Arsenic and Old Paint

by Hailey Lind

  I felt rage boiling up, threatening to spill over. There was no point in hanging around the ICU. There was a would-be murderer to find. I turned to Michael, who nodded in unspoken agreement.

  We walked out of the hospital into the strong late-morning sunshine. The next thing I knew I was sitting on the curb, struggling to breathe as my head swam. Michael sat beside me and stroked my hair.

  “I was with him last night,” I said.

  “It was an accident, Annie. A mistake. It happens.”

  “Accidental arsenic poisoning? Tell me how that’s possible. Anton knows paint chemistry better than anyone—better even than my grandfather, and he knows more than most chemists. Anton taught me himself, when I was a teenager.”

  “He was also an absentminded fellow, Annie, you know that. As likely to put a tin of linseed oil on the stove to boil as the teakettle. And he’s always covered in paint.”

  “Arsenic doesn’t work that way. It’s not easily absorbed through the skin—that kind of poisoning would happen gradually, after years of exposure. The only way arsenic kills quickly is if it’s ingested. We had dinner together last night, and I feel fine.”

  “Perhaps he ate something else later.”

  I stood up abruptly.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To his studio.”

  “Annie, wait...”

  I was already marching to the parking structure.

  “At least let me drive,” Michael said, trotting up behind me.

  “Make it fast.” I tossed him the keys.

  We turned onto Anton’s street in the Noe Valley neighborhood, and saw four black-and-white police cruisers, a hazardous materials truck, and an unmarked police car parked in the already cramped space in front of his house. A uniformed cop halted us at the gate to Anton’s yard, and at my insistence, called over the investigating officer.

  Annette Crawford.

  “Annie, I’m so sorry—”

  “Why would Homicide be here if this was an accident?” I challenged without preliminary.

  Annette shot a concerned look at Michael. It made me angrier.

  “Homicide gets called in on special cases to assess the crime scene,” she said, her deep voice gentle. “It’s standard procedure.”

  “I want to see his studio.”

  “You can’t. The place was full of arsine gas. Hazmat is in there now, cleaning up so we can assess the scene.”

  “Arsine gas?” I asked.

  Someone dressed in a moon-suit shouted to Annette, and she nodded. “Listen, this isn’t even my catch. I was checking out a possible link with the Fleming-Union. There have been some...developments that I need to speak with you—the two of you—about. I’ll call with an update and we can arrange a time to meet, all right?”

  “But—”

  “Later, Annie. I promise.”

  I became aware of Michael’s firm grip on my upper arm, and allowed myself to be turned toward the street. Halfway down the block, beyond the clump of emergency vehicles, I spied Anton’s cargo van parked at the curb. Its tan paint was dented and scratched, its windowless sides advertised SULLY’S CARPET CLEANERS. It was the sort of vehicle that appeared unlikely to contain a functioning radio much less valuable artwork. Glancing around to be sure the cop at Anton’s gate wasn’t watching, I headed straight for it.

  “Now where are you going?” Michael said, chasing after me.

  “Open it,” I demanded as we reached the van.

  “Why?”

  “It’s Anton’s. I want to check it out.”

  “Forgive me for stating the obvious, but if this wasn’t an accident we should tell the cops about the van. It may contain evidence.”

  “You heard Annette, Michael. They think it’s an accident. No one’s interested in what really happened. They’re only too happy to blame the crazy old artist. Besides, even if the cops do rule it an assault, the closure rate on homicide in San Francisco is, what—thirty percent? Not good enough. Nowhere near good enough.”

  “It’s not a homicide, Annie. Anton’s still alive, remember?”

  “For now. But it was meant to be a homicide. And if anyone’s going to get to the bottom of this, it’ll have to be us.” I was in a fever of needing to do something, anything. If I didn’t keep going I would have to think about the fact that Anton—Uncle Anton—the talented, gossipy old artist, might never again bug me about my love life in his funny Polish accent. “Now, will you open the damned van or do I get a new business partner?”

  Michael hesitated for a moment longer before trotting back down the street to my truck. He scrounged in back of the seat for a minute, returning to the van with a couple long strips of thin metal.

  “Act as lookout,” he said. I kept an eye on the bored cop guarding Anton’s gate as he chatted on his cell phone, oblivious to the breaking-and-entering a hundred yards away. Michael slid a metal strip between the driver’s door and the weather stripping and yanked up, popping the lock mechanism. It had taken at least three seconds.

  “After you.” Michael gestured.

  “On second thought, let’s drive around the corner so we can search it in peace.”

  “No keys, love.”

  “So hotwire it.”

  “You want me to hotwire it?”

  “You expect me to believe you don’t know how to hotwire a car?”

  “I know how to hotwire a damned car,” Michael bit off, casting a glance back toward the marked police presence half a block down. He climbed into the driver’s seat and started kicking at a panel under the dashboard. Leaning down, he fiddled with wires, working by touch while keeping his eyes fixed on me. “In case you’re wondering, I’m imagining what my poor parole officer will say when I’m busted for Grand Theft Auto.”

  “I know exactly what he’ll say,” I replied. “ ‘Practice your breathing.’ ”

  Breathing was a big part of Doug-the-parole-officer’s philosophy of How to Fix the World and Find One’s Place in It. He had explained it all to me over a vegan meal of flaxseed, tofu, and shredded carrots in a raspberry-melon vinaigrette at the Gratitude Café in Berkeley. The meal was memorable mostly because I grew weary of chewing long before my hunger was sated, which I imagine would be an excellent dieting technique. According to Doug, the secret to inner peace was to breathe with intent, inhaling anger and exhaling compassion. Or maybe it was the other way around. I got it mixed up.

  At the moment I was both inhaling and exhaling anger and misery, with nary a hint of compassion.

  The old van coughed to life, and I ran around to the passenger’s side. Michael executed a twelve-point U-turn on the narrow, choked lane, took a right on Twenty-third, a quiet residential street, and maneuvered into a tight spot in front of a fire hydrant. I climbed in back and started poking around the cargo area in the dim light from the front and rear windows.

  “Find anything?” Michael asked.

  “Not yet. So far it’s pretty much like his studio. Just, you know, without the easels.”

  One thing seemed out of place: I picked up a pack of sparklers stapled to a fireworks catalog.

  “Does this seem strange to you?” I asked, handing him the fireworks.

  “Why? Do you think I’m not a patriot?”

  “I never actually thought about it.”

  “Hey, I’m as American as...the next American. I’m a big fan of John Philip Sousa.”

  “Why would Anton want fireworks? Fireworks are illegal around here, aren’t they? Too great a fire risk.”

  “I’m fairly certain Anton would not be deterred by something as minor as fireworks being illegal,” said Michael. “Wait a second. There’s something written on the catalog.”

  I looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, Anton had scribbled a phone number and “Chan—Cameron House, two o’clock.”

  “What’s Cameron House?” I asked.

  “Beats me. Let’s keep looking.”

  I leaned against the side of the van and picked up a brown grocer
y bag stuffed with papers, fearing it was only trash Anton had intended to toss in a recycling bin. Old ATM receipts, junk mail, a Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes entry, take-out menus for pizza restaurants—and a newsletter from Cameron House.

  I handed it to Michael. “Look at this.”

  The front page of the newsletter featured a black-and-white photograph of Anton surrounded by a dozen kids, everyone grinning happily. The accompanying article was a laudatory piece describing how Anton Woznikowicz, “an internationally famous artist and CH benefactor” had restored a mural in the Cameron House entryway.

  A siren blared, and we jumped. “I’ll check it out,” Michael said.

  While he scoped out the scene, I pawed through the rest of the junk. Plastic milk crates held cans of turpentine and kerosene; sealed bottles of different kinds of oils; boxes of powdered pigments; brushes of various sizes and shapes; more boxes of artists’ crayons and charcoal, pencils and chalk; a cloth bag of clean rags—the usual effluvia every working artist carts around. Nothing distinctive or suspicious about any of it.

  I crawled to the front and slipped into the driver’s seat. If I were an elderly Polish art forger who drove a piece-of-crap van any half-wit could break into, where would I put something valuable? In the molded plastic well between the front seats were some crumpled papers, including a coupon for five dollars off an oil change, two Golden Gate Bridge toll receipts dated several months ago, and a piece of heavy sketch paper on which was written “Victor” and a hand-drawn map to an address in Sausalito. Another piece of paper had a sketch of a brick-lined tunnel labeled “tunnel vision.” On yet another scrap he had written “Fleming-Union” and a time, and jotted down a reference to Balthazar O.

  A fresh wave of tears stung my eyes. Anton had never mastered the finer points of the criminal life, such as not writing down incriminating information. Dear, silly old man. If he weren’t already in Intensive Care I would be tempted to send him there myself for doing whatever he had done this time.

  “Anything?” Michael asked through the window.

  “Some notes,” I said.

  “Isn’t it possible this was an accident, Annie? I thought lots of artists suffered from toxin poisoning. Didn’t van Gogh manage to poison himself with paint?”

  I sat back, and tried to dredge up one of Anton’s many lectures about the toxic potential of paint. I could practically hear the talented forger pontificating about one of his favorite topics:

  “The history of paint is the history of poison, Annie. Lead, mercury, chromium, cadmium, manganese...and Emerald Green, such a lovely hue, is only achieved because of the arsenic in the pigment. The genuine shade was outlawed years ago, which is why a clever painter must mix it himself, of course! No modern green can compare to True Emerald. You know, Annie, art is but a metaphor for life: a little poison, judiciously applied, makes all the difference.”

  Interestingly, Emerald Green was one of Gauguin’s favorite paint colors.

  “Daily exposure can mess with your system, true, but that’s over the long run,” I said. “When I was a kid in Paris Anton insisted I wear latex gloves anytime we worked with dangerous pigments.”

  “Somehow I doubt Anton took his own advice. He was always covered in paint.”

  I nodded. Artists hate protective gear. Feeling the paint is part of the joy.

  “The thing is,” I said, “Anton was poisoned by arsenic gas. Arsenic green could be the culprit, but not only is it banned in the U.S., as far as I know it comes in the form of a powdered pigment, a solid. Why would he turn it into gas? It doesn’t make sense.” I wished I had paid more attention to Anton’s lectures. I needed to talk to someone who understood the chemistry of paint.

  What had Anton said last night? Several years ago, he forged a copy of the original Gauguin painting for an F-U member. The forgery was supposed to have been kept private but for some reason was brought to Mayfair’s Auction House. I was working from the assumption that Anton painted the forgery for Victor Yeltsin, the fellow who reported the Gauguin stolen and reaped a huge insurance windfall, which was why Jarrah Preston was investigating. Had someone tried to kill Anton to prevent him from admitting to the forgery?

  That didn’t make much sense. First, copying an artwork is not a crime in itself. Anyone who tries to pass that artwork off as genuine, however, is guilty of fraud. Forgers aren’t normally a threat to their co-conspirators because not only are they also implicated in the crime but unless the forgery can be proved—which, when it comes to fine art and other original masterpieces, is much harder to do than most people realized—the law can’t touch them.

  Unless...a forger decided to indulge in a spot of blackmail. But successful blackmail required a degree of cunning and ruthlessness that Anton simply did not have. Anton was a criminal, to be sure, but he did not have a violent bone in his body. On the other hand, he was always talking about one last big score. Or could he have been working on a second Gauguin forgery? It wouldn’t be the first time there were multiple Anton forgeries floating around. Could that be why he had arsenic-laden pigment in his studio? But why would he have needed another fake?

  As much as I hated to admit it, this really was a job for the police. Michael was right; I needed to tell Annette Crawford the little I knew about Anton’s possible connections with the F-U, and a copied Gauguin that had recently turned up at auction.

  We returned to Anton’s where, at my insistence, Annette broke away from her duties for a few minutes and listened to my vague suspicions and half-baked theories. The one time I decide to do the sane, legal thing and spill my guts to the officials, and all Annette had to say was: “I’ll nose around, but chances are that it was just an accident. You’re so close to it it’s hard for you to see.”

  She also mentioned, again, that she needed to call Michael and me down to the station in the near future to discuss further “developments” in the Fleming-Union case. Oh goodie.

  After that less-than-satisfying interaction with the police, Michael drove us back to the DeBenton studio building. Suddenly the X-man had become Mr. Law-and-Order, an obedient citizen arguing for allowing the wheels of justice to turn, telling me to let the SFPD handle it.

  “I just gave the police all the information, didn’t I?” I asked. A fat lot of good that would do Anton, I thought.

  “Are you saying you’ll let it drop?” Michael pushed me. “And the Preston case is on the back burner until we figure out how Anton’s connected to that.”

  “I thought you knew that Anton was involved...”

  “In what?”

  “You let it slip that Anton was involved with the Fleming-Union. Remember?”

  “That was something entirely different,” Michael said.

  “Like what?”

  “A while back, Anton was doing some restoration work on an old mural in their wine cellar, and he happened upon something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know the particulars. You know how closed-mouth Anton could be. He thought he had discovered something relevant to the past.... He was asking the F-U for money for some community group.”

  “Do you know what group?”

  He shook his head.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I just want to look up some of these names I found in Anton’s van. Maybe one of them will shed some light on all of this.”

  “Look up some names, like ‘Victor in Sausalito’? Didn’t I hear you tell Annette that the man who filed for the insurance money was named Victor? And where did he live again?” He drove into the DeBenton building parking lot and pulled in next to Frank’s shiny Jaguar. We were still arguing as we climbed out. “I’m serious, Annie. Leave this to the authorities this time. Just drop it.”

  “You are such a hypocrite,” I said.

  “Pardon me if I’m not looking forward to a repeat of last time.”

  Frank strolled out of his office, looking amused, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his gray wool trousers. “Everything okay out
here?”

  Michael glared at him, then at me, before stomping up the stairs.

  “Lover’s quarrel?” Frank asked with a ghost of a smile.

  I burst into tears.

  8

  Dear Monsieur: Our school board cut the arts program in the elementary schools while increasing the budget for the sports programs. How can I make them change their minds?

  Dear Madame: I regret to say that anyone who places a higher value on an inflated pig’s bladder than on the spark of divinity within each of us, which is the very essence of art and beauty, is beyond redemption. It was for such as they that Dr. Joseph Guillotin invented Madame la Guillotine.

  —Georges LeFleur, “Craquelure”

  Frank looked so appalled I almost started to laugh. But I was still sniffling when he wrapped his arm around my shoulders, gently led me through the door of his office, and sat me down in the leather chair he kept for visitors. He hitched a hip up onto the side of his desk, handed me a tissue, and looked down at me with a slight frown of concentration, as though trying to decide what to say.

  “Annie, I’m not trying to tell you what to do”—that was news to me—“but I’m speaking as your friend. He’s not good for you. It’s as simple as that.”

  I sniffed loudly and looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Look at your life, at everything you’ve accomplished. He’s part of your past, Annie, not your future. It’s time you walked away. Just turn your back on him and everything he represents, and walk away.”

  “I can’t do that. Not now, when he needs me most.”

  “You have to. You owe it to yourself.”

  “I can’t just abandon him.”

  “He’s gotten along without you all these years, hasn’t he?”

  “I don’t care what legal troubles he’s in. I still love him.”

  Frank let out an audible sigh. “All right then. I guess I’m the one who needs to walk away. Once and for all.”

  “Wait...” I saw muscles working as Frank clenched his jaw. He was furious. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Michael.”

  “Michael?”

  Frank spoke slowly, as if I’d lost my mind. “He’s wrong for you. He can’t give you—”