Color Blind (33 page)

P
BS had been airing the promo for the show on an hourly rotation. Herbert Bloom was making room in his gallery. Brown had gathered the troops.

“Remember,” said Brown, scanning the crowd in the briefing room. “If he is the escaped patient from Pilgrim State, we’re looking for a white male, early- to mid-twenties, may be wearing sunglasses; and if he’s not, wearing sunglasses, that is, he’ll be blinking and squinting. Oh, and he’ll have a nasty scar on his wrist.”

“And what if it’s not that guy?” asked a young detective in the first row.

“Either way we’re dealing with a psychopath,” said Brown. “And he might be out of control at this point.”

“That mean he’s gonna come in shooting?” asked another cop.

“Doubtful. The shrinks think he’s going to want a good look at his artwork before he pulls anything. But all of you are still wearing Kevlar.” Brown tugged at his earlobe. “There will be at least twenty or so civilians in the gallery with you—art lovers and collectors that the dealer invited so the situation looks and feels kosher—so caution and judgment are the words of the day, people. The civies’ names will be at the door. Of course anyone suspicious
will
be let in. That’s the whole point.”

Brown glanced over at Agents Sobieski and Marcusa taking notes for Grange, who was busy prepping a few new recruits for the operation. “The Bureau’s also going to have agents inside, wired, in contact with a van around the corner. There will also be an agent across the street at all times, and we’ll have two men in a car as well. Oh, last thing. You gotta look the part.” Brown nodded at Kate.

“The operative word,” said Kate, taking a place beside Brown, “is black.” She glanced over all the uniforms and detectives who would be playing art lovers at the Gallery of Outsider Art, a fairly equal mix of men and women. “Black is the unofficial art world costume. Anyone who shows up in floral prints or stripes is in
big
trouble. This opening has to look like the real thing because we have no idea if our unsub has ever been to an actual art opening. But on the chance that he has, all of you have to look authentic.” Kate scanned the men. “Guys, it’s perfectly okay to wear black jeans, just couple it with a decent black shirt or tee, or a plain white shirt is okay too. But absolutely no button-down collars.”

“Jean jackets okay?” asked Brown. “They’ve got to hide their guns somewhere.”

“Fine,” said Kate. “But don’t all of you show up in jean jackets. Some of you get your black sport jackets out of mothballs. And ladies, black too. Black jeans, pants, black tops; white’s okay too, if it’s a plain blouse. But keep it simple. Nothing too fancy, and absolutely nothing frilly.”

A detective in the front row self-consciously patted down the ruffles at the cuffs of her pink blouse.

“And no comfy cop shoes or sneaks, girls.” Kate took in the women cops, the uniforms and detectives, remembered what it had been like when she was in Astoria, and wanted to do something for them. “Listen, if you haven’t got any, go out and buy yourselves a pair of really expensive black shoes. Go over to Jeffrey. It’s just a few blocks south on Fourteenth Street in the old meatpacking district. It’s known for its shoes, and it’s where the art world girls who can afford to, go. And don’t faint when you see the price tags.”

A hand flew up. Second row. Youngish woman. Dyed blond hair.

“You’ll be reimbursed,” said Kate, anticipating the blonde’s question.

Kate nodded at Floyd Brown, just so he’d know she intended to pick up the tab for a dozen pairs of designer shoes. What the hell, she thought, regarding all the smiling women. She thought back to her cop days, shopping at JC Penney and discount stores. Why shouldn’t these women own a pair of fancy-ass shoes? “Choose something you really like,” she added. “’Cause you get to keep them. Just make sure they’re black.”

“Hey—” Burly detective, second row. “What about me? I could use me a pair of them Yves Saint Laurence shoes.”

Everyone laughed. Kate too.

“Sorry,” said Kate. “Black sneaks or oxfords will have to do. Let’s face it, who gives a shit what you guys put on your feet?”

More laughs. First time the cops who weren’t part of the “murder squad” were not giving her the cold shoulder.

Nicky Perlmutter threw her a wink.

“Okay,” said Kate, trying to get their attention again. “A few rules about art opening behavior. One, it’s okay to look at the artwork, but don’t act like you’re terribly interested. It’s all about attitude.” Kate glanced over at a corkboard wall covered with gruesome crime scene photos, lifted a brow, pursed her lips, crossed her arms over her chest, affected a look of total ennui. “See what I mean?”

“Like you just smelled a fart?” said the same burly detective, obviously the class clown in junior high and still playing the role.

“Not quite. But something like that.” Kate didn’t bother to smile this time. “And chat with your partner, say things like,
interesting,
or
fascinating,
but never—ever—say the artwork is pretty. That’s a no-no.”

Class Clown said, “Aw gee, can’t I say you’re awful purdy.”

Brown locked the man in his gaze. “This is a killer, McGrath. A cunning psychopath, young and strong. Get it?”

The bulky McGrath seemed to shrink a bit.

“Weapons concealed, but easy to get at,” Brown continued. “And do not overreact. We don’t want to scare him off. We’d like this joker alive.”

“Why’s that?” asked a very young guy in uniform leaning against the wall.

“Because that way,” said Brown, “he gets to answer all of our questions.”

H
ey, wait up.” Kate called out to Nicky Perlmutter, who was heading down the precinct hall at his normal loping stride.

He turned, offered up one of his Huck Finn smiles, but it faded fast when he spotted Class Clown and his partner lumbering toward them, both in serious need of a gym membership. Class Clown whacked Perlmutter on the back. “Hey, Nicky-boy, you gonna go over to that Jeffrey place, get yourself a pair of shoes?” He elbowed his overweight partner, the pair of them giggling like ten-year-olds as they turned the corner.

“Dumb and Dumber,” said Kate.

“You got that right,” said Perlmutter, but he wasn’t smiling. He fixed her with his twin blues, hesitated a moment. “I don’t imagine you know what it’s like to be a gay cop.”

“No, but I know what it’s like to be a woman cop, in Queens, no less, and what it’s like to be a woman in general.” She straightened and affected a radio announcer’s voice: “All second-class citizens please raise their hands.” And she did.

“Well, gay men are more like third-class, and gay cops—who knows?” He shrugged his broad shoulders.

His admission hadn’t come as much of a shock to Kate.

“You know the old joke: What do you call an African American with a degree from Harvard?” Perlmutter waited a beat. “Nigger.” He dragged a hand across his mouth as if wiping away the word. “Me, I’m usually about halfway out of the room when I hear ‘Faggot’ muttered under one of those assholes’ breath. You heard what good ol’ boy Agent Sobieski said, didn’t you? ‘One less faggot.’ That was his assessment of the murder of that poor kid.”

“Sobieski is a jerk,” said Kate.

“Half the people in this country think guys like me are going straight to hell.”

“Maybe, but the Supreme Court has condoned same-sex marriage and killed the sodomy laws.”

“Yeah. And Pat Robertson is praying that the judges responsible for that vote die. Now there’s a lesson for the kids. ‘Hey, kids, if someone disagrees with your point of view, just ask God to kill them.’” Perlmutter sighed. “When I was ten, I was sitting in church with my mom, who remained devout even though she’d married a Jew. Go figure.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I’m sitting there and the priest is up in front preaching about how homosexuals are going to hell. Never forgot it.”

“Okay, I got one for you,” said Kate. “There’s a social worker, a lawyer, and a priest on the
Titanic,
and it’s going down, fast. Social worker says, ‘Save the children!’ Lawyer says, ‘Fuck the children!’ Priest says, ‘Do you think we have time?’ ”

Perlmutter sputtered a laugh.

“I’ll bet hell’s a lot more fun anyway.” Kate looked into Perlmutter’s open face, and got serious. “So how come you never said anything to me about being gay?”

“How come you never said anything about being straight?”

“Touché.”

“Seriously?” He sighed. “Took me half my life to like myself, to accept who I am. And I do. But I don’t feel like making announcements or being a poster boy. They wanted me to head up Hate Crimes, and I thought about it, but I didn’t want to be known as the gay cop, which that would have ensured, though with all due modesty I am the best damn gay cop you, or anyone else, has ever seen.”

“Never doubted it for a minute.”

“You know, maybe McGrath is right. About Jeffrey, I mean. I could use a new pair of size thirteens.”

Kate made a show of reaching for her shoe. “What the hell, I’ll lend you mine.”

A
m I dreaming?

He reaches out and touches the TV set to make sure it is actually there, that he is not hallucinating, feels the crackling static on his fingertips. He stares, transfixed, at one of his very own street scenes, while the art
her-story-n
says something about a gallery, but he is so bewitched by the image of his painting on the screen that he can just barely hear her. He blinks and squints, realizes he has been holding his breath and gasps. His ears pop and he hears her clearly now, quickly writes in his sketchpad in his childlike scrawl, and afterward, when she is gone from the set, he reads and rereads the fragments of her statement that he has scrawled in the sketchpad, and tries to believe it is real.

A promissing new comer. A tail-ented painter. Her-bert Blume Gallery. In Chel-see.

He stares a full minute at his notes, at these things the art
her-story-n
has said, then calls out, “Donna! Tony! Dylan! Brenda! Everyone! Listen to this!” And he tells them in detail over and over about his painting on TV and how they will all be going to his exhibition. “She’s seen them. My paintings. And she likes them!”

A feeling, like the embrace of a soft blanket, comes over him, but it doesn’t last long.

How will he do this, see the show? After all, he can’t just walk into the gallery and say those are
my
paintings. Do they think he is stupid? Would she try to trick him? He doesn’t think so, but it’s possible. People are always tricking him.

“What do you think, Donna?”

“I think you can do anything,” says his Donna-voice.

“Sure, sure,” says his Dylan-voice. “You can figure it out. You’ve done lots of stuff, and you always get away with it.”

He thinks about that, a montage of images playing in his brain along with the static and jingles and radio-speak, and agrees that it is true. He
can
do anything.

He glances back at the TV, at a woman with mahogany hair and a wild-strawberry blouse drinking a Coke and walking across an emerald lawn, and falls back against the couch thinking about his exhibition, and he is so utterly and deliriously happy the tears in his eyes have blurred all the TV colors into a gorgeous streaky rainbow. It is truly a miracle—the exhibition
and
being cured. All of it.

His own show.

Celebrate the moments of your life.

Indeed.

He has to make a plan.