The Art of Violence

by S. J. Rozan

  “He doesn’t remember any of it, and neither do most of the others. The one witness who was relatively straight—the punch was gone by the time she got to the party, so she’d had a beer but that’s all—she says Amy was high as a kite and went with Sam, cuddling and laughing the whole time. Then she—the witness—heard screams from the basement. She started down the steps and saw Sam stabbing Amy over and over. She ran back up, bolted the basement door, and called the cops.”

  A terrier sniffed my knee while its oblivious owner at the next table gossiped with her lunch date. I slipped the dog some pork.

  “One of the things I was hired to do back then,” I said, “was to reconstruct the party, find witnesses willing to swear Sam didn’t know what was in the punch.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, including the girls who’d put it there. But the case never went to trial because the defense would have been temporary insanity and Sam was afraid he’d end up in a mental hospital. The DA offered a plea bargain and he took it.”

  “He preferred prison to a hospital?”

  “That’s what he said then, and he said it again last night.”

  “That by itself might be enough to prove he’s nuts.”

  “I’m not so sure. Prison’s not a bad place for a guy like Sam. Not a lot of choices, lots of rules and boundaries. Sam’s confused a lot.”

  “A guy like that, though—wasn’t he afraid?”

  “Not as afraid as he was of the hospital. And it turns out that in Greenhaven they appreciate great art.” I told her about Sam’s portraits of the other cons. “What’s interesting is that outside, he hadn’t ever let anyone but his brother see his work. In prison, he felt safe enough to do the portraits, and then to paint. That’s how he was discovered.”

  “So, now he’s free and sitting in your living room, telling you he’s a serial killer. Is there a chance it could be true?”

  “There’s a chance,” I said. “One way or another, we need to find out.”

  The sidewalk began to fill with people waiting for a table. I gave Lydia the part of the project I thought she would carry off better than I could: talking to relatives and friends of the victims. She’d try to get an idea of the women’s lives, of their movements on the nights they were killed, to see if Sam popped up anywhere.

  “Keep your eye out for a cop named Ike Cavanaugh,” I said. “You may find him shadowing you.”

  “Pro or con?”

  “Once he meets you, he’ll probably find you as irresistible as everyone else does. With me, definitely con.”

  “You’ve alienated yet another of New York’s Finest?” She sighed. “What is he, the cop on one of these killings?”

  “Not these two. Amy Evans. He’s holding a grudge.” I told her about Cavanaugh and Grimaldi. “She told him to back off, but he seems pretty determined to prove it’s Sam. You might run into him.”

  “Sounds like he doesn’t much care for Detective Grimaldi, either.”

  “You, on the other hand, will love her. She’s nearly as tough as you are.”

  “Me? I’m a marshmallow.”

  I couldn’t see a way to win on that one, so I stuck to business. As the waiter put down the check, I handed Lydia a copy of Grimaldi’s file. “While you do this, I’m going to go from the other direction. Try to establish Sam’s movements, see if I can find an alibi even he’ll have to believe.”

  “Bill?” Lydia finished a last cup of tea. “Is he really a great painter?”

  “He may be.”

  “But you don’t like his paintings. I can tell from the way you said that. Why?”

  Maybe I should get a column in Art Now if I was going to keep doing reviews. “Like Sam, they’re hard to be with,” I said. “They may be great, but you want to get away.”

  “So what makes them great if people don’t want to stand there and look at them?”

  “They seem to reach deep into you. Everyone has a strong reaction, even if it’s disgust.”

  I tucked cash in with the bill and we stood to leave. Before we’d gone three steps, our table was pounced on by waiting foodies.

  “Can you describe them? The paintings?” Lydia asked as we walked.

  “I’m not sure I’ll do them justice, but: Your first impression is, very pretty. Landscapes, or seascapes, or cottages with gardens and picket fences. Winter twilight on a frozen pond. The kind of paintings you’d see at a sidewalk art fair. Nice colors, good composition, artistically lightweight. They give you that twinge of nostalgia for a life you never lived. You know what I mean?”

  “I think I do.”

  “So, you move in, you stand there, trying to spend a little time with that warm feeling. Then, as you look more closely, it dawns on you that all these serene images and lovely colors are made up of tiny scenes of horrendous, graphic violence. Blood, bombs, people in chains, being beaten, killed. Pain, rage, fear, despair—they’re everywhere. Those images dissolve when you’re standing back, like the dots in a newspaper photo. But they’re what all that prettiness is made of.

  “When I went to see his show, I watched people lean close to a picture and then almost jump back. But once you’ve seen it, you can’t un-see it. You feel sucker-punched. You feel—” I searched for the words. “You feel like you were caught in an enormous lie. Like you’ve been exposed for the hypocrite you are. It’s an uncomfortable feeling.”

  “Uncomfortable? It sounds awful.”

  “It’s hard to dismiss the power, though.”

  “But is that what art’s about? Power, even if it’s power to make you feel bad?”

  “Good question. I don’t know. But it’s what the art world loves about Sam.”

  “If they love that he makes them feel bad, maybe there’s something wrong with them.”

  “Maybe that’s what they feel bad about. You know, if you want to see the paintings, you can go up to Lemuria. Or the Violence show at the Whitney opens tonight. He’s got three pieces in that.”

  “The Violence show?”

  “The Art of Violence/The Violence of Art.”

  “Seriously? Paintings of blood and guts?”

  “Not generally, except for Sam’s. More conceptual. Though I hear there’ll be a Colt revolver that used to belong to the czar of Russia, with onion domes carved on it, broken down into its component parts, each in a gilt frame.”

  “Oh, goody. But listen, Bill, tell me something else. You don’t like the paintings. Do you like Sam?”

  I took out a cigarette. “I feel like I owe him. And it seems to me someone has to look out for him. His folks used to do that, and now his brother, but this isn’t something he wants his brother to know about.”

  “If I thought I was a serial killer, I wouldn’t tell my brothers, either. You know, if he is, he’ll have to go back to prison, no matter how great an artist he is.”

  I nodded. “He’s counting on it.”

  We split at the subway, Lydia to head to the East Side, me uptown to Sam’s studio. If he was there, I’d talk to him; if not, it wouldn’t be a total loss, because I also needed to have a serious discussion with his gun dealer.

  6

  Before he’d gone to prison, Sam, as he’d said, had never shown anyone his work. From the time he was in middle school he was a classic outsider artist, painting in private with a drive bordering on obsession. He didn’t study art and had nothing to do with the glittering art world across the river.

  But that art world had gotten him out of prison and it had made him famous. He belonged to it now. Though from what he’d said, and from what I’d seen in his eyes and the slump of his shoulders, “belonged to” didn’t mean “fit in with.” It meant “was owned by.”

  On the phone too early in the morning, Peter Tabor had put it plainly: for the first time in Sam’s life, in the eyes of the world, Sam was somebody. To Peter, that was clearly a good thing. Sam would have disagreed, I thought, but Sam hadn’t been asked. And while Nobody could paint under fluorescent lights in a b
asement in Queens, Somebody couldn’t. Sam’s current studio was a huge room in a former warehouse on the West Side of Manhattan, leased by and close to his gallery, the rent coming out of the sale of his paintings. Other studios, most smaller than his, filled the rest of the six-story building. Sam’s faced north for good light, had running water for his convenience, was near the freight elevator for the handy moving of large canvases.

  And Sam’s was next door to his gun dealer’s.

  At the building, I tried Sam’s buzzer first. I gave it two attempts, the second try long and insistent. When I was met with silence, I called and again got voice mail. So I buzzed the studio next to Sam’s.

  “Who’s there?” It was more of a demand than a question.

  “Bill Smith. I’m here to see Sam Tabor.”

  Nothing. I was just about to try again when the door was buzzed open. I was impressed that a buzzer could be made to sound grudging.

  Upstairs, I walked along paint-splattered vinyl and knocked on the steel door identified by a nameplate as Sam’s. I didn’t expect a response and I didn’t get one. Down the hall I knocked at the next studio, and after a pause I heard an annoyed shout: “I’m coming!” Eventually the door was yanked open. An angular, glowering woman stared me down. She looked fortyish, and angry enough to live forever.

  “Are you Ellissa Cromley?”

  A moment, and then a curled lip. “Why, who should I be?”

  I had no suggestions. “Is Sam Tabor with you?”

  She turned and walked back into the studio, leaving the door open. I guessed that was as close to an invitation as I was going to get. I followed through the overlaid smells of turpentine, dust, and stale coffee. A narrow path wandered among sawhorse tables, piles of art books, rolls of canvas, stacked boxes. Metal cans overflowed with brushes, milk crates with metal cans. In a corner, wood scraps; on a chair, sketchbooks. Taped-up drawings and torn-out magazine ads covered the walls. A pile of Free Sam Tabor leaflets fanned out under a table.

  The path emerged into a clearing just big enough for a stained couch. Beyond it, by the windows, three easels held unfinished paintings.

  Ellissa Cromley dropped onto the couch and retrieved a Brooklyn Lager from the paper-strewn table beside it. Already on the couch, his own beer in hand, was Sam.

  “Hey,” he said with an out-of-focus smile.

  Cromley scowled at Sam. “You know this guy?”

  Cromley wore a gauzy, gathered skirt, splashed with both flowers and paint, topped by a white, paint-smeared polo shirt. Paint streaked her arms, spotted her bare feet, and smudged her forehead behind long brown hair only partly contained by a clip.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said to Sam. There was no place in the room to sit except where the two of them were already sitting. I moved in closer. They both tilted their heads up at me. Well, if their necks started to hurt, maybe Cromley would clear off a crate and offer me a seat. I turned to her. “And to you.”

  “Me? I don’t know you.”

  “Is this yours?” I held out the .22 I’d taken off Sam last night.

  “Oh, that’s him?” She turned to Sam, who nodded. After a pull on her beer she said to me, “He said you had it. I was going to come get it later.”

  “You think so? You know Sam’s a felon on parole? Do you know what happens if he’s caught with a gun?”

  “He wasn’t going to use it.”

  “He goes back upstate, no questions, no appeal. Sam, did you know that?”

  Sam, fingers drumming on the couch arm, looked confused. He probably couldn’t remember whether he knew it or not.

  “He wasn’t going to hurt you.” Cromley smirked. “It wasn’t loaded.”

  I put the gun back in my pocket. “The First Precinct will have it. You can pick it up there. It’s a lot of paperwork, but they’ll probably give it back to you in the end.”

  “You can’t do that! It’s mine! I have a license for it!”

  “You don’t have a license for Sam to have it. If he’s arrested for carrying it, you’ll be arrested for supplying it to him. I’m going to tell them I found it in the gutter. You can tell them whatever you want.”

  “Oh, screw you.” Cromley settled back with a superior smile. “I do have another one, you know.”

  “I didn’t know and I don’t care, unless you give that one to Sam, too. Sam, I need to talk to you.”

  Uncomfortably, Sam said, “Okay.” When I just stood there he said, “Oh, you mean, somewhere else? We don’t have to do that. Ellissa knows all about it. Ellissa’s my friend. She helps me.”

  “Really? She helps?” The look I gave Cromley wasn’t any harder than the one she was giving me. “She knows why you came to see me? You told her?”

  “Hey, yo, hello, I’m sitting right here,” Cromley said.

  “When Sherron first got me the studio”—Sam took a sip of beer—“right next door here, I didn’t know… I wasn’t used to it, being in a building like this, everybody here. So much light, so open. My dealer coming and going, other artists, collectors. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “He was a mess,” Cromley said fondly. “I looked after him. Showed him the ropes. Even though you signed with Sherron instead of coming with us.” She gave Sam a playful poke and a smile that didn’t include me.

  “ ‘Us’?” I asked.

  Cromley looked at me and drank beer.

  “Ellissa’s part of a gallery.” I guess Sam thought I deserved an answer, or maybe the daggers coming at me from Cromley’s eyes made him think, like Leslie’s and Peter’s fights, of Mom and Dad. “She kind of runs it, actually. An artists’ co-op. They all help each other. Like she helped me.”

  “We invited him.”

  “I wanted to. It sounded nice. But Peter told me to go with Sherron.” Sam’s tone was apologetic.

  “Yeah, Peter thought Sam had bigger fish to fry. Like Sherron gives a shit about him. I helped him anyway.” She poked Sam again, in the ribs. He grinned and squirmed. “And it’s a good thing,” she said, “because if I hadn’t, you’d still be standing in the corner staring at those brand-new brushes Sherron bought like they were going to bite you. Or you’d be sitting in the hall because you couldn’t remember the combination to your keypad.”

  Sam gave an embarrassed shrug and downed more beer.

  “All right,” I said. “Tell me: why did you say last night that Detective Grimaldi threw you out?”

  “She did. She thought I was another nut just looking for attention. She said so.”

  “She drove you home. All the way to goddamn Greenpoint, and she searched your place. You didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”

  “Sam?” said Cromley. “Did she really do that, that detective?”

  “I… yeah, I guess she did.”

  I said, “Are you claiming you don’t remember?”

  “What’s the big deal if he doesn’t?” Cromley demanded.

  “No, I do,” Sam said quickly. “Sort of. She was there. In the kitchen.”

  “She searched the whole place and she didn’t find anything. Not a drop of blood, nothing. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because what does it prove? Maybe I hid things. Maybe I threw them away.”

  “What things?”

  “What I was wearing, my clothes, my shoes, I don’t know.”

  “The knife,” said Cromley, and she looked at me. “Some serial killers who use a knife throw it away or bury it and use a new one each time. The same type—maybe they even buy them by the dozen—but a new one for each victim. Oh, what, you thought you were the only one who knew anything about serial killers, big shot? I’ve read every book there is. I’ve heard John Douglas speak twice. You know who he is? He wrote Mindhunter and some other important books. You never heard of him?” She turned again to Sam, pointing her beer at me. “Are you sure he’s the right guy to be doing this?”

  “He’s good,” Sam said, though he sounded a little unsure.

  Hey, yo, I’m standing right here
. I said to Cromley, “You seem very up on this stuff. Is this since Sam decided he was one? Or you just have a thing about serial killers?”

  “A ‘thing’? What the hell is a ‘thing’? I’m interested. So, sue me.”

  “Interested why?”

  She gave me the look you’d give someone who was dripping wet and asking if it was raining. “Because the more you know, the less likely it is to happen to you.”

  “You mean, you think you’ll recognize one if he comes down the street?” I stopped just short of telling her she was as crazy as Sam. “And what about Sam? He’s sitting right next to you. What if he’s right and he is one?”

  “He is so wrong.” She patted Sam’s knee in a way that seemed neither companionable nor romantic, but proprietary. He gave a wavering smile, moved his eyes back and forth between us.

  “I know a lot about Sam,” Cromley said. “Not just about serial killers. I was on the committee, you know. We got him out. Tony Oakhurst and Sherron Konecki and all those big shots think it was them, they think they’re all that and a bag of chips, they do the press conferences and all that shit, but I did the fucking work.”

  “And you think that gave you insight into Sam?”

  “You really don’t know anything, do you?” She reorganized herself on the couch, ready to deliver a lecture. “There are different types of serial killers. Almost all are men, with a brain-wiring glitch that gives them a sense of sexual satisfaction and power when they kill. Women so-called serial killers are usually predatory opportunists—for example, women who serially marry and then kill rich husbands. Real serial killers are different.”

  The way she said “real” made it sound like finding one was a prize.

  In smug tones, Cromley continued, “There actually are some who forget their crimes. But Sam doesn’t fit that particular profile. Those—”

  “That’s the second time I’ve heard that today.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Go on, I’m fascinated.”

  Cromley’s jaw set angrily. For a moment I thought she’d stop, but like anyone speaking on a subject dear to her heart, it wasn’t all that easy to derail her.