“I’m trying to find out if someone rented commercial space in SoHo. Or maybe uptown on Madison.”
“I see.”
I took a sip of the cold, sparkling water. “This’d be space for a gallery.”
“An art gallery?” she asked.
“Right.”
“Is it that woman who was hurt in the explosion? The one you know?”
“No,” I said, “but close enough.”
“Sharon was telling me. Sounds like something worth doing, Terry. To find out who hurt a friend.”
I shrugged. “Feels that way.”
“OK,” she said, “give me the name. There’s someone I can call. I’ll have to get him out of bed, but…”
“Julie, I don’t want you to use a chit you don’t have.”
“No,” she replied. “Count me in. Like I said, sounds right.”
I gave her two names. On the other end of the phone, pen scratching on paper.
I told her I’d call her.
“I’ll be back by 11, 11:15,” she said. “If you’d like to come by…Late breakfast, early brunch.” She added nervously, “You know.”
“I wish, Julie. I’ve got to work this now.”
“Rain check?”
I hesitated. “We’ll see.”
It would’ve been wrong to say no. She’s a good girl. And happy.
The offices of AbEx magazine were in a building on the outskirts of SoHo, at the corner of Wooster and Canal, a short stroll from Chinatown. They were precisely as I remembered: musty, disheveled, comfortable, inviting. Years ago, I freelanced a piece for AbEx, profiling Sandro Chia, more as a favor to Marina than for the fee. The piece I turned in was breathless, a puerile display of pyrotechnics designed to impress my new wife. Arno Bloom took the overblown tripe and turned it into something presentable.
That I was standing in the open vestibule to the AbEx offices was no guarantee that Arno Bloom was inside. He’d been known to teeter out without closing up, head out for dim sum and a casual stroll to a gallery on Mercer or a meeting on Spring, and return to find a pair of homeless men asleep on the battered leather sofa that I stood in front of now. He denied that he offered this kindness by design, but his friends knew better, as did his neighbors in this old building, who made sure that no one walked out with his old Compaq 286. Arno kept his archives behind lock and key, so well-organized as to suggest that he knew what he had was of historical value. He’d founded AbEx during World War II and was the first American to profile in depth the abstract expressionists Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Arshile Gorky and Yves Tanguy, among dozens of others. He championed Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Josef Kline and Mark Rothko, and he created a diary of the downtown art scene at its height. It was said that the paintings Arno owned, all on loan to museums throughout the U.S. and his native Poland, were worth perhaps $100 million. Yet the 83-year-old man with the Einstein hairstyle and oversized glasses that made him look like a five-foot-high owl lived as he had since he arrived in New York shortly before the blitzkrieg—with a simplicity that revealed contentment.
I found Arno at work, his elbows on the dented gray Steelcase desk.
“A little early, Arno, isn’t it?”
He looked at me and I could see him trying to place me. “Fiorentino,” he mused as he stood. “Orr. Terry Orr. Chia. So many words. Alliterations. Do you control your enthusiasm now?”
I nodded.
The office was a mess: stacks and stacks of torn and creased manila folders and loose sheets and old newspapers on top of beat-up filing cabinets, and assorted folders and papers on the desktop; a big old TV and, sitting on it, a radio with its antenna extended skyward, and on the radio, more paper, at all angles. The crooked blinds over the long windows were speckled with dust and a ratty towel covered the air-conditioning unit. The Indian rug on the floor might’ve been beautiful, say, 30 years ago, but now it lay worn and faded on the linoleum floor.
“Your wife. Terrible, terrible,” he muttered as he wobbled toward me.
I stepped closer and shook his hand.
“This was a woman with a gift,” he said.
He gestured for me to sit, and he eased himself into the chair next to mine. A slight, knowing gesture with his head invited me to speak.
“Arno, I need to look up something in your archives.”
“About your wife? Of cour—”
“Actually, about Bullethead. You remember?”
He wrinkled his nose. “A fraud. A successful fraud, but a fraud.”
“I’m trying to track him down.”
“A séance you’ll need.”
“He’s dead?”
He nodded. “An overdose, though not so interesting as heroin and a model at the Château Marmont, if you will. Somebody dumped him on the Pacific Coast Highway, outside a Denny’s. A very American death. A bit lowbrow, perhaps?”
Christ. “When?”
“Two years ago, maybe,” he replied. “This was, I think, about the time your wife and son were killed.” He shifted in the chair. “Why are you asking about this guy? You’re not going to write about him? You can’t. There is nothing to write, nothing with Walter Pafko.”
“Walter Pafko?”
“His real name. He took Vlad Smith from the Russians and David and Tony Smith.” He frowned in distaste. “Don’t waste ink on this guy.”
“I’m trying to piece together what happened at the Henley Harper Gallery.”
He smiled as if relieved. “Ah, yes. Judy. I hear she is better.”
I shrugged.
“This crazy place…” He let his thought drift away. “You’ll give my regards.”
“Of course,” I said. “I thought maybe Bullethead was involved in this thing. Just a random idea, I guess. Explosives, downtown, art.”
He pushed off the wooden arms of the chair. “Makes sense to me.” His back to me, he dug into his baggy slacks and withdrew the heavy end of a key chain, a ring with perhaps two dozen keys. “You’ll see what you can find.”
He went to a door with sturdy beveled glass and undid the lock. He snapped on the overhead light. Inside the small room, lining both walls, were high rows of old filing cabinets, dated from 1944 to the present. A wooden chair with casters rested against the wall.
“Every issue is in there.” He pointed to a cabinet to my right. “Start with ’84, maybe.”
Arno stepped aside to let me squeeze in.
“Is there an index?” I asked.
He smiled and tapped the side of his head.
I went quickly through the back copies of AbEx, skipping the issues I knew well; with Bullethead dead, I didn’t know what I was looking for. There were only three copies of each magazine in each section, and I found myself turning the thin pages carefully, gingerly, as if I were holding a rare copy of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper from the 1850s; and rather than simply dump a copy on the floor when I was done with it, I put one back in its snug, proper place before removing the next.
Finally, I found a photo of Bullethead amid the back pages of the November 1986 issue. At a party at the Paula Cooper Gallery, he had his arm flung over the shoulder of Jackie Winsor, whom Arno described as an artist who “penetrated the anatomy of context” with her abstract sculptures. Scowling, tilting his shaved head in a manner that he seemed to think made him look menacing, Bullet-head had a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s dangling in his hand. Winsor, meanwhile, looked like she hoped a trapdoor would open under him.
I looked closely at him, bringing the magazine under my nose in the stark light. His head looked more like the crown of an artillery shell than a cartridge. But “Bullet-head” was close enough.
Ten minutes later, I found something. In the May 1988 issue, with a Mapplethorpe shot of a deadpanning Jasper Johns on the cover, there was a photo spread in back of a Bullethead opening at the Carroll. Looking wan and soiled, his eyes sunken in black pits, Vlad Smith was sagging on a sofa, sycophants at hand. To his right on the sofa, looking a
s if she was responsible for keeping his head from lolling, was a young Edie Reeves. In the caption, she was identified as his representative.
I stood, chair creaking beneath me, and went out to Arno, who was proofreading an article the old-fashioned way: on paper, with a blue pencil in his hand. I slid the magazine in front of him.
“You remember anything about this?”
He looked at the cover. “Yes. I like this photo of Jasper. But this event? With Smith? Nothing.”
“The girl?”
“She’s pretty.” He looked at the caption. “She is working now with Judy Harper.”
“But she represented Bullethead?”
He dropped his finger on the glossy page. “If it says so…”
“No, I’m not questioning your reporting—”
Arno tapped my hand. “This is 1988,” he said. “His time had passed. Who would touch him? She looks like a kid here. Her first job, maybe?”
“You know any of these other people?”
He shook his head. “They are interchangeable. Not to be cruel…”
I lifted the magazine. “What do you know about Sol Beck?”
“I knew Hopper.”
“Beck’s wife? Lin-Lin Chin.”
He said no.
I went back into the archive room and put away the magazine. I cut the light and came out. Arno handed me his keys and I locked the door. I thanked him and offered to buy him a fresh cup of coffee.
He declined. “Work,” he said. “I am alert until noon.” He stood to walk me to the door. “I don’t know from spouses, Terry. Lin-Lin Chin. And you, I thought maybe you disappeared.”
He put his hand on my back as we moved toward the open door.
He asked, “You are looking for work?”
“No,” I replied, then added, to my surprise, I’m still trying to settle in.”
“I say this: Take forever. What’s the rush?”
I said goodbye and I went toward the gray hallway and the fireproof stairs.
“What’s up?”
“You,” I replied. “Is D?”
“No, he’s still snoozing. But it’s fine. I’ve got homework” she said. “Where are you?”
“Mulberry Street.”
“Italian side or Chinese side?”
“I’m in the DMZ,” I replied. “Now I’m on the Chinese side.”
“That cell is clear, Dad. I can hear the cars.”
I passed between cars inching impatiently toward the tattered rubber cones and flashing lights that signaled construction on the Manhattan Bridge.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’ve got to see somebody,” I told her as I reached the sidewalk. “Get D to take you to the theater. I’ll meet you at 1:15.”
“Can we ask him to lunch?”
“Whatever.” I stopped. Lost in thought, in strategy, I’d just paced nine blocks. “Take the tickets. They’re on—”
“The refrigerator. I’m looking at them.”
“And Bella, I need you to do me a favor. I need the phone number of a car service. I’ve got to do something and—”
“I’ll call for you.”
“No, you’ll have to leave a credit card—”
“Dad, I know your Amex number,” she huffed. “And your MasterCard.”
That figures.
“Give me the address.”
I did. “I need it in a half hour,” I added.
“Can we keep it for the theater? Be cool to go to the theater in a limo.”
No. “Maybe. Bella, don’t do anything nuts. No white stretch thing.”
“I was thinking that. Big, long, white limo, and I’ll stand up through the hole in the roof and—”
“Say good-bye, Bella.”
“Arrivederci, Poppa.”
“Very cute.”
Edie Reeves had the third floor of an old cast-iron building on Watt Street, not far from West Broadway. Around the corner, a line snaked out of Starbucks.
“Terry Orr,” she said. The modest exclamation revealed her British accent. She pulled back her front door and her bare feet padded the glistening hardwood floor.
Her nipples pressed against the thin fabric of her long, silklike orange robe. She tugged at her coal-black hair.
“You alone?” I asked.
“Sadly.”
“We need to talk.”
“Do you have an office—”
“Now.”
She steeled herself to argue, then seemed to slump in sudden resignation. “Of course.” She stepped aside.
Now she wore a shiny indigo top unbuttoned at the collar and black slacks above stylish flats, and she put a cup of coffee on the glass table at the center of her dining room. I looked through the glass at the bare floor below, my hands folded near the water she’d served me.
She returned with a small plate that held a stack of biscotti.
“Please,” she said, as she offered me a cookie. “I know it’s not Harrod’s after Boxing Day, but …”
She tried to retain her customary reserve, but it wobbled hard.
I said, “We need to talk about Judy. And Bullethead and what you know, Edie.”
She held up her hand. “Terry, please, let me explain.”
Behind her, on the stark white wall, was a red sculpture, a diamond shape pierced by a red rod. Heartless arcwelding. It fit perfectly in this costly, soulless apartment.
“Let me get it out,” she continued. “I should have come straightaway, I know, but it’s hard.”
I looked at her. If she expected a break, she wasn’t going to get it from me.
“You were never cold, Terry,” she tried. “Marina—”
“Let’s not do that, Edie. You, Lin-Lin. Lay it out.”
She brought her palm to her forehead, and closed her eyes. “Terry. Ambition, money … You know what I mean, Terry.”
“No, I don’t.”
She reached for her coffee.
I said, “What I know is someone made a move on Judy. And did it with no class.”
She wanted to say something, but she hesitated.
“You could be back in Brighton now, but you decided to stay,” I led.
She sipped the coffee, then ran a warm hand on her thin forearm.
“I was going to come and see you, Terry. I was.”
“Then let’s do what we should.”
She nodded. “How much shall I tell you?”
“Let’s start with Bullethead.”
“When I met Vlad— You knew Bullethead preferred to be called Vlad Smith. What a joke: He was too self-absorbed to have heroes and hadn’t enough talent to have influences.”
“But you represented him.”
She shrugged. “I was ambitious. Nobody would handle him; the drugs, the arrogance. My beginning. His end. I was a kid. It seemed romantic.”
She sipped the coffee, then held the cup between her tapered fingers.
“He was impossible. He wouldn’t work. Couldn’t. It was over. No one would touch him. And he was completely oblivious to it all. He thought he was brilliant. Really. All these people coming about and he thought it was because they adored him. The scene he created: He believed it was the Factory and he was Andy Warhol. It was one long party, completely out of control. You know, Terry. You were there.”
“We were not,” I said.
“No,” she replied, as she let out a breath, “I suppose not.”
“Bullethead…”
“I had to restore some form of order if I had any hope of making something out of the situation.”
“And?”
“So I hired Just a Guy. The money was running low so I sent Bullethead to Laguna Beach to dry out and I hired Just a Guy.”
“I don’t get you,” I said.
“After a while, he wanted to be called ‘Just a Guy.’ His real name is Zoran Vuk.”
“And he did what?”
“He made Smithereens. He was a street kid who knew how to handle explosives and I showed hi
m what Bullet-head had done. He took to it in a heartbeat and he was spot on. Brilliant.” She snapped her fingers. “And I had Vlad Smith back in business.”
“Christ—”
“No,” she interrupted, “I know. But it somehow seemed logical. There was all this money and so little genuine talent and it was exciting, Terry. I wanted to belong. It was all so alluring and, God, it was just bloody pieces of metal, after all. It wasn’t like we were copying Rembrandt.”
“Edie,” I said impatiently.
“Justification,” she nodded, “but at the time…”
I stood. To my right was a tall canvas splashed with pastels. Pollock goes Miami, I thought. There was more craft in the frame. “Tell me about Vuk.”
“Zoran. Zoran was freaky, but compared to Bullethead he was very manageable. That is, until he began to understand.”
“That he could make a fortune blowing up aluminum.”
“Yes, I made a huge mistake when I showed him ‘Angel/Angle.’”
“I’ll bet.”
“So we found ourselves with even more Smithereens, as he tried to replicate the box. We did well with the uninformed—a lot of uptown lawyers with trophy wives own faux Smithereens.”
“Just a Guy originals.”
She nodded.
“Then?”
“Then Bullethead died.”
“We all agree: a very American death,” I said. “Maybe Schnabel could direct.”
“It made the papers.”
“And your guy was out of business.”
“Not immediately, but yes.”
I came back to the chair. “What happened?”
“That’s when he began to claim to be Just a Guy and he said now he had his own vision. But he was just absolutely awful. No sense of an aesthetic. No one could possibly take him seriously.”
He started out with adaptations of what Bullethead had done, she said: He’d break bottles, old stained-glass windows; he’d find an old guitar sticking out of a garbage can, smash it and try to get Edie to sell the pieces. He had no idea. Little wonder: Why would shards of metal be valuable and not jagged pieces of stained glass? The difference wasn’t in the art, but in the artist; not what he created, but how he behaved. Never mind style over substance. It was more about a uniform, about acceptance into a fractured fraternity.
“Then he began creating these monstrosities: mannequins with their nipples replaced by screws, for instance,” she said. “Or a male mannequin with a Slinky between his legs. Awful. But by now, he was Just a Guy.” She raised her hands to frame a marquee. “‘Just a Guy. Guerrilla Artist.’ A guerrilla who wants his money. Every bloody cent of it.”
Closing Time Page 19