CADAVRE EXQUIS
29
The house was built onto a cliff side and was reached by a steep, zigzagging driveway with several switchbacks and hairpin turns. Hector thought of all the drinking that was probably well underway and wondered how many guests wouldn’t be coming back for return engagements once they tried to navigate that steep driveway back down — squinting into darkness and three-sheets-to-the-wind.
Hector reached the top and rolled slowly by the house. It had been designed by some protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright’s and looked like nothing so much as a Mayan temple fused to a prototypical Hollywood rich man’s pad.
Hector pulled alongside the temple-cum-house, backed up, and turned around so he’d have an easier time leaving. Not that Hector intended to be drunk — his most recent ex-wife had at least convinced him to taper off on the booze during their last days together and he was still enjoying near-sobriety. Hector just liked the option of quick exits.
A swarthy man in a white jacket put a hand to Hector’s chest as the writer stepped up onto the porch out of the rain. He spoke in lightly-accented English. Not Mexican, but perhaps Spanish...maybe a Moor. “You have an invitation?”
“I’m here as a guest of John Huston. Name’s Hector Lassiter.”
The man checked a clipboard and said, “Right. Good. Go ahead.”
Hector scoped the main room: very swanky. The Mayan motif carried on through the interior of the house. The place was packed with pre-Columbian art and artifacts, interspersed with cubist and surrealist paintings, photographs and sculptures. Hector perused Picassos, Miros and Man Rays...several Magrittes and a couple of works by Salvador Dali.
Another swarthy man with jug ears, also dressed in a starched white jacket, sidled up next to Hector with a couple of trays. Hector helped himself to some champagne and a couple of hors d’oeuvres. The hosts seemed to favor Billie Holiday, too. Her recording of “Lover Man” played low under the buzz of the guests.
Roaming, he saw bug-eyed Man Ray in spirited conversation with a couple of men whose backs were to Hector. Hector had always thought the little photographer, whose given name was Emmanuel Radnitsky, from Philly, of all places, to be quite mad. In those long-gone Left Bank days, Hector had invested much more of his interest in Man Ray’s then-lover, the sleek, blond model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Lee was Man Ray’s muse become bête noire...a woman Hector had not succeeded in catching on the bounce, despite a few tries.
When Lee had left Man Ray to pursue her own photographic career, Man had unleashed a flurry of pieces that literally deconstructed Lee Miller, entitling one Object to Be Destroyed.
By a tall sculpted stone fireplace, Hector spotted Vincent Price — something of an art collector himself, Hector had heard — chatting up John Huston...two gaunt and imperious men with world-class voices, passionately going at it over something regarding the Marquis de Sade.
Hector was headed their way when a pair of arms slipped through his. “You’re Hector Lassiter, aren’t you?” It was the voice of a little girl.
Hector looked over the young woman hanging on his “gun arm.” He switched his unsampled drink to his left hand, so she wouldn’t jostle it, and said, “Howdy, honey. Yeah, I’m Hector Lassiter.”
“I’ve read all your books...I just loved Satan’s Daughter. It was a gas.”
“Great. But aren’t you a little young for that book? I mean, what are you? Sixteen, certainly not 17?”
“Fifteen.”
Hector smiled and slid his right arm free. She was tallish, buxom. Enough drinks and enough impaired judgment — the right low light — and a man might convince himself she was a newly minted eighteen. She struck Hector as disturbingly worldly. He said, “What’s your name, angel?”
“Sarah.”
“Got a last name to go with ‘Sarah’?”
“Sarah Marshall.”
“Ah. Daughter of the hosts, yes?”
“That’s right. Mummy sent me to fetch you.”
“Yeah? How’d she say to do that?”
“Left if up to me.”
“So where is Mummy?”
“Right there,” she said, pointing. “When she’s through with you, find me again. I want to talk more about your books.”
“Sure. Sure...if it’s not past your bedtime.”
Her cheeks flushed. Sarah stuck out her tongue, tossed her hair...and headed toward Man Ray.
Hector watched her go — all bouncing brown hair and wagging hips. Jesus. Man Ray smiled at her and slipped an arm around her shoulders. The photographer stopped one of the interchangeable, white-jacket clad swarthy men and grabbed some champagne. The photographer handed the glass to Sarah.
Hector was quickly loosing his taste for the party. Another arm slipped through his. The woman was a taller, legal version of Sarah Marshall. The woman said, “I’m Mercedes Marshall, Mr. Lassiter. I was thrilled to hear it when John mentioned you were coming as his guest.”
Hector smiled, all innocence and bonhomie. “You read my books too? Just like your little girl?”
The woman tilted her head; a sly smile. Her eyes were big and blue with violet highlights. Her eyes unsettled Hector: she didn’t seem to blink. “Sarah’s not so little, as I noticed you noticing. And we’re both avid readers of yours, yes.”
“That’s...real nice,” Hector said. “Quite a collection you and your husband have amassed.” He waved a hand at the paintings and sculptures surrounding them.
“Me, mostly. I don’t think Raymond really cares a toss for art, Mr. Lassiter. Other than as an investment, of course.”
“One of those, eh?”
She winked. “As I said, I was thrilled to hear you were coming. I’m told you know, or knew, a particular painter. I’ve been able to purchase some of her works, which are quite rare, given her terrible and early end. I’m told you might have some more of them in your own collection. I’d like to buy them from you. I’ll pay you quite handsomely. What I’m prepared to pay you will more than return your investment in them.”
Hector’s mouth was suddenly dry. Already fairly certain of the answer, he said, “Who is this painter?”
Mercedes took Hector’s champagne flute from his hand and drained it to its dregs. Hector looked at her lipstick stain left on his emptied glass. She smiled and said, “Alva Taurino. I have many of her works. She was a genius. What a tragic waste. What a terrible and senseless loss. I mean, her being executed in service to a lost cause like that.”
“She wasn’t the only one.” Hector motioned around them with his left hand. “I don’t see any of her paintings here.”
“They’re in my private study. I’ll show you.” She took his hand.
He followed her down a long hallway, the walls covered with more geometric patterns contrived to evoke the sense of an ancient temple. Hector looked her over as he followed her. Mercedes wore a clingy black gown with no back. She had lush hips that Hector figured the vixenish daughter had studied to master her own slink. Mercedes had long legs, one of which was visible through a dramatic slit up the left side of her gown. Good shoulders, too: she wore her hair up to showcase her fine shoulders and long back. Mrs. Marshall opened a door at the end of the dimly lit hallway and Hector followed her in. Low bookcases ran around the perimeter of the room. A massive, hand-carved desk dominated the study. The walls were filled with canvasses. Nearly all of them were signed “Alva.”
Hector walked around the room, lips parted and heart racing...moving dumbstruck from painting to painting. “I was in Alva’s loft, in Madrid, and saw many of her works,” Hector said. “But I don’t remember any of these. Never saw anything like these, there.”
Many of the paintings were essentially nude, surrealist self-portraits. Hector was nearly stricken to see Alva staring back at him, and in such dark contexts. In some of the paintings, Alva had made herself a redhead, or a blond — the latter reminding Hector of Rachel. But the paintings were stark and brazen...some verging on the pornographic. Others
were almost offensive in their blunt, lovingly-studied depictions of violence.
“Inaccrochable,” Hector caught himself whispering.
“Yes, you can see why these are hung in my most private area,” Mrs. Marshall said, taking Hector’s arm again. “Nobody can really tell me just how many of her works exist. Each time I think I’ve hit bottom, another painting or two of Alva’s seems to surface at some gallery in Paris...maybe in Milan or Barcelona. They aren’t for every taste. But they are brave, you must admit.”
“I suppose you could call them ‘brave.’ There’s also something almost jaded or debauched about these,” Hector said. “They smack of a kind of dark glut. The ones I own are nothing like these. These hint of a side of Alva that I never saw.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “A fact made more striking because you and Alva were lovers...or so I’ve heard.”
Hector made a sour face.
“I’ve offended you,” she said. “How strange. I mean, based on your books, I thought you more the man of the world than perhaps you are. I at least expected you to be a man who would be more frank and open.”
Hector continued frowning. “I can be those, in the right company. Being open right now, let me be frank and say I frankly don’t know you, lady.”
She said, “You don’t strike me as a champagne drinker, Hector. What can I make for you?”
“Whiskey and water will be fine.”
“A serious drinker, after my own heart.” As he continued studying the paintings, she poured them both cocktails from a sideboard bar. She tapped glasses with him and said, “Los toros dan y los toros quitan.”
“Right.” Hector sipped his whiskey, staring at Alva’s depiction of a bull raping a woman who looked uncomfortably like Alva. The woman’s expression was something between terror and a sensual snarl. The bull seemed aloof...but hung.
“What was Alva like, Mr. Lassiter? I confess, I’m utterly fascinated by her. By her vision and by her life...what little I’ve been able to learn about it.”
Hector sipped his whiskey. He thought awhile and then he said, “She was very passionate about her painting. Very free spirited. Unfortunately, she allowed politics to begin to impinge on her work, both on and off the canvas. It was the same trap that befell many creative types in the 1930s — writers, painters and actors. She had the misfortune of doing it in Spain...and of choosing losing sides. I tried to warn her off.”
Mrs. Marshall was still hanging on Hector’s arm, her head tilted against his shoulder and her piled-up brown hair tickling his neck. “Is it true what they say about what led to her shooting? That she was using surrealist art as a means of torturing fascists to secure intelligence?”
“That was the story out of Spain, and last I heard, those on the scene seemed to be sticking to it,” Hector said. “Not that those are sources to be trusted. Nothing was what it seemed in Spain. Nobody was who they seemed in Spain.”
“And Alva?”
“A casualty of war. What was that phrase of Auden’s that Orwell so hated? Oh yeah, Alva became some son of a bitch’s ‘necessary murder.’”
“Ten years, and you’re still very bitter.” She squeezed his arm. “The memories must be terrible. They say ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ So in that spirit, you would consider selling me your paintings of Alva’s?”
Hector shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t. Unlike your husband, I don’t buy art for investment’s sake. I liked the art, and, as you’ve said, I had a very close connection to the painter. They’re mementos to me, not collectibles.”
“You haven’t heard my offer, Hector.”
“Money isn’t the issue.”
This look in her eyes. He said, “Sex isn’t the issue either.”
“I haven’t offered that.”
“Well, now it’s out of the way, either way,” Hector said.
Mercedes said, “I saw you with my daughter. Sarah seemed to like you. And I could tell, in some ways, you liked Sarah, too. Like Alva, you and your books fascinate me. I’ve heard stories about the tension between what you write and your own life. Sarah’s fascinated by all that, too. Perhaps you could explain in more detail to both of us....”
Hector shook loose his arm. “Twenty years ago, I’d probably have followed that conversational thread all the way to a sweaty, panting, limb-tangled end. But now I’m just going to follow that path back down that hallway of yours and back to your damned fine party.”
“Thinks some more about it, Hector. I really mean to have your paintings.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Think about all of it.”
“Oh, I’ll do that, too. Filthy thoughts about all of that will probably eat at me for the rest of the night...maybe longer.”
Hector stepped back into the hubbub of the party. He thought he smelled marijuana. A back slap. “Hector, I saw you, then I lost you.” Director John Huston...slender, slope-shouldered...bushy eyebrows and the voice.
“I was getting a private showing,” Hector said. “Mrs. Marshall was showing off her collection of Alva Taurinos. You asked me here, John. Did you do that so she could make a pitch to buy my ‘Alvas’?”
“Partly, Hector,” John said. “I also don’t see you often enough, and caretaking Orson as you are, I thought this was a rare chance to catch up.”
“Quite a crew,” Hector said. “I was looking around and counting communists.”
“It’s a real concern for the artists, particularly, Hector,” John said. “Many have quite overt communist connections. The city of Los Angeles has actually passed an ordinance, Hector, banning modern art. Particularly, Surrealist art. Bastards have banned it from public spaces, declaring it all to be ‘emblematic of communist enterprise and philosophy.’”
Hector smiled. “They all got painted with the same slanted brush, eh? Ironic fate for a bunch of lefty, loony artists.”
“You were in Spain in 1937, Hector,” John said. “How have you eluded a subpoena from HUAC?”
“I was in Spain babysitting another friend,” Hector said. “I didn’t choose sides. Just ate and drank and caroused and watched Hem’s back for his second wife.”
“I’ll spread that word,” John said. “Because you see, Hector, some people are talking. Some are wondering why you’ve avoided the House subcommittee hearings.”
“Well, fuck ‘some people,’” Hector said.
John changed topics. “Orson was supposed to be here tonight. What’s he up to now, Hector?”
“He’s wired and working on his own sets. He’s painting up some funhouse for the climax of his latest film.”
“Ah, yes. I guess I have heard something about that. Mercedes scrounged up a painter and some young would-be actress to help him.”
Hector realized he was still carrying his glass of whiskey. He sipped a little more. A couple of years of near-abstinence had taken away his taste for the stuff. He dropped his glass on the tray of a passing, swarthy waiter and pulled off a fresh glass of champagne...something he could nurse, if Mercedes Marshall didn’t take it away and drain it again. Behind him, Hector heard two women discussing some work of Dali’s, something titled Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. Hector said, “I overheard you talking about De Sade to Vincent Price a bit ago. Didn’t realize you were all so steeped in De Sade’s works.”
“We all are,” John said. “As a man who favors strong sensations, I’m frankly surprised you aren’t as well, Hector. Of course nobody else is quite so devoted to Sade as Man is.”
“Man? Man Ray?” Hector sipped champagne. “Makes sense in Man’s case. I mean, old Man’s more than a bit of a misogynist, isn’t he? Strikes me as very sadistic.”
John brushed back an unruly forelock of brown hair. “How so?”
“It’s always been there in his work. I attended a showing of some of his photographs a few years back. The Fantasies of William Seabrook, it was called...naked women in chains and ropes
, gagged...their privates on display. They looked like the stuff that crazy killer Barney Waxmiller shot of his victims before he raped and then killed them.”
“By God, you’ve grown stodgy in your forties, Hector,” John said, laughing. “Pardon me, I’ve got to go chat-up Fanny Brice. We’re negotiating a trade of some pre-Columbian pottery.”
Hector drifted around some more, increasingly eyeing the exit. Hector also was aware of Mercedes Marshall and her saucy, jailbait daughter, eyeing him. Some artists were gathered around a table with a long strip of paper. Hector leaned over for a look and Vincent Price whispered, “It’s a game of Exquisite Corpse. Quite an intense one.” Their game was also highly pornographic, from what Hector could see of the lower-most portion of the sketch, now well underway.
One of the artists, a short fat man with bucked teeth, said, “We need a model for round two!”
Sarah Marshall obediently put down her drink and, looking more than a bit drunk, tugged her blouse from her skirt. She began fiddling with the buttons. Several of the artists moved to the couch for a better view. Hector drifted over to Mercedes and said, “You don’t seem to be moving to stop this.”
Sarah’s mother shrugged, reminding Hector of her proud, bare shoulders. She said, “Why would I? They’re artists. I collect surrealist paintings. Those artists I collect used live models. I’d be a hypocrite to buy their art and then rebel at the elements critical to its creation.”
“Even if one of those ‘elements’ is your lushed-out, underage daughter?”
“I really did badly misjudge you, Hector,” Mercedes said. “I guess that just like you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can’t judge an author by his characters.”
“Maybe,” Hector agreed. “And ‘artists’ do evolve.”
“So where have you ‘evolved’ to? What are you working on now, Hector?”
From the corner of his eye, Hector could see the young girl struggling with her brassiere. He made a conscious effort not to look there again. Riffing, Hector lied, “It’s a literary thriller. And a bit of a roman à clef. It’s based on the premise that a collection of libertine artists have moved through several phases of creativity. Because they have functioned with utter abandon, and with no restrictions on their behavior nearly all along the way, they have escalated in their debauchery. So they try to redeem themselves with abstract notions of politics, then social commentary. But jaded as they are, they eventually sink into complete decadence, and murder...reaching for increasingly bloodier places, just to feel.”
Toros & Torsos (The Hector Lassiter Series) Page 20