An Exquisite Corpse

by Helen A. Harrison

  “I wanted details, and he was quite reluctant to give them. That must be pretty standard, but I argued that I couldn’t help him without more to go on. I think he realized I had nothing to do with it, so he told me a few things. Breton went to call for Lam last night and found him on the studio floor. They’re treating it as a suspicious death, cause unknown at present, but not an accident or a stroke. In other words, someone killed him, though Dillon didn’t say as much. No other conclusion to draw, is there?”

  Nods from his tablemates.

  Motherwell leaned his head on his hand. “Lam, of all people. Whatever ideological differences any of them had with one another, no one ever had a bad word for him. It sounds corny to say it, but he was pure. Oh, he listened to the rhetoric, and even went along with the idea of creativity as a product of the unconscious, but his art came from another place. I’ve never met anyone for whom it was so genuinely spiritual. If Surrealism helped him reach deeper into the source of his inspiration, then, yes, he was a Surrealist, but I think it came naturally to him. Breton and his theories just validated what he was already aiming for.”

  “Ja,” agreed de Kooning, “he vas a natural. I vas nuts about de guy.” Yielding to sentiment, he sighed heavily and polished off his whiskey.

  Thirty-Seven

  “I’m going to ride uptown with you,” Fitz announced as they left the Cedar Tavern. By the time they had finished dinner, lingering over coffee and swapping stories of their exploits in law enforcement, it was after eleven.

  Nita protested that she’d be fine going home alone. “Just because I’m out of uniform doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself,” she told him.

  Fitz insisted. “My mother would never let me hear the end of it. And she’d be right. ‘A gentleman sees a lady to her door,’ she’d say.”

  “Do you tell your mother everything?” Nita teased.

  “I want to tell her about you,” he explained, looking at her earnestly. “I’d like her to know that I had dinner with a lovely lady who just happens to be a cop, who I’m sure can take very good care of herself, but who I’d like to be with for a bit longer this evening.”

  Nita was touched. She slipped her arm through his as they walked to the subway. “You know,” she mused, “I think I’d like that, too.” She stopped and pulled a serious look. “But we’re riding Dutch, understood?” She fished a nickel out of her purse and flashed it at him.

  A wide grin spread over Fitz’s face. What a corker she is! “Deal,” he exclaimed, and shook her free hand vigorously. Their laughter accompanied them all the way to the IRT station.

  At that late hour, the wait between trains was a lot longer, which bothered the couple not at all. What had begun as a business meeting had turned into a social occasion, and Fitz was determined to make it last as long as possible. But the case was still on his mind.

  “Tell me something,” he said to Nita. “How old is Joey?”

  “I’d say about twenty-four, maybe twenty-five. Why do you ask?”

  “I suppose his gang are all about the same age, too, or younger,” he replied. “I was wondering why they haven’t been drafted. You don’t see a lot of young, healthy guys around these days who aren’t in uniform.” He chuckled. “Like me, for instance. I’ve already got a uniform, which is why I’m not in the Pacific with your brother or with my cousin Liam in Italy. My little brother, Andy, I think his number’s coming up soon. But those hoodlums, they’re still in civvies. How’s that?”

  “Believe it or not,” Nita explained, “Joey has a legitimate excuse. Asthma. He got a medical deferment because of it. When he went to get the doctor’s note, he persuaded the doc to write excuses for his gang members. When I say ‘persuaded,’ I mean he either bribed him or threatened him. How else do strapping guys like Manuel and Felipe, his two musclemen, get to be 4-F? Manuel suddenly developed a weak heart, though the only weak part of his body is between his ears, and Felipe’s newfound hernia doesn’t prevent him from lifting crates of stolen liquor. Joey’s whole crew got out on medical grounds. Everybody knows they’re perfectly fit for service, but nobody would dare squeal to the draft board.”

  “So while the honest guys march off to war, the crooks do their dirty business as usual,” said Fitz, disgusted. If he hadn’t been with a woman, he would have spat on the subway platform in spite of the signs saying it was prohibited. “Boy, that gets my Irish up!”

  “How do you think I feel,” countered Nita, “with my brother overseas while Joey and company piss on the home front? Pardon my French.”

  That gave Fitz an opening to change the subject. “So you speak French, too. A girl of many talents.”

  “Watch out who you call a girl, buddy boy, or you’ll hear some more of my French and maybe some spicy Spanish to boot.” The twinkle in her eye told him she knew he was teasing.

  Thirty-Eight

  When Carlos returned to the Princesa, the purser was waiting for him. “I have a message for you,” he said, handing him the note.

  His first thought was that Joey had further instructions for him, perhaps the name of the contact for the next handoff. Instead it was from Lam’s friend Matta. “I must see you urgently,” he had written in Spanish. “Come to my place as soon as you get this note.” Carlos recognized the address. He had been there before, only a short walk from Lam’s. Probably wants to tell me what I already know. Maybe he knows about the deal and wants to warn me. Too late for that. I should just stay on board, forget about Matta, forget about Lam, and lie low.

  He folded the note and shoved it in his pocket, where his hand encountered Joey’s nine fifties. Better stash them while the rest of the crew are ashore.

  With the cash safely tucked away in his hidey-hole, Carlos went on deck for a smoke. The purser joined him at the railing, and Carlos offered him one of his Camels. His shipmate thanked him and lit up. “Aren’t you going to your friend’s place?” he asked. “He seemed pretty anxious to see you.” Of course he had read the note.

  “Oh, sure,” replied Carlos. “I just wanted to drop off my ditty bag. I’ll see you later.” Reluctantly, he crossed the deck and headed down the gangway.

  It was not a long walk. Across Gansevoort four blocks to West Fourth Street, then eight blocks south to where it crossed West Tenth Street, an odd anomaly of numbering in that unconventional neighborhood. From there it was less than two blocks to Lam’s place and only one more to Matta’s. He took it slow, giving himself time to consider the consequences of what he had done.

  When he had seen the body crumpled on the studio floor, his first impulse had been to run, but a little voice had told him to stop and think. Lam must have been robbed. Someone found out he had the three hundred he was going to pay me, came up here, slugged him when his back was turned, and took it. So now I’m stuck with the dope and no money. I could leave the dope here, but then I get nothing for the risk I took. And if I leave it, and the cops somehow trace it to me, they’ll think I killed him. But why would I do that if the deal went through as planned?

  Maybe it didn’t. Maybe he shorted me and I got sore. Shit, they could probably make that stick; it’s only my word. They wouldn’t bother looking for anyone else.

  He had sat down at the kitchen table, careful not to touch the surface, though he realized that his fingerprints must be all over the apartment from his previous visits. He tried to calm himself, to think straight, but the more he thought, the more frightened he got. Lam’s friends had seen them together. They’d tell the cops who to look for. Then his head cleared and he realized that he could make them look in a different direction, toward those weird Surrealists Lam hung out with. He got up from the table and returned to the studio as a picture formed in his mind’s eye.

  Finding the right props was easy. The rubber chicken’s foot was standing behind Lam’s easel, where he had placed it so he could sketch its shape on the canvas he was painting. The African mas
k was hung on the wall nearby, also in position for study. The umbrella was leaning beside the kitchen door with the galoshes. Gingerly, he removed Lam’s shoes and socks, and stretched his body out on its back.

  When he touched his friend’s cool, dark skin, he’d felt sadness sweep over him. If only he had arrived earlier. Then the voice of common sense urged, Work fast and get the hell out before someone finds you. He pulled the socks over his hands and wiped his prints off the shoes. Then he collected the props and created a three-dimensional full-size version of one of the grotesque figures he and Lam had drawn on paper.

  When the exquisite corpse was complete, Carlos had put Lam’s shoes and socks in the bedroom. Taking up his ditty bag, still containing the undelivered package of cocaine, he hesitated at the studio door, wiped the knobs with his handkerchief, and contemplated his handiwork. It must have been one of those crazy artists, he reasoned, so this isn’t such a dirty trick. The door was open, after all. Better leave it that way. He let the killer in. Yes, it must have been a fellow Surrealist.

  Now, approaching Patchin Place, Carlos reminded himself that Matta was one of them. But surely not the one who robbed and killed Lam. If he had done it, he wouldn’t bother with me. The body must have been discovered, and he probably wants to break the news to me. Warn me not to go near Lam’s apartment. I appreciate that.

  Thirty-Nine

  Anne Matta was surprised to find a stranger, and a somewhat disreputable-looking one at that, standing outside her apartment door. Shifting uneasily from one foot to another, clutching his watch cap in both hands, Carlos eyed her sheepishly.

  “Buenas noches, señora. Yo soy Carlos. ¿Está Señor Matta aquí?” he asked, glancing past her, scanning the room.

  He had been there once before, with Lam. Over coffee in the studio, Matta had talked about growing up in Chile and his early training as an architect. His desire to see the world had prompted him to become a merchant marine—he and Carlos had that in common. But life at sea was not for him. “Much too hard work,” he confessed with charming self-deprecation. Still, it took him to Europe, where he soon fell in with the leading architects and artists of the day. Carlos had never heard of any of them, but Lam said that they were important people.

  The ambitious young man had proven himself to be remarkably adaptable, learning French in Paris and English in London. Soon he was working on building projects as far afield as Finland and the Soviet Union. But his base was Paris, where he met Dalí, who in turn introduced him to Duchamp and Breton. For an adventurous fellow like himself, the intellectual, political, and artistic turmoil of those prewar years was magnetic.

  With Breton’s encouragement, he abandoned architecture, which produced solid, tangible things, and jumped into the void, so to speak. “In Surrealism,” he explained, “you have no structure, nothing to grab hold of, nothing to fall back on but your own imagination. That’s why I call my paintings ‘inscapes.’ They show what’s inside my head, inside my heart, inside my very soul.”

  Carlos was not a deeply religious man, but he thought this seemed a bit blasphemous. The idea that serious art should illustrate, not the holy word of God but the base feelings of man, was troubling. In his experience, art had always been a servant of the church, like the opulent carvings and colorful paintings in Cartagena’s Catedral Basílica Metropolitana de Santa Catalina de Alejandría, where he sometimes went to pray for safe passage through treacherous waters.

  The funny drawings he and Lam made together were just a game, a pastime, not serious. He didn’t understand the arcane symbolism or the significance of the hybrid creatures in Lam’s paintings, but he knew they had a spiritual dimension that was meaningful to Lam, if not to him.

  When he timidly questioned Matta’s motives, the artist had laughed out loud. “Haven’t you heard?” he sneered. “God died on the seventeenth of July, nineteen thirty-six, the day Spain declared war on herself. Go stare into the empty eyes of the survivors in Guernica and tell them to look to Heaven for salvation. As we sit here debating the proper function of art, bombs are raining from the sky onto Europe’s cathedrals.”

  Matta had checked himself before he became too strident. “You’re entitled to your beliefs,” he concluded, “just as I’m entitled to mine. I choose to believe in myself.”

  Forty

  Carlos was recalling this exchange as Anne regarded him coldly. Her Spanish was limited to a few pleasantries, and she had no intention of trying to converse with this unwelcome caller. “Go away,” she said.

  Anne had been out when Carlos first visited, so she had never seen him before, but she recognized his name. He was part of the scheme her husband, Lam, and Hare had cooked up. She wasn’t supposed to know anything about it, but she had overheard them planning.

  Back in August, on an especially hot afternoon, she had climbed out the bedroom window onto the fire escape to cool off while keeping an eye on the twins, sprawled naked on the bed. Only recently liberated from the damp warmth of her womb, they didn’t seem to mind the heat—in fact, they appeared quite comfortable, while she was suffocating in the unventilated room.

  As she stood outside the open window, she heard the three artists talking in the studio. That window was also open, and they had no idea she was out there. At first she paid no attention to them, her mind on how pleasant it would be to go up to Darien for the rest of the summer, how tempting to just pack up and quit the city until after Labor Day. If only she could persuade Roberto, though that was unlikely. He was far too proud to subject himself to her parents’ unspoken but evident disapproval for any length of time.

  Even a weekend was an ordeal for both couples, an exercise in restraint, which, aggravated by her pregnancy, left her tense and moody. But now there were the twins to consider as well, and coping with two infants in this heat was equally exhausting. Perhaps Roberto would let her take the boys on her own. He could manage by himself for a couple of weeks, just until the weather broke.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Hare’s voice, saying something about money. He spoke no Spanish, so they had to converse in English.

  “We need to figure out the initial cost. I’ll put up the stake,” he offered, “if you two can work out the other ends.”

  “My old friends in the merchant marine will put me in touch with the right people in South America,” said Matta. “Cocaine is flooding out of Peru, all spoken for by the medical corps, but it shouldn’t be hard to arrange for a little diversion. I’ll find out how much it costs down there. There’s probably already a pipeline we can tap into.”

  “If we can get the goods to Cartagena, I’m sure Carlos can handle the transport,” said Lam. “He’s an experienced smuggler.”

  “Okay, let’s say we get the stuff to New York. Who buys it from us?” Hare wanted to know.

  “I can sell it in Chinatown,” Lam assured him. “I know who to go to. You give me the money for Carlos to buy it and to pay him when he delivers. Then I sell it and pay you back, with interest. Out of the profit, I give him enough for another run, and Matta and I split what’s left.”

  “Forget the interest,” said Hare. “I don’t want any of the profits. I’m just putting up the stake so you two can have a steady income. I’m out of it as soon as you get the deals working at both ends. All right, let’s investigate this, see if it’s feasible. It’s up to you, Matta. You find out about supply, and then, if that can work, Lam will find out about demand.”

  Anne was aghast. Her husband was actually planning a crime! Three crimes, in fact—stealing cocaine from the army, smuggling it into the country, and selling it to a dope pusher. She almost jumped through the open window into the studio and confronted him. But she’d hesitated.

  He’ll think I was deliberately spying on them, she told herself, and anyway they can’t possibly go through with it. It’s too outlandish. Of course Roberto wants to make money so he doesn’t have to take support from my fa
mily, but he won’t really go that far.

  The whole idea is…well, it’s surreal.

  Forty-One

  Before Anne could close the door on Carlos, her husband appeared behind her. Ever since leaving the note, he had been anxiously awaiting this visit.

  “Let him in,” he demanded, pulling the door out of her hand. No apology or explanation for his rude behavior.

  Carlos edged into the room, trying to avoid Anne’s angry look.

  She turned it on her husband. “I don’t want him here,” she hissed.

  Ignoring her, Matta hustled Carlos toward the studio. “We have business,” he said over his shoulder. “It won’t take long.” They went inside and closed the door.

  Back in early September, when the aerogram arrived, she had begun to fear that his reckless dream—her nightmare—was becoming a reality. He sometimes received air letters from his relatives in Chile, but this one bore a Peruvian stamp and was postmarked Lima. Unfortunately, he was with her when she picked up the mail from the hall. He was expecting it and quickly snatched it away. He said it was from a cousin, someone he hadn’t heard from in a long time and had been worried about. She didn’t challenge his lie but dared to hope the letter told him the plan wouldn’t work, that the drugs were not available, so he should forget the idea.

  Three weeks later, another aerogram came, this time from Colombia. Anne happened to be returning from the store when the postman arrived or she wouldn’t have seen it, because her husband was waiting by the door. The postman was nearly at their building when she caught up to him.