The Death Artist

by Jonathan Santlofer

  “What happened?”

  He shrugged his halfback shoulders. “I guess she lost interest—which was a shame.”

  “It was good?”

  “It was great.” Washington’s eyes drifted away a moment, filled with—Kate wasn’t sure. “It would have made her famous.”

  “I don’t understand. If it was great, why wouldn’t Elena—”

  Washington stabbed the cigarillo into the ashtray with such force, it looked as if the glass would shatter. Kate watched the man reel in his emotions as if he were hauling in a killer shark. “All I can say is . . . it was going well, and then Elena seemed to . . . lose interest. But it was months ago.”

  “So you’ve had no contact with Elena for months?”

  “Exactly.”

  Kate unfolded a copy of Elena’s phone records, slid it toward him. “According to this, she called you only days before she died.”

  Washington’s dark eyes narrowed. “You know, this is beginning to sound like an interrogation. If the police want to question me about Ms. Solana, that’s fine. But right now, I’m finished talking.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Kate, laying her temporary NYPD ID on the coffee table.

  Darton was up from the couch as if he’d been stung, almost dancing backward across that bright red floor, putting distance between Kate and himself. “What the fuck is this? You call, say you’re a friend of Willie’s, and—”

  “I am a friend of Willie’s—but I’m assisting the NYPD.” Kate stood. “And you will answer my questions, Mr. Washington—either here or at the station. Which will it be?”

  Washington took a few steps toward her, jaw clenched, hands twitching at his sides. They were three feet apart, the air between them buzzing, electric. Kate’s hand hovered close to her hidden Glock, but she maintained her cool. “Look, I’m not here to fuck you over. Simply to fill in some blanks about Elena’s life.”

  “Nobody fucks me over. Nobody. Not me. Not the people I care about. You got that?”

  “Nobody fucks me over either, Mr. Washington. You got that? Now, you want to tell me what you and Elena Solana talked about when she called, or you want me to have a patrol car pick you up and haul you over to the Sixth Precinct? It’s up to you.” Kate’s eyes had not left his, but she remained alert for any sign of movement.

  Washington sighed. “She was thinking about working again—on the CD.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . I didn’t want to.”

  “I thought it was great. Why wouldn’t you?”

  “It had been months. I’d lost interest. I had other projects going. I wasn’t about to stop everything and just pick up where we left off.”

  “Pick up with . . . what, exactly?”

  “With the CD. What else?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I told you. I’d gone past it.”

  “Past it, or past her? You two were involved, weren’t you?”

  “Involved in making a CD—until Elena stopped being involved.”

  “And that made you mad.”

  “I was annoyed, yes. That she’d been so cavalier. That she just let the thing go. I’d invested in her. Thought we had a future together—in business.” His sensuous lips tightened. “I’ll admit it. My pride was hurt.”

  “So she hurt you.”

  “She hurt herself—and her career.”

  “And your career?”

  “My career is just fine.” Washington folded his arms across his chest. “And there was no way I was just going to dump everything and start up working with her again just because she felt like it.”

  “Can I hear them?”

  “What?”

  “The demo tapes.”

  Washington turned away, lit another cigar, puffed. “If I can locate them.”

  “It must have meant a loss of revenue not to finish Elena’s CD.”

  “I made a decision,” said Washington. “To cut my losses.”

  “Really?” said Kate. “Sounds like bad business, Mr. Washington.”

  Washington and Elena? Kate tried to picture them together as she headed down the cold white hallway. The man certainly fit Fat Wally’s description—a black man who looked like a football player or prizefighter. Not that Fat Wally was what Kate would call a reliable witness.

  Washington had admitted to a business relationship with Elena. But was it more than that? Kate wanted to push him further, but also wanted to get more information before she did.

  There were just too many connections—Trip, Pruitt, the pornographic films, Washington owning an Ethan Stein painting. It was as if she’d stumbled into a seething nest.

  Kate checked her watch. She was supposed to meet Richard for dinner, and it looked as if she was going to be late. Again.

  25

  A police car streaked past, amber lights flashing, the siren so loud, Willie’s ears shivered with pain.

  Harlem—125th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Willie checked out the new street sign: AFRICAN SQUARE. It struck him as a white man’s idea of what African Americans wanted.

  Now it was a fire engine, blaring. Willie covered his ears as it tore past him. Was that the same direction as the cop car? He was still wondering when, seconds later, another one screamed down the street. Willie followed it with his eyes, wondered if some kid had fallen out of a tenement window that had no bars because the landlord knew he could get away with it up here; or if a family had been wiped out because there were no goddamn smoke alarms or usable fire escapes. The sirens faded into blasting rap music—a kid in low-slung baggy jeans, exposed boxer shorts, a handheld boom box to his ear. Oh, yeah, you’re cool, thought Willie, real cool. Just don’t be boppin’ down these mean streets when you’re forty.

  Then a couple of white guys, hunched over, scoping out the street, looking to score. Looking for trouble, too, thought Willie—better wait till morning, boys, join the Sunday tour groups of white folks, cameras at the ready to snap the colorful coloreds up in Harlem.

  Willie dug his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, twice cleaned. Now it no longer smelled of death—nor leather—just chemicals. He sniffed at a sleeve: Chemicals or not, the action brought back that night, and Elena’s shattered body.

  “Shit.”

  At Lenox Avenue the crowd thickened: mostly men, mostly young, some duded up for the evening ahead. Others—for whom Saturday night was like any other night—shuffled farther east, where abandoned buildings hugged the periphery of the elevated subway like empty husks: rags on their heads, bottles wrapped in crumpled paper bags at their lips.

  A pot of coffee crashed to the floor. Brown liquid splashed in slow motion. Shards of glass flashed silver, then morphed into a knife slashing through space. Elena’s arms crisscrossed in front of her screaming face.

  Then there was another face. But a kitchen light swinging on a chain dissolved it into a network of fractured shadows, an unrecognizable abstraction.

  Willie strained to hold on to the vision—to see the face. But it was no use. It faded from blood red to the painted purple facade of the corner bar, the Lenox Lounge.

  A place Willie knew, a memory.

  Plush velvet booths. Bitter-tasting beer. Trying hard to look older than sixteen. Henry beside him. And the talk. A kind of talk Willie rarely heard, surely not around his South Bronx project. But in the Lenox Lounge it was different. Not angry talk. Not scared talk. Just men talking, laughing, too. Henry’s arm around his shoulders, more father than brother. Just remembering that now, the hurt was too much.

  Across the street, the Apollo’s neon announced PIONEERS OF MOTOWN—the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Kate’s favorite music. Shit. He did not want to think about her. Not now.

  He kept his head down, walked with purpose. He knew where he was headed, hoped he was right. The wind kicked up with a slight mist. Willie shivered inside his ruined jacket. Would spring ever settle in?

  Now he was with the lost men, beside the E
l, sidestepping the lean, mangy dogs who hunted for food the way the lost men prowled for drugs and drink—the way Willie, too, prowled the dark street where the sun was never invited, kept out by the rusted hulk of overhead metal tracks. His Doc Martens kicked at garbage and broken glass; he shoved an abandoned shopping cart, like some goddamn symbol—a horn of plenty that had run dry for his brothers up here in Harlem.

  Was it 132nd? Maybe. He wasn’t sure. The street looked as if it had been waiting for something to happen—not enough activity; men huddled in doorways, faces hidden by the dark. But no, it was the wrong street.

  Across the avenue, once-white lettering, now yellow and chipped, on a cobalt blue background—the Greater Central Baptist Church. Stained-glass windows—slabs of colored glass flowers framed an awkward head of Jesus. Tomorrow, he knew, the churchgoing ladies would be here in their Sunday-morning finery and it would be a whole different world. Maybe he should have waited until tomorrow, too. But no. This could not wait.

  On the corner of Fifth, across from the church, was a whitewashed brick building that could use a second go-around with the white paint, now pigeon gray, a rusting metal sign dangling off-kilter above the double doors: TRANSIENTS—WEEKLY. Worth checking.

  “You kiddin’ me, boy?” The flesh around the proprietor’s eyes was light pink, like raw meat. It’s that disease, thought Willie, the one Michael Jackson’s got—supposedly. “I don’t get nobody’s name here. What you think—they be paying by check with their names printed out on ’em?” The man scratched his two-toned neck.

  Willie peered up the staircase to the right. The wallpaper—pink flamingos against a faded-blue sky—though peeling badly, looked hand-painted, as if maybe, at one time, this hotel had really been something. But how long ago, Willie couldn’t imagine. Not in his lifetime, that was for sure. He asked if he could check the rooms, but even as the words passed his lips he knew how absurd it sounded.

  Mr. Two-tone didn’t even look his way, just lit a bent cigarette, shook the match out in Willie’s face.

  The mist had turned to rain. Halos of yellow light from the streetlights spilled onto the wet sidewalks like pale honey.

  On the next corner, P.S. 121. Was it only last fall that he and Elena had been here with that class of seventh graders—a new foundation group—the teacher shushing them while Elena performed a few astonishing riffs—poetry as abstract music.

  Afterward, Willie had taken the kids outside, into the little courtyard, to collect the leaves shed by the few trees. Five minutes, and a couple of brawls later, the kids had stripped the concrete of any hint of fall. Then he had them glue the leaves onto colored construction paper, paint on and around them, or use them as stencils.

  Now, when Willie looked up and saw the second-story windows still dotted with those same construction-paper leaves—so many months later—it made his heart ache.

  Another block and there it was. The eight-foot-high fence of corrugated aluminum jammed up around the corner building. First, one man, jacket hiked up to hide his face, darted a look over his shoulder, slipped behind the aluminum. Then, a minute later, there was another.

  The street lamp painted the brick building a sour-lemony hue, and through the blown-out upper windows and the caved-in roof irregular patches of blue-black sky formed themselves into a mean abstract painting.

  Another man squeezed past the aluminum grating.

  Willie paced halfway down the street and back, trying to rev up his nerve. He watched two more men disappear behind the aluminum.

  Okay, man. It’s time. Do it. He took a breath, then another, pumping up his courage; then fast, almost without thinking, he squeezed past the metal, his feet taking the crumbling gray stones that were once front stairs, then through the open archway that functioned as a front door onto the torn-up floorboards, which slowed him down.

  He reached out in the dark for support, but there were no walls.

  Whispers echoed in the open space.

  Across the blackness, a glowing mass of red-orange, and figures.

  It took a moment before he could figure it all out: the makeshift oven an upended garbage can, and how many men—four? five?—all huddled around it, their hands, glass syringes, metal spoons flickering white-hot.

  Another deep breath, and Willie moved out of the dark.

  “What d’fuck—?” A black cutout, a man with a red-orange outline, shimmered toward him, blurring into darkness.

  Willie could feel the fire’s heat on his face. Or was it fear? He caught sight of his hands, glowing like a jack-o’-lanterns, in front of him—and realized he was the only one illuminated.

  But then another man spoke up—a scarecrow with a spoon, melting crack over flames. “Wil? That you?”

  “Henry.” Willie let out a breath. “You gotta come with me.”

  “What? You crazy, man? What the fuck you doing here?”

  “You’re in trouble, Henry. Big trouble.” Willie couldn’t see his eyes, but his brother’s fingers tightened on his arm.

  “Wait for me out front, little bro.”

  “This is real serious, Henry. You’ve got—”

  “Wait out front.” Henry shoved Willie back toward the door, his strength always a surprise to Willie, considering how frail he looked. Henry slid back into the dark until the fire painted him orange again and he got that spoon back over the flames.

  Outside, Willie kicked at shards of glass, stared up at those sad school windows with their sad colored-paper leaves, rain sprinkling his face, his hair. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Ten minutes felt like hours.

  When Henry strutted out, high, smiling and bold, Willie felt as if he could kill him. “You are in big fucking trouble,” he said, producing the police-artist sketch, crumpled and damp, from his pocket.

  Henry stared at the image, his hand shaking as he took hold of it, but his voice was cocky. “Goddamn it, man. This fucking thing. Hell, this could be anyone.”

  “You think so,” said Willie, barely able to control his rage. “Then how come it took me about half a fucking second to recognize you? You think the cops won’t?”

  The street lamp provided enough light for Willie to see the desperate look that suddenly animated his brother’s once handsome face, but it was enough to soften him—at least for a moment.

  “Please, Henry, tell me. What were you doing at Elena’s place?”

  Henry sagged. “I—I just wanted to see her. Nothing serious, man. Like . . . maybe have a drink, you know? Be with her.”

  “Why?”

  “I . . .” Henry stared down at the wet sidewalk. “I knew her since school, man. Since before I dropped out. You know that. I liked her. Is that so bad?”

  “And that night—the night she was murdered? You were there.”

  “But I didn’t do anything, Wil. You gotta believe that.” He paced under the sickly yellow light, his hands shoved into his pockets. “When I got there, her bell was out, but the front door was wide open. So I went up and . . . I saw her, all cut up. I . . . I just got out of there, fast. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “I believe you—but there’s a killer out there, and the cops think it’s you.”

  “What? They think I’m the goddamn death artist?”

  Henry’s mouth fell open, then broke into a sickly grin. His cackling laugh cut through the mist.

  “You think this is funny?” Willie grabbed him by the shoulders.

  Henry’s hands were around Willie’s throat, fast.

  Willie gasped, the muscles in his throat twitched for air. His big brother, no matter how wasted by drugs, could still overpower him. Willie pulled at Henry’s hands, tried to speak, but couldn’t. The yellow street lamp above was spiraling like a whirlpool, and he was falling into it, swooning.

  A minute later—or was it an hour?—Willie was sitting on the damp sidewalk, stroking the sore tendons in his neck, Henry’s face coming into focus only inches from his.

  “Oh, man. Oh, man. Forgive me.”
Henry hugged Willie to him. “I didn’t mean it. It was the crack, man. I love you, Wil. You know that, don’t you?”

  Willie eyed his brother gravely. Was it the drugs working that night at Elena’s? He stared into Henry’s face, the face of this junkie who was once the big brother he loved. “Yeah, Henry. I know that.”

  “And you believe me?”

  “I believe you.” Yes, he knew his brother. He wasn’t capable of murder. He wasn’t. Willie repeated the phrase—he wasn’t—in his head, trying to convince himself, almost believing it, too. But would anyone else? “Why didn’t you tell me this before, Henry?”

  “I tried, man. Last time I saw you, but . . .”

  Willie shoved the envelope of money into Henry’s hands. “You’ve got to get out of town. Before the cops find you.”

  Henry licked his dry lips, fingered the bills.

  “There’s five hundred dollars there. Get on a train or a plane or a bus, but get away.”

  “I don’t have to run,” said Henry, some of that cockiness back. “I’ve got a place to hide out. No one can find me there.”

  “Then go.” Willie sighed. “And don’t blow the money on drugs.”

  “I’m almost clean,” said Henry, his face going soft. “A little crack is all. I’ve been off junk for weeks. You believe me, right?”

  Willie thought of what their mother, Iris, would say—You’re throwing good money away, son—but he was doing it for her, too. The shame would kill her. Guilty or not, Henry was the perfect patsy. He took his brother’s hand, the one that only moments ago had been choking the life out of him. Henry squeezed back, this time with tenderness. Then Willie turned away, hurried down the street.

  Forgive me, Kate. He’s my brother.

  Richard was at the very last table in Joe Allen’s, on the bar side of the dimly lit, passionately old-fashioned watering hole. Kate couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was giving the reporter his best smile, complete with that almost-wink thing he did.

  Did he think he was cute? Oh, yeah. Leaning in toward the young blonde—Why did they always have to be blond?—Ms. Kathy Kraft of the New York Fucking Times, who was laughing, her bleached-blond head thrown back like Richard had just told her the fucking joke of the century.