The Death Artist (45 page)

Oh, he feels so much better. Venice was just not meant to be. And this will be even better.

Now he must bring her to him.

But how?

He spreads more cards and reproductions across the table, studies each one of them, all the images, the colors, moods. But nothing strikes him. Not until he finds the black-and-white self-portrait, and with it, the idea finally takes shape:
Go for him. Get her
.

Of course. Perfect symmetry. First he takes one child. Now, he will take the other.

But can he possibly do it? Despite everything, he must admit that he loves the boy.

If you love him, you will make the sacrifice.

“I don’t know . . . I’m not sure . . .”

Think of Abraham and his son. And remember, he is simply a pawn. A way to bring her to you.

“But then–must I kill him?”

Yes.

He studies the painting he has chosen, lets it distract him from the thought of loss, all the years he has invested. He can do this.

Now, using his X-Acto knife, he oh-so-carefully cuts around the figure of a young black man with dreadlocks. Then he scrambles through his box of cards looking for something to complete the vision, trying one, then another, laying the cutout figure on top, testing, testing, testing. Should the background have more color, or less? No. That’s not what matters. What matters is that it be clear.

Then he finds it. A scene.

He rests the cutout black man with dreadlocks onto it gently. The two meld flawlessly.

He takes a moment, revels in his genius, then glues the figure down.

Now, really to show off his talent, he dips his tiniest brush, a double-zero pointed sable, into some black acrylic paint, adds a touch of titanium white, mixes a gray almost identical to the one in the reproduction, then paints three tiny water towers onto the roof of a small cabin in the painting. He blows on the surface to help dry the paint. It only takes a minute. And it’s perfect.

A building by the river with three water towers, his little additions, so small, so flawlessly rendered, they look like part of the original.

He sits back.

One child gone. One to go. Yes. He is up to the sacrifice.

He looks again at his creation. It’s perfectly clear. She will understand it. And it will terrify her.

Floyd Brown looked solemn as Kate came into the room. He slid the book of mug shots toward her, stabbed his finger below a slightly blurry photo.

   
 HENRY DARNELL HANDLEY

    #0090122-M

“This is who the neighbor, Prawsinsky, picked out. I sent out an APB thirty minutes ago. Turns out the address on One Hundred Twenty-ninth Street is a burned-out apartment building. But the cars are out canvassing Harlem. Couple of the Bureau robots went along. They’ll find him. And we’ll deal with your boy, the brother, later.”

Kate tried to digest all of this information at once. “Willie is not his brother’s keeper,” she said, not sure what that meant, just something to say.
Willie’s brother the death artist
? She’d never known him, met him once, at Willie’s high school graduation. She stared at the mug shot. The guy looked nothing like Willie, but pretty close to the police sketch.

Brown’s beeper went off. “Hold on.” He grabbed his cellular.

Kate paced.

Willie’s brother? How is it possible? Did Willie have any idea
?

Kate’s mind was racing. She’d given Willie the police sketch. He
knew
who the police were looking for. How could he have continued to shield his brother?

His brother
.

Of course. Kate got it. Willie was doing exactly what she’d done–protecting a loved one.

“They found him in Spanish Harlem,” said Brown, clicking off. “Henry Handley. He’s holed up somewhere over near the East River. They’re bringing him in.”

Willie hung up the phone with a deep sigh.

He didn’t much feel like making a studio visit, traipsing over to some artist’s place, looking at the guy’s work, dredging up things to say–
Oh, like, nice color, and I sure do like the way you painted that what-the-fuck
–but how could he say no?

He had to do it. He owed the guy. If all he wanted was for Willie to visit some artist–as a “personal favor to me”–well, Willie could hardly refuse, could he? He recognized a command performance when he heard one.

He set his paintbrushes aside.

Maybe the break would do him good.

Willie glanced up at the deep cobalt sky, the sun making a last stab at drama and succeeding, gilding the edges of SoHo’s castiron structures bronze.

The air was warm, slightly humid, a hint of summer.

He cut across Hudson Street, noted the address he’d jotted down–not really an address, more a vague description: West on Jane Street, cross over the highway, then a right, continue north along the river. You can’t miss it.

A studio by the river.

Well, at least it sounded exotic.

Willie quickened his step.

“It don’t look habitable, does it?” The young cop played nervously with the ends of his mustache, stared through the car’s windshield at the one-story cinder-block structure, most of the windows gone, the river a dark blue-gray strip of ribbon just behind it.

His partner, pasty-faced, also young, just shrugged, bored, or trying hard to fake it.

The building did look deserted, but Henry’s mug shot as well as the police sketch had been identified by the two shopkeepers just across the street.

The cops had been instructed to wait for backup. They didn’t know who this clown was they were going after, but Mead and Brown had both told them repeatedly to “proceed with caution.”

Moments later, a second NYPD vehicle cruised down the street, no beacons, no sirens, as it sidled alongside the first car. The window rolled down and a uniform leaned out, said, “Detectives just behind us in an unmarked vehicle.”

Now it was a blue Ford sedan, early nineties variety, sliding in behind the other cars. Doors creaked open, two detectives signaled the others out of their cars. The six of them huddled together.

One of the homicide detectives, a guy about forty in shirt-sleeves, a nervous tic in his right eye, asked, “You sure he’s in there?”

The mustachioed uniform tipped his head toward the bodega and liquor store. “According to the store owners. They say he’s been holed up in the warehouse for over a week. Comes into the stores once or twice a day. Has money for baloney sandwiches and rotgut Thunderbird.”

“Okay.” The detective swatted at his flicking eye. “You two guys see if there’s egress from the back. We’ll wait for your signal, then head in the front.” He nodded at his partner, who already had his pistol out.

The two uniforms fell into that half-crouch walk made familiar by TV cop shows and movies, made their way across the sad-looking street, disappeared behind the ware-house.

“You know who the perp is?” asked one of the waiting uniforms.

“No,” said the homicide detective with the eye problem. But that was a lie. He’d spoken to Brown, had a pretty good idea who it was, but no way he was saying anything. If it was who he thought, it would be his job to stay cool, not let the other cops know. If they did, they’d shoot the mother-fucker on sight.

The air was thick, tension palpable.

“Gettin’ hot,” said his partner, rocking back and forth on his heels.

Eye-tic nodded.

The uniform’s voice crackled over the transceiver. “No egress in back,” he whispered. “The door’s boarded up. Windows, too.”

The detective rubbed at his eye, signaled the other uniforms to get ready. “You guys come around front,” he said into his handheld radio. “We’re right behind you. And take it easy. Real slow. We don’t need no fuckin’ heroes.”

They scrambled toward the warehouse entrance, met up with the other two uniforms, took turns pivoting through the door, pistols out in front of them.

The broken windows and cracked ceiling allowed in just enough of the dying daylight to illuminate the scene: four or five guys huddled around a garbage can, smoking crack.

All the cops shouted at once: “Hands in the air, mother-fuckers!” “Don’t fuckin’ move!” “Don’t fucking breathe!”

The junkies scattered like mice.

But the cops were faster, grabbing one guy, then another, slamming bodies against brick walls, guns hard into backs.

When they marched them into the street, handcuffed, shuffling, the junkies looked like a bunch of sad, lost children.

The detectives separated Henry from the group just as the police van arrived.

“What do you want?” Henry’s lip was trembling, though he was trying for tough.

The two detectives slammed him against the cold metal of the police van, spread his legs, patted him down, came up with a knife he had in one pocket, a handful of photos of a young Latina in the other.

Eye-tic looked them over, recognized Elena. “You’re under arrest.” He attempted to push Henry into the cop car, but Henry turned, bumped his chest up against the guy as if he were some NFL champion.

The cop double-punched him in the gut.

Henry buckled, fell to his knees, dry-heaved.

The detectives got him under the arms, threw his sad ass into the back of the car. Two uniforms got in on either side of him.

Back at the station, Kate could see that the cops had had then-way with Henry–one of his eyes was half-closed, turning purple; his lip split. He was still handcuffed, his arms stretched over the back of a metal chair, fluorescent lights of the Interrogation Room giving his skin a grayish cast.

Mead was doing the interrogating. For the past half hour he’d been badgering Henry, but not really getting anywhere.

Mitch Freeman was beside Mead, taking notes, a couple of Bureau robots on either side of Henry, ready to spring into action, as if somehow Henry could burst out of the steel cuffs, kill everyone in the room.

Kate and Brown stared through the one-way mirror.

Mead spread the photos found on Henry across the table. “You wanna tell me where you got these pictures of Solana?” he asked, for what Kate guessed was the tenth time.

Henry’s eyes were glazed; he was thinking:
How did I get them
? He wasn’t sure. It all seemed so long ago. So far away.

“You had a thing for the Solana girl,” said Mead. “Hey, I get that.” He sucked his teeth. “What’s the matter? She brush you off? You couldn’t take it, a girl like that. Who’s she think she is, right? Women.” He added a wink of camaraderie. “Fuckin’ kill you. The lot of them.”

Henry just stared at him, eyes blank.

Kate wondered when they were going to get the poor bastard a lawyer. Something she had not worried about when she was interrogating Damien Trip. But could they possibly think Henry, this pathetic junkie, was their man? “I don’t believe this,” Kate said to Brown. “They’re wasting their time.”

“I don’t know,” said Brown. “I’ve seen stranger things. Librarian-type guys, real Milquetoasts, who gunned down families, kids. Fall apart when you catch them.”

Mead lifted a paper from the table. “Says here you worked for Manhattan Messenger Service. Damn good way to get in and out of places, to deliver packages, envelopes, right, Henry?”

Freeman suggested they undo the cuffs, offered Henry a cigarette and a warm smile. He winked, too, but not at Henry; at Mead, who gave a slight nod.

Henry sucked on the weed as if it were oxygen.

“The way you arranged that girl, Elena Solana,” said Freeman. “That was beautiful, man. I mean, I was impressed.”

Henry’s eyelids were half-closed; his brain playing it back, Elena’s bloodied body. But he was confused. He didn’t actually remember the killing part. Was it the junk? The crack? Maybe. All he remembered was the blood on his fingers, and the photos he took off her dresser. Right, that’s how he got them. “I took them,” he said. “The pictures. I took them.”

Mead’s face lit up.

“So it
was
you who did that beautiful work,” said Freeman. “God, you’re good.”

Henry blinked uncertainly.

“They’re setting him up,” said Kate. “It’s absurd.”

“So you took Solana’s pictures,” Mead enunciated into a recording device on the table between them. “You were there.”

“Well, of course he was there,” said Freeman. “How else would Henry have done such great work if he wasn’t there.” He beamed at Henry, elbowed him as if they were good pals. “Isn’t that right, Henry?”

Henry almost smiled.

“Say it,” said Freeman: “You were there.”

“I was there,” Henry repeated.

Kate couldn’t take it anymore. She would not stand by and watch them railroad Henry just because they needed a scapegoat. She turned to Brown. “I’ll be right back.”

Minutes later, photos in hand, Kate pushed through the Interrogation Room door.

“Not now, McKinnon,” said Mead.

“Henry. I’m Kate McKinnon. We met a long time ago.”

Henry squinted up at her.

“McKinnon–” Mead sucked his teeth, gave her a threatening look.

So did the two robots.

“Just one minute, Randy.” She laid one of the photos of Elena’s crime scene on the table. “Tell me, Henry. Where’d you get the idea for this? What was your . . . inspiration?”

Henry regarded her with a flat stare.

“What about this one?” She held an Ethan Stein crime scene photo under Henry’s nose. “What’s this based on?”

Henry pulled back from the picture. “What do you mean . . . based on?”

Mead sighed heavily.

Kate said, “I’m just looking for a couple of names, Henry.
Painting
names.”

Henry repeated the words as though they had no meaning: “Painting names?”