The Painter: A Novel (23 page)

I needed a drink. Alce, I need a drink. Little one. I can taste it in the back of my mouth.

Silence. Wind.

What are we here for? Surely not to purge others who have no clue either. There would be no one left. Urge rose up like bile to drive straight down to the police station next to the courthouse and confess everything. It choked me. I swallowed it back.

I thought about leaving the canvas up here in this unholy spot as kind of a tombstone, but then I thought, Screw it, Steve will love it, I know him. He will scrunch up his lips and digest it and look at me sideways wondering what the fuck is going on with me, what’s true, and he will sell it for seven thousand dollars.

I backed out of the parking spot at the trailhead and swung a U-turn onto the two-lane and did a double take on a black El Camino parked on the shoulder across the road. The driver window was down and he looked straight at me, a dark bearded man in a trucker’s cap and aviator shades. The shock of recognition. Fucking Jason. He looked straight at me, made sure I saw him, saw him speaking emphatically into a cell phone. Fuck.

Steve called me as soon as I got back to my room.

“Do you have a camera in here?” I said.

“No, I have Kimberly at the front desk. You know, the gringa. Who, by the way, adores you.”

“Kimberly. You. And the cops.”

“A Detective Hinchman is on his way to see you. Very courteous. A bit fat. What time will you be at the Pantelas’ tomorrow? The canvas is already there, you know, since we expected you yesterday. I set it up in the piano room, remember? Off the courtyard with all the hollyhocks. Remember that big spacious room with the north light, where Julia serenades us with all that awful Bach. Imagine! Taking up piano at forty. Should be illegal. I always felt like I was at a kid’s recital. Why couldn’t they just let us tipple in peace? What time did you say? Ten a.m.? That seems perfect to me. Give the hairdresser time to get the girls up to running speed. Did I tell you they hired a hairdresser? Who specializes in kids?”

No he hadn’t told me, and I hadn’t said a time in the morning, but this was Steve and ten sounded right.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“I better hang up and wash the blood off if Officer Hinchman is coming.”

Silence. Shocked probably.

“Ha!”

Steve was always nimble, never took him long to recover.

“Ha! Some joke. Speaking of which. You know I’ve been revisiting your last two paintings. The ones from last week.”

That usually meant he was reconsidering whether he should show them. Or that they hadn’t sold and he was going to offer buyers a further consideration or find other ways to discount them.

“Yeah.”

“They are disturbing, that’s all. Not really like anything you have ever done. Ah—”

“Wait till I show you the one I did this afternoon.”

“Really?” Excitement back in his voice. “You have another? Already? Well, you’re Jim Stegner of course. Wow. I—” He stopped like a car coming to a clanging railroad crossing.

“Is it dark and disturbing? I mean the paintings—something is going on with you. I thought you might want to talk about it. Do you?”

He couldn’t help himself. His tone now was completely free of affect. Kind of in awe.

“The phone is probably tapped,” I said.

“Oh oh. Of course. Okay.” He was flustered. “Okay, go up tomorrow at ten! Whoa.”

I hung up. I waited for Detective Hinchman. I waited for three minutes.

He called from the lobby. I invited him up. Don’t know why, but I placed the fresh canvas next to the hearth in the sitting room, face out. Maybe because I didn’t want him turning it around a la Sport, and because I knew he would see it eventually since I was going to let Steve show it. It could hang next to the others on the Wall of Confession.

A spirited double tap at the door, ta-da! announced Detective John Hinchman, homicide. He was fat and wheezed like a bulldog, and was the most cheerful man I’d ever met at death’s threshold. He seemed to be, anyway. Seemed about to drop from a cardiac at any second. He maneuvered through the door and was genuinely glad to meet me. His blurred smile was infectious. I say blurred, because it was hard to see him sharply through the cloud of good cheer he brought with him the way Pig-Pen brings his dust.

He said, “Been an admirer for years. Did you know you were the first man to paint magpies on furniture? I did the research.”

“Ouch.”

“I know, huh?” He chuckled. “You have a true creative impulse and within no time at all the market turns it into kitsch.” He shook his head in mirth. I offered him a seat in a wingback and he waved it away.

“May I?” he said.

“Be my guest.”

For such a big man he moved pretty smoothly, a little like a parade float. He studied the new picture.

“You paint that today? Still smells strong.”

“You must be a detective.”

A goofy smile stretched to his sideburns.

“One thing I love about this job. Nobody knows anything about being a detective except what they see on TV and in movies. So they talk like that. The dialogue, it usually runs along those lines. Even in interrogation. Makes it easier that way, everyone knows the protocol.” He laughed.

“What is it?” he said, bending down and looking more closely.

“Two guys. On a rough road.”

“Yep. Anyone you know?” He straightened.

“Probably Grant and Dellwood.”

His eyes widened.

“Well. Off script,” he said.

“Not really.”

“You’re a pretty straight shooter. I thought you would be. You can tell a lot about a person from his paintings.”

“You want a beer? That mini fridge is stuffed. I think there’s some fancy German beer in there.”

Waved it away again. “Any reason you’d be painting Mr. and Mr. Siminoe?”

“They’ve been on my mind a lot.”

Again his eyes. His smile at his own astonishment. Can a man really move through the world like this, with such droll good humor? I thought he was Buddha-like.

“How so? On your mind?” he said.

“Well, let’s see. Dellwood almost beat a horse to death in front of me, then fought me, then got himself murdered so everyone thinks I did it, so that’s Dellwood. Grant, well, he threatened my life a week ago and burned down my neighbor’s barn. Because of aforesaid horse and brother. So maybe that’s why.”

He nodded. He looked serious for the first time since he’d come through the door.

“These guys, in the picture, they’re having a really rough time.” He frowned. “The older one in front, that must be Grant, he’s trying to take care of his brother, protect him, like he’s done ever since the two of them went to foster care.”

It hit me like a blow. I felt dizzy. Not even sure why. Of course they were raised in foster homes. I guess of course.

He was watching me. I liked him. He seemed to be just about wincing, feeling my pain.

“They always went together. Since they were like ten and twelve. Couldn’t separate them. They tried, the state, but they always ran away and came back together. Child welfare just had to make allowances.”

“Right.”

“You don’t look so good.”

“I’m not.”

“You see Grant lately?”

“Never met him.”

“But he’s in the painting. Wrong scale, though. You’ve got him smaller than Dell. I’m assuming that’s Dell right? Yeah, Grant’s even bigger. Hard to believe he’s bigger, huh? Given how massive Dellwood is. Was.”

He looked at me. He wheezed. “The painting is real sad. Kinda makes me choke up. Don’t even know why. Sign of a great artist.”

He was watching me. “Want to sit down?” In a reversal he was offering me the same chair.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Think there’s a Coke in there?”

“Probably.”

“We could use one.”

He went to the mini fridge, pulled out two Cokes, cracked them, handed me a blessedly ice cold can. I drank half of it in one gulp.

“Grant took off Tuesday. Headed this direction. Sheriff had him at the Delta County line, then a witness saw his truck going through Saguache. Hard to miss a diesel two tone blue F-250 with a gooseneck hitch and spotlight. No reason for him to come this way except to come after you. A dangerous man, very pissed off, already threatened you once. Why I’m here.”

“You’re worried about me.”

He smiled. “Right now I think I’m more worried about him. You look like you want to hurl. Want me to call reception and get you some Pepto?”

“No.”

“I take these.” He pulled a prescription pill bottle out of his jacket pocket, twisted off the cap, tipped the bottle up like a can and shook some into his mouth. “Sad thing is even a Coke can give me acid reflux. Sucks being fat.” He smiled.

“Mr. Stegner.”

“Call me Jim.”

“It can eat at a man. The stuff we do. Secrets make you sick, isn’t that what we say?”

“Being in prison makes you sick.”

He nodded. “You have no idea where Grant Siminoe might have gotten to?”

“Wherever it is, I’m sure it sucks. I’m sure it’s no fun at all within about a three mile radius.”

He nodded. He dug in the pocket of his overcoat, pulled out a piece of clear plastic. He held out his palm.

“This belong to you?”

It was a small Visqueen envelope with a dry fly in it. A number 18 hook, tufty elk hair wings and an orange body made with strips of baling twine. It was a Stegner Killer.

“Yes? Take it, take a closer look. None of the fishermen we interviewed had ever seen one in these parts, but somehow you’ve got a shitload of them in your fishing vest. Excuse my French. Ten or twelve. And a couple on your kitchen counter. Must catch a lot of fish.”

He stared at me.

“That yours, Mr. Stegner?”

“I’m not sure. Probably.”

He nodded.

“Think you can patent something like that? I mean if it’s just head and shoulders better than anything else?”

That twist in the guts. A sharp pain in my stomach that cut through the queasiness.

“Forensics found this by the creek,” he continued. “Right where Dell was bobbing in the water. They missed it the first morning, but there it was in the second sweep, wedged in the sand between two rocks, right there, like a marker.”

“I fish that stretch all the time,” I said weakly.

“We know that,” he said.

“It’s funny,” he said, standing, wheezing with the effort. “The longer I do this, the less I’m sure who the bad guys are. Ever feel like that?”

His candor landed on my shoulder like a lost bird.

“Not really. I have a pretty good idea who’s really bad.”

“I found something else in my travels,” he said. “Something I read.”

He brought two folded pages out of his inside jacket pocket. Handed them to me in the chair. I took them, my hand was shaking a little, I unfolded them, read:

She had the bag. I say to Hen, “Hey, Bug uses those black bags.” “Fuck Bug. Let’s grab it,” Hen says. I say, “You fucking grab it.” He says, “What’re you afraid of pussy? She’s about the size of a Chihuahua.”

I gagged.
She
was Alce. It was the transcript, from the DA in Taos. I’d read it before, three years ago. Alce coming at them with her bag of pot. I read it now. The whole thing. It was the last thing I wanted to do and I couldn’t help myself.