A Little Trouble with the Facts

by Nina Siegal

  “Come quick,” he whispers and he grabs my arm. My heart jolts, I race behind him up a narrow stairwell, circling, heading up. Next thing I know he’s pushing a metal grate above him, and we’re up and out, a fresh night breeze on my face. He pulls me out and slams down the grate. We’re back on the city streets, in the middle of nowhere.

  I follow him until he finds me a new subway entrance. My heart slows. “That was pretty awesome,” I say. “You’re just great.”

  He chuckles through his facemask. “You’re a funny lady. Just don’t tell RIF it was me.”

  I don’t need to look at a map now to know how to get to the South Bronx. I find the door for RIF’s apartment in the James Monroe Houses, the one I got from TNL. I do the walk-up and knock. An Italian grandma gives me the one up, one down, saying, “Oh, you’re looking for our little Picasso.” Then she turns and yells, “Carrrlo,” as she leads me through the railroad flat. “Carlo! You’re finally famous just like you wanted. Come explain yourself to your adoring press.”

  It turns out Carlo and I have a friend in common—a young man named Kamal Prince Tatum. It’s been a long trip just to get back to where I started. Before I leave the Bronx, I make one more stop.

  No one is home at Amenia’s. So I slide my business card under the door with a note: “If I figured it out, the cops won’t be too far behind. With me, you have a chance to tell your side.”

  Back in Queens after midnight, I prop myself up on Cabeza’s pillow and I loop my index finger through one of his curls. “Given the circumstances, this could be perceived as a conflict of interest,” I say.

  “This? You mean the fact that you’re in bed with a source?” he says, dragging his pinky finger slowly up my thigh. “But you tracked Kamal all by your lonesome.”

  His pinky continues up, making a circle around my navel. “I’m feeling less conflicted every minute.”

  His pinky takes a tour of my breasts. “That’s good, because I haven’t lost any interest.”

  We don’t talk for a while. Not with our voices. We drift out, and the faces and names and details and concerns of the day dissipate with a cool fan-blown breeze. I feel the sweat lift off my back. I roll with him like a stone at water’s edge, From Here to Eternity. I roll again, the water washing over me, back and forth, until all I’m aware of is Cabeza’s warm weight and his low, dry moan.

  Afterward, I find myself another loose curl and twirl it. “Where would Wallace would be now if he were still alive?”

  Cabeza is smoking; his head drops to the side. “Why, here, in bed with us, of course.”

  I push another pillow under my head and turn onto my back. “I’d love to know what Wallace was like as a teacher. I bet the students adored him. I bet he had some compelling riff about the spirituality of the burner or the transcendence of the fill-in. What it means to ‘get up.’”

  Cabeza strokes my belly. “You’re a quick study, baby.”

  “When I was in that tunnel with that kid today, I got a taste of what it’s like. The adrenaline rush. The feeling of being chased, wanted. It was thrilling. It was the kind of feeling you’d want to have again and again. I can see why people do it. It’s not just about getting your name up. It’s not just about the fame or the props. You’re getting off the grid, all the way off.”

  “You make it all sound very romantic.”

  “It was romantic,” I say. “I hadn’t expected that. I wish I’d had half the chutzpah Stain did, to just keep going for it, even when nobody’s watching.” I turn to face Cabeza. “I got Wallace all wrong. When I wrote that Obit on him, I thought he was nobody. I didn’t even realize how big he was in the eighties. No wonder all these kids thought he was a hero.”

  Cabeza reaches for a strand of my hair and presses it behind my ear. “Methinks my linda is in love with a ghost.”

  He could be right. “Wallace was like us,” I say. “He tried to get inside the machine, and he realized he didn’t fit there. But he didn’t stick around and just sink into the abyss. He found another way to make his mark. I admire that.”

  “Maybe that makes sense.”

  “What do you think, Cabeza? Would you go with me? If I left it all behind? I’m thinking Woodstock. I’m thinking of planting a garden.”

  “You see? What did I say? Sunburst is shining back through.”

  “So?”

  “I say finish your story,” says Cabeza. “I say, once it’s done, we can talk about the next step.”

  The next morning, Amenia Wallace Tatum is waiting in The Paper’s marble foyer with Kamal Prince. He’s just as I left him: a six-foot mound of uncooked dough. Maybe a little worse for the wear: his mother seems to have dragged him by his ear two hundred blocks south. He jabs the toe of his Puma into the floor. Amenia says, “We got your note late last night. My son has something to say to you.”

  We go upstairs, find Curtis, and shut the office door. Kamal confesses everything, from the plan for “the action” conceived at the Wallace memorial to the names of his accomplices: RIF, BANG, TRK and N/R. “Stain had the Art Crime Posse, so we called ourselves the Rebel Art Posse,” he tells us. “I don’t like that lady dealer. My uncle told me she took his paintings without paying, and that’s not right. I wanted to get her back.” He looks from us to his mother, who is very slowly shaking her head and clutching her purse like a string of rosaries.

  “I thought you weren’t into graffiti,” I say. “I thought you wanted to be another kind of writer.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “But journalists are liars.”

  I take that a little personally. But I can’t exactly blame him. “You didn’t have to destroy priceless paintings,” I say.

  Kamal waves his hands in the air. “No, no. That’s just the thing. We had no idea those paintings were important like that.” His bottom lip starts to quiver. “I was pretty surprised when my moms said they were from a museum. I mean, they were all just white. I thought they were planning on putting something else up there.”

  I’ve got to smile. “But what about the guard?”

  “No guard. It was like the place was wide open, anyway. I swear, we didn’t mean to ruin anyone’s art,” Kamal says quickly. He’s been waiting to say it for days. “It was just, you know, to make a point that the lady dealer didn’t own my uncle’s art work. I’m really sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

  Amenia’s eyes track from her son to Curtis and back. “Prince would never have done anything like this before Malcolm passed,” she says. “That man used to look out for him, make sure he didn’t get into trouble. Without Malcolm, I think he’s all mixed up. I want him to take responsibility for his actions, but I’m worried about going to the police. You can understand. They aren’t always sympathetic to poor black children. And Prince is a child, but he looks much older.” She glances at me. “We also wanted to make sure the story got out right. We want to make sure Kamal doesn’t look like some thug.”

  Curtis thinks it over for a while, turning from right to left in his swivel chair. He glances at the map on the wall, then at me, then up at the ceiling. Amenia watches his face and Kamal looks up at me from under those angelic eyelashes.

  “Okay,” Curtis says, finally. “I’m going to give you the best deal I can clear. If you give us everything you’ve got, and if you let us use some quotes from Kamal and if we can secure some comments from the other writers, we can help you. First, we run the story. Then tomorrow, when the paper hits the newsstands, before the cops send out a goon squad, I’ll personally walk you and Kamal Prince into One Police Plaza to submit his written confession. I’ll stay with you through the processing, and keep an eye on you in case anything goes awry.”

  Amenia looks like a few thousand skyscrapers have been lifted off her back. We walk the two of them to the elevator and outside the fortress. I doubt anyone we pass in the hall would finger this kid as a vandal.

  “So, any chance I could help redeem your faith in journalism?” I ask Kamal out on the street. The air has cooled
a little, but it’s a bright sunny day.

  “Maybe documentaries,” he says. “I’ve been using the camera for man-on-the-streets.”

  I look at Amenia and at Curtis. “That’s good. Maybe it’s a better future for you than all this graffiti stuff, huh?”

  “I’m done with that,” says Kamal.

  Amenia’s eyes cloud. “You said it. Now I just hope you remember it.” She shakes both our hands, Curtis’s especially. “Thanks for being so understanding. Thanks for setting the record straight. We’ll see you early tomorrow.”

  Curtis and I press the final keystroke on the Darla story at 5:00 p.m. While the backfield editors are taking a look at our three-thousand-word opus, we head to Jimmy’s Corner and order a couple rounds. “You’re a real hardboiled news hawk now,” says Curtis. “You’ve earned the right to drink your bourbon neat.”

  I drink my bourbon and think of all the rough-and-tumble newsmen who have rolled through this spot in the last thirty years. Did they nurse their beers to the same Billie Holiday on the juke? On the walls and mirrors are tacked thirty years’ worth of boxing memorabilia. I wonder, too, through the dusty light in the smoked-out mirrors did they, same as me, love being surrounded by the ghosts of prizefighters?

  We head back to the office for round after round of editing. The backfield hands it off to Battinger, and she runs it by Moore and Lessey for vetting, and then Battinger goes over it once again with a fine-tooth comb. From there, the copy editors coax and prod it into standard style, fact-checking every inch, then a page one editors meeting takes a whack. Finally, around 11:30, just before the section goes to bed, Battinger has her mitts on the final version.

  She has only one question: “So, Valerie Vane, are you sure you want to continue your career with this ridiculous Style-girl byline?”

  19

  Headline News

  There on A-1, below the fold, 2,624 words, with a two-page jump and four pix:

  * * *

  FOR BRONX TEEN, “TAGGING” PRICELESS

  ART SOOTHED UNSPEAKABLE GRIEF

  Chelsea Gallery Vandals Riled by

  Death of Eighties Artist

  BY CURTIS WRIGHT AND S. R. MILLER

  All he saw was white. To him, it was emptiness, the void. The white canvases on the walls may have been worth upward of $50 million, but he couldn’t possibly calculate values like that. He saw only a blank slate, and the chance, at last, to express some portion of his grief.

  For a week, Kamal Prince Tatum, 16, a South Bronx High School sophomore from Hunts Point, had been mourning the death of his uncle, Malcolm Wallace. Mr. Wallace, who used the graffiti name Stain 149, was a blockbuster artist in the early 1980s, showing at prominent galleries in New York, Paris, and Düsseldorf. His work is owned by several major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern in London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Next month he will be the subject of a retrospective at the Ludwig Museum in Germany.

  To his nephew, however, he was more than that. He was a man who rebelled against the art establishment and sought to give a voice to underserved communities. He was a man who stayed true to his heritage, and he returned to the Bronx ghettoes he’d come from to establish a painting school for low-income youth.

  Kamal wanted to express his grief in a way he thought would make his uncle proud—by making a statement within the art establishment that had rejected Mr. Wallace.

  But the police didn’t see it that way. And neither did Darla Deitrick, the owner of the 24th Street Chelsea gallery that was tagged by graffiti artists on July 30, just before dawn.

  After all, these weren’t blank canvases. The list of price estimates could’ve put an average Christie’s auction to shame: The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s White Flag, by Jasper Johns is estimated at $20 million. The Museum of Modern Art’s Suprematist Composition: White on White by Kasimir Malevich is estimated at $18 million. Cy Twombly’s 1955 Untitled, from a private owner, is estimated at $4 million.

  The story of Mr. Wallace’s life as a painter and the interaction he had with Ms. Deitrick is an art world parable, setting one artist’s desire for immortality against the unpredictable forces of the marketplace and the powerful dealers who operate it. Although the reason for his death is still unclear, it seems that his own efforts to control his legacy may have contributed to his untimely demise….

  * * *

  Curtis and I still hadn’t nailed down the cause of his death. Instead of writing a reason, this time, we’d done a classic vague-out: “mysterious death,” “circumstances unclear,” “early suggestion of suicide,” “still puzzling police.” No one seemed worried about it. All they wanted was more Wallace. The fact that he was both recently deceased and newly famous made him a hot ticket. By midafternoon, representatives from Sotheby’s and Christie’s and a handful of private art dealers had called the office to find out who was handling his estate. Curtis was down at the district attorney’s office with Amenia and Kamal, so I told these callers to try back later.

  Meanwhile, I sat in my cube in Obits and received my kudos. Clint Westwood came around and shook my hand. Randy Antillo stopped by to say, “That’s pretty cool, Val. Really cool. You know, when I was fifteen, that guy was like, my idol. I remember a few months ago when he was downtown at that rally…” Rusty Markowitz gave me a thumbs-up from across the room. Jaime signed me up for a few new advancers.

  By noon, I was pretty puffed up with praise, just enough to feel like I could float out the door. Jaime told me I might as well take the rest of the afternoon off—“and hell, take tomorrow off too. It’s summer, and I’m feeling generous,” he said. “We’ll get started on new work on Monday.” I was packing up my death faxes when Buzz Phipps’s BMW face parked in front of my cube. “Can we still call it the Valerie Treatment?” he asked. “Even with your new byline?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Nobody’s ever calling me Sunburst out loud.”

  “Whatever we call her, this girl I’m looking at is on to bigger and better things,” he said. “I’m proud of you. If you’ve ever got Style ideas, just run them by me so I can shoot them down.”

  “Sure.” I smiled. “Definitely.”

  Buzz flashed his expensive teeth and left. I was standing up to make my exit when the phone rang. I took my purse instead. But when I was almost past Rewrite, the ringleted clerk cried, “Valerie Vane, call on line four.” I backed up to Randy Antillo’s empty desk and, still standing, picked up the receiver. “Obits,” I said. “Vane.”

  “Vane? I thought it was S. R. Miller now. Or can I just call you Sunburst Rhapsody?” His voice made my legs go weak. I sat down in Randy’s chair.

  “Jeremiah.”

  “Congratulations, sweetheart. I always knew you’d end up back on top.” His voice was hoarse.

  “What do you want, Jeremiah?”

  “Nothing, Val. I just wanted to say hello and to congratulate you. To see how things are going. Maybe you’ve read in the tabloids, things are over between Angelica and me.”

  “Heard about that. I’m sorry for you.”

  “Don’t be. She didn’t mean anything to me. I made a big mistake. I should’ve stayed with you.”

  “That’s a lovely sentiment, Jeremiah. But I’ve really got to go now. I’m meeting someone—”

  “We’re both starting over now,” he said. “You with your new byline, me with my one-bedroom in Brooklyn Heights. I’ll be moving in a couple of weeks. You ever walk on the Brooklyn Promenade? My real estate agent says it’s beautiful in the mornings.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “What do you say? Could we take a stroll sometime, talk? Just like in the old days?”

  I didn’t remember a single stroll we’d ever taken. I didn’t really remember seeing much of Jeremiah in daylight, and I definitely didn’t remember much talking. “I’m sorry about what happened with Angelica, Jeremiah. I guess it was partially my fault. I really regret everything I did that night. But I don’t think—”
<
br />   He chuckled for no apparent reason. Maybe just to put me on edge. “Oh, I see. Everything’s swell for you now; you don’t need me, huh? Well, just don’t get too comfy with your good fortune. It’s amazing how quickly the floor can slip out from under you.”

  I assumed he meant Angelica, or maybe just the bathroom floor. I was about to say something biting, something about how he didn’t have any right to talk to me about mistakes. But I didn’t have the heart.

  “I wish you the best of everything,” I told him. “I’ve got to go now.” I hung up and headed quickly down the escape hatch to Queens. Cabeza was there at his studio waiting for me, two martini glasses in his hands.

  Some mornings start slow. So slow you think there might be nothing to the day but morning. Nothing but the soft curve of a lover’s foot, the sleek hull of a sailing ship. No sound but the whir of the fan forming white caps on the sheets. No smell but the salty morning brine on his lips.

  I lay thinking of the ceiling and nothing else. It had cracks. It was a pale, forgiving gray. Its mildew stains were cumulus clouds, puffy and shape shifting. At some point, I knew I’d have to get up. But for the moment, I drifted, and listened to Cabeza’s snore, a hush like waves crashing.

  Later, when he was stirring, I woke and watched him move around the room. He was naked. Even though we’d been together, I felt strange watching. He had been a muscular man, a tough man, perhaps all his adult life. But there were signs of age in his body now. His torso, a classic V, was sunken slightly under his breastbone; the muscles in his calves and thighs were strong, but the skin under his hips had softened. He reminded me of a leading man just past his prime, trying to suck it in, hold his face at angles that wouldn’t reveal the emerging jowl. Robert Mitchum in later life as an aging Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely and the remake of The Big Sleep. For a moment, I felt sorry for him, and then I felt a rush of something I might call love. And then I didn’t want to be a spectator anymore. “Comeeer, baby,” I purred.