Artist's Proof (10 page)

I shoved that nugget to the back of a high shelf, where it nestled beside the accusation against me of police brutality. I reminded myself to start thinking positively: I had sold a painting.

Cassie Brennan, poor Cassie, had come through for me.

E
IGHT

S
HARANOV HAD APPARENTLY
abandoned his Brighton Beach roots. When I couldn't find his phone number in the Brooklyn book it took a call to my old buddy Tony Kump, still working a precinct in Manhattan I had left years ago, to locate him through the DMV on Central Park West. The phone was unlisted, and NYNEX doesn't routinely give unlisted numbers even to the police, but Tony got me that too. I didn't ask how.

“So you're in town,” he said when we had finished our business. “You going to Muccio's later?”

“Some of the guys'll be there?”

“It's Friday, isn't it?”

I thought maybe I would go. I had an understandable itch to find out what was so compelling about my “oeuvre,” as Lonnie called it, that Mikhael Sharanov had to have a drawing by me hanging in his living room—his only wall adornment—while a business associate of his fell all over himself to gift him with one of my paintings. If Sharanov himself wouldn't enlighten me, one of my old bunch might have some recent news on him that would help clear the air.

Meanwhile I called the Manhattan number Kump gave me.

A woman answered with a sour, “Yeah?”

“Mr. Sharanov, please.”

“You have got to be kidding.” She was beyond sour; she was bitter.

I said pleasantly, “Does that mean he's not home?”

“You pick up pretty quick.” She wasn't only bitter, she was drunk. “Who wants him?”

“My name's Shale. We met at the beach today.” Did she know what had happened there? “At his house.”

“You sound like a cop. Are you investigating Cassie Brennan's murder?”

Okay, she knew; that would save some explaining. “I'm not a cop. I'm a neighbor. But I knew Cassie.” This woman wasn't Russian. “Are you Mrs. Sharanov?”

“Kitty. ‘Mrs. Sharanov' makes my teeth ache.”

Now I knew how she knew. She had to be the Kitty I heard Sharanov talking to on the phone. I said, “Do you know where I can reach Misha?”

“I have no idea, thank God.”

She sounded as if she might be more forthcoming than her husband. “I'm in the neighborhood,” I lied. “Could I drop up for a few minutes to talk?”

“What about?”

“Cassie's death.”

Pause. “Why don't you just do that?”

*   *   *

I
T WAS A
solid prewar Central Park West building, but almost certainly a rental; no co-op board with half a brain would approve a purchase by an applicant whose proudest reference was that he had never been indicted. The doorman phoned up to Mrs. Sharanov for an okay and then sent me to the tenth floor.

Kitty answered the door herself. She certainly hadn't spent the ten minutes since my call gussying up for a visitor. She was wearing a pale silk robe that she may have been living in. A yellowish nightgown drooped forlornly below its hem. Her lank pale blonde hair matched her pale blue eyes. Her face was drawn with an unhappiness that had all but robbed her of her Nordic good looks. She was probably under forty because even in her present state she didn't look more than forty-five.

I stepped into a large foyer with lime green walls that were completely blank; except for my work, Sharanov didn't seem interested in art. During my quick glance around, Kitty looked me frankly up and down. Apparently she approved because she said, almost pleasantly, “Can I fix you a drink?”

I didn't want a drink; if I went on to Muccio's, I'd be drinking as much as I could handle before the ninety-mile drive home. But this woman would take a refusal as an insult.

“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you've got.”

“I've got everything,” she growled, as though I had challenged her bar. She was leading me into a good-size living room with dark, clunky furniture and the same lime walls. The minimalist style of Sharanov's beach house was definitely a mood change for him.

“Why don't you surprise me?” I said, and then, “You know something? You've got a great view of the park, but you'd like it even better if your walls were bone white.”

She stopped her beeline march to the bar to give me another scrutiny, this one more intense. “What are you, a decorator?” she said in dismay. I was beginning to think she had plans for me, and if she didn't like my answer I might be given the door instead of the drink.

“No, I'm a painter.” Now she wrinkled her straight arrow nose in disdain. I added, “Of paintings. Cassie used to model for me.”

Visibly relieved that she was not entertaining a handyman, she resumed her path to the booze. “I can see why. She was a pretty young thing.”

She had suddenly remembered the tragedy and her face sagged; behind the booze and the brittle facade may have lurked a woman of substance. Abruptly she said, “I should never have hired her…” She had reached the sanctuary of the bar and her voice trailed off under the sound of rattling bottles.

“Why not?”

“Do you bring candy to a diabetic? Misha has a serious sweet tooth when it comes to women. Cassie was only fifteen when I hired her last summer, but she turned sixteen in the fall. Sweet, sweet sixteen. And Misha started going out to the beach more. Good weather and bad.”

“They were having an affair?”

“I hope not. But who'd ever know for absolutely sure? He was smitten, and he doesn't give up easily. If she had any sense she turned him down. And please don't dignify Misha's every score with ‘affair.'” She was drunk but she wasn't stupid.

“I gather you two aren't getting along.”

“Never better. I haven't seen the bastard in weeks. I got what I deserved.”

“How's that?” I prompted, although this woman didn't need prompting.

“Thinking I could civilize him after two wives failed. But they were Russians, raised to expect nothing from their man but a kid or two and a belt across the chops on Saturday night.” She handed me a generous Scotch on the rocks. Her own was even bigger. “I forget. What was it brought you here?”

“I care what happened to Cassie. I think you do too.”

The brittle shell was easily punctured. She said softly, “I wish I knew who did that. And why. Misha is cunning and he's got the conscience of a house plant. But
that…
” She couldn't say it, and her sculptured jaw quivered. “What happened. That's not his style. Not anymore. Cassie may have brought it on herself.”

“How?”

“Exploring the world of grown-ups. Testing her powers and going too far. What do you think?”

I didn't want to speculate about that. I said, “I don't know what she was like at the end. We'd been out of touch for months.”

She let me off the hook. “Yes, at that age months can be years. God, can they.” Her face softened further at some memory. I took a closer look. Tarnished gentility now, she must have been something at that age.

I changed the subject. “All those wives, including you—did any of you teach Misha to make a bed?”

“Misha? He resented having to tie his own shoes. Russian men!” And then, shrewdly, “Didn't you say you weren't a cop?”

“I'm not. But a question keeps nagging me. I don't figure your husband for a nester. And yet his bed at the house was made this morning—not made well, maybe too quickly, but made. Sheets, blankets, pillows, cushions, bedspread, the works. And not by Cassie—she hadn't even begun her housework when she was killed. That bed must have been made up when Misha left for the city last weekend. Any idea who might have done it?”

“None. Except, you're right, it wasn't Misha. In all our years together I never saw him make a bed. Even badly.”

I took a shot. “Is there someone else here who can help us with this?”

She dug a hand in her yellow hair. “What do you mean, someone else?”

“Am I sticking my nose in where I shouldn't?”

Kitty stared at me, but she said nothing. She hadn't stopped drinking since I arrived but she had been growing progressively less drunk.

I said, “Okay. I'm looking at two sections of the
Times
on two chairs, one folded neatly, the other badly. By different hands?”

She took a moment before she said, “You
are
a cop.”

“Again, no. But I used to be. I got it right, huh?”

She called, “Roy!” And then, “Roy, would you come in here, please?” And then, to me, “It's no big deal. My brother moved in when I threw Misha out. They've never gotten along. You'd never say anything about his being here…?”

I shook my head. “You threw Misha out because of Cassie?”

“No. How could I compete with that? My blood boiled over only when he went after women past thirty.” She looked at me and she was no longer vaguely flirty; she was suddenly too insecure to go on using me for target practice.

I took a swipe at reassuring her. “The better-looking the woman, the more she hates rejection. I'd hate to be near when your blood boils. I hear you pitch chairs.”

She may have seen through my flattery, but she rallied. “I've heard that too. It's not true. Sunbathing breeds gossip. All that lying around with nothing to do.”

The brother had walked into the room; he had pulled on a sweatshirt over rumpled cords, but he hadn't taken the time to comb his hair. I had figured, brother my eye; she's taken a live-in lover. But he did look like her—a softer version, pudgy, with drooping eyelids and a self-conscious languor. I'd have given odds that he had been out of work for two years while he looked for “a really suitable business opportunity.”

Kitty introduced him as “Roy Chalmers, my baby brother,” and me as a “Mr. Shale.” She hadn't been so drunk as not to remember my name. Roy allowed in a faintly preppy voice that he was pleased to meet me, as though I had shown up for an audience. I decided that this pair might be the remnants of a once proud WASP family that had gone through the last of the money.

“Roy,” Kitty said, “if I told you someone was currently playing house at the beach with my dear husband—even made his bed for him—would you take a guess?”

“Only if there's a prize for getting it right the first time.” He didn't wait. “Let's see, I'd look for someone witchy, greedy, and calculating—a woman who may be better at unmaking beds than at making them, but who'd better nail him before her looks fade and her chances vanish.”

Kitty's lips tightened; the tail end of that description cut too close to the bone. But she said, “You do have someone in mind.”

“Of course. So must you. Olivia Cooper. Or you wouldn't have thrown that beach chair last summer. Kit, have you given any thought to dinner? What would you say to the little Turkish place we discovered last week?”

He had dismissed me. I stayed only long enough to learn that Olivia Cooper lived in Manhattan, and I left brother and sister arguing dinner plans over fresh drinks.

N
INE

C
HINATOWN WAS CREEPING
up on this part of Little Italy; in five years it would vanish in a sea of wonton soup and black bean sauce.

Muccio's didn't seem to notice. I hadn't been to the joint in nearly two years, but it might as well have been ten. The front room never changed; I suspect it had looked this way since Rocco Muccio opened the doors in 1922 to share with the world his wife's punishing version of Sicilian cooking. Rocco's son Jack was not so much maintaining a tradition as failing to see that the moldering place had one. The regulars didn't care; if they didn't object to the food—Jack's cousin Angelina was keeping up the standard in the kitchen—why would they complain that the decor was fifty years out-of-date?

That front room still had all the warmth of a storefront gypsy mitt joint. A long bar, scarred and bruised, was the main attraction here. Above the back bar hung an overripe nude in overripe colors I had painted for Jack Muccio twenty years ago in exchange for meals. Looking at it now gave me the same heartburn as Angelina's cooking.

A few drinkers could usually be found at the bar, but diners ate in the large backroom. I had never seen any of the four tables in here occupied. Forty years ago two mob hit men had lurched through the front door and sprayed this room with submachine guns, killing two patrons and wounding four, although none was the rat fink they were after. He was in the john at the time, upchucking Mrs. Muccio's linguini
con vongole.
Ever since the massacre, the tables in the front room had been considered undesirable.

I had forgotten that on Friday and Saturday nights a pudding-faced woman named Mona held forth in the front room on an electric dreadnaught; when I came in the door she was winding up a bone-rattling “Volare.” “Lieutenant Shale!” she yelled happily, over it.

It was good to be remembered. “How goes it, Mona?” I asked and stuffed a couple of bucks in the cloudy tooth glass she kept next to the keyboard.

“Not bad,” she yelled, “except for a touch of arthritis in the fingers.”

“Mona, you mean you haven't always had that?”

She laughed appreciatively and launched into “Sorrento.” It was as though I had never been away.

I bellied up to the bar and a full-throated greeting from Jack's nephew Enzo, the bartender. “Sid-ney!” he said; he always gave me the measured two syllable treatment. “Long time. You been dead or something? Your gang is in the backroom.”

“In a while, Enzo. Good to see you. I'm expecting a lady.”

“Here?”

I wasn't surprised at his surprise. “Not to eat. Would I lay a lawsuit on the joint? What's new?”