Artist's Proof

by Gordon Cotler

  “Nikki, nice to see you,” I said pleasantly. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  He had been prepared for an argument, and he took a moment to regroup. “Is no honor, is no visit,” he muttered. “Mikhael Sharanov wants you.”

  “Fine. Is that him in the driver’s seat?”

  It didn’t look like him, and anyway, it was unlikely he would be driving; but as Winston Churchill once said, “Jaw, jaw, jaw, is better than war, war, war,” and I wanted to find out what Nikki meant by “wants you.”

  Nikki said, “No, dat’s not him.”

  I said, “I just passed his house. He’s not there.”

  “His house smells bad. From paint.”

  “So where is he?”

  “I will take you.”

  Damned if I was going to drive to Brooklyn with this goon. Patiently I said, “Nikki, Sharanov wants me, I don’t want him. The way we do here in America, the person who wants does the traveling.”

  “Not Mr. Sharanov.”

  “You know what? Neither do I. You’ve delivered your message. Thank you. I’m on my way into the village.” I was testing the waters.

  I started around him toward my pickup. Now the other man slid out of the driver’s side of the Volvo. Squat, big-bellied, bouncy. Another Russian. He rocked from side to side to show he was ready for whatever, and he looked to Nikki for instructions.

  Nikki took a couple of steps toward me, and now the two of them had me in a loose sandwich, about two feet of air to my front and to my back. I stopped walking.

  “Is Dimitri,” Nikki said by way of introduction. “We have a big car. Plenty of room.” Did he think I was worried that I might feel crowded during the drive?

  We were at an impasse. While I considered my options the Russians each sidled a half step closer. Their argument was growing persuasive.

  Finally I said, “Hey, if Mr. Sharanov is this anxious to see me, why not? Just give me a minute to duck in and use the john. The bathroom?”

  In a minute I could grab the Smith & Wesson and possibly find the ammo. I would feel more comfortable with the gun tucked in my belt under my loose sweatshirt.

  But Nikki said, “Mr. Sharanov has bathroom, very nice. Is not far.”

  So we all climbed into the Volvo. Plenty of room.

  * * *

  NEITHER OF THE Russians was a talker, and we made the trip in virtual silence. It turned out that Sharanov was staying at the Gulliver, no surprise when I thought about it. The village was not eager to encourage casual visitors; it preferred the stability of summer people who were homeowners. So the Gulliver, a totally ordinary two-story motel on the bay that could have been built from mail-order plans, was the only decent public shelter in the area. Its one distinction was an attached marina. In season it attracted boaters who wanted a night in a real bed after taking a real bath; the rest of the year business was, at best, slow.

  The parking area was sheltered by the two wings of the motel. Dimitri drove to the center section and turned the car so that the door on my side was exactly facing a room door I surmised was Sharanov’s. Dimitri was either being careful not to overexert me with a long walk or he was making sure nobody saw me go into that room.

  The caution seemed unnecessary; of the several dozen oversize motel windows we were facing, only two or three leaked ribbons of light around the edges of the closed drapes, and there were no more than half a dozen cars in the vast lot. That reflected the predictable occupancy rate for a Wednesday in May.

  Dimitri switched off the motor. Nikki reached past me and opened my door. I felt less than totally at ease; I supposed I was being paranoid, but if Sharanov chose, he could play Roach Motel in this setup. His visitors might check in, and if they didn’t check out there would be nobody around to notice.

  I stepped out of the car. Nikki was resting a big mitt on my shoulder, in case I wondered if he was still behind me. Four short paces and I would be at Sharanov’s door.

  And then I came into a small piece of luck: It turned out we were not alone. A room door sprang open a few yards along the walkway and a man in overalls emerged. He was steadying an air conditioner on his shoulder and carrying a tool kit in his other hand. He pulled the door closed behind him.

  Nikki’s mitt was urging me to move. Dimitri was already knocking on Sharanov’s door. But now the man in overalls turned just enough so that his face emerged from behind the air conditioner. It was Harry Gregg.

  “Harry!” I yelled in exactly the voice I would have used to greet a brother I thought had perished years ago in a jungle air crash. “Harry Gregg, well I’ll be damned.”

  Sharanov’s door had opened a crack, but now it quickly closed, and the parade of which I was the centerpiece came to a halt. So far, so good.

  The trouble was, Gregg looked, but he didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t blame him: He had barely glanced my way the few minutes I had spent on his proch yesterday, and this walkway was poorly lighted. He seemed rattled by my larger-than-life greeting. All he said was, “Huh?”

  “Harry, are the bluefish still biting?” I called. Dimitri was rocking, as though his spring had been overwound.

  I said, “Chuck Scully and I were wondering if we could get in line for some of your overflow catch.” I was laying it on with a snow shovel.

  Gregg took a harder look and put together who I possibly was. “Oh, yeah, right,” he said vaguely. “Well, I haven’t been out since, so there isn’t any.”

  He had started off across the area and I called, “I’m visiting a friend here. You want to meet me for a beer at Pulver’s when you get off?”

  A lot he cared. He had already disappeared into the dark.

  But I had made my point with my escort. Behind me, Nikki muttered a few words in Russian that were not complimentary.

  * * *

  SHARANOV WAS WEARING a black silk dressing gown with contrasting trim. Had I seen Edward G. Robinson in a vintage movie on the tube relaxing in a similar robe after a hard day with his submachine gun? I had to admit that Misha looked good in his, almost good enough to make my palms sweat. When he nodded recognition of my arrival it was with an air I remember Miss Lombardo in second-year high school French describing as de haut en bas when we were studying idioms.

  The boss was occupying what I supposed the Gulliver called a suite—two identical motel rooms with an open connecting door. The first room he had personalized with a vodka bottle and a clutch of glasses. He waved me with a show of politeness to the second room, but I held back while he took a brief apologetic report in Russian that he didn’t like from his two goons; I supposed they were telling him about our encounter on the walkway.

  He shook his head as though to say, What can you do with the kind of help you get these days? Then he left the boys to shift for themselves—or were they standing guard?—and he led me into his personal quarters. Except for an open suitcase this room was no more personal than the other.

  Without an ounce of irony he murmured, “I’m glad you could come, Mr. Shale.”

  He nodded me to the king-size bed while he took the single chair. He said, “Please excuse this place. I’m supervising some redecorating at my house. Would you care for a drink? I can offer you a vodka—Swedish, not Russian.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  He watched me sit and said, “You’re comfortable there?”

  I wasn’t, nor was I with his purring tone, which again reminded me of a high-performance engine in idle. Enough politeness. I said, “What the fuck do you want?”

  If my response put him off he didn’t show it. He waited till he had lit a thin cigar and then he said, “I want to talk to you. You know, you’ve caused me trouble.”

  “No, I don’t know. How?”

  “The detective. Doggerty? Docherty? He came out to Brooklyn to see me. At my restaurant? I don’t like to see policemen come to the Tundra. It upsets the staff.”

  I bet. I said, “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Docherty
asked me questions. He wanted to know where I had slept the night before the little girl was murdered. Cassie.” The idling engine lost its purr for a single piston stroke, on the name.

  He was becoming more interesting. I said, “You had trouble with that question?”

  “I did. My wife and I—it is no longer a secret—have been in a serious marital dispute for some time. We are now going to be divorced. Where I slept that night is a matter of no damn business of the police. But it might be of some interest to Kitty’s lawyers. Mrs. Sharanov.”

  “You’re not legally separated?”

  “Only physically. I have been staying for the past couple of weeks in a hotel in Manhattan. Docherty believes I slept that night in my house here at the beach. As it happens, I could prove to him otherwise in a minute, but I don’t want it anywhere recorded that I was in the company of a woman that night.”

  “I can understand that. But I repeat, what does any of this have to do with me?”

  He leaned forward and blew smoke not exactly in my face but close enough. “You are the person who—how does it go?—put the bug on his ear.”

  “In his ear.”

  “That my bedroom at the beach had been slept in that night. You gave him a picture you drew that shows a window open in my room. You said you drew it early on the morning of the murder.”

  “That’s right, I did.” Docherty had been needlessly generous in giving me credit for the deduction. He may have hoped that the Russian would reciprocate by having one or both of my legs broken.

  “But what you claim is impossible,” Sharanov purred. “I did not sleep in the house that night. And I never leave that house until it is locked up. Tight. I see to that myself.” He leaned back into his chair, totally confident. “So there remain two possible explanations for the picture you drew with the open window.”

  He waited for me to ask what they were. When I didn’t, he volunteered. “One. You drew the picture on a different day than you originally thought—possibly a day during the previous weekend, when I was staying in the house.”

  “Nope.” I knew he wouldn’t like that answer. I said, “Okay if I take a stab at number two?”

  “Do that.”

  “I exercised artistic license and drew the window open because I liked the look of it that way. But it was actually closed.”

  “Excellent. You said it much better than I could have.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and shut up.

  I had guessed where he was headed, but contrary to his expectation I was damned if I would follow. More and more the man was bugging me. And more and more I didn’t like this bed heaving under me at my slightest move while Misha sat back in his comfortable chair and we played his game to its predictable end.

  He was searching my face for a clue. Finally he had to spell it out. “So that is what happened? You drew what you liked, what pleased you, not what you saw that morning?”

  “No.”

  His face didn’t show it, but he really hated that answer. He said, “Mr. Shale, you are not making a careful search of your memory.” His voice was still in idle, but now he touched the accelerator. “Think again. It is important that you do so.”

  “Not to me.” Slowly and carefully I added, “And, Mr. Sharanov, that last sounded like a threat.”

  “Did it?” He was unmoved.

  “You must know that would be foolish.”

  “Because you are a New York City policeman? But retired.” He had his ducks in a row. “And under investigation for having beaten a prisoner.”

  My eyebrows may have lifted because he took the trouble to explain. “How do I know? Your victim’s lawyer found me. To ask if I believed it was you who murdered my cleaning person. Since you have a history of sudden explosions of violence.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  Again he tapped the gas pedal. “I said I would have to get back to him on that.”

  “He knew where to come,” I said, “for an expert opinion on explosive violence.”

  Sharanov acknowledged the validity of my point with a tight smile and a jab of the cigar: touché. “Ancient history,” he said.

  “That’s comforting to hear.”

  His eyes shifted purposefully to the other room. “I’m speaking for myself,” he said. “I can’t answer for the actions of anyone else.”

  “So you are threatening me, you son of a bitch.”

  He erupted in a short staccato laugh and his slate eyes returned to me; there was no laughter in them. He said, “My apologies. That came out of an old habit. I haven’t threatened anyone in years. All I ask of you is that you set the record straight when Docherty gets back to you. Which he most certainly will. And very soon, I predict.”

  “Are you going to tell me why?”

  “He has to be interested in your involvement with Cassie Brennan. Don’t you agree?”

  “What involvement?” I hated the taste of the word. “There was none.”

  “No? Then why did she push me—push me hard—to buy that drawing of yours from the firemen’s auction?”

  Cassie had promoted me to Sharanov in all innocence, and now he was turning it into something dirty. But at the same time he was giving away something about himself.

  I said, “Do you usually take artistic advice from teenage girls who clean your house?”

  A mask dropped over his face. “Sometimes. Why not?”

  But I had pressed the right button. The Turkintons believed the way to please Sharanov, the way to his pocketbook, was with a painting of Cassie Brennan; they were prepared to bet a bundle that he was hung up on Cassie. Kitty believed as much, Paulie Malatesta smelled it, and Olivia Cooper would not have been surprised. All that was new to me now was how much the aging thug had been like an eager puppy with the teenager. He must have been far gone to buy my drawing for no better reason than that Cassie wanted him to buy it. He wouldn’t have told Docherty that he had a drawing of mine; her certainly wouldn’t have said why he had it.

  So Misha and I broke even on the question of “involvement” with Cassie. He couldn’t hold that club over me without calling attention to himself. And I could see that he understood that.

  So he reached back again into his enforcer past and tried to play from that strength. “You will think about what I asked you?” He was purring again. “To remember correctly how that drawing with the open window came to be? To set the record straight? I would hate there to be a misunderstanding between us.”

  The man had tunnel vision. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Absolutely.” Screw him; but not while I was still his “guest.”

  “Good. Done. My people will drive you home.”

  And the hell with that. “Thanks anyway, I’m not going home.”

  * * *

  I WALKED TO Pulver’s, about half a mile. The night air was still mild and people were out; they were leaving restaurants or strolling on Covenant Street, but I still glanced back a couple of times to see if I had company.

  And at Pulver’s instead of the beers I had planned on I knocked back a few scotches and unwound by listening to the soothing sounds of the locals arguing zoning code changes.

  I phoned for the village taxi. It was not as roomy as Nikki’s Volvo, but it was worth every penny of the ten bucks it cost me to get home.

  I thought I would put in a couple of hours on Large. But first I spent ten minutes rooting around for the ammo for the Smith & Wesson. I never found it. By then I was too disgusted to paint and I went to bed.

  SEVENTEEN

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING I was forced to lay down a brush heavy with paint and climb down off the scaffold. Someone had been pounding on my front door and wouldn’t take no response as an answer.

  For my trouble a bowlegged marshall with bad breath favored me with a subpoena to appear the following Monday at 11 A.M. before the grand jury at the county courthouse forty minutes to the west. Docherty was casting his net.

  I had put off hiring a lawyer, and I was going to
have to do something about that; but not until I absolutely had to.

  Inspired by my cash flow drought, what I was going to do was clean my brushes, close my paints, and take a stab at what I had done for a living all those years: investigate a murder. My money problem aside, didn’t I at the very least owe Cassie Brennan, friend and loyal booster, a serious try at bringing her killer to justice? Especially since neither John Docherty nor Chuck Scully had moved a millimeter closer to doing that.

  I eased into my sleuth mode slowly. I began with a variation on a ritual that had worked for me in the past when I wasn’t making headway on a case. I used to park my car on a side street, tilt back the seat, and free-associate everything I knew about the case while I stared at the ceiling light. What I did now was kick off my shoes, lay back on my bed, and let myself be hypnotized by that giant hand I had repaired on Large.

  People, facts, and events formed three-dimensional pictures in my head. They knocked against each other and spun away like fun park bumper cars. In the past when I did this two cars would sometimes lock.

  After I’m not sure how long, a couple did now. Anyway they clung for a moment. Long enough to get me started.

  * * *

  THE HUGGINS SERVICE Station was at the west edge of the village, along the highway, a last chance for residents heading for the city to keep their gas money local. I steered clear of the pumps and parked at the side of the garage. A mechanic was at work in each of the three bays.

  Paulie Malatesta was just emerging from the open jaws of a Jeep in the middle bay, his jet black hair tumbling onto his generous brow. I could see why Cassie might have gone for him; he had the dark, brooding looks of a Heathcliff, if not the style.

  I called his name, and his face lit up when he saw me. He wiped his greasy hands on a paper towel with only moderate success and hurried to meet me.

  “Hey, Lieutenant, what’s up?”

  “Can we talk?”

  This was not what he wanted to hear; he was expecting news of an arrest. He took a moment to consider, then turned to the adjoining bay. “Yo, Ike, I’m taking my break.”