by S. J. Rozan
“And she’s the only one where the killer made any effort to hide the time of death.”
“Or maybe he was just hiding the body. Which, okay, he didn’t do with any of the others, either.”
“And they were all killed in parks. Not on loading docks.”
“True. But if it’s a different killer, why is the damn earring from the wrong ear in the box with the other two? They know each other, these killers? It’s a tag team? And where’s the one from the first one? Where in the hell is that one?”
“Or maybe we assume the wrong-ear thing doesn’t mean anything and there’s only one killer,” Lydia said, still looking at the board. “Maybe Kimberly Pike’s killer went out of his way to confuse things by making her death look different. If I were that killer, trying to frame Sam, I’d take out the earring from the murder from before he got out.”
“Okay. And why are you framing Sam?”
“I think the police are getting too close to me?”
“Hah. You must know something I don’t. Oh, button it, Gabi,” she said in answer to Iglesias’s laugh.
“If you planted that box,” Grimaldi turned back to Lydia, “you would’ve had to know how to get into Tabor’s studio.”
“Pretty much everyone did,” I stuck in. “And while we’re on the subject of physical evidence…?”
Grimaldi said, “You’re not going to give that up, are you?”
“It’ll just save me the trouble of calling the lawyer.”
“Ah, shit. Okay, because your partner here gave me the wrong-ear-earring thing. Even though that might not mean anything. Dark hairs, on Kimberly Pike’s sweater.”
“Sam’s? You know already?”
“Rapid DNA. I get the fancy new tech because it’s a high-profile case. You sound surprised.”
“I am.”
“And seeing as how Tabor says he didn’t know her, I bet he is, too.”
Lydia began, “It could just mean—”
“Don’t start. Could’ve been from another time. Another place. She snuck into the Whitney party and brushed against him. She went to the any-gender bathroom right after he did. She stood behind him on the line for the bar. Hairs go flying through the air on a breeze all the time. It proves nothing, except it gives the DA something to hold him on and that plus these damn earrings in his studio plus him confessing to everyone and their monkey gets him sent back upstate and my maniac is still walking the streets and where the fuck is that other earring?”
28
“Well,” Lydia said as we left the 19th Precinct, “that was enlightening. Wait, let me rephrase that. Cavanaugh’s a pig.”
“No argument.”
“And Grimaldi’s a mensch.”
“No argument there, either. And you’re a genius.”
“No argument.”
“However,” I said, “while you were so enthralled watching Grimaldi and Cavanaugh butt heads, I had a thought.”
“Hey, I don’t usually have a front-row seat at a pissing contest.”
“Would you really want one? Now, think about this. While we were with Oakhurst before, a collector called. Franklin Monroe. You saw him at the Whitney.”
“The oil slick with the ponytail?”
“Itself a strike against. Oakhurst had called to invite him to come see some new work.”
“Right, and he used that as his excuse to kick us out.”
“Yes. I met Monroe at Oakhurst’s yesterday, though. He’d been looking at Oakhurst’s new work. He was annoyed because he thought I was another collector, which would mean he didn’t have an edge. So what new work could Oakhurst have now, except something he made last night?”
“Ohhh. He was at the Whitney photographing the action, inside and out. But this would be something for his private collectors? The people who buy the work too dark for Sherron Konecki’s gallery to sell? That he made last night?”
Our eyes met.
I said, “If that’s what it is, I’d sure like to see it.”
I called Tony Oakhurst. Amara’s bored monotone told me that Tony was out—really out, even for me. She’d be sure to let him know I’d called. I tried his cell phone but got voice mail.
“Do you think he showed whatever he has from last night to Konecki and that’s what got her so upset?” Lydia asked.
“That did cross my mind. Let’s ask.”
The young woman who answered the phone at Lemuria Gallery was as briskly professional as Amara was chicly lethargic, but no more helpful. Ms. Konecki was out; no, she didn’t say when she’d be back; no, I couldn’t have her cell phone number; yes, I could leave a message; yes, she’d get it as soon as she came in or called. Was there anything else?
“No Ice Queen?” Lydia asked when I lowered the phone.
“That was her assistant, Permafrost.” I thought for a moment. “Well, there’s one more thing to try. Monroe claimed he was always happy to meet a fellow collector.”
Lydia made a face as I took Monroe’s card from my wallet and dialed.
Two rings, then, “Go for Monroe.”
“Franklin, it’s Bill Smith.” A second’s silence, so I said, “We met yesterday at Tony Oakhurst’s.”
“Oh! Yes, sure. And again at the Whitney last night. Another of Tony’s collectors. What can I do for you?”
“You just saw Tony, didn’t you? You saw last night’s work?”
Cautiously: “Yes, that’s right. Have you seen it?”
“I’d like to talk about it. Do you have some time?”
I could practically see his teeth gleaming white as his voice smiled. “Any time’s a good time to talk about art. I’m just back from his studio, actually. You have my address?”
“On your card.”
“I’ll be expecting you.”
“I’m in,” I said to Lydia as I pocketed the phone. “Want to come?”
“Do you need me?”
“Is that even a question? In this case, though, unless you really want to go, I think Monroe might be happier if it was just the two of us.”
“You know what? I might be, too. I’m a little overdosed on creepy men right now.”
This was my case. If I’d really wanted her to come with me—or had somewhere else I wanted her to go—she’d have done it. But I’d have a better chance with Monroe if he saw this as a meeting of the secret connoisseurs society, and I could tell Lydia had something else on her mind.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked.
“I think I want to go back to Sam’s neighborhood. If someone really broke into his apartment, it would be useful to know who.”
“Grimaldi already sent people there.”
“To see if anyone saw Sam in the middle of the night. She didn’t say they were asking about the break-in. Besides, even if they are, everybody needs a little help sometimes.”
We kissed good-bye. I watched her hips swing as her confident stride took her to the subway entrance. Then I headed in the other direction.
On my way to Monroe’s I grabbed a slice of pizza. I’d just about finished it when my phone rang. Wiping my hands, I checked the screen: Susan Tulis, Sam’s attorney.
“Susan,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Just checking in. Sam’s been booked downtown. I sent one of my best young associates. Lupe Veracruz. He made her crazy.”
“How?”
“By happily telling everyone he saw that he was being arrested and he wasn’t going to kill anyone anymore.”
“God, Sam.”
“Lupe finally told him if he shut up and let her do all the talking, she’d arrange for him to have paper and charcoal in his cell, otherwise not. He told her he didn’t like her, but okay.”
“Give her a bonus.”
“I’ll put it on Sam’s bill. If she stays on the case, I may have to bill for a shrink, too.”
“It’s Sam. We’ll probably need a shrink anyway. Maybe you can get a two-fer. Anyway, stay with it, Sam’s good for it.”
“That’s actual
ly one of my questions. Who’s my client, Sam or Peter? Peter says he’ll take care of it, like last time.”
“You talked to Peter?”
“He called. He wanted to know what the evidence was. It was hairs, by the way. Sam’s, on the victim’s sweater.”
“I know. I just came from talking to the arresting detective. I don’t like it.”
“I hate it. So, by the way, do Peter and Leslie, though it seems like for opposite reasons.”
“She was on the call, too?”
“Of course. He kept saying it wasn’t possible, Sam didn’t know the woman and didn’t do it. She kept saying it wasn’t all the cops had, there had to be something else they weren’t telling us about. Peter said that that sounded like she thought Sam did it. She said the cops don’t make an arrest like this without more evidence than a few hairs. I said sure they do, and I doubted they had anything else, but if they did, they’d have to produce it eventually. I got the odd feeling neither of them was listening to me.”
“I get that feeling with them all the time.”
“After a couple of times around that barn, I signed off so they could go dance with each other.”
I told Susan she’d better bill Peter, because she was more likely to get paid in this century. Although with Sam’s OCD, for all I knew he paid his bills assiduously. I asked her to keep in touch and hung up. I gave the situation some hard thought as I covered the final blocks to where I was headed.
The Park Avenue address on Monroe’s card turned out to be a prewar dowager of a building, all burgundy brick detailing, terra-cotta window surrounds, and haughty suspicion of the new glass tower across the street. I announced myself to the doorman. He announced me to the intercom handset, listened, and pointed me across a mirrored lobby filled with the gentle aroma of money. Ten floors later, the brass-buttoned elevator opened on a hallway wallpapered in tropical forest scenes. Its thick carpet led me to an elegant dark green door, where a sonorous doorbell brought me a toothily smiling Franklin Monroe.
“Well,” he said. “Great to see you. Come on in.”
I followed him through a marble vestibule into a large sunken living room. Hulking gray tweed sofas and oxblood leather armchairs squatted among gray walls hung with photos, paintings, and prints. None of the work was familiar to me, though I might have been willing to take a stab at guessing about half the artists, ranging through the last three centuries. The photos weren’t anything I’d seen, either, but it was clear which ones were Oakhursts. The subject of everything hanging in this room was the same: pain.
Blood, wounds, agonized faces. A 19th-century woodcut of Death flying through the air with the body of a child, its mother wailing on the hillside below. Red paint smearing a 1970s collage of news headlines about bodies found, children lost, whole families slain. A beautifully delineated, hyperrealistic canvas of a severed hand on a tabletop, blood continuing to drip down from somewhere just out of the frame.
The Oakhurst photos, three of them, were stylistically unmistakable: shadowy colors, deep blacks, glares of white. In one, a terrified-looking young woman tied to a chair could just be seen over the hulking shoulder of a shirtless man. The subject of another was unclear, but it featured blood, flesh, and damp hair. In the third, a scarred arm rested on a filthy mattress with a needle still stuck in the vein. Behind it, a skeletal junkie, works fallen into her lap, mouth open as she drifted off, seemed oblivious to the man ODing beside her.
I found myself understanding Sherron Konecki’s refusal to show these photos. I also found myself hoping they were made using props and models, but I had a bad feeling that wasn’t the case.
“Drink?” Monroe asked, pointing me to a chair.
Not a bad idea. A cigarette would be good, too, but I didn’t see any ashtrays. I sat; the chair gave a little too much, seeming to want to devour me. Monroe poured into heavy glasses from one of half a dozen crystal decanters on a cabinet. As he walked across the room to hand me a glass, I spotted three of Sam’s pencil drawings framed and hanging by the fireplace.
“So? Not bad, right?” Monroe took his glass to an armchair opposite, crossed his legs on a leather hassock. There was a hassock in front of my chair, too, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to get that comfortable. “I have a good many more, of course. I keep them rotating, out here, in there.” He gestured vaguely with his glass toward a hallway I hoped I wouldn’t have to enter.
“You have a great eye,” I said, giving him the compliment a collector treasures most. “The Oakhursts, the Santlofer”—that artist was a friend of mine; I’d have to talk to him about the direction he was moving in now, if Monroe’s charcoal drawing was any indication—“and the Tabors. I didn’t know you collected him, too.”
“Tony introduced me. Those are sketches for Red Barn. A lot more powerful than the painting itself, don’t you think?”
No, but more rare. “I thought Tabor didn’t sell the pencil sketches, on principle. That’s what Sherron Konecki told Michael Sanger.”
Monroe smiled his tooth-filled smile. “Right now, he doesn’t. Sherron’s fine with that. She can pump up demand while there’s no supply. But you know she’ll talk Tabor into selling. Money talks, stick-up-the-ass principles walk. Michael’s an idiot to fall for that, but he’s generally an idiot.”
“Is he one of Tony’s private collectors, too?”
“Michael?” Monroe snickered. “He doesn’t have the balls. He’s an aesthete. That’s another word for asshole. Sherron started out by dumping her hard-to-sells on him. When he discovered Tabor, he turned into a money fountain.”
“If Tabor has yet to be talked into selling the sketches, where did you get those?”
“Tony asked Tabor for them, as a favor. Tabor thought Tony was going to keep them. He didn’t know they were for me.” Monroe’s tone was smug. Clearly Tony had done no such favor for me. “I like sketches. I like to see where the artist started. Even Tony—he sometimes lets me have a raw shot he took, before he worked on it. If I buy the final, too.”
Gazing at Sam’s sketches, I sipped my drink. Scotch, complex, high proof, well balanced. Whatever was in the decanter was damn good.
Monroe followed my eyes. “You know they’re close, Tony and Tabor? I think Tony’s limited-edition work has gotten even edgier since they met. I’m sure you’ve noticed that?” His smile said he was pretty sure I didn’t know, and hadn’t noticed.
“Hmm. I hadn’t thought about it. In what way?”
“In a pissing contest way.”
If that was right I’d have to tell Lydia; maybe she’d want to catch another one.
“Not that Tabor would care,” Monroe went on. “Probably has no idea there is a contest, he’s in such a goddamn fog. Amusing to watch, isn’t he, the way he blinks and stumbles around? Impressive that a dolt like that can turn out such great work. But with Tony, it’s like Tabor’s work lit some kind of fire under him. Maybe because Tabor doesn’t know what he’s doing, and Tony does. I think Tony hates to lose to a guy who doesn’t even know what he’s doing.”
Interesting. In an odd way that aligned with what Oakhurst had said about Sam creating what he, Tony, could only see.
I asked, “Is that what’s behind the newest work, do you think? A darkness contest, him and Tabor?”
“What else?” Monroe swept his legs off the hassock and leaned forward. Although no one else was in the room, he lowered his voice. “So what did you think of it? Last night’s?”
I looked into my drink. “Like I said, I’m not sure.”
“Oh, come on. You’re telling me you have a line you won’t cross?” I guessed the smirk in his voice was telling me he had no line.
Last night’s. I took a chance. “It didn’t look… staged, to you?”
“No, it didn’t fucking look staged. Those eyes? As soon as he sent me the raw photo, I knew. Staged. Are you kidding? Tony wouldn’t do that. He never has. That misses the whole goddamn point.” Monroe threw himself back in his chair. “How long have y
ou been collecting him? You don’t trust him? Why do you bother?”
“I’ve always trusted him up to now. It never even occurred to me something might not be real.” I gestured at the bound young woman, hoped that was the right answer. “But last night’s…”
“Oh, come on! You know he was there. I saw you with him, for Christ’s sake, at his and Tabor’s wall. And you have to know she’s dead, it’s been all over the news. What do you think, that’s not really her?” He gave me a hard stare. “No. You don’t think it. You hope it. You’re not afraid it was staged. You’re hoping it was.” He finished his drink. “When it comes right down to it, you don’t have the balls for this, do you? You’re just another candy-ass. I misjudged you. I’d invite you to see more of my collection, but to hell with you. Finished with your drink?”
The question couldn’t have been more pointed. I hadn’t been, but in another two seconds I was. Another five after that, and I was up and out the door. I didn’t say thanks and Monroe didn’t say good-bye.
29
I lit a cigarette as soon as I was on the street. I took a few moments to weigh the relative merits of calling Grimaldi but decided she was less likely than I to get invited to see last night’s Tony Oakhurst if, as now seemed probable, it was Kimberly Pike’s final portrait. Grimaldi would need a warrant, but she’d never get one based on my reading of what Monroe had said. I’d need to see the photo myself and tell her about it.
I headed for the subway to go down to 39th Street.
Had Oakhurst killed Pike? Unlikely; he’d described himself as an artist who could see the pain but not create it. All right, but that didn’t account for Heisenberg’s principle: observing a phenomenon inevitably alters the nature of it. Oakhurst might go around telling himself and everyone else that he just shoots what he sees, but his subjects—the pain creators—might be changing their behavior because they know he’s photographing them. Did that mean there was a wide, blurred line between Oakhurst seeing and recording, and his subjects performing for the camera? I thought of the huge photo of Rick and Laurel, and whomever else, and imagined them writhing while Oakhurst’s flash popped off. What else was happening because Oakhurst was there? Were women being killed so Oakhurst could take pictures?