Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  “Yeah, right.”

  The sarcasm was well placed. Sneaking up behind people had always been her own special talent. How many times had she frightened him out of his skin, coming up behind him when he was convinced she was rooms away or even miles. Well, this would be fun. “Lunch, right? That’s the bet.”

  “It’s a bet, Charles. Go for it.”

  Charles left by a side door leading to a back room, saying, “I’ll be right back. Don’t move from that spot.”

  Three minutes later he opened a section of the wall behind her and said, “Mallory, you’re dead. Oh, and you owe me one lunch.”

  Mallory turned slowly, and he was somewhat disappointed that she hadn’t jumped. Had anyone ever taken her by surprise?

  She examined the section of wall. There was a beveled overlap at the edge of the wall, and a similar overlap lined the edges of the door. “It’s a perfect job. Nearly seamless.”

  When she opened the door wider, she saw the white curtain hanging over the opening. She looked up to the overhead track lights which illuminated the curtain, killing the dark hole of the small hallway beyond and maintaining the illusion of an unbroken wall, even when the door was slightly ajar. “Perfect.” Now she closed the door, and the wall became a single plane. She pushed lightly on the wall. The door opened. “Pressure lock. Just perfect.”

  “Like his shows. You never see anything but the art. Let’s say you had an interest in a particular artist, but his work wasn’t on display. Koozeman would position you with your back to this wall. A gallery boy would open the door, hand him a painting, and you’d think it had just materialized behind your back. He’s always been quite a showman. It’s the main reason I attend his openings- for the magic act.”

  Three gallery boys entered the room with buckets of whitewash, a ladder and brushes. One boy stood off to the side, unraveling the cord on a large industrial waxing machine.

  “Koozeman had the place freshly painted and waxed for the funeral,” said Mallory. “Why is he doing it again?”

  “Well, that’s pretty standard. You said there was artwork on the wall during the filming of the television movie. Now they’ll fill in the holes in the wall with plaster and paint again. Then the floors will be waxed.”

  “He always does that?”

  “Yes, always.”

  “Did you ever go to one of his shows at the old East Village location?”

  “Yes, a few times. Where shall we have lunch?”

  “Did he do this in the old days, too?”

  “The painting and waxing? Yes. Everyone does it. It’s standard.”

  “Thanks, Charles. Now I’ll tell you why Oren Watt couldn’t have used this door to kill Dean Starr. When Koozeman did his little trick on the patrons, he was the one who positioned them. No one behind the door would know who was on the other side unless Koozeman was doing a planned setup. So an accomplice would have to position the victim, and then signal Watt to come through the door and stab the man. According to Watt’s confession, he works alone and never plans that far ahead.”

  “All right. I’ll pay for lunch. Where shall we go?”

  She was distracted. He followed her gaze to the entrance of the gallery, where J. L. Quinn was standing. How long had he been there?

  “Mallory, isn’t this the second time he’s found you at Koozeman’s? It can’t be coincidence. He’s stalking you, isn’t he?”

  “Or maybe he has some connection to Koozeman. We’ll do lunch tomorrow, Charles.”

  “I was expecting the Gulag,” said Mallory, looking around at the appointments of the Tavern on the Green. She approved the cleaning job on the clear panes of glass looking out on Central Park, and she ignored the gang of tulips just beyond the window in a riot of color, each bloom openmouthed and screaming at the sun.

  Quinn was reading the wine list. “Unless you have a preference, I’ll-”

  “Frog’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon, 1990,” said Mallory. “That year isn’t on the wine list. They only have a few bottles left. You may have to pay more to get the waiter to look for it.”

  Quinn set down the menu. He seemed only vaguely disquieted by the fact that she might be accustomed to this place where one did not escape the table without a substantial outlay of cash. She sat back and watched him through half-closed eyes, wondering what other small cracks she might make in his composure.

  When he had ordered the wine and the lunch, he folded his arms and leaned toward her. “Well, what shall we discuss? Art?”

  “Marketing.”

  “Same thing.”

  “A lot of money flowed through Koozeman’s hands after Peter Ariel was killed. But most of it didn’t stay in his bank account or his investment portfolio.” And it never appeared on Koozeman’s tax returns, but Quinn didn’t need to know she’d found a back door to the IRS computers.

  “Part of the money would have gone to investors. Koozeman was small-time in those days, so we can assume there was substantial backing to promote Peter Ariel. I imagine you’ve seen Koozeman’s old gallery in the East Village.”

  She nodded, though she had never seen it except in cyberspace visions of paperwork, rent estimates, map locations and a floor plan. Now she thought she might make the trip to the East Village to check it out in the dimensions of real time and space.

  A plate of appetizers appeared on the table with the unobtrusive flash of a waiter’s sleeve.

  “There were no profits on Peter Ariel’s show,” she said. “Not on paper. But Ariel was dead less than three months, and suddenly Koozeman was paying ten times the rent for his new SoHo location. His investors paid for that, even when he had no buyers for the art?”

  “The investors were the buyers.” The wine arrived and he paused for the rituals of reading the label and testing the contents. “It’s difficult to launch an artist in the primary market, particularly a sculptor like Ariel- no talent. Sometimes a dealer creates an artificial market to get the ball rolling.”

  “The primary market-you mentioned that before.”

  “That’s the initial sale. The secondary market is the resale of work. If you can generate a lot of hype, the demand for the art will exceed the supply. Then you go back to the buyers of the early work, and you broker resales for a share of the profit.”

  Salad plates appeared with the finesse of fine service, and disappeared to be replaced with main courses. Between the leafy vegetables and the red meat, she learned the fine points of faking success in the art world-the kickbacks to grant committees for impressive lines on a resumé, the trade of advertising money for guaranteed reviews, and even the publicist’s fees.

  “I can’t question Koozeman on the old case,” she said. “How do I find out who participated in the sales of Ariel’s work?”

  “You don’t.” Quinn caught the waiter’s attention and mimed the word “coffee.” “Even if you could approach Koozeman, he wouldn’t give you any names. That list would be the most closely guarded thing he possessed.”

  “Because he doesn’t want the police to bother his clientele?”

  “Because some of the people on that list are probably not paying any capital gains taxes or sales tax.”

  “He ran a tax scam?”

  Conversation stopped as coffee cups were filled.

  “I don’t know that he did anything illegal-I’m only speculating. You said there were no profits on paper from the last Ariel show. Let’s say most of Peter Ariel’s work was reported damaged on the night of the murder. In a tax audit, Koozeman would only have to produce the police report and letters from the initial buyers saying their money was returned to them because the work was damaged prior to delivery. But they might hold on to the work, and Koozeman might not actually return the money.”

  “So he voids the check transactions by claiming refunds in cash. Then the cash goes into a safety deposit box?”

  “If it happened that way, the initial buyers would make a substantial tax-free profit on a cash resale. No capital gains tax for th
e initial buyer, no sales tax for the resale buyer, no income tax for Koozeman.”

  “Could he use the same racket to sell what’s left of Dean Starr’s work?”

  “I hardly think so. He actually did make a few sales the night Dean Starr was murdered. But the art is such a crock, the A list people wouldn’t touch it. The work was bought by ignorant gate crashers. For the second showing, he’ll probably sell directly to the amateurs.”

  “So the primary market is the A list.”

  “Right. That would be the money people. They’re not art lovers-only looking for investment ventures. Now if an artist dies with a lot of notoriety, that’s a windfall profit. The art is knowing when to unload the work before its value falls off.”

  “So the A list unloads on the suckers from the B list.”

  “And they may in turn sell to a C list, the ultimate morons who get stuck with worthless art. C list buyers are corporate collections and banks. They rarely notice they’ve been duped because the cost of the work is added to the asset value of the company. It’s a hidden loss, a worthless holding that won’t show up in an audit. And now you know all about art.”

  “But I don’t know anything about Aubry’s mother. Why aren’t there any photographs of Sabra?” She had expected some reaction to that, but his composure never faltered.

  “You can blame my father for that.” He leaned toward her. “My mother was every bit as beautiful as you are, Mallory. That’s why my father married her.”

  Over another cup of coffee and dessert, she learned that Quinn’s father had not been married long before he discovered what hell it was to live with a woman obsessed by mirrors. One night, when Sabra was only twelve, her father said to her, “It’s a pity about your beauty. If only you had been born ugly or even ordinary, you might have developed an intellect.” He was drunk when he said that, but he meant it. He was afraid for his daughter.

  Sabra had marched up the stairs and destroyed all the mirrors in her bedroom. Later, the Quinns began to notice the sabotage of family photographs all over the house. Eventually, she had destroyed every likeness of herself. She never wanted to see her own face again.

  “It may seem mad to you, but I thought it was rather brilliant. It gave Sabra great focus, and she did develop that intellect and more. She was a creative genius. So perhaps you can also blame my father for her talent.”

  “But eventually she did go insane.”

  “She went through a bad time of it when her child died.”

  “Her husband says she was crazy, certifiable. And she spent some time in an institution.”

  “Gregor said that? Well, perhaps by New York standards she was always mad. She never took money from the family. That was insane, wasn’t it? With no help at all she made a startling career. Her museum retrospectives traveled the world. But she probably did need professional help getting through the aftermath of the murder.”

  “Sabra was a strong woman. I have to wonder what pushed her over the top.”

  “Sabra adored Aubry.”

  “That’s not enough. We all lose people. And how is she living now? She doesn’t paint anymore. Hospitals are expensive. Gregor says she never used their health insurance plan, so her money had to dry up eventually. Wouldn’t she go to her husband or her family if she needed money to live on?”

  “I only wish she had.”

  Mallory knew he was lying, but she didn’t call him on it. “Let them lie,‘’ Markowitz had told her. ”They always tell you more with the lies than you will ever get from the truth.‘’

  She sipped her coffee, and stared out the window. “You know, when you ask a civilian the names of the artist and the dancer, they only remember Peter Ariel.”

  “Of course. The cliché romance of the starving artist who’s only discovered after his death.”

  “But if you ask a cop, they only remember Aubry’s name. That was your work, Quinn. You led the investigation back to Aubry every time, even though Peter Ariel was the most likely target.”

  “Oh, was he? Then why did the chief medical examiner back up my point of view? Twelve years ago, he supported Aubry as the primary target.”

  She watched Quinn and the young woman from the vantage point of a pile of garbage fresh from the restaurant’s kitchen, the spill of an overturned can. She didn’t notice the odor of fish heads mingling with the warm aroma of dog turds and the smell of fruit. Nor did she feel any curiosity about the young woman. This was simply all the spectacle offered to her at the moment, watching them together as they left the Central Park restaurant.

  The woman with the wire cart was not so old as she appeared. Just as money could keep age at bay for a while, the dearth of money could and did accelerate aging. The lack of a roof to keep off the elements could ravage the skin and prematurely wrinkle the spirit. There were gaps between the teeth she had left to her. Her hair was iron gray and unwashed since that time, months ago, when she had been herded into the women’s shelter, stripped and deloused as the matrons watched from the door of the gang shower.

  Now she spoke to the tea tin on the top of her cart, and nodding to it, she moved away with the cart in tow. Cart wheels squeaked, and aching feet with swollen ankles dragged across the gravel path. Her breathing was the wheeze of bad lungs as she strained to pull the cart which had grown heavier with each passing year on the streets of New York.

  Coffey sat back in his chair, holding the telephone receiver a short distance from his ear. Commissioner Beale had a high irritating phone voice, and he tended to yell like a boy in the days when telephones were tin cans and wires.

  “Yes, sir,” said Coffey. “I’ll pass your compliments along to Mallory before she leaves for Boston… Yes, sir, Boston. Chief Blakely’s pulling her off the case and sending her to…”

  Coffey held the phone farther from his ear. “Well, Blakely felt the case might go high-profile if Mallory… Yes, sir, the photograph of the ball… Oh, you’re putting me in a hard place, sir. Blakely gave me a direct order to send her to Boston, and I would never… Yes, sir. I’m glad you understand… Well, no, sir, I wouldn’t mind if you had a word with him, but I’d appreciate it if you’d leave my name out of it. He might get the idea I was going behind his back to keep Mallory on the case… Thank you, sir.”

  Coffey set down the phone. When he turned to his reflection in the glass wall of his office, he thought he recognized a Mallory smile on his face.

  The rabbi’s desk and chair were the heart of this sun-bright room filled with books and papers, warm wood, and white curtains that lifted with every breeze from the open window.

  Rabbi David Kaplan was a long, elegant figure in a dark suit. His graying beard was close-trimmed and did not conceal the leanness of his face. His eyes conveyed the tranquillity of a drowsing cat, and this was deception. In every meeting with Kathy Mallory, all his senses were in play, and speed of mind was paramount in all his dealings with her. His old friend Father Brenner had learned this lesson the hard way and too late.

  Helen Markowitz had sent her foster child out among the Catholics to honor a covenant with Kathy’s birth mother, a woman Helen had never met. Kathy had never spoken about her first mother, and so Helen had to intuit the wishes of this woman who had taught her child to make the sign of the cross. It was the only stitch of evidence to link Kathy with a past. Protestants did not make such signs, so it was determined that Kathy must have begun life as a Catholic. Helen had honored that original intention-up to a point. The experiment had ended badly.

  The child was sent back to frustrate Rabbi Kaplan until her religious education was deemed complete. His greatest frustration had been the fact that she was his brightest student, and he could not separate the makings of a scholar from the greater talents of a thief and a gifted liar.

  When she was well into her teens, he had offered her a choice of which faith she would continue in. She had chosen Judaism on the grounds that Jews had no place called hell.

  If he had been marginally successful in kee
ping her from the flames of the Catholic hell, he had not brought her any nearer to God. She had been insulted by his efforts, believing that deities of every faith were no more than fairy tales for slow learners. But for some strange reason, the Christian devil was very real to her. She had met him somewhere out on the road in those first ten years of life, the years she shared with no one.

  Despite all the traps he set for her, all the lost leaders he had put out upon the air between them, he had learned very little of her origins. Through the years, he had continued with his gentle probes into her past, and she had fended them off with agility. And so their relationship had always been a bit like a badminton game.

  The rabbi set the black telephone receiver down in its cradle and looked across the desk to the child he loved as much as his own. “All right, Kathy. You have an appointment. Madame Burnstien will look at you.”

  “Look at me?”

  “She must have assumed I was sending her a dancer. She hung up on me before I could correct that assumption. It’s just as well. My wife tells me Madame’s whole life is the ballet. If you’re not connected to that life, you don’t exist. The woman only accepted my call because Anna’s charity group donates scholarship money for the ballet school.”

  “Markowitz couldn’t get anywhere with her. What do you suppose he did wrong?”

  “Well, your father’s best weapon was charm. As I recall, the scum of the earth could be quite taken with him.”

  “So we know that doesn’t work on the old lady.”

  The rabbi only smiled at the idea that charm might be an option for Kathy Mallory. “Now, you will mind your manners with this woman. You will address her as Madame Burnstien. Helen raised you to show respect for the elderly. Of course, Madame Burnstien is a lot tougher than you are.”

  “Yeah, right.” She was not at all impressed. “I have a photo of her at Aubry’s funeral. She must be pushing ninety by now, and she walks with a cane.”