End of Secrets (16 page)

“Figure it out yet?” The voice came from over her shoulder.

“Excuse me?” she said, turning. “Oh.” His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck where smooth flesh pulled against the sturdy contours of his collarbone. Dark, meticulous hair shot up from his forehead. What startled her were his eyes—a moody hazelnut color of uncertain depth. The surveillance footage had not been able to pick up on that. He was looking past her, up at the wall. She followed his gaze back to the painting, assessing the shapes and colors. “I think i
t’s
an ear canal,” she said. “Or a wormhole.”

“Those are very specific interpretations,” said Charlie Canyon.

“I did
n’t
mean to project. Do
n’t
tell the artist,” she said, and then caught herself in time to play it off. “That is,
I’m
sorry, yo
u’r
e not—?”

“God, no. The artist is the girl over there by the yellow canvas. Marybelle Pickett. Sort of improbable, is
n’t
it, a girl so tiny churning out these massive works?”

They were standing close enough to the canvas that color filled Ker
a’s
vision from one side to the other. “I think I like it. Whatever i
t’s
supposed to be.”

“Sh
e’s
an important artist,” said Canyon.

“Wh
y’s
that?”

“Because her paintings expand our awareness of the world, rather than distract us from it. Sh
e’s
going to be famous.”

Kera did
n’t
know the art world from molecular biology, but her gut told her there was
n’t
a chance in hell the paintings hung around this basement would ever enjoy a wide audience. They seemed precisely the sort of indie achievements that would be destined for obscurity. Kera searched his face for any sign of irony, but found none. “
I’l
l have to take your word for it.
I’m
no art critic.”

“The opinions of those who call themselves critics matter the least.” When he looked at her, his gaze was piercing, like he knew she did
n’t
belong here, like he knew everything. “What do you do, then?” he said.

“Huh?”

“The drinks were better at the Empire Hotel. If yo
u’r
e not an art critic, what brings you all the way down here?”

“
I’m
a journalist.” She did
n’t
like how this was going. After watching his every move for a week, sh
e’d
assumed she was walking into this with the advantages of surprise and information. And yet she felt like he was a step ahead of her.

“Are you here on a professional basis?” he asked.

“Tonight? Yes.
I’m
researching a story.”
Stick to the truth
, she reminded herself.
As close as possible to the truth.
Her training had taught her that, when working undercover, it was important to tell as few lies as possible. Especially about the big things, like her name and occupation. Necessary as they were, lies had a way of becoming very slippery once you started making them up on the fly.

“About?”

“About the cit
y’s
underground art scene.”

“Taking a pretty literal stab at it, are
n’t
you?” he said, looking up at the ceiling.

“I guess I am.” She smiled and turned toward Canyon, positioning herself so that she could perform a sweeping glance around the room. Erica stood chatting in a group by the small stage.

“What do you think?” he said.

“About what?”

“The underground art scene. For a journalist, you do
n’t
ask very many questions.”

“Are the paintings for sale?”

“Of course the
y’r
e for sale. What else would they be for?”

“How much does something like this go for?”

“Tha
t’s
the fun part. The market will decide.”

She laughed.

“Wha
t’s
funny?”

“The market? Most of these people look like they could
n’t
afford a cab fare to get over here.”

“These people do
n’t
want to own the paintings, not most of them, anyway. They want to enjoy them. See? The
y’r
e having a good time.”

“You said the point was to sell them.”

“It is. But the paintings need to acquire value first.”

“The artist has
n’t
given them enough value?”

“Oh, the
y’r
e most valuable to the artist. But what does that matter? They need to become valuable to others.”

“And what makes them more valuable to others?”

Canyon never got a chance to answer her because just then, the energy in the room shifted abruptly. It was nothing overt—no applause, no announcement, no gasps. Just a shift, subtle but unmistakable. Kera looked to the door. The man who had just entered was tall and lean, and his dark hair curled out in waves from underneath a beanie cap. The dim light in the room seemed to be soaked up by his olive skin. His fingers, she noticed as she watched him greet people, were long and beautiful. Bystanders hovered close, their bodies leaning slightly toward him, as if trying to catch a word or two of what he was saying. If he enjoyed the attention, he did
n’t
show it. His limbs were loose, his back straight—not like someone who was acting proud, but like someone for whom pride was a baseline. His expression was open and radiant. She could not pull her eyes from him.

The basement was crowded now, and traffic throughout the room spun on two orbits. The man who had just entered was the gravitational center of one. A cinnamon-skinned woman with dark curly hair stood at the center of the other, her thin shoulders thrown back, her fingers pinching the stem of a wineglass. A trio of oversized bracelets slid up and down her forearm whenever she lifted her hand to drink. She wore jeans and a spaghetti-strap top that revealed an inch or two of flesh above her studded belt; a small tattoo peeked out from her abdomen as if it had been tucked into the waist of her jeans.

“Who are they?” Kera asked.

Canyon looked at her. When he saw that she was serious, he laughed.

“H
e’s
Rafael Bolívar.”

Kera held the name in her mind. Sh
e’d
heard it before but could not assign to it any meaning. “Is he a celebrity?”

“Only of the tabloid sort. I
t’s
refreshing, actually, to meet someone who does
n’t
know him as that.”

“And the woman?”

“Natalie Smith.”

“The filmmaker?” Kera said, picturing the
America
ad visible from her office overlooking Times Square and remembering that Parker had wanted to take her to see the film. She wondered if there was a way to tell Parker about this without jeopardizing her security clearance. There was
n’t
. Instead, she said to Canyon, “
I’m
going to see her film next week.”

“It wo
n’t
make it that far,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“The studio is going to kill it.”

“Why do you say that? I just saw an ad for it today. It releases next week.”

“Wait and see. The
y’l
l pull it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because
I’v
e seen it.”

“I
t’s
that bad?”

“I
t’s
brilliant. It might have given a real, nonpartisan meaning to the word
‘v
alue
s’
again. But that, of course, scares the hell out of a lot of religious and right-wing groups. The
y’l
l mobilize. And in a few days, the first reviews will start coming out, and the
y’l
l be horrendous. The studio will get phone calls and e-mails. And because the
y’r
e a bunch of pussies, the
y’l
l feel compelled to pull it. You ever notice how the people who most need to see or read something are the most oblivious or resentful of its existence?”

“Yes,” Kera said quietly. She and Jones had gotten Canyon wrong. They might have proof that he met with the people who had gone missing, but she saw something now that was impossible to see with HawkEye. Charlie Canyon was the kind of guy who
would
meet with up-and-coming artists at a rooftop bar. He saw the world in the way that an artist did, or at least in a way that was compatible. Which is to say that he saw the world in a way Kera did not, at least not automatically. It was like the paintings. She looked at them first for the literal, surface truth. But after taking a few moments to look at them in a different way, it was possible to see that something both simpler and more complex was going on.

She shifted her gaze between Natalie Smith and Rafael Bolívar. They were on separate sides of the basement, entrenched in separate conversations, but there was a current suspended between them, unbroken by the intervening crowd. “The
y’r
e together, are
n’t
they?”

In Canyo
n’s
laugh was a hint of genuine surprise but also something darker, as if he both appreciated her and despised her for noticing.

“You mean, are they fucking? Jesus, is it that obvious? I underestimated the degree to which they were flaunting it.”

“I did
n’t
mean to imply that they were flaunting it.” In fact, they were
n’t
. They had
n’t
even come near each other. It just seemed to be a natural fact one noticed when seeing them together in the same room: these two are fucking.

Canyon, she noticed, was staring at Bolívar, his eyes sharp.

“Yo
u’r
e jealous.” It was something she probably should
n’t
have said. She braced for blowback, for some sign that sh
e’d
crossed a line. But when he turned to her, his eyes had transformed. They were bright with laughter and a little wild.

“I suggest you stick to reporting and drop the speculation.”

“
I’m
hearing that a lot lately. Excuse me a minute, I need to use the ladie
s’
room.”

She left him staring down at the shrunken ice cubes in his glass. But she made it only a few steps before he called after her. “Who do you work for?”

She turned. “The
Global Report
. W
e’r
e a digital news organization that curates an—”

“Curates an insightful blend of the world’s best original and aggregated news stories,” he said. Then he shrugged. “I’ve heard of it.”

She nodded. “
I’m
flattered.”

She went in search of the ladie
s’
room and found instead that there was one cramped, unisex restroom fitted with a urinal and two narrow stalls. She let herself into the farthest stall and pulled out her phone to text Jones. The strength-of-signal icon indicated that the phone had no service. That was a first. No device issued to her by Hawk had ever failed to achieve an uninterrupted signal, including while in the subway tunnels, which crawled much deeper beneath the city than this basement. She slid her tablet from her shoulder bag and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. No cellular or Wi-Fi signal on the tablet either. There was
n’t
time to fiddle with the devices. Instead, she took a few minutes to enter her notes about what sh
e’d
just witnessed in as much detail as she could remember. She noted the approximate ages of people in the room (early twenties to late thirties), what they were wearing (casual, trendy), the ratio of male to female (close to even), and recorded the names of the people sh
e’d
identified (Canyon, Erica, Bolívar, Natalie Smith, Marybelle Pickett). Then she typed Canyo
n’s
name at the top of a new note and, using shorthand, recorded everything she could think of from their conversation.

She was in the stall six, maybe seven minutes. She stretched her cramped fingers and considered what to do next. It was well after midnight, sh
e’d
been out of communication with Jones for more than an hour, and her objective for being here in the first place was at best vague. But she felt sharp and wide-awake. She could feel each moment come into focus and then fly past, as if she were leaving them behind and not the other way around.

She noticed the wall markings on the stall as she was putting away her tablet.
Le
t’s
smoke drugs
.
Call me 917-214-7512.
Janey is a bitch
.
I let him rape me
.
Have you figured it out yet?
A few heartbeats ticked off while she stared at the last etching. The words, scratched into the paint, curved around the circular knob that worked the lock on the stall door. She reached for her phone and clicked a photo.

When she emerged from the restroom, Canyon was talking to someone near the bar.

“Will you introduce me to the artist?” Kera said, interrupting.

Canyon excused himself and scanned the crowd. His eyes popped a little in his head when he spotted Marybelle Pickett, who was across the room, just visible through a break in the crowd. He said, “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Kera said.

The artist was on her toes, whispering something into Rafael Bolíva
r’s
ear. Bolívar was hunched over, listening. But he was staring directly at them. Or, rather, at Canyon.

“What is it?”

Canyon did
n’t
respond, he just returned Bolíva
r’s
stare. Bolívar glanced at one of the paintings on the wall, and then he swung his gaze back, locking it again on Canyon. Suddenly, he was coming toward them, maneuvering his way through the crowd with a dark smile that made Ker
a’s
skin crawl.

Bolívar stopped in front of them. He nodded to acknowledge Ker
a’s
presence, but only barely. His interest was in Canyon. “Can we talk?” he said, and turned for the exit without waiting for Canyon to respond. Canyon disappeared after him.