EQMM, March-April 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  That gets my attention. “A favor?"

  "The guy didn't come off looking like your average junkie; eyes wild as pinwheels but smelling more like turpentine than a garbage truck. Was short on cash to cover his rent and to buy paints, canvas, and stuff is what he said. He said he didn't feel like being cheated on what the pawn shops and art galleries were offering him for his Godowsky, is what he said. The boss took the painting on consignment and meanwhile wrote him a nice check as an advance. He's like that, the boss, a big heart and all. No spring chicken, but he's going to make a fine and loving daddy.” She gently patted what only a fertile imagination could call a baby bump.

  "You said two paintings.” I describe the girl in the golden gown.

  "The other,” the clerk says, nodding. “Looked to be the same model he used, who sort of somewhat resembles your lady friend here. Went into the window and sold faster than you can spell Godowsky, so I wouldn't think twice about grabbing this one up, I was you."

  Irma steps forward and shouts an excited, “Yes. What are you asking?"

  The clerk tells her and explains, “We'll need cash or traveler's checks, ma'am. My boss isn't one for personal checks or credit cards from anyone but trade regulars."

  The answer elicits a moan from Irma. She shoots me the kind of soulful stare puppy dogs engineer when they're begging for table scraps. The price is more than I'm carrying in bills. I haul out my roll and peel off ten Ben Franklins. “Will this hold it for us until I find an ATM?"

  "Certainly shows good intentions, sir. I'll go make you out a receipt."

  "And something else I'll need."

  "Oh?"

  "The name and address of the man who brought the painting to you."

  She looks like she's about to quote some store policy against revealing customer information to anybody outside law enforcement and the IRS. I peel off another pair of Franklins and dangle them. She hesitates before trading in the deep furrows between her sculptured eyebrows on a toothsome smile. “It's not far from here,” she says, tucking the bills inside her dress, down around her nonexistent breasts.

  * * * *

  The four-story factory building is a leading candidate for teardown, its regiment of walled-over truck docks decorated in graffiti and new and disintegrating one-sheets, a relic from SoHo's past subdivided into cheap loft living. Once through the unguarded entrance, the outdoor city smells give way to a mix of indefinable noxious odors. A narrow stairway that threatens collapse with every cautious step takes us past derelicts sleeping in corridor alcoves to the top floor loft of Bo Goodwin.

  The bell doesn't work, and there's no response to my knocking on the rusted metal door until I bang harder and holler for Goodwin by name. The spy hole opens for several seconds. It's another minute before the door slides open and we're staring back at a young man in boxer shorts, barefooted and bare-chested, his body and arms freckled by oil paint residue; chiseled features punctuated by restless brown eyes, crooked yellow teeth, and an unruly beard the color of mud.

  "You're an hour early,” he says, his voice soggy with sleep. “C'mon, entrez vous." His French pronunciation is lousy, on a par with my own.

  I nod confirmation to Irma, who's also recognized Goodwin has mistaken us for somebody else, as we enter a vast expanse of loft space with living areas defined by bits and pieces of furniture and appliances, a stove and fridge by a sink loaded with pots and dishes, a sagging sofa and a decrepit armchair over by one wall, a disheveled bed pushed against another wall; clothes strewn about, the floor for a closet; overall, a nightmare of a bachelor pad. A painter's easel—a color-splattered bed sheet covering the canvas—and a cluttered work bench dominate the center of the room.

  Goodwin ponders Irma. “I didn't know you'd be bringing company,” he tells me. “Is this some kind of a setup?” He shifts his weight from foot to foot, on sudden guard against what I don't know or care to know. Through the years, minding my own business has kept me healthier than any HMO. He's obviously confused me with someone else. I tell him so, explaining what brought us here:

  "The Godowsky portrait at Treasures Island? We just bought it and will be taking it back to L.A. with us."

  His tone lightens. “Bought it, huh? It wasn't cheap."

  "Worth every dollar. The clerk sent us over to see you when she learned we collect Godowsky, thinking you might have others for sale."

  Goodwin's eyes glide to the easel and back to us, while he weighs the possibility, a study in indecision until: “It would cost you another bundle, ‘cause I'd still owe the store a commission."

  "No problem, assuming it's as good as the portrait in the window."

  "Guaranteed,” he tells us, his head bobbing agreement while he quicksteps across the room to a group of canvases stacked against the wall. He exercises care rifling through them until he locates the one he's been searching for, emits a victory noise, and displays the canvas.

  It's another rendering of the girl in the golden gown that caused Cutler's infatuation and locked me into this search for Michelle Ballard. Irma and I recognize it immediately as a forgery, dated the way Godowsky never dated any of his works.

  "One more for you to see,” Goodwin says. He settles the oil against the base of the easel and returns to the canvas stack. After another minute, he removes a second portrait of Michelle signed and dated by Godowsky. It's a smaller canvas, a nude, Michelle gaunt and wasted, her face a study in turmoil, her once hypnotic blue-green eyes blinded by defeat.

  Irma locks her arms around herself and, shaking, screams, “Michelle! Oh, my dear Lord. My dear Lord. What's happened to you?"

  Goodwin, puzzled by her reaction, asks, “Michelle? Who's that?"

  I tell him, “The girl in the painting."

  "No,” Goodwin says. “Micki was her name. Her name was Micki."

  Irma explodes into tears. "Was. Oh, my dear Lord. He said was. He said was."

  "She was my girl, Micki was, and she left me cold,” Goodwin says. Now he's also shedding tears by the bucketful. “I woke up one morning and she was gone. Over a year ago. I finally got around to painting Micki from memory, how I remembered her looking on the day she arrived here knocking on my door. Our last night together. The good times in-between."

  "Imitating Godowsky's style, signing his name,” I say, like it's a fact that doesn't need validation.

  "He was my uncle,” Goodwin says, “my father's brother, only he kept the original family name, from the old country. All I learned about painting was from my uncle, until finally I could match him stroke for stroke. Dealers ignored my work as second-rate imitations, except when I copied Uncle Ivor's style and signed them with the Godowsky name; like whenever I need scratch to survive."

  "Habits are a luxury."

  "Yeah,” he agrees, lifting his palms to the bright copper ceiling surrounding the skylight twelve feet up that's showering us with late afternoon sun in a cloudless sky.

  "And forgeries put you in prison."

  "Not forgeries, sir. Godowsky's still legally my name. Uncle Ivor never dated his works, so I do, using my birthday as the date. There's no law against selling copies. And Micki's portraits sell better than anything, my originals as well as my copies of the one by my uncle.” His words are racing. He looks desperate for acknowledgment. “She had that one with her on the day she showed up at my door unannounced, saying how my uncle sent her and she was looking for a better life than the one she was living now and how my uncle said I was the one to look after her for him."

  "And living with you turned her into a junkie. You call that a better life?"

  "I've been living with that sin ever since, sir. Nothing I'm proud of. I loved Micki with all my heart and she loved me."

  Irma unbridles her anger again. “Michelle, damn you. Her name is Michelle, and I am her mother."

  "I see it, ma'am. She was always telling me how you looked alike, like sisters. How much she loved and missed you, but this was the life she needed, free to be herself."

  "
Did she say where she was going before she left you? Did she leave a note? Have you heard from Michelle since?"

  The questions rattle Goodwin. He averts his eyes from the blistering condemnation she is pouring on him. “I apologize for not making myself clear, ma'am. When I explained I woke up and she was gone, I mean she had passed on sometime during the night, in our bed over there, cradled in my arms like always.” His eyes are clouded with tears again. He chokes on his words. “The city took her and she was cremated and after that I don't know what . . . God, I need a fix. I do, I do, I do . . . Where the hell is he?"

  Before I can stop her, Irma grabs one of the sharp-edged palette knives off the workbench and launches at Goodwin. He sees the oil-crusted blade coming, but can't move fast enough to avoid it completely. Irma's thrust catches him below the neck, inches away from his heart. Blood seeps from the wound and mellows into his chest hair as she yanks out the blade and raises it to strike again.

  "My little girl is dead because of you!” she screams.

  I grab her wrist and force the blade from her grip, trap her in my arms.

  Goodwin, bandaging the wound with his palm, shouting with pain and out of fear, stumbles backward. He bangs into the wall and slides down into a sitting position on the stained hardwood floor. The small diamond-shaped blade has done damage, but nothing permanent. He'll need patching up, but he'll live.

  Irma is trying to wrestle free of me, trying to get to the workbench and another of the palette knives, demanding, “I want him dead. I want him rotting in hell."

  "No,” I tell her. “Enough."

  Without a backward glance at Goodwin, who's cry-babying for his connection, I steer Irma to the door.

  "Wait here a minute,” I say, and backtrack to the easel.

  I pick up a palette knife and use the scepter-shaped steel blade to slash and shred the nude of a drug-bludgeoned Michelle out of existence.

  As an afterthought, compelled by curiosity, I toss aside the shroud covering the canvas on the easel, revealing an elegant and vibrant Michelle projecting an intoxicating enthusiasm for life.

  I return to Irma and hand it over, telling her, “We came to find your daughter and we've found her. It's time to go home."

  * * * *

  Driving Irma back to Cahuilla Sands from LAX, Cutler's office at One Wilshire in downtown L.A. is an easy one-stop off the freeway interchange. I call ahead, figuring it'll take me five, ten minutes max to explain about Michelle Ballard and Godowsky's portrait and square accounts with Cutler before we're back on the road.

  We're barely settled in the waiting room after the receptionist announces me when Cutler comes charging out of his inner sanctum like an Olympian after a gold medal in the 100-meter dash. He reaches me and quits, bends over with his hands on his knees, huffing and puffing, sweat dripping onto the plush pile carpeting, insisting, “Tell me that you have good news, that you've found her."

  Before I can frame the best way to let him down gently, he notices Irma.

  He's momentarily transfixed.

  Rising to his full height, sucking in enough air to reach his toes, he points to her like he's identifying the suspect in a lineup. His lips are moving, but he can't seem to get words out, until:

  "Bless you, my good man, you're a miracle worker, as good as I was told. Better. You not only found her for me, but you've brought her to me. . . . Oh, my dear, you've aged exactly how I've imagined since I first set eyes on your portrait. The years have made you more beautiful than ever."

  Irma smiles nervously and, uncertain how to respond, turns to me for direction.

  I know what I'd do, but I give her a look that says it's her life, her decision to make.

  Cutler reaches out for her hands.

  She hesitates briefly before letting him take them.

  Copyright © 2010 Robert S. Levinson

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: SATAN RIDES THE 5:15 by Vincent Lardo

  Vincent Lardo is the author of several novels, including the mys-teries The Hampton Affair and TheHampton Connection, published by Putnam in 2000 and 2002. China House, his first novel, has been selected by the Author's Guild for their back-in-print program and is available on the web via iUniverse.com, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. The Sacramento Star said of China House that its “recipe of spice, the supernatural, and suspense is blue ribbon. It may become a classic."

  1.

  They had just finished dinner in a neighborhood restaurant. As the waiter cleared the table, Tom emptied a bottle of Chianti into their glasses. Waving away the dessert menu, he said to Colin, “You look very pensive. Are you thinking about next weekend?"

  "You might say that,” Colin responded. “In fact, I've been thinking about Rosemary's Baby. Do you know it?"

  "The book or the film?"

  "Either, because it's the plot that concerns me,” Colin said. “The story of an actor who sells his soul—or his wife's body—for a starring role in a Broadway show. I forget how it all turns out."

  "She has a boy,” Tom told him. “He wins a Tony, they go to Hollywood where they live happily ever after in a modest mansion in Beverly Hills. The boy becomes a producer known primarily for his religious epics. You can't fault Satan for his ironic sense of humor."

  "I think they all go to the devil,” Colin countered.

  "And that's where you'll go,” Tom assured him, “if you don't get this role. Your bio says you're twenty-four. I know you're twenty-six, and on a clear day you can see thirty. From juvenile to supporting player—at best—to oblivion. You've got to get the starring role in Freddy's new play, Colin, or you're as viable as yesterday's mashed potatoes."

  "And for it I have to kill him?"

  "Think of it as one small murder for man and one giant kindness for mankind. Besides, I'm doing the dirty work with your help."

  "It's called aiding and abetting."

  "You talk like a character in those dreadful soaps you keep appearing in."

  "They pay the rent,” Colin said.

  "And little else,” Tom reminded him. “Now, shall we go over it once more before the weekend?"

  * * * *

  The man whose life these two handsome young men were plotting to end this coming weekend was none other than Fred Langton, the legendary writer/director of the successful Broadway team Langton and Langton. With his wife, Vera, wearing the producer's hat, this extraordinary couple were solely responsible for no less than a half-dozen Broadway hits, all of which had found their way to Hollywood, where Tonys turned into Oscars. Fred Langton was often called a Renaissance man when his name appeared in print and a bastard when it was bandied about in private. A variety of more descriptive and colorful expletives were also attributed to the Renaissance man with the Machiavellian touch, who was as ruthless as he was talented. This combination attracted envy and hate in equal amounts, and the fact that Fred Langton was not done in years ago attested to luck also being one of his abiding traits.

  However, it appears that his luck ran out when he signed the virtually unknown Tom Harrington for the lead in his last Broadway show, making Harrington a matinee idol and a very happy actor. Alas, joy turned to disappointment, then anger, when Tom received the longed-for offer from out West and was told by Langton's lawyer that he could not accept it because he owed Mr. Langton his services in another play. Tom knew he had signed with Langton and Langton for two plays, but he didn't know that until he had fulfilled the second obligation he could not appear on stage, screen, television, or radio without the permission of Langton and Langton which, the lawyer made clear, was not likely to be forthcoming in the immediate future. So strident was the second-play clause and such a bitch was Fred Langton that Tom Harrington could not even appear on TV to solicit subscriptions for PBS.

  When he asked how he could get out of the contract, Tom's agent, without malicious forethought, read aloud the final sentence in the binding agreement.

  Upon the demise of either party, this contract is rendered null a
nd void.

  Revenge has no greater champion than an actor thwarted from strutting his stuff before a camera. There, in his agent's office, Tom decided that he was going to Hollywood and Fred Langton was going to hell.

  * * * *

  The slow leak in Fred Langton's lucky vein began to hemorrhage when he gave Tom not only the venue for the crime but a scapegoat to go with it. The Langtons, like many of their colleagues in the New York theater world, kept a second home in Westport, Connecticut, a convenient one-hour-plus ride from Grand Central station. Here they employed a cleaning woman in the person of Rosa Ortiz. On a Saturday morning, before taking the Metro North to Westport, Fred went to his friendly ATM in Grand Central station and withdrew two hundred dollars in twenties before boarding his train. Rosa was just finishing her weekly chores when he arrived at the house.

  Going directly to the master bedroom, Fred put his wallet, keys, and loose change on his dresser before doffing suit and tie for jeans and polo shirt. Vera, as often happened, had an appointment with her hairdresser and would join him that evening. Fred decided to go to the local pub for a burger and beer that afternoon. Retrieving his wallet from atop the dresser, he paused to count his money and discovered his total assets were a five-dollar bill and a few singles. The twenties were gone, and only Rosa had been in the house since his arrival. Subtlety was not Fred Langton's strong suit. He picked up the phone and called the police. They picked up poor Rosa and hauled her into the police station, along with her husband, Alonzo. There, accuser and accused came face to face and the fight was on. In the melee that followed, Rosa denied taking the money; Fred said he would tell all the people who employed Rosa that she was a thief; Alonzo spat in Mr. Langton's face and threatened to kill him. The evidence against Rosa was circumstantial at best so the police sent everyone home before blood was spilt and relegated the missing twenties to the cold-case file.

  The hot-blooded Mexican, Alonzo, had threatened to kill Fred Langton within earshot of a room full of police officers. When Fred told this story to anyone who would listen, Tom knew that an angel or devil was sitting on his shoulder. Uncertain of the identity of his benefactor, Tom was torn between lighting a candle in St. Patrick's Cathedral or mounting a cross on a black ribbon—upside down.