An Exquisite Corpse

by Helen A. Harrison

  Jacqueline was sympathetic. They both had too much experience of duplicity and corruption to take the authorities at their word.

  The only French Dillon knew was déjà vu, but he had an inkling that Breton had spotted the guy and was having misgivings. He decided to let it ride.

  Jacqueline took her husband’s arm and pulled him close. Their marriage was unraveling, but they shared a past that neither her feelings for David nor his resentment of her infidelity could erase. On the deepest level—beneath the intellectual, the artistic, even the carnal—they trusted each other.

  “We are in the New World, André. We have left the evil behind. We must believe that the good is here, and that it will triumph. This is a test of that belief.”

  He touched her cheek. “Do you believe it?”

  “Yes.”

  Breton turned, and together they approached Dillon.

  “Trois,” he whispered to Jacqueline. “Il est numéro trois.”

  She translated.

  Seventy-Four

  By the time he reached Matta’s apartment, Hare was winded. He had sprinted all the way from his loft and had just enough breath left to blurt out, “They’ve got Carlos!”

  “For Christ’s sake, keep your voice down,” Matta warned him as he led him into the studio. “Anne is asleep. She hasn’t been herself since I told her Lam was dead. She had a bad feeling about Carlos when he came here on Sunday night, maybe it was women’s intuition, but I think she suspected he was a problem. My story confirmed it.” He closed the studio door. “Who’s got Carlos?”

  “The police. Here. They must have intercepted the ship and taken him off.”

  The studio was warm, but Matta felt a cold chill. “How is that possible? How in God’s name did they find him?”

  Hare shook his head. “I have no idea. All I know is that he’s being held at the Sixth Precinct. I found out from Jacqueline. That detective, Dillon, went to see Breton again. She had to translate. Dillon wanted to know if André could recognize Solana. He said yes, he’d met him a couple of times, when Lam brought him along to our gatherings. Dillon asked if he’d seen him anywhere near Lam’s apartment on Saturday night. André said he wasn’t sure. So Dillon asked him to go down to the station and try to pick him out of a lineup. That’s how Jacqueline found out he’s in custody. She called me right away, all excited because it means the police have their man and he’s not one of us.”

  Matta was thinking furiously. “My story still holds up,” he said. “There’s nothing to link us to Carlos. Unless he talks.”

  “Why wouldn’t he talk?” Hare was being realistic. “If they charge him with Lam’s murder, he’ll claim he had no reason to kill him because they were partners in the smuggling racket. He’ll say somebody else robbed him and killed him before he got there. They may not believe him, but he’ll probably expose you as their silent partner. You told him you arranged it.”

  Hare had a sudden thought. “He doesn’t know about me, but of course, you do.”

  Matta stared at him in disbelief. “What are you saying, David? Surely you don’t think I’d implicate you?”

  “Where did you get the front money? They’re sure to ask you that.”

  “I could have borrowed it from you without telling you why I needed it. Jesus, what do you take me for?”

  Hare was disgusted with himself. Matta had his character flaws—smug, self-centered, look at the way he treated Anne—and clearly he was capable of deceit, but of informing on a friend? He was ashamed even to have implied it.

  “Please forgive me. I didn’t realize how that sounded. I would never think—” His apology was cut short as the studio door opened and Anne entered the room. Hare started to rise and excuse himself.

  “Sit down, David,” she demanded with more energy than Matta had seen in her for some time. “I was wide awake when you came in, and I heard what you said.” Her gaze turned toward her husband. “I’ve been listening outside the door ever since you closed it.” As she moved into the room, her body appeared to stiffen with resolve.

  Both men felt oddly immobilized by her presence, at a loss for words and incapable of action. They simply sat and waited for her to continue.

  When she spoke, her voice strained to control her pent-up emotion. “There’s something you need to know.”

  Seventy-Five

  Thursday afternoon

  Back in his cell—alone now, since the drunk and disorderly had been sprung—Carlos signaled the guard.

  “Por favor, señor, ven aquí.” Sticking his arm through the bars, he waved Francisco Ortiz’s card.

  The guard ambled over. “So, changed yer mind, have ya?” He took the card. “You sit tight now. Don’t go away,” he said, mocking the prisoner. “You’d better hope this shyster has a magic wand, ’cause that’s what it’s gonna take to get you off.”

  Two hours later, Carlos was again sitting opposite Ortiz in the interview room. The attorney opened his notebook and reviewed the notes from his briefing with O’Connell.

  “They are charging you with the voluntary manslaughter of Wifredo Lam. Do you know what that means?” he asked.

  Carlos shook his head.

  “It means that either you attacked him intending to kill him or you intended to inflict bodily harm that resulted in his death. It is a lesser charge than murder, which assumes premeditation—in other words, that you went there deliberately to kill him.”

  “I swear by all that is holy, I never touched him until after he was dead. How can I make you believe me?”

  Ortiz gave Carlos a hard look. “You can start by explaining why you didn’t go to the police when you found the body, why you assumed someone killed him, and why you tried to place the blame on one of his artist friends.”

  Carlos jumped directly to the second question. “I suppose he could have had a bad heart or some kind of fit that killed him, but I thought he had been robbed. I got scared. I was afraid someone would accuse me.”

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  “Because I am a foreigner, I speak no English, and I was often at his place.”

  “If someone robbed him, what would they have stolen? From what the police told me, the only valuable things he owned were still in the apartment.”

  “Money. He had money there.”

  “The money was still in his pocket.”

  Carlos gasped. “You say he was not robbed?”

  “He was not,” Ortiz informed him. “The police believe you went there to ask him for a loan because, as you say, you knew he had money. But you didn’t think he would have it on him. He refused and you knocked him out, so you could search the place. They know you were there, they found your fingerprints. But you hit him too hard, killed him, and tried to send the cops in the wrong direction until you could get away. That’s their case.”

  Carlos came to a decision. “You told me yesterday that what I say to you is private, between you and me only. No police.” He looked searchingly at Ortiz. “Is that really true?”

  The attorney understood his dilemma. “I know it is hard to believe, but yes, it is true. What you and I say here goes no further unless you allow it.”

  “Then I will tell you why I was there and why I did not call the police when I found Lam dead. Why I made the body into an exquisite corpse.”

  “A what?” Ortiz thought he had misheard cadáver exquisito. The police had not gone into detail about the nature of the costume, only that it was an inside joke among Lam’s artist friends.

  Carlos explained what it meant. And he told Ortiz about the drug deal. “That is why I could not go to the police. I still had the parcel.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I sold it to a man in Harlem. He gave me five hundred dollars. The money is on the Princesa, under my bunk.”

  The complications were becoming clear
to Ortiz. He could appreciate why Carlos would try to implicate someone else and was rather impressed by his ingenuity. He needed the answer to one more question.

  “What made you think of using the exquisite corpse costume?”

  “I thought one of the Surrealists killed him.”

  “That is what I think, too,” replied Ortiz.

  Seventy-Six

  The telephone rang on Detective Dillon’s desk.

  “Yes, Joe, what is it?”

  “There’s a lady out here, says she wants to see you about the Lam killing. Says her name is Mrs. Roberto Matta.”

  Dillon’s curiosity was aroused. “Bring her to my office.”

  When Sergeant Ryan opened the door, Dillon greeted a nervous but resolute Anne Matta. He saw a woman in her late twenties, not exactly beautiful but strikingly good-looking. He was impressed by the graceful way she carried herself, her dark lustrous hair, and delicate, slightly elfin features—qualities that had inspired the experimental filmmaker Maya Deren to cast Anne in her Surrealist-inspired movie, Witch’s Cradle. Filmed at Art of This Century, Anne drifted through the galleries like a sleepwalker, encountering fantastic sculptures while Marcel Duchamp made cat’s cradles and was throttled by some of the very string he was playing with.

  Anne introduced herself and accepted Dillon’s offer of a chair opposite his desk. This is going to be interesting, he thought. I wonder if she’s going to reinforce her husband’s story or contradict it.

  She was composed but wound tight with anticipation. She knew very well what she was going to say—she, Roberto, and David had gone over it enough times last night—but she had never before deliberately lied to anyone in authority. Even as a child, she was not given to fibbing to her parents or teachers. She believed in owning up and taking your medicine.

  But this was different. You’re not a kid anymore, she told herself. You have a husband and children to consider. She adjusted her posture, looked Dillon straight in the eye, and said, “I understand you have a man in custody for the Lam killing.”

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s right.”

  “He didn’t do it,” she said. “I did.”

  That was certainly not what Dillon was expecting to hear. For a moment he simply stared back at her, unsure of how to proceed. He cleared his throat.

  “Mrs. Matta, you have just admitted to a very serious offense. You’re entitled to a lawyer, who may advise you not to say anything more, because what you say could be used against you in court.”

  Anne reassured him. “I’m aware of my legal rights, Mr. Dillon. My father is an attorney. I would like to make a formal statement.”

  “I’ll get the stenographer in here,” he said. She nodded her agreement. He buzzed through to the clerk, who presently entered the room with his stenotype machine.

  Once the clerk indicated that he was ready to begin, Dillon asked Anne to state and spell her full name and to repeat what she had told him a few moments ago.

  “I killed Wifredo Lam,” she declared. Her voice was flat, not at all emotional, but Dillon sensed that she was struggling to control her feelings.

  This was the hardest part for her. Not only was she confessing to what she believed was a crime, but she was also about to make a false statement to a police officer. If she had to repeat it under oath in court, she would be guilty of perjury.

  “In Paris, before I met Roberto, Fredo and I were lovers. Then I fell in love with Roberto, and I broke it off.” She waved her hand as if to swat away a bad memory. “He and Helena found each other, so he moved on, too.”

  Her hand returned to her lap. “Helena Holzer,” she explained, “a German woman living in Paris. She’s some kind of scientist. She was working in a lab there. I think they met through Max Ernst, one of Fredo’s artist friends. He’s German, too.

  “When the war came, Roberto and I got out just in time. A couple of years later, I learned that Fredo and Helena had gotten away and were living in Cuba. Many of our friends were not so fortunate, but with help, some of them were able to escape. Fredo was among the lucky ones. I was so relieved and my affection for him, well, I was reminded of it.”

  Anne cast her eyes down, in what Dillon interpreted as a gesture of embarrassment. “I wrote to him, rather indiscreetly, I’m afraid, but I thought I’d never see him again.”

  She hesitated, and for a moment, it seemed she might break off her narrative. Just as Dillon wondered if he might have to prompt her, she continued.

  “Then, last fall, he suddenly appeared in New York, alone. Helena was still in Cuba. At first I was delighted to see him safe and well, but I soon found out that he wanted to resume our affair. Apparently my letters had encouraged him. By that time I was pregnant, and, in any case, I was married to Roberto, so I told him no.

  “He left me alone until after the twins were born.” She brightened momentarily. “Our two beautiful boys, Sebastian and Gordon, they were born in June.” Her smile faded. “But then he started up again. He was persistent. He threatened to show Roberto my letters.”

  So, Dillon silently confirmed, this is a sex case after all. “And that scared you?” he asked, encouraging her to continue.

  “I was afraid he’d ruin everything. Roberto is very possessive. So I decided to confront Fredo, try to get the letters back. But it was hard to find the right time, what with the boys to take care of, so I arranged a visit to my parents in Connecticut.”

  Here Anne relaxed just a bit, since she was transitioning from fiction to a story based on what actually happened. Not the whole truth, to be sure—in her telling, love letters would take the place of cocaine—but closer to reality than she had been so far.

  “On Saturday morning, I left the twins with Mother, took the train into the city, and went to Fredo’s apartment. I thought we could discuss the situation like adults, but he became unreasonable. I asked for the letters, and he refused.”

  She lowered her eyes again and, for the first time, looked distressed. “He…he assaulted me. He tried to, you know…”

  “I understand, Mrs. Matta, you don’t have to paint a picture for me.” Dillon immediately regretted his inappropriate figure of speech, but Anne seemed not to notice the artistic allusion.

  “We struggled. I managed to twist out of his arms, and as I did, I pushed him off balance. He tripped against the hearthstone and fell back. I heard a thud, more like a crack, really. He must have hit his head against the mantelpiece. He just crumpled to the floor. He was out cold. You’ll think me heartless, Mr. Dillon, but I saw my chance to get the letters. So instead of tending to Fredo, I searched for the letters, and I found them.”

  Matta and Hare had been insistent on her having a reason to go through the apartment that didn’t involve looking for drugs. A search for love letters would account for any fingerprints.

  “I heard him groan, and I thought he was coming around, so I left. I went home to my parents’ house. I was only gone a few hours. I told them I went window-shopping in Darien and walked in the park, just for a break. I burned the letters, and I thought that would be the end of it, but now I find out that he died from that hit on the head.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Dillon. He kept his tone neutral, not challenging, just curious.

  “Well, didn’t he?” she replied. “Bob Motherwell told David you said it was a hit on the head that killed him. And I did it. I pushed him, he fell and hit his head, and later he died.”

  “That was five days ago, Mrs. Matta,” Dillon reminded her. “Why didn’t you come forward sooner?”

  They had anticipated that question during the rehearsal.

  “I only found out he was dead last night. Roberto wasn’t going to tell me at all, but I overheard him and David talking about it in the studio when they didn’t know I was listening.” She looked vaguely annoyed. “I don’t know how he thought I wouldn’t find out sooner or later. I
guess he wanted it to be as later as possible, after it was all cleared up.”

  Her eyes fixed firmly on Dillon. “Of course he had no idea it was my fault. But when I heard them say that someone had been arrested for the crime, I could hardly stand by and let an innocent man go to jail, or worse, for something I did.”

  “So they told you about this Solana fella we have in custody?”

  “Yes. They said André identified him.” A look of disgust crossed her face. “They said he dressed Fredo up like an exquisite corpse to throw suspicion on one of his artist friends. What a horrible thing to do! Humiliating. And cowardly. He must have been desperate.”

  “I think you’re right there, ma’am. He was afraid he’d be fingered as the killer, and sure enough, he was. He’s the logical suspect.”

  Anne tried to draw him out, to find out if he knew anything about the drug deal, and who was in it with Lam and Solana.

  “Why would he want to kill Fredo?” she asked.

  “We thought he tried to tap him for a loan and clocked him when he said no,” Dillon explained. “But from what you say, it looks like he’s telling the truth. Lam was dead when he got there. What time did you say you, ah, struggled with him?”

  Anne was ready for this. “I took the ten-o-five from Darien to Grand Central, then the subway downtown. I think I got to Fredo’s at about half past eleven and left before noon. There was a twelve-thirty back to Darien, and I caught it.”

  Seventy-Seven

  Dillon excused himself and went out to the front desk. “Is Frank Ortiz still in there with Solana?” he asked Sergeant Ryan.

  “Yeah. You want me to get him?”

  “No, not yet. I want to talk to him before he leaves, but I gotta talk to O’Connell first. Just don’t let him go until I see him.”

  On his way to O’Connell, he popped his head back in his office, where Anne sat quiet and composed, and the clerk was packing up his equipment.