by A. E. Roman
But the most unforgettable sight in Giovanni and Joey’s inferno, standing spectacular in the middle of a mess of hammers and chisels and plaster, was an impossibly colossal hunk of untouched white marble, about nineteen feet tall. How Giovanni got it down there, I did not know—like Max’s coin tricks, it was magic, and it was really something to see, like an undiscovered wonder of the world.
“So,” Vaninni said, and slapped my shoulder. “How do you steal your money?”
“I like to think I earn my money.”
“We all like to think that. That’s what the banks think, too.”
“I’m a private investigator,” I said, “not a bank.”
“Even so,” said Giovanni, touching the collar of my shirt. “You do not look rich enough to buy my sculptures.”
“How do rich people look?”
“Assholes.”
“We just met,” I said. “I haven’t warmed up yet.”
Giovanni laughed and slapped my shoulder again, all friendly-like.
“So you are looking into that gruppo we call as TSP.”
“You don’t approve of TSP?”
“No,” he said. “Giovanni do not approve. They want only the money.”
“You sell sculptures for money,” I said. “I hope that doesn’t make you feel like a hypocrite.”
“Roma non fu costruita in un giorno,” said Giovanni, waving his hands. “Money is the tool that Giovanni will use to bring down this dirty house, this military-industrial state, this capitalism.”
“Does that work with most of your customers?” I said.
“Some,” Giovanni said, and laughed and slapped my back with an open hand. It was like being tapped by a Mack truck or a whale.
He felt my shirt again.
“What is? An antique?”
“Why do you hate TSP so much?” I asked.
“If TSP control New York City, give candy to children would be felony. No more Friday night, no more beer, no more cigarette, no more sex, no more vino. TSP can no accept the possibility that things in the world are not getting worse but better. They believe only in rules, money, power, the state, even worse than the Catholic church. They are scientifico only if you believe that to hate pleasure and freedom is science. That’s what you are looking into, signore.”
He paused. “And much much more.”
“Like what?”
Giovanni laughed. “You see. You must experience TSP first to believe.”
“Joey. He was a friend of yours?”
Giovanni stopped, looked sadly at Pablo, took a drag on his cigarette, gulped his wine, and said, “Joey Valentin is dead.”
“What?” said Pablo, obviously shaken. “When? Where?”
“I mean,” said Giovanni, “Joey is dead . . . in a way.”
Pablo let out a breath of air as if he’d been holding his breath for a year, relieved.
Giovanni sniffed at the air around me. Then he looked at me with one eye closed, shrugged, and said, “Go around the room, look at some of my old work and enjoy. I must finish some things now or go mad. I will only be a second.”
Pablo and I went around the room, looking at stuff, as Giovanni chiseled, rubbed, scraped, and cut at some sculptures with a metal string, running from project to project.
We were strolling through the enormous studio, looking at the sculptures, when I saw a knife marked Michael Jordan’s Steak House and tiny scraps of tin foil, near a postcard picture I recognized as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, a book titled Mussolini: A Biography, another titled God and the State by Mikhail Bakunin, a black notebook marked Notes of a Sculptor and another marked The Notebooks of Giovanni Vaninni. Oh, the cat had dreams.
Then I saw that Giovanni had stopped darting around his studio and was standing, very still, staring at a particular sculpture of two wrestlers, both with wings, made of plaster.
“Is something wrong?” I said.
“Essi,” said Giovanni. “She is no good. She is all wrong.”
Before I could ask what was wrong with her, Giovanni Vaninni picked up a sledgehammer and began slamming at the helpless plaster sculpture until it crumbled into white dust. When the dust cleared, Giovanni said, “There. Bene. That’s good. Much better.”
Then he turned to us, massaging his lower back, and said, “Spiacente. You must excuse. I have no slept in almost a week.”
“Just how much is this stuff worth?” I asked.
“Not much,” Giovanni said, dramatic pause. “Not yet.”
Giovanni went back to nervously darting about the room, not at ease while he was working, lit cigarette dangling from his lips.
I called out, “So you were good friends with Joey?”
Giovanni stopped moving, at last. He lit another hand-rolled, laughed, and said, “Joey and I, we meet at the School of Visual Arts. We make art. Why? Why are you so interest in Joey, signore? He is go.”
“Joey was an old friend of mine,” I said. “He was a good guy. A great artist when I knew him as a kid. I used to draw a little myself.”
Giovanni looked at me with those sleepy gray eyes of his, laughed again, and said, “I do not know what you are, signore. But you are correct about Joey. Joey know how to make passion in persons. Joey make you feel he love you, you are his best friend, and there is no thing he would no do for you. That was how it was for me, and that was how it was for Pablino. Right, Pablino?”
Pablo nodded. “Joey was a great guy. I mean, Joey is a great guy.”
“When I first meet Joey at the School of Visual Arts,” said Giovanni, “I want nothing more than to stay indoor all day, read books, work as a art teacher, and sit on the café.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” I said.
“Joey take me away from all that,” Giovanni said. “He give my first great original idea. My first great sculpture was inspire by his painting La Battaglia.”
He pointed at the wrestling sculptures collected about the room. “The Struggle,” he said. “Yes. When I first meet Joey I was drawing the fruit.”
I nodded.
“The difference between me and Joey in the end,” Giovanni said, “was that Giovanni still belong to Giovanni.”
Pablo went to open his mouth. I signaled for him to shut it.
This part of the investigation was easier than I thought. I wasn’t sure why, but Giovanni Vaninni wanted to talk about Joey, maybe needed to talk about Joey, with me, with Pablo, with anyone. It was easy. Too easy.
“When I first meet Joey he was ocean of promise and possibility and dreams,” Giovanni continued. “By the end, he was TSP, not artist.”
“Unlike you?”
“Not like me,” Giovanni said. “You. I don’t know what you are, Chico. But Joey, he was . . . how do you say . . .”
“Magical?” Pablo said.
“Magical,” Giovanni continued and glanced at Pablo. “To hell with TSP. Hypocrites. They throw you out, Pablino. After Joey go. Joey was not around to protect you. You could not go back, Pablino. It is a cult. Nothing but a bunch of Nazis and fascists with their blue and yellow and red uniforms, their weight and height, their rules, nothing but little Hitlers and Mussolini, all of them. From the top, all the way to the bottom.”
“Is TSP really that bad?” I asked.
“Bad?” Giovanni laughed. “TSP says is not religion. TSP is not science. TSP is a cult. Confession circle. Physical. Measure this. Weigh that. Business workshop. Money lecture. Real estate lecture. Abundance is fancy word for greed at TSP. Buy. Power. Create. Buy. Make children. Buy. Make bread. Buy. Make money. Buy. Make art. Make bullshit. Preach bullshit. Buy, buy, buy. Go out and bring money. That is the TSP. They do not care about philosophy or history or art. They care about bling. Bling. Bling. Bling. Bene, Giovanni is not for sale like you, Chico.”
“You think I’m for sale?” I said.
“Maybe you are,” he said. “Just like the rest. Who knows?”
“So why would you agree to let me come here?”
Giovann
i grinned at me. “I am an artist. The artist must keep himself open to all experience, always. You are experience Giovanni has never had. Now!”
Giovanni clapped his hands together again. “Who is this man called Chico Santana? Who are you really, signore?”
“Pablo thinks that Joey didn’t have anything to do with Gabby disappearing,” I said, ignoring his question.
“No,” Giovanni said. “Pablo wants that Joey is innocent. It is not this way. Gabby was Joey Valentin’s last painting. It was the truest thing he ever created. He lived a possibility but he died an artist.”
“You say that like you admire him for possibly killing his wife.”
“Who are you, Chico?”
“Me?” I said. “I’m just a little guy here trying to help find a missing girl.”
Giovanni laughed. “But the answer you seek is not with me. The answer you and Pablo are looking for is not here, it is not with me.”
I looked at Pablo and he shrugged.
“What do you know about Mara Gupta or Hari Lachan?” I asked.
“No more, signore,” Giovanni said. “While I am Italian and I love a farce as much as anyone in Roma, my part in your play has ended. I must excuse myself. Go now from my beloved inferno.”
“The marble,” I said, pointing at the huge chunks in the middle of the room. “How much would that cost?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I do not worry for money. Why?”
“Are you independently wealthy?”
Giovanni beamed. “I am God.”
I looked up at the giant marble mountain. “That explains a lot.”
Giovanni allowed me to see Joey’s old bedroom before I left, a large space behind a separation wall. I found nothing but canvas and paintbrushes and overalls, a shelf stacked with plastic bottles of ginger, pepper, and saffron, and twelve rusty metal bookshelves filled with dusty art books and journals. Over the bed hung the painting of two brown-skinned females on a beach, one nude, one clothed, signed Joseph Valentin. The painting was an explosion of colors that made a rainbow look muddy: a Hindu deity, an elephant adorned with bright red rubies and gold bangles stood behind the brown nude, gazing at her, while she gazed out at us. Embedded in the painting was a quote: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
I walked around the room, looking at things. I found a small pile of Superman comic books on the floor near the bed. There was an ancient, oversize comic featuring an unlikely Superman nemesis—Muhammad Ali. Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was a comic that every self-respecting comic-book collector at St. Mary’s owned and treasured, a comic book where reality and fantasy came together.
Frankly, that comic book choked me up and broke my stupid heart.
Superman fighting Muhammad Ali?
Good vs. good.
Say it ain’t so.
I never read it.
I didn’t even crack the cover.
I couldn’t.
It was my first protest.
One small vintage poster advertised P. T. BARNUM’S GRAND TRAVELING MUSEUM, MENAGERIE, CARAVAN & HIPPODROME and another from the 1920s advertised Houdini offering twenty thousand dollars to anyone who could prove telekinetic powers. They hung over a small stack of books: Black Elk Speaks, Up from Slavery, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Wealth of Nations, The Communist Manifesto.
I checked everything for clues.
Nothing.
Then I saw an old photo of basketballer Michael Jordan flying through the air.
Then I thought back to Joey’s phone call and his business card sitting in Esther Sanchez’s blood and Esther Sanchez being stabbed.
I went back out. I picked up the “interesting” Michael Jordan steak knife and asked Giovanni about it.
“I get from Joey,” he said. “When Joey give up eating the meat. There were four knife.”
Pablo nodded. “I got one, too.”
“Who got the other two?”
“Gabby got one.”
“The fourth?”
They didn’t know.
I tossed the knife down.
Giovanni turned to Pablo, kissed him on both cheeks, and said, “Ciao, Pablino.”
He turned to me and said, “Ciao, Santana. Parting is such sweet sorrow but part we must. Ciao, amico.”
And with that, Giovanni Vaninni disappeared behind a separation wall, where I think he kept his toilet. Not exactly sure what his plan was, once he got back there, I looked at Pablo and said, “Let’s get outta here.”
On the humid streets of Williamsburg, Pablo and I walked past a construction site, chock-full of equipment and earth diggers and green temporary walls blanketed with movie posters and the latest news about whose hip-hop album was about to drop.
“I want you to search your apartment for that Michael Jordan steak knife Joey gave you.”
I thought back to Joey’s calling card.
“Check around your apartment and see if you find it.”
“Why?”
I gave him a look.
His body went soft as pudding. “You think?”
“Look for it.”
But why would Joey kill Esther when she was totally on his team? Because she knew too much about him and Gabby Gupta and he couldn’t chance it? Why would Elvis kill Esther? Because he wanted her to support his presidential race and she wouldn’t? She laughed at him?
No. I didn’t think Elvis or Joey killed Esther Sanchez but I also once thought you could never lose money by investing in real estate so there it is. Maybe Gabby Gupta was someplace with sand in her mouth or maybe she was somewhere sipping on gin and juice, but I was gonna find out one way or another—if not for Joey’s or Elvis’s sake, for Pablo and Esther Sanchez.
“You think Joey did it?”
“Or maybe somebody wants us to think so.”
Then I noticed that Pablo was looking back at something. I looked back too, and all I could see was a thin man in a white shirt and black slacks and a white panama hat run out of Giovanni’s warehouse. It wasn’t Giovanni. The man had his back to us. He was tall but leaner than Giovanni and he was hustling. I watched as Pablo twisted his head from side to side as if that would help him get a better look, as if he was trying to figure out what it was he was looking at. Then Pablo took off running in the opposite direction, away from me, toward the running man.
“Pablo!”
“Joey!” Pablo yelled. “C’mon!”
I ran. It was crazy, but I ran, past Pablo, toward the running man in the panama hat, across streets, zigzagging across avenues. I heard Pablo panting behind me, an echo, and when I finally looked back and saw Pablo holding up his belt, moving as fast as he could, he smiled and nodded and then went down, tripping into the gutter and bam!
“Keep going!” Pablo yelled.
I kept going. I chased the running question mark, chased it finally into an alley where it did a thing that put the fear of God into me. It floated. The mystery floated over a ten-foot fence like a bird. Well, didn’t actually float, but jumped up on a garbage can, pushed off from the wall, held on to the topmost part of the fence with both hands, and leapt over to the other side. Then he landed on the other side of the fence and took off. I tried to scale the fence but I was too tired and it was too damn high and it was too damn hot.
I went out of the alley, exhausted, and tried to cross the street.
“Chico!”
Pablo came running, out of breath.
“Watch out!”
The party wasn’t over. I turned and suddenly caught a glimpse of a red flash bearing down on me. I jumped and felt hard metal slam up against my back as I was flung over, wheels screeching, me drifting through the humid New York City air, worried that the connection between me and the world would snap, as soft flesh hit hard metal and then asphalt, a joyless tumble of bloodied knee and hand and elbow. And as I rolled into the street like a ball of blood and fire, I wondered again about a change of profession. I had always wanted to be a ventriloquist. And when I stopped rollin
g, I looked up from the gutter where I lay, and saw Zena Gupta, brown, tall, thin as a palm tree, in a yellow blouse and blue jeans. She looked down at me and said, “You came from nowhere . . .”
Later, I would tell anyone who would listen that the second time I saw Zena Gupta there were fireworks, and they would think that I was being romantic. The pain in my knee, my back, my gut, and my head was excruciating.
And that was only the beginning . . .
THIRTEEN
Pablo was gone and the sun was starting to set and I was alone with Zena Gupta. It wasn’t wrong. She was connected to the case. Her older sister was missing. She could be a possible suspect. I had nothing to feel guilty about. I was only doing my . . . You know better than that, baby. You don’t eat where you . . . Shut, up, Nicky!
Maybe it was beyond the call of duty. I confess.
But it was another unbearably humid New York City night, so Zena Gupta planned that we would drive back from Williamsburg in her red Mini Cooper, park, and sit on the concrete steps in Union Square’s plaza with a couple of ice-cold fruit smoothies from a tin shack at the side of an overpriced hipster eatery called The Coffee Shop.
We purchased the smoothies and went and sat on the concrete steps about ten feet from a table where flyers were being handed out, with banners that said: Support our troops. Bring them home!
Zena Gupta kept going on about how she loved the English language and did her graduate degree in English Literature in London and how bloody sorry she was that she had nearly bloody killed me with her bloody car and wanted to make it up to me. She wouldn’t let me go home to the Bronx until she was fully satisfied that she had made amends and had been totally and forever forgiven. The future, she said, her life in the next world, her karma, if the Hindus were correct, depended on my spending the rest of the evening with her. Karma’s a bitch. What you put out comes back to you, she said. She also added that she knew I was a private investigator working for Pablo and would like to help me find her sister Gabby.