An Exquisite Corpse

by Helen A. Harrison

  Approaching the apartment, Breton held his friend back a moment.

  “Before I open the door,” he said, “I must remind you to touch nothing. The police, if they bother to look, will not find my fingerprints, as I am wearing gloves. I hope that whoever did this has left some evidence other than the humiliating costume.”

  He flipped on the light and directed Duchamp into the studio.

  Beyond the death of a close companion, the loss was sharpened by the knowledge that a Surrealist must be responsible. Who else would think of that collection of disparate elements, attached to the body in such a way as to mimic one of their communal drawings? Each item was familiar, even the giant chicken foot that Lam had found in the trash outside a costume shop and brought back to the studio as a prop for his exotic ritual scenes. The African mask, acquired in the Marché aux Puces, was one of his prized possessions, so much so that he had insisted on taking it with him when they fled Paris. The galosh was one of a pair he wore on rainy days, when the umbrella also served. All these things had been in the apartment, so the killer simply used what was at hand.

  But why? It occurred to Duchamp that this was a diversion, done to implicate a Surrealist. Yet only a Surrealist could have thought of it. Only a Surrealist would know what an exquisite corpse looks like—what Lam looked like now.

  Breton’s experienced eye detected subtle changes. Again he removed his glove and checked the mastoid neck muscle. It was stiffening, indicating death more than three hours earlier.

  “We must go to the police station right away,” he told Duchamp. “If we delay any longer, they will wonder why we waited.”

  Five

  The two friends climbed the steps of the Sixth Precinct, on Charles Street, and approached the reception desk. One of them spoke to the desk sergeant in accented English.

  “I wish to report a death,” he said matter-of-factly, “in an apartment at one forty West Tenth Street. It is my friend Wifredo Lam, a painter.”

  “Name?” said the sergeant.

  “Lam, as I said,” repeated Duchamp.

  “Your name.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp.”

  “Address?”

  Duchamp gave it. “Two hundred ten West Fourteenth Street.”

  “And who is this with you?”

  Breton’s name and address were duly given.

  At that moment, Detective Sergeant John J. O’Connell came on duty, ready for the usual drunk and disorderly traffic, barroom brawls, and occasional knifing that punctuated every Saturday night in the West Village. The two neatly dressed men at the desk were an unexpected sight. They appeared to be sober, polite, and uninjured. He pegged them as victims of a pickpocket.

  “What have we here, Sergeant Greco?” he inquired.

  “These French fellas found a pal o’ theirs dead in a crib on Tenth Street,” Greco replied. “This one don’t talk no English.” He nodded at Breton. “That one does the talking for ’em both.” He gestured at Duchamp.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. You gentlemen come with me to the interview room. We’ll get all the details there.”

  With Duchamp’s help, Breton made his statement, swore to its accuracy, and handed over Lam’s keys. O’Connell, a doctor, a photographer, and a couple of forensic cops were dispatched to the scene. They searched and dusted the apartment, examined and photographed Lam’s remains, called an ambulance, and had the body removed to the morgue. Breton and Duchamp had been kept in the interview room, dozing on hard chairs while the police went about their business. O’Connell wanted them held until he returned.

  He had been confused by the description of the body, and he didn’t like it. It sounded crazy, and he wanted the witnesses, such as they were, to be around after he had seen this improbable sight for himself.

  Sure enough, Duchamp had described it accurately.

  What he hadn’t mentioned was the artistic significance of the costume. If he had, the suspects would all be his friends, and the prospect of implicating them was too daunting. So when Breton blurted out, “Il est arrangé comme un cadavre exquis,” Duchamp didn’t translate the phrase accurately. He said, “My friend says the corpse is disguised.”

  Duchamp also didn’t—in fact, couldn’t—explain why anyone would do that to Lam after he was dead. It certainly wasn’t done while he was alive.

  You’d have to kill me before I’d let anyone make me look like that, thought O’Connell. But these are artists, he reminded himself, so who knows what they get up to? Maybe the guy just lay there and let someone decorate him before they did him in. Some stupid game, maybe a sex thing that got out of hand.

  But except for his shoes and socks, Lam was fully clothed, and there were no visible marks on the body. That suggested to O’Connell that he had been smothered. It could have happened while he was lying there being decorated. No, that made no sense. He would have struggled and undone all that perverse handiwork.

  There was no evidence of forced entry. The window was locked, but Breton said the apartment door had been open. Lam must have let the killer in, so it was probably someone he knew. They’d all have to be questioned, starting with the friends who were at the party Duchamp mentioned in his statement. Lam was supposed to be there. Maybe one of the other guests stopped by for him, like Breton had done later, and they got into a fight. But there were no signs of violence.

  They searched the apartment. Tucked inside Lam’s passport was a letter, written in French, postmarked Havana and signed “Je t’embrasse, Helena.” That must be the wife Duchamp told them about. Nothing appeared to be missing. The artist had few personal possessions, not surprising for someone who had been uprooted and was on the run for a while. According to Duchamp, he’d been in New York for only about a year and was getting financial help from a rich lady, one of the Guggenheim clan, who ran an art gallery uptown. She would buy a painting outright and try to sell it to pay herself back. Sometimes that worked, but even when it didn’t, she made sure Lam had rent money. They found $300 in cash in his back pocket, the first place any thief would look. Probably a payment from the Guggenheim dame.

  In the studio, Lam’s canvases leaned undisturbed against the walls, and a painting in progress, nearly finished, remained on his easel. Like a confused spectator in a silent movie, O’Connell cocked his head and then scratched it, unable to fathom the arcane symbolism in the abstraction of stylized figures, some brandishing what looked like weapons, in a tropical jungle. The officer who had been dusting for fingerprints asked what he made of it, and the detective replied that he was damned if he knew.

  “Looks like the natives are restless,” observed the officer drily.

  “Looks like they’re downright murderous,” O’Connell replied. “Maybe they did it.”

  Although there was no way to know whether any sketches or drawings had been taken, it didn’t seem likely. Maybe the African mask was worth something to a collector, but that was still there, covering Lam’s face. And the cash was still there, too. If robbery wasn’t the motive, what was? And what possible reason would someone have for the bizarre postmortem getup?

  These enigmas were complicated by the fact that Lam was half Afro-Cuban and half Chinese, two cultures as mysterious to O’Connell as the circumstances of the artist’s death. Both had footholds in New York, the Chinese nearby on and around Canal Street, the Cubans in a smaller enclave uptown in Spanish Harlem. Apart from his Parisian expatriate circle, Lam might have a connection to either or both communities.

  Unfortunately for O’Connell, this not only widened the investigation’s scope but also took it into unknown territory.

  Six

  Sunday morning, October 17

  The sun had been up for nearly half an hour when Breton and Duchamp were finally released. After a virtually sleepless night in the interrogation room, drinking bad coffee and eating stale donuts, they were mo
re than ready to part ways. When they reached Greenwich Street, Breton thanked his friend for sharing his ordeal and turned north toward his apartment. Although he wanted nothing more than sleep, good manners dictated an invitation. “Will you come in for coffee—real coffee, that is?” he inquired.

  “No, I think not, thank you,” replied Duchamp politely. “I must tell Peggy what has happened, and I must do it in person.”

  The subway took Duchamp north to East Fifty-Ninth Street, two blocks from Peggy Guggenheim’s town house. By the time he reached her door, exhaustion was catching up with him. It was only eight a.m., and Peggy never rose before ten on Sundays, but the maid let him in, took his overcoat, settled him in the parlor, and went to awaken her mistress.

  His disheveled appearance stopped Peggy as she entered the room, still wearing her negligee. He was normally so fastidious, so nicely turned out. Even if his well-tailored clothes showed their age, they were always clean and pressed. This morning they were rumpled, and he needed a shave.

  “My dear Luigi,” she began, addressing him by his pet name, “you look all in. Something is wrong, I know it.”

  His weary eyes found hers. It was hard for him to focus. His words came in short bursts. “It’s Lam. He’s dead. Murdered, it seems. Breton found him. We’ve been with the police all night. I had to translate.”

  Peggy dropped beside him on the sofa, her face flushed with astonishment. “Who on earth would do such a thing? Where was he?”

  Duchamp began to describe the circumstances, but he faltered. “Dear Peggy, may I rest awhile? I can hardly keep my head up. I will tell you all I know after I’ve had some sleep.”

  Stifling her curiosity, Peggy led him to her bedroom, helped him off with his jacket, and offered him a pair of silk pajamas she had bought for her husband, Max Ernst, who had never worn them—not because he didn’t sleep in pajamas, but because he seldom slept in the town house. He and Peggy were not on the best of terms.

  “I’ll leave you now,” she said. “I won’t disturb you. Tell me everything when you awaken. But one thing I must know before you sleep. Where did it happen? Oh yes, and where did you report it?”

  “His apartment,” Duchamp mumbled, “and we went to the local precinct. Very nearby. On Charles Street.”

  He slumped in a chair and began to remove his trousers as Peggy discreetly left the room. He was nearly asleep when he climbed into the bed, still warm from her body, and quickly drifted into unconsciousness.

  Back in the parlor, Peggy was consulting her address book. As the niece of wealthy, prominent New York businessmen, she moved in a social circle far wider than the tight-knit art world that included both the European émigrés and the American avant-garde whose work she showed in her Fifty-Seventh Street gallery, Art of This Century. While they lived and worked downtown, she was cultivating an uptown clientele. Her gallery receptions attracted a cosmopolitan crowd, many of whom were family friends. Among them was Lewis Valentine, the police commissioner, whose home telephone number she found and dialed.

  When Theresa Valentine answered the phone, Peggy asked if her husband was at home. “I hope I’m not disturbing your Sunday breakfast,” she said.

  “Oh, no, not at all,” replied Mrs. Valentine graciously. “Lewis and I are just back from Mass, and we had a light breakfast before we went. He’s right here, Peggy. I’ll put him on.”

  Valentine came to the phone expecting a summons to one of Peggy’s soirées or perhaps to a charity function for the war effort. Her gallery had opened a year ago, and its first event had been a benefit reception for the American Red Cross.

  “I apologize for calling you at home,” Peggy began, “but I wanted you to be aware of a case in which I have a personal interest. One of my artists, Wifredo Lam—the dark-skinned Cuban fellow; I believe you and Theresa met him at my party in March—has been murdered. He was found dead in his apartment on West Tenth Street in Greenwich Village. I understand that the local precinct is investigating the crime, and I should be deeply grateful if you would make sure it’s properly handled.”

  After ten years in office and with hundreds of murder investigations behind him, Valentine wasted no time on commiserations.

  “Why of course, my dear Peggy. Please spell his name for me. That’ll be the Sixth Precinct’s jurisdiction. When was the body found? Late last night, you say. Well, they won’t have the autopsy report yet, but I’m sure the detective in charge—probably O’Connell, if I remember rightly—has already begun his inquiries. He’s a top man. He’ll solve it, don’t you worry. We can’t have people killing off your artists, now can we?”

  He regretted that flip remark as soon as the words were spoken.

  “Please forgive me, Peggy, that was patronizing. I shouldn’t have implied that this case is anything less than serious. I’ve been in this job too long, I guess. You get pretty hardened to tragedy when you deal with it every day.”

  Peggy rescued him before he could dig himself in any deeper. “I understand completely, Lewis. I know I can rely on you to do whatever you can to bring whoever is responsible to justice.”

  She replaced the receiver with a feeling of satisfaction. Far from taking offense at Valentine’s faux pas, she sensed that it would make him all the more determined to ensure that the investigation would be thorough and the killer found. She smiled to herself as she returned to her bedroom, where Duchamp lay deep asleep.

  Shrugging off her negligee, she climbed naked between the sheets and nestled against him, feeling the contours of his lean body under the smooth silk. Gently, so as not to disturb him, she slipped a hand inside the pajama trousers. When he awoke, she would help him forget for a time the sad circumstances of his visit to her bed.

  Seven

  O’Connell’s shift had officially ended more than an hour ago, but he wanted to make one stop before heading home to Brooklyn. He had already ordered the beat cop to talk to Lam’s neighbors and assigned Detective Patrick Dillon to interview the host of last night’s party, after which he was to take the subway uptown to East Harlem and inquire about Lam’s possible ties to the Cuban immigrant community.

  That left the Chinatown connection to investigate, and O’Connell knew better than to send one of his officers nosing around in that neighborhood. All doors would be closed to a Caucasian cop working outside his jurisdiction. He had to take a roundabout route, and fortunately he had one, via someone he’d encountered in the station house a few times—an artist with an unfortunate tendency to land in the tank overnight. He opened a file drawer, pulled out a nearly full pint bottle of Four Roses bourbon, slipped it into his overcoat pocket, and set off.

  A short walk to Seventh Avenue led him to a run-down loft building with dirty windows and a battered doorway where derelicts could often be found huddled in the recess. This morning it was vacant, and O’Connell rang the second-floor bell. He could hear the chime faintly but had to give it a few more hits before he got a response. Finally the buzzer released the latch, and he entered the tiled hallway, rank with the odor of unemptied garbage pails and oily paint rags. He climbed to the second floor and knocked.

  “Come in,” a voice croaked. “I left it open.”

  Yun Gee’s studio was a certified mess. It was apparent to O’Connell that Gee’s wife hadn’t been here in a while, maybe never, and also that Gee hadn’t gone home to their apartment for several days. Could be they’re having marital troubles, he mused, and the guy decided to lay low for a while. Sure looks like he’s been drowning his sorrows.

  In addition to the clutter one would expect in an artist’s studio, there were dirty dishes, a pile of clothes and bedding, and a couple of empty liquor bottles littering the floor around Gee, who was seated on a sagging couch that apparently doubled as a bed. The only other furniture, apart from a sturdy easel and a long worktable improvised from plywood and sawhorses, was a three-legged stool and a discarded office chair rescued
from the street. O’Connell rolled the chair over to Gee, who showed no inclination to rise and greet his guest.

  The detective pulled out the whiskey bottle, retrieved a grimy glass from the litter, wiped it with his handkerchief, poured a stiff shot, and handed it to the artist.

  “Hair of the dog,” he advised. “Your health.”

  The irony was not lost on Gee, who grinned and sipped the drink gingerly. “Early in the day for me, but thanks.”

  “I’m the one to be thanking you,” said O’Connell, “because you’re going to help me out. You know all the artists around here. You know one who’s half Chinese, name of Lam?”

  Gee’s grin widened. “A Chinaman? Also an artist? Of course I know Lam. He’s not really Chinese, in spite of his name. He’s really Cuban. His dad went there from Hong Kong to work the sugar, married a Negro girl.” Gee’s own father had followed a similar path, coming to the United States from Kwangtung as a laborer. Settled in San Francisco in 1921, he sent for his fifteen-year-old son. As Lam had done, the young aspiring artist gravitated to Paris, and then to New York, then back to Paris.

  “Like all of us,” Gee continued, “he wanted to be modern. He went to art school in Spain, but it was too traditional for him. He got a good reception in Paris. An important Spanish guy, Picasso, looked after him, helped him plenty. But the Nazis kicked him out, his friends too, and they all came to New York. I was here already, got out in thirty-nine.”

  Gee took another sip of whiskey. Another smile, rueful this time, more to himself than to O’Connell. “So we met up again. Like old home week.”

  O’Connell doubted that an artist’s life in wartime New York was anything like the prewar Parisian scene, which he imagined as glamorous in a gritty, bohemian way, certainly a lot more stimulating than the materialistic American culture they were stuck in now. At least they were alive. It would be a different story if they’d fallen into Hitler’s hands. But he didn’t want Gee to turn nostalgic, so he let the remark hang.