Killing Critics

by Carol O'Connell

  The matron with the pearl choker made a mental note to send a nice check to the Coalition for the Homeless and drained her full wineglass in one swig. What dark thing had lived and brooded on the wrong side of the glass, she did not want to know, but thought it might have come from hell and felt rather at home there.

  Mallory stood very close to the wall, eyes level with ticket number thirty-four. “Tell me again about the metaphor, the poetry of shape and color—”

  “That pertains to fine art,” said Quinn.

  “What’s this?”

  “The demystification of art.”

  “Well, thanks for clearing that up for me.”

  “It’s not a technical term. It’s a eulogy.” Quinn only glanced in the general direction of a passing gallery boy, and two glasses of wine appeared in the next instant. He handed one to Mallory. “Actually, if Dean Starr hadn’t been such a fool, I might have given him credit for ingenious parody. Go to any Whitney Biennial and you’ll see scores of three-minute ideas executed by the untalented and curated by the blind. Starr just carried the premise a little further by not bothering to construct the idea. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that the idea for the tickets wasn’t even his.”

  “Gregor Gilette said Koozeman used to be an artist.”

  “Yes, he was. You know, the tickets could be Koozeman’s concept.”

  “What are you doing here, Quinn? You said you didn’t review hack artists. And I had the feeling Koozeman didn’t expect you to show up tonight.”

  “I’ve been planning a lengthy piece on Koozeman, not Starr. He really is quite the magician. I could hardly ignore a thing like this.”

  “How will you write it up?”

  “I intend to promote Koozeman as a genius of the new order. A genius of hype, and hype, don’t you know, is the art form of the era. He’s truly a man of his times. But it hardly merits writing. I can phone this one in.”

  “Will anyone know you’re kidding?”

  “Nor.”

  “What did you think of Koozeman when he was a working artist?”

  “I thought he was very good.”

  “According to your brother-in-law, Sabra thought he was a genius.”

  “She was probably right. Some of his work was brilliant, and now he promotes hacks. Every third person you meet in this town is a creative artist. If you have an old can of spray paint knocking around in the garage, Koozeman can make you a star.”

  “Must be tough for the people with the real talent.”

  “New York City,” said Quinn, as though the complete explanation could be offered in those three words. New York, he explained, was tough on every artist. In the beginning, New York doesn’t seem to notice them at all, or so they think. They believe the city doesn’t even know they’re alive. Then, one day an artist trips on the sidewalk and his hand hits the pavement and New York steps on it and breaks all his fingers. New York has noticed him. Then New York steps on his face and breaks that, too, and that’s just to say hello. “So, who could really blame Koozeman for opting to roll in cash instead of always chasing after the rent money.”

  Now Koozeman joined them with fresh wine and a gallery boy at his side to take away their empty glasses. “Quinn, you mustn’t monopolize my prize celebrity this way.” He made a small courtly bow to Mallory. “It was lovely the way you demolished the FBI. So these killer profiles of theirs are worthless?”

  “No, not if they’re done right. My own profile tells me the killer is successful. He’s rich and getting richer. I smell money every time I think about the case. So I’m looking for someone with a soul that’s interchangeable with a cockroach or an advertising executive.”

  Koozeman stared into his wineglass as he spoke to her. “And you think the killer of Dean Starr—”

  “Oh sorry,” she said. “I was thinking of the wrong murder. Sometimes I get confused. I understand you were once an artist. Is that true?”

  “It was a long time ago.” His words were halting.

  “What kind of work did you do?”

  “Nothing of any consequence.” Koozeman sipped his wine, eyes reevaluating her over the rim of his glass.

  “But I heard different,” said Mallory. “ ‘Genius’ is the word I keep hearing. Now let me guess. You were a sculptor, right?”

  A few drops of wine spilled from Koozeman’s glass.

  Mallory didn’t wait for her answer. She abruptly dismissed him with the turn of her back and drifted off toward the wine table, leaving Quinn to wonder. He turned to Koozeman.

  If a face could fall, Koozeman’s truly did. His mouth opened slightly as the jaw fell first, followed by the excess flesh of cheeks and jowls. And at last, his eyes dropped, staring at the floor now, as though it might be coming up to meet him at any moment.

  Mallory was standing at the long table, looking from bottle to bottle.

  “Can’t make up your mind?”

  She looked up to see the smiling face of Kerry, the bartender from Godd’s.

  “You know, what you drink at an art function is very important.” Kerry said this as much to the small crowd gathered at the table as to Mallory. “It shows your true political orientation.”

  Heads turned. Kerry flourished a crisp white bar rag and continued. “A major gallery opening serves wine, champagne and sparkling water. Now, champagne,” he said, holding up a bottle as a visual aid, “given the state of the world, is in the worst possible taste. It says, ‘I realize that people in third-world nations are starving and politically oppressed, and I don’t care.’ ”

  Emma Sue Hollaran, wearing a knockoff silk blouse made by third-world child labor, sipped champagne and nodded reflexively before she could call the gesture back.

  “White wine is middle of the road. It says, ‘I have no political convictions of my own, but I would be happy to embrace yours if you would only explain them to me.’ It’s the wine of wimps.”

  The reporter from StreetLevel Weekly had been reaching for the white wine. He withdrew his hand as though it had been slapped.

  “How about a nice glass of water?” another man suggested.

  “Oh, worst possible choice,” said Kerry. “Water says, ‘I’m in complete sympathy with the plight of the homeless, and now I’m going to grind my heel into your face, you fascist pig.’ Water is much too politically volatile. They really shouldn’t serve water here.”

  “What’s left?”

  “My personal favorite.” He held up a dark bottle. “Red wine only says, ‘I don’t care if I do spill this on my suit.’ ”

  The sour-looking young man from StreetLevel set his glass of sparkling water down on the bar and edged toward the red wine. Then, perhaps thinking of the cleaning bill for his only good suit, he retrieved his glass of water and went off in search of some rich and pretty socialite whom he might kill with words.

  As Emma Sue Hollaran walked away from the table with her champagne, Kerry formed his hand into a gun and shot her with his middle finger, thus combining an obscene gesture with an imaginary kill.

  Mallory took a glass of red. “You have a problem with her?”

  “I have a problem with art critics in general. I make exceptions for the good ones, but there aren’t many like Quinn.”

  “I thought Emma Sue Hollaran was on the Public Works Committee now.”

  “She still turns in columns in the art magazines,” said Kerry. “She likes to keep her hand in with the thumb-screws. But she’ll get hers. I know where New York art critics go when they die, and it’s not pretty.”

  “You mean fire and brimstone?”

  “No, more like self-cannibalism. Critic’s Hell looks just like New York—but without any artists. The critics have to make their own art and criticize themselves. So they start chewing on their own tails, and being what they are, they can’t stop until they reach their necks, and ...”

  Everybody wants revenge.

  While Kerry went on with the bitter details of the critic’s afterli
fe, Mallory was watching J. L. Quinn in conversation with Emma Sue Hollaran. Quinn’s polite mask was fracturing. He wore a nearly human expression of dismay. As Hollaran walked away, he emptied his glass in one swill—not his style. What had Hollaran said?

  He turned to see Mallory watching him. He came toward her now, and set his empty glass on the table with a nod to Kerry.

  “Take this.” Mallory handed him her own glass. “You look like your stock portfolio just died.”

  “I’ve just been told the name of the artist who’s doing the work for Gregor’s plaza.”

  “How bad can it be?”

  “It couldn’t be any worse.”

  Kerry appeared with another glass of red wine and held it out to Mallory. She nodded her thanks, and turned back to Quinn. “Did she give you any idea what the plaza art will be like?”

  “No, she didn’t. Hollaran’s forte is covert attack. It won’t be anything small, I can guarantee that. I only hope its removal won’t be too much of a problem.”

  “You can have it removed? I thought the law protected—”

  “The law? Oh, yes, I bought off the law. I have the paperwork on my desk to remove whatever travesty she decides to install.”

  “You bought the law?”

  “Mallory, you can buy anything in New York City.”

  “I’m the law.”

  “As if I needed reminding. Oh, please. We’re both grown-ups. This town has not had six continuous uncorrupted moments since its inception. What can’t you buy here? You can buy men, women, and children. You can have sex with them, or just remove the organs you need for spare parts. And it’s not getting more corrupt, only more imaginative. Before we developed the technology, they only used the spare body parts for trophies and souvenirs.”

  “And artwork.” She was staring at his face. “Where did you get that scar? Did a woman give it to you?”

  “Charles Butler gave it to me.”

  Was he being sarcastic? No, he was serious. “Why?”

  “You’ll have to ask Charles.”

  The curator for a New Jersey bank’s art collection looked down at his red ticket and asked the computer software king, “Would you be interested in trading my football arena filled with marmalade and great white sharks for your mile-long line of bustless but sexy blondes?”

  Quinn watched her walk away from him. It seemed she was always doing that. She walked past a neighborhood junkie, apparently uninterested in his unlawful act of demonstrating a drug fix for a small group of well-dressed out-of-towners.

  One of the nicely dressed people obligingly held a lighter under the junkie’s spoon as the man filled his needle with a liquefied dope. The junkie expertly tied the elastic cord around his upper arm to make a vein bulge out. And now he inserted the needle, and the spectators watched him fly away to the land of Wynken, Blynken and Slow Death.

  This was not the first junkie Quinn had seen up close. He had seen Oren Watt outside the gallery on the night Aubry died. He had only taken note of the dark glasses and the bizarre mouth. All the other features had been wiped out by the headlights of three police cars, all trained on Oren Watt. His limbs had been jerking to a music of the mind with only half its notes intact. Between his lips, his tongue had darted in and out like a small pink mouse, keeping the rhythm of his spasms, as Watt’s feet tap-danced in codes of pain. He had fallen to the ground, and then scrambled back to his feet.

  “What a trouper, ” one cop had called out.

  “Encore, ” yelled another.

  And Oren Watt had done his junkie’s song and dance one more time.

  Quinn, Markowitz and Riker had been passing by the drug addict and his art critics in blue uniforms when Quinn brought the parade to a halt. He had pointed to the junkie, and Markowitz shook his head, saying, “Not enough blood on him. ”

  Quinn remembered looking down at his own clothes that night, the blood on his shoes and pantlegs. And the policemen and technicians filing past them, going to and from the gallery, all had blood on them.

  Koozeman jerked his head to the sound of her voice. She smiled. It had taken less than twenty minutes to instill this lab-rat reflex in the man.

  “Miss Mallory.” His smile was forced this time.

  “Just Mallory is fine. I suppose your next opening will be an Oren Watt show?”

  “No. I told you I don’t handle him, and I never will. The television people only rented the gallery for the shooting. Just business. Nothing to do with art, really.” He was perspiring, and his hand went to the knot of his tie, unconsciously working it loose.

  Feeling the heat, Koozeman?

  “Don’t you think Oren Watt is a genius?”

  “Of course not,” said Koozeman. “He knows nothing about art, and it shows. He could never work outside that narrow market of ghoulish souvenirs. The drawings are poor by any standard. If you’re thinking of investing—”

  “No, but I am interested in art—more and more every day,” said Mallory. “The most fascinating piece of art I ever saw came out of your old gallery in the East Village.”

  “But you would have been a child when I was in that location.”

  “I was. All I have now are the photographs of the artist and the dancer when the butcher was done with them. I study them every day, every damn day. I can’t stop looking at them. I’d say there was a dark genius to the arrangement of the bodies. Wouldn’t you?”

  “In the context of the crime, perhaps—”

  “But Oren Watt is no genius, is he?”

  Koozeman’s forehead was filmed with sweat. And now, not wanting to lose the momentum of a hit-and-run, she went off in search of Charles Butler. She had a few questions for him, too.

  “The scar? Quinn told you about that?”

  “He says you did it.”

  Charles took Mallory by the arm and led her to the only corner of the room unpopulated by tickets or patrons.

  “I’ll tell you some other time, all right? Here,” he said, presenting her with a red ticket. “A souvenir.”

  Mallory looked down at her ticket. “I can’t believe you paid good money for this.”

  “I didn’t. Koozeman would never insult me that way. He gave me an obscene discount. I think he wants to cultivate me for the A list. I hope you like it. Dean Stan’s idea for this one was an elephant museum. His plan was to reenact all the elephant jokes with stuffed elephants. The real thing. Only dead.”

  “Charles.”

  “Oh, lighten up. It’s only a joke.”

  “So, that wasn’t really one of his numbers.”

  “Oh, yes it was—one of his best.”

  She smiled at him. It was one of those rare smiles, not meant to convey anything threatening or sinister, but only the pleasure of the moment. And to think he had bought that pleasure with an elephant joke.

  Then the moment was over, the smile was gone. “Quinn thinks these tickets were Koozeman’s idea.”

  “Well, that would only fit if it was a joke. He’s always been a man of extremes. But he—”

  “Maybe it was a joke. I’ll bet you even money that Koozeman was surprised when some of the tickets actually sold the night of the first show.”

  “No bet, Mallory. I’m sure you’re right. Koozeman does have an interesting sense of humor. Let me see if I can guess where you’re going with this. You think Koozeman was setting up Dean Starr to look like a fool in public, am I right?”

  She nodded. He continued. “When Starr was a critic, his writing showed a lack of native intelligence. Odds are the joke would have gone over his head. So the scheme would suggest some animosity, a—”

  “A falling-out among killers?”

  “That’s reaching, Mallory.”

  “Not really. Koozeman still owns the old gallery in the East Village. He rents it out through a real estate agent. According to the agent, he put both of the galleries on the market this morning. He’s planning to liquidate and run.”

  “That theory won’t hold up,” said Charl
es. “He’d be running very slow, given the current real estate market.”

  “He’s greedy. He wants to leave, but he can’t let go of the money on the hoof. The tickets are worth money, but only if he sells them fast. It all hangs on money, the old murders and the new one.”

  She seemed so comfortable inside of Koozeman’s skin, it seemed a shame to point out the obvious flaw in her logic, which was also the flaw in Mallory. “You always force everything to a money motive. And I blame this on your father. That was his all-time favorite, wasn’t it? But twelve years ago, most people just looked at the evidence of butchery and said, ‘Psycho.’ ”

  “Charles, twelve years ago, Quinn didn’t buy the psycho theory. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  As J. L. Quinn approached them, Mallory turned and glided away. The critic stopped and watched her back for a moment. Then he smiled at Charles. “She asked you about the scar?”

  “Yes, but I put her off.”

  “You must tell me how you did that. I’ve never met anyone more tenacious than Mallory.”

  “It’s an old magic trick.” Charles pulled a coin from his pocket, displayed it in his spread hand, and then made a fist. “You do it with distraction, replacing one thing with another.” When he opened his fist again, the coin had become a twenty-dollar bill.

  “I’m in your debt, Charles.”

  “Good. Perhaps you could explain something to me. I understand you think the tickets were Koozeman’s idea. I like that theory. It suits Koozeman. But it doesn’t explain why people are actually buying the tickets. They’re all grown-ups. Not a four-year-old in the pack.”

  While they discussed the big production of the little tickets, Charles took slower, more careful measurements of the man who might be stalking Mallory. Jamie Quinn was a cool one, and always had been. Charming manners and eyes that chilled. As Quinn had once instructed him in the art of fencing as a child, he now guided Charles Butler through the unfathomable.

  “So, it’s just business? If you don’t have the talent of an artist, you can make do with the talent of a business-man. Close?”