A Little Trouble with the Facts (19 page)

“Please, ladies and gentlemen of the press,” she said, and I remembered her name was Jill. “Ms. Deitrick will make a brief statement and then she will answer one or two questions. Please
understand that Ms. Deitrick is very busy, but she would like to make sure you all get what you need.”

The press pool hushed, waiting for Darla to take her turn. Jill put a small pedestal on the floor in front of Darla; she stepped up onto it and then steadied herself. She quietly unfolded a piece of paper. Her hands trembled slightly.

“Early this morning at approximately two fifteen a.m., some of the greatest art institutions in the world, along with my humble gallery, Darla Deitrick Fine Art, were the victims of a horrifying and senseless crime,” she said, her voice quavering. “Works by some of the leading contemporary artists in the world, such as Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, and Cy Twombly, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Centre Pompidou of Paris, have been vilely desecrated. You see all around you the evidence of that desecration. I consider this violation akin to an art world rape.”

Murmuring from the crowd. Notes scribbled. Shushing from Jill.

“The police suspect that there may have been more than one culprit,” Darla continued, shakily. “I have no idea who would’ve committed such a heinous act, and I will not make any guesses to that effect until all the evidence has been accumulated. I am adequately insured to cover the works on loan, and I have already been in contact with the owners of these invaluable works of art. There was no sign of forced entry, and nothing appears to have been stolen.” She gritted her teeth. “The violators clearly hoped to destroy masterpieces and to humiliate me personally. I intend to pursue them and punish them to the full extent of the law.” Her little nose was flared and her eyes were so narrowed she was almost a Cyclops.

When she stopped talking, she started breathing again. Her breaths were long and shallow in the microphone. She took a
step back while the brunette flack named Jill chose her favorite TV talent from the front of the press pool and let them toss some softballs: “Ms. Deitrick, it must’ve been just awful to walk in here and see this,” said Phyllis Chestnut, the entertainment reporter for
Wake Up Call,
the morning report on Channel Five. “Tell us, what did it
feel
like?”

“You can’t even imagine, Phyllis. Why, I looked around the gallery when I arrived and…” Darla started to get choked up. The second flack, the blonde, put a reassuring hand on Darla’s shoulder and softly said, “It’s okay, dear. Ms. Deitrick has to get back to work.” Flashes went off.

“Okay, only two more,” said my old buddy, Jill, sternly, as if she were protecting a toddler from a pack of rottweilers. “Ms. Deitrick is getting worn out.” She pointed to TV talent Jinny James up front.

“Darla, you’ve been such an important supporter of graffiti artists in the past. Do you ever think you’ll represent one of them now that they’ve betrayed you like this?”

Darla looked up appreciatively. “Oh, Jinny, to give of your heart and soul to these people and then to have them turn around and do this.” Again, she was awash in emotion, and the cameras were clicking, flashing, exploding.

“A last question please?” said Jill. “Right here, up front.”

A man’s voice started, “Can you tell us if you’ve found any meaning in these senseless scrawls?”

But I couldn’t take it any longer. I broke in, from the back of the pack: “Ms. Deitrick, is there any connection between this vandalism and the fire at your warehouse that used to contain hundreds of works by graffiti artists?”

Darla’s eyebrow began to twitch spasmodically as she peered through the assembled shutterbugs and news hawks to find the face that went with that question. Her flacks began to search for me too, and Jill whispered something into Darla’s ear, speeding
her twitching. Finally, her eyes landed on me and her face went red as the hamburger in the Malevich.

She lifted her hand and pointed. “Arrest that woman!” she shouted, loud enough for the NY1 News reporter to drop his script. “She is connected to the vandals who did this! She’s responsible!”

There was sudden pandemonium as the entire bank of reporters shifted and a few of the cameras swiveled to turn their lights on my face. A couple of coppers edged closer, as if they might do something. But no one made an abrupt move.

“Arrest her!” Darla screamed again. “She knows who did this. She’s an accomplice!”

I figured something unpleasant was about to happen—maybe a copper would tackle me or maybe Jill would start pulling my hair. I would’ve made for the door, but I was stunned into immobility. I just stood there taking in the sight of Darla, standing like Art Gallery Barbie atop her pedestal.

Flashguns started going off in my face and reporters hurled question at me: “Name, please?”…“Aren’t you…?”…“Do you know who did this?”…“Did you have a hand in this?”…“What was the purpose of this vandalism?”…“Aren’t you Valerie…?”

Maybe Blondie had gone soft after he’d returned from the Twilo Ecstasy romp and blubbered on Darla’s shoulder. Or maybe she’d had him followed that night and she’d tortured him to find out what he’d spilled. Maybe he was getting the hot light and rubber hose treatment in the back room even now. Or worse—Darla had hired Tan Rafifito splatter his white linen suit with cow’s blood.

All I could do was blink into the cameras and promise myself to stand quite still and not do any further damage. I had no interest in fifteen more minutes in the spotlight. So I sighed and said, “Ms. Deitrick is unfortunately mistaken. I’m a journalist.
Check my press credentials. I came here to cover a story.” I waved my press badge. A few cameramen snapped it. It gave the coppers pause, but not much. They looked back at Darla, who was still shrieking accusations, even under the muffling hands of her damage-control experts.

“I’ll press charges!” Darla shouted, and that did the trick.

My buddy Blue Eyes from the door had his plastic cuffs off his belt and he held them out to me as if presenting a gift. “I knew you were trouble,” he said.

I remembered what Cabeza had said about Darla’s pull with the cops. Ah, Giuliani New York. It sure was good for some people. “Little Miss, we’re going to have to take you down to the station house and sort this all out,” Blue Eyes said.

I didn’t want Darla Deitrick to become the new Angelica Pomeroy—star of
Terror in the City II
. I had to hand it to her, though, for her skills of misdirection. Her storage facility burns down, her art goes missing, graffiti kids vandalize her gallery, and somehow it’s the washed-up journo hack who’s to blame. Not bad for the daughter of a muffin maven.

They were on me now. As the coppers tugged me by my plastic cuffs toward the door, I glanced back into the depths of the gallery, to the office in front of the sliding glass door where I’d first met Darla. I saw something white skitter across the space. I figured it for Blondie.

J
aime looked different in the pale green light of the Tenth Precinct lockup. Not like the boss who’d forced me to write unbylined death squibs. More like a guy who’d bailed me out twice.

I’d spent three hours in the cooler looking at a dank stone wall while reporters all over the city were filing stories on Darla’s break-in. The cell was one of those temporary tanks at the back of the precinct, just big enough for maybe a couple of tricks fresh from the local one-hour motels. It had a cold concrete floor and hard bench suspended on two chains. I didn’t have any company or anything to read. That gave me a lot of time to think about how all the pieces might fall into place. It also gave me time to daydream about Cabeza and the nice little tomato salad with balsamic vinaigrette we’d eat one afternoon in our Woodstock cabin once we’d left this dirty town in our rearview.

After the first hour, a sergeant named Suarez pulled me out of the lockup and put me in a windowless room upstairs. The décor wasn’t any prettier, but at least I had Suarez to look at. He was bald as a baseball and what he lacked in height he made up in girth. He carried his extra weight like a kid carries an inner tube. Suarez told me Darla said I was personally acquainted with the vandals; I told him I wasn’t so well connected. Suarez asked me who I knew who disliked Darla. I said I disliked her.

After a few rounds of twenty questions, I told Suarez that based on what Darla had given him I knew he couldn’t get me past the precinct, and I wasn’t dumb enough to give him any excuses. I said if he had enough to run me down to Central Booking, he should go right ahead, otherwise I was going to call my boss and he’d call our lawyer. I wish I could say he looked embarrassed when he handed me the phone.

An hour later, another copper clinked keys to unlock my cell and Jaime put his wallet back in his pocket. The expression on his face made me think of a man who’s just learned his daughter is a porn star. “Jaime,” I started to say.

“Let’s not,” he said, holding up his hand, “until we get outside.”

I followed him out to the street with my head bent and waited dutifully on the curb. It was a clear day, the sky luminous blue. I loved the sound of the traffic and the smell of the exhaust, the people zigzagging through the streets and the scowls on the faces of the fruit sellers. Ah, it was good to be a free woman! I gulped in the fresh air, trying to forget the taste of the dank cell.

Jaime opened the cab door for me. “Come on, Bonnie Parker.”

I slid onto the seat and waited. Jaime slid in next to me and unrolled his window, as if he couldn’t bear the stench of me. I felt guilty, but I wasn’t sure why. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d been wrongly accused! But I knew Jaime must’ve had to make up some strange excuses to get out of the news office and pick me up.

“What makes you stick up for me, Jaime?”

“Don’t be too sure I will.” His eyes were fixed on the driver’s royal blue turban. He announced the address of The Paper and the taxi bolted forward, went a few yards, and then skidded to a sudden stop behind another yellow cab. It was going to be one of those lurching rides all the way north—a bad driver and nothing to be done.

“Is it too late for me to file something for tomorrow’s paper?” I asked. “I didn’t get everything at the press conference but I…”

Jaime rolled down his window further, pumping the handle hard, as if he had something against it. “Forget the story,” he said. “Tracy got it. It’s been filed.”

That smarted. I leaned back in my seat. “Jaime, listen, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was going down to Chelsea this morning. I thought if I could—”

“Save it. When we get back to the office, there is going to be a conference room full of people who will want to know what you were doing at the Deitrick gallery. You can explain it to them.”

The cab jolted forward. I caught myself against the divider. I’d never seen Jaime so angry. Actually, I’d never seen him even a little irked. “I let you down,” I said. “I’m sorry. I know you must think I’m a total screw-up. I shouldn’t have gone creeping around behind your back. I should’ve…”

Jaime unstuck his gaze from the turban. His eyes were bloodshot. His hair sprang out wildly from under his yarmulke. A day without Brylcreem.

“This is very hard for me, Valerie,” he said, softly, his low southern twang more guttural. “My cousin had this kind of problem. We lived with it all our lives. After a while, I realized, we couldn’t help him. We had to give up trying.”

I didn’t know what Jaime meant by “this kind of problem.” Did Cuban Orthodox Jews get locked up for attacking VJs or for asking unfriendly questions at pressers? It didn’t seem like the right time to interrupt. I looped my hand through the window strap and held on, jerking along with the bumpy cab.

“You had such great promise,” Jaime said. “Even when you started out on Style, I could see you had a real gift for writing about people. You were tough when you needed to be, and always unflinching.”

You
had
. You
were
. Why was he using the past tense? “Thank you, Jaime. I think the world of you too. I think you’re a great editor. I—”

“No, Valerie,” he said. “I’m not trying to flatter you here. I’m trying to tell you something. When I read your early work, I thought a person with your observational gifts would make a great obituary writer. I had the idea of stealing you from Buzz even before you sabotaged your own career. Then, when Battinger wanted you out of the building, I made my pitch. I told her that I knew you had some personal problems, but I was willing to take you under my wing and see if I could make something of you. I thought you’d been hired too young, that a little fame had gone to your head. People grow out of that sort of thing with the right guidance. Heck, I flattered myself that I could make you into one of the best obituary writers The Paper has ever seen.”

This was a new one. “You actually wanted me on your staff?” I felt like a kid who’d discovered a kaleidoscope on a gray day; everything suddenly turned prettier, more magical.

“What did you think? That you were a charity case? The Paper is no place for charity.”

We were moving up Eleventh Avenue fast now, the hot wind rushing through Jaime’s open window.

“It can still be that way, Jaime. I’ve almost got this story worked out, and if someone would give me a shot to run it in Metro—”

“You’re not listening, Valerie,” Jaime said. “Editors are assembling in the Page One conference room at this very moment to determine whether to fire you. And this time, I’m not going to step in.”

The cab braked suddenly and we were both hurled forward. Jaime rapped on the glass, “Goddamn it! Take it easy up there!” he shouted. I’d never even heard him raise his voice. The cabbie
shouted, “Pothole!” and turned his Gurbani music to blasting. Jaime slammed the divider shut. “I know you think writing obituaries is no fun,” he said. “But Obits is a very esteemed section of The Paper. It can be a very prestigious posting for the right reporter. Too bad you blew it.”

I took out a pack of gum and toyed with the plastic wrapping and then the foil. “I blew it? That’s it?”

“I’ve got to disengage, Valerie. If you can’t help yourself, if this drug thing has got you, I can’t do anything about it. I learned that with my cousin. He struggled with addiction for thirty years. It doesn’t matter how much you care about someone, they have to do it themselves. They have to go to rock bottom before they turn around. Maybe you’re almost there. I sure hope so.”

It hit me like a pie-in-the-face joke. Everything was full of creamy good sense. “Oh, Jaime! You think I’m on drugs? This is wonderful!” I reached over and gave him that hug I’d held out on. “Oh, Jaime! Is that why you’re disowning me?”

Jaime jerked away, like a man whose porn-star daughter has just attempted a French kiss. I started to laugh. “Oh, Jaime! Who gave you that idea? Was it the sergeant? Was it one of the officers? Darla? Did Darla tell you that?”

Now I remembered: while I’d been in the cooler, Jaime had been chatting with my dear friend Blue Eyes in the hall. They’d yucked it up a little, and then they’d gone hush-hush.

“It’s a smear. An old-fashioned Vaseline-on-index-finger smear,” I shouted. “Oh, it’s terrific! What did that cop tell you?”

Jaime wasn’t amused. “He said that Darla’s assistant had been doing drugs with you at a club and that you were mixed up with some graffiti artists who might be dealers. They said the dealers had done the vandalism. Is that not the case?”

“All of that is a lie,” I said firmly. I leaned back in my seat. Thank God I hadn’t accepted Charles’s mother’s little helper. I was practically a Girl Scout. The cab jolted and my head grazed
the gray ceiling. “Drug test me! Go ahead! I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m as clean as Doris Day.”

Jaime was still skeptical.

“The truth is simple, much simpler: I’ve been moonlighting, Jaime. That’s all. I’ve been working on a story without your permission. I’ve kept my nose clean, as they say. No—literally. I was trying to get a scoop. I was trying to make you proud.”

The part about making him proud hadn’t occurred to me until just then, but no matter. I wanted it to be true. Jaime had believed in me when I was at my lowest. He could believe in me again. I would make sure of it.

Jaime squinted and smoothed back his hair. “No drugs?”

“If they had anything on me like that, why wouldn’t they book me? Why wouldn’t they at least print me?” I held up my ink-free hands. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Jaime took my hands and turned them over; he put his hands under mine to see if they were shaky, I suppose. Then he leaned close and looked at my eyes. He still seemed to be willing to be convinced the copper was wrong. “If what you’re telling me is true, then maybe I’ve been too hard on you. If you’re working on an enterprise story, that’s okay, but I wish you’d told me. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to defend you if I don’t know what you’re up to. I don’t know if the other editors will be receptive to that sort of thing.”

“That’s okay, Jaime. You don’t have to defend me this time. I’m a big girl. I’ve got my dukes up.” I raised my fists.

The cab was turning from Eleventh Avenue onto Forty-first Street and I knew I had to collect my thoughts to get ready for the inquest. I went over the whole day, starting with Rood’s call, my arrival at the presser, my flashbulb redux, the sergeant moping when he couldn’t make me soil myself, and this final news that I’d been painted as a Chelsea-trolling raver. Then I got to thinking about it more and I laughed from my gut. Then I kept
laughing until my laugh didn’t sound quite right, like a handsaw in a two-by-four, going back and forth but not quite slicing.

Jaime became concerned. “Are you sure you can handle going back into that office?” he said, as the cab jolted to a final stop on Forty-third Street. “You’re going to have to face Battinger and Sneed and Richard Antigoni in a couple of minutes.”

I stopped laughing and took a few deep breaths. “Whatever happens,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

Jaime paid the driver and led me into the fortress. We climbed the stairs to the Page One conference room, so named because that’s where the editors elected The Paper’s most prized stories for A-1. I’d never gotten there yet, and so it seemed like a funny location for a beheading. I would’ve laughed then, but beheadings aren’t all that funny.

I was impressed by my own stature when I saw the witnesses assembled for my execution. It looked like the cast
of It’s a Wonderful Life,
without the wonderful part.

Metro editor Jane Battinger and her deputy, Aaron Sneed, flanked Buzz Phipps like a couple of crows on fresh stalk of corn. The Arts and Leisure editors, Liz Moore and Orland Lessey, dressed in black and red shirts, could’ve been a pair of mating cardinals. Metro columnist Clint Westwood warbled a few notes to them across the table and Tyler Prattle, also present, warbled back. Tracy Newton was balanced on the arm of a chair, chirping away at Curtis Wright. Richard Antigoni, the managing editor, was at the far end of the table, gazing up at the ceiling, using all ten fingers to massage his bald pate. With his long beak and his elbows bent out from his head, he gave the impression of a turkey buzzard.

It was more like Hitchcock’s
The Birds
. I hadn’t counted on a fatal pecking.

Jaime slid behind me into a seat against the wall. I stayed at the door of the aviary. I felt thirsty, but I didn’t dare reach for
the pitcher of water, which sat in front of Mr. Antigoni, the most menacing of the flock.

My tongue roamed my mouth for stray gum, and came up with nothing. I thought about that pack in my purse and wondered if they’d let me have a final chew.

“Hello, Valerie,” Battinger said, when the door thumped closed behind me. The whole room rustled to a stop, and every beady eye landed on me. “We’re glad you could make it. I trust there was no trouble at the station house?” She looked from me to Jaime, who nodded. “Good,” said Battinger, pulling out a seat at the table. “Why don’t you sit right here next to me, Valerie?”

“Why don’t we all take a seat?” said Sneed.

I took my place at the table, suddenly conscious of the stench of the lockup on my clothes. My fingers and palms were grimy and my nails had been chewed to bloody. It must’ve been me who’d done that.

“You know my deputy, Aaron, and, of course, Buzz, and Clive, Tracy, and Curtis,” Battinger was squawking. “I don’t know if you’ve ever met Orland and Liz.” They each cheeped a little hello, and Curtis winked. “Mr. Antigoni also asked to join us,” she added, as the man at the end of the table nodded gravely. “He’s taken an interest in your tenure here.”

I did my best to smile. Lethal injection would’ve been so much more relaxing. I’d even prefer an old-fashioned hanging or perhaps the guillotine. At least that was French.

“I bet you’re wondering why we’re all here,” Battinger said. “I have asked everyone to join us because time is short and I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”

“Page one,” I said. That was about as close as I was going to get to a joke with this crowd, but it didn’t go over. All I heard was the sound of ruffled feathers. Tracy twittered. Lessey and Moore offered each other coffee and tea. Curtis shot me a look that said,
Be careful, Val. Watch it
.