The music stopped in mid-phrase and the door buzzer rasped. Shapiro climbed two flights of stairs and a door was open for him and a tall woman in a two-piece bathing suit looked at him and said, “Oh,” with disappointment in the sound. Then she said, “What do you want this time?”
She was, Shapiro guessed, about five feet ten. She had an oval face—a face now twice familiar to Shapiro. Her hair was deeply brown, as it had been in the painting of her in the studio, and her eyes were brown. There were lines from nostril corners to upper lip and they were, Shapiro thought, the kind of lines which deepen. There had been no lines in the painted face. But it was the same face, and almost a lovely one. Her body, nearly as revealed now as it had been to Shack Jones when he had painted it, curved luxuriantly and her legs were straight and long. Particularly good calves, Shapiro thought.
She said, “Well?”
Shapiro told Dorothy Briskie, professionally Dorothy Goodbody, that one or two things had come up and that he was sorry to have to bother her.
“I don’t know that you’re going to,” she said. Her voice had been low and soft the evening before. Now there was an edge to it. “I’m working. Benny’s supposed to be here. I thought you were Benny. With the new lyrics.”
Nathan Shapiro remained sorry to have to interrupt her work. He would make the interruption as brief as he could.
“The thing is,” he said, “there seem to be discrepancies, Mrs. Briskie. We thought you might want to clear them up.”
She did not know what he was talking about.
“Just something that doesn’t quite jibe,” Shapiro said. “Has to do with a painting Mr. Jones did, Mrs. Briskie. A painting of you, I think. Has a number on it—catalogue number, I’m told. The number’s seventy-nine.”
“The stinker,” Dorothy Briskie said. “The lousy stinker. He promised Max and me—” She stopped abruptly. “I talk too damn much,” she said. “Oh, all right. Come on in, then.”
The living room into which he followed her seemed smaller than it had the evening before. The compact Baldwin had been pulled out into the middle of the room. It had been against a wall when Shapiro had been there eighteen hours before—had been there and asked a few questions of a small and handsome man who moved like a featherweight boxer and of his much taller wife; had been assured that they both knew Shackleford Jones only casually, and had never been in his apartment in Eighth Street.
“I see you do remember the picture,” Shapiro said in the room which the moved piano seemed to have made smaller. “A very attractive picture, it seemed to me. And what they call representational. Painted, I think, in the living room of his apartment. The model sitting—partly lying—on a striped sofa. In a room you had never visited, Mrs. Briskie.”
“It isn’t the way it looks,” she said. She had sat on the bench in front of the piano when she led him into the room and put long fingers on the keys. Now she turned on the bench to look at him. “Not at all the way it looks, Lieutenant.”
“No? How is it, then?”
“All right. The face—all right, the head is mine. The rest—I don’t know who posed for that.”
One way of telling liars, Shapiro thought, is that they are often so anxiously believable.
“Just the head,” he said. “I see. Somebody else’s body. Somebody who had been in the apartment. Posed on the sofa. Did he paint there often, Mrs. Briskie?”
“Sketched sometimes,” she said. “And coded the colors. He’d finish in the studio. Of course, he knew the colors in the sofa. He carried colors in his head. A good many of them do. He—”
She stopped herself but not in time. That was recognized between them, with no need of words.
“I talk too damn much,” she said.
“Yes, I guess you do, Mrs. Briskie. You said you hardly knew him. Knew him only casually. Had never—”
“Max said he thought you were trying to make something out of it,” she said. “Something not suicide. He said we’d better stay out of it.”
“Last night?”
“Just before you came up. All right, I knew him better than I admitted. We both did, actually. But not well enough to help you. That’s true. That’s absolutely true.” There was a good deal of emphasis on the last phrase—the last unnecessary phrase.
“You’d forgotten about the picture? Or thought we wouldn’t find it?”
“He promised us—promised me, I mean—he’d destroy it. He said it was just—just sort of a joke.”
“The number on it,” Shapiro said. “That would be a catalogue number, wouldn’t it? The number given it in an exhibit?”
“It wasn’t actually hung. Oh, it was and then Maxie found out somehow and Shack took it down. Before the opening. So nobody ever saw it. And the stinker promised—”
Shapiro waited briefly, but she did not go on.
“Just the head, you say.”
“Yes. Not that it would have meant anything anyway. I suppose that’s hard for people like you to understand—to believe. I suppose you think that when a woman poses naked for an artist it inevitably—” She paused. “Leads to something,” she said.
Shapiro thought that might well be possible. He did not say so. He thought that Dorothy Briskie had become verbally discreet in midsentence, and that that probably was not characteristic. He did not mention this.
“Your husband wouldn’t have objected?”
“Of course not. Any more than I object to his sketching the Farmer girl.”
“But he did object to the picture being exhibited?”
“That’s a different thing. Entirely different. It would have been—I mean would have seemed to be—a picture of me without any clothes on. Not just a nude. Dorothy Goodbody—” She half laughed suddenly. “Living up to her name,” she said. “His idea of a joke.”
“Not yours evidently. And not Mr. Briskie’s?”
“No. Would you want your wife—recognizably your wife-painted that way? Or maybe you haven’t got a wife.”
“I have,” Shapiro said. “And the answer is ‘No.’ But, as you said, ‘people like me.’ Only, apparently, people like Mr. Briskie, too.”
“Because I would be recognized. People would talk. Wait a minute.”
She swiveled on the bench and began to play the Baldwin. Shapiro discovered he was tapping his right foot, and resisting the inclination to hum with the tune. Of course—“The Moon Fell Down.” For months, not long before, nobody had been able to turn on a car radio without hearing it. She ended with a sweep of her right hand across the keyboard.
“Yours?”
“Mine and Benny’s. And we’ve got a show set for fall. There’s been publicity. Pictures of me. And Benny too, of course. It wouldn’t have been a very funny joke, Lieutenant. Not for me, anyway. Leonard Lyons. Maybe even Variety. But not for me. You see—”
She stopped again, and then shrugged her bare shoulders and went on.
“This show we’re doing,” she said, “Benny and I are doing—it’s a very wholesome sort. For the family trade. People can take their little brats to it. Like—oh, like Mary Poppins. And Hollywood is dickering and—well, Hollywood gets the fidgets.”
“Mr. Jones knew about this?”
“Yes, I guess—all right. Yes, he knew about it. I told you he was a stinker sometimes.”
“You started to tell me he promised something. To you and Mr. Briskie.”
“To destroy it. Anyway, to paint the face out. Nobody would have recognized—I mean, the body isn’t my body. I told you that.”
She had, of course. For what it was worth. Shapiro sighed. Somebody better at this sort of thing would know whether to press now or let it ride.
“We think,” he said, “that Mr. Jones had planned to have a guest Wednesday evening—the evening of the day he killed himself. Or, of course, was killed. You told me last night that you weren’t to have been the guest. But also—”
“That was true,” she said. “Oh, we both knew him better than we said. But I wasn’t goi
ng to his apartment Wednesday.”
“For the record,” Shapiro said, “what did you do Wednesday evening, Mrs. Briskie?”
“Opened a can of something. Or unfroze something. I don’t remember. And went to a movie.”
“You and your husband?”
She shook her head.
“Max was in Chicago,” she said. “With an architect. They got a flight at the crack of dawn. Max maybe will do a mural for the lobby of a new co-op.”
“And got back?”
“Yesterday morning. I suppose you want to know whether he got the job?”
Shapiro didn’t, especially. But he said, “Did he?”
“He doesn’t know yet. So he flew out again this morning to talk to some more people about it.”
“Just for the record,” Shapiro asked the name of the architect Maxwell Briskie had flown to Chicago with; was, presumably, now in Chicago with. She said he could believe it or not, but she hadn’t the faintest idea.
“And if you ask me, he doesn’t have the faintest idea who’s going to put the show on. My show. And Benny’s, of course.”
The doorbell rang, the sound loud in the room.
“That’ll be Benny,” Dorothy Briskie-Goodbody said, and got up from the piano bench. “And we’ve got work to do.”
Shapiro stood up, too. He watched her press a button near the door and heard the rasping from below.
“Did Mr. Jones offer to sell you this painting?” he asked, and walked toward the door. She hesitated, he thought, and then said, “No, he didn’t. Anyway, he’d got into the habit of asking the mos—” She stopped with that. Shapiro had no trouble finishing her sentence. He walked on to the door and put his hand on the knob, and heard steps on the stairs. He turned.
“By the way,” he said, “have you a key to Jones’s studio? Or has your husband?”
There was no hesitancy this time. Her “No” was immediate and emphatic. As if, Shapiro thought, she had anticipated the question.
He opened the door and a medium-sized, plumpish man hurried through it. He carried a large manila envelope and began to wave it at Dorothy Goodbody as he went through the door. When he was inside, Shapiro went outside and down the stairs.
On the second floor, he knocked at Rachel Farmer’s door. He knocked several times, but nothing came of it.
VIII
Typewriters clattered in the squad room. Detectives spend a good deal of time at typewriters. Nathan Shapiro went through the squad room to his own office, which was a cubbyhole, and a hot one. There were papers in his In basket. A lieutenant of detectives spends a good deal of time reading what others typed.
The police of Emporia, Kansas, had been cooperative. Isabelle Jones was well known in Emporia. Not officially known to the police; known of. Daughter, that was right, of James Cronin, “Cronin, Food Specialities.” Lived, alone, on the outskirts of the town, in a house which had been her parents’. Alone because the drive from store to house had, as he grew older, become more than James Cronin wanted to take on. He lived in a small apartment over the store. Emporia was on a feeder airline to Kansas City. Yes, there was a midafternoon flight. It was a short jump to Kansas City; a little over a hundred miles. It was also, of course, not a long drive by car. Mrs. Jones could, obviously, have left her house at any time she chose and driven to Kansas City and got a nonstop plane to New York and, when she chose, a plane back. And picked up her car and returned to her house. There was no reason anybody should have noticed if she had done this, or been concerned. She had neighbors, but they were not close.
There was this, if it was worth anything. “Cronin, Food Specialities” was not what it had been. Partly because James Cronin was somewhere around eighty, and not what he had been thirty years before, when he took the store over from his father. It had been quite a place then, from what one heard of it. Anything in the food line you could buy in Kansas City, and some said New York, you could buy at Cronin’s. Foods imported from Europe even. And the meat department—people said that used to be the best in all eastern Kansas. Which said a lot, the Emporia detective thought.
The detective himself, which was to say, for the most part, the detective’s wife—not that he was not called in on the marketing on his days off—shopped at a supermarket. And most people did. Even in places a lot bigger than Emporia, the way he heard it, the privately owned, special grocery stores were on their last legs. The chains underpriced them. One thing he did know. Ten years or so before, Cronin’s had had a tea room and a lot of the women who shopped in town had gone to it for lunch. But that had been closed down. Yes, rather recently. Yes, there had been some talk that Cronin might have to close the whole place down. Pity if it came to that. Sort of a landmark, Cronin’s had been in the old days. From what the detective’s parents told him.
Yes, he did know that Belle Jones was married to an artist and not living with him. Man’s first name was—wait a minute. He had just thought of something.
Anthony Cook had waited a minute, toll charges the responsibility of New York, New York, not of Emporia, Kansas.
“Piece in the Gazette,” the Kansas lieutenant said, after rather more than a minute. “Picked up from the Kansas City Star. Headline is, ‘Art is Big Business Now.’ All about—wait a minute. ‘Special correspondence to the Kansas City Star.’ Yep. About how people have begun to buy paintings all over the country and pay a lot for them. Seems to me—yep. Want me to read what it says about this Jones guy?”
Cook had guessed he did.
“Says,” the policeman in the distant state read: “‘One of the artists recently most successful is a native of Kansas City, Shackleford Jones, the son of the late Jason Jones, a partner in the wholesale grocery firm of Jones and Hartnett. His paintings, which are for the most part abstractions, are among the most sought after among the works of living modern painters. It is reported in art circles that one canvas, being moved from Mr. Jones’s Greenwich Village studio to the gallery of his dealer, was insured for $100,000 during the period of its transit. His dealer, Myra Dedek, declined to confirm or deny this report, but did tell your reporter that there was active interest, on the part of collectors and museums, in the work of Mr. Jones, who always signs himself Shack.’”
The article on art as Big Business had appeared first in the Sunday edition of the Star. It was reprinted in the Gazette in midweek “by permission.” The Gazette added that Mr. Jones’s wife, Isabelle, lived in Emporia and was the daughter of James Cronin, prominent local merchant.
You put two and two together, Nathan Shapiro thought, and as often as not came up with five—came up with almost anything. Mrs. Jones could, obviously, have flown to New York any time she wanted to, and nobody the wiser. She could, for example, have flown Tuesday. Perhaps after she had read in the Kansas City Star about the prosperity of her husband? With her father, perhaps, in considerable need of capital?
Anthony Cook had found Mrs. Jones at the Hilton, as promised. She was certainly going to stay in New York until she found out where she stood. She wasn’t going to be cheated out of anything. Not if she knew it, and she was going to see that she did know it. You can’t trust New Yorkers. She had found that out during the two years she had lived in New York after her marriage. No, she hadn’t read anything in the Star about her husband. Yes, she took the Star. It came by mail, but she didn’t read it very much. Hadn’t for years, since it came out against Mr. Gold-water.
Mrs. Jones had checked into the Hilton late Thursday evening. She had not had a reservation, but it had been found possible to accommodate her. The rate on her room was fifteen dollars a day.
“Jeremiah Osgood generally considered reputable art dealer, according to informant, member of the staff New York Times.”
Michael Corrigan, detective (2nd Grade) had written that, and gone on:
“Established present gallery at —East 57th Street four years ago. Frequently acts as expert appraiser of paintings, according to informant. Specializes in modern art, including paintings by
living artists. Not known to have exhibited work of Shackleford Jones, according to informant, who will have to check further to be sure. Difficult to set values of paintings by living artist, informant says. Go by fads. Says no idea whether there’ll be a fad for Shackleford Jones, only now he’s dead there could be. Says, ‘Sometimes that happens.’ Says Jones probably under contract to Dedek Galleries, but doesn’t know for sure.”
The telephone rang on Shapiro’s desk. He said, “Lieutenant Shapiro.”
“Dorian,” she said. “Dorian Weigand. Was I right about the nude? Number seventy-nine?”
“Partly, at any rate. How did you recognize it?”
“Seen her photograph. With a story about a musical she’s doing. I remember what things look like. And people. What do you mean, ‘partly,’ Nathan?”
“She says the head is hers. Denies she posed for the, er, rest. What she says is.…” He told her what Dorothy Goodbody-Briskie had told him, and Dorian said, “Hm-m-m.” Then she said, “Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know,” Shapiro said, and considered that. “No,” he said, “I don’t, Mrs. Weigand. She was wearing a bathing suit outfit. Of course, it was very warm in her apartment.”
Dorian laughed briefly. She said, “You recognized the—call it construction?”
“I think she could have been the model. In his apartment. Would he have painted her there, do you think?”
She didn’t know. What was the light like in the apartment?
“Not very good. Not a north light, anyway. Fairly dark without the lights on. Would he have painted by artificial light?”
Again she didn’t know. Some painters sometimes did. Most wanted daylight—the steady, unaccented light which comes from the north. She would have thought Shack Jones one of those; would have expected him to paint, if not necessarily to draw, only in his studio.
“She denies she was ever in the apartment?” she asked him.
“Not specifically, any longer. She admits she—and her husband too, she says—knew him better than they said last night. Says they didn’t want to be involved. Sort of thing that does happen.” He sighed. “Makes needless trouble,” he added.
Murder For Art’s Sake Page 9