by Jon Loomis
“Bingo. The real deal. This thing is legendary. Worth several hundred large, minimum. When I spotted it in the video I knew I had to get in and grab it before that scumbag DA figured out what it was.”
“What do you mean, it’s legendary?”
“Pollock used to hang out here in the forties. That was when he first started doing the drip thing, but he wasn’t famous yet. He was broke most of the time, and he liked to drink and play cards. If he owed you money, he’d give you a small painting to make good on the debt. That’s where this baby’s from.”
“How do you know all this?” Coffin said, turning right on 6A and heading toward the town center. “What, you’re an art historian now?”
Rudy grinned. “Like I said, this thing is legendary. Pollock owed a couple hundred bucks to Stinky Mayo—lost it to him in a poker game. Couple hundred bucks was a lot of money in ’47. Pollock gives Stinky the painting, they call it even. Stinky doesn’t know squat about art, though—thinks the painting’s the ugliest fucking thing in the world. Ends up trading it to Bucky Morales for doing some work on his boat. Bucky loves the thing—he sees the genius of it, puts it up on the wall of his house. Then Life magazine does a feature on Pollock, and suddenly the painting’s worth some serious cash. Dealers show up at Bucky’s house, trying to buy it. He won’t part with it, no matter what. Then, about a year later, Bucky’s house catches fire and pretty much burns to the ground with him in it. Bucky gets incinerated, and everybody thinks the painting does, too. There’s even a piece in the Cape Cod Times about it.”
“But it doesn’t get burned up,” Coffin said.
“Nope,” Rudy said. “It doesn’t. The fire starts in Bucky’s room—smoking in bed, probably. It doesn’t spread to the kitchen where the painting is until later. One of the firemen sees the painting, has an idea what it is, and lifts it before the whole place goes up in flames.”
“Jesus,” Coffin said. “Some story.”
“Yeah,” Rudy said. “People don’t like to think about firemen looting shit out of burning houses, but it happens all the time. Know who that fireman was?”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Coffin said.
“As well you should be,” Rudy said. “It was my father, your great-uncle Manny Santos, who you never met but who was a fucking pistol, I don’t mind telling you.”
“So how did Kenji end up with it?”
Rudy shrugged. “Pops was no fool. He knew somebody who knew somebody who was willing to buy it under the table. Probably only got a fraction of what it was worth, but it was still a pretty good chunk of change. Then it moved around from rich asshole to rich asshole until it wound up with Kenji Sole. The way I see it—”
“Don’t say it, Rudy,” Coffin said, fingers tightening on the steering wheel.
“No, seriously. The way I—”
Coffin pressed down on the accelerator. The Fiesta responded with a loud backfire. “If you say that painting is rightfully yours I’m going to wreck this car, I swear to God.”
Rudy looked at Coffin and put his seat belt on. “That painting is rightfully mine. My father stole it, it belongs to me. Until I sell it, of course.”
Coffin said nothing for a long minute. It was almost 3:00 A.M., and there was no traffic on Bradford Street. The Fiesta’s one working headlight flickered, went out, came back on. Overhead, the clouds were moving out to sea in a hurry, herded along by a freshening wind.
“Rudy?”
“Yes?”
“You knew where the painting was, right?”
“Yep. Hanging in the bedroom, over the dresser. Just like in the video.”
“You were in there for seventeen minutes. What took you so long?”
Rudy shook his head. “Frankie,” he said, “we’ve got to talk about the lack of trust here. It hurts me, it really does.” He fished his flask from his jacket pocket, uncapped it, and took a long swallow. Then he offered it to Coffin.
“This is my scotch, isn’t it, Rudy?” Coffin said, taking a drink.
“Yeah. I don’t know why you buy this fucking blended stuff,” Rudy said, taking the flask back from Coffin and emptying it in one long swallow. “Life’s too short to drink cheap booze, Frankie.”
Coffin slowed, then pulled the car off the road into the parking lot of the Tennis Club. He killed the lights but left the engine running. “I must be losing my fucking mind, Rudy,” Coffin said. He sat back in his seat and looked at his uncle under lowered brows.
“Uh-oh,” Rudy said, lighting a cigarette. “Must be serious if you can’t talk and drive at the same time.”
“How did you know about the DVR, Rudy? The state cops knew, but so did you. How?”
“Educated guess.” Rudy shrugged. “Based on what I’d heard from Cavalo.”
“Cavalo? What’s your connection to Cavalo?”
“WitSec. He thinks I’m his minder.”
“Wait a minute,” Coffin said, holding up both hands, palms out. “Just hold on. Cavalo’s in the witness security program?”
“Check.”
“The federal witness protection program.”
Rudy nodded. “Right. He got mixed up with some mob boys out in Vegas. Saw some stuff he shouldn’t have seen, ended up testifying in federal court.”
“He thinks you’re a federal marshal assigned to his case?”
“Right again.”
“Why does he think that, Rudy?”
Rudy spread his big hands. “Because that’s what I told him,” he said. “The badge helped.”
“The one you found,” Coffin said.
“Right. Cavalo’s no fucking Albert Einstein. Doesn’t get a lot of blood to the brain, if you know what I mean.”
“And you knew he was in WitSec because . . .?”
“I hear things, Frankie,” Rudy said. “People talk in this town. What else is there to do in the off-season?” He put a hand on Coffin’s shoulder. “Which reminds me—how’s the fertility thing going? Any luck?”
“You’re freaking me out a little,” Coffin said.
“Good,” Rudy said. “I like to maintain an air of mystery.”
“So you heard Cavalo was in WitSec and what, you figured you could exploit him?”
“‘Exploit’ is such an ugly word. Besides, you’ve got it all wrong. I heard about his porn operation, then I heard about WitSec, then I figured maybe he needed a business partner.” Rudy pointed at the keys dangling from the ignition, then tapped his watch. “Can we drive now? I’ve got an appointment with a young lady.”
“At 3:00 A.M.? An appointment? What kind of young lady are we talking about here?”
Rudy looked at him, eyes glinting in the dark car.
“Forget I asked,” Coffin said. He restarted the Fiesta and pulled out of the parking lot onto Bradford.
“I’ve been thinking about this whole deal with the hidden camera,” Rudy said after a minute or two. “If it wasn’t about outright blackmail, it was probably a control thing—do what I say, or I’ll expose you. If not control, security. She wanted to have something on them. The whole crew.”
“Security?”
“She must have known she was playing a dangerous game,” Rudy said. “People have feelings—they get jealous, they get angry, they do crazy shit. Hell, I can’t even manage one relationship, let alone twenty.”
Coffin passed Conwell Street and the Yankee Mart, then turned right on Standish. “So she wanted them on tape because she couldn’t trust them?”
“Something like that. Or maybe it was just a trophy-taking thing. She wanted to have a personal record of her conquests. People do that shit, you know. Another notch in the bedpost, or whatever. I mean, she was into porn in a big way. Why not make some of her own?”
“So she filmed the same scenario over and over—”
“Because that’s the thing that turned her on.”
Coffin pulled up in front of his house and turned the engine off. The Fiesta shuddered and clanked for a few seconds before it finally died.
<
br /> “So what were you doing in there, all that time?” Coffin said.
“That’s what I love about you, Frankie,” Rudy said, squeezing Coffin’s shoulder. “Always asking questions.” He dug his thumb into the pressure point hard enough to make Coffin’s eyes bulge, then opened the door and levered his broad frame out of the Fiesta’s passenger seat, the towel-wrapped painting under his arm. “Well, it’s been fun, Frankie. Hasta con carne.”
“Rudy?”
“Yo.”
“The DVR. Hand it over.”
Rudy grinned. “Right. Almost forgot.” He crossed the street, unlocked the blue Chevy pickup truck he’d borrowed from his son, Tony, and put the painting inside. Then he reached into the passenger seat and pulled out a cardboard box. “Here you go, Frankie,” he said, setting the box down on the Fiesta’s hood. “If I was you, I’d skip to the end and watch the last ten minutes or so. Tonight, before somebody else steals this thing.”
Coffin stood on the screen porch, fumbled a bit with his keys, and unlocked the front door. He had been born and raised in Provincetown and had been back for almost fourteen years now after living in Baltimore for a decade. In Provincetown he had never locked his house, even at night—nor had his parents nor anyone he knew—but ever since the incident two years ago with Duffy Plotz, whenever he left Jamie home alone at night he made sure to lock the door.
When he let himself in, the living room was dark. A small bronze clock ticked on the mantel. The stuffed goat’s head leered down from the shadows, yellow-eyed, deranged. He set the cardboard box on the coffee table. Something stirred beside him, and Coffin turned, the hair on his arms prickling.
“Frank?” It was Jamie. She’d fallen asleep on the sofa. She sat up slowly, pushing her hair away from her face. She was wearing one of Coffin’s white T-shirts; her nipples showed dark through the thin cotton. “What time is it? Where were you?”
“It’s late. After three. Let’s go to bed.”
Coffin held out his hands; Jamie took them, hauled herself off the couch, then collapsed slowly into Coffin’s arms. “Bed,” she said, nuzzling into Coffin’s neck; on her tiptoes she stood three inches shorter than he. “Good thinking.”
Coffin’s hand grazed her hip. She wasn’t wearing any panties.
Jamie looked up at him and placed both of his hands firmly on her backside. “But seriously,” she said. “Where were you?”
“Out,” Coffin said. “With Rudy.”
“Oh,” she said, nibbling Coffin’s earlobe. “Jesus. Rudy.”
“Yeah,” Coffin said, leading Jamie up the stairs. “You know things are about to get weird when Rudy shows up.”
“Weirder,” Jamie said. She pinched Coffin’s buttock. “You know, you’re still pretty perky for an old guy.”
“Thanks,” Coffin said. “Thanks a lot.”
At the top of the stairs, Jamie put her arms around Coffin from behind and began to unbutton his shirt. “I was wondering,” she said, “if you had any plans at the moment.” Her hands were slender, the fingers long and articulate.
“You were?”
Jamie unbuckled Coffin’s belt. “I was.”
“I thought you might be.”
“I’m predictable like that,” Jamie said, unbuttoning Coffin’s khakis with one hand, sliding the other into his boxer shorts.
“There is one thing,” Coffin said.
“Really?”
“That box in the living room—”
Jamie grazed the head of his penis with her fingernails. “You didn’t just say that, did you?”
“Me? No.” Coffin said. He turned, kissed her on the mouth, then grabbed a handful of her T-shirt and pulled her into the bedroom.
Fifteen minutes later, Jamie looked over her shoulder at Coffin as he knelt behind her. “Everything okay back there, cowboy?”
“Sorry,” Coffin said, giving her rump a pat. “Just getting a little leg cramp.” He shook his leg a bit. “There—all better.”
Five minutes after that, Jamie turned and looked at Coffin again. “Another leg cramp?” she said.
“Sorry,” Coffin said. “I must be tired.”
Jamie wiggled her backside against his pelvis. “Come on, little man,” she said. “Give me your sperm.”
“Maybe we could try a different position.”
“No, no, no,” Jamie said. “How many times do I have to tell you? Doggy-style makes boy babies. Everyone says so. Now giddyup—my eggs aren’t getting any younger, you know.”
Three minutes later, Jamie turned and said, “You must be tired. Need a little jump-start?”
“I need sleep,” Coffin said, flopping onto his back. Outside, the sky had paled at the edges; birds were waking up, whistling back and forth in the trees.
“Apparently so does this guy,” Jamie said, rolling onto her side, stroking his slack penis lightly with her index finger.
“Sorry,” Coffin said. He took a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand and lit it; they were Jamie’s organic brand—the kind that weren’t supposed to kill you as quickly.
Jamie smiled. “You should be,” she said, turning onto her belly, “but I forgive you. This time.”
Coffin blew a stream of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “Ever been curious about the whole dominant-submissive thing?”
“Mmmmm,” Jamie said, rolling her hips a bit. “Schoolgirl outfits and riding crops? When do we start?”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I had no idea.”
“Well, you never asked me until now. A girl doesn’t just volunteer these things, you know.”
“What about the other way around?”
Jamie laughed. “You mean if you were wearing the schoolgirl outfit? Is there something you’d like to tell me, Frank?”
“Not me in particular,” Coffin said. “What I mean is, would it excite you to be the dominant one?”
Jamie propped herself up on her elbows. “Maybe. If I could keep a straight face. Would I get to wear a leather bustier and thigh boots?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Jamie jiggled a cigarette out of the pack, looked at it, and put it back in. “Actually, no. I don’t think so.”
“How come?”
“It’s complicated,” Jamie said. “For me, I think it’s kind of about control—it’s exciting to let go of that for a while, but I’m not really interested in controlling anyone else. You know? It just seems like too much work, somehow.”
Coffin told her about Kenji Sole, how she’d filmed the same scenario over and over with a dozen different men. “It was obsessive,” Coffin said. “Like a test they had to pass.”
“That’s pretty weird,” Jamie said. “Like she was hazing them, almost. But why did she film them? Why did they let her?”
“Mostly I think they didn’t know.” He sat up and stubbed out his cigarette in the art deco glass ashtray he’d inherited from his father: a naked girl in a bathtub, knees up, breasts floating, head thrown back. “I’m not sure why she filmed them. Rudy thought it was a control thing. Either that or trophy-taking.”
“The first thing makes the most sense to me,” Jamie said. “It comes back to control. If they didn’t do what she wanted them to do, she’d expose them.”
“So it was her way of keeping them on a leash, you think?”
Jamie rolled onto her back, and pulled up the covers. “I think it was her way of keeping them,” she said, closing her eyes. “Period.”
“Frank! Frank! Oh my God!”
It was Jamie. Coffin tried to get out of bed, but his arms and legs felt rubbery and weak. “What is it?” he said. “Jamie? What’s wrong?”
“Oh my God! It’s everywhere!”
Coffin lurched down the hallway. The floorboards rippled and warped under his feet. “Jamie? Jamie, are you okay?”
She stood in the bathroom, nightgown pulled up above her waist. The light was impossibly green. She was covered with blood. Blood on her legs, on her belly. Blo
od in the toilet. Everywhere, blood. “Oh my God!” Jamie sobbed. She seemed unable to move. “Frank! Oh my God!”
Coffin was dizzy; the side of his face tingled. He reached for one of the white towels on the rack. The towel seemed to shrink from his hand. When he touched it, a dark spot of blood welled through the cloth. “It’s okay,” Coffin said, trying to mop the blood from Jamie’s legs. The more he mopped, the more blood there seemed to be. It pooled on the floor, spattered the walls. Everything he touched began to bleed: the doorknob, the faucet, the sink. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”
______
Coffin woke up early. He had slept only an hour or two. Something was wrong with his face, he realized: His lower left eyelid was twitching. Jamie lay on her back, sound asleep and snoring a little. More than anything he wanted to stay in bed with her, wake up slowly, make love, eat a late breakfast, go for a walk. He got up as quietly as he could, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and went downstairs.
Outside, a damp fog hung between the cedar trees. The neighbor’s laundry drooped on the clothesline, empty and vague at the edges. Coffin dropped a filter into the coffeemaker, spooned in an overdose of espresso roast, filled the carafe at the sink. Poured it in. Flipped the switch. Remembered the cardboard box in the living room.
“Rudy,” Coffin said, left eyelid twitching. He walked out to the living room and sat down on his mother’s Victorian sofa. The box sat on the coffee table where he’d left it. He pulled the flaps open. The DVR was not inside. “Rudy,” Coffin said. There was a thick paperback book in the box instead. Coffin reached in and took it out. It was called Overcoming Male Infertility: Understanding Its Causes and Treatments. The authors were Drs. Leslie R. Schover and Anthony J. Thomas Jr.
Coffin’s face felt hot. His eye twitched furiously. He stood, stalked barefoot across the living room, unlocked the front door, and walked through the screen porch and into the fog-damp yard, the screen door slapping shut behind him. “Rudy!” He yelled. “God damn it—Rudy!”
No one answered. The Long Point foghorn skwonked in the distance. Three starlings pecked in Mrs. Rivera’s yard.