N
ola insisted they watch
Artists’ Lives,
though Kate was hardly in the mood, the day playing and replaying in her mind; first the conversations with Brown and Freeman, then Noreen Stokes lying in that hospital bed accusingeverything mixing in her head, competing for her attention, the interview with Boyd Werther now just images on a small screen, not nearly enough to distract her. Still, she managed to make small talk with Nola, to smile, to say everything was fine, until Nola finally went to bed. Then she poured herself a tall glass of Johnnie Walker and tried to make some sense of it, and think what, if anything, she could do about the situation.
Kate tapped on the penthouse stereo system, kept the music low, a favorite Julia Fordham CD she had not been able to listen to since Richard died, so many of the songs about love and loss or a kind of happiness that she thought she might never have again. But she was singing along now, whispering, really, with one of her favorite cuts, “Missing Man,” before she even realized it, the lyrics sighing into the room, soaking into the walls, the rug, Kate’s aching heart. She realized the song had been in her head for days, “Missing Man,” a mantra for Richard, her missing man.
She tiptoed down the darkened hall, peeked into Nola’s bedroom, listened a minute until she heard the reassuring slow steady breaths of sleep. She leaned against the door-jamb as moonlight slivered in from a window and illuminated Nola’s beautiful face. She wanted to rush to the girl, stroke her brow, hug her and protect her, promise to keep her and her baby safe forever.
But how could she make that promise? She felt incapable of protecting anyone.
She closed the door quietly, headed back to the living room and a refill on her Scotch, still trying to sort out what she knew and what she didn’t, Julia Fordham’s gorgeous voice and tender lyrics trailing after her.
A call to Richard’s accountant had confirmed that the law firm’s finances were in trouble due to large, unexplained withdrawals of cash in the week just before Richard’s death. The accountant had called Richard, concerned, but the meeting to discuss it never happened, scheduled for the day just after Richard’s murder.
Had Richard been withdrawing money to pay off loan sharks? But couldn’t he just have easily paid them from his personal funds? The accountant had assured Kate that their personal assets were fine. It didn’t make sense. And if Richard
had
been paying off the debtwhich Noreen Stokes said he hadn’tthen why would they have killed him?
Kate paced around the perimeter of the living room, her eyes sliding over art and objects that no longer meant anything to her. She would exchange all of it for the truth in half a second.
According to Noreen Stokes, it was all Richard’s fault. But the woman blamed Kate for Andy’s deathnaturally she wanted to be hurtful. Would she lie when it no longer mattered? Maybe Noreen didn’t know her husband had been lying to her; maybe this was simply the truth according to Andrew Stokesa man who had been lying to his wife for years; a man who frequented prostitutes, who knew Lamar Black well enough to be holed up in the pimp’s apartment, who fraternized with known mobsters like Giulio Lombardi.
Kate reached for the phone, started punching in Floyd Brown’s home number to wake him up, tell him he absolutely had to reinstate her, had to pursue this, had to let her help him find the truth.
But how would they do that? Stokes was dead. Baldoni was dead.
Richard was dead. The thought rippled through her.
Richard, dead.
Yes, that much was true; whether it was a case of mistaken identity or an intentional hit, it didn’t make much difference. He was gone. And so were the men who could give her the answers.
Kate gazed out the window at the night sky, then down at the park, inky smudges of landscape illuminated by street lamps.
In the bathroom, she shook an Ambien into her palm. Probably a mistake on top of the Scotch, but the thought of another sleepless night was unbearable. Mitch Freeman may have had a point. And Brown too. Maybe she should get away. Yeah, she thought, to the Betty Ford Clinic.
A
hand on her breast, slowly caressing her nipple, then down, between her legs. Back arched, body pressed against his. Lips at his neck, a whiff of citrus.
His fingers softly stroking, perfect. He knows her. He kisses her lips, parts them gently with his tongue.
She can taste him. So familiar.
Legs apart as he moves on top of her.
So why doesn’t she feel anything? She whispers his name,
Richard,
lifts her hips to meet his and the bedroom dissolves, replaced by the alleyway, which is darker than she remembered, longer too, interminable, shoes sticking to the ground as if she were walking on wet tar, the sliver of light at the other end growing smaller, not larger. She spreads her arms to touch the walls and her hands sink into something soft rather than hard, viscous and warm, like intestines.
Kate gasps, trapped, the light at the end of the alley gone as if someone had suddenly flipped off the switch. Total darkness. Black.
She staggers along like a drunk, shoes dragging through muck, hands dripping with viscera, blind.
But when the darkness gives way and she can see again, the body at the end of the alleyway is Leonardo Martini, and the man standing over him wielding the knife is Richard, who stabs Martini over and over and over, blood gushing from the artist’s wounds like a fountain, coursing through the alleyway, and swirling around her shoes.
Red.
Kate stares at the color until it goes slightly pink and becomes the clouds in the Bronx psycho’s painting, and then the painting comes to life around her, and she is walking past tangerine-colored tenements and razzmatazz-colored garbage cans, and there is Richard painting everything these absurd colors.
“Nice, huh?”
“No,” says Kate. “It’s nuts.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Who?”
“Martini.”
“Had to,” says Richard, painting the sidewalk with broad stripes of tickle-me-pink. “He knew too much.”
“Like the movie,” says Nicky Perlmutter, who has suddenly appeared. “You know,
The Man Who Knew Too Much.
Alfred Hitchcock?” He sings out in a deep bass: “Que será, será!”
“Stop it,” says Kate. “This is serious.”
“Of course it is,” says Nicky, who continues to sing.
The candy-colored world fades and Kate is in a hallway, flaking paint, flickering yellow light, and there are footsteps, like a dull heartbeat, echoing. A scream, and Angelo Baldoni is right there, in her face, grinning, gun in her gut. He pulls the trigger and she stumbles back, falling, falling, falling through the dark, back into the alleyway, with Richard. Two Richardsone lifeless, slumped against the alley floor, the other alive and busy working on a small painting, which he finishes and leans against the alley wall. “Good, huh?”
“Not bad,” says Kate, staring at the painting with the blue-striped bowl. “But what are you doing?”
“Faking my death. That’s okay, isn’t it honey?”
“Sure. But…why?”
“Gotta go, sweetie. See ya.” He smiles as his living self dissolves into smoke, and, like some animated cartoon ghost, snakes itself into the dead Richard lying on the ground.
“No, Richard. Wait! Please. Tell me what this is all about.”
The dead Richard’s head comes alive, looks up at her and says“Shhhh, it’s a secret”and the alley goes dark.
Now a stark white room. Walls, floor. But when Kate looks up, there is no ceiling. Gray clouds race across a pale blue sky, as if she were inside a painting by the French surrealist René Magritte. In front of her is a white table. On it a body, Richard’s. Daniel Markowitz, ME, is tugging at the ring on his finger.
“It won’t come off,” he says, his features contorted with frustration. He picks up a Stryker saw. “This ought to do it.”
“No. Wait.” Kate snatches the saw from his hand. “Let me,” she says, and starts sawing away at the finger, separating the digit from the hand, blood spurting, painting everything in deep, rich vermilion.
K
ate tugged herself out of the dream, half conscious, half caught in the nightmare, the hideous image of sawing off Richard’s finger clinging to the recesses of her brain. She checked to be sure she was awake, her hand going for Richard’s wedding band on the chain around her neck, then pulled herself out of bed, anxious to be as conscious as possible.
Other mornings her dreams had been sweet, with her and Richard together, and she had tried so hard to hold on to them before the real world intruded. But this nightmare had been far worse than the real world, and she wanted to forget it as soon as possiblethough it lingered. Why had she condemned Richard in her dream, her subconscious making him a cheat and a murderer?
Kate stripped off Richard’s pajamas, crushed them down into the wicker hamper. She no longer wanted to wear them, no longer wanted to be reminded of him every minute.
Or did she?
She had no idea. She plucked them up out of the hamperone last timeand held them to her face. His scent was gone.
From her dresser top she grasped the silver-framed photo and stared into Richard’s laughing face. Was he mocking her? Lying to her all this time? What had he been involved in? Why was he killed? Kate wanted to know so badly, and did not want to know at all.
“What happened, Richard?”
But Richard only continued to smile, shielding his eyes from the sun, the photograph betraying nothing more than stopped time, a moment that would never exist again.
Kate regarded the burned-out votive candles, glass blackened by smoke, wicks withered and embedded in flat amoebas of dirtied wax. She turned the framed photo facedown onto her dresser.
Freeman was right. She should get away. To think. Or not to think. She couldn’t even decide that. Her TV crew was down in Houston, getting ready to film the last episode of her show. They could film the chapel without her, but why not join them? Nola wasn’t due for a few weeks, and Lucille could look after her for the couple of days Kate was gone. Get out of her apartment, out of New York City. A good idea. And Houston held no memories waiting to ambush hershe had never been there with Richard.
Before the sun rose, everything was bookedplane tickets, hotel. In another hour she could call her friend who worked at the famous chapel.
Kate tugged a small suitcase from the closet, laid it on her bed, and started packing.
The Rothko Chapel. A place of worship based purely on color. Art as religion; religion as art. There was a time she had truly believed that possible. But now, she hardly believed in anything.
B
oyd Werther dragged the gate across the industrial elevator, thinking this was a big fucking pain, that he’d had two major studio visits todaycurators from London’s Tate Modern and the new director of the Whitney Museumand he was in no mood for another, particularly with some needy, insistent kid who must have buzzed his loft about a dozen times saying he was a friend of Kate McKinnon’s, and just after his assistants had left. Now he’d have to deal with him alone, at least until Victoria got back to pack up his drawings. She’d be his excuse to tell the kid to get going, if he was still around. But okay, he was a friend of McKinnon’s, so he’d give him a few words of wisdom about his work, which the kid had actually brought with him, and he could stand five minutes of the kid fawning over him and his work. The kid gave him a sweet, shy smile. Damn handsome, thought Werther.
“So how do you know Kate McKinnon?” he asked as they rode up in the elevator.
“Oh, I’ve known her a while. She was my, uh…teacher.”
“At Columbia? Art history?”
“Yeah, and we’re like, good friends.”
“And she told you to look me up, huh?”
“Yeah. She said you’d look at my work and give me some good ideas. I won’t stay too long.”
Damn right.
Werther stepped out of the elevator and led the kid into his loft.
Immediately, the kid was unwrapping his paintings, spreading them across the studio floor. Werther stifled a groan. They were worse than he’d imagined. Garish color, unsophisticated, clumsy. What the hell was he going to say about this crap? He was really going to let McKinnon have it. Plus, the kid wasn’t even looking at
his
work, which pissed him off. He expected, and was used to, a certain amount of attention, especially from young artists on the make.
The kid finished arranging his canvases on the floor, stood back, hands on his narrow hips. “So what do you think?”
“Well…” Werther stroked his chin, took in the crude still-life paintings and cityscapes, the eccentric color. “First of all, why don’t you take off the shades so you can see better.”
“Oh. I forgot.” He removed his sunglasses, and blinked.
Werther looked into the kid’s eyes. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone who looked so sad, so in pain. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m grrrrrrrrrreat!”
“Just that you’re blinking, and I thought maybe”
“Nah, that’s nothing. I’ve got a…condition.”
Yeah, thought Werther, regarding the paintings, a condition, all right, it’s called
no talent
.
“So, what do you think?”
Jesus, this kid was like a puppy, so fucking needy. “They’re, uh, interesting.”
“How do you mean?”
Oh, fuck.
“Well, the way you use color, for one. It’s…unusual.”
“Is it?” The kid squinted at his work. “I don’t see
why
?” An edge in his voice.
“Well, you’ve got to admit it’s not standard. I mean, you’ve got purple clouds and blue apples. Been looking at the fauves?”
The young man stared at his paintings as hard as he could. What was the artist talking about? He’d gotten the color right, he knew he had. “I think you’re wrong about that.”
“About the fauves?”
“No.”
“Not the fauves? So what then, the German expressionists?”
“No.” His head was starting to ache a bit and the music had started up along with a few jingles.
“I don’t know what they’re teaching you kids in art school today.”
“I didn’t go to art school.”
“I thought Kate was your teacher, at Columbia.”
“I took a night class, that’s all.” He blinked as if blinded by a flash bulb, then quickly offered up a studied, suggestive smile.
Werther took a good look at him, full lips and fine bone structure, almost too pretty, but there was definitely something off too. “Maybe we should do this another time.”
“No. This is the right time. This is it! Coke is it! The real thing.”
“Excuse me?”
“Wait a minute.” He yanked the papers out of his backpack. “These are for you. A gift.”
Werther looked at them, a bunch of prints, all obviously torn from books, the edges frayedFrancis Bacon, Jasper Johns, a Soutine. “Oh. Thanks.”
“They’re grrrrrrrrreat, aren’t they!”
“Well, Johns is very good, and the Soutine is interesting, though a bit overheated for my taste. But Francis Bacon, well…”He held the reproduction at an arm’s length, wrinkled up his nose. “I just can’t get into him at all.”
Can’t get into him…Can’t get into him…
The artist’s words were echoing in his brain along with the songs and ads and jingles. “Why not?”
Werther shrugged. “Who knows?” He handed the prints back. “You should hang on to these. They obviously mean more to you than me.”
“You don’t like them?”
“They’re fine. But I have plenty of art books and reproductions. Plus I own a Johns painting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I bought a Jasper Johns painting. I
own
it.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s not here. It’s in my home. This is only my studio.” Werther was really growing impatient. “You know, I should be getting there; home, I mean.”
“But we’ve hardly started. You haven’t taught me anything.”
“Look.” Werther sighed. “We can do this another time, okay?”
Like, never.
“I’m tired. Long day, you know.”
“Just a couple of minutes. Then I’ll go. Okay?” He looked up at Werther with those sad blinking eyes.
Werther glanced at his watch. Five minutes, that was all he was going to give him. “Okay.”
“Grrrrrrrrreat!” The young man pointed to one of his paintings lying on the floor, a street scene. “What do you think of that one?”
“It’s…fine. Very nicely…constructed.” Werther wanted to say it sucked, but he also wanted the kid out.
“How do you mean?”
“Your composition, the way you set it up on the canvas. Very nice.” It was all he could come up with.
The kid smiled. “And what about the color?”
“The color?”
“Yeah, the color?”
“Well, there is no color.”
“Of course there is. Are you crazy, or something?”
Sometimes you feel like a nut!
“Well, if you mean, the gradation of tone, or”
“No, the
color
.”
“But it’s entirely black and white.”
“You’re lying.” Panic was starting to overtake him, nerve endings tingling. “Are you just teasing me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because…”He didn’t know why the artist would be so cruel to him. He snatched the loose black-and-white canvas off the floor and brought it close to his face. “There’s lots of color.” His blinking eyes were starting to tear. “You have to be wrong.”
This is getting too fucking weird. Time to get him out.
“Look, I’ve got to get going.”
“Where?”
“Home.”
“One last question.
Please.
”
Werther sighed heavily. “Yes?”
“Okay. So it’s black and white, but it’s good, right?”
“Yes. It’s fine. I think it’s very nice.”
“Nice?” The kid stared at him, those sad eyes blinking wildly. “You don’t think it’s nice. You think black and white is
boring
. You think any artist who doesn’t use color is
wasting his time
.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw you, heard what you said about black and white. Boring, you said.”
“Oh.” Werther laughed. “You mean on TV, on Kate’s show.”
“That’s right.”
“Why don’t you pack those up,” Werther said, indicating the paintings. “We’ll talk another time.”
“I’m
trying
to learn. Really I am.”
“Sure,” said Werther, hearing the plaintive note in the kid’s voice.
What a case.
He couldn’t wait to give Kate McKinnon a piece of his mind. If she even knew this kid, which he was beginning to doubt. He watched the kid scoop up his paintings. Were those tears on his cheeks?
Jesus.
“Listen, it doesn’t matter what I think.”
The kid wiped the tears off his cheeks, and Werther turned away.
W
hen Boyd Werther next opened his eyes his head was aching, and when he tried to move he realized he could not. He struggled against the duct tape that held his broad chest strapped to the chair, and when he looked down he could see there was more tape wound around his wrists and ankles. How long had he been unconscious? He had no idea. The last thing he remembered was watching the kid packing up his paintings and crying. No, that wasn’t the last thing. There was the hand coming across his face from behind, and the chemical smell, and he remembered trying to fight the kid off, but then the room had started to spin.
The kid was rubbing his arm where a bruise was already setting in. “You hurt me, you know.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
The kid blinked, and glanced to his side. “Hey, Tony, get the lights, would you?” He waited, squinting, shielding his eyes from the studio’s spotlights, then after a moment strutted toward the wall, found the switch, and the room went dim. “Gotta do everything myself, I guess. Thanks
a lot,
Tony.”
Boyd Werther glanced at the empty space beside the young man. “I said, what the fuck is going on, what do you want?”
“II want you to help me.”
“Fuck you! Get me out of this. Now! Are you fucking crazy!” Werther struggled against the tape and the chair jumped a bit.
The kid got behind him, started making a circle, wrapping more duct tape around Werther and the chair, connecting it all to a heat pipe.
“What are you doing?” Werther told himself to be calm. “Just tell me what you want, okay? I’m sure we can work this out.”
“Shhh…”The young man tilted his head to the side like a dog, as if listening for something. “What? No, Tony. Not now! Sorry. What was it you asked?”
“I, uh, asked what you
want
.”
“Oh. Conversation.”
“Conversation?”
“Uh-huh.”
Boyd Werther felt panic rising from his gut, bile in the back of his throat like he was going to be sick. But no, he had to keep it together, this was just a kid, he could handle him, get out of this absurd situation. “I told you before, we can talk, anytime.”
“No, you wanted me out.”
“I was tired, that’s all.”
“You didn’t like them. The gods.” He pointed to the prints scattered on the floorFrancis Bacon, Johns, Soutine.
“That’s not so. I told you, I
own
a Jasper Johns painting.”
“He’s…afflicted, you know?”
“Who?”
“Jasper Johns.”
What the hell is this lunatic talking about?
“Really?”
“That’s right.”
Werther couldn’t see his watch, but knew that his assistant, Victoria, would be back soon.
Keep him talking.
“Uh, how old are you, twenty-two, -three?”
“Why?” The kid, in dark silhouette, seemed larger now, moving around the studio, muttering. The question threw him; he’d never known his real age.
“II was just wondering, I mean, you’re young, and…” Werther was figuring it out as he spoke. “I, uh, always wanted a…son, someone I could mentor.”
The dark silhouette stopped moving. “Mentor?”
“Yes, you know. Someone to help, to show the ropes. In your case, help you with your…your artwork.”
“You’d really do that?”
“Absolutely. I’d like to.”
“Gee, that’s grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat! You can’t beat the real thing, you know. I mean, you’re in good hands with Allstate!” The kid stopped and laid a hand on Werther’s shoulder. “Let’s play a game. I’ll point to an area of your painting and you’ll tell me the color.”
“It’s going to be difficult with the lights out.” Werther remembered the kid squinting in the bright lights earlier.
The dark silhouette backed up, flipped a switch and the room was bright again. “I’m doing this for you, the lights. I wouldn’t want to be…counterproductive.” He was blinking like crazy. He put a hand up to shield his eyes. One of the spotlights was glinting off the heavy silver chain at Werther’s neck.
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“On your neck.”
“Oh. A chain, that’s all. Very old. Rare. It’s medieval.”
“I’ve read about that. The Middle Ages, right?”
“Right. It was a gift.” Werther thought back to the moment when his beautiful first wife fastened it around his neck after they had made love. Any other time he’d have smiled. “I wear it for good luck.” A thought: “Hey, why don’t you have it? It will bring you luck.”
“Wow, that’s so nice of you.” The kid leaned in and for a moment Werther thought about sinking his teeth into the kid’s forearm, then saw a thick, jagged scar on the wrist and just couldn’t do it.
The young man held the chain in his hands, admired it for a minute, then fastened it around his neck. “That was real nice of you. I won’t forget it either.”
“Don’t mention it.” Werther forced himself to smile.
“Okay. The game. It’s just to teach me about color, okay?”
“Okay.”
He faced one of Werther’s huge abstractions, pointed a finger at an area of intense yellow. “What color is this?”
“Yellow.”
“Yellow? Are you
sure
?” He listed toward another area, and pointed. “What’s this?”
“It’s, uh, red.”
The kid squinted at it. “Don’t fuck with me.”
“But it is. Can’t you see that?”
“Of course I can see it!”
“Okay. Okay. Sure. Sure you can.” Werther’s heart was pounding against the tight duct tape. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t get the game. Why was the kid asking him about the color? “Your eyes. Is there a problem?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But…you seem to have trouble…seeing the color correctly.”
The kid came right into his face, spitting out the words: “
NoIDon’t.
”