The Genius

by Jesse Kellerman

  He shuffled past me. “Help me with the box.”

  “You need to get to the hospital.”

  He said nothing, went to the back room. I followed.

  “Lee. Did you hear me?”

  “You gonna give me a hand or you want me to lift this myself.”

  “You need to see a doctor.”

  He cackled.

  “You look like shit,” I said.

  “Thanks, you too.”

  “You need to go to the hospital.”

  “You want to drive me?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re not supposed to say yes, you’re supposed to stop arguing with me.”

  “I’m saying yes.”

  “My guy, you need an appointment to see him, you can’t show up unannounced.”

  “Then I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “For crissake,” he said. He sounded grief-stricken. “Pick up the box and—” He erupted in coughs. His hand came away from his mouth bloody.

  I picked up the phone on the desk, managing to dial 9-1 before McGrath hobbled over and wrestled the receiver away from me. He was surprisingly strong for someone in his condition, and he also had the protection of knowing that I wouldn’t fight back, for fear of hurting him. He unplugged the receiver and put it in the pocket of his robe. He pointed at the box.

  I stood there, trying to decide whether to use my cell phone. He probably would have confiscated that, too, or thrown it out the window. I decided to give him a few minutes to calm down before saying anything. I picked up the box and carried it to the dining-room table. “Sit,” he said. I sat. Silently, we began spreading out our work. His nose ran and I handed him a tissue, which he used and then tossed on the floor with utter contempt—whether for me or his own condition, I couldn’t tell.

  He said, “I called Rich Soto about those cases.”

  The cases in question consisted of everything Soto could dig up with a similar MO. McGrath had grown fond of the notion that the Queens murderer had other notches in his belt, and that locating one of them might yield more information—a suspect, perhaps; or someone already doing time.

  “And?”

  “He’s getting the files together. He said two weeks, but don’t hold your breath.”

  “All right.”

  He closed his eyes then, and I could see how badly our struggle had worn him out.

  “Lee.” I put my hand on his arm. It was warm and frail. “Maybe we shouldn’t work today.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you want to lie down?”

  He nodded again, and I helped him to the back room, settling him into the La-Z-Boy.

  “You want the TV on?”

  He shook his head.

  “You want some water?”

  No.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  Yes.

  “Are you fixed for food? Is Samantha coming?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “What about tonight.” I tapped my foot. “Lee. What are you going to eat for dinner?”

  “Fuck dinner,” he croaked.

  “Do you want a joint?”

  Yes.

  I went to the kitchen, found his stash and his rolling papers. It had been a while since I’d rolled one myself, and I ended up spilling flakes all over the floor. I sponged up the debris, found a lighter, and brought McGrath his medicine.

  “Thank you.” He groped around for an ashtray that had gotten moved across the room. I brought it to him and watched him smoke.

  “Hungry yet?”

  He laughed, a balloon losing air.

  “I’m going to call Samantha and have her check in on you.”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  I said nothing. I waited until his eyes closed and his breathing changed, then went into the next room and made the call. I told her what had happened.

  “I’m coming,” she said.

  When I returned to the back room, I found McGrath feebly smiling. “You’re a real buzzkill, you know that?”

  “Well what do you want me to do?”

  “Go home,” he said.

  “No chance.”

  “Go to hell,” he mumbled.

  I sat on the floor at his feet and waited.

  It would take Samantha a while to get over from Borough Hall, and I considered calling the paramedics in the interim. But I didn’t. McGrath looked a little better now; he had stopped coughing, and I knew that waking up in the back of an ambulance would be the ultimate assault on his dignity. He wanted to stay where he was, wanted to make his own decisions. I chose to respect that.

  By the time she did show up, McGrath was out cold: snoring and wheezing like a man twenty years older. She gave me a wrung-out smile and mouthed thanks. I nodded and started to go. As I turned I heard McGrath say, “We’ll work next week.”

  Samantha and I exchanged a look.

  “I’m going to Miami next week,” I said. “You know that, right?” McGrath nodded loosely. “Have a good trip.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said. “We’ll finish up then.”

  • 10 •

  Victor Cracke’s debut show closed the next day. Taking the canvases down put me in a terrible mood, although part of me did note with relief that Victor had nothing to complain about anymore. He wanted me to STOP and I had. I also had much less reason to want to come in in the morning.

  Three days before I left for Miami, I arranged to have Kevin Hollister’s canvas transferred to his home, an hour and a half outside the city, in an upscale area of Suffolk County that he seemed to own wholesale, as though the bucolic fixtures in the distance—a shingled post office, quaintly decrepit farmhouses, gray-and-blue meadows roamed by purple specks of livestock— had been placed there by his landscaper for that authentic feel. I decided to accompany the piece, to oversee its installation and shake hands with the man himself, who sounded pleased as punch to get his art.

  At his request, I hired an armored car. It seemed like overkill to me, but then Marilyn explained that I was not only delivering the Cracke drawing but several dozen items Hollister had bought from her.

  “How much stuff are we talking about?”

  “Eleven million,” she said. “Give or take.”

  My sale no longer seemed that impressive.

  "You haven’t seen the house yet, have you.”

  "No.”

  “Well, darlin, you are in for something rare.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “No. It’ll give you boys a chance to bond.”

  Considering where I grew up, it takes quite a bit of house to impress me, and the neoclassical monstrosity that appeared as we cleared security (ID check, bomb sweep) and passed through the imposing over-wrought-iron fence didn’t do much to heat my bluish blood. It was large but utterly vulgar, a nouveau-riche temple, no doubt filled with hideous statuary and histrionic window treatments. I was surprised that Marilyn had not warned me.

  “Holy shit,” said the driver of the armored car. He gawked at a long structure, evidently the garage; outside, a group of men lovingly detailed a Mayfair and a Ferrari. The garage had eight more doors, like the set of a game show.

  At the end of a quarter-mile driveway stood a butler and two men in red jumpsuits. I stepped out of the car and waited while the butler gave instructions to the driver. Then I followed the butler up the steps, which seemed wider and shallower than necessary, causing me to lean forward as I walked. I was reminded of the palaces of Mughal kings, their doorways built purposefully low, so that all entering bent their heads.

  “I’m Matthew,” said the butler, in a shockingly Californian voice. “Kevin is waiting for you.”

  Contrary to expectation, there wasn’t anything ugly inside. In fact, there wasn’t anything at all: the entry hall was empty, its walls gallery-white and bathed in cold light. Soaring ceilings and skylights created a dizzying sense of upward drift, and I felt as though trapped in a Minimalist dream: Donald Judd’s idea of heaven.
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br />   “Would you like a Pellegrino?” asked Matthew.

  I was still looking at the ceiling. The place did not seem fit for human habitation.

  “You’ll have to excuse us. We’re in the process of redecorating. Every so often Kevin wants a change of pace.”

  “This looks more like a total overhaul.”

  “We have a designer on retainer. Kevin likes to make use of her. Did you want that Pellegrino?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Right this way, please.”

  He steered me down a long, blank corridor.

  “Where’s the art?” I asked.

  “Most of it is in the museum. We haven’t really had time to do this wing of the house yet. We’ll get there. As Kevin says, it’s a work in progress.”

  I questioned the decision to leave the front part of the house unfinished. Didn’t you want to make a good impression on visitors? I supposed that Hollister didn’t have many people to impress.

  We stepped into an elevator (blank), walked another hallway (blank), made several more turns down several more hallways (all blank), arriving finally at a heavy-looking door. The butler pressed a buzzer. “Ethan Muller is here.”

  The door clicked, and Matthew held it open for me.

  “I’ll be right back with your beverage,” he said, disappearing before I could tell him that I didn’t want a beverage.

  Hollister’s office was the first room in the house that didn’t feel like the inside of an asylum, although I can’t say that it was very cozy. To begin with, there were no windows. Then there was the design scheme, which I can best describe as a hypermodern rendering of the traditional English hunting lodge. Low-slung sofas and Eames-like chaises had been scattered throughout the room. There was a steel globe large enough to incite the envy of James Bond villains; there were five identical jet-black bearskin rugs; there was a moosehead cast in resin. The walls, paneled in black leather and brass nailheads, absorbed much of the ambient light, making an already vast, dark, and masculine room seem endless, lightless, and more than a little homoerotic. Hollister’s desk—a block of smoked, crackled glass spotlit with halogens—was easily the brightest object there, throwing an unearthly halo around its occupant and making him look like the Wizard of Oz.

  On a headset phone, he waved for me to sit down.

  I sat. Like in the rest of the house, there was no art up—not unless you counted the room itself, which I think you would have to.

  “No,” he said and took off the headset. “Everything in one piece?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. I told them to wait for us before they put anything in place. I’d like to get your opinion, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  A small tone sounded on his computer. He glanced at the screen and touched a spot on the desktop. I didn’t see anything like a button, but behind me the door clicked open and the butler appeared with a tray of drinks, which he set on a stand before withdrawing in silence.

  We talked about the house, which had taken three years to build. The original design scheme “was my ex-wife’s. All Shabby Chic. When we split up, I decided to give the place a fresh start. I hired a designer, wonderful girl, extremely creative and intelligent. So far we’ve been down several roads. First we put in all Arts and Crafts; then we went the art nouveau route. Nothing quite fit, so on to version three-point-oh.”

  I might have suggested he find a designer with less wonderfulness—which I took to mean T&A—and more forethought. Instead, I said, “What are you going for?”

  “I’d like it to be a little more intimate.”

  I nodded, said nothing.

  “You don’t think that’s possible, do you.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  Hollister grunted a laugh. “Marilyn told you to agree with whatever I say.”

  “She did. Although with enough money I really do think anything is possible.”

  “Did she mention my secret?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He smiled and touched another spot on the desktop, and a mechanical whirr started up. Slowly, the leather panels in the walls began to rotate, revealing, on the reverse, blank canvases. I counted twenty of them.

  “I asked her for a list of the world’s greatest paintings,” he said. “Full Fathom Five is going there.” He pointed to the next canvas, far smaller. “The View of Delft.” Next. “Starry Night.” And around the room he went, naming a canonical work and indicating an appropriately sized piece of primed cotton duck.

  I wondered how he intended to acquire The Persistence of Memory, not to mention Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, The Nightwatch, and the Mona Lisa.

  “She recommended an excellent copyist.” He then named an Argentinean, living in Toronto, best known for having been arrested—but never convicted—for forging Rembrandts.

  I considered the decision to line up all those competing pictures questionable at best. But Hollister seemed honestly thrilled by the idea. Describing himself as a “heavily quantitative thinker,” he raved to me about Marilyn’s ability to cut through the jargon and give a clear picture of what art mattered and what did not. She had given him some sort of numerical guideline for assessing a piece’s worth, and it was with this scale that he had decided to make me an offer on the Cracke drawing.

  “To be frank,” he said, “I would have gone as high as four-fifty.” He touched the desk again, causing the panels to slowly rotate back to their original positions.

  Except for one—the future resting place of The Burial of Count Orgaz, which got stuck after about a quarter turn. Hollister banged at it, found it intractable, and, reddening, touched the desk to summon Matthew. The butler appeared post-haste and, seeing the catastrophe, hurried from the room, cell phone in hand. As Hollister and I stepped from the office and made our way back toward the elevator, I heard a California accent rising to the top of its lungs.

  HOLLISTER’S PRIVATE MUSEUM stood at the highest point on his estate. A glass dome, dimpled and latticed with iron pipes, the structure resembled nothing so much as a gigantic, half-buried golf ball. I could only imagine the cost involved: the foundation work alone probably ran toward eight figures, once you took into account that the top of the hill had to be chopped off. Add to that an architect so prominent that Hollister declined to name him (“It was a favor. He doesn’t want it getting around that he does residential work”) and bulletproof glass for the entire exterior and you began to approach a new universe of money.

  The armored car was parked by the loading dock, the jumpsuited men waiting for us. Like the butler, they addressed Hollister by his first name.

  A retinal scan later, we stepped inside the dome, and I looked up at a series of concentric balconies culminating in an enormous Calder mobile seven stories overheard. Whoever the architect was, he had ripped off the New York Guggenheim to the extent that I wondered if that had been Hollister’s express wish. He wanted copies of the world’s most desirable paintings; why not replicate the most famous buildings, too? The glass I saw as a nod to I. M. Pei, and I felt certain that if I looked hard enough I would find other references as well.

  A tweedy, greenish man in a well-cut suit met us in the lobby. Hollister introduced him as Brian Offenbach, the museum’s manager, who I gathered was basically a glorified picture hanger. In the cadences of a well-rehearsed speech, Offenbach explained the logic behind the museum’s layout; the work was displayed not chronologically or thematically but tonally, with the darkest pieces on the ground floor, and every successive floor getting lighter. Light and dark could mean the color of the piece, but more often it meant the emotional response the piece provoked, or the sense of weightiness it gave. Hence the Calder, despite its immensity—five tons of painted steel—occupied the apex, for the feelings of flight it evoked. Hollister had designed the scheme himself, and was proud of it; as one went higher, one transcended the physical realm and found oneself elevated to an understanding of blah blah blah blah bl
ah.

  I distrust binary systems—light and dark, good and evil, male and female—and the arrangement seemed to me self-defeating: an attempt to whittle down art’s ragged irrationality that ultimately created not order but muddle.

  “It’s wonderful,” I said.

  They had already begun bringing the new art up to the third floor, and when we stepped out of the elevator we confronted a tornado of packing material and exploded crates. Hollister had to keep raising his voice above the whine of drills.

  “I’ve been wondering if the Cracke PIECE BELONGS HERE WITH THE REST OF THE, of the collection. I mean, it’s so disturb DISTURBING, AND I WONDER IF I’D BE BETTER OFF PUTTING IT in a separate wing. For outsider art. I could tack on another few rooms. NEAR THE BACK. THAT WOULD HAVE SYMBOLIC RESONANCE, WOULDN’T IT, PUTTING the outsider art segregated in its own sphere. WHAT DO YOU THINK?”

  I nodded.

  “On second thought. The THE WHOLE POINT OF COLLECTING OUTSIDER ART AS I UNDERSTAND IT—MARILYN HAS BEEN GIVING ME SOME GREAT, great books to read. Have you read”—and he named a bunch of obscure monographs. The only name I recognized was Roger Cardinal, the British critic who gave Dubuffet’s term Art Brut its English equivalent.

  “The whole point is to REASSESS THE TRADITIONAL STANDARDS OF WESTERN CULTURE, AND to bring to light the talent of people untempered by SOCIETY. RIGHT?”

  The Cracke drawing had special value to Hollister, as the first piece he had purchased of his own volition rather than Marilyn’s; he took a personal stake in its location. Offenbach offered suggestions, each one dismissed: “It’ll get lost.” “It’ll stand out.” “Too sterile.” “Not well framed.” It was as though this one piece had revealed all of the scheme’s flaws.

  As a last resort we moved back to the lobby, It was my idea to have the workers hold the canvas up immediately to the left of the entrance. That would make the Cherubs the first thing you encountered.

  “Perfect,” said Hollister.

  Perfect meant another thirty minutes of discussion about height and centering and lighting. It couldn’t be too perfectly square; that wasn’t in keeping with the piece’s Otherness. But if you cheated to the left, you had an unpleasant gap; to the right and the edge of the drawing began to jut around the corner…