There wasn’t any bruise, or the remnants of a bruise.
“Why would she lie about it?” Shapiro asked.
“Fun and games,” Briskie said. “Getting her own back. Perhaps, to give her the benefit of the doubt, there was something like—”
He stopped and looked thoughtfully at nothing in particular. After a moment, he said he would be damned. Then he said, “I slandered the lady, Lieutenant. Next time I see her I’ll take her flowers.”
“Yes?”
“I see why the telephone wouldn’t do,” Briskie said. “Wanted to see for yourself.”
“Yes. That came into it.”
“All right. She did see something. Could have, anyway. A smudge, not a bruise. Shack wasn’t a very good housekeeper, poor devil. What happened, apparently, I put my hand on something there Wednesday and then put the hand against my face. And left a hell of a smudge. I didn’t know it until I got back to my own studio and looked in the mirror. So I washed my face. All there was to it. Innocent mistake.”
“Clears it up,” Shapiro said.
“You thought I’d been in a fight with Shack? And that he’d slugged me?”
“It seemed possible.”
“And I grabbed his gun? He did keep it lying around loose. To show what a tough character he was, I always thought.”
“Was he?”
“He could be, I guess. It was more—oh, he had an image of himself. The he-man type. Hundred per cent virile. You know the kind?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “I’ve run into them. You doubt he was?”
“No, I don’t particularly. If you mean overcompensating. Protesting too much. But I’m not his analyst.”
“He went to an analyst?”
“Sure,” Briskie said. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“No,” Shapiro said. “Do you, by the way?”
“Is it any of your business?”
“None.”
“In that case, no, I don’t. When I found out I wasn’t going to be as tall as most men, and I did when I was in high school, I didn’t need to ask an analyst what to do. I learned to box. And I came damn near making the Olympic team as a featherweight.” He smiled suddenly, widely, and came up out of the chair. “Want to try me out?” he asked Shapiro.
Shapiro shook his head.
“If I had had a tussle with Shack, he wouldn’t have touched me,” Briskie said.
“All right. He wouldn’t have touched you.”
“So. Satisfied, Lieutenant?”
“For now,” Shapiro said, and that there was one other small point. Would Mr. Briskie mind telling again, as precisely as he could remember, what happened in Shackleford Jones’s studio when he went there and found Jones’s body?
“Think you’ll catch me out about something?”
“Let’s say I want to refresh my memory,” Shapiro said. “Of course, I can still take you in and ask you to make a formal statement. And you can call your lawyer. If you want to waste our time.”
“I went, complete with check, to pick up a picture. I …”
He told the story as he had told it before. Not word for word, as if he had committed his story to memory. That happened sometimes. It was always worth looking for.
Shapiro’s memory had, somewhat to his surprise, been entirely accurate. And the discrepancy remained. Perhaps it did not stick out a mile and perhaps it was not important. But it was there. Nathan Shapiro turned it over in his mind on his way home to Brooklyn. Of course, no two people see or hear things in precisely the same way, including events in which they are personally involved. Even when they intend accurate reports. A policeman is used to getting disparate accounts from witnesses who should have seen the same things happen. This is one of the trials of a policeman’s lot.
When Shapiro got home, Rose had long since walked the dog.
There is a kind of emptiness about the city of New York on Saturday mornings in the summer. People who go into it from out of town do not equal in numbers those who leave it for the country, or for the beaches. And most of those who remain in the city sleep late, since on Saturdays most time clocks do not tick. It is even possible to get a seat in the subway during the hour between eight and nine in the morning. Shapiro got one on a train from Brooklyn. Anthony Cook got one on a train down from the Bronx.
“Get anything useful from Miss Farmer?” Shapiro asked Cook, in the squad room of Homicide, Manhattan South. It is suitable that a lieutenant of detectives appear omniscient. Cook looked at him with surprise. “Lasagna,” Shapiro said.
“She seems like an all right kid,” Cook said. “Sort of nuts, but all right. Comes from California, originally. Wants to be a fashion designer. Being a model is just filling in and making a living. Says she was surprised as hell when Jones called her up a couple of weeks ago and wanted her to pose, because everybody thought he was in Spain or somewhere. Says she was even more surprised when she went around and found out he had shaved off his beard. Because it was a sort of trademark, and had been for years. Anyway, that was what she’d heard. He’d walk along the street and everybody would look at him, and if they didn’t know who he was they’d ask, and that he liked. She said, ‘Of course, a lot of them are sort of crazy. Egomaniacs.’ But that Shack wasn’t any worse than a lot of them, except that he shouted a lot. And that he was the last man she would have thought would kill himself. All right, Lieutenant, how did you know?”
“Saw you,” Shapiro said. “On your way to this Italian restaurant you’re fond of, I supposed. Briskie says his face was dirty. Not bruised. And, Tony, she wasn’t far from Jones’s studio Wednesday morning.”
“I think she’s an all right kid,” Cook said. “And, I’m watching my step.”
He was at his desk. He had been typing when Shapiro walked into the squad room. He looked up at Shapiro.
“O.K.,” Shapiro said. “Didn’t question it, Tony. When you get the report done, I want you to ring some doorbells.”
It was not precisely that. That was merely a phrase for it—for the slow, slogging routine which is most of police work. What Detective Anthony Cook was to do was to get a list of stores which had art galleries and find out whether any of them had for sale paintings by Shackleford Jones. Or had been offered any. And, if offered any, by whom. And whether any of the clerks or curators, or whatever they called themselves, had known Jones. And if they had, whether, in the past few weeks, they had seen him in their galleries.
Cook said, “Will do.” Then he said, “Want to know any more about last night, Lieutenant?”
Shapiro said, “No,” and went to the cubbyhole which was his office.
He used his telephone. Oscar Bracken would be at the Bryant & Washburn gallery until noon. He took Saturday afternoons off. If it was about that painting somebody had thought was by Shackleford Jones, the police would be wasting their time. But if they wanted to waste it, that was up to them.
Bracken, Shapiro thought, was quick at putting two and two together. He said there were a couple of small points, and that he’d be along well before noon.
He used his telephone again. Except for swollen hands, Dorian Weigand was fine. Yes, “Urban Rectangles” would be as good a title for the painting she had seen at Bryant & Washburn’s as “Cityscape.” No, nothing she had seen at Jones’s studio looked like a picture which might be called “The Melting Clown.” But putting titles on pictures —
“I know,” Shapiro said. “Pictures aren’t about anything.”
Was she now as convinced as she had been yesterday that the painting called “Cityscape” was by Shackleford Jones?
“Yes,” she said. “From the whole feel of it. And when I saw it I was—oh, pretty well up on the style of Shack Jones. With the way he laid on paint. With everything about what he did. But—” She hesitated. “I’m not an expert; couldn’t conceivably qualify as one. And Mr. Bracken says the painting was by a man named Shayburn. Who’s dead, as I told you. And Myra is certain Jones wouldn’t have sold to a store and that, anywa
y, the picture I described doesn’t feel like a Shack.”
“But you’d stick to your opinion?”
“For what it’s worth. As I’m saying, it isn’t worth much. It’s—oh, more of a feeling than an opinion. Based on intangibles. Arrived at subjectively. Nobody would listen, Lieutenant. Probably Mr. Bracken could produce something entirely tangible. A bill of sale, or something like that. Is it important?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Weigand. I’m trying to find out. You think Mr. Bracken recognized you yesterday?”
She could not be sure. She thought so. From the time he had been a partner of Myra Dedek’s when there had been an exhibit, in a group, of sketches by Dorian Hunt.
A partner?
She thought so, or that it came to that. It had, as she remembered from several years back, had the feel of that. Although, she was almost certain, it had been the “Myra Dedek Galleries.” Not “Dedek and Bracken,” or anything like that.
“There was a feeling of authority,” she said. “I’m a great one for feelings this morning, aren’t I, Lieutenant? Perhaps he was just a clerk. Like this Weldon Williams, who’s there now. As I remember it, it didn’t feel like that, then. But—warmed over intuition, isn’t it? And so no real help. Bill will be disappointed in me.”
“No,” Shapiro said. “But don’t walk in front of buses, Mrs. Weigand.”
“Today,” Dorian said, “I stick to taxicabs.”
People get notions, Oscar Bracken told Shapiro, and sighed over the notions people get. He also mentioned that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Not that, in her own field, Dorian Hunt was not professional. But hers was entirely another field. The painting she had been so sure was by Shackleford Jones did not, actually, in any significant way resemble the work of Shackleford Jones. Entirely different in style, in composition. In brushwork, come to that.
“You did recognize Miss Hunt? That is, Mrs. Weigand?”
Oscar Bracken, who was tall and lean and somewhere in his forties, was formally dressed. Shapiro rather felt that he should be wearing a flower in his buttonhole. He leaned back in the chair behind his desk in his small, very modern, office off the art gallery of Bryant & Washburn’s furniture department.
“Not when she was here first,” he said. “Then she seemed only vaguely familiar. I had only a feeling I had seen her somewhere before. When she came back, with this—er—pretense that she wanted to buy the picture—yes, then I did recognize her. But I—er—assumed that she had some reason for not wanting me to.”
He tilted forward in his chair.
“What is all this, Lieutenant?” he said. “A woman—one who isn’t an expert in such things—makes a mistake about a picture. I realize, of course, that being the wife of a police captain gives her a—oh, a certain credibility. Among the police, at any rate. That she has to be listened to. Are you implying that I lied to her? That I’m lying to you? Why on earth would I? We never had a Shack here. Were never offered one.”
“A man dies under suspicious circumstances,” Shapiro said. “There is a chance that he has been killed. We have to poke into all sorts of things. Mrs. Dedek—you know her, I gather?”
“I was associated with her at one time.”
“Mrs. Dedek seems to be quite sure that Mr. Jones would not have sold his paintings to stores. Mrs. Weigand was quite sure that the painting you had here for sale was one of his. Apparently she was wrong. But it’s the sort of thing we have to go into. Check out. Something that doesn’t fit into what appears to be a pattern.”
Bracken shook his head.
“Put it in another way,” Shapiro said, with the feeling that he was making speeches. “Five days a week a man takes a certain train from New York to his home in the suburbs. Say he takes a five-oh-two train. But one day he takes a train which leaves an hour later. And that day he dies suddenly, violently. Probably the train he took has nothing to do with it. But—it was a break in his routine. Why did he change his routine? See what I mean, Mr. Bracken?”
Bracken supposed so. The police had to satisfy themselves about even the most trivial things. He hoped the lieutenant now was satisfied about this Shayburn picture.
“I understand,” Shapiro said, “that Mr. Shayburn is dead?”
“A great pity,” Bracken said. “He had considerable promise. He was quite a young man. Yes, he died almost a year ago.”
“The store has, I suppose, some record of his sale to you? A bill of sale? Something of the sort?”
The accounting department of course had. Unfortunately, the accounting department was closed on Saturdays.
Would the records describe the picture? Identify it?
“I’m getting a little tired of this,” Bracken said. “You still seem to doubt what I’ve told you.”
“No,” Shapiro said. “It’s only that we have to do things in a certain way, according to rules. I’ve got to report to my superiors, Mr. Bracken. It isn’t what I think. I go to the inspector and tell him this picture wasn’t by Jones—not that it’s likely to come up, but suppose it does—and he says, ‘Can this man Bracken prove that?’ And I say, ‘Sorry, sir, but I didn’t think to go into that.’ And he says, ‘You’re going back into uniform, Patrolman Shapiro. To a beat in Staten Island. Maybe you’ll learn to think.’”
Shapiro could imagine few less likely conversations. But he was not yet ready for Oscar Bracken to get tired into silence.
“Monday,” Bracken said. “Go to accounting Monday and you’ll get all the proof you want.”
Shapiro said he didn’t doubt it. Nor did he doubt it. He was quite sure that, on a given date in the past, Bryant & Washburn had purchased a painting from a man named Alan Shayburn. He doubted whether the records would include a photograph of the painting.
He moved as if he were about to get up; spoke as if something altogether trivial had just passed across his mind.
“You say,” he said, “that you and Mrs. Dedek were once associated. Partners? Was that it?”
“What on earth?”
“Just getting things as straight as I can,” Shapiro said. “Strange new world to me, Mr. Bracken. You were?”
“For a couple of years,” Bracken said. “I had a small gallery of my own. We—call it merged. Running a gallery can be an expensive business, Lieutenant. Something artists never seem to understand.”
“You dissolved the partnership?”
“A year or so ago, I was approached to start the gallery here. And—I don’t see that this has anything to do with what you’re after, but since you’re curious—Myra and I weren’t doing especially well financially. Overhead ate things up. It’s a chancy business, dealing in art. Particularly when you want to do it on a grand scale, as Myra does. In your own building.”
“She owns the building?”
“Has an equity, anyway. Actually, it was her insistence on buying instead of renting that we broke up on. I’m—well, past the age when I want to take a flyer. You’re going rather far afield, aren’t you?”
“One thing does seem to lead to another,” Shapiro said, and spoke in a tone of mild apology. “I suppose you knew Mr. Jones? When you were associated with Mrs. Dedek.”
“Not well,” Bracken said. “Myra was already handling him when I joined up with her. Kept on doing it. I knew him to speak to, of course. To speak to, usually, about the prices he wanted us to hold out for. Out of line, some of them were.”
“He was difficult to deal with?”
“All artists are difficult to deal with, Lieutenant,” Oscar Bracken said, and made a gesture with both hands to indicate the problems presented by artists. “All the moderns are Picassos, to hear them talk. All dealers are out to do them in. A very abused lot, artists.”
“Mr. Jones more than most?”
“No, I wouldn’t say so. More flamboyant than most, maybe. That beard of his!”
“I’ve heard about the beard,” Shapiro said. “Something of a trademark of his, I gather. At any rate, before beards got to be such a thing.
You couldn’t miss it, I gather.”
“You certainly couldn’t. Which was his idea, I always thought.”
Shapiro stood up, and had another afterthought.
“By the way,” he said, “was Mr. Jones in the gallery here recently? Past few weeks?”
“No,” Bracken said. “Never was here, so far as I know. Certainly not when I was around. And if somebody else had been helping customers, he would have mentioned Shack Jones if he’d seen him. Sort of man who got himself mentioned.”
“And recognized,” Shapiro said. “Because of his curly, reddish beard.”
“Yes,” Bracken said. “It was quite a beard.”
Shapiro gathered as much. And he rather wished he had seen it. And he was sorry he had taken up so much of Mr. Bracken’s time.
At the door he had another afterthought. He understood that Weldon Williams, Mrs. Dedek’s assistant, had been in to see Mr. Bracken the day before. Would Mr. Bracken mind telling him why?
Bracken couldn’t see that it was any business of the police. Shapiro shrugged his shoulders. But if the lieutenant thought it was —
“To see if he could get taken on here for the summer,” Bracken said. “As an assistant in the gallery. Mrs. Dedek closes up for July and August. Most of them do. Some of them around the middle of June. People don’t buy pictures in the summer.”
“Did he get the job?”
“Told him to try Personnel,” Bracken said. “But I’ve told Personnel we don’t need him. People don’t buy many pictures from us in the summer, either.”
XIV
Detective Anthony Cook finished his report and separated ribbon copy from carbons—the ribbon for the Deputy Chief Inspector, Commanding, Detective Division—and put them in a basket for collection by the probationary patrolman who was acting as clerk for the squad. He got from Detective Michael Corrigan the name of the man Corrigan knew in the art department of the New York Times and from him a list of stores which operated art galleries in connection with furniture displays. There were seven stores on the list, dotted uptown from Thirty-third Street. He was getting up from his desk to start a round of doorbell-ringing when his own telephone rang. He identified himself.
Murder For Art’s Sake Page 16