“A tic is what my mama calls it,” said Bobby-Joe, smiling a bit now, as each cop took a turn patting him on the back, mumbling “Sorry,” cuffing him on the chin as if he were their kid brother.
“Call a car,” Brown said to Class Clown. “Take Bobby-Joe wherever he’d like. You can tell your pals back home that you took a ride with the NYPD. Bet they’ll be jealous of that.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bobby-Joe and shook Brown’s hand.
Brown turned to Kate and Perlmutter and shook his head. “Waste of time,” he said.
T
he gallery lights had blinked a half hour earlier and the place was empty now of art lovers dying to buy a piece of the death-related art. Grange was still huddled with a couple of his agents, but most of the cops had already left, the women exchanging their new black heels for running shoes before heading to the subways that would deliver most of them to the outer boroughs, to husbands and kids who had eaten take-out from Boston Market or Domino’s Pizza. A bunch of the younger guys were taking their tired bodies but still active libidos to a singles bar to see if they might get lucky. Only the waiter cop and the bartender cop remained, and a couple of gallery assistants who were cleaning up. Herbert Bloom was making notes at his deskprobably figuring out how to sell the paintings without anyone knowing, thought Kate, gazing across the room, feeling disappointed, adrenaline oozing out of her as if she were donating blood. She stared at the psycho’s paintings, the ones with her name encoded into the borders.
“The paintings will stay up for the next couple of days and there’ll be cops here with them. There’s still a good chance he’s gonna show up,” said Brown, though his heart wasn’t in it. “Hey, Bloom,” he called out to the art dealer, “you gotta get going.” Then he turned his attention to the bartender and waiter cops, noted how young they were, two rookies who’d been assigned to him from General, felt like telling them what sort of life was in store for them, but didn’t bother, they’d see for themselves in a couple of years. “Replacements will be here at seven
A
.
M
. Have a good night, boys.”
“I already picked out my chair,” said bartender cop, angling his square jaw at an overstuffed leather number beside Bloom’s desk.
“What’s that leave me?” said waiter cop.
“Comfy-looking metal folding chair over there,” said the bartender cop, and laughed.
“Don’t forget. You’ve got Brennan and Carvalier in the car across the street. And Agent Homeless too,” said Brown. “Call in if anyone even
sniffs
around the galleryyou got that?”
“Got it,” said waiter cop. Bartender cop was already arranging himself in the leather chair, sipping black coffee from a Styrofoam cup and trying not to yawn.
I
t is one-fifteen in the morning. No people on the street other than the homeless man who he knows is a cop and the car just across the street from the gallery with two guys in it, one with his face buried in a newspaper, the other one with his head against the backrest, maybe sleeping, also cops, no question. He’d watched them before, when all that commotion with the kid was going down.
This is the perfect moment, with the garbage truck halfway down the street, making a racket.
“I’ll be back for you in a minute.” It is almost black in the alleyway, but he can see perfectly. “Wait for me.”
“Then what?”
“Do just like I said. Don’t worry.” He swings his arm into the night air. “You’ll be grrrrrrrrrrreat!”
N
ola was asleep in the chair, an old James Bond movie playing on the TV screen, Pussy Galore pulling a karate-type flip on a startled Sean Connery.
She woke up when Kate turned off the set. “How was the opening?” She yawned, stretched out her arms.
“Believe me, you didn’t miss anything.”
Had they missed something?
Kate wondered. Tonight, in the gallery, two or three times she’d had the feeling that something had happened but they just didn’t know it. She’d been so sure that he wouldn’t be able to resist, that he wouldn’t be able to stay away.
“I’m starved,” said Nola.
“Let’s see what’s hiding in the fridge.” Kate laid her arm gently over Nola’s shoulder as they headed down the hallway toward the kitchen. She wondered if Richard was home yet and was about to ask Nola if he’d called when she remembered.
A
gent Marty Grange stared at the TV, some dumb cop show, a repeat, no less. He took a sip of his Budweiser and glanced at the file he had accumulated on McKinnon: her Astoria record, a couple of cases she’d botched, but plenty of commendations, which far outnumbered the fuckups. That, plus copies of her marriage certificate, phone records, and bank statements with numbers he never even imagined possiblenone of it amounting to much. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had bothered, just that the woman had gotten under his skin.
He finished the Bud, pulled himself up and went for another. Today was his birthday. Fifty-seven years old. No family. No hobbies. No one to celebrate with. A life devoted to the Bureauand for what?
He needed this operation to go well. He needed to be the one to catch this guy, this psycho. He had to show the Bureauand his new superiorthat he still had what it takes.
Grange took another slug of Bud, then he shoved the papers back into the file, closed his eyes and pictured McKinnongreen eyes, shiny hair, the way she held herself, poised, regal, the kind of woman who wouldn’t give a guy like him a second glance.
V
onette Brown was curled up in a corner of the couch in the living room of the Park Slope apartment that she and her husband had lived in long before the area had become chic.
Floyd kissed her cheek lightly and her eyes fluttered open.
“What time is it?”
“Time for me to retire,” said Floyd.
Vonette Brown rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard that before.” She patted her husband’s cheek. “You eat anything?”
“Not hungry,” he said, thinking about Bobby-Joe Scott and what a welcome to the big city they’d given that poor kid. At least no one had shot him. But the thought brought him little solace. They had three more days to wait around and see if the psycho would come see his paintings. Floyd was surprised he hadn’t shown tonight. In the past, when McKinnon had a hunch, particularly when it came to artistssane or insaneshe’d been right.
Vonette gripped Floyd’s hand, and pulled herself off the couch. “I’ve got some meatloaf I can microwave.”
Brown followed his wife into the kitchen, sat heavily into a chair, and leaned his elbows onto the table.
“Everything okay?” Vonette asked, setting the timer on the microwave.
“Just tired.” He was thinking that in a few minutes he would call those rookies inside the gallery, and see how they were doing. “Maybe a little hungry too.” He managed a smile for his wife.
H
e watches a moment, then sprints down the street. The homeless agent, who is practically asleep, blinks awake and sees him coming. The agent is just going for his gun when he gets a bullet between the eyes. The silenced gun makes a small popping noise lost in the din of a New York City nightthat garbage truck churning away, distant sirens, the underground rattle of a subway. It is only a few yards to the car and though the cop who has been reading the newspaper has sensed him coming, it is too late. Through the open car window he fires off several shots.
T
he beeper went off and Nicky Perlmutter reached for his pants crumpled on the floor beside the bed in a heap. He tugged the pager out of a pocket. Brown’s telephone number glowed iridescent in the dark room.
“Gotta go,” he whispered.
“So soon?”
“Work calls.”
Spiked Hair gazed up at him, reached out and ran his hand over Nicky’s muscled chest. “Glad I went to that opening tonight.”
Perlmutter pictured the psycho’s paintings on the gallery walls, the disappointment they’d all felt just a few hours ago when the guy hadn’t showed up. But there was still time. He just hoped to God that they wouldn’t lose anyone else before they finally caught the creep.
“You okay? You looked far away for a minute there.”
“The job. You know.”
“Not me. Never actually had a real job. Just a poor starving artist, is all.”
“Lucky you,” said Perlmutter, ruffling the guy’s spiky hair. “I’d like to see your art sometime.”
“That mean you want to see me again too?”
“Yeah.” Permutter pulled his black tee over his head, down over his chest, regarded Brown’s number glowing on his beeper again. “I gotta get moving,” he said. “But I’ll call you.”
T
he bartender cop is on the floor, gasping for breath, eyes wide open, glazed, staring at the blood pouring out of his gut, his life along with it. The waiter cop is nearby, shot through the heart, already dead. Any minute the bartender cop will be dead too, just like the homeless cop and the two in the car, shot right through the open car window, pop, pop.
He gazes at the bodies on the floor, all the blood, magenta with a hint of razzle dazzle rose.
Beautiful.
But nothing compares to his paintings on the wall.
No need to turn on a light. For him, it is better this way, just the soft illumination from the street lamps. How elegant they look, shimmering with color, perfect.
The only thing missing is the art
her-story-n
to talk to him about them.
He goes from painting to painting, the colors blurring a bit from the tears in his eyes. He is content, happybelieves those are the emotions he is feelingand something else, sadness, loss. But he can cope with them; has his whole life.
He knows what he must do and has the strength to do it. He uncaps the tin, the smell in his nostrils a bit sickening, sprinkles some onto the floor, splashes more onto nearby walls, leans over a dead body, shakes the liquid onto the face and hands, draws his leg back and delivers a swift mean kick directly into the lifeless mouth, teeth shattering and splintering, then remembers something important and takes a moment to do it before splashing a bit more gasoline onto the body, for good measure.
One last look at his paintings. The colors are fadingor is it just the tears in his eyes washing the color away? Doesn’t matter. Not any longer.
It’s a sacrifice. Necessary.
This part of his life is complete, finished.
He’s had a triumph tonight. Outsider, indeed.
His mind is clear. No ads or jingles or noise to distract him. Everything makes sense now, has had a purpose.
He sees her perfectly, the one who hurt him, starved him and sold him.
Sara Jane.
Fifteen years old when he was born. Of course he did not know her then, or know that he was born addicted to heroin, or that he had gone through withdrawal, DTs, just days after entering the world. Nor has he any way of knowing that the reason he so often feels as though he is suffocating is because, as a baby, his mouth was taped shut to stifle his cries. But soon enough he knew her, this girl, his mother, a runaway.
My daddy used to fuck me, you know, and Mom, where was Mom? In hell, I hope.
How many times had he heard that?
He remembers the man whom she brought home that night, who destroyed his artwork and stomped on his crayons and chalks, and Sara Jane did nothing.
He touches the crescent-shaped scar hidden beneath his light brown hair. He remembers the struggle to save his drawings, the man’s heavy black boot connecting with his head and everything going black.
Was it hours, minutes, he’d been unconscious? He’d never been sure.
When he awoke, Boy George was crooning, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” and there were two figures on a bed, blurry, but clear enough, Sara Jane and the man. Disgusting. Not that seeing her, his mother, fucking a stranger shocked him. He’d seen it before. What shocked him was that their flesh had gone gray, two cadavers, grunting and groaning.
For just a moment the Francis Bacon painting
Two Figures
glows in his mind, and then he is back in that room, watching his mother fucking that man, everything gray.
How could it be?
Sara Jane’s colored bulbs still burned, but the light they cast was no longer blue or red or green. He raised his hand; it had also turned gray, and touched his aching temple and when his fingers came away sticky and stained black, he knew it was his eyes and not the bulbs that had failed, and nausea rose in his gut and his head throbbed, the floor tilting, room spinning.
That was when the man noticed he was awake, and pushing Sara Jane aside, lumbered over, naked and leering, and called back to Sara Jane, “He’s prettier than youI’d rather fuck him,” and she shrugged, and said, “Suit yourself,” and started rolling a joint. And then this man, this monster, grabbed him by the shoulders and hoisted him up and shoved his half-erect cock into his bleeding mouth, and though he had been forced to do this so many times as a child, and lately had been doing it for money, he could not detach, was absolutely incapable of imagining a garden or rainbownot now, when the real world had gone gray. He smelled her on the man’s cock and thought he’d be sick.
The penknife burned in his pocket. He wanted to slice the man’s cock off, pictured him darting around the room bleeding and squawking, a wild, headless chicken, but he was not sure the small knife was up to the task and could not risk failure, and so he continued the chore, scrutinizing the man’s face, and when his eyes closed and he knew he was close, he drew the knife and inflicted the blows, three quick jabs, stomach, lung, heart
thwack thwack thwack
and blood poured from the man’s wounds and streaked down his belly and coated his cock and then splattered onto
his
face and into
his
eyes, and for a brief moment he wondered if that was why everything had suddenly turned red.
The man was making wild, pathetic efforts to stanch the blood loss, hands pressed into gashes, eyes wild, deep crimson stripes against pale apricot flesh. Everywhere he lookedfloor, ceiling, wallswas now radiant with Sara Jane’s colored lightsperiwinkle, shamrock, and royal purplewhich, if he had been able to think clearly about it, was impossiblethere were no purple bulbs. But then the colored lights began to fade and the man’s flesh went white and the blood deepened to black, and the man keeled over and hit the floor, the whole time Sara Jane screaming, until he turned the knife on her.
Afterward, when they were both quiet, he smoothed the hair off Sara Jane’s face and noticed all of the razzmatazz blood had turned ebony, her goldenrod hair ash, the walls, everything, a wan gray, and he barely remembered that, minutes ago, when he killed them, the room had been dazzling.
The radio was humming in the background“
This is Casey Kasem with the top…”
as he placed Sara Jane on the floor and dragged the man’s body beside her and put the knife in his hand, and imagined what Jessica from
Murder She Wrote
would say: “A fight between a prostitute and her customer; they must have killed each other, right, Sheriff?”
When he was going through the man’s clothes, looking for money, he’d found the gun, wasn’t sure what he would do with it, but thought it might come in handy one day and decided to keep it.
Then he cleaned up and changed his clothes so that people would not stare at him in the street, gathered his money, and made his way to Port Authority, where he stashed the cash and the gun in a locker, the whole time staggered by a world gone gray, the pain in his head growing worse, legs weak. When he awakened in the white room he thought he was deadand was glad.
But he wasn’t dead. And the colorless world remained.
The doctors stitched his head and bandaged his wounds and told him what they thought had happened
some sort of brain damage
. But he wouldn’t tell them anything. Ignored the plates of gray sludge that was supposed to be food and stared out the window at a dull pewter sky, and tried to pretend that one day he would see color again, but somewhere inside he knew that he would notand that his dream of becoming an artist was over.
He returns to the moment, staring at his brightly colored paintings, and smiles. He has proved them wrong. He is cured.
He moves from one painting to another, so close, nose practically grazing paint and canvas, inhaling the sweet scent of oil, once or twice drags his tongue across an area of thick impasto painta long wet kiss good-bye.
Tears are streaming down his cheeks now, everything in front of him streaking like visions through a rainy windshield, but the images in his mind have started to play again, that awful woman and man, and now music chimes in along with the jingles and ads and radio-speaka jumble of white noise. That’s it. Enough.
Strikes a match.
A sound like wind through a hollow heart.
Flames dance. Heat.
He gazes straight ahead, almost hypnotized, as the flames lick his paintings and the canvases begin to blacken and curl, reaches out for a farewell touch, fingertips singed. The fire twirls around his shoes, bottoms of his pants begin to smoke and burn.