Skyscape (13 page)

“A Kill Patterson club.”

“Probably not very many people. It wouldn't take all that many.”

No, thought Patterson. It only takes one.

They entered his office and Angie handed him a cassette. “Go ahead and listen to it. See if you recognize the voice.”

She was one of those blonde women who have decided that red is their color. She was right. Her lipstick, her skirt, were dazzling, arterial red, but it had the effect of making her look somehow generic, another striking woman in a town full of female professionals on the make.

“I'm not sure I want to,” he said.

“It could help. And you want to help, don't you?” she said with what she must have thought was a seductive smile.

“If it's someone I know I'm supposed to be able to tell you.” Her smile
was
fairly seductive, he thought. “I have to warn you—I'm terrible at stuff like that.”

The door opened and Loretta Lee took one look at her, at both of them. “I'll take it from here,” said Loretta Lee.

Angie said that she was consulting with Dr. Patterson on security.

“He's safe with me,” said Loretta Lee.

The tape was a voice, but Patterson could see why there was a little confusion as to sex, identity—anything specific at all. If a garbage disposal could speak it would sound much like the voice on the tape. “Dr. Red Patterson is going to die.”

“I thought it said something about my brains,” said Patterson.

“It's not funny,” said Loretta Lee.

“Angie told me it said something about my brains getting blown out.” Actually, Patterson was feeling just a little sick.

“It's some kind of voice filter,” she said. “So you won't know who it is.”

“It's very effective.” He considered ringing the kitchen and asking for a tray of something easy on the stomach. He was like a guest in a hotel, living as though this was another man's home, another person's life.

Maybe Paul Angevin had foreseen this, too.

That night, Patterson stared at the black nozzle of the firesprinkler in the ceiling.

How
did
the twins manage it? Did they take turns on the toilet? And sex. What a scene
that
must be.

But the early shows had been wonderful. People with problems sat before an audience. They talked about their lives. They found themselves stronger afterward. The show had evolved into something brittle, hard-hitting, and just sometimes a little mean. But it was still beautiful, when the magic worked.

Paul had said that he would do everything in his power to keep the show from ever being broadcast. It might start out with focus and dignity, he had predicted, but all that would decay.

Maybe tomorrow, Patterson thought, I will be killed. It certainly would solve a few problems, and it would guarantee the keeping of a few secrets, although Patterson knew he was absolutely innocent.

There was no question about that at all.

14

“You poor dear,” said Renata. “Is that what you ordered?”

Bruno had really terrible things he would like to say to Renata San Pablo. She had delayed him, made him stay away from Andy a few more precious hours.

Instead he gave her a smile. He had a simple policy in dealing with people like her: utter insincerity. “They look lovely,” said Bruno.

Bruno gazed at what had been set before him as a “Continental breakfast.” Two little pastries flavored with fruit preserve were abandoned on his plate.

“I have one cup of decaf every morning,” said Renata, “and then nothing at all until after four.”

He had hated leaving the drawings with Margaret. He should have done something to keep his hands on them. But Margaret herself had stymied him. She was sweet, surefooted, like one of those nimble mountain goats one reads about, well-balanced in oxygen-poor air. Margaret of the Yard. Why be cruel to her?

He had decided it was wrong to lie about Curtis to Renata. Telling her that Curtis was working on something grand would be a way of putting pressure on himself and on Margaret. After all, in the weeks ahead he was the one who would have to call or visit Margaret and ask how the great new work was coming along.

On his arrival at the Plaza Hotel, the young man at the desk had said, brightly, “We have a message for you.” And there it had been, a cute little computer printout that read: “Can't make tonight. Breakfast tomorrow?” By which Renata meant a meal well into the day, virtually a lunch. He had tried calling Margaret and the answering machine had been turned off.

“I can't eat sugar anymore,” said Renata. “It gives me a headache.”

“How awful,” said Bruno.

“You didn't answer my question about Curtis Newns.”

What I would like to do, Bruno thought, is reach right across the table and give her left tit a pinch. A hard one. A pinch and a twist.

It had been the question Bruno expected, the one he knew everyone would be asking him.

But answering it would be difficult. Bruno's words would be repeated, and Renata was always dangerous. If he was silent too long she would draw her own conclusions. Bruno decided to take that little risk, after all. It was not difficult. A little lie can be fun. “I came away from San Francisco with a very exciting secret.”

“You devil.”

He would make her wait.

“Don't torture me, Bruno. You'll regret it.”

“I would have thought that's exactly what you deserve.”

“You're so sweet.” She was both bovine and fanged, an ungodly combination. He could handle her easily, but she had that animal persistence. You couldn't ignore her for a second—that was her charm.

“My lips,” he said, “are sealed.”

Renata leaned back in her chair. Bruno suspected that she had practiced this look over her five decades, the way she looked at her appointment secretaries and ex-husbands. “I heard he's back to his old ways.”

“They seem perfectly happy.”

“You saw them both?”

The potted palms that surrounded them were graceful, even adding a touch of elegance to what was really a place of terrible service and worse food. “Naturally.”

“I'm so glad,” she said, crinkling her eyes. She meant: if you're lying I'll kill you.

He said nothing. He enjoyed Renata. She bought art from museums in need of a new sculpture wing or that pricey new director, sat on the art until it was even more valuable, and then donated the inflated art to other museums, taking a huge write-off. She had created a foundation, named after herself, to actually own her paintings.
Skyscape
had been on “traveling loan” when it was burned. The insurance money from the loss of
Skyscape
would be put to good use, and might even end up funding that dream of hers, a museum dedicated to her own—admittedly excellent—taste.

He enjoyed the thought of teasing her. He sampled his cherry danish. He was accustomed to the tasteless bread and delicious caffé latte of Rome, but he had recalled, from his youth, an America of wonderful breakfasts—crisp hash browns, and fluffy scrambled eggs, and if you ordered breakfast pastries they arrived huge and hot, shot through with raisins and confectioner's glaze.

“I saw that thing about a fight in a restaurant,” said Renata. “On the news this morning.”

“Yes, wasn't that amusing?”

“Good old Curtis, you mean.”

Maybe, thought Bruno, that's what I mean. Curtis did act like that, in past years, when he was a very productive artist. A scuffle or two might be a good sign.

“I was wondering, in an idle way, if he'd been working,” she said.

What she meant was that she did not necessarily want a new and impressive Newns on the market unless she got a chance to buy it first. Renata did not like things to be complicated for her. She liked to make difficulties, not suffer them.

Perhaps it was partly out of spite for last night that he took the risk. Perhaps he was for a moment inattentive, but later he would consider that it had felt and sounded like a blunder without actually being one. It would, there was no question, cause her some unease.

“He's working on something very fine,” he said.

Her nostrils flared, just slightly. The wildebeest scents water, thought Bruno.

“How wonderful,” she said.

There was a spell of quiet. Then Renata could not feign indifference any longer. She had never been much good at feigning anything. “What's it like?”

Why not go all the way, he thought. “It's a painting, naturally.”

“I don't believe it.” Did she hear how she sounded? “Bruno, you're teasing me.”

“This painting,” said Bruno, “is going to be exquisite.”

“Of course it is. It's wonderful. Tell me what it looks like.”

“I'm not prepared to describe it in detail.”

“Is it something fine and sweeping, like—” She had trouble finishing the thought. Even Renata had feelings.

“It is.”

“No!” Renata widened her eyes, considered, then let doubt cloud her eyes. “He can't.”

Bruno knew how to play silence out, so much line after the shafted whale.

After awhile, Renata offered, “People would kill.”

“This will be worth killing for,” he said.

Renata had that look Bruno particularly hated in women, that hunger. It did, though, make her look impressive. “I want to see a photo.”

He shrugged. “It's barely begun.”

She looked at him with an expression that was not friendly in the least.

“I'm telling you the truth. It will take time,” he said.

“I made him a wealthy man,” said Renata.

“I know how important you are to Curtis.”

Some gallery owners were mere dealers, businesspeople, sometime investors. Renata was of another league entirely, and she knew it. “Who else knows your ‘secret?'”

Bruno felt himself becoming circumspect, now that he had something Renata wanted, even though it was not something that actually existed. “You are always first with any news I have about Curtis,” he said. Then he almost wished he could be frank with Renata. This surprised him as a sign of possible weakness in himself. “Curtis is still Curtis.”

“Tell me about his wife.”

“She's refreshing.”

“Not our sort of person,” said Renata.

“She's intelligent, maybe a little innocent.” Why was he being truthful with this woman? he asked himself.

“But she inspires him,” Renata added.

Like many otherwise worldly people, Renata believed in “inspiration.”

“I think she does.”

Before Margaret, Curtis Newns's art had ceased, unless you call one botched start after another a kind of experimental creativity. The question was: what was Curtis about to do? He might resume his career—or continue to fade.

“Her father was something interesting,” Renata said, sipping her decaf.

“He wrote books about chess.”

She absorbed this, wrinkling her nose. “You're fond of her,” said Renata, exaggerating
fond
.

But he
was
fond of Margaret. A likable, direct girl, in a world of people like Renata. And himself.

“We're monsters, aren't we?” said Renata.

It was the sort of thing that made Bruno realize why, years ago, she had been the first person to know. He remembered sitting in the airport so intent that a kind woman next to him told him how breathing exercises could help with fear of flying. He had not been afraid. He had been rapt. He had seen an artist who would change his world. Renata, a woman for whom art was a form of nuclear weapon, had believed him, made a few calls, and made Curtis Newns a name.

Why have I told her such a lie? Bruno asked himself. When Renata finds out that Curtis is not working on a new painting she will destroy me. She will whisk through my hard-built fame like a wrecking ball, because forgiveness was not one of Renata's characteristics.

Tomorrow he would be in Rome, with Andy, and they would have nothing to do with any of this. Bruno was very good about forgetting unpleasantness.

But Renata was saying, “You must let me see a slide of this painting, Bruno. You can't keep it secret from me,” and to his own horror he was was saying that yes, maybe he could manage to send her a slide some time before long, a statement which made Renata smile.

Because Bruno knew that as long as Curtis Newns was important, Bruno Kraft was a man whose future lay before him, whose comments would be solicited, whose face would appear in magazines.

As soon as Curtis was known as a relic, Bruno would begin to be just a little bit dated, his life one of those pleasant reruns screened at three in the morning when all the more lively and youthful have long since been broadcast.

And surely, Bruno reassured himself, Curtis would be painting something wonderful soon. It had been a long time.

It was not like Bruno to pray. But just now he couldn't help it.

15

“You'll see a doctor,” said Margaret.

The bedroom was quiet. It reminded her of that day in Sacramento when her father lay unable to move, unable to speak. The room had been cool, the light like this, muted to the point of total absence. But she had been able to see enough to know that he still heard, still knew.

She soothed Curtis, gently brushed the hair from his forehead. It was a pallid euphemism, to say
doctor
when she meant
psychiatrist
.

He seemed about to say something, taking in a breath of air, lips forming a word. But he subsided.

“If you don't …” But she couldn't say that. She just couldn't bring herself to say it—it wasn't true.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” said Curtis.

“Of course not,” she whispered. Of course you won't hurt me, Margaret thought.

He closed his eyes, then opened them. She could read his question: what's happening to me?

“If you don't change, Curtis. If you don't get help somehow.” Go ahead, she commanded herself. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't.