by Susan Daitch
Making my way to a side door that led to the viewing rooms, where more valuable objects, from the gold Incan death masks to van Goghs, waited to be displayed before auction, I gained a few minutes. This room was kept locked, but I had a key. Except I had a lot of keys, and I couldn’t remember which one it was. Footfalls drew closer. I fumbled, dropped the ring. The steps got trapped in a cul de sac made of vintage British phone booths and huge Chinese urns. I could hear his frustration as his pace pounded, stopped, pounded in a different direction, stopped short again. A creaking sound came from one of the giant urns being pushed, teetering over, and then, crash! Porcelain hit the floor, shards flying and skittering into floor lamps shaped like the Space Needle from the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, a couple of stone-garden Buddhas, stuffed replicas of presidential dogs. He was out. Footsteps headed my way.
There were so many keys on the ring. Which one opened this door? With each attempt to put a key in the lock, footsteps got closer. All the keys looked alike. On maybe the seventh try I got the right key in the lock, and I was in. I rapidly shut the door behind me and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no way to lock this particular door from the inside, but there were many places to hide—behind curtains and in cabinets, empty crates, hidden alcoves. The room was dimly lit, but I was familiar with its maze-like layout. That was an advantage.
At first, a cluster of taxidermied animals blocked my way. This wasn’t super-valuable stuff, but some art handlers with a sense of humor had arranged them as a pornographic panorama, and I could imagine them saying, as they so often did, “People pay money for this shit?” A coiled cobra had been inserted into the mouth of a silver-backed gorilla whose expression could be interpreted as both fierce and ecstatic. A looming grizzly humped a moose from behind. An elephant tusk attached to a mounted head probed a tiger. The tiger’s mouth was open, full roar, and I yanked out a fang. It had been shellacked and blunted, and I wasn’t sure the four-inch tooth could be weaponized. The user’s upper-body strength would have to be equivalent to the force of the animal’s jaws. Somewhere in the room there may have been a collection of Samurai swords, but I had no time to hunt for them.
A row of large wheeled bins, some gray plastic, some canvas, used for transporting paintings, caught my eye. At that moment a light came on. Footsteps tapped a few feet on the concrete floor. Hearing the man breathing and invisible somewhere in the room, I flipped the brakes on the closest bin. A few heavy paintings sat in the container, so there was no danger of the receptacle tipping when I hoisted myself over the edge and slid between two large canvases swaddled in bubble wrap. The buckle from one of my disabled shoes slit the plastic wrap, making a soft tearing sound. Had he heard me? Unknown. I slid the paintings apart, so that they formed a triangular space overhead, while I sat at the triangle’s base, curled up in my ready-made house, like a child who hides under a cloth-covered table.
The steps neared some cabinet doors, opened, then slammed them shut again. Anyone familiar with how paintings sit in bins would realize that they don’t ordinarily fall into an A shape; they lean against one another at a shallow slant. Would he know this? He approached the row of bins, lined up like supermarket carts, and flipped through paintings, moving down the line of carts, finally stopping at the one I crouched in. Every sound seemed magnified, and I didn’t realize that I was holding my knees to keep them from shaking, nails pressed through light fabric, marking skin.
The man unlocked the brake of the canvas bin, my safe house. I felt myself being wheeled, then the movement stopped. Squinting through the coarse weave of the canvas, I watched him. He had shoved my bin aside only to discover a draped sculpture behind the row of carts. Grabbing at the covering with a swish sound, as if revealing a magic trick underneath, the man gasped audibly when the sheeting fell to the floor. Before him was a giant hamburger, more than six feet in diameter: a Claes Oldenburg sculpture made of canvas and foam rubber. The man ripped off the top half of the bun and threw it on the floor. Perhaps he thought I was sleeping on the stiff and scratchy lettuce, using the tomato slice as a pillow. Cursing in a language I couldn’t identify, he kicked at the soft sculpture. Brief silence. Footsteps tapped to another part of the room, then paused.
Hold your breath, then breathe out slowly, I thought. Silence. I was sure he could hear me breathe. The footsteps paused, then moved on, searching two alcoves behind the row of carts. I held my breath again. Straining, I heard no sound of footsteps leaving the room, but no one turned off the lights. With all the time in the world, he could be sitting on a folding chair, the ones with fake red velvet seats, waiting for me to pop up from my nest. It was also possible that he continued on to the next room, but I hadn’t heard him walk in any direction or open any door. The paintings smelled of the damp warehouse in which they’d been stored, and the more recent pictures still smelled of paint and turpentine. I stifled a sneeze, squashing my nose as much as possible into my face, pushing until it hurt, then took a chance and peered over the brim of the bin. Reflected in a broad Art Deco mirror was a man with a head shaved like Mr. Clean, a gold ring at the end of his nose. He pulled a hood over his head. I quickly ducked back down, then the lights snapped out. My legs had cramped from sitting who knows how long. Had he truly left? Or was snapping off the lights only a trick? The little space was stifling. My ears rang as I strained to hear the sounds of my stalker.
Maybe fifteen minutes later, I looked out again. Eyes adjusting to the near-darkness, as far as I could see the windowless room appeared empty. Only a white neon framed diner clock, valuable because it had belonged to John Lennon, and a red-lit exit sign provided any light. It was one in the morning. Quickly making my way across the showroom to other display areas, and then to the lobby, I locked each door behind me—perhaps locking the man in, perhaps not. I no longer knew where he was. An elevator creaked. Was it the man in the hoodie? I had no way of knowing. No guards or security staff were in evidence in the lobby. The auction house appeared completely deserted. A swipe of my ID card got me out of the building and onto the street.
It was pouring, and at that hour Madison Avenue was also desolate. Wiping wet hair out of my eyes, I searched my pockets for my cellphone, but then remembered that I had left it in the studio. Somebody throws a jar of turpentine at your head, you don’t stop to look for your phone. Awnings were drawn up; the gutters were flooded. I was quickly soaked; the leather soles of what remained of my shoes felt like shirt cardboard. There were no cabs to be found on Lexington or Park Avenue, and I wanted to get as far from the auction house as quickly as possible. A solitary cab drove past, spraying me with black water. I shouted for it to stop, but the driver ignored me. Cabs were supposed to take you directly to the police if you witness a crime. This one didn’t care if I had the Hope Diamond in my pocket. Then the street was completely vacant again. Even the doormen had disappeared into the backs of buildings, reading their papers, watching little televisions, or asleep somewhere.
At Lexington Avenue I ducked into a lone relic of a phone booth, part of the glass plastered with posters about a lost dog. Why was there a pay-phone booth in the middle of a city when every complex molecule has its own cell? Who knows? On September 11, when not so many people had cellphones, and those in existence didn’t function very well, there were lines for the not yet obsolete booths, and maybe some management person, remembering this, said, “Let’s leave this one lone soldier, in case of emergency.” So there it was, illuminated from within, recently used as a urinal, as out of place as a post for tying up a horse. It was dead. As I slid open the door, a rat scudded in and ran around the inner periphery as if it knew that in some bygone era humans had eaten pizza slices and candy bars here, receiver wedged between their ears and their shoulders, a bounty of food falling to the crap floor.
I looked down the street. Dondy’s twenty-four-hour diner was open. It was little more than a counter, but there would be a phone there. The counterman nodded as I entered, not even asking why I needed to use the landlin
e, as if this kind of thing happened all the time, and at that hour maybe it did. He handed me the receiver from a cracked wall phone. As I spoke to the operator I leaned against the pine paneling, avoiding coming into contact with autographed photos of Derek Jeter, Elvis Costello, a past mayor…catching my breath, staring out Dondy’s plate-glass window, through the rain, onto the street.
A tall man in a hoodie put his hand on the door. He stopped, staring into the diner without moving. Fluorescent light glinted off his nose ring. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t mouth anything at me. He just looked. I held his gaze—it was mesmerizing, like looking at a swaying snake. Then I noticed his tattoos. Hawks, their beaks pulling the corners of his eyes, one each. They were either stretching out his eyeballs or flying into them, depending on how you looked. The hood fell off and rain trickled down his bald head. He took in the others sitting at the counter: ambulance drivers, orderlies in aqua-colored scrubs, subway workers in orange vests—all coming off graveyard shifts. I clutched my tiger’s tooth. Thumbs in the eyes, if you have time, I’d once read if a shark or an alligator attacks you. I had seen him. I was the woman who knew too much. Claiborne’s isn’t far from the East River, which is deep with swift currents. If anything happened to me, the paintings wouldn’t talk.
Chapter 2
Detective Ron Garfield and his partner, Demetrius Pitt, were the first at the scene. Sirens, yellow tape unspooled to block off the entrance to Claiborne’s, police photographers—it all happened very methodically and quickly. While I was punching in the security codes to the front door, Claiborne’s director, Terence Fieldston, emerged from a dark Lincoln Town Car. Actually, the chauffeur got out first and held a large black umbrella over the director’s head. I didn’t cross paths with Fieldston often, but even at this early hour he was impeccably dressed. He wore those kinds of pastel shirts with white collar and cuffs, gold tiepin. Probably used cologne for mouthwash. He stood over me, and I paused in the middle of the sequence of numbers.
“Sir, would you prefer to open up yourself?” I swear, I didn’t mean this sarcastically. Fieldston was breathing in my face. Was I supposed to let the master of the house open the doors?
“You need to stand back. Let Ms. Da Silva open the doors.” Detective Pitt was letting Fieldston know who was in charge.
Fieldston sent me a withering look.
“The Velázquez?” he asked me.
“It’s still there.”
I was so flustered, I had to start over. To hell with the body. All he cared about was the painting. Ashby, smelling of cigarettes and barely wet, his raincoat tightly belted around his spindly waist, emerged from a taxi. He must have gotten one straightaway, even with the rain.
The door opened, but Ashby and Fieldston weren’t allowed in.
“You’ll have to stand back, sir. No one is allowed in till the investigation is finished.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Fieldston began to push Garfield and Pitt aside. The two detectives were tall, but Fieldston was not only taller but the product of a lifetime of never yielding to anyone he considered to be his inferior. These weren’t decisions he made but instinctive, involuntary movements. The greatest tragedy of his life, I’m guessing, was that he needed to have a job at all.
“I’m afraid, sir, it is. This is a crime scene. We can’t let you in.” Pitt was so calm and polite. He wrote with a chewed ballpoint pen and had a square diamond in one ear. Garfield was older, the superior officer on the case. He had the bored look of a dentist who’s about to do his five-hundredth root canal and was perfectly capable of administering less painkiller to a patient who pissed him off. If Fieldston or Ashby hit the ceiling, what did he care?
“You ever hear of fingerprints?” The endodontist could be just as condescending as the director of Claiborne’s. “You got ’em—I’m going out on a limb here in making that assumption—and we let you in, you leave them in places they don’t belong. It’s that simple.”
“I’m the director. My fingerprints are already in abundant supply here.” Fieldston left a big, fat palm print on the glass door. Sandy hair, lightbulb-shaped head, his chin retreated into a crisp bow tie.
“Princeton colors,” Garfield said, pointing at the tie. “I would have been class of ’76, but I thought eating clubs were those places in Marine Park where your uncles had to know someone for you to get in the door. Sorry, I left my seersucker suit at the dry cleaners.”
“Your personal history is of no concern.” Fieldston tried to push open the door once again.
“Sir, we can’t allow anyone in who could contaminate the premises.” Pitt stood between me and the door. Despite the rain, I could feel the warmth of his body.
The detectives didn’t know whom they were dealing with. Within Claiborne’s and its global art-market reach, if Fieldston or Ashby told you to go fuck yourself you were done, but, on the other hand, the detectives weren’t collectors of Koons or Schnabel. They just wanted Mr. Interference to get back in his limo. One pair was from Jupiter, the other from Halley’s Comet. They didn’t speak the same language, but neither duo had yet fully figured this out.
“Let’s say you accidentally or intentionally leave a white kid glove or half a ticket to a Broadway show near the body. That becomes evidence when it shouldn’t be. That’s a headache for me and, believe me, it will be for you, too.”
Looking at Ashby and the director through the detectives’ eyes, they were rich Upper East Siders who extremities and went to expensive Broadway productions. What the police didn’t realize was that Ashby and company wore gloves on the job because acid from your fingers will get on any surface and ultimately do considerable damage. And tickets to Broadway shows? Not on your life. The Metropolitan Opera, but not Les Mis.
Detective Pitt asked me how long I’d worked at Claiborne’s. I wanted to say, “Long enough,” but figured I’d better be specific.
“So you restore paintings? Van Gogh comes in without an ear and you stick it back on?”
“No. I can’t add to a surface. I conserve, not restore. I would have to send van Gogh to Lenox Hill Emergency.”
“You go to school for that?”
“Of course.” I didn’t mean to sound snotty, but there was an incredulous tone to Pitt’s voice. I knew from conversations with Ashby that police all over the world, with the possible exception of Italy, don’t take art theft very seriously unless someone is killed in the process. It’s just canvas or paper or some other material, plus a layer of paint, which, after all, is just chemicals. But there was a body here, and I was having trouble with the door. Pitt’s attitude was that I was the little lady in a frilly apron and a feather duster, cleaning people’s possessions before they went on the block.
The director and the curator invoked their close friendships with everyone from the mayor to the secretary of state. The idea that I would be allowed in while they had to wait in the rain with the nosy doormen and the early-morning dog walkers was not to be tolerated.
“You know the mayor? Really? It’s a privilege to be standing in the rain with you, pal,” I heard one of the policemen say. His sarcasm was lost on its target.
Garfield and Pitt were firm about police protocol. No one but me was allowed into the building. In the stairway, on each floor, while surfaces were photographed and dusted for prints, the detectives and their entourage made their way up to my studio. Pitt made sure I walked up the stairs ahead of him. I moved quickly, so that he wouldn’t be able to hold any doors open for me. An annoying man. The remains of my shoes were found and bagged. When we got to the third floor, I noticed that my door was closed, though I was sure I’d left it open as I ran out, and doubted that Mr. Clean had shut it as he began the chase.
“You have the security code?” Pitt asked.
“Of course.” Without Fieldston or Ashby standing over me, I quickly tapped in the codes and opened the door.
The body was gone.
So was the painting.
—
S
omewhere in Siberia a gigantic black hole had opened up out of nowhere. It was found by reindeer herders in a region known as the End of the World, in Yamal. And although it was said to be as bottomless as an earthbound hole could be, the body might well have been in those depths. It had to be somewhere. But it was definitely not in my studio.
“Could he have picked himself up, dusted himself off, and started all over again?” Elder statesman Detective Garfield quoted Nat King Cole, but I didn’t feel exactly in on the joke.
Police moved methodically around the room looking for fibers and blood. One member of the search unit dusted for fingerprints and footprints using jars of white-, black-, and silver-colored powder, depending on the color of the surface. With gloved hands they examined the tools of my trade, especially knives or anything with a pointed end that could be used to inflict wounds. All were clean, but the police operated as if from square one, and all my statements were possibilities rather than facts. A woman examined small red spots on the floor. Madder lake and vermilion. Their chemical composition in no way resembled human blood or any other kind of blood. One of the detectives was entranced by my collection of jars of pigments and paint, which occupied nearly an entire wall of the studio. He confiscated jars of Naples yellow (contains antimony), cobalt violet (cobalt and arsenite), and lead white, all highly toxic. Poisons, I was told, may or may not have been operative, but they had the potential to be weaponized. How is lead white like a tiger’s tooth? Both require skill to be used effectively. I knew how to use one but might have been a joke with the other. Minute scrapings were bagged from here and there in the room, sealed in tiny bags. The body was not a hallucination, but the more I insisted, the more I felt all eyes in the room on me. I was in that Siberian crater full of disappeared people and evidence. No one would believe me. They took my fingerprints and scrapings from under my nails as a matter of course. Pictures were taken, and measurements from the last location of the painting to the door. My description of the man who stared at me through Dondy’s window was sent to a police sketch artist, though I offered to do the drawing myself.