The Death Artist Page 9

  A decent turnout, though people were checking watches, twitching with boredom, one man actually whispering into a cell phone.

  Richard had refused to come, would not be a “hypocrite.” Others had no such problem with hypocrisy.

  Even Pruitt’s mother, the venerable socialite, kept yawning into her lace handkerchief.

  Twenty long minutes later, the group was turned out into the rarefied afternoon light of upper Madison Avenue. Blair leaned into Kate, whispered, “Darling, if I should suddenly drop dead, please, say something, anything about me other than my charitable works.”

  “How about Olympic shopper, or . . . fabulous luncher.”

  “Bitch,” said Blair, laughing. Then: “Kate, have you checked all those things for the benefit?”

  Kate ticked them off on her fingers. “Florist, caterer, PR people. Check.”

  “Fabulous.” She air-kissed Kate’s cheeks. “I’m off to Michael Kors. The final fitting for my gala dress. Who’s doing you, darling?”

  “Oh—” Kate hadn’t even thought about it. “I guess Richard, though not often enough.”

  Blair’s trilling laugh was cut short as the driver closed her into the airtight BMW.

  Mrs. Pruitt laid a hand on Kate’s arm. “How lovely of you to come for Bill, dear.” Her frosted-helmet hair glittered with lacquer.

  Kate felt a slight pang of guilt. She’d come purely out of obligation. “Well,” she said, “Bill was always so . . .”

  The older woman waited for Kate to come up with something.

  “. . . neatly dressed,” she finally said.

  The older woman nodded, then sighed. “Care for a drink? I’m only around the corner.”

  Kate hardly felt she could refuse.

  Winnie Armstrong-Pruitt-Eckstein arranged herself on an Empire couch upon which the Empress Josephine would have looked, and felt, perfectly at home.

  The Park Avenue apartment had that Sister Parish look that the late great decorator to the staid old rich made famous: the English manor house in the middle of Manhattan, brocades and chintz, worn Persian rugs, a grand piano with an enormous bouquet of wildflowers, a wall of paintings—all of dogs.

  The maid arranged the tray between them, poured each a martini from a deco shaker.

  “Cheers.” Winnie tipped her glass toward Kate, her eyes, under blue-shadowed lids, sparkled.

  The toast and Winnie’s demeanor were not quite appropriate to the circumstances. The woman had always reminded Kate of an old-time actress, any one of a dozen, but particularly the one who played Cary Grant’s mother in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest—one of Kate’s favorite old movies—a sort of combination heiress/showgirl. How she ever produced a son like Bill was a total mystery.

  “How is that marvelous husband of yours?” asked Winnie.

  “Overworked. But fine.”

  Winnie’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You know, my mother always said that Jewish men make the best husbands.” She tossed Kate a wink. “I thought I would be married to Bill’s father, Foster Pruitt, forever, but then, well, he was gone, and to be absolutely truthful”—she leaned toward Kate—“he did not leave me quite as well taken care of as I would have liked. Not that I married Mr. Eckstein for money. Heaven forbid!” Her hand fluttered to her bosom. “Larry Eckstein was the most fabulous man in the world!” She sighed, dramatically. “Oh—I miss the man terribly.” Her eyes went moist. She raised a tiny bell from the nearby table, gave it a firm shake. “Another drink?”

  Minutes later, the maid had refilled Winnie’s martini and supplied Kate with a fresh one.

  “My son was the only one who actively showed his disapproval when I married Larry.”

  “Some people find it difficult to accept change,” said Kate diplomatically.

  “Oh, bull! He was a snob. We had a terrible falling-out over my marriage.” She shook her head. “Though, after Larry’s death we had a bit of a rapprochement. I think, to his credit, William now feels a bit guilty.” Mrs. Armstrong-Pruitt-Eckstein pursed her lips. “Oh, my, I’m talking as though he were still alive.”

  “Well, it is hard to believe he’s gone. He’ll be . . .” Kate found it difficult to say the word: “Missed.”

  Winnie raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  Poor Bill. His own mother didn’t like him. Kate searched for something to say, gestured at the wall of doggie portraiture. “Obviously, you shared your son’s love of art.”

  “Oh, no. Our tastes were completely different, dear. Of course, I adore his Impressionist paintings. Who wouldn’t? But those religious paintings, well . . . they’re a bit too Catholic for me.” She polished off her second martini. “I have one here. Bill left it with me.”

  “A medieval painting?” Even after two martinis, Kate’s attention was piqued. “May I see it?”

  Winnie rooted around in a closet of the wood-paneled library, came up with a crucifixion scene, painted on wood, no bigger than an average paperback novel. She handed it over to Kate as if it were nothing more than a copy of last week’s TV Guide.

  Kate was momentarily disappointed. But had she really expected Winnie to come up with the Madonna and Child in the collage?

  “I believe it’s quite old,” said Winnie with a disinterested shrug.

  Kate stared at the cracked paint, the remains of gold leaf around the borders. Richard, she thought, would kill for it—if it was authentic. She regarded it more closely.

  “Do you think it has any real value?” asked Winnie.

  “It’s hard to say,” said Kate. “It’s not really my area of expertise. But very possibly. When did Bill give this to you?”

  “Oh, a couple of months ago. It was a bit odd. He asked that I take care of it for him. Like it was a pet or something.”

  “Has he given you any others?”

  “One or two of the wonderful canine portraits.” Winnie beamed, then stopped, thought a moment. “You know . . . there was a another religious painting I saw in Bill’s apartment, just the day before he died. It was on the desk in his library, only half wrapped. I took a peek at it. A Madonna and Child.” Winnie looked away a moment, puzzled. “Come to think of it . . .” She retrieved a few papers from her desk, ran her finger down a page. “Let me see . . . No. The Madonna and Child is not here. That’s odd.” She handed the paper over to Kate. “It’s a list of the art in Bill’s apartment. The police furnished it. Very annoying they were, too.” She pursed her lips. “They expect me to check with his insurance carrier to see if anything’s missing. I mean, really.”

  “You’re absolutely sure you saw it—this Madonna and Child painting?”

  “Kate, dear. I may be old, but I’m not senile.”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Kate scanned the list, then got the cut pieces of the Madonna and Child out of her bag, arranged them on Winnie’s library desk. “Did it look anything like this?”

  “Goodness.” Winnie tilted her head one way, then the other. “I mean, I’m no expert, dear, but it certainly looks the same.”

  Kate thought a minute. “Could Bill have sold it?”

  “I can’t imagine that. It was just the day before he died that I saw it. There wasn’t time.”

  Exquisite.

  His eyes linger over the delicate crosshatching in the gold leaf, the tiny fissures in the egg tempera, the tender look in the Madonna’s half-closed eyes. It’s so beautiful, so terribly moving, he is almost afraid to look at all that emotion the artist has dared put into a painting meant for reverence and piety.

  He was right to take it. The man did not deserve it.

  He thinks back, tries to relive the moment when he held the man’s spindly legs in the air, watched the old fool thrash about in the water. That was nice. Funny, too. But the best part? He raps his pencil along the steel table’s edge. Oh, yes, finding that cleaning bill. The perfect prop.

  Still, it felt a bit too much like work.

  Now he wishes he’d taken something, a talisman, a souvenir. H
e peers across the vast space to what was once a window, now a lopsided, jagged-edged square framing a piece of river like an old photograph.

  That’s it. A camera. Next time, he’ll take the Polaroid with him.

  Now he tugs the heavy volume over, skims through the pages. This next one must be more fun.

  How to make it both essential and pleasurable?

  Such an odd pursuit, pleasure. Had he ever really known any?

  As a child it was so elusive—the smell of a cat’s burned fur, the parakeet’s tiny heart pulsing in his hand. But they were incomplete pleasures. They had no reason.

  But now his head has begun to ache. He rubs his hands across his forehead, fingers pushing, pulling until the flesh tingles, sits back, breathes in deeply. A moment’s respite.

  He slides the gloves on, turns the pages with care, stops at a possible prospect. But where would he get all those rifles? No, not viable. Not yet, anyway.

  Here’s something. Stark. Dramatic. Vivid. He likes that. Thinks the artist will like it, too. Maybe it’s too vivid, too good. But does that really matter? After all, the guy’s just a pawn, a bit player.

  How easy it was to secure the date. Flattery. It never failed—especially with an artist. And the accent was a nice touch.

  He pictures the artist in his isolated Hell’s Kitchen studio, surrounded by those boring little paintings, slides back in his chair, runs his hand along the pitted wall, his fingers looping over bumps and snags, stopping at the newspaper photo of Kate, his little guardian angel with her graphite wings and halo.

  Is he overwhelming her with all this information? He’s already given her a lot to think about. How much has she figured out? How much does she understand?

  Well, that part is her job. And this time he’s not going to make it so easy for her.

  He checks his watch. Feels the heat, the hunger stir inside him.

  Soon.

  “How do you do?” he says aloud, practicing his clipped German accent.

  11

  Ethan Stein rearranged the copies of his art reviews on the paint-stained table just beside the entrance to his Hell’s Kitchen studio. He’d had them enlarged by ten percent—just enough to make them look bigger, more impressive, without the reader’s knowing quite why. Too bad they were a few years out of date.

  What was it exactly the collector had said over the phone? That he was a “longtime admirer” of Ethan’s work? Something like that. Whatever. It was goddamn music to his ears. Mother’s milk. And every other cliché Ethan could think of. Lately, he hadn’t been hearing many compliments; the collectors and curators were not exactly beating down his doors.

  Maybe that’s why Ethan had neglected to get any particulars, just that the man saw a painting of Ethan’s—where was it again? In another collector’s home? Somewhere. What mattered was that the man was coming to the studio “with the intent to buy.” That much Stein had heard loud and clear.

  Ten years ago he was one of the young turks—a twenty-five-year-old mover and shaker in the world of Post-Minimal Conceptual art, and damn proud of it. But it had been six years since his last New York show. Six long years. Well, that would have to change, and soon. This was a good sign. An omen. And these new paintings were good. Not exactly revolutionary. But that didn’t matter. His work had always been about the pure thing, about honesty.

  He splashed some turpentine onto his large glass palette. He hadn’t painted in a week, but wanted the studio to smell as if he had.

  He tried to recall the collector’s name while sorting through his CDs, looking for the perfect music, mellow jazz, he decided, that would complement his minimal abstract paintings.

  Had the guy even given him a name? He really needed to start paying attention. Maybe it had been something foreign. The man had definitely had an accent.

  The artist surveyed his studio just as the sun dropped behind the old McGraw-Hill Building, checked the bottle of Sancerre chilling in his half-sized fridge, quickly dumped Terra chips into a bowl, rearranged his art press for the umpteenth time. He hardly ever stayed late, felt just a bit uncomfortable in the totally deserted building, all the businesses having cleared out at exactly 5:00 P.M., and the street, at night, Eleventh Avenue, so far away from any life. But this was worth waiting for.

  The buzzer sounded. Ethan checked his watch—8:00 p.m. The collector, right on time.

  When he came back to the conscious world, Ethan Stein wished he had not. He couldn’t move his arms or legs, every breath was an effort, his thoughts were muddled, his head ached as though his skull had been shrunk too tight for his brain.

  What happened? All he remembered was answering the door.

  Oh, right. The hand across his face, the chemical smell, the slightest struggle before the room went black.

  Ethan blinked. The man’s shoes passed in front of his eyes. He was lying on the floor, his cheek against cheap, paint-splattered linoleum, dust in his nose. The man was whistling.

  For a second, the irony sloshed through Ethan’s drugged mind—sure, he likes it rough when it’s play, but this . . .

  The panic rose so quickly, the smell of ether, or something like it, still so strong in his nostrils, that Ethan thought he would surely vomit. Were those gagging noises coming from him?

  “Calm down.”

  A voice from above.

  Ethan strained to see, but could not move his head.

  The man bent down, his face an inch from Ethan’s face, features a blur. “This is going to take a while. Relax.”

  Now the man was on a chair. Ethan could hear him unscrewing floodlights, half the room going dark.

  “Patience,” the man said.

  Ethan’s heart pulsated in his ears, sounding like a tennis match in the rain, the ball soggy, leaden. Plop. Squish. Plop. Squish. And were those tears on his cheeks? He’d never felt so helpless, so utterly terrified. He felt cold and, looking down at his chest, realized he was naked. His panic rose. There were noises emanating from somewhere deep in his throat, but he couldn’t form words. His lips and tongue were thick, immovable.

  Now the man was beside him, unfolding a paper, mumbling to himself. Ethan strained to turn his head. Impossible.

  The man’s hands came into view, the straight razor glinting.

  Noooo! But Ethan couldn’t scream. The words dribbled out of him, pathetic, just bubbles of spit on his lips.

  “I’ll start with the leg,” the man said, grabbing Ethan by his ankles, hoisting his legs up, arranging it so that Ethan’s naked heel was against the back wall wedged between two of his minimal white paintings.

  Ethan was hanging upside down now, staring up at the man, but couldn’t make him out. The lights’ glare had turned the man into a dark silhouette. All he could see was the way the man referred to the paper in his hand just before he started slashing Ethan’s calf with the straight razor.

  It wasn’t the pain that made Ethan faint. He only felt the slightest tug, a sort of pinch. No, it was seeing that the man was plying the razor under the skin, chopping away stubborn muscles and tendons, lifting flesh off bone as if he were skinning a chicken.

  12

  ARTIST FOUND DEAD IN MIDTOWN

  The body of Ethan Stein, 36, was discovered late last night in his Hell’s Kitchen studio by maintenance man Joseph Santiago, at 427 West 39th Street, when the man noticed blood pooling out from under the artist’s studio door.

  The murder, which appears to have ritualistic overtones, is so far baffling the NYPD. The artist was . . .

  Morning light poured through the tall penthouse windows, dappling across the kitchen counter, Kate’s cup of black coffee, and the New York Times.

  Ethan Stein. Kate hadn’t heard much about him in the past few years. One of those artists who seemed to fall through the art world cracks after their style and moment ceased to be fashionable. Richard had bought a painting about five or six years ago. It used to hang in the Rothsteins’ living room, was later demoted to a guest room—a small, min
imal piece, layers of white and off-white paint built up with palette knife and brush, the faintest grid of gray. Nice. Not terribly exciting. Now it made Kate sad that they had never kept up with the artist, or that they moved his painting, or . . . she wasn’t sure. A life cut short was always tragic. But ritualistic overtones? Blood under the door? Jesus.

  Her head ached. Those ninety-proof martinis with Winnie Pruitt, topped off by a couple of glasses of cabernet with Richard’s clients last night. Kate could barely make conversation. Not like her. And Richard noted it. More than once. It was not as if she didn’t want to be sociable, but her mind was obsessed with that collage, and with the idea that Bill Pruitt could have been dealing in stolen art.

  She slid the Metro Section aside, was about to look at the Dining In section when the photo slipped onto the counter.

  A Polaroid, almost totally white, the faintest suggestion of an image, something gray and out of focus in the corner.

  What’s this? She studied it a moment. Could it possibly have gotten stuck, accidentally, inside her newspaper? A week ago she might have thought so. Not now.

  Kate washed down two Excedrin, quickly got the cordless under her chin. A call to Richard.

  “Sorry, Mrs. R. He’s in a meeting.” Richard’s true-blue secretary.

  “Just tell him I called, Anne-Marie.”

  “Sure thing. And thanks for the fudge. It was yummy.”

  “Hey, you deserve it—and don’t you share one bit,” said Kate, who intended to keep that woman working in Richard’s office well past retirement age. She also intended to maintain Anne-Marie’s plus-size figure. Handmade truffles for Valentine’s Day. Candy canes and pound cake at Christmas. Even a five-pound chocolate turkey at Thanks-giving. “Tell him to call me, okay? Thanks.”

  But enough small talk. Her hands were shaking.

  Kate lifted the Polaroid for a closer look, but there was nothing to see. It was mostly white with a hint of gray, a complete blur. She put it down, reached for her coffee, and stopped. The Polaroid, resting just beneath the banner of Ethan Stein’s murder, was suddenly a juxtaposition so compelling, she was on her feet.