Graven Images

by Jane Waterhouse

  “Is it still like that now?”

  “A couple of years ago, he went on the wagon. That’s when Beth came in to manage the operation. She convinced Dane it would be good to move out here, get a fresh start.” She drained her coffee, looking longingly into the empty cup. “Still, sometimes we don’t see him for weeks at a time. He just barricades himself in his quarters, and everybody covers. The official word is Blackmoor’s better than ever.” Annie rolled her eyes. “Shit,” she said, “I really shouldn’t have told you that.”

  I motioned to the waitress for the check. Houghton shifted in her seat. “You know, when I talk about him, it makes it sound like Dane’s pretty weird, but he’s really not, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “Well, the life he leads, the sicko art crowd, and the fame.” She paused, then said, earnestly, “I don’t think he could ever kill anybody, though. Especially not Torie.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, the only time I’ve ever seen him act really excited about anything was when he saw her work.”

  “Did she ever say anything to you about him?”

  “Like, if they were fucking, you mean?”

  I felt my face flush. “Whatever.”

  “I think she would have told me if they were,” said Annie. “I mean, I knew about her and Richard.”

  “Richard Lewan?”

  “Yeah, do you believe it?”

  “He seems too…breakable…for sex.”

  Houghton cracked up. “That’s a kind way to put it. Although I wonder whether his wife would agree.”

  “He’s married?”

  “What a heartbreaker, huh? Torie used to say he was on a higher plane spiritually, but what she didn’t know about men could fill a set of encyclopedias. I guess that’s why she was so devoted to Dane,” she mused. “He was probably the only guy who was ever nice to her.”

  I tossed a ten-dollar bill on the table to cover the $3.50 tab. “Let’s go,” I said. “It’s stuffy in here.”

  When we were out in the fresh air, I turned to her. “One more thing—how did you start working for Dane, anyway?”

  “Oh, I used to go clubbing with Roberto and his boyfriend,” Annie said. “He knew I needed money, so he brought me around.”

  It was Roberto who’d brought around Torie Wood. Another question came to mind. “Did you ever hear of anyone named Donna Fry, or maybe Kimberly Arnette? They did some modeling for Blackmoor, before your time.”

  Annie shook her head. “Do they have something to do with Torie?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I’m just hoping they won’t turn up as body parts.” Annie Houghton’s sharp little face suddenly paled.

  Torie Wood’s friend Nicholas owned a small antique shop on the hill near the railroad station. He was talking on the telephone in hushed tones when we walked in. “No,” he said softly, “I was at the hospital last night.”

  A friend with AIDS, I thought automatically.

  Annie waved and blew him a silent kiss. We let him wind up his phone conversation as we looked around, Annie humming to the classical music that played over the speakers. Moments later, she made the introductions.

  “This is a real pleasure, Ms. Quinn,” exclaimed Nicholas. “I think your books are absolutely brilliant.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How’s Howard?” Annie inquired solicitously.

  “The same.” He explained, “My friend has AIDS.” I wished I hadn’t guessed.

  The young man’s eyes misted over. “Torie,” he said, “was Howard’s favorite.” The past tense hung in the air over all of us.

  I was pleased when he suggested that I go up alone. The narrow wooden stairs had been painted a madder brown. I breathed in the musty smell of the place.

  The room that Nicholas had lent to Torie Wood (lent, not rented, he’d reiterated carefully, because they were friends) was at the right rear of the building. It was barely bigger than a walk-in closet. A twin mattress, neatly made up with printed sheets and coordinating pillowcases, took up most of the floor space. In one corner stood a rust-stained pedestal sink; in another, a cheap, four-shelf bookcase. One nicely framed nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe hung on the wall. A Madonna poster had been tacked up next to the sink, probably to cover a wandering crack in the plaster. If I stood on tiptoe to look out of the one small window, I could see the canal, and beyond that, the railroad.

  This was where Torie Wood had slept during the last six weeks of her young life. When she wasn’t sleeping with Richard Lewan. Or maybe Dane Blackmoor.

  I checked out the bookcase. There were a couple of books on sculpture, one by Frank Rich, another by Stewart Johnson; an unauthorized biography of Dane Blackmoor and a coffee table–sized book of his work; two photography books, one Gordon Parks, one Annie Leibovitz; and some Disney Goldenbooks—The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, and Bambi. An upscale Sears-type family portrait in a simple wooden frame showed Torie and her two sisters with their parents. From the looks of it, it had been taken fairly recently. Torie’s hair was slicked back in a vain attempt to disguise the blatantly fuchsia highlights. I felt my throat constrict.

  One shelf of the bookcase was filled with a row of ugly little dolls with pastel-colored hair and heads too big for their bodies. “Torie’s Kiddles,” Nicholas said, behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin. There’s something unnerving about having someone sneak up on you when you’re looking at a dead person’s things.

  “She collected them,” the young man explained. “Actually the ones with the boxes are worth quite a bit.”

  But I’d stopped listening. I knelt down to get a better look at the objects on the lower shelf—small figures in wax and clay. A little boy. A horse. A naked woman. A Native American head.

  Nicholas and Annie moved into the room. The shadows they cast over the tiny sculptures made it somehow difficult for me to catch my breath. Even after I excused myself, running down the madder stairs and out the front door of the shop to breathe in the moist, cool air, I still wasn’t sure whether my physical response had been to the claustrophobic little room, or to the uncommon beauty of the extraordinary creations that Torie Wood’s hands had fashioned.

  NINE

  We had arranged to meet in town, at a restaurant tucked off the main drag. Elizabeth Rice rushed in, a half hour later, but glowing. “I feel wonderful,” she said. Not Sorry, or Have you been waiting long?, but I feel wonderful.

  “Gee,” I said.

  “I just had an aromatic massage,” Beth sighed. “Have you ever had one?”

  “No,” I said. “Gee.”

  “You have to,” said Beth Rice. “You can just sense all the toxins pouring out of your body. We could go together, sometime—there’s a spa not far from town.”

  I made all the appropriate sounds that might pass for indicating that this would be a swell idea, all the while waiting for the woman to settle in so we could get down to what I wanted to get down to. Beth ordered a bottle of mineral water. I caught the disapproving glance she’d given my glass of chardonnay.

  I brought the wine to my lips, rebelliously. “How long have you been working with Blackmoor?” No sense in postponing things. For all I knew Rice would have a Reebok Step class in half an hour.

  “It’s been three years,” Beth said, adding, “God,” as if she couldn’t believe it.

  “How did you two get together?”

  Rice drew her chin into a perfect heart, dimpling it on each side. It was a practiced, but effective, move. “As odd as it may sound”—she lowered her voice—“we met in recovery.”

  “You mean like AA?”

  Elizabeth’s smile flickered, then stuck. “Yes.” The waiter brought her water. “Could we have just a teeny bit more time?” she asked.

  “So you met in recovery,” I prompted.

  “Anonymity is one of the Twelve Traditions,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But, of course, I knew who he was right away.” She smiled at the memory. �
��I was managing a gallery on Fifty-Seventh Street at the time, really terribly unhappy.” She said this as though it were an unusual state of affairs; and I added another feature to Annie’s description: shitty childhood, shitty marriage. Shitty professional life.

  Rice went on. “One night, I just walked up to him and told him how in awe I was of his talent. Well, right afterward, he stopped coming to the meetings.” She realigned all the silverware on her side of the table. “You have to understand that there was—and is—a great deal of self-loathing in this man. It might seem incredible to you or me, but, for some reason, Dane has never quite accepted his own genius.”

  “He hasn’t?”

  Elizabeth had relaxed into her subject. “Oh no,” she said. “I sensed that about him, right from the beginning. That’s why, when he stopped working the program, I summoned up the nerve to go to his studio. You see, I knew what I would find.”

  “What was that?”

  “He’d started drinking again. The place was in absolute chaos. Graham and Richard had been trying to keep things going, but commissions were down. I immediately saw that something needed to be done.”

  “And you did it.”

  Beth smiled modestly. “Dane did it. I just provided the necessary support.”

  “He owes you a lot.”

  “Oh no,” she demurred. “I owe him. He gave me a sense of purpose.”

  The waiter came back and asked if we were ready. Elizabeth went into lengthy instructions as to what should be cooked without butter, and what made with balsamic vinegar. I ordered a multilayered sandwich with Russian dressing.

  When we were alone again, I shifted direction. “What can you tell me about Torie Wood?”

  “Just that she was a sweet child,” Beth said, adding, “and Dane thought she was very talented.”

  “Do you know of any reason why someone would want to kill her?”

  “You mean someone at the Mill?”

  “Who else could have sealed her body parts into a Blackmoor sculpture?” I lobbed the question across the table like a tennis ball.

  This bluntness seemed to ruffle her. “I see what you—” she sputtered. “But it’s just too awful to think about.”

  “Yes, it is,” I agreed. “By the way, did you know Donna Fry or Kim Arnette?”

  “The names sound familiar.”

  “They were on that list you gave me,” I told her. “Only now nobody seems to know where they are.”

  Elizabeth’s hands fluttered around her water glass. “I think I remember Kim,” she said. “She wasn’t one of Dane’s regulars. She might have posed for him once, maybe twice.”

  “Could you find out the titles of the sculptures she modeled for?”

  “I’ll try,” Rice said stiffly, “but I’m not sure we kept records like that back then.”

  The waiter returned with our food. As I bit into my sandwich, I noticed a visible change in Elizabeth’s demeanor. The top layer of her face, the brittle, sugary one, had cracked, giving a glimpse of something softer underneath.

  “You’re going to hurt him with this book, aren’t you?” She looked down at her food as though she didn’t know what to do with it.

  “That’s not my intent,” I replied. “I just want to find out the truth.”

  Rice nodded—one of those quick genuflections of the head that an athlete might give to an opponent on another team—then she dug into her salad, and began reciting the benefits of aromatic massage.

  “Hello?” I called out into the empty studio.

  A halfhearted echo bounced back at me. “—lo?”

  The worklights were on, but the place looked deserted. Everyone had probably jumped ship early for the weekend. Upstairs, I noticed a light was on in one of the bays. I climbed the steps, noisily, as if a brazen approach might scare away all the bogeymen who might be lurking. I passed several shuttered workspaces, stopping at the one open door. “Roberto? Lucy? Anybody here?”

  A middle-aged woman in a short-sleeved print housedress was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. Unflattering folds of dimply flesh hung at the back of her big arms and legs. She wore a Walkman, the pack tucked in her pocket. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

  The woman didn’t respond. Maybe the music—I came closer. The plaque read: CLEANING LADY.

  These sculptures were really getting on my nerves. They made me feel like a voyeur—fascinated, and yet ashamed—as though just by looking I’d entered into some kind of dark pact with Blackmoor. I turned off the light on the painted washer woman and headed toward the last bay.

  The door clammered open easily. I hit the lights, relieved to be among these workaday tools, free for a moment from the creepy, black-eyed staring faces, the unanswering mouths. I picked up implements, one at a time, feeling how heavy they were, testing their sharpness, their hardness, their cutting edges, trying to remember what Blackmoor had said. Which ones were for pulverizing and bruising? Where was the gouge? The body grinder? I counted four power saws and one hacksaw. Scores of razors. The place was a potential chamber of horrors.

  A noise came from outside, in the gallery. I turned in time to see the door swinging down. “Who’s there?” I called hoarsely, making my way around the worktables. Before I reached for the counterweight pulley, I picked up a mallet.

  The gallery was empty.

  “Hello?” I leaned over the railing. “Anybody?” My voice swirled around in the vaults of the deserted studio. I checked my watch—6:10. The weekend stretched ahead of me—time enough to learn all about sculpting tools and their uses; and to imagine what these implements could do when applied to flesh and bones.

  I replaced the mallet, snapped off the light, pulled down the door, and hit the steps, taking two at a time. Rounding the platform in the dark, I ran slam-bang into another warm body.

  “Jesus, Garner!” Annie gasped. “I didn’t know you were still here!”

  I laughed a little hysterically. “Were you upstairs a minute ago?”

  She shook her head. “No, I was just heading there now to make sure the lights were off. As far as I know, I’m the only one left.”

  A sound came from the skylights, muffled but frantic, like fast feet in an empty gynmasium. The big white bird dive-bombed, landing on the edge of the platform, where it whistled a snappy, “Screwyou…screwyou…screwyou…”

  “I say we kill it,” Annie whispered.

  “He’s much too fast for you,” Blackmoor said.

  Annie spun around, stammering, “I was just going upstairs to—”

  “I”ll take care of it.”

  “Well, see you Monday.” The young woman backed out of the room.

  I stood my ground. “Were you up in the gallery a little while ago?”

  “No,” the sculptor replied. “Why? Did you get scared?” He moved past me, not waiting for a reaction. The cockatoo flew to the edge of the platform, sharpening its claws on a manila envelope. Blackmoor shooed it away.

  “From yesterday,” he said, removing a stack of photographs. “A good one of you.” He held up a shot.

  “What happens to the videos?”

  He slid the pictures back into the folder. “We label them and put them on a shelf.”

  “What about Torie’s sittings? Did you tape them?”

  “I tape them all.”

  “I’d like to see those cassettes.”

  “So would I,” Blackmoor said. “Unfortunately, they’re missing.” He began walking away.

  “That’s convenient.” I ran to keep up with him.

  “Depends on your point of view,” he said. “Personally, I think it’s a pain in the ass.”

  I followed him into his office. “How about Donna Fry? Do you have tapes of her? What about Kim Arnette? How many have there been?”

  “Lost tapes?” he asked. “Or lost girls?”

  “How come you didn’t tell the police that more than one of your models had disappeared?”

  “I didn’t know myself, until today,” he said
. Before I could ask, he added, “My staff is very loyal.” Beth Rice, I thought. Or at least I hoped.

  “The ones who are still around,” I noted. “By the way, I saw some of Torie Wood’s work this afternoon.” I gestured toward the glass display case. “Those are hers, aren’t they? The two on the bottom?”

  “What an eye.” His voice sounded bitter.

  “Was it difficult being around that much…natural ability?”

  Blackmoor laughed. “You mean for someone like me?” He walked over to the shelves of miniature maquettes, and studied them for a moment.

  “Do you know what my critics say, Garnish? They call me a fake. A con man. Would you believe that some have actually had the nerve to suggest that it takes little or no talent to do what I do? The P. T. Barnum of sculpting, one of them dubbed me. That’s my favorite”—his mouth twisted—“that, and the one the gossip columnists use all the time—celebrity slash artist. What the fuck do you suppose a celebrity slash artist looks like, Garnish?”

  “Like you.”

  He laughed. “Well, since you’re the one with the eye, I’ll ask. What do you think of my work?”

  I thought for a moment. “I think it’s startling, disturbing.” I said the words slowly. “I’m just not sure I’d call it art.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. “Good,” he said finally. “Now come over here.” I hesitated. “I promise not to slice you up. Or kiss you.”

  I walked as casually as I could to the display case. “Want to know how I think of them?” He was standing so close, his breath tickled my face. “I think of them as my little graven images.”

  My knees almost buckled. I didn’t like hearing those words again. For some reason they frightened me. “I know who I am, Garnish,” he whispered. “My work is in every major modern museum in the world, private collections, you name it. They don’t buy those.” He pointed to the models. “They buy me.”