Nice going. Where is he?”

  “At Bloomingdale’s.”

  “You think he might be there for a while?”

  “I know he will.”

  Riker was rising from his chair when Charles waved him to sit down again. “No, there’s no hurry. He’s there for the long haul. You see, my hairdresser-Mallory’s hairdresser-is having an affair with an off-Broadway set designer whose brother is one of Bloomingdale’s executives. They were talking on the speakerphone while I was having my hair cut. According to the brother of the Bloomingdale’s man, Andrew Bliss outfitted the roof as a luxury campsite. Then the chairwoman of the Public Works Committee sent out a press release declaring Andrew Bliss an artwork in progress. And an ACLU attorney is meeting with the store’s law firm to discuss freedom of speech versus liability. Bliss has already done his first press interview. Now he’s an official performance artist.”

  “Oh, great. Another performance artist.” Riker began to push the telephone buttons. “Let’s see what we’ve got on the little bastard.”

  While Riker was talking to the desk sergeant in the East Side precinct, Charles turned his attention back to the cork wall. All but a few of the pictures and reports belonged to the old murders of the artist and the dancer. As he walked the length of the wall, he was aware of the father’s brain merging with the daughter’s. Here was Louis Markowitz’s mania for detail matching Mallory’s obsession with neatness. Every bit of paper was equidistant from each other, but the significance of some items should be beneath Mallory’s contempt for the small details. And she usually tossed out whatever did not agree with her.

  Riker held the telephone receiver in the crook of his neck as he tapped his foot and played with his pencil, all the signs that his call had been placed on hold.

  Charles continued down the length of the wall. The fine detail work was already falling away. Louis Markowitz’s influence was passing off. Most of Louis’s paperwork had related to Aubry Gilette. Now Charles encountered a smiling publicity photo of Peter Ariel, the artist who had died with the young dancer. All that accompanied this photo was a medical examiner’s report.

  After a few minutes’ conversation, Riker put down the phone, and none too gently. “We can’t touch Andrew Bliss. No interviews, nothing. Bliss’s personal shopper signed a charge for the merchandise. Then his lawyer showed up with a check to cover damages to a roof staircase.”

  “But surely this is criminal trespass.”

  “The store isn’t filing a complaint. They like the little guy. He’s their most loyal shopper. And he’s good for a five-minute spot on the evening news.” Riker put his feet up on the desk and slumped low in his chair. “I don’t understand this, Charles. I thought the guy was a professional art critic, and now he’s a damn performance artist.”

  “Well, there’s quite a bit of crossover in art. Artists sometimes write art criticism the way authors review books by other people. No reason why a critic shouldn’t make art.”

  “But isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

  “Perhaps, but crossover is common practice. Take your most recent dead artist, Dean Starr. As you know, that wasn’t the name he was born with. His-”

  “Starr is an alias?” Riker pulled out his pen and notebook and scanned the first page. “All the identification on his body was in that name.”

  “Sorry, I assumed you knew.” Charles retrieved his discarded newspaper from the wastebasket and opened it to the obituary columns. He tapped the boxed mention of former art critic, current murder victim, Dean Strvnytchlk. “That’s it. Under his original name, he used to publish a rather bad magazine of local art coverage. He was the chief art critic. He also contributed reviews to local tabloids.”

  Riker stared at the obituary. “How do you pronounce that?”

  “Too many consonants. You’re on your own.” Charles opened a desk drawer and pulled out a pair of scissors. “If you followed the art news, you would have seen a review of his own show written under his real name.”

  “The bastard reviewed himself? You’re kidding me.”

  “Not at all. There’s historical precedent-Walt Whitman once reviewed his own work anonymously.” Charles carefully cut the obituary from the paper, trying to make straight edges so as not to annoy Mallory with an imperfection. “Starr’s gallery dealer, Koozeman, is also a critic. He writes a regular column for an international art magazine. Oh yes, it goes on all the time.”

  Charles tacked the obituary on the cork wall below the medical examiner’s preliminary report on the death of Dean Starr. And now he noticed the next item on the cork wall was a blank sheet of paper. On closer inspection, this paper covered a photograph. He turned to Riker. “What’s this about?”

  “Mallory did that for you. It’s the crime-scene photo of the old double homicide. She covered it over because you knew Aubry.”

  Charles and Riker exchanged a look which acknowledged that neither of them had believed she was capable of this delicate courtesy.

  Mallory pa
used near a pile of the television crew’s paraphernalia. Quinn watched as she neatly snatched up a clipboard. Anyone might have believed it belonged to her as she studied the pages on her way out the door.

  He caught up with her on the street outside the Koozeman Gallery. “Hello again.”

  She nodded, acknowledging that she recognized him, but not that she was particularly pleased to see him. She turned away and walked down the street.

  “I wonder if you could explain something to me.” He walked beside her, matching his steps to hers. “The drawings of the bodies? Oren Watt has been selling them for years, and I still can’t believe he’s being allowed to profit on murder.”

  “He gets around the profit-on-crime laws because he was never brought to trial.” One hand shaded her eyes from the light of the noonday sun as she looked up at him. “But your family lawyer would have told you that.”

  It was impossible to miss her suggestion that he was making up useless small talk. And of course, he was.

  A warm breeze ruffled a bright silk banner overhead, and he could follow the wind down the SoHo street with the lift and swirl of similar banners which hung out over the sidewalk to advertise galleries and trendy boutiques.

  He was walking faster now, to keep pace with her, and casting around for some bit of unfoolish conversation that might hold her attention for a while.

  Mallory broke the silence. “Did you know Koozeman scheduled another show of Dean Starr’s work?”

  “Yes. I thought it might be going up today. I was surprised by the Oren Watt drawings.”

  Her face was telling him she didn’t think he was all that surprised, and he wasn’t. She quickened her steps, putting some distance between them. He walked faster.

  “Koozeman never handled Oren Watt before,” he said, in self-defense. “So, it is odd.”

  “Koozeman says he’s not handling Watt.” She consulted the stolen clipboard as she walked. At the top of the first sheet was a network logo followed by a schedule of places and dates. “He says it’s a temporary installation. The television crew rented the space for the day.” She made a check mark by the Koozeman Gallery and this day’s date. “The Dean Starr show goes up in three days. Do you know why Koozeman’s so hot to have another showing of Starr’s work?”