The Death Artist (22 page)

Charlie was picturing Willie’s painting on the wall of her museum as she came. She wondered if it might not be a good time to hire a PR agent for the event.

By the time her physical tremors had quieted, she had decided yes.

He really shouldn’t do this. Not here. What if someone came in?

But it’s late. The door’s locked. He leans back into the couch, his eyes trained on the video monitor.

How many times has he watched this? Thirty times? A hundred times? So many that the images are practically etched into his brain–and that’s what he wants. Because this is the last time, and he wants to remember it–the image of her moving, alive–memorize it before he destroys it. Before he sacrifices it.

The girl’s already undressed now, the camera licking at her nipples, the curve of her hip, in and out of the frame as she dances to some silent music–there’s nothing on the sound track.

He breathes in, sharp, slides his hand inside his pants, strokes himself through his boxers.

Damn. Why can’t they hold the goddamn camera steady
? Amateur Films. They got that right. Still, it’s why he’s always sought them out, the reason for his collection of their films–the down-and-dirty production values, the non-actors they manage to employ. So real.

He just wishes the guy on the bed would disappear. It’s her he wants to see. Vital. Sexy. None of the angry bitch here. Just pure lovely lust.

Her hand seems to echo his; her fingers flicking through pubic hair, touching herself, head thrown back, eyes closed.

Oh, damn.
The guy again. Pulling her onto the bed, forcing her beautiful head down between his thighs. He always hates this part, doesn’t want to see it.
Fuck.
Just when he was so close, too. He hits the fast forward. No good. They’re screwing now. Reverse. That’s better. There she is again, dancing, peeling off her clothes.

He watches another minute, transfixed, his hand working as the girl on the small screen dances.

Ahhh . . .

When it’s all over, he slips on his gloves, pops the video out of the VCR, pulls a long loop of tape out of the cassette, and puts it in his pocket.

This will make the perfect gift. The perfect bait.

And she’ll take it. He’s certain of that.

Now to deal with her mail, three separate plastic bags full, rerouted by the post office from Kate’s Central Park West apartment to the station house, bagged before anyone could get their mitts on it.

Kate tugged on a pair of plastic gloves.

The first batch, a Con Ed bill, AT&T, assorted catalogs. The second, more of the same. The third, a cable TV bill,
The New Yorker, Business Week,
more bills, a postcard from a friend in Belize, a confirmation from the hotel she and Richard had booked for the Venice Biennale. But it was the plain white envelope she now held that stopped her.

Inside was a copy of her author photo from the back of
Artists’ Lives
, with wings and a halo drawn on, tied up with a black plastic ribbon. Kate’s hands were shaking. Black ribbon.
A death symbol
? Maybe. A red border drawn around the picture, and a message–HELLO. What was it about the red marker, the printed letters that tugged at her memory?

Kate looped the black ribbon over her auto pencil, held it up to the light. It wasn’t ribbon at all. It was a piece of video-tape.

“You don’t have to wear the gloves
all
day, McKinnon.” Hernandez set the copy into the case for fingerprints.

“Oh. Totally forgot I had them on,” said Kate, watching the Krazy Glue do its magic.

“Sorry. No prints. Nothing. Whoever sent it wiped it down.”

“What else can you do?”

Hernandez turned it over in her gloved hands. “Type the paper, see if there are any particles imbedded. I can’t tell you where the copy was made, though. Too many copy shops in the city.”

Hernandez handed back the piece of videotape, now inside a plastic bag. “Take this down to Jim Cross in Tech Services, Photo and Film Unit.”

Jim Cross sat behind the video-splicing machine, half-glasses propped on the top of his head, pushing back what was left of his hair. The reels, tools, and tape cassettes that covered the nine feet of his running desk sprawled onto the two chairs and floor of the small office. He gestured for Kate to sit, but there was no place for her.

“Sorry.” He swept a bunch of plastic reels off a chair. They hit the floor running, a few spiraled across the floor as if someone had sounded the gong for a race.

Kate held up the plastic-encased videotape. “Is there enough to see what’s on this?”

Cross studied the tape through the bag. “I’d say you’ve got maybe twenty seconds of film here. I can splice it onto something else and put it on a cassette.”

“How long will it take?”

“Just give me a few minutes.” He turned away, cleared a path on his desktop. “You don’t care what it’s spliced onto, do you? I’ve got some old procedural footage here somewhere.” He sorted through a dozen or more open cassettes until he found what he wanted, set it into the splicer, went to work. A few minutes later he turned to Kate. “Look through here.”

Kate leaned toward a monitor that looked like a drive-in theater for ants.

Jim Cross hit a switch. The film started to play. The procedural footage, a diagram of some sort, maybe a floor plan–it was too small to be sure. Then an abrupt change–a figure? a woman?–breasts, yes, a woman, nude. Then it was the diagram again.

“It’s too small,” said Kate, straightening up.

Cross pulled the film out of the editing machine, snapped it into a cassette. “Here,” he said. “Take it to one of the viewing rooms. Right next door.”

Not quite the neighborhood Cineplex. A nine-by-ten-foot room. Peeling paint. Fluorescent light. Three televisions on stands. Six metal chairs for viewing.

Kate popped the cassette into a VCR, didn’t bother to sit. There was a slight buzz in her head, muscles tense. She had to admit she was excited to see what he’d sent her. She hit play.

A minute or so of that old police footage–a diagram of a room, something out of an old manual. Then a sudden change. Poor color quality. Amateurish lighting. But it was a woman, all right, and definitely nude, touching herself. Then, for maybe three seconds, her face, in sharp focus.

Kate reeled back.
It can’t be.

Now it was that damn police diagram again.

It took a few seconds for Kate to lean forward, hit rewind, then play.

Elena.

Kate hit stop, let herself fall into one of the stiff metal chairs, stared at the blank screen.

What is this
? And how did he get it to send to her? Had he been spying on Elena, secretly filming her?

She had to look at it again. This time in slow motion.

Excruciating. Twenty seconds stretched to a full minute.

Kate studied the details. It was not Elena’s apartment. She was sure of that.

She played it again. And again.

Elena. The room. The bed. And just at the end, before that damn police diagram made an appearance, the shadow of a man entering the frame. Kate played it a dozen more times to see if she could identify him, but it was impossible.

She stared at the Xerox in her hand–the halo, wings, the red marker, HELLO. But nothing else would register. Those twenty seconds of film were seared into her brain.

Elena did not look as if she was under any pressure to perform. Nor was she alone.

What is it
? Some kind of porno tape? Maybe a home movie, something Elena had made with a boyfriend? That was the most plausible excuse Kate could come up with. But then, how would he–whoever
he
is–get it to send to her?

The list of Ethan Stein’s sexual paraphernalia flashed in the back of Kate’s mind, then Pruitt’s sadomasochistic leather mask and his porno tapes.

Kate didn’t like making any connection between Elena and those two–conscious or otherwise. Until she knew exactly what it was, she was going to keep the knowledge of this tape to herself. She’d rather not read all about it in the
New York Post.

She needed some answers.

Willie. She had to see Willie.

“You mind if I keep painting?” Willie dragged his palette on wheels–a converted tea cart covered with a thick slab of glass, half of which was encrusted with anthills of dry and semidry mounds of oil paint–toward the painting he was working on.

“Not if you don’t mind me watching.” Kate plucked a couple of oily paint rags off an old upholstered chair.

“Careful. There might be paint on that chair.”

Kate shrugged. Her clothes were the last thing she cared about at the moment. She regarded his large, unpainted canvas, the rough indications of form sketched in charcoal. “Is this piece for a particular show?”

“If I finish it–for the Contemporary show this summer.” Willie squeezed blobs of red and white paint onto his glass palette. “My two pieces for the Venice Biennale were shipped off the other day. You’ll be there, won’t you? In Venice, I mean.”

“Yes. Sure.”

“Great.” Willie swirled a stiff white bristle brush through the creamy red paint and titanium white, the two colors momentarily married into a wavy motif of stripes before each ceded its own identity to form a lush pink. “I’ve been trying to make sense of it, of Elena’s death,” he said.

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“For me, the only way I can make sense of anything–and maybe this sounds wrong, or pretentious, I don’t know–is through my work.”

“Artists are always trying to fix their broken worlds with art,” said Kate. “And you’re lucky to have it, your art. Believe me.”

Willie drew his loaded brush onto the canvas, gracefully at first, then scrubbing up and down, back and forth, working the paint into the canvas rather than onto it. A face began to take shape. “Maybe it’s that I’ve been trying to make up for something, how I grew up, you know, like I could fix everything by being an artist.” He laid his brush down, unscrewed a bottle cap, poured a thick unctuous liquid into a wide-mouthed bottle. Linseed oil. Kate recognized it from its golden color and particular smell, oily and sweet. Then he added damar varnish, pale yellow, like white wine; a drop of cobalt drier; then, finally, turpentine. With the wide-mouthed cap back on tight, he gently shook to create an emulsion.

It really is a lab, thought Kate. She’d seen him do this before, and other painters as well, this creation of an artist’s painting medium; the particular blend they mixed up to add to their paint or dry pigments to help them create the effect they were after–slick or dry, fat or lean.

“Pretty idealistic, huh?” said Willie.

“Idealism is a good thing, Willie.” Could Kate possibly hold on to her own?

Willie poured a bit of the newly mixed medium into a clean metal can, dipped his brush into it, and this time when he laid brush to canvas, the paint glided on, translucent, luminous. Then, with another brush, he outlined the pink form with jet black, stood back to study it a moment, then grabbed a rag and wiped it out, though traces of black remained in and around the pink oval–ghostlike features of what had been, instant pentimento.

Kate was fascinated by the process, always had been, by this magic known as painting. It was the first time in days that she’d felt anything other than pain or anxiety or suspicion.

“But there’s no way I can fix what happened to Elena with my art. So, it’s like, making art has no purpose anymore.” He suddenly stopped working, dropped the brush onto his palette.

“Now you listen to me,” said Kate. “You may not be able to change what happened, but I can tell you that if Elena were here she’d tell you to keep painting. She felt like you do, Willie. Look: Your job is to make the best possible paintings. Mine is to find out what happened to Elena.”

“Will you?”

Kate sat back, was quiet a moment. “Yes,” she finally said. “I think I will.”

Willie reached for another brush, examined its bent bristles, tossed it toward a large metal garbage can, and missed. The brush skittered across the studio floor. “And can you keep the cops off my back?”

Kate reached into her bag, unfolded the police sketch she got from Calloway. “This should make you feel better. The man the police are looking for. He was seen entering Elena’s apartment building. Does he look familiar to you?”

Willie eyed the sketch, then looked away. “I don’t actually know every black person in the city.”

Kate blinked as if she’d been slapped. “Did I imply that?”

“That sketch could be anyone, Kate.” He frowned, reached for a new brush, stabbed it into a coffee can filled with turpentine.

Kate could see he was as touchy as she was these days. She let it go, opened her notepad, scanned Elena’s phone records, the names and addresses that had now been matched to the numbers. “Maybe you can help me figure out who a few of these people are.”

Willie left the brush to soak, leaned over Kate’s shoulder. “J. Cook. That’s Janine. You know, Janine Cook.”

“Of course.” A foundation dropout. A hard case even back in the seventh grade. A kid Kate never went to bat for. So why, even now, did she feel guilty? She couldn’t save them all. “Do you still see her?”