A Little Trouble with the Facts (13 page)

“Why not?”

“The eighties,” she said, as if that explained all of it.

I shook my head.

“You say you’re putting together a story about Malcolm? Will it be a big piece? When will it appear? I can tell you everything.
I can put you in touch with all the right people. But not just this moment; this is a bad time.” She caught herself. “It’s never a good time, is it?” She stood up again, stroking the tresses of her hair. “I’ll tell you what I can now, and then we’ll talk more later. Okay? Will that be okay?”

I thought this would be the best I could get. I nodded, and then waited, while she assembled her thoughts. Then, without much ramping up, she launched in: “I remember when he first came into my gallery, he was like a Molotov cocktail. I’ve seen a lot of kids who think of themselves as artists, but there aren’t that many like Wallace. I was of course the first dealer in New York to recognize the power of that genre. People dismissed graffiti, but to me it was the next natural step from neo-Expressionism, the last gasp of modernism. There’s a direct line from Rothko to Rauschenberg to Basquiat. Stain’s work had an additional charm—it was evasive, somehow, withholding.”

Darla was all over the place. Pseudo-nostalgia, self-aggrandizement, a touch of critical theory. I wondered if this was how she processed grief.

“He did well for you?”

“Oh, he did fabulously! Probably the best of his group. Some of them had talent, but not like Malcolm. He was genuinely brilliant. And believe me, I use that word advisedly.”

“You represented a lot of graffiti artists.”

“Of course. I was the first. People have held it against me for years. Some people said it was ‘fad art,’ but no one would convince me of that. Some people called it scrawls; I said, then what’s Dubuffet? Every artist working today references outsider art and primitives. I got the feeling some collectors just didn’t want people from the
outer boroughs
in
our
galleries. They appreciate that much more in Europe. I say: You just don’t know where good art will come from. If it comes from the gutter, it comes from the gutter.”

She reconsidered what she’d said. “That sounds wrong, maybe too dismissive. Divisive? What’s the word I’m looking for? You’re a writer. You can fill it in. The thing was, Wallace wasn’t really graffiti. He was much more than that, a true painter. Also, he had irrepressible charisma. Let me say that. He was also a gorgeous kid. Beautiful! You could see it emblazoned on his face: ‘I will be famous or I will die.’ Putting his name on things was just a small part of it; Malcolm
needed
to be recognized the way fish need gills to breathe and elephants need those huge ears to, well…you know.”

Darla was exactly the kind of creature I’d come to know so well on Style, and maybe that’s why Cabeza knew I’d be able to get her talking. Just feed her ego a little birdseed and she’d go on singing like this for hours. But I didn’t need the entire eighties flashback. I just needed to know one thing. “Do you still have some of his pieces?”

“No, no, no, no, of course not. I sold everything. All the pieces he gave to me, personally, I sold while the market was high. I would’ve sold more to collectors, too, if he’d given me more. I had a waiting list of buyers.”

“Why’d he stop giving you things to sell? He stop working?”

“No! He was very prolific.
Constantly
working. His studio was wall-to-wall paintings, scraps of metal, shoes, pants. He painted on his pants! Stop working? Never!”

Darla started clicking back and forth in front of me.

“Why did you let him go?”

“I didn’t, exactly. He got back from his European tour and he had this whole new modus operandi. He didn’t want to talk to the collectors. He didn’t want to ‘make nice,’ as he put it. The more I tried to sell, the more he told me that he didn’t belong on gallery walls. His only credentials were street credentials, he said. And so forth. I’m sure you know the argument.”

“I’ve heard something about it.”

“The trouble was, he was having a lot of fights with other graffiti writers. Beefs, they call it, sort of like little gang wars. He’d write his name somewhere and someone else would buff it—you know, write over it. Who knows why he still wanted to be doing that. He was famous. Genuinely. He didn’t need to be scrawling on walls anymore, tempting arrest. It was like he still wanted to be the tough kid on the block. And well, there were all these street urchins here all the time and it was getting out of hand and I didn’t really want them wreaking havoc. I was paying for his very high lifestyle. Limos and hotel rooms, painting supplies, trips to Europe, with lots of hangers-on. I didn’t like that. Not too many dealers would, frankly.”

“Sure,” I said. “I can understand that.” I jotted some notes on my pad.

“You don’t need all this,” Darla said. “In fact, strike that last part. I don’t want to be quoted on that.”

I didn’t bother to pretend to cross out my notes. She wasn’t watching anyway.

“Do you really want to hear all this? It’s a sad story. It’s not going to be important for your piece. But I’ll tell you, if it can stay off the record. It got worse. He got deeper into drugs, and then he became very radicalized. Paranoid, if you ask me. He said he didn’t want his art to be sold, so he started painting on his own skin. He showed up at an opening at Sidney Janis one night with the word
slave
on his forehead. He tapped people and offered to let them examine his teeth. It was all very hard to take.”

“How deep was he into drugs?”

“Did I say he was? Actually, strike that too. I don’t know. I try not to get too involved with the personal lives of my artists. Once you get into that territory, there’s no coming back.”

“What about his friends?”

“Well, he had that group of sycophants, you know, always
around him. I’m sure some of them were dopers. You know kids from that neighborhood, there’s always that element. But dear, I’m telling you. I handled the works of art. I didn’t spend my free time with the boy. He had a pretty rough crowd.”

The word
boy
rang in my ears. I didn’t know much about how artists related to their dealers, but a woman like Darla would’ve noticed a lot of things even if she wasn’t using her free time to get to know Wallace.

“As you can see, I’m a businesswoman. I run a small business where I sell pictures for a fee,” she gestured toward the million-dollar paintings, as if this were a poster shop where a van Gogh sold for twenty bucks. “If you don’t want to sell art, you don’t need me. I think we parted in 1987, but I could be mistaken.” She fastened her lips politely and turned the clasp. Apparently my time was up. “I’d love to tell you more but my clients will be here any minute. We’ll reschedule, yes?”

I thanked her. But I knew she didn’t have clients arriving anytime soon, at least to buy these works. Nobody was going to be buying works on loan from major museums. She walked me to the foyer of the gallery, stopping in the middle of the space before the Robert Ryman. “Now, this,” she said, “is where conceptual art meets abstraction: emotion essentialized. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful in your whole life?”

I looked at the all-white painting. I felt like Scott of the Antarctic.

“Critics like to say that the white canvas is the endgame of fine art. They are wrong. It is the pinnacle. You don’t get to white immediately. You have to arrive at white. You have to be a perfect classicist—life drawing, color, perspective, mastering figurative painting, exploring abstraction—before you get to white. You strip everything down and you go closer and closer to the essence of expression. White is the last possible painting. It’s a
kind of religious moment, a paradigm shift that makes anything possible.”

We’d finally gotten to the heart of Darla too. Strip down all the exterior varnish and what you’ve got was a saleswoman. The entire time I’d detained her with Wallace, she’d been preparing her pitch. And here it was, as polished as a press release. I had to marvel. “Fascinating,” I said.

Darla breathed in the Ryman and exhaled. Every time she looked at the work, this was meant to suggest, she experienced a new conversion. “Well,” she said. “At least your visit down here was profitable in the end, I hope. Please call me in a couple of days and I’ll put you in touch with anyone you’ll need for your Wallace story. He deserves a big feature. And in the meantime, we’ll see you later at the opening, yes? Perhaps you’ll travel down with Mr. Prattle. If need be, I can have Gideon arrange a car.”

We’d come full circle. My payment was due. I looked down. “Lovely shoes,” I said. “What are they, may I ask?”

“Aren’t they cute?” she said. “Irrawaddy cobra. I just brought them back from Bangkok.”

“Adorable,” I said. “I’ll send a note to Prattle when I’m back at my desk. Just one more thing. Why do you think Wallace thought you had his paintings?”

Her eyebrow twitched again, but her face was stolid. “Did he?”

Darla reached behind me and grabbed the stainless-steel door handle, pulling it open to let in the swelter. “You’re some sort of celebrity journalist, I take it? Is that what Gideon was saying? I’m always pleased to speak with anyone from your paper. However, I hope next time you come you’ll give us a ring and let us know you’re coming down. Just so that we can make sure we give you the proper attention. I hope you understand.”

“Certainly,” I said.

“We’ll see you at the opening tonight,” she said again. She didn’t wait for my answer. The glass door swooshed softly closed behind me. I was back out on West Twenty-fourth Street, a gray block of cement buildings with an abandoned stretch of railroad overhead, garbage strewn into the rutted pavement. I smelled the vague scent of rancid meat and motor oil.

Okay by me. I was tired of all that purity.

W
hen I got back to the office, I found a note on my desk, scribbled in the looping script of Rood’s hand:

Blondie. And I’d forgotten to say good-bye.

I shredded the note and looked around for Rood, but he was unaccountably absent. Despite the previous night’s downpour, the newsroom was still on heat-wave tempo. Clerks glided somnolently back and forth like ducks in a shooting gallery. Randy Antillo was sling-shooting rubber bands into the Manhattan map on the office wall. Clint Westwood was replacing his penny loafer insoles. Rusty Markowitz was cursing at his monitor, “
Active
quotes, damn stringers! How can I use this crap?” Battinger was wearing her headset tipped back like a tiara and typing, a burger in her kisser.

Jaime called out, “Firehouse pre-bit coming along?”

Firehouse. Right, Firehouse. “Yes, just fine,” I said. The Wallace file was covering up the Firehouse file, so I switched them. I put an article in front of me and dragged my eyes over the words, but nothing sank in. I picked up the phone and dialed Betty Schlacter,
the DA’s flack. When I asked her about the Wallace case, she said his name back to me, as if he were already filed on microfiche.

“Graffiti guy. Queensboro Bridge. Saturday.”

“Doing follows now on obits?”

“You know how slow it gets in summer.”

“What was the name again?”

I told her and there was a click. She left me with Bernadette Peters singing
Oklahoma
from the soundtrack. Just when the wind was sweeping down the plain, she returned. “That case is still active. You know we can’t discuss anything under investigation.”

“Sure,” I said. “I know that.”

“How about this: I’ll let you know when we’ve solved it and give you everything. I still have your number around here somewhere.” These government flacks had a way of making you feel small. Fishing wasn’t allowed at city hall. But before she’d let me beg off, she asked, “Do you still have any juice with Buzz Phipps, Valerie?”

“It depends on how hard I squeeze him.”

Silent pause. “I have something new on the supermodel slaying,” she said. “But never mind, I’ll call Tracy.” Then she hung up. It was a low blow, and I had to sit there and take it. Tracy was getting “Drop Dead Gorgeous” and I was getting the dial tone.

I tapped the eraser of my pencil on the desk for a while. I needed to get something on Wallace—anything—enough, anyway, to get Cabeza off my back. Enough to satisfy my newfound curiosity about him too. But how would I do it? News hawks didn’t get their information from flacks, did they? Gumshoes didn’t go around asking press agents for scraps. Jake Gittes knew he had to go to the orange groves. Marlowe had to go to Mexico to find Terry Lennox. But how did he know? And when did he know?

I scanned the collection of reference books on my cubicle shelf: a Zagat restaurant guide; a hot pink guide to Manhattan sex haunts; a thick
Gotham’s Gate
special edition, “Who’s Who in the Hamp
tons”; and a thin volume of celebrity yoga gurus. These would have to go. I’d need serious journalistic tomes.
The Pentagon Papers.
Speeches by MLK, something by Chomsky, and that book
We Regret to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will…Something, Something.
A guide to digital reporting. That was all the rage. I’d need to get a little cap that made me look smart. Maybe dye my hair and get a cut? A wristwatch. I made a list. It was a short list, and when I got finished, I noticed Jaime watching me. Firehouse.

I pulled out the Firehouse file again and started jotting notes about her “ground-breaking” feminist performances, including her 1981 piece, “Nympho/Pyromaniac,” in which Sally masturbated while self-flagellating, and then set fire to her panties. Very soon I had a couple of pages of notes for a story, but it was just about the trickiest bit of cultural translation imaginable, like turning a Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner into a bedtime story. I couldn’t politely conjure a tenth of Sally’s act. I tried to describe the protective sheeting and fire-resistant jelly, which she called her “special-formula K-Y,” and resorted to the phrase “unsuitable for a family newspaper” five or six times. I drifted back to wondering about Wallace.

Rood arrived an hour later, like Jimmy Cagney back from the joint, smiling and snickering and flashing his gums, while lurching across the newsroom. “Miss Vane,” he said, cordially. Then he coughed what sounded like acreage of phlegm.

“Mickey,” I said, nodding. “Are you all right?”

“Nothing a few dozen surgeons can’t fix,” he said. “Or so my doctor tells me.”

Mickey had already had one lung removed; I knew that much. I couldn’t imagine what they’d be able to do about the other. I was pleased when he opened up his filing cabinet and took out his brown bag. When he started peeling the layers off his lemon sugar wafers, I was reassured. After he’d finished, he opened a folder on the desk, laid out the clippings from the file,
and leaned over the papers like an overgrown toadstool. I looked at his wide back for a while before I asked: “Mickey, you worked in the cop shop, right?”

“Fifteen years,” he said.

“Ever solve a crime the police couldn’t get?”

“Not too often, but a couple of times.” Rood leaned back until his chair hit his desk, and he reached for a cigar box he kept next to the picture of his granddaughter. He took out an unfiltered Lucky Strike. “One case was sort of a mistake. A serial rapist attacking prostitutes in the Brooklyn projects. Cops picked up the suspect and I was on the follow. I was collecting string from victims’ neighbors, and folks started telling me the cops got it wrong. Then I knocked on one door, and there was a guy there, looking pretty ragged. ‘Do you want to talk?’ I said. Bingo, confession in my lap. That wasn’t anything I did, either. Just knocked on the right door and out comes this cranked-up kid thinking I’m a priest.”

“I guess that’s a big break.”

“Dumb luck.”

“And the other?”

“That was all me. That was the big feather in my cap,” he snickered like he didn’t mean it. “It never ran. Some time I’ll tell you all about it, but not now.” He tapped the Lucky on the desk’s surface and placed it between his lips. He didn’t light it. He took it out again and plucked a speck of tobacco from his tongue.

“If you had to do that again—go out on a limb, check something out on your own—where would you start?”

“If I had to, I’d start in the most logical place, with the known facts. I’d follow all the facts back to their source, see if the facts lined up right. Usually they don’t. So you find which fact is wrong, you work from there. Then I’d cover my ass. I’d make sure I did everything on the up and up. No side dalliances, nothing that would stop the brass from accepting my word as scripture.” He tapped
his Lucky on the desk. “You wouldn’t want to tell me any more about this thing you’re trying to follow, now would you, Vane?”

“Me?” I said. “Oh, nothing. I’m actually just trying to find some of my dad’s relatives. Old family history.”

“That’s good,” said Rood, sitting up straight. His chair whacked him in the back, making him cough again. “Because I wouldn’t want you checking into something that wasn’t within your current realm of expertise. That might lead to a story that was too big for Obits. And that would get certain editors so worked up they’d muss their hair.”

Cabeza’s call came an hour later. He didn’t bother with courtesies. “Did you get news on the Stains?”

“Darla says she sold all of them,” I said. “That’s all she said.”

“Did you get any leads?”

The answer was no. “I can’t talk about it here,” I said.

“Claro,”
he said. “I’ll be on the Queensboro when you get off work, shooting footage.”

“Footage?”

“I’ll be there after five. There’s a bike ramp on the north side.” Before I could ask for directions, I was listening to the dial tone again. I hated that.

I riffled through papers in the Stain morgue file. I picked through the bruised clips. There were lots. I found a
N.Y. Reader
item dated 1985, “Skirmish Disturbs ‘Equilibrium.’”

I had to like this reporter’s style. It was cranky. It didn’t tell the whole story, but it told the good parts. On page two, I saw something else that interested me, a photo of Wallace arm in arm with Darla in front of the SoHo gallery. They looked to be pretty swell pals. She was even putting a few teeth in her smile. In the background was another face I now recognized: Cabeza’s. He was twenty years younger, maybe about ten pounds lighter, and his hair had no sign of gray. He was behind Wallace with his arms folded. He had a look of disapproval on his face, but he was leaning sideways, almost as if he wanted to get into the frame. It reminded me of kids who stand behind on-air TV newscasters, mouthing “Hi, Ma!”

Based on what I could find in the clipping file, the incident at the Koons opening hadn’t improved Stain’s public profile. The next few items I found focused on his public decline: a 1986 story in the
Daily News,
“Staining His Own Reputation? Wallace Undermines His Work with Silly Stunts,” followed by a
Village Voice
feature, “Sell-Out Stain Gets Religion,” a four-page rant about how Wallace had no right to start “speaking for the people,” when he’d already become a parody of himself. A
New York Post
gossip item asked, “What former art star should be voted ‘Most Likely to Exceed’? The wall-scribbler named Stain, who can’t stop putting his rather large foot in his sizable mouth.”

Here it was: the media machine that had built Wallace in his early career was turning on him, taking him apart one pull quote at a time.

The Paper reserves a special place in its heart, and on its fourth floor, for its critics. While most of the reporters who fill the ever-expanding culture sections make their homes in cubes, the critics get offices with walls that smack the ceiling and doors that shut and lock. This alone gives them reason to feel haughty.

Curtis had an office on the floor’s west wing, just a few feet behind Tyler Prattle’s. He shared it with the second-tier film critic, a British Mensa cardholder named Marvin Everett with the byline M. E. Smarte. I rapped lightly so as not to disturb Smarte, in case he was deconstructing the new Kubrick release. No one answered. I rapped again, this time a little harder. I heard a noise inside, and then the muted rolling of wheels, until the door snapped open.

Curtis was in his chair, his head was tossed back lazily and his eyes were a little misty, as if I’d interrupted him reading Wordsworth. He had a dreamy Sunday kind of look on his face, like he’d just put away a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and was coming up with excuses to skip the Week in Review.

“Well, I have to say, you missed some serious Bollywood,” he told me, and I almost confessed that I’d have preferred to go to the Film Forum than to a funeral. He got up and made ceremonious with the door, then rolled Smarte’s chair out from under the other desk and offered it to me. “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Sushi hand roll?” He had a smooth, high voice that kept its pitch.

It had been only a day since I’d last seen Curtis and I should’ve been able to pick up right where we’d left off, but something had come between us in the last twenty-four hours.

“So, I’ve got tickets to Celebrate Brooklyn tonight,” he said. “Beastie Boys and Kid Creole. Any interest?”

Before I could think of a good excuse, his phone rang. Curtis twisted to answer it. “Just a sec,” he said, picking up the receiver. “Culture.” He winked at me. “Hey, Clive. Sure, I know—it’s in my heart but not in my budget, man. Sure, I’ll come down anyway. Sure. Save me a seat up front.”

He hung up the phone. “Sorry about that.” Before I could answer, the phone rang again. “Oops! Sorry, Val. Just this one.”

“Culture,” he said. “Berta! Girl! It’s been ages!…No kidding.” He continued on for a while, scribbling something onto his desk calendar and thanking her profusely for the invite I was sure he wouldn’t accept. Every box in his desk calendar was already covered with jots: hundreds of invitations to rock concerts, music hall openings, movie premieres, and film festivals. All New York was bumping elbows just to get on Curtis’s schedule. Poor culture contenders. The hopes of a slew of aspiring pop stars could be dashed with a single spill of his coffee cup.