The Genius (25 page)

“Did you find everything all right?”

"Yes. Thank you.”

"How’s the man I sent you?”

Across the kitchen, Isaac was pouring himself a bowl of cereal. So much for his diet. “Superb.”

“Greta recommended him. He used to work for Whitney Houston. Don’t tell me you don’t need it, I can tell you’re about to say that.”

“I wasn’t, in fact. I was just going to thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Really—I’m so grateful for—”

“Hush,” she said and hung up.

Next I called the gallery. Nat picked up. I asked how the opening had gone.

“Beautifully. Alyson was ecstatic.” Like me, Nat went to Harvard, but he graduated summa cum laude, writing his thesis on ambisexual iconography in Renaissance tapestry. His Boston accent is clipped and wry and fabulous, making him sound sort of like a gay Kennedy.

He told me about the show, concluding, “And the fridge is on order. Oh, and something came in the mail for you from the Queens District Attorney. Do you want me to open it?”

“Please.”

“Hold on.” He put the phone down and came back a moment later.

“There’s a little cotton swab thingy and a vial. It’s some sort of—what is this?”

I heard Ruby say, “A paternity kit.”

“It’s a paternity kit,” Nat said. “Did you impregnate the Queens District Attorney?”

“Not yet. Messenger it over here, would you.”

“Sí, señor.” Then, to Ruby: “You know, you sound awfully well acquainted with this paternity thing. Are you in a family way
again
?”

“Bite me,” she called.

I smiled. “Listen, I’m worried about the two of you. Whoever did this to me is out there and I don’t want anything happening to you.”

“We’re fiiine.”

“It would make me more comfortable if you didn’t hang around the gallery. Close down for a couple of weeks and take a vacation. Paid.”

“But we just opened. Alyson will go ballistic. And I wouldn’t blame her.”

“Keep your eyes open, then. Please. Do that for me.”

“We’re fine, Ethan. Ruby knows kung fu. Tell him.”

“Ki-yai!”

I LEFT A MESSAGE FOR SAMANTHA and she called back within the hour, her tone all business.

“Did you get the kit?”

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll do it today.”

“Good. I need you to think, Ethan: was there anything else that might possibly have a trace of Cracke’s DNA on it?”

“There might be,” I said. While watching the nurse change my dressing in the hospital, I’d noticed that the color of the bloodied gauze looked eerily like that of the five-pointed star at the center of the Cherubs, a theory that appeared to me more and more brilliant as they continued to feed me drugs. In the sober light of day, it seemed not quite as brilliant, but given our shortage of viable leads, I didn’t see how it hurt to consider the possibility.

“Even if it’s blood,” she said, “it might not be his blood.”

“That’s true.”

“But it can’t hurt. Let’s give it a whirl.”

“Well, hang on. Here’s the tough part. I don’t have the drawing anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I sold it.”

“You’re joking.”

I told her about Hollister.

“Are there any other drawings like that one?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. We can go through all of them but it’ll take a while. First let me see what I can do about that one.”

I had no doubt that Hollister liked me enough to invite me back to his house. But he’d have to like me a lot more than that to allow me to start cutting samples out of his artwork. Which left me one option: if I really wanted that piece, I’d have to buy it back.

I hate to buy back art. Some dealers guarantee that if an item’s market drops, they will repurchase it at sale price, allowing the buyer to walk away even. I won’t. I think it infantilizes the client; part of the point of collecting is to hone one’s own aesthetic sensibilities, and that happens only when one takes a personal stake in the matter.

And, understandably, I balked at forking over a large amount of money only to discover that the bloodstain was not a bloodstain, or not one that could give us any information. My hesitation turned out to be moot; when I called Hollister the next morning, his secretary told me he was unavailable.

Monday and Tuesday I lounged around Marilyn’s house, Isaac tailing me, like I’d swapped shadows with a sumo wrestler. When I went to get my missing incisors replaced, he lobbied for gold rather than porcelain: “All the big dogs got gold.”

On Wednesday the NYPD sent two men over to the house. These were not the same two I’d met in the hospital—at least as far as I could remember, which wasn’t very far—but detectives from the major case squad who specialized in art theft. Immediately, I flagged them as rather an odd couple. Phil Trueg was all belly; his garish Jerry Garcia print tie stood out like an abdominal Mohawk. He had a strong Brooklyn accent and a tendency to laugh at his own jokes, which came fast and furious. His partner, on the other hand, was ten years younger, taut and tan and reserved, his outfit likewise muted, khaki bleeding into itself. His name was Andrade, although Trueg told me to call him Benny, an instruction that I decided to disregard.

Andrade and Trueg believed that the attacker’s primary motivation had been to get the drawings rather than to injure me, and in support of this theory, they pointed to the fact that my wallet hadn’t been taken. Nor, said Trueg, had I been beaten up “any more than necessary.” (I replied that I didn’t think any beating was necessary at all.) The thief was almost certainly an insider, connected to the art world or working for someone who was; otherwise, it was hard to understand how he would know of me or how he could hope to resell the drawings. The detectives asked me a long series of questions. I evaded the ones about my clientele; I didn’t want the police pestering people who were obviously innocent and who would take strong umbrage at having their privacy invaded. I showed them the threatening letters I’d received from Victor Cracke and described at length my attempts to find him, my meetings with McGrath, my visit to the precinct.

Andrade squinted at the letters. “Are you sure these came from him?”

“They look like his handwriting.”

“What does he want you to stop?” Trueg asked.

“I have no idea. I assume he was unhappy about the show. But in that case I can’t understand why he would still be angry; the show came down almost a month ago.”

“He might want his drawings back,” said Andrade.

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Anybody else you can think of might have a grievance with you?”

The best name I could come up with—and I gave it to them reluctantly— was Kristjana Hallbjörnsdottir.

“Spell that, please.”

The plan was to wait and see where the art popped up. Since I was presumed to have in my possession all but a few of the drawings, any that came onto the market would by definition be stolen. This strategy was far from foolproof. There might have been other Crackes out there that I didn’t know about, or the thief might never sell. But without eyewitnesses, we had few other options. And since I could not confirm my attacker’s identity, a conviction would be difficult, if not impossible, without a tangible link—to wit, the drawings—between the crime and the perpetrator.

They left me in a state of utter exhaustion.

For the first few days of my convalescence, Marilyn played the role of overbearing mother. She called to check on me every half-hour, often cutting short my naps. She sent her assistants over with books that I couldn’t concentrate on. At night she brought in dinner or else made me something, chicken, hamburgers—anything with protein—and forced me to eat, saying that I had lost too much weight and that I was beginning to look like Iggy Pop. I think she was trying to buoy my spirits, but the relentless stream of mockery began to grate on me. Her fear of losing me came in just shy of her fear of appearing corny, and so whenever she considered herself verging on sentimentality, she would pull back and make some unreasonable demand of me, resulting in conditions that were both doting and ruthless, as when she brought me in a sushi platter but ordered me out of bed to eat it.

“You have to move,” she said.

“I’m not an invalid, Marilyn.”

“Your legs are going to atrophy.”

“I’m tired.”

“That’s the first sign. You need to get up and walk around.”

I told her that she would have made a terrible doctor.

“Thank God I’m a bitchy art dealer.”

Improbably, she also tried to insist on having sex. I told her I had a headache.

“You don’t expect me to fall for that, do you?”

“I have a head injury.”

“All you have to do is lie there,” she said. “Like you usually do.”

“Marilyn.” I had to physically pry her from my neck. “Stop.”

She stood up, red-faced, and left the room.

The more she did things like that, the more I thought of Samantha. I know that it’s cliché to run from those who love you most, and equally cliché to want what you cannot have, but for me these were new emotions. I’d never wanted to run from Marilyn; why would I? She gave me all the latitude a man could ask for. Only the most recent display of affection had caused me to feel stifled. And I’d never desired someone out of reach—mainly because nobody has ever been out of reach for me, not really.

KEVIN HOLLISTER CALLED ME BACK from Vail, where he was enjoying an unseasonably early snowfall.

“Eighteen inches of fresh powder. As close as it gets to perfect. God’s country.” He sounded out of breath. “I’ll send a plane, you’ll be on the slopes by noon.”

As much as I liked to ski, I couldn’t stand up quickly without feeling like I’d been shot in the face. I told him I was under the weather.

“Next year, then. I’m having a birthday party at the house. My ex-wife put in a kitchen that can cook for two hundred. There are twelve ovens and I can’t even make toast. I’m having”—here he named a celebrity chef— “cater the whole thing. You’ll be there.” He was huffing and puffing now, and I heard a faint noise, like Velcro.

“Are you skiing?” I asked.

“We are,” he said.

“I hope you’re on a headset.”

“My jacket has an integrated microphone.”

I wondered who else he had with him. His interior designer, probably, or some other special lady friend two decades his junior. That’s who my father would have had.

I told him our conversation could wait until he got back to New York. “I’m traveling until after New Year’s. Better now.”

“It’s about the drawing.”

“Drawing.”

“The Cracke?”

“Aha, right.” He sniffled. “You know, you’re the second person this week to ask about that piece.”

“Really.”

“Yes. I had long conversation about it, just a few days ago, in fact.”

“Who with?” I asked. He didn’t hear me.

“Hello? Ethan?”

“Hi.”

“Ethan. Are you there.”

“I’m here. Can you—”

“Ethan? Hello? Shit. Hello? Fuck. Piece of shit.”

He hung up.

“I need to get a new system,” he said when he called back. “This thing’s always breaking. What was it you were saying?”

“I wanted to know about the drawing.”

“What about it.”

“I’m wondering if you might be interested in selling it back to me.”

“Why.” Instantly his voice went cold. “Someone made you a better offer?”

“No. No. Not at all. I just feel a little regretful, is all, breaking up the piece the way I did. That section you have is the center, after all, and I think the integrity of the work should be preserved.”

“You had no problem breaking it up before.”

“Fair enough. But having had some time to think it over, I’ve changed my mind.”

“Out of curiosity, how much are you offering me?”

I quoted purchase price plus ten percent. “That’s not a bad return for one month.”

“I’ve had plenty of better months than that,” he said.

“Fifteen, then.”

“You seem like you’re on a mission,” he said. “And while I’d love to see where this goes, unfortunately for you, I’m a man of my word. The piece is spoken for.”

“Pardon me?”

“I sold it.”

I was dumbstruck.

“Hello?” he said. “Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.… Who’s the buyer?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Kevin.”

“I’m sorry about that, I truly am. You know me, I’d love to tell you. But the buyer was very specific in wanting to remain anonymous.”

He sounded more like an art dealer than I’d thought possible. Marilyn had created a monster.

“What did you get for it,” I asked, expecting the same answer. Instead he replied with an absolutely staggering number.

“The nuttiest part? That was the first offer they made. I might have asked for more but I thought, ‘No sense in being greedy.’ Still, I made out like a fucking bandit.”

You’d think that, to a man like Hollister, selling a piece of art—even for a big profit—would provide little thrill, especially if you looked at the numbers in comparison to his net worth. What he made on the drawing, while mind-boggling to me, would at most take a decent bite out of his electricity bill. Yet he sounded like a gleeful child; I could almost see him rubbing his hands together. Rich men get rich in the first place because they never lose that lust for the kill.

I asked if he’d delivered the piece yet.

“Monday.”

I thought about asking if I could take one last look at it. But what would I do? Grab it and sprint away? How far could I get: running, with a head injury, carrying a sixty-square-foot canvas made of one hundred individual sheets of disintegrating paper? Besides, I had a clear notion of who the buyer was. Very few people had that kind of money to drop on an essentially unknown artist, and fewer still had the motivation.

Still a little shellshocked, I congratulated him on his sale.

“Thank you,” he said. “Invitation stands if you want to join me.”

I wished him happy skiing and dialed Tony Wexler.