Through the Grinder

by Cleo Coyle

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Todd has got a problem with men. A rooster complex. He’s superficially charming around both sexes, but he truly prefers to deal with women. Especially if it has to do with his career. In my opinion, it’s the secret of his success…his way with the ladies, I mean. My boy Seth has charmed his way to the top.” Torquemada offered me a malevolent smile. “If you’re very lucky, my dear Ms. Cosi, he’ll work his magic on you.”

  Sitting next to me, Matteo shifted his weight and folded his arms tightly. I could hear the tension in his voice when he asked, “Does that magic include murder?”

  “Seth has his personal ghosts to deal with,” said Torquemada, his attention straying to the skeleton behind him for a moment. “We all do.”

  Then he looked at me. “If you think Seth murdered Sahara, you’re wrong. He felt nothing but contempt for Sally and her bourgeois background. Seth’s power as an artist comes from the knowledge that he destroyed something he loved. That the one person who meant more to him than life itself died at his hands.”

  The bald man’s gaze strayed to the skeleton behind him again. “I understand Seth,” he continued. “In a way, I know how he feels. I didn’t kill my wife, but I stood by and watched her die.”

  He looked back to us, but his eyes were distant as he kept talking. “Madeline had a taste for the needle…heroin…That coupled with her inability to measure anything correctly caused her to have an overdose. But she’s still here, with me.”

  Call me naïve, but it took me a few seconds to understand that he was referring to the skeleton. That medical school anatomy specimen standing behind his shoulder was the mortal remains of Torquemada’s late wife.

  Good god, I thought. This place really is a horror show.

  “I can’t forget her, you see,” Torquemada said. “At least Mars was healthy enough to let go, to bring those pictures to me. To never look upon the dead face of Sahara McNeil again.”

  “Thank you for your time,” I said, rising quickly. Matteo followed my lead. Before I turned to leave, however, I couldn’t stop my eyes from straying morbidly to the contents of the tray clutched in the late Mrs. Torquemada’s hands.

  I saw a syringe, a spoon, a clear plastic bag of white powder, and a candle burnt down to the wick. There was also a shrunken object that looked like a turkey neck—whatever it was, it was definitely organic.

  Matteo glanced at the tray, too, and I heard his breath catch in complete horror. “Jesus Christ, man!”

  Matt’s outburst set off Torquemada, who rose quickly and nearly pushed us out the door. “You’ll never understand,” he said angrily. “There are many ways to be faithful, to keep one’s promises…I have been faithful, in my fashion.”

  Matteo grabbed my arm and the next thing I knew, we were both out in the street, sucking in fresh, cold air like a pair of trapped miners resurrected.

  “Thank goodness we’re out of there,” I said. Then I turned to Matt. He looked pale. That surprised me—frankly, his outburst surprised me, too.

  “Since when have you been so squeamish?” I asked him. “You’ve seen bones before. And New York City creeps.”

  “It wasn’t the bones that got me, or that creep Torquemada. It was the thing lying on that tray,” Matteo said, hustling me along Thompson Street.

  “The needle? The heroin? The turkey neck?”

  Matteo shook his head. “That wasn’t a turkey neck, Clare.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “When I was in Africa some time ago, two men were convicted of rape. After their trial certain body parts were removed as punishment.”

  “My god,” I choked, “then that was—?”

  “You heard the man,” said Matteo, nodding. “He remained ‘faithful,’ in his ‘fashion’…”

  NINETEEN

  AFTER we left Death Row Gallery, Matteo and I walked to the R line and boarded the uptown Broadway local—the train Valerie Lathem died trying to catch.

  At Times Square we switched to the Queens-bound 7 train for the ride out to Long Island City. The 7 train travels underground from Times Square to Fifth Avenue, and on to the deepest level of Grand Central Station. Then it races through a tunnel under the East River and emerges to run along an elevated track across the middle of Queens to Flushing’s Shea Stadium and the end of the line.

  Among the 7 train’s passengers, Hispanics and Asians dominated, along with East Indians and a smattering of florid-faced Irish newcomers who had migrated from the Emerald Isle to Woodside, Queens, to be among their fellow émigrés. Matteo and I would be getting off before we reached that tiny Irish enclave. We were heading to a far less pleasant place, a nominally industrial area of Queens known as Long Island City, which was in transition to residential zoning—in other words, we were going to an old factory district that spirited urbanites had begun to homestead.

  Despite our wretched experience in the bowels of SoHo, or maybe because of it, I found the train’s hypnotic underground motion sending me into a daydream—back to Bruce Bowman’s unfinished house, where my skin still faintly tingled from the hours he spent touching me, our last coupling in his four-poster bed.

  Until recently, the transit authority ran an older scarlet-painted train along this line, known as the redbird, with drafty, noisy old cars so loud on some sections of track it made conversation almost impossible. The new cars were sleek and quiet, but Matteo and I still chose not to converse. I remained in my reverie, and beside me on the hard, plastic orange seat, Matteo sat with arms folded, staring into the distance, looking as though he’d gone somewhere else, too.

  I roused when the train emerged from its tunnel, the glaring light of late afternoon bursting through scratched windows. Then the track inclined and the 7 Local became elevated, crossing over a deserted railroad yard covered with puddles of mud and melting snow.

  Despite long and extensive work on the tracks, and the new train, the 7 line still looked dismal and worn in places, like an impoverished cousin of the Manhattan lines, with their restored mosaic-tiled stations.

  Century-old elevated 7 stations like the one at Queens Plaza were a throwback to the Industrial Revolution—no-frills steel-framed structures on tall iron stilts, with several levels of concrete platforms and wooden tracks. When the subway clattered into that station, it sounded to me like the old wooden roller coaster I used to ride at a local amusement park growing up.

  We disembarked just after Queens Plaza, at the Thirty-third Street stop. From its narrow concrete platform, we had a magnificent view of the Empire State Building across the river, burnished by sunset’s golden rays. We walked down three long flights of stairs to Queens Boulevard, one of the borough’s two major thoroughfares. While we waited for the light to change, a tide of traffic flowed by in three crowded lanes. It was here, over the roar of the engines, that Matt and I began to argue.

  “This is a bad idea, Clare,” Matteo said. “Why confront Seth Martin Todd now? Today? We already know he’s killed—twice. Why enter the predator’s den?”

  “You know why. It’s something I have to do for my own peace of mind.”

  “We could let Quinn handle it. Police detectives must do more than eat Krispy Kremes and chase divorcees, right? Let that faded gumshoe earn his salary for once.”

  “You don’t have to insult Quinn,” I said. “He may be wrong about Bruce, but he’s not a bad cop. And I do intend to let him handle it…I just need to give him an ‘it’ to handle. Come on, we’ve got a good lead here. You’re usually up for a challenge.”

  Matteo’s face was stone. “A challenge is one thing, Clare. But now you’ve got me escorting you to the home of a murderer, and I don’t like it.”

  I sighed. “You don’t want me to go alone, do you?”

  “I don’t want you to go at all.”

  “Well, I am. So it’s your choice.”

  Matt rubbed the back of his neck, then shook his head. “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

  “It’s real
ly the perfect opportunity,” I said, trying to sound encouraging as we crossed the busy street. “Torquemada said Todd blew off a member of the World Trade Center Commission, and that he runs on charm, right? So I’ll pretend to be another person from the WTCC, and while he charms the heck out of me, I’ll pump him for information.”

  “What am I supposed to do while you’re, uh, pumping him?”

  “You will wait outside. Torquemada said Todd had a problem with males in authority.”

  “No, Clare. That’s really not a good idea.”

  “Of course it is. If I’m not back in a reasonable amount of time—say thirty minutes—you can call the cops. You can even call Quinn. This isn’t his usual stomping grounds, but—” I threw Matt a look. “I’m sure there’s a Krispy Kreme around here somewhere.”

  Matteo returned my look but said nothing.

  The sun was touching the horizon now, and streetlights were flickering on as we moved north up Thirty-third, a largely commercial area of auto body shops, steel finishers, furniture makers, and garages—closing up now or closed already.

  In the distance, there were several tall loft-type manufacturing buildings, and they appeared to be at least half vacant. This was not a residential neighborhood, and no one had bothered to clear away the snow. It lay on the street and sidewalks in dirty layers. There were no stores, or diners, supermarkets or newsstands, either. As far as city living went, this was certainly the proverbial “urban frontier.”

  As we moved past a vacant lot that some Hispanic teens were using as a ball field, I felt feral eyes watching us—and was suddenly regretting the decision to wear my brand new, thousand dollar, floor-length shearling. The chic coat was the perfect garment for garnering admiring glances in the streets of SoHo, but far from the smart thing to wear in Long Island City.

  After the teens gave Matteo and me a second and third look, Matteo offered them a sneer of his own. They quickly returned to their game.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Clare, this it not a great neighborhood,” Matteo said evenly.

  “If you can make a Jeep trip through bandit country to Jiga-Jiga, I think you can protect us both in the jungles of Long Island City.”

  “In Africa I carry a gun.”

  Twilight descended quickly as we turned right, into a narrow, dead-end alley between two tall manufacturing buildings. On our left, through three separate eight-foot, barbed-wire-topped chain link fences, a large black dog snarled at us. The building on our right—a six-story manufacturing and warehouse structure that covered nearly the entire block—had the same address as the one printed on the business card Torquemada had handed me.

  “Here we are,” I announced brightly.

  Matt grimly scanned the shadowy alley—still paved with its original cobblestones—and the dark windows on the buildings, through which no interior lights shone. “Yeah. Home sweet home.”

  We walked to the far end of the dead-end block, stopping before a windowless steel door, a bare unlit bulb above it. In the last dying light of the day, I read the sign.

  “Tod Studios. This must be the place, but I wonder why he misspelled his own name. His business card spells it ‘Todd’ with two D’s.”

  “It isn’t a misspelling of his name,” Matteo replied. “Tod is the German word for death.”

  “Oh.” I took another look at the strange door on the stark building and shrugged. “Well, on that note, I’ll say good-bye.”

  Matt tugged me back by the sleeve of my shearling. “Let’s synchronize our watches. Thirty minutes,” he said, fingering his Breitling.

  “Got it. Now get out of sight.”

  From a hidden vantage point, Matteo watched as I pressed the button beside the door. I heard a loud, warehouse-style bell echo through the massive, empty structure.

  It took so long for anyone to respond that I thought I’d be spending my whole thirty minutes just standing there, in front of that door. After about ten minutes, I heard footsteps. The bare bulb above the door suddenly glared to life and, with a shrill metallic squeal, the door swung open.

  A slight blonde man with tousled hair and sharp features stood in the doorway. Though tall, he was so slim I decided I probably outweighed him, and his complexion was pale and unhealthy looking. But there was both intelligence and energy behind his sky-blue eyes, and he seemed open and friendly. In fact, the only unsettling thing about Seth Todd was the fact that his hands and arms were stained with a wet, dark red liquid all the way up to the elbows.

  “Gosh, I hope that’s paint,” I said.

  To my surprise, the man laughed—and so did I.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “You can if you’re Seth Martin Todd.”

  He nodded. “At your service, and you are—?”

  “Clare,” I answered. “I understand you submitted a proposal to the World Trade Center Commission?”

  “Pleased to meet you, Clare.” Seth Todd thrust out his hand to shake mine. Then he noticed it was still covered in blood-red paint.

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly. Then we both laughed again.

  A perfect romantic comedy moment, I thought, except for the fact that this guy murdered his wife.

  “Come in,” Seth Todd said, using his scuffed Skechers to open the door wide enough to admit me.

  With a quick, uneasy glance over my shoulder, my eyes found Matteo’s silhouette, far down the alleyway, lurking in a doorway. I turned toward Todd and entered.

  “Go on inside,” he said, directing me to a large, open door with his elbow. “I’ll join you after I clean up.”

  I crossed the threshold and found myself in a large, barren industrial space with oil-stained concrete floors, a high ceiling, and visible plumbing and heating ducts running up the plaster-free brick walls.

  This area of the warehouse looked like it had once been a loading dock. Two huge garage doors in the wall faced Forty-third Avenue, and a cold draft leaked through the joints.

  Though there were tall windows lining both sides of the room, strategically placed in the days before electricity to admit both the morning and afternoon sun, it was now getting downright dark outside, and much of the massive interior space was slipping into shadows.

  Now that I was inside the building, I understood why there were no interior lights visible through the windows. Todd used only a tiny corner of the massive space for his work area, and only that part of the room was lit—by three naked light bulbs hanging on long cords from the ceiling.

  There were several chairs—none of them matched—a few stools, and several easels with various paintings displayed. Some were abstract, but not all. There was an oil of an old Gothic church, and another of a farmhouse that reminded me of Andrew Wyeth’s work.

  Todd’s current work in progress rested on a large easel in the center of the workspace, a six-by ten-foot canvas covered in various shades of scarlet—from the color of bright blood freshly spilled, to the dull crimson of a new scab, to the dark brown blot of an old bloodstain. Though abstract, the elements came together to evoke an emotional impact. The artist showed real genius in his selection and arrangement of the hues, shapes, and textures.

  “Would you like some tea?” Seth Todd asked, appearing at my side with a steaming silver pot and two white ceramic cups.

  “Thank you,” I said as he set the cups on a low wooden table and poured.

  “Please take off your coat. Sit down.”

  I slipped off the shearling and threw it across the back of an overstuffed armchair. He pulled over a battered chrome bar stool with a black cushioned seat and sat across from me. I sampled the tea and found it savory—a Darjeeling with a subtle fruity tang.

  “I actually prefer coffee,” Seth Todd said apologetically, his Skecher heels resting easily on the bottom cross bars of the stool like a teenager in an episode of Leave it to Beaver. “A good Kona, or a Blue Mountain would be great about now, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping, so no caffeine after six P.M. My friends say I shou
ld switch to decaf, but I’d just as soon skip my evening cup as resort to such desperate measures. The poet Dante forgot to write about that ring of hell reserved for those who oppose caffeine.”

  I laughed out loud. My god, I found myself thinking, if I hadn’t been told he was a killer, he’d be a man after my own heart.

  “My sentiments exactly,” I told him. “I’m a bigger coffee afficionado than you could possibly imagine, but I have to admit that this tea is delightful.”

  “I bought it in Chinatown, a little store on Mott Street called Wen’s Importing. I won’t touch anything other than leaf.”

  I scanned Seth Todd’s work area. It was, as far as I could see, a typical artist’s studio. Tubes and jars of paint. Brushes. Pencils. Canvas and paper. There were some pen-and-ink and pencil sketches tacked to another easel. Human studies, mostly. Faces and figures, several portraits obviously drawn from life—none of them slashed or stabbed or brutalized in any way. But my eyes were constantly drawn back to the large red canvas that dominated the room.

  “That’s a powerful painting,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he replied, his eyes watching me. “It was commissioned for the foyer of the Seattle-based software firm, Gordian Incorporated. Their brand new headquarters building was designed by Scott Musake and Darrel Sorensen. Really amazing.”

  He spoke about several other commissions—for the Tokyo headquarters of an electronics firm, a skyscraper in Sri Lanka, and the grand ballroom of a Paris hotel still under construction. He also managed to drop the fact that his work was displayed in several museums and galleries around the world.

  Though he came on a little strong, I found Todd’s enthusiasm for his art and the design work of others infectious. He was a serious painter, but one concerned with his own notoriety, too. Some would probably be bothered by his ambition, but I found it honest and refreshing—at least he wasn’t hiding what he wanted out of life from anyone.

  “So,” he said at last. “You’re here about my WTCC submission?”