by Ken Brigham
When Hardy Seltzer entered the bar, he strolled deliberately to where Shane sat quietly sipping his wine. Offering only a token nod to the other bar patrons, some of whom he knew quite well, Hardy walked directly to the end of the bar and took a seat next to Shane, ignoring the bubble of respected space that usually insulated the ex-cop from unwanted intrusions. Pat Harmony hurried over to pour Hardy a generous portion of sherry.
“Hello, Hardy,” the bartender said, nodding somewhat tentatively.
“Good afternoon, Pat,” Seltzer replied. “Thanks for the wine.”
“You should thank your meditating friend,” Harmony responded.
Shane was still staring into the space before him, oblivious to Hardy Seltzer, Pat Harmony, and probably the entire animate world. He was in his thinking space.
Hardy respected that fact and didn’t speak. He sat quietly, sipping his sherry. Harmony returned to his usual neutral spot, leaning against the cabinets behind the bar, polishing a glass with a cup towel, and humming to himself what sounded like a fragment of a Gregorian chant but probably wasn’t.
Shane finally broke the silence.
“Hardy, my man,” Shane said while still staring blankly into space, “the only way I can see that we have a chance to find out whether the departure of our widely hated and newly admired artist was assisted is to open a formal investigation. I’ve milked this retired detective ruse about as far as the odd cast of characters involved is going to tolerate.” He turned to face Hardy and placed a hand on the detective’s shoulder. “The badge, Hardy, my man. We need the power of the badge.”
“That’s going to be a hard sell, Shane. You sure you’ve gone as far as you can on your own? Why a formal investigation without some evidence to support it? Understand, Shane, if I try to push this and it fizzles,” he raked a forefinger symbolically across his neck, “it’ll be curtains for me.”
“Two things about the situation have changed, Hardy. You know about the Times art review that is likely to send the value of Fitzwallington’s paintings through the roof. Depending on how many there are, we’re talking real money, and, as you are well aware, there is no more potent motive for misbehavior than money. Second, I have come by some information that may warrant determining the paternity of she who has been assumed to be the artist’s sole heir. How about that for a complicating factor?”
“What information?”
“While I must protect my source,” Shane said, “I have it on good authority that our deceased friend possessed a genetic oddity, it is called a trisomy, that could very well have rendered him sterile. To answer this question will require DNA samples from both Fitzwallington and the lovely SalomeMe. I fear that the tattooed one will not be anxious to participate in this little project, especially if she has any suspicion of the possible results. After all, she could have a fortune at risk here.”
“I see what you’re saying, Shane,” Hardy sipped at his wine. “And what if she knew that she wasn’t a legitimate heir even before dear daddy’s demise? Might she have hastened things along in hopes of avoiding such an inconvenient discovery?”
“The power of the badge, Hardy, my man. We need the power of the badge.”
Hardy sighed. “A pot of trouble I can’t possibly avoid,” he thought.
Chapter 15
Bruce Therault read the identity of the caller, Mildred Roth, spokesperson for the group of Galleria Salinas investors, before punching accept on his cell phone. Bruce didn’t know Ms. Roth well, but she had regularly delivered on the financial commitments of the group she represented so that he didn’t feel a compelling need to know much more about her. He judged partnerships more by what they accomplished than the character and motives of the players.
Truth be told, Mildred Roth was a pretty scary lady; at least she could sound that way on the phone. Bruce had never actually met her in person. He imagined her a statuesque brunette with dark eyeshadow, pale gray lipstick, midnight blue nail polish, and penetrating hazel eyes who habitually dressed in a form-fitting ankle-length sheath of deeply intense New York City black. Maybe something like a chimera of Morticia and the Dragon Lady. He knew that he could be wrong about that. He really didn’t care. Just keep sending the dinero, Dragon Lady.
“This is Bruce,” he said.
“Hello, Bruce,” Mildred Roth replied. Then, as usual, she cut directly to the chase. “Given these recent developments, of which I am certain you are aware, we believe there is considerable urgency in sewing up the Fitzwallington matter. Have you completed an inventory of the available works and assured your gallery’s exclusive rights to their sale?”
“We are working on that,” Therault replied. “Mace Ricci is still in Nashville working full time on the matter. We’re close.”
Bruce Therault was blowing smoke. He didn’t know how close they were to nailing this thing down, but he was certain that the fallout from the Times obit would be a complication. How much of one remained to be seen. Bruce hadn’t talked to Mace Ricci in several days and had intended to contact him after reading the Times piece. Morticia Dragon Lady had beat him to the punch. She had a habit of doing that.
“Close has very little value for us. I talked to Mace just now, and it is not at all clear to me how close you are. And who is this ex-cop who appears to have a more than healthy interest in the situation? Either you don’t know what’s happening there or you are not dealing straight with us. Don’t let this thing fall through, Bruce. Especially not now.” The tone of her voice changed, each word stretched taut and fired off staccato, like rounds from an Uzi, same intensity, same intent. “We’ve gone to considerable trouble and expense to make this happen and our group would not take kindly to anyone who fails to deliver on their promises. I am speaking primarily of you, Bruce.”… rat… tat… tat… “You. Don’t. Want. To. Mess. This. Up. Believe me; you don’t want to do that.”
Wow! Therault thought. He was not particularly surprised to discover that this group was capable of playing hardball, but the verbal blitzkrieg blindsided him. A side of Morticia Dragon Lady that he had suspected might exist but hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing in action before. He thought for a few seconds. True, the support of the investment group had been and continued to be important, but now they could be in a position to reap exorbitant returns on their investment, and they couldn’t do that without the gallery’s connections. He made an executive decision. He disconnected the call without responding.
After barely a second pause, Marvin Gaye launched into his ode to the grapevine.
Such a cliché.
Therault ignored it.
For any interested party, it was a simple matter to identify what dealers held paintings by Bechman Fitzwallington that were available for sale. Just Google them. Consequently, phone lines at Galleria Salinas on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and at the AvantArt Gallery on the southern edge of downtown Nashville had burned white-hot since the appearance of the NYT Fitzwallington obituary. Ringtone clichés reverberated across the continent. The cat’s cradle plexus of human communication hummed.
So, when Blythe Fortune finally got through to Athena Golden, both of them were aware of the possible implications of the situation, and their conversation was guarded. They had spoken only on rare occasions before and never under such intense circumstances.
“Any fallout from the obit?” Blythe summoned her most blasé NYC attitude.
“A few calls,” Athena replied. “And you?”
“Some calls,” Blythe answered. “Do we know much about the situation with the paintings?”
“I don’t know many details yet. I did have a visit the other day from your investigator, Mr. Ricci. Not a very pleasant sort.”
“Mr. Ricci?” Blythe pretended not to recognize the name.
“Yes, Mace Ricci. He said he was working for your gallery.”
“I see,” Fortune mused. “My business partner, Bruce Therault, probably hired him just to give us some eyes and ears there. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
<
br /> Damn it! Blythe thought. I wish to hell that Bruce would clue me in when he does something like this.
“Athena,” Blythe continued, “I hope we can cooperate. There should be plenty of profit for both galleries if we play our cards right. Neither of us will maximize our benefit by fighting with each other.”
“That’s no doubt true.”
A tepid response, Blythe thought, to a less than convincing proposal.
“Well,” Blythe said. “Let’s do stay in touch. Perhaps we can share any information that we get about the inventory and availability.”
There was a pause, and then Athena replied, “Yes, that could surely be helpful.”
They ended the call on a superficially amiable note. Neither of them believed the substance of their conversation. But then, art is not about substance.
Mace Ricci punched the red end call button on his cell phone and headed immediately for his car. It wasn’t the first time that he had found himself the target of the ire of Mildred Roth (he couldn’t resist thinking of such experiences as the wrath of Roth). Mace had done work for that group going back to his days as a New York cop and then continuing after he quit the force. Well, he quit the force in a sense, chose not to wait around for the threatened less-noble means of exit that would have had the same outcome but have been less personally satisfying. The work for the group that Mildred Roth spoke for was lucrative, considerably more so than the police force would ever have been. Although the wrath of Roth always annoyed him, the outbursts didn’t happen too frequently, and his compensation was sufficient motivation to tolerate them. Mace Ricci, gainfully employed private citizen, was not at all unhappy with the course he had chosen. People who gravitate to careers as policemen are generally pragmatists, if prone to somewhat simplistic interpretations of that philosophy. The same is true of professional assassins.
Ricci was headed as fast as was practical from the parking lot of his hotel downtown to the Germantown abode of SalomeMe. He had tried to call her as soon as he got off the phone with Mildred Roth but didn’t get an answer. It was abundantly clear that the daughter was the key to discovering the number, location, condition, and ownership of her father’s remaining paintings. Ricci had spent considerable time cultivating a relationship with her that was meant to assure his employers exclusive rights to handling sales of the paintings (and therefore exclusive recipients of the commissions). He thought he had done pretty well, but she had resisted giving him any specific information, and it appeared that the time had come to move ahead with this project. Better to do that in person.
The time was approaching noon, and the lunchtime parade of cars packed with downtown workers heading for lunch at the trendy Germantown restaurants was starting to build. Ricci maneuvered across Eighth Avenue, around by the Capitol building and the park, home of a row of fountains for kids to romp in when the weather was hot, the farmer’s market, and a carillon. An odd trio of attractions, Ricci thought.
At last, he turned into the quiet street in the residential heart of the area where SalomeMe's house sat silently, resting on its haunches like an aging widow resigned to her fate. A striking contrast to the persona of its owner. Ricci pulled to the curb in front the house and parked close behind a late-model midsize Chevrolet that he had not seen there before. SalomeMe opened her front door in response to Ricci’s several impatient punches at the doorbell. She was in the full uniform of her public self. She appeared to be uncomfortable. Her body language was like she had been caught en flagrante delecti with an illicit lover. Ricci was confused by that until he looked past her and saw the woman sitting on the living room sofa. The AvantArt Gallery owner, Athena Golden.
Damn!
The afternoon was warm, and Parker Palmer sat on the deck in back of his house pondering the caprice of his chosen profession. He was still baffled by the obituary of the artist that he steadfastly refused to think of by the pretentious name that the old man had assumed. To Palmer, the guy was Billy Wayne Farmer. Always had been. Always would be.
How could such a knowledgeable and highly respected New York critic suddenly decide to see Farmer’s art as deserving of such unbridled praise? The old guy was a son of a bitch. Okay, you could live with that. But also, his art was just not that special. It was without depth and, especially in the last couple of years, it was basically just repeating a lifelong formula. The fact that he was dead didn’t change that.
Palmer had managed to create a niche for his own work and had made a decent living at it. He was proud of that accomplishment. While early in his career he had aspired to wider recognition in the art world, he had long ago accepted the reality that he was not a great artist…good enough to make a living at it, but not great. He was comfortable with who he was and satisfied with the life he had made for himself. What galled him about Farmer’s posthumously blossoming fame was that Farmer’s talent was no greater than his own.
Art is not about reality, Palmer thought, it is entirely about perception. The eye of the beholder as they say… caprice. Reality had nothing to do with it. If the beholder happened to be Arturo Carbone who perceived something that wasn’t there, then perception became, with the stroke of the revered critic’s pen, reality.
Thus mused Parker Palmer in the afternoon sun of a warm day, raptly gazing at his green lawn and the lone elm tree standing tall and proud in its center. He thought of his mother. She was a gifted artist who lived her entire too-short life with very few people aware of her gift. She certainly made very little money at it. So, how come Palmer, his mom, and Billy Wayne Farmer shared the artist gene, if there was such a thing, but not the spotlight? Where was the justice? A silly question. There was no justice in the creative world, Palmer thought. He was feeling a little sorry for himself. That wasn’t like him, and he didn’t like it. Damn Billy Wayne Farmer.
The haunting twang and drawl of Jimmy Reed’s Bright Lights Big City called to Palmer from his cell phone. He didn’t answer it.
Had he interrupted his musings to answer the call, Palmer would have been greeted by a voice that he had not heard in several years, since the death of his mother. The caller’s reason for trying to reconnect after such a long absence had something to do with Billy Wayne Farmer’s recent death. The caller had read the Times obituary and was struck with the opportunity this turn of events might present. Time to mend fences with the family. You never know. You just never know.
Fiona Hayes, Shane thought. He sat in the center of his invisible insulating bubble at the end of the Wall Street bar, periodically sampling the glass of sherry that sat before him, and pondering the notes he had made in the small leather-bound notebook that was always present in his left shirt pocket. He had opened the notebook and laid it on the bar before him. He was going carefully through his notes from each of the interviews and came to a sudden stop at the name of Fiona Hayes. Of this entire group of Bechman Fitzwallington haters, Fiona Hayes was the most vehement.
Shane’s legs hurt. Both of them. A sort of nerve-grating ache; endurable pain but distracting. KiKi said that could be a good sign, that he might still be regenerating some nerves down there. And he was gaining a little strength in the excruciating Monday morning workouts with the physical therapist. But he didn’t find any of that particularly consoling at the moment. His legs hurt.
Fiona Hayes. He tried to refocus his thoughts. He had pretty much blown the interview with her and her arrogant sculptor friend. But he had written in his little embossed brown leather book, she knows something that she is not telling me. And evil she had said of the old artist…evil. That sounds a bit more of a character indictment than something like rascal or even son-of-a-bitch. Evil sounds like you’re talking big-time misbehavior.
“The money, paternity, and Fiona Hayes,” Shane greeted Hardy with the substance of his triptych argument for opening a formal investigation, foregoing any preliminaries.
They hadn’t planned to meet, but Hardy Seltzer had been stewing about this thing ever since they last talked, and he k
new that Shane was likely to be at Wall Street around five in the afternoon, so he just dropped by.
“Fiona Hayes?” Hardy queried. “Who the hell is Fiona Hayes?”
Setzer had forgotten the name that he had given earlier to Shane as someone to follow up on. He had not thought of her as a major player.
“The lovely Fiona Hayes, local ceramicist, is reason number three for opening this thing up to the full attention of our esteemed law enforcement apparatus. Primarily meaning, of course, getting you involved. The power of the badge, not to mention the skill of an active investigator carrying the city government’s imprimatur.”
Hardy made a mental note to add the word to his list of words to look up as soon as he had a chance.
“Murder,” Hardy moaned. “Has to be something credible to indicate foul play. Like I said, Shane, there’s no law against dying, famous or not.”
“Don’t loose ends count? Unexplained discrepancies in the narrative? Come, now, Hardy, my man. There is a story here begging to be told. It’s just that it hasn’t come together yet. Still too many blanks that need filling in. You are very skilled at filling in blanks.”
“I’m sure there’s a story. There is always a story. But I’m also sure that my people would be very quick to tell me that I don’t get paid to flesh out stories. I get paid to investigate murders. No murder, no job. Look, Shane,” Seltzer looked directly into Shane’s eyes, “what do you really think? Does your gut tell you this is a murder case?”