Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  Coffey gave him a grudging smile and fished a back pocket for his wallet. He laid a ten-dollar bill beside Riker’s, saying, “Go for it.”

  “You’ve been in here for less than ten minutes, and the glass is drained. Now that’s criminal, ‘cause it’s a real good grade of sipping whiskey. Your knuckles are white, and you look like a man who shouldn’t be allowed near a loaded gun. It’s Blakely, right? He’s messing with your command.”

  Coffey pushed both tens to Riker’s side of the desk. “Yeah, he wants Mallory off this case. He wants that really bad.”

  “And he threatened you, right?”

  Coffey nodded, as he reached into the drawer of his desk and produced another glass, holding it up to Riker as though he actually believed his sergeant might say no to a shot of whiskey.

  “Well, I think he’s overreacting,” said Riker, accepting his glass and emptying it before he spoke again. “There’s worse department cover-ups to worry about. This one is really small potatoes.”

  “Blakely’s taking it pretty seriously.”

  “And I’m sure he’s taking it personally, too. He’s the one who ordered Markowitz to close out the case.”

  “But the case stayed open. Blakely never screwed around much with Markowitz, did he?”

  “Well, you have to figure Markowitz had something on Blakely-the things the old man got away with? Lieutenant, you know what your real problem is? You got your promotions on merit. You didn’t come up through the patronage system. If you had, you’d have enough dirt to fend for yourself. You remind me of my old man. That’s high praise, ‘cause the old bastard was as straight-arrow as they come.”

  “Riker, why did you stay on the force after they busted you to sergeant?”

  “Well, my old dad was a cop. My grandfather, too. There was nothing else I ever wanted to be. So I quit the force and do what? You think I’m gonna go be a hairball private dick? Gimme a break.”

  “You’re fifty-five. You could retire with a nice pension and a few-”

  “And put a gun muzzle in my mouth after the novelty wears off? Naw. I still got Markowitz’s kid to raise. She thinks she knows it all. You can’t tell her nothin‘. She’s gotta learn everything the hard way. Somebody’s gotta be there with the bandages when she falls down and skins her little knees, or gets kicked in the head.”

  Rather normal people, suited and gowned, filled the gallery and mingled with the freaks of SoHo antifashion. Among the better dressed, there were many obvious cases of plastic excess and cut-rate work. With an unerring eye for aesthetics, it was not difficult for Charles Butler to guess which of the noses and chins had come from the store.

  Charles took Mallory’s arm to escort her around a leering little man in a long fur coat which probably concealed something lewd. Among the lunatics, his instincts were seldom wrong. Whenever he smiled in public, they gravitated to him, taking him for one of their own. He held his loony smile accountable for every mad confrontation on the streets of New York.

  “Mallory, it’s not the same crowd that would have been at the last Dean Starr show. If that group was the A list, this is definitely the C list, the incompetents of art collecting.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Koozeman brought out the circus freaks to entertain them. They’ll want to tell their friends back home in the suburbs that they spent the evening with famous artists. Any freak will qualify in that role. In my experience, the real artists are fairly normal in most respects.”

  A young woman with a half-shaven head walked by in earnest conversation with a pin-striped suit.

  “So Koozeman is trying to unload the unsold work in a hurry,” said Mallory. “That fits. He put both galleries on the-”

  “Check out the metal jacket on my tooth, here,” said the small man in the fur coat, who had followed along behind them. Now the little man put himself in Mallory’s path, and she was suddenly confronted with a wide, grinning mouth. A grimy finger pointed to the shiny metal crown reflecting a small silver cameo of her face between his lips. The tiny mirror was set slightly off center in a crooked line of yellow teeth. She backed up and stared at his sweating face above the collar of the fur, taking in the spiked hair, and the gold rings which pierced both his nostrils.

  He grinned at her, all but salivating as he looked her up and down. “Would you like to see the jeweled safety pin in my dick?”

  Charles pulled her away while she was still in the fascination mode and had not yet thought to bloody the little man.

  Koozeman was advancing on them, smiling and openly appraising Mallory’s black silk dress as he extended his hand to Charles. “Mr. Butler, how good to see you again.”

  “Hello, Koozeman. I believe you’ve met Mallory.”

  “Who could forget such a face? If I had known you were coming, my dear, I would have made up a guest list with a better class of collector.”

  Charles nodded to the near corner. “I see J. L. Quinn is here.”

  “Yes, he is,” said Koozeman, as though he could not figure out why Quinn had come.

  Mallory looked around at the walls, stark and bare but for the small red bits of paper held in place with pins. “So where is the artwork?”

  “The artwork?” For a moment, Koozeman seemed baffled by the idea of art in his gallery. “Oh, the tickets. See the tickets on the walls? They all have numbers. Dean Starr did it with numbers.”

  “Pardon?” Charles knew he would regret asking for clarification.

  “Numbers. See?” Koozeman waved a small red velvet bag in front of them, grinning like a master sorcerer. He opened the bag with a small flourish and offered Mallory a peek inside, wherein lay a pile of tickets like those on the walls.

  “Every one of them matches up with an idea, just like the tickets on the walls. They all have numbers on them. Please pick one.”

  She dropped a white hand into the bag and pulled out a red ticket. It was number twenty-two.

  “All right, Dean’s idea for number twenty-two. Let’s see.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. “Oh, yes. His idea for number twenty-two is a broad steel beam that goes half a mile straight up in the air.”

  Mallory seemed skeptical. “What for?”

  “To make you uncomfortable. You can’t see the base support, it just stands there while you wait for it to fall down. It’s meant to be threatening. Not his most original theme, though. He’s building on the work of a sculptor who once wrecked the side of a government building when the plaza sculpture fell down.”

  “A half-mile beam. That’s a rather ambitious project,” said Charles, playing the good sport. “How are you planning to fund it? With drawings-like Christo?”

  “Oh, no. Dean never intended to create the pieces. He just thought of them.”

  Mallory tilted her head to one side, and Charles wondered if she was listening for the audible snap of her mind, which could only be moments away.

  “Well, of course. He just thought of them.”

  Koozeman missed her sarcasm, as he took her hand and kissed it. “You do understand. I sell the artist’s thoughts, his intentions. Very pure, isn’t it?” He handed a price list to Charles.

  Charles scanned the list of numbers accompanied by prices in four and five figures. “And how are the sales going?”

  “I’ve sold four of them in the past half hour.”

  “You sell the artist’s thoughts.” Mallory gave equal weight to each word.

  “Yes. I sit over there.” Koozeman pointed to the side wall where an armchair sat on a platform. “When you see a number you like, you come and tell me the number on the ticket, and I tell you the idea Dean Starr had for that number. Simple?”

  Charles watched J. L. Quinn’s approach. “Charisma” was a word he called up easily enough, but he was also searching for something to describe an animal so much at home in its body, too graceful to be human. Now this was art, he thought, as he soon fell victim to Quinn’s talent for putting people at ease when he felt so
inclined.

  And then suddenly, Charles realized he had been robbed. Mallory was walking away with the art critic.

  A matron, wearing a pearl choker, gasped audibly at the specter standing by the gallery window.

  On the sidewalk outside the gallery, face pressed up against the window, a ragged derelict was holding a tea tin to her head and staring after the retreating figures of Quinn and Mallory. The woman’s mouth was working in a furious agitation of red gums as she slowly withdrew into the darkness beyond the light of the window.

  The matron with the pearl choker made a mental note to send a nice check to the Coalition for the Homeless and drained her full wineglass in one swig. What dark thing had lived and brooded on the wrong side of the glass, she did not want to know, but thought it might have come from hell and felt rather at home there.

  Mallory stood very close to the wall, eyes level with ticket number thirty-four. “Tell me again about the metaphor, the poetry of shape and color-”

  “That pertains to fine art,” said Quinn.

  “What’s this?”

  “The demystification of art.”

  “Well, thanks for clearing that up for me.”

  “It’s not a technical term. It’s a eulogy.” Quinn only glanced in the general direction of a passing gallery boy, and two glasses of wine appeared in the next instant. He handed one to Mallory. “Actually, if Dean Starr hadn’t been such a fool, I might have given him credit for ingenious parody. Go to any Whitney Biennial and you’ll see scores of three-minute ideas executed by the untalented and curated by the blind. Starr just carried the premise a little further by not bothering to construct the idea. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that the idea for the tickets wasn’t even his.”

  “Gregor Gilette said Koozeman used to be an artist.”

  “Yes, he was. You know, the tickets could be Koozeman’s concept.”

  “What are you doing here, Quinn? You said you didn’t review hack artists. And I had the feeling Koozeman didn’t expect you to show up tonight.”

  “I’ve been planning a lengthy piece on Koozeman, not Starr. He really is quite the magician. I could hardly ignore a thing like this.”

  “How will you write it up?”

  “I intend to promote Koozeman as a genius of the new order. A genius of hype, and hype, don’t you know, is the art form of the era. He’s truly a man of his times. But it hardly merits writing. I can phone this one in.”

  “Will anyone know you’re kidding?”

  “No.”

  “What did you think of Koozeman when he was a working artist?”

  “I thought he was very good.”

  “According to your brother-in-law, Sabra thought he was a genius.”

  “She was probably right. Some of his work was brilliant, and now he promotes hacks. Every third person you meet in this town is a creative artist. If you have an old can of spray paint knocking around in the garage, Koozeman can make you a star.”

  “Must be tough for the people with the real talent.”

  “New York City,” said Quinn, as though the complete explanation could be offered in those three words. New York, he explained, was tough on every artist. In the beginning, New York doesn’t seem to notice them at all, or so they think. They believe the city doesn’t even know they’re alive. Then, one day an artist trips on the sidewalk and his hand hits the pavement and New York steps on it and breaks all his fingers. New York has noticed him. Then New York steps on his face and breaks that, too, and that’s just to say hello. “So, who could really blame Koozeman for opting to roll in cash instead of always chasing after the rent money.”

  Now Koozeman joined them with fresh wine and a gallery boy at his side to take away their empty glasses.

  “Quinn, you mustn’t monopolize my prize celebrity this way.” He made a small courtly bow to Mallory. “It was lovely the way you demolished the FBI. So these killer profiles of theirs are worthless?”

  “No, not if they’re done right. My own profile tells me the killer is successful. He’s rich and getting richer. I smell money every time I think about the case. So I’m looking for someone with a soul that’s interchangeable with a cockroach or an advertising executive.”

  Koozeman stared into his wineglass as he spoke to her. “And you think the killer of Dean Starr-”

  “Oh sorry,” she said. “I was thinking of the wrong murder. Sometimes I get confused. I understand you were once an artist. Is that true?”

  “It was a long time ago.” His words were halting.

  “What kind of work did you do?”

  “Nothing of any consequence.” Koozeman sipped his wine, eyes reevaluating her over the rim of his glass.

  “But I heard different,” said Mallory. “ ‘Genius’ is the word I keep hearing. Now let me guess. You were a sculptor, right?”

  A few drops of wine spilled from Koozeman’s glass.

  Mallory didn’t wait for her answer. She abruptly dismissed him with the turn of her back and drifted off toward the wine table, leaving Quinn to wonder. He turned to Koozeman.

  If a face could fall, Koozeman’s truly did. His mouth opened slightly as the jaw fell first, followed by the excess flesh of cheeks and jowls. And at last, his eyes dropped, staring at the floor now, as though it might be coming up to meet him at any moment.

  Mallory was standing at the long table, looking from bottle to bottle.

  “Can’t make up your mind?”

  She looked up to see the smiling face of Kerry, the bartender from Godd’s.

  “You know, what you drink at an art function is very important.” Kerry said this as much to the small crowd gathered at the table as to Mallory. “It shows your true political orientation.”

  Heads turned. Kerry flourished a crisp white bar rag and continued. “A major gallery opening serves wine, champagne and sparkling water. Now, champagne,” he said, holding up a bottle as a visual aid, “given the state of the world, is in the worst possible taste. It says, ‘I realize that people in third-world nations are starving and politically oppressed, and I don’t care.”

  Emma Sue Hollaran, wearing a knockoff silk blouse made by third-world child labor, sipped champagne and nodded reflexively before she could call the gesture back.

  “White wine is middle of the road. It says, ‘I have no political convictions of my own, but I would be happy to embrace yours if you would only explain them to me.’ It’s the wine of wimps.”

  The reporter from StreetLevel Weekly had been reaching for the white wine. He withdrew his hand as though it had been slapped.

  “How about a nice glass of water?” another man suggested.

  “Oh, worst possible choice,” said Kerry. “Water says, ‘I’m in complete sympathy with the plight of the homeless, and now I’m going to grind my heel into your face, you fascist pig.’ Water is much too politically volatile. They really shouldn’t serve water here.”

  “What’s left?”

  “My personal favorite.” He held up a dark bottle. “Red wine only says, ”I don’t care if I do spill this on my suit.“

  The sour-looking young man from StreetLevel set his glass of sparkling water down on the bar and edged toward the red wine. Then, perhaps thinking of the cleaning bill for his only good suit, he retrieved his glass of water and went off in search of some rich and pretty socialite whom he might kill with words.

  As Emma Sue Hollaran walked away from the table with her champagne, Kerry formed his hand into a gun and shot her with his middle finger, thus combining an obscene gesture with an imaginary kill.

  Mallory took a glass of red. “You have a problem with her?”

  “I have a problem with art critics in general. I make exceptions for the good ones, but there aren’t many like Quinn.”

  “I thought Emma Sue Hollaran was on the Public Works Committee now.”

  “She still turns in columns in the art magazines,” said Kerry. “She likes to keep her hand in with the thumbscrews. Bu
t she’ll get hers. I know where New York art critics go when they die, and it’s not pretty.”

  “You mean fire and brimstone?”

  “No, more like self-cannibalism. Critic’s Hell looks just like New York-but without any artists. The critics have to make their own art and criticize themselves. So they start chewing on their own tails, and being what they are, they can’t stop until they reach their necks, and…”

  Everybody wants revenge.

  While Kerry went on with the bitter details of the critic’s afterlife, Mallory was watching J. L. Quinn in conversation with Emma Sue Hollaran. Quinn’s polite mask was fracturing. He wore a nearly human expression of dismay. As Hollaran walked away, he emptied his glass in one swill-not his style. What had Hollaran said?

  He turned to see Mallory watching him. He came toward her now, and set his empty glass on the table with a nod to Kerry.

  “Take this.” Mallory handed him her own glass. “You look like your stock portfolio just died.”

  “I’ve just been told the name of the artist who’s doing the work for Gregor’s plaza.”

  “How bad can it be?”

  “It couldn’t be any worse.”

  Kerry appeared with another glass of red wine and held it out to Mallory. She nodded her thanks, and turned back to Quinn. “Did she give you any idea what the plaza art will be like?”

  “No, she didn’t. Hollaran’s forte is covert attack. It won’t be anything small, I can guarantee that. I only hope its removal won’t be too much of a problem.”

  “You can have it removed? I thought the law protected-”

  “The law? Oh, yes, I bought off the law. I have the paperwork on my desk to remove whatever travesty she decides to install.”

  “You bought the law?”

  “Mallory, you can buy anything in New York City.”

  “I’m the law.”

  “As if I needed reminding. Oh, please. We’re both grown-ups. This town has not had six continuous uncorrupted moments since its inception. What can’t you buy here? You can buy men, women, and children. You can have sex with them, or just remove the organs you need for spare parts. And it’s not getting more corrupt, only more imaginative. Before we developed the technology, they only used the spare body parts for trophies and souvenirs.”