by J. A. Kerley
I said, “I hear Mr Coyle’s hell on a biscuit with contracts and negotiations, Mr Hamerle.”
“The best. Phenomenal.”
“Something he learned from you?”
Hamerle blew on his coffee, took a sip, seemed satisfied. “I specialize in wills and estates.”
A squabbling pair of gray squirrels scampered past the porch and we all turned to watch the display. They disappeared up a tree.
“Does Rubin confide everything to you? Every aspect of his work, his negotiations?”
I saw a wariness come to his eyes, a crinkling of the brow. “One doesn’t inspect every thread in a garment to be secure in its quality, Detective. Rubin relates major points, keeps me informed of progress.”
Reading between the lines, I pretty much took that Hamerle was hands-off. Until it was time to add up the hours and mail the invoice.
“He keeps you informed of every negotiation?”
“I review each and every one. The basic points, of course. A negotiation is a fluid endeavor.”
“What fluids had he been working on recently?”
Hamerle started to shoot me the irritated eye, thought again. “Arbitration between a highway contractor and the state regarding a cost overrun. Trying to work out common ground between a developer and an environmental group. There’s also the upcoming work on the contract for the dockworkers’ local. It’s a couple months off, but pre-planning is essential.”
That would be Aragorn’s ongoing work. I shifted gears.
“Did he ever work on projects that maybe you weren’t informed about? Like freelance.”
“No.” Almost too fast.
“Did any of them have to do with artwork, his clients?”
For the briefest moment I thought I saw a wisp of consternation quiver through one white eyebrow. He paused and stared at me. After a couple beats, he frowned and said, “Dartboards?”
“Artwork, sir. Did Rubin ever mention anything about art in connection with a contract or negotiation?”
He cupped a hand behind his ear and raised an eyebrow. “Art,” I enunciated loudly. “Did any contracts have to do with art?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. Never came across anything like that. What’s the reason for this line of questioning, if I may ask?”
“Are you sure? Maybe he…”
Warren Hamerle made a point of studying his platinum Rolex. He stood suddenly. “I’m afraid I just recalled an important appointment, gentlemen. Memory is another victim of age. Please excuse my manners, but could you find your own way to the door?”
We followed our path back through the Hemingway Collection. I paused at the door, turned back, yelled, “Thanks for your time, Mr Hamerle.”
“You’re welcome,” he called back, sounding distracted. “Please keep me apprised of your investigation.”
“Hearing’s back,” Harry whispered.
I smiled. “But no mention of getting together soon to finish up.”
Harry put the car in gear and started down the drive. We paused at the street as a line of traffic passed. I twisted for a final look at the white house tucked deep in the trees.
“You think maybe the art question threw him? He did the bad-hearing bit to cover for a second, collect his thoughts? Harry? Harry?”
I turned to my partner. He cupped his hand behind his ear and stared goggle-eyed at me. “Dartboard?”
“Not real convincing, was it?” I said.
“I expected a lot better from a lawyer. Think we can get Lydia to let us in Coyle’s place? I got to use the john.”
Lydia pulled into Coyle’s circular drive and stepped slowly from a well-traveled Accord. She paused to straighten her skirt and jacket, smooth back her hair, paste a flat smile to her face. As she walked toward Harry and me, it hit me that despite her Walgreen’s exterior, there were moments of Saks in her bearing. It was there, not there; the kind of woman you’d pass by on the street, then turn to look at, not knowing exactly why.
“Thank you for coming, Ms Barstow,” I said. “It makes it better if someone has a key.”
“I’ve never used it,” she said. “Rubin has one to my place, and I pestered him to return the favor. It wasn’t a matter of being able to get in…” she paused, as if unsure of the next words.
“But a symbol of closeness,” Harry said. “Sharing.”
“Yes,” Lydia said. “Like that.”
Her keys were on a loop of braided wire, no plastic flower or smiley face or other embellishment; sensible, functional. She flicked through the dozen or so keys, found a shiny brass one, inserted it in the lock.
“Nice lockset,” Harry said. “Got the heavy deadbolt. Mr Coyle didn’t skimp.”
Lydia fiddled the key left and right. Slid it in and out, tried again.
“It’s not working.”
“Let me give it a shot,” I said.
Didn’t work for me either. I passed the key to Harry. He’d spent two years in Crimes Against Property before jumping to Homicide, learned a lot about how locks work. Harry moved the key gingerly, as if feeling for something. He studied its teeth, tried again.
“It’s almost right,” he said. “But not perfect. Either the maker of the key was inept…”
“Or Rubin had it made wrong,” Lydia said. She turned abruptly and stared down the street, hiding tears. I took the key and stepped into the sunlight. The ground surfaces of the key seemed slightly different in places.
“Do you have reading glasses, Ms Barstow?” I asked.
They were perhaps the 2.50 magnification, medium strength. I studied the key through a lens. “The grooves from grinding all run at right angles, except on one tooth. The filing is coarser and a different angle.”
Harry took a look. “Hembree’d know better, but it looks like someone filed off half of a tooth, all it’d take to kill the key.”
Having discovered the problem, getting in turned out to be no more than a fifteen-minute round trip to a hardware store.
“You need what?” the clerk had asked.
“A duplicate key,” Harry said. “Except where this tooth is flat, I want you to fix it so it pokes to a point.”
“Never done that before,” the clerk said, holding the key to the light and squinting. “Shouldn’t be hard.”
The cool air in Coyle’s home smelled unoccupied. Lived-in homes smell differently than those without passengers. Maybe it’s cooking smells, or exudations of the human body, or some form of psychic aroma, but I always seemed able to determine when a dwelling had been unoccupied for even a few days.
We walked into a great room with vaulted ceilings, floor of polished wood. The furniture was primarily a gray leather grouping arranged around a low table of green marble. There were accent rugs and lamps. A credenza. Corporatetype art on the walls. Harry slid a finger across the table.
“He pay his housekeeper a lot?” he asked Lydia.
“He didn’t have one.”
“Good, ‘cause she ain’t dusted in a couple weeks.”
Our heels ticked across the wood as Harry and I progressed from room to room. There was no spontaneity to the dwelling, everything in order, nothing in transition. The magazines were racked, the remotes side by side, the chairs perfect beneath the dining-room table. The throw pillows had never been thrown.
“This place is more anal than a proctologist convention,” Harry whispered. Lydia followed several feet behind us, jumpy, eyes darting, as if expecting Coyle to pop from a closet.
We came to an upstairs room, tried the knob. Locked. “What’s in here?”
“His office. That’s what he calls it.”
“You’ve never been in here?”
Her embarrassment was painful. “I’ve only been in this house a few times. He liked to come to my place. He said it seemed dead here, but my house was alive and exciting…” She paused, spoke in a monotone. “Like me.”
“I’m sure that’s how he feels, Miz Barstow,” Harry offered. “A guy gets tired of staring
at walls. Especially his. A different place and person make life worth looking forward to.”
Lydia smiled Thanks for the try. I shook the knob a couple more times. “I’d really like to look in here,” I said. “If it’s his office it might hold something that tells us where he is.”
Harry knelt beside the mechanism. “It’s not like the front door, but it’s more lock than people usually keep on an interior door. Opens inward; that’s good.”
He stood, pointed out the window at the end of the hallway. “Hey, is that a turkey buzzard?” Lydia and I turned to look, saw blue sky and tree limbs outside. An explosion spun our heads back to Harry. The door was wide open.
“Whoops,” Harry said. “Guess it was just a robin.”
The room was dark, the window at the far end shrouded in drapes. Harry stepped inside. I followed, Lydia at my back. Harry fumbled at the wall inside the door. “Got to be a switch somewhere…there.”
The room brightened, not from floor or ceiling lamps, but from lighting within a dozen display cases hung on the walls. The boxes held cords, blooded wads of cloth, a railroad spike, a pair of broken eyeglasses, a chunk of something resembling beef jerky. All mounted like art at a museum.
“Lawd,” Harry said as the scene registered. “Carnival time.”
“What is this stuff?” Lydia whispered from behind me.
“A collection of shadows,” I said, easing her from the room.
Chapter 30
Coyle’s fingerprint at a murder scene and subsequent disappearance - combined with his newly revealed fondness for serial-killer memorabilia - allowed a search warrant. We sent a pale and frightened Lydia Barstow home. Harry and I started back into the house. He stopped, a stricken look on his face.
“I hate to say this, but given the burr under the chief’s britches, you think we should call -”
“Yep,” I said, less irritated than I should have been.
Ten minutes later Danbury was in the driveway in an unmarked van, savvy enough to forgo the logo-screaming newswagon. Given the trees and the curve of the street, few would notice our discreet little group. She’d brought Zipinski. The diminutive cameraman gave Harry and me a wide berth, tripoding his camera at the far end of the drive, framing the house in the background.
“So we file this footage away?” Zipinski asked Danbury.
“For now,” she said. “It’s for a possible story. Just get the house. Anything comes out, we’ll get that too.”
“This has something to do with the crazy you told me about?” Zipinski asked. “The artsy crazy?”
“That’s what the guys will tell us. Right, gents?”
Harry sighed. “Is Carla all right?”
“Secure in the fortress and didn’t want babysitting.”
Zipinski shot footage of Harry and me standing outside. It was illegal for a news crew to accompany us inside, so we went in alone. Danbury wasn’t happy, but knew the law. “I want a full report,” she called out as we entered.
Harry and I split up inside Coyle’s office, Harry taking the desk area. I checked a closet, files in a credenza, a stack of papers in a chair. Everything seemed related to cases and negotiations and I couldn’t look without violating lawyer-client privilege. When my eyes lingered benignly on the pages, I saw nothing allied with art.
“Carson,” Harry said quietly, “I’ve got something.”
He was behind Coyle’s desk. I set aside a file and walked over. Harry lifted a foot-square Plexiglas box from the top drawer, a small white envelope taped to the box.
He held up the box with gloved fingers. Inside was a painting of a skull, dark with browns and umbers. The skull had been overpainted with glazes and highlighting and tiny flecks of red, giving it a trompe-l’oeil sense of depth and dimension. There were more of the squiggly wormlike shapes. The image was so hyper-real it seemed possible to pick up the skull, give a soliloquy on slings and arrows. Harry set it carefully on the desktop and opened the white envelope. He removed a card, four by six inches or so, holding three paragraphs of typewritten text.
“Well ain’t this interesting,” he said, passing me the card.
Marsden Hexcamp, reportedly a study for “The Art of the Final Moment”. Painted July 1970(?). One of seventeen studies for a final canvas measuring 367 (h) x 212 (w) centimeters. The studies are explorations of subject matter within the final work. Fourteen are of high-quality, two have moderate environmental damage (water, probably), one heavy damage, probably due to haphazard last-minute packing.
Several small canvases Hexcamp employed as “test” versions also are extant, two having been scavenged and cut into smaller pieces for the market. Nine of these “works” are also currently available, five of high quality, three rather heavily damaged by exposure to the elements.
Note: The accompanying piece has been cataloged as MH - AFM, stud. 012.
I digested the information. Brief as it was, it provided a treasure trove of insights. “It’s a catalog entry, bro, or similar: Marsden Hexcamp, ‘Art of the Final Moment’, study number twelve.”
Harry, reading over my shoulder, caught it. “Seventeen studies, one major work, ‘The Art of the Final Moment’. What size is it, Cars? Outside of buying scotch by the liter, I never made the jump to metric.”
“About twelve feet high by seven feet wide.”
“Damn,” he said. “Almost a mural.”
“And now we know why the pieces we’re seeing are snippets,” I said. “Someone’s cut a couple of studies up, selling them piecemeal, literally. Maybe they were part of the damaged canvases.”
“Maybe they’re worth more that way, Carson. People aren’t looking for art, specifically.”
“Right. They just want something pretty touched by Marsden’s hot little fingers.”
Harry thought a moment. “The mailing to Coyle might have been a purchase. This is his. Maybe permanently, or maybe he’s bringing the whole collection together for the big show.”
I mulled the possibilities. “Or whoever’s selling the collection sent this to Coyle as good faith, Coyle’s payment, a sample of how they’re displayed. Who knows.”
Harry said, “Could Coyle be the guy who’s verifying this stuff?”
“I’d bet against it; but this about clinches his role as salesman, or facilitator. It’s almost a given he knows who’s doing the verifying. Maybe even hired our authenticator. Who else could write the catalog information?”
The painting was all we took from Coyle’s office, its technique and composition a match with the art found in Marie’s room and Heidi’s trailer. The narrow search warrant didn’t allow removal of Coyle’s “art” from the walls, it lacking direct connection to our cases. I looked at it again and suppressed a shudder; between Forrier’s mask and Hexcamp’s skull, I was getting an unsettling glimpse into the dark underbelly of creation.
Harry bagged the painting. We went outside and walked to the edge of the lawn, where Danbury and Zipinski waited in the dense shade of a magnolia tree. Danbury rushed up. Borg stayed beside his tripod-mounted camera, probably not wanting to get caught between Harry and me.
“What’d you find?” Danbury asked.
Harry held up the boxed artwork. “My God,” she said. “It’s a photograph from the dark side.”
Zipinski took a look, frowned. “I can almost smell rotting meat. How about a shot of it?”
Harry started to say no, caught himself. Zipinski shooting the painting was no different than when the newsies videotaped cops carrying potential evidence from any legal search.
“Yeah, fire away,” he muttered.
“Stand there and hold it,” Zipinski said. “Let me get the light right. He started fiddling with a reflector. There was wind today, but it was hot, and the windblown reflector kept zapping Harry’s eyes as he waited for Zipinski to get set. Harry squinted, growled, shoved the painting at me.
“You do this, Cars. I just made you official poster boy of the PSIT.”
The reflector flashed
in my eyes until Zipinski got it clamped down. I let him run footage, a red light flickering on the camera. After a few seconds he said, “OK.” I returned the painting to Harry and he walked it to the car.
Danbury’s phone rang. She began talking to someone about a motorcycle crash on I-95 and how she’d had two crashes already this week and someone else can by God do this one. She walked toward the street, still arguing into the phone. How about one of the freakin’ anchors does it, if they still remember how…
It sounded like she was winning.
“Damn, it’s gotta be ninety-five degrees,” Zipinski said. He yanked out his shirttail and wiped his sweating face. His stomach was as furred as an orang-utan’s. He set his ballcap atop the camera, blotted his balding head. It gleamed in the sunlight. He looked at me, started to speak, looked away.
“What is it?” I said.
“I screwed up the other day. We do some investigative work. Ambush interviews. Y’know…pop out of a car in front of some stickyfingered bureaucrat. She asks, ‘Just how much money did you take from the Orphaned Children’s Fund?’ or whatnot. I make sure his face gets on tape - that first guilty expression, just before the denials kick in. I was still in that mode when I fucked with you in the parking lot. I apologize.”
He offered his hand. I made it a brief handshake. I didn’t much care for Borgurt Zipinski, but no longer wanted to make him walk bowlegged around his own camera. He started to break down the video equipment, paused, a confused look on his face.
“Let me ask you a question, Detective Ryder. That painting was pretty and freaky at the same time. You really think this crazy guy - Hexcamp? - painted it? And a whole bunch of stuff like it?”
I nodded yes and glanced at Danbury in the distance. She shook her head, dropped the phone in her purse. She looked weary, almost deflated. It hit me that cranking together the news might not be as easy as I thought, asking questions, jamming a microphone in people’s faces, running down tips, most probably going nowhere. I guess you had to do a lot of planning, meet a lot of people you didn’t want to meet, see a hell of a lot of vehicle crashes, shootings, drownings. Kind of like me.