Innocent Monster (13 page)

“You got anything?”

No beating around the bush with this guy. He asked the big questions right away. The thing is, I didn’t want to answer. If he found out about where I was going with Nathan Martyr, McKenna might step in and do things his way. And while the detective didn’t strike me as a hard-ass or strong-arm type of cop, there was a girl missing for over three weeks now and his patience was probably at low ebb. Hard-ass or not, I doubted McKenna would approve of my agreeing to Martyr’s extortion demand. Paying off a no-talent, scumbag junkie with the last painting of a lost girl whose abilities he ridiculed and reviled was utterly perverse, but there was a kind of twisted symmetry to it. I just didn’t want to waste time by trying to make McKenna see it. I also doubted he would have thought much of my manipulating Candy to get the extra paintings. He would think that what I planned to do with them was beside the point. Again, I didn’t want to waste time convincing him it wasn’t.

“Nothing, not really. Just reinterviewing people you’ve already spoken to. How about on your end?”

He wasn’t buying. “That’s it? You got
bubkes?”
Only in New York did people named McKenna speak Yiddish.

I didn’t want him to pursue this any further, so I played one of the two cards I still had in reserve and said, “I got a feeling.”

“What feeling?”

“Max and Candy aren’t telling us something. It’s something big, but I don’t know what it is.”

“I’m with you on that, Prager. But I don’t think they’re lying. More like they’re—”

“—holding back,” I finished his sentence.

“Exactly. That’s it. From day one, I felt there was a part of the puzzle they had that they weren’t showing me. Any ideas?”

“Not really.”

“You’re an old friend of the mother’s. Work on her.”

“I will. How about you?”

“It’s cold out there, very cold and very fucking dark. Three weeks and counting...”

“Okay. If I get anything or make any progress with Candy, I’ll let you know.”

He didn’t bother with goodbye. That worked for me. My head and gut were feeling a little better, but McKenna’s words stayed with me. We needed to make some progress soon or the real mourning would soon begin.

I went back to bed thinking that it would be a waste of time. Wrong. I woke up three hours later with the phone trilling at me like a pissedoff cricket.

“Mr. Prager?” It was Wallace Rusk. “Are you quite all right?”

“Sorry, I’m not feeling great today.”

“You left a message...”

“I did. I don’t know if you’ll be able to help, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

“Ask?”

“I might need some paintings authenticated,” I said.

“That’s not an issue. I’d be glad to recommend someone and if she’s not to your liking, any of the major auction houses—”

I cut him off. “They’re Sashi Bluntstone’s paintings.”

“Oh, I see. That
is
a bit more problematic. Let me think... Okay, yes, I have someone for you. His name is Declan Carney. Wait, let me get you his number.”

“Is he any good?” I asked, scribbling down the number and address. “For what you want, yes, the best, but I should warn you his services will not come inexpensively and he’s a bit... let us say... idiosyncratic.”

“I don’t care if eats mosquitos on toast for lunch as long as he can do the work.”

“Now, Mr. Prager, if that is all...”

“One last thing.”

“Yes.”

“Is Nathan Martyr a liar?”

There was a sudden and profound silence on the other end of the line and it spoke well of Wallace Rusk. He was actually thinking about the question and not dismissing it out of hand.

“I don’t think very highly of his work and I think he’s a detestable human being, but in my thankfully limited dealings with the man I have never known him to lie or renege on his word. Why do you ask?”

“He’s promised me something and I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t being jerked around.”

“Very well then. Good morning to you.”

I liked Wallace Rusk in spite of himself. I didn’t think we’d be going to a sports bar to catch a Jets’ game together any time soon, but he seemed an honorable sort. Old-fashioned as it may be, I admired that in a person. Honor seemed to be a commodity in very limited supply these days.

Candy said she had the paintings for me, but didn’t exactly sound happy about it. Tough shit for her, I thought. Besides, a little anger never hurt anyone and stuffing her guts with feelings other than guilt, panic, and grief would do her good. I didn’t question her about how she managed to get the paintings because I didn’t care about how. Nor did I ask her if there was any fallout from my telling her that Max knew about her affair. No matter how any of this turned out, even if we somehow managed to find Sashi alive and relatively well, their world was never going to be the same. Whether they chose to blow it apart or to plow it over and begin again was up to them and them alone. But when I told Candy I would be over in an hour or two to collect the paintings, she said I should get them from the gallery, that Randy Junction had them wrapped and ready for me. She hung up on me before I could ask why he was involved. That was just as well.

It was a particularly bleak day, cold and threatening, gray clouds churning, snow showers here and there. So when I walked in, the gallery was empty except for Randy Junction himself. He was busily dusting dust that wasn’t there and straightening already straight paintings. He gave me a big smile when he saw me and that knocked me off my game there for a second. Then it occurred to me that he didn’t know who I was, not really. He thought I was that investor come back to snatch up some of Sashi’s works at pre-death prices.

“Hello again,” he said with dollar sign eyes and a glad hand. “You’ve come back for some paintings.”

“That I have, but not any of these.” I gestured at the walls.

“I’m afraid I’m at a loss.”

“That’s probably true.”

His glad hand turned frigid and his smile went nearly as cold. “Look, I don’t know what you’re playing at, but—”

“I’m not playing at all. My name’s Moe Prager. Candy sent me over to collect some paintings.”

If I expected him to get all weak-kneed and weepy, I had something else coming.

“You’re a prick, you know that, Prager? Why the hell did you tell Candy that Max knew about us?”

“Because I needed her full attention. I’ve got my eye on one thing here and that’s getting Sashi back. What you and Candy and Max do is up to the three of you. But I’m gonna do what I’ve gotta do and I don’t give a shit whose feelings get hurt in the process.”

“Very nice.”

“Nice! Are you fucking kidding me? You think I wasn’t paying attention to your sales pitch yesterday? You think I didn’t see you nearly come in your pants after Sonia Barrows-Willingham handed you that check? Give me a break, Junction, all right, and get down off that high horse. It doesn’t suit you.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but just turned on his heel and disappeared. When he returned he was carrying four bubblewrapped paintings.

“What do you need these paintings for?”

“For kindling.” The guy actually grimaced. “Take it easy,” I said. “I’m kidding. Let’s just call it bait.”

“Do you think they could—”

“I’m not thinking anything right now except about getting Sashi back. If I somehow manage to do that, you and me, we can sit down and have a chat. Right now, just give me the paintings.”

He did without hesitation. “You know, Prager,” he said once I had the paintings in my arms, “you are walking into a situation you don’t understand.”

“That’s true. I’m always late to the party and too stupid to get the inside jokes. I’m always playing catch-up because people come to me late in the game. But, you know, sometimes it’s a big advantage not to be on the inside.”

“Nice speech. You ought to get it carved in stone and put on your grave, but you don’t fool me.”

“How’s that?”

“You don’t even know Sashi and you haven’t seen Candy in a hundred years. No, there’s something else at play here. There’s something in it for you. I just can’t see what it is.”

“Candy came to me,” I said, sounding defensive as hell.

Junction smiled at that. “I know all about how Candy came to you. Moe Prager
ex machina:
you were going to come in out of the blue and save the day. You were going to come in off the bench and hit a walk-off home run. What a load of crap. You’re just going to make it all worse. What am I saying? You already have.”

I wanted to disagree with him, but he was right, up to a point. I had walked into a situation I didn’t understand. I didn’t know Sashi except through videos and I hadn’t seen Candy since her wedding day. I did have a separate agenda in wanting to regain my daughter’s love and, as far as Candy and Junction were concerned, I had made things worse. I took the paintings and left.

As was the norm with this case, I didn’t get very far. All four of my tires were slashed and the driver’s side window was smashed to bits. I found a stuffed brown teddy bear propped up on my glass-covered front seat. Its head was missing, its legs and arms hog-tied behind it. The words STOP NOW were stenciled in red spray paint across the passenger seat. While I may not have known what I was doing, there must have been someone else who saw it differently.

I didn’t want to call McKenna, but I had to. There was no way I could leave the cops out of this without risking obstruction charges and further endangering Sashi’s life. This was evidence of something even if the vandalism turned out to be just some bullshit stunt. I’d managed to piss somebody off. No surprise there. I had a talent for it, but it wasn’t necessarily the person who had Sashi. Still, I couldn’t take that gamble. Before I called the cops, I brought the paintings back around the corner to the gallery. I warned Randy Junction not to talk about the paintings to the cops if they came asking questions, that mentioning them would ruin the one good lead I had. He may have been a bit of an asshole, but he seemed to care about Candy and Sashi enough to play along. After I called McKenna and the rent-a-car company, I rang Jimmy Palumbo and told him we were on for a visit to Nathan Martyr that evening. My back was in need of some serious watching.

I hadn’t even bothered calling for a tow as there was little doubt my car would be impounded before it was released back to me. Detective McKenna was fairly humming with perverse joy when he showed up and beheld the wrecked glory that was my car and the crime scene boys fussing over it like nervous ants attending the colony’s newborn. I couldn’t begrudge McKenna his newfound joy. It is the harsh reality of police work that bad news is sometimes the best possible news, that a new crime is a welcome event as it might shed light on an icy cold case. I remembered when I was in uniform and got assigned to do grunt work for the Son of Sam task force. Confounded as they were by the.44 Caliber Killer, the detectives let out a silent somber-faced cheer every time Sam struck again because it meant fresh evidence. Every new killing meant there was a chance to find that one fingerprint or shell casing or witness that would break the case wide open. And in the end, that’s what happened. On the mid-summer night Sam shot out the eye of Robert Violante and snuffed out the life of Stacy Moskowitz, he got a parking ticket and was spotted by a woman walking her dog. So I understood why McKenna looked about ready to click up his heels.

“You got somebody’s attention, Prager.”

“Sure as shit looks that way.”

“Any idea who?”

“No.”

“Bullshit.”

“You want a list of the people I’ve spoken to?”

“That would be a start,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Max and Candy.”

“Yeah.”

“Nathan Martyr, but he was alibied by the ex-cop doorman.”

“David Thompson.”

“He’s an asshole.”

“He may be, but it’s airtight,” McKenna said. “Martyr didn’t do it. He was home that day.”

“Junction, the gallery owner. Wallace Rusk.”

That got McKenna’s attention. “Who’s this Rusk guy?”

“Not your man. He’s an art critic and the curator of the Cold Spring Harbor Museum of Modern Art.”

“You don’t mind if we talk to him anyway, do you?”

“Be my guest.”

“Anyone else?”

“Dawn Parson. She wouldn’t let me talk to her kid.”

“Okay. You need a lift or anything? I can get one of the uniforms to take you.”

“No thanks, McKenna. I got a rental being dropped off for me.”

“Keep in touch.”

It was an order, not a suggestion.

The rental was dropped off at the gallery and I loaded the paintings into the backseat of the Japanese generic-mobile. Man, I was old. I still recalled a time when one car looked different than the next. “Not no more,” as my old friend Crazy Charlie Rolex used to say. Those days, like the majority of mine, were past. I was relieved that McKenna was still around the corner salivating over the crime scene. It would have been a bit awkward trying to explain to him what I was planning to do with the paintings. Many years had passed since I’d come anywhere near working a case, but the lying came back to me like riding a bike. You work a case, you start lying to everyone. More often than not, you even wind up lying to the person or persons who hired you. Sometimes especially them. The one person you can’t lie to is yourself.