The Death Artist Read online

  “Good. Get it right.” Kate tried not to sigh out loud. “Just take your time, Mrs. Prawsinsky.” She rapped her nails against the teacup.

  “It was earlier. Definitely earlier. It must have been Taxi. I don’t like that as much as Bewitched or Dick Van Dyke or even Jeannie, but that short guy, Louie, very funny.”

  “Oh, yes. A scream,” Kate encouraged. “So, earlier? What do you mean earlier?”

  “I heard a noise. Like a crash. From upstairs. Like maybe someone fell or they dropped something heavy.”

  “And you went to see?”

  “No.” She shook a bony finger at Kate. “Don’t get ahead of me, dahlink. No. It was in the middle of Taxi I heard the noise. A thump. Had to be from the girl’s apartment because no one’s living on two. I didn’t think too much of it. I went back to Taxi. A minute later, another thump. Then another. I go to the door, I peek out. Nothing. I figure maybe I’m imagining things.”

  “And then?”

  “Then? Nothing. Taxi is over. But later, I’m watching Dick Van Dyke. It’s the one where Laura buys the new dress but she’s afraid to tell Rob because . . .” She was off and running. It took Kate a good ten minutes to get her back on track.

  “I get up to turn off the light, just there.” She pointed to the near-shredding Chinatown paper lampshade hanging over a bulb just inside the door. “I like to keep it on most of the time. Scare the robbers away. But it was bothering my eyes, making it hard to see the TV. So I get up to turn it off and I hear the outside door bang. Like someone’s slammed it shut. But I had it backward.” She stopped, a dramatic pause, arched a penciled eyebrow.

  “What do mean backward?”

  “He was coming in, dahlink, not going out. The front door, you see, it banged open. It hit the wall. Bang. So I open my door very, very quiet-like and take a few steps into the hallway and there’s this colored man—like I described to you, skinny—on the stairs. He’s going up and—and look, come, dahlink, I’ll show you.”

  Mrs. Prawsinsky tugged her into the hallway. “Now bend down so you’re like my height, dahlink. There. Now take a peek.”

  Kate did as instructed; she was practically on her knees, and no more than three feet from the staircase.

  “He was on the first, maybe second stair when I looked. I was eyeball to eyeball.” She put a hand to her cheek, shook her head. “Oy vey. You shouldn’t know from it. I thought I would die. A stranger! A colored man! On the stairs! In the middle of the night!”

  “And what happened?”

  “Happened? Nothing. He didn’t even look at me. Like maybe he was on something, you know what I mean? Drugs,” she whispered. “So, I scoot back to my apartment and close the door, quick.”

  “Did you hear any noise after that? More crashing-about up-stairs? Fighting?”

  “Nothing. The noise, the thumps, dahlink, that was earlier, remember?”

  Kate thought she remembered more of the Dick Van Dyke episode, but she nodded.

  “To tell you the truth, I figured it’s none of my business. The young people today. Who am I to judge? Anyway . . .” She leaned close to Kate, who was still bending down, her back starting to ache. “The girl, she was Spanish, you know. So . . .”

  Kate pulled herself erect. “Mrs. Prawsinsky, were there other men who visited Ms. Solana?”

  “That night, dahlink?”

  “In general?”

  “Let me think.” Again, the prune face. “Yes. There was her friend. Also colored.”

  “But he was not the one you saw that night.”

  “Oh, no. The friend is a very polite young man. He holds the door open for me, like I’m a queen.” She beamed. “One time, he even helped me with groceries. A very nice boy—though I don’t understand what he’s doing with his hair.” She made a face.

  That made it definite. The guy on the stairs was not Willie. Kate was so relieved she could have kissed the old woman’s racist prune face. “Mrs. Prawsinsky, I’d like you to do two things.”

  “So ask.”

  “One, sign a statement about the two men not being the same. And two, the other man—the one you saw on the staircase—do you think you could describe him, his face, to a police sketch artist?”

  The old woman’s eyes lit up. “You mean like on TV?”

  “Just like Perry Mason.”

  “Oh, I love that Della Street.”

  “So, you think you can do it? Describe the man?”

  “Dahlink, if I could paint, I’d do it myself.”

  Kate assisted Mrs. Prawsinsky up the long flight of stairs to the precinct’s second floor.

  The old woman stopped halfway, a hand on the railing, panting. “Oy. No elevator?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine, honey, fine.” She stopped again, caught her breath.

  Oh, please don’t die, Mrs. Prawsinsky. I need you. “You sure you’re okay?” Kate asked.

  “Why? You gonna carry me?”

  “You kidding? I think you could carry me.”

  Mrs. Prawsinsky cackled. “That’s a good one, dahlink.”

  Four police sketch artists sat in front of computers listening to victims, making eyes smaller, adding and subtracting beards and wrinkles with the touch of a key. Kate hadn’t had time to get used to the computer guys, though she figured she’d better. Soon they’d be the only ones left. Maybe it was her interest in art, the fact that she liked to see the charcoal going down, the constant erasing and redrawing, the rearrangement of features, the artist, police or otherwise, getting his fingers dirty. Today she was in luck. One of the dying breed was still in operation.

  Balding, sallow-complexioned, maybe fifty-five, fingers stained with charcoal. His name tag read Calloway.

  “You free?” asked Kate.

  Calloway scowled. “I was just goin’ home. It’s almost six.”

  “Just one more? Please.” Kate gave him her best smile. “I’m on the Special Squad. With Randy Mead. I’ll put in a word for you.”

  “Big deal. I got two months till retirement.”

  “How about a hundred bucks then?”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “You from IA, or something?”

  “Internal Affairs? No. No way. Just desperate. What do you say?”

  Calloway sat, resigned.

  Kate planted Mrs. Prawsinsky opposite him. Calloway raised his charcoal, asked: “Oval, square, round faced?”

  The old lady scrunched her face up. “I was watching Dick Van Dyke and—”

  Kate handed Calloway her card. “Call me when it’s ready.”

  Mrs. Prawsinsky squirmed in her seat, anxious to keep going, her squinty, turquoise-lidded eyes sparkling.

  Kate asked Calloway to fax the sketch to her home office. She needed a break. Time to think quietly. She patted Mrs. Prawsinsky’s wrist. “I’ve arranged for your ride home.” She checked out Calloway. A scowl twisted his mouth. “Just take your time,” she said. “Calloway here, I can tell, he’s a very patient man.”

  The guy was about as subtle as Andy Warhol’s wig, thought Kate, his backward baseball cap, manic pacing, darting eyes practically broadcasting I-AM-A-COP, here, in front of one of New York City’s snazziest Central Park West addresses.

  Kate nodded at the plainclothesman the department had stationed in front of the San Remo. He nodded back without looking up, kept pacing. The doorman gave him a get-lost-you’re-bringin’-down-the-neighborhood look, but smiled at Kate.

  Had her neighbors noticed him? He was pretty hard to miss. Just what she needed, something else to remind the co-op board that she was getting way too much attention.

  Inside the safety of her apartment, Kate kicked off her shoes, dropped her jacket onto a chair, shuffled down the penthouse hallway not bothering to turn on the lights.

  She stripped off her slacks and blouse, left them all on the bedroom floor, padded to the bathroom, avoiding the mirror—who needed proof that she looked a wreck?

  In the shower, she kneaded a sponge of foaming bat
h gel over the black-and-blue forming on her right elbow, then over the scraped knuckles on both hands, the rainbow-hued bruise making an appearance on her knee. Thank you, Fat Wally.

  She needed to pull herself together, meet Richard at that new restaurant everyone was talking about and couldn’t get a reservation to.

  She checked the fax machine. Nothing yet. Mrs. Prawsinsky must be driving Calloway mad.

  Back in her bedroom, she started writing up her notes from the meeting—the black man on the staircase the night of Elena’s murder. Was it the guy Fat Wally had seen with Elena? She yawned. Made a note. Yawned again. Maybe just a five-minute nap. She took the phone off the hook, tucked it under a pillow.

  Marilyn Monroe, leering, not quite human, lips like appliquéd velvet. The Fourteenth Street pillow, on the floor of Elena’s apartment, zooming into sharp focus, the room around it dark, airless. Elena’s face still. Eyes flat. Blood on her cheek. Kate stares at the swirls of crimson. Then, from somewhere beyond the apartment walls, her name is being called. Softly at first, then louder.

  “Kate. Kate.”

  Richard’s face replaced Elena’s.

  “Oh. Richard.” Kate rubbed at her eyes. “What time is it?” Her body felt thick, heavy with sleep.

  “Nearly eleven.”

  “Oh. I must have dozed off . . .” Kate touched his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, it was really embarrassing.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I’ve been calling. And calling.”

  “Oh . . . right.” Kate retrieved the phone from beneath the pillow. “Sorry again.”

  “What about your cell?”

  “In my bag, in the hall.” Kate tried on a sheepish smile.

  Richard pulled away, slipped out of his Hugo Boss jacket, arranged it onto a padded hanger in his walk-in closet. “I kept saying, oh, my wife will be here any minute—all the way through dessert—which was really good, by the way.”

  “Do you know how many dinners I’ve sat through waiting for you to never show?” Her voice went artificially light. “Oh, Richard? Yes, a tad late. I think it’s his night to fuck the secretary. You understand.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Richard sighed. “But I was worried, and these dinners are important, Kate—and I want you with me. We’re a team, remember?”

  Kate managed a smile. “Just give me a little time, all right?”

  Richard sighed again, came to the edge of the bed, touched the bruise on her elbow, the scraped knuckles. “What’d you do to yourself?”

  Kate shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? It looks like you got hit by a Mack truck.”

  Kate pulled herself up, ran her fingers through her hair, tugged the robe over her knees. No need to let him see all her bruises at once. “It looks worse than it is. I banged into something, that’s all.”

  “Or something banged into you.” Richard frowned. “Police work?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I thought ten years ago you desperately wanted out of police work—that you couldn’t wait to get married and give it up, get back to art history.”

  “That was then. And I will get back to it—and to our dinners, and social life, and everything else. But I need to see this through.” Kate got quiet. “For Elena.”

  “I know you miss her.” Richard’s tone softened. “I do, too.”

  “Really?” Kate could not keep the challenge out of her voice. “Because you haven’t mentioned her once since it happened.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  “I thought it would upset you,” he said, laying a hand on her arm.

  “To talk about how I felt?” Her eyes filled with tears.

  Richard took her hand, folded it between his. “I’m sorry, honey. Really, I am.”

  Kate swiped away her tears. “Believe me, I’d like everything back the way it was, too. But it’s not, Richard. It’s just not.” She pulled away, started to exchange her robe for a pair of silk pajamas.

  “I’m sorry.” Richard balled up his Egyptian cotton shirt, shoved it into the wicker hamper inside his closet.

  Kate managed to shift gears. “Richard, do you think it’s possible that Bill Pruitt could have been dealing in stolen art?”

  Richard jerked out of his closet. “What?”

  “Winnie Pruitt said her son had an Italian altarpiece that may have been stolen.”

  “Winnie said he stole it?”

  “No. Just that he had it.”

  Richard pulled on a pair of striped cotton pajama bottoms, yanked at the drawstring waist so hard the elastic snapped. “Goddamn inferior fucking goods!”

  “Take it easy.” Kate slid under the puffy white comforter, wiggled her toes against the smooth cotton sheets. Richard seemed almost as tense as she was. She watched as he threw the torn cotton pants into the corner, huffed as he pulled on a pair of striped boxers. “So, what about Pruitt? Do you think it’s possible?”

  Richard yawned. “I’m tired. Can we talk about Bill Pruitt some other time?”

  21

  The art world’s red-hot center used to be SoHo. Now it was Chelsea—a former swath of wasteland bordered by the Hudson River on one side and Tenth Avenue on the other, stretching up to Hell’s Kitchen and down to Fourteenth Street’s meat market. Here former warehouses, auto dealerships, and garages had ceded their land to overscaled art galleries, high-fashion boutiques, and the hippest of the hip new eateries. The transformation, still in progress, was spreading faster than fungus in the rain forest. Forget the total lack of public transportation (the art world habitués were partial to taxis and private drivers anyway), here you had wide streets and picture-postcard Hudson River views, though a few problems persisted. On off-hours, many of those streets in the West Twenties and Thirties were so desolate one felt as if one had entered the Twilight Zone. Then there was the odor. Eau de meat market: a particularly noxious bouquet that stuck in the back of the throat, making it hard to swallow without vomiting. But no matter. In a year or two those lonely streets would be overrun with clothing and shoe stores, home furnishing outlets, wine bars, more and more restaurants; and the wholesale butchers, unable to keep pace with the exorbitant rents that a big-time art gallery can pay, would haul their dead animal carcasses over to Long Island City or Secaucus. And then, in another decade, when the streets would become so clogged with shops and tourists that people stopped looking at the art, well, the art world would simply move on.

  Willie did not feel like going to an art opening. But his art dealer, Amanda Lowe, had urged him to come, reminding him that with all the exhibitions he had coming up he was obligated to be “out there,” promoting himself and his work.

  Before Willie had become an artist he’d thought that was her job, that his was solely to make the work. How wrong he had been.

  Still, the last couple of days his studio had begun to feel cramped, the smell of turpentine cloying.

  The Amanda Lowe Gallery, a former auto dealership recently transformed into the epitome of postmillennial chic complete with green glass front, fifteen-foot white walls, and dull gray poured-concrete floors rough enough to skin your knees while you worship at the feet of the latest art gods, was located at the westerly end of Thirteenth Street. Less than a year before, this particular spot had been favored by African American transvestites, and though a few of these hardworking men in minis and wigs remained, their number had significantly dwindled now that the art mob had invaded the area.

  Amanda Lowe’s gallery, Willie’s gallery, was the place for up-and-coming Young Turks. Here they rubbed shoulders with a few older art stars whose lights still burned, jostled for breathing space with the new ones just beginning to ignite, and watched their backs around the wanna-be sparklers.

  From a block away, Willie spotted the crowd spilling out into the street. He had an urge to pivot on his Doc Martens, run all the way back to the safety of his studio. But no, he was a professional, or learning to be, and he could handle th
is even if his heart was not in it. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, said a few quick hellos, and then pushed past the outer herd.

  Inside, the gallery was packed, humming, clusters of people exchanging bits of artspeak, always with an eye on the crowd, searching for someone more important.

  As Willie made his way through the crowd, he picked up snatches of conversation, several people talking about the death artist.

  “I tell you,” said one thirtyish woman clad all in black leather with muscled arms tattooed from wrist to elbow as if she were wearing Pucci gloves. “It gives me the fucking creeps. The fucking creeps. I mean, I don’t feel safe in my fucking studio.”

  “I know what you mean,” said the fiftyish man with a bar through his nose and a shaved head. “I’m fucking scared, too. I had to take a handful of fucking quaaludes to sleep last night.”

  “Willie!” Schuyler Mills cut through the throng, got an arm around his shoulder. “Are we having fun yet?”

  “If I remember it was you, Sky, who taught me this stuff was work, not fun.”

  The Contemporary Museum curator patted Willie on the back. “Good boy. See where my lessons have gotten you? You are, and always will be, my favorite pupil.” He gave Willie’s arm a paternal squeeze, then beamed an electric smile at someone over Willie’s shoulder. “Ah! Queen of the night!”

  Amanda Lowe brushed her cheek in Schuyler’s vicinity while kissing air. A painfully thin woman in a high-fashion formfitting black Azzedine Alaïa dress, except there was little form to fit—her hip and shoulder bones threatened to tear the fabric. Unnatural eggplant-colored hair, blunt cut to her earlobes (one of which sported an earring so large it grazed her shoulder), formed a severe helmet around her stark white face. Her eyebrows were black commas, eyes lined with dusky kohl, her mouth a red gash. The total effect was somewhere between a Kabuki mask and a corpse.

  She air-kissed Willie, then snagged him with one hand, Schuyler with the other, and led the artist and curator—the crowd parting before them like the Red Sea—for a closer inspection of the current exhibition.