by Nina Siegal
Now that we were in the full fluorescence of the M&G, I saw what I hadn’t in the shadows: eyes so pale green they could make a forest feel gaudy. They were underscored with sleepless purple half moons and topped with a furrowed brow and crow’s feet. They were creased at the sides like bed sheets tucked in in a hurry.
“You’re not supposed to eat chicken and waffles until after you’ve danced eight hours to the sixteen-piece swing band,” he said.
“You’d better get them to wrap that up.” I nodded toward his airborne thigh. “Got a place in mind?”
“You’re not bad,” he said. “You can just turn around on a dime.”
My face still felt raw from crying, but Cabeza had filled me with a few cups of black coffee and fed me hot corn muffins. “Where are you from?” I asked.
He brought the paper napkin to his lips, smoothing away the shine left by the chicken. “Puerto Rico. A seaside town called Aguas Buenas. La ciudad de las aguas claras,” he added with some fanfare. “City of clear waters. I left the island when I was eighteen for Hollywood, imagining I’d soon be a big American director, but no one seemed to agree I fit the bill. They didn’t have room for Mexican directors, they said.”
“Mexicans? But you are—”
“Precisely. Hollywood wasn’t interested in geography. When I got there, even Latino bit parts were played by gringos bronzed with shoe polish.”
Now that he mentioned it, Cabeza reminded me a little of Ramon Miguel Vargas, the narc border cop played by Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil. Heston was supposed to be a Mexican, but he was about as Mexican as Judy Garland.
“So I switched coasts and went into documentaries,” he continued. “I had family in El Barrio. I got a cheap camera and started shooting stoops in my neighborhood. Then, an Austrian director who was trying to document the burning of the Bronx heard about me and asked me to help him out. It was a big break, in a way. I’ve been at it ever since.”
He set down his chicken and used the napkin to tap the corners of his mouth. I could tell that despite his man-of-the-people jive, he was an aristocrat by breeding. It didn’t matter that he sat on a stool at a Formica table. Every table at which he sat was cut from aged oak. Every paper cup that met his lips was crystal. His napkin, on his lips, turned to linen.
“And what kinds of films are you making now?”
“My work still focuses on the urban landscape, working-class families and their struggles,” he said, in the language of a grant application. Then he looked up at me and laughed. ‘Con los pobres estoy,’” he sang. “‘Noble soy.’”
I knew just enough Spanish to get this: I’m with the poor. I’m noble. But he said it in jest. Self-mocking. I must’ve been smiling at him, because he smiled back. It was a nice smile. As big as a house with a few extra rooms.
“So,” he said. “You want to talk to me about what happened out there? I may not be so terrific on the telephone, but I’ve been told I’m not a bad listener one-on-one.”
I looked down again at my corn muffins. No one had asked me to articulate my feelings for a long time. I chewed some yams for a while and he waited. I lifted my eyes. He was still waiting.
“I…It’s just…” I stopped.
“You don’t have to talk to me.”
I didn’t know why I wanted to tell him things, but I did. Maybe it was because his jacket was still warming me, and he hadn’t asked for it back yet. Maybe because it seemed like we were at a diner at the edge of the world. “It’s not going to make a lot of sense,” I said. “My father died when I was ten. It was a long time ago, I know, but since then, it’s like I’ve never known who I was supposed to be. It’s like I’m always trying on costumes that never quite fit.”
Cabeza laughed. “I think that’s probably true for most people.”
“You think so?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s true for me.” I took a sip of my coffee. He kept talking. “Nobody in New York is who they pretend to be. You think the people back in that room are all genuine? Nah. Everyone has something they’re hiding about themselves. You’re right at home with the phonies if you live here in New York.”
He was cutting his waffle into wedges, slicing along each radius. It didn’t faze him. Everything he said made me feel better. Just the sound of his smoky voice this close made me feel there might be ground under my feet.
“I’m not trying to dismiss what you’re saying, linda. It’s a terrible thing to lose a father. I have something like that too. I lost a brother very young. I sometimes feel that I’m always trying to make up for that. Sometimes I think it’s how I got so close to Malcolm. I thought he’d be my new brother. In some ways, he was.”
I put my hand out across the table and touched Cabeza’s arm. “I’m so sorry about Malcolm,” I said. “I should’ve said it earlier. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Look, it’s not your fault. But you can help us. If you want to redeem yourself here and help us at the same time, we can work something out.”
“How?”
“We don’t need a correction,” he said. “We just want the truth to come out. I think you want that too. Maybe you didn’t want it before, but now that you’ve seen how devastating his loss was to so many people…” He went back to cutting his waffle. “If we can get a story out about what happened to Wallace, we’d be happy. If you can get the story, I think it would be beneficial to you too.”
“I think you’re assuming I have power. I’m not even allowed to write under my own byline. No one would give me any story—let alone a story that big.”
He put some waffle into his mouth and chewed. When he was done chewing he started talking. “You may temporarily be in somewhat of a bad position, I’ll grant you that. But because of where you are—still working at that paper—you’re a very powerful girl. Maybe you don’t realize how powerful you could be. We come from a place that isn’t covered much in the media. The fact that you came up to the Bronx today was a sign that you’re tougher than you think. You came this far; maybe you’re willing to go a little bit further. You could help us find out who killed Malcolm. You write about it. We all win.” Cabeza dipped his waffle in syrup. “Malcolm was a real art star, perhaps the most important black artist in contemporary art, after Basquiat. I hate those distinctions—black artist, Latino artist, woman artist—but that’s how people thought of him. And if you check your art history, you’ll see there aren’t too many black artists allowed through the gates. If you found out who murdered him, you’d have a very big story on your hands. It would be the kind of story your editors couldn’t ignore, no matter who brought it to them.”
I was starting to get his point. I was starting to understand why he’d gone to all the trouble to invite me to the memorial and then to bring me in from the rain. He could’ve just called Battinger back to file a complaint. Anyone in that room could’ve done that. But he’d seen an opportunity I hadn’t seen—as long as I was still on staff, I could still make it right. But first I needed to know why everyone had ruled out suicide. “Why are you so sure that Wallace was murdered?”
He stopped chewing. “Because I know he didn’t kill himself. He wasn’t that type of man. It just wasn’t in him.”
I’d already heard this logic. I moved my silverware around on my plate. Cabeza could sense my dissatisfaction, and he didn’t let it slide.
“And because there was too much intrigue going on around him at the time of his death. You see, Malcolm spent the last several months looking for some paintings that had gone missing. He’d been down to see his old dealer, a woman named Darla Deitrick, who has a space on West Twenty-fourth Street by the West Side Highway, because he thought she still had some of his works.”
I knew about the Darla Deitrick gallery. Darla was a famous dealer who’d recently gotten attention for an exhibition called “Good Cop,” a series of portraits of New York’s men in blue just weeks after the Amadou Diallo shooting in the Bronx. It had caused a great commotion, and The Paper ha
d covered the show at least three times. If Darla Deitrick indeed had something to do with Wallace’s death—even tangentially, even if I could merely mention her name in the same breath—it would indeed be the kind of story I could pitch to Battinger.
“I’ve tried to reach Darla about those paintings, but she doesn’t return my calls,” he said. “I imagine working for that paper qualifies you to go to art galleries and ask questions, no matter what subjects you’re supposed to cover.”
“You can’t possibly think a gallery owner would kill one of her artists.”
“I’m not saying any such thing.” He chewed politely for a while, and then swallowed. “I’m just trying to figure out if there’s any connection between these missing paintings and the fact that he ended up dead.”
“For instance?”
Cabeza’s movements were all fastidious, deliberate. He held his fork suspended before eating another bite. “For example, Malcolm told me he thought Deitrick had sold his work but she hadn’t reported the sales, not to him and not to the IRS. If he was right, she committed a federal crime. That would be a good story for your paper, I think.”
Darla Deitrick committing tax fraud? Yeah, that would be a story for us. I could probably even go past Battinger, maybe even to the Culture desk. I swallowed a big sip of coffee, but my cup was getting cold and empty. The waitress came over and hovered above us with a pot of coffee that smelled like fresh peat. “She’ll have a refill,” Cabeza said. “None for me.”
“Let’s say I find something. How does that serve you?”
“I find out whether Malcolm was onto something. If he was, I can follow up. I can help the Wallace family secure his works, if she still has them. They would want them back. But I don’t know how it will all play out right now. All I know is I need someone who can get in there and snoop around.”
I finished my chicken and put the bones down on my plate. “I won’t be able to do any of this if I get canned for my mistake on the Obit.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ll see to it that no one makes a fuss. I’ll let them know we’re working together to make it right.”
“How will you do that?”
“I’m going to, that’s all. Ms. Deitrick has got a show going up just now, some minimalist mierda. So she’s got to be nice to reporters this week. That gives you an in.”
The waitress came by and lifted Cabeza’s plate. “Weren’t hungry, I see,” she said.
“It’s the chicken I can’t stand,” he said, passing her his bone-littered plate and winking. He routed through his back pocket and came out with two Handi Wipes, offering me one.
“Never touch them myself,” I said. “How did you meet Wallace?”
He was wiping his hands with the Handi Wipe one finger at a time. I got a whiff of its sweet alcohol scent. “In 1973, I made a documentary about a group of graffiti writers, the early ones tagging. I did most of the filming at the Bench, the subway stop on 149th Street where everyone would watch the trains go by. That’s where Wallace got his name, you know.”
I nodded. Stain 149. A name and a street.
Our waitress dropped our check on the table. Without looking at it, Cabeza removed a crisp twenty from his pocket, folded it the long way, and tapped her arm. “Gracias,” he said. “Lo retenez.”
“I was very young myself,” he continued. “We were all kids. I shot the movie on sixteen millimeter and it wasn’t in great condition, but it got a pretty good play underground, so to speak. Malcolm was always with me, no matter what I did. I helped him get stretchers when he was short on cash. You could say I was a patron, of sorts. I also dated Amenia for a little while, years ago, before she converted to Islam. Shall we?”
He stood up and wiped the front of his shirt. He took his Havana hat off the table and put it back on his head. I stood up with him. I was mostly dry by now. The comfort food had made me feel brand-new. “Where did the rest of them end up?”
“Who?”
“The other graffiti kids you filmed. Other than Wallace?”
Cabeza walked me to the door, reached around me, and opened it for me. He was gentlemanly that way. “The truth is a lot of them are already dead,” he said. “Shot or overdosed, bad drugs, bad beefs, bad doctors. Some are in jail. Some still write. There’s a place in Brooklyn where some writers work on legal walls. Stain was one of the few who made it out whole.”
The air was lighter outside, since it had stopped raining. Cabeza asked me where I was headed and he hailed me another gypsy, handing me a ten-dollar bill. “You going to be all right getting home?” he asked.
I handed back his cash and took off his jacket. “Reporters aren’t allowed to accept gifts over twenty-five dollars from sources,” I said, handing it to him. “And you already paid for the meal.”
“That was just a meal between friends,” he said. “But should I take that to mean you’re willing to work with me to find out what really happened to Malcolm?”
I knew it was risky, but I also didn’t see any other road to redemption.
“Yes,” I said, stepping into the cab. “I’m in.”
10
White on White
I sat on a white leather ottoman before a white marble desk in a white room in the back of a white gallery, looking at a white man in a white linen suit.
I was fidgety.
The man had a white phone to his ear and showed me the whites of his eyes to let me know he was on hold. “This will just be a minute.”
“Nice suit,” I said. “Dolce?”
He nodded and pursed his lips. Then he pulled the receiver away from his ear. He whispered, “All the assistants wear Dolce. She gives us a clothing allowance, but only for her designers.”
“Only Dolce and Gabbana?”
“Dolce, Paul Smith, Prada. The usual suspects.”
“Ah,” I whispered back. “A strict constructionist.”
He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “You don’t know the half.” Then there was a buzz on the other end of the line and he turned his chair to show me the white shell of his ear. When I’d walked into the gallery, I’d thought he was bald, but now I noticed a soft blond down on top of his head, cropped so close it shimmered.
“Listen, I’ve got someone in my office who wants to do an interview with Darla,” he said into the phone. “A drop-in. I should…Of course we’re opening tonight. Aren’t you coming?”
I’d been sitting on the ottoman looking at Blondie for twenty minutes, waiting for him to finish up on the phone. “Of course you don’t go at two o’clock,” Blondie said, twisting the phone cord around his white finger. “It doesn’t get fun until five! I usually get there at about three thirty so I don’t have to deal with the hetero crowd clogging up the coat check. So? Take a disco nap.”
The gallery was everything a gallery should be, long and wide and pristine with cold polished granite floors, its cool minimalism showing high-class restraint. It was sealed airtight with soundless central A/C, so I forgot the 100-degree swelter beyond the glass doors. Before taking my lunch break to Chelsea, I’d conducted a little more research on Darla Deitrick. It was much more fruitful than the hour I spent searching “Cabeza” on the Internet. His name generated 39.4 million Web hits, none of them very helpful: the sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca; Spanish medical sites about dolor de cabeza—a headache. The closest I got was info about a documentary called Wild Style, and a site that called itself a “cyber-bench.”
By contrast, there were buckets about Darla. Cabeza had been spot-on about her publicity lust. As a twenty-year-old junior at the Rhode Island School of Design, she’d strolled into MoMA one afternoon, pulled a can of spray paint out of her patent-leather purse, and hissed the words Paint Makes Art onto the surface of Jackson Pollock’s, One: Number 31, 1950. She’d turned toward Matisse’s Dance (I) when three security guards tackled her.
Once the Pollock was restored—she’d used water-soluble paint—and Darla had
done her jail time and finished up her degree, she opened a gallery on Greene Street and positioned herself as a champion of illegal art underdogs—namely, Bronx and East Village street vandals she showcased like prize poodles. She moved to Chelsea from SoHo in 1995. Her first show there became famous because the artist distributed workable stun guns. People downed wine and cheese and zapped one another until Darla was carted away in cuffs. She’d gotten the address of her new gallery in every rag in town.
I’d been to her Chelsea space once with Jeremiah, back when things were swell, to attend an opening for Tan Rififi. The artist had been naked, save a loincloth, and he crouched like a sumo wrestler over a pail of cow’s blood. He leaned in and soaked his hair, then took sumo strides to a canvas on the wall and shook his locks like a dog shaking off a bath. Jeremiah and I had gone straight to the dry cleaners from there.
Now I was considering Darla’s current exhibition: “PURE: A Retrospective of White-on-White.” All the paintings were white, or shades of white, white lines on white backgrounds, white boxes on white squares. One had a small red square in the corner of a white box. That was pretty exciting.
I didn’t know many of the artists in the show, but according to the catalog on the desk, they were something special: Cy Twombly, Robert Ryman, Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin, Kasimir Malevich, Josef Albers, Piero Manzoni. There was one I recognized: Jasper Johns’s white-starred and-striped White Flag. It was on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art—which had agreed to hang it with Darla under the strictest of conditions, the catalog made clear—and it was hanging in its own alcove, with its very own guard. I figured I was standing in the most expensive whitewash ever produced—perhaps $50 million’s worth.
Could Cabeza be right? Why would a woman who obviously had high-level connects care one way or another about a smalltime graffiti dude who ran a paint school in the Bronx? She didn’t need to be bothering with minnows, when she was frying up great whites. And why was Cabeza so concerned about these paintings of Wallace’s anyway? I knew from my days on Style that everybody has an angle. What was his?