Bloodman

by Robert Pobi

  Then his stomach.

  The floor stretched away into the dark at a right angle to his line of sight, and dust bunnies danced in front of his face with his breath.

  How many crazy paintings would a crazy painter paint? echoed somewhere off in the distance.

  Then everything faded away, even the canopy of faceless stares.

  28

  For a second there was the black-hot pain of a fist clenching inside his skull and as quickly as it took hold, it faded to a distant hammer against the membrane of his mind. Kay was in a rectangle of light, her hair outlined in a phosphorescent glow, rushing forward, mouth flying open. A filling twinkled amid her molars.

  “Jesus! Fuck! Jake!”

  He pushed himself up onto his knees, holding his chest.

  “I prefer See Spot run, but if it turns you on…” He let the sentence trail off.

  Kay helped him to his feet.

  “Sorry, baby. The jukebox took a hit. I guess I got too excited.” He stood up shakily, massaging his chest.

  She punched him in the arm. “Thanks for scaring the piss out of me. Usually you just twinge a bit and you’re good.” Kay wondered what could have set his heart rate through the roof.

  Jake turned away from her, back to the images on the walls and ceiling. “Whacha think?” he asked, nodding up into the darkness.

  She followed his nod and her mouth twitched into an uncomfortable grin, all teeth and no lips. “This is Gustave Doré on psychotropic leave.”

  Jake nodded. “Apt comparison.”

  Kay walked slowly around the room.

  Like Jake, she was more impressed with the endless stacks of little paintings than the bleeding men in the black sky overhead, although it was obvious that she felt they were following her as well by the way she kept glancing up at them. She threaded between the pillars of paintings, trying to make sense of it all. “There has to be three thousand of these things.”

  Jake did a rough and dirty calculation. “Closer to five.”

  “There’s a bunch in the house, too.” Kay stopped, picked one up. “Are they all a different shape?”

  Jake shrugged. “Looks like. Just in framing it would take a year to stretch all of these. Then to gesso the canvases and paint them…” He let the sentence die. “Mad as a—” he looked around the place and a wave of sadness sunk into his flesh—“painter. You sure you want to spend the rest of your life with a guy like me? This,” he said, sweeping his arm over the piles of canvases, “is hereditary. Except with me, it will be pictures of dead people.” Jake sat down on the edge of the framing table, one of the only uncluttered surfaces in the studio.

  Kay pointed at the door to the garage. “What’s in there?”

  Jake, brought away from the dark ride he was taking through the demon-haunted universe painted by his father, looked over. “Garage.”

  “Can I?”

  He shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

  She turned the knob and to both their surprise it swung open on greased hinges. Kay flicked a switch beside the door and the lights in the garage hummed to life. The room, in direct contrast to the studio, was painted in a bright blue-white. A car sat in the middle of the space and Jake eased forward, not realizing that he had stopped breathing again.

  He got closer to the door and the image of the automobile began to widen. The skin was obscured by a thick layer of dust that hadn’t been disturbed in years. The windshield was opaque and the whole car looked like it had been sitting in here unnoticed forever. Jake knew this car, knew what it looked like under the neglect, and it reminded him of the night that everything had fallen apart. His life. His father’s. Everything turned to bloody black dirt in one big swing of fate.

  It had been his mother’s—a 1966 Mercedes W113 in factory cream with a red leather interior. Jake remembered the morning they had brought it back on a flatbed after her murder. Jacob was drunk and had stayed in the house. Jake had helped them back up the truck and when they had rolled the Benz off, it had grazed the paneling under the window. They had closed the door and that seemed to be the end of it all. The sealing of the tomb of the queen.

  At the front of the garage sat a cracked leather Eames lounge chair. It was dust free and surrounded by a forest of whiskey bottles, the floor at its feet worn smooth. He saw the chair, the bottles, and a quick flowchart sparked to life in his head. How often had his father come in here? Once a year? A month? A week? Looking at the forest of bottles and the smooth ring worn around the base of the chair, Jake guessed that he had come in here often. Maybe every night. Perched in his Captain Kirk chair, bottle of anger fuel in his hand, thinking about his dead wife. Probably never driven the car. It had stayed right here for how long? Thirty-three years now.

  Jake moved slowly down the wall and peered at the back bumper. It was still touching the panel where it had rolled to a stop all those years ago, a fibrous tear in the grain of the wood, still splintered but now covered in dust and cobwebs.

  It was obvious that it had not been moved since the morning after his mother’s murder.

  The last people to touch it had probably been the flatbed guys. Before that, the police. And before that, his mother’s killer.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Jake said, holding his own hands up as an example.

  “Why?”

  Jake ignored her and took out his cell phone. Dialed. “Yeah, Smolcheck, Jake Cole. You have time to do a car for me? Sure. Yeah. No. 1966 Mercedes convertible. Two-seater.”

  Pause.

  “It was part of a murder scene thirty-three years ago.”

  Pause.

  “I think so. Local police went through it.”

  Pause.

  “Returned to the family within twenty hours of the crime.”

  Pause.

  “Bare storage. Unheated but safe from the elements.”

  Pause.

  “No, no traffic. No one has touched it. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”

  Longer pause.

  “Okay, I’ll book storage from here. I’ll do the best I can. Polyethylene and duct tape. Got it. Sure.”

  Pause.

  “Thanks, Smolcheck. I appreciate it. It’s cold but it’s going to help me with a lateral case. I’ll make sure I go through Carradine. Don’t worry, it will be okayed by the time it gets there.”

  Jake hung up and focused on a note taped to one of the scotch bottles: YOUR NAME IS JACOB COLERIDGE. KEEP PAINTING.

  Oh, you kept painting, you mad old motherfucker, Jake thought. And what were you trying to say?

  He looked up and Kay was gone, back in the house with Jeremy. How long had he been in one of his trances?

  He put his hand to his chest and felt his heartbeat. Everything was fine. Fit as a fucking fiddle. When he thought about it, it was amazing what you could live through. Nietzsche had been right. After killing yourself three times with a high-octane mix of China White and Columbian, there was pretty much nothing else on the planet you were afraid of.

  Except maybe the past.

  29

  Jake sat atop an old dented mechanic’s chest filled with brushes, palette knives, and the assorted implements of his father’s trade. It was an old Snap-on model, covered in painted fingerprints, brushstrokes, and random cuts of color. An open but untouched bottle of Coke sat on the concrete floor, bleeding condensation in a wet ring that seeped into the dust. He had one boot up on the edge of the tool chest and he hugged his knee, staring off into darkness decorated like Breughel’s The Triumph of Death. There was no exterior light, and bright bulbs lighted the room.

  At first he thought it was the wind. Just an oblong sound that the ocean had somehow kicked up. Then he heard it a second time, the distinct cadence of human speech in its vowels. Someone was yelling. It was a tentative yell, but a yell nonetheless.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  Jake recognized the voice, the accent. He unfolded himself from atop the tool chest, stood up, and walked outside.

  A man in a s
uit was on the balcony, bent over and peering into the living room. The posture, the hair, the soft pink hands clasped behind his back, the well-tailored suit—hadn’t changed in twenty-eight years. Jake walked quietly up behind him, leaned in, and very softly said, “Hello, David.”

  David Finch jumped, banged his head on the mullion, and converted the startled jerk into a quickly extended hand. “Hello.”

  Jake stood there for a second, appraising the man. “It’s me. Jake.”

  Finch’s eyes narrowed, and he took in Jake with an exaggerated up-and-down. “Jakey?” He examined his face, his big polished smile opening up. “You still look like Charles Bronson.”

  David Finch was one of the top gallery owners in New York and Jacob Coleridge had been one of his first discoveries. The two events were not mutually exclusive.

  “And you look like a parasite coming to feed on a not-yet-dead cash cow.”

  “I didn’t know you and your father were that close, Jakey.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Still making money with that mouth?” Finch asked.

  Jake took a step closer to the man and opened his teeth in an ugly smile. “What do you want?”

  “I sent flowers. Did your father get them?”

  Jake remembered the broken vase on the floor. “My father isn’t getting anything anymore.”

  Finch looked around the deck. What for? Help, maybe. “Jakey, can we talk?”

  Jake thought about the last time he had seen the man. About how he had asked for thirty-one dollars. About how he had been turned down. About the things he had done to feed himself because of that. “No, David, I don’t think we can.” Besides, Kay and Jeremy were inside and Jake didn’t want them to get contaminated by any more of his old life than they already had.

  “I need to talk to you about your father’s work.”

  Jake thought about the bloody portrait splattered onto the hospital wall. “Dad’s not making a lot of sense on any level, David. The old Jacob Coleridge is on a permanent vacation.”

  Finch pointed at the Chuck Close through the window, the eyes gone. “Jacob Coleridge would never do this to a Close. Cy Twombly maybe—maybe. But a Close? Rome could be burning and he’d be the guy defending the museum with an axe.”

  “It’s Alzheimer’s, David—not a German opera. Jacob Coleridge is not coming back.”

  Finch’s head swiveled in an angry jerk. “I know you and your father haven’t exactly been simpatico, Jake, but I know your old man; we’ve been friends for almost fifty years. We’ve stuck by one another when the going was tough and both of us had plenty of opportunities when we should have taken up other offers in the interest of our careers. But we didn’t because we were a good team. And that only happens when you know someone. Know them intimately. And Jacob Coleridge could be drunk off his ass with his cock falling off from a bout of syphilis and be using someone else’s liver because his was out being dry-cleaned and he’d never lay a finger on a Chuck Close. Too much respect. Too much professional admiration. Never. Ever. No way.” Finch turned back to the painting.

  Jake followed his gaze, then looked beyond the painting into the kitchen. Kay and Jeremy were gone. Maybe down on the beach for a walk. He saw his own reflection staring back at him. “If you say so.”

  “Did your father have any work in the studio?” The gallery owner asked, the unmistakable lilt of greed in his voice.

  “It’s empty. It was filled with crap and most of it’s gone.” It was a lie but Jake didn’t feel like having an argument with Finch. If the sycophantic little fuck had his way, he’d be peeling up the paint-splattered floor in the studio and selling it by the square foot at Sotheby’s in their spring sale of important American art.

  Finch stared into Jake’s face for a second. “Jake, you do know that I am your father’s sole representative. We have a lifetime and beyond contract.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Jake’s patience was running out. His old man had fried his hands off and this parasite was here to sniff out a commission.

  “That means that I have proprietary rights on his paintings in reference to sales. No one—and that means you, too—can sell a Jacob Coleridge.”

  Jake crossed the space that had developed between them in a long-legged stride that would have made Hauser proud. “David, you and my father may have been friends but as far as I’m concerned, you’re a smarmy little bloodsucker who would do anything for his wallet. Do you remember the night I showed up at your house when I left here?”

  Finch sunk into himself, brought his head down. Said nothing.

  “I was seventeen years old, David, and I was alone on the streets of New York. I came to you because you were the only person I knew in the city. The only one. And do you remember what I asked for?”

  Finch shook his head but it was clear from his expression that he did.

  “I asked for some food, David. I asked for a meal and thirty-one bucks. I didn’t ask for too much because I didn’t want to jeopardize your relationship with my father—I knew he’d get rid of you if you helped me. So I asked for very little.” Jake’s hands hung loosely at his sides and Finch’s eyes kept looking at them, something about the way they hung limply more threatening than if they had been rolled into tattooed fists. “You said no. Do you know what I had to do to eat? Do you, David?”

  Finch shook his head slowly, keeping his eyes on Jake’s hands.

  “I had to blow some guy, Dave. I know that’s your kind of thing, but it’s not mine. I was seventeen and alone and I had to suck some stranger’s cock so I could get something to eat. Nice, huh? So if you’re thinking about threatening someone, you’re picking on the wrong guy. Not only will you never see another of my father’s paintings, but I may just burn them.”

  Finch gasped like he had been kicked in the pills.

  “I can use them for fucking target practice.” He pulled out the big stainless revolver and placed it to Finch’s head. “You know what I do for a living, David?” Finch would have looked into it before coming out here—he was the kind of man who liked to cover all his bases.

  Finch nodded. It was a frightened, skittish action.

  “Then you know I don’t have a squeamish bone in my body.” Jake cocked the hammer on the pistol and pressed the heavy barrel into Finch’s temple, denting the skin. “I could empty your head all over this deck for trespassing and no one would think twice about pressing charges. So don’t you fucking threaten me, you little sack of shit, because I passed don’t-give-a-shit about ten years back and have become comfortably ensconced in don’t-give-a-fuck. Are we clear?”

  “What about your wife? Your child?” Finch asked, his voice half an octave from hysteria.

  “Was that a threat, David?” Jake’s other hand came up and locked on Finch’s larynx in a Ranger chokehold. “Because if it is, you are a dead man.”

  Finch shook his head, coughed, brought his hands up to the tattooed vise fastened to his throat. “No. No. I didn’t—. I—. I—. Let go—!”

  Jake pulled his hand away and Finch fell back against the railing. It creaked in protest.

  “I think you better leave, David. Before I start getting angry.”

  Finch opened his mouth to protest but his jaw froze. There was an instant of indecision as he made whatever calculations he thought necessary, then he turned and walked away.

  Jake followed him off the deck, around the house, and watched him open the door to the big silver Bentley GT Continental. He stopped again, turned to face Jake, and said, “Not that it makes a bit of difference, Jakey, but I’m sorry. I always was. About everything. Your father’s drinking. Your mother’s murder. All of it.”

  “Don’t ever contact me again, David. You’re dead as far as I’m concerned.”

  Finch got into the big sedan, closed the door, and slipped out of the drive onto the Montauk Highway. Jake watched the Bentley until it was out of sight, then turned and walked back to the studio.

  30

  The wi
nd had picked up considerably over the past few hours and the ocean was hazed over with low-slung blue clouds and the jagged dance of whitecaps kicking up. For a few minutes he stood leaning against the railing, knowing that something was off but not being able to localize it. Something felt odd, eerie—then he realized that the ever-present shorebirds had disappeared; there were no plovers, sandpipers, or gulls milling about the beach or riding the stiff wind coming in off the water. What do they know that I don’t? Jake wondered.

  He stood on the deck, sipping what felt like the hundredth coffee of the day, watching the truck pull to a stop in front of the garage, beeping like a gargantuan alarm clock. One of the carriers stood at the truck’s flank, directing the driver with the lazy movements of a man who trusts the guy behind the wheel. He was dressed in gray workman’s Dickies with the telltale bulge of a sidearm pressing the fabric each time he raised his arm.

  Jake stepped off the weathered wood planking and walked over to the big Hino. The twenty-four-foot covered flatbed was one of the bureau’s “clean” trucks, a boxed-in van that shielded evidence vehicles from the elements as well as peripheral contamination. The driver was simply that but the second man, the one who had directed the truck with the airfield hand gestures, was a technician, here to make sure that as little evidence as possible was disturbed.

  The technician in the Dickies met Jake at the edge of the gravel drive. True to his kind, he was all business. “Special Agent Cole?” he said, extending a hand.

  Jake nodded, shook.

  “Miles Rafferty.” With the exception of the firearm pressing against the fabric of his coveralls, Rafferty looked like a guy contracted to paint the garage/studio. “I was told that the evidence you are looking for in the vehicle is twenty-eight years old.”

  Jake nodded. “Thirty-three, actually.”

  Rafferty’s face didn’t change. “The wind’s a little strong here so what I’d like to do is bag the car before we pull it onto the bed.”

  “The tires are flat and I’m not sure—”