An Exquisite Corpse

by Helen A. Harrison

  Eighty-Two

  Tuesday evening, November 30

  The opening reception at Art of This Century for Wifredo Lam: A Memorial Exhibition had attracted a distinguished crowd. In addition to the full complement of refugee Surrealists—even the despised Dalí and the apostate Masson had turned up—and the young Americans itching to take their places at the head of the vanguard, Peggy had recruited some serious collectors. A personal call to each of them ensured their attendance.

  “I’m not taking a commission on sales,” she told them. “All the proceeds will go to Lam’s family. And of course, his prices will soon rise now that he’s dead,” she added with practical wisdom, “so you really must take advantage of this opportunity.” Her blandishments had lured Saidie May from Baltimore and Edna Winston from Detroit, as well as the New York collectors Sidney Janis, who would soon retire from the clothing business and open his own art gallery, and Nelson Rockefeller, whose mother was a founder of the Museum of Modern Art.

  Standing beside Peggy as she proudly surveyed the turnout was Alfred Barr, the museum’s embattled former director, who had approved the loan of the two Lam works on paper just prior to being sacked. In a long-running battle of wills with the Modern’s dictatorial president, his enthusiasm for the more radical types of modernism had cost him the top job. But his supporters had rallied, and he had been kept on to oversee his first love, the permanent collection.

  Barr remarked on the odd mixture of art world regulars and outsiders.

  “Who are those two young redheads holding hands and looking confused?” he asked her. “A handsome couple, but not among your clients, I assume.”

  “The police,” she replied, enjoying his shocked reaction. “And there are several other officers of the law here tonight as well.” She gestured across the room.

  “See that large black-haired gentleman over there, talking to the lady who looks like a gypsy? He’s the detective who broke the Lam case. And the lady is Madame Carmen, a genuine gypsy fortune-teller from Spanish Harlem. She knew before anyone else that a woman was involved. According to Officer Fitzgerald—he’s the red-haired policeman, a charming young fellow—Madame Carmen had only to touch the photograph of Lam’s body to sense a woman’s aura. Isn’t it thrilling?”

  “Surely you don’t believe in such hocus-pocus.”

  “I never did before, but now I wonder,” she admitted. “Officer Fitzgerald told me they went to her because they thought the way Lam’s body was decked out had something to do with Cuban voodoo. That lovely young woman with him, Officer Diaz—yes, a female police officer, isn’t that wonderful?—was his interpreter. They were thrown together by the investigation, and look at the result! You can see how much in love they are.”

  “And how perplexed they are,” Barr observed. “Evidently Lam’s work is a bit over their heads.”

  “That’s hardly surprising,” she pointed out. “I don’t suppose they’ve ever set foot in your museum, much less in a gallery like this one. Not that there’s another gallery like it anywhere. The best of both worlds, Europe and America. I must ask them what they think of the Surrealist collection and the abstract room. I do so enjoy exposing young people to advanced art, as I’m sure you do, too. We must bring along the next generation, mustn’t we?”

  Barr favored her with an indulgent smile. “Peggy, my dear, you are incorrigible. You don’t give a rap for the next generation. Even your own children take second place behind your collection. Sometimes I think you love your paintings more than you do Sinbad and Pegeen.”

  “What a wicked thing to say, Alfred! I adore the children. Of course, I have neglected them from time to time, especially when I’ve been romantically involved, but I know they understand. Besides, they love the collection as much as I do. Well, almost as much.”

  Barr decided on a tactical retreat. “As you say. And it’s good of you to encourage Pegeen’s artistic efforts. Her painting in your show of female artists last winter was charming.”

  “Thirty-One Women,” Peggy recalled ruefully, “one woman too many. Dorothea Tanning, that vulgar little minx, set her cap for Max, and now he chases after her like a love-sick teenager. I have to admit she’s a good painter, but I curse the day I put her in the show.

  “And there they are.” She nodded toward her husband and his lover, who were at the center of a scrum of Max’s admirers on the other side of the room. “He has the nerve to parade her right under my nose.”

  Fortunately, Peggy’s cousin Harry spotted her before she could make a scene.

  “A wonderful tribute to Cuba’s most important modern artist,” he enthused. “I confess I wasn’t familiar with his work, but of course he was in Europe when I was posted to Havana. His death is a great loss—to the art world in general and Cuba in particular. But this show will certainly enhance his posthumous reputation.”

  Harry scanned the gallery. “I see a few potential buyers. As a matter of fact, I think I may be one myself. I’ve taken a fancy to that large gouache, the jungle scene. Isn’t that his last painting?”

  “Yes,” replied Peggy, effectively diverted from the indiscreet Max. “The last one he finished, that is. There was a companion piece in progress on his easel when he died. That unfinished one, of course, is not for sale.”

  Always alert to a potential acquisition but woefully short of purchase money, Barr intervened. “I say, Harry, how would you like to buy that gouache for the museum? As a gesture of inter-American goodwill from the former ambassador to the country where he served with such distinction?”

  Harry nodded with appreciation. “Alfred, you should be in the diplomatic corps. What do you think, Peggy? Is that a good idea?”

  “It’s a marvelous idea,” she agreed. “And such a boost to Lam’s family. I’ll have Jimmy put a red dot on the label right away and spread the word that The Jungle is going to the Modern’s collection.”

  Peggy winked. “I know that will encourage the others to open their wallets.”

  Eighty-Three

  “Such mixed feelings,” said Motherwell to the knot of Americans clustered around him. “I certainly didn’t mind putting off my own show in favor of this one, but I hate to see the word ‘memorial’ on the invitation and the brochure. Even now, it’s hard to believe he’s gone.”

  “Look at the crowd,” said Baziotes, spotting Rockefeller now in conversation with Peggy and Barr. “There’s some money in the room, for sure.”

  “A lot of strangers, too,” observed Rosenberg. “I recognize the police commissioner, but only from his picture in the paper. I’ve certainly never seen him here before.”

  Motherwell laughed. “That’s because you don’t buy tickets to any of Peggy’s benefit events. He’s a family friend of the Guggenheims, so she ropes him in whenever she’s raising money for one of her causes.”

  Rosenberg didn’t like being reminded that his job at the Office of War Information paid just enough to keep the wolf from the door. Motherwell, subsidized by his father, could afford those tickets, but they were beyond Rosenberg’s reach.

  “My war work is contribution enough,” he grumbled, changing the subject. “I’m surprised to see Matta here, considering that his wife was responsible. Not deliberately, of course, but still.” His heavy brows frowned in disapproval.

  “I had no idea she was involved with Lam before she married Matta,” said Kamrowski. “Too bad he carried a torch. Hard to blame him though, she’s a sweet little number. Turned out to be his unlucky one.”

  “Don’t be flippant,” scolded Motherwell. He decided to show his support for Matta in what must be an uncomfortable situation. “Very decent of you to come,” he said as he shook Matta’s hand, pointedly in full view of Rosenberg, Kamrowski, and the others he had just left.

  “I promised pajarito I’d be here,” Matta explained. “She obviously couldn’t come herself. She wanted everyone to know that I don
’t blame her. It might look otherwise if I stayed away.”

  Motherwell could appreciate the reasoning. He also assumed that Matta must have known about Anne and Fredo in Paris—an affair that, while it never happened, was now common knowledge, as were its fatal consequences. Like Dillon, he wondered if Anne had taken the blame for her husband’s jealous outburst.

  He banished that thought to the back of his mind. Whether Roberto or Anne had pushed him, Lam’s death was an accident. That was the official verdict.

  Eighty-Four

  O’Connell and Dillon stood together in a corner of the gallery, surveying the crowd with practiced eyes. In spite of their civilian clothes, they might as well have had their detective shields pinned to their lapels. Their acumen failed them only when they tried to size up Lam’s paintings.

  “What do you make of this stuff, Jacko?” asked Dillon with off-duty familiarity. “Personally, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

  “You said it, Pat,” O’Connell replied. “Especially since every time I look at that big one, with all the boogeymen and the plants that look like they could strangle you, I see Lam with his head in a scary mask and a rubber chicken’s foot on his leg.”

  “Seems like somebody bought the thing,” said Dillon with a grimace. “I think that’s what the red spot on the wall next to it means. If I took that home to hang on my wall, my wife would throw it out of the house and me along with it.”

  He turned his attention back to the gathering. “I see all the artists I interviewed, the Yanks and the frogs, including Breton and Duchamp. Even Matta showed up. They’re eccentric, all right, but a pretty decent bunch, really cared for Lam. Respected him, too. I’m glad it turned out none of them did him in.”

  O’Connell regarded him shrewdly. “You sure about that?”

  “What I’m sure of,” Dillon said, hedging, “is that it was an accident. Case closed. And I’m sure of something else, too.”

  “Which is?”

  “As sure as God made little green apples, them Surrealists are never gonna make another exquisite corpse.”

  Monday evening, October 18

  Carrying a battered cardboard suitcase in his right hand and a one-way ticket to Chicago in his left, Ricky Wong made his way along the Pennsylvania Station platform. Close behind him walked an On Leong henchman with a round-trip ticket, assigned to escort Ricky to the tong’s Midwest headquarters on Cermak Avenue and return with the news that he had been effectively absorbed into South Side Chinatown.

  Ricky’s minder was making no secret of his distaste for this babysitting job, and for the boy himself, who had royally botched his first important assignment. The man scowled and grumbled, impatient to be off yet dreading the sixteen-hour trip to an unfamiliar city, not to mention the tedium of the return journey. He figured it was punishment for some infraction, though he couldn’t put his finger on what he’d done to displease the boss—unlike Ricky, who knew only too well how he’d screwed up and why he was being banished.

  When he’d got to Lam’s apartment to pick up the package on Saturday night, the artist was drunk, or so it seemed, wandering around the studio in a daze. In his minimal English, Ricky kept insisting, “gimme bundle,” and couldn’t make any sense of what Lam was saying. He kept mumbling something about waiting, like Ricky should wait until he sobered up and remembered where he’d stashed it. No way was he going to hang around that long.

  Then Lam asked for more. More what? More time? More money? What the hell was he trying to pull? Ricky had arrived punctually at eight p.m., as arranged, and had strict orders to get the package, hand over the agreed-on thousand dollars, and go straight back to headquarters. He wasn’t there to argue or bargain.

  Exasperated, he grabbed Lam by the shirtfront and slapped his face, hoping that would sober him up. “Gimme now,” he demanded, not loud enough to alert the neighbors but forcefully enough to show Lam he meant business. If that didn’t work, there was always the switchblade in his sock.

  It didn’t work. Lam’s head lolled, his eyes couldn’t focus, and his body felt limp in Ricky’s grasp. As his knees started to give, Ricky pushed him away in disgust, but a bit too hard, sending him toppling backward. His head hit the floor, and he let out a gasp and fainted. At least that’s what it looked like.

  Ricky stood over him, sneering. “You pathetic lush,” he said in Cantonese. “I’ll show you, you don’t fool with an On Leong man.” As he crouched and took hold of Lam’s shirt again, intending to pull him up to sitting and brandish the knife, he realized the guy wasn’t breathing.

  Lam was dead.

  Ricky stared at the body in disbelief. He was suddenly lightheaded as his heart jumped and he felt the adrenaline rush. How did this happen? he asked himself. Drunks don’t die from falling down. They’re always falling down, and they just roll over and pass out. I didn’t hit him hard enough to kill him. It was just a slap, not even a punch.

  He began to sweat, then to panic. The cocaine forgotten, he bolted to the door and made a quick escape, though not before checking that the hall was clear. He hadn’t thought to wipe his prints off the doorknobs, but it was his one stroke of good luck that Carlos soon took care of that.

  On his way back to On Leong, Ricky considered how to explain his failure. If he said Lam wasn’t there, he’d be told to go back and wait for him. So his story was that Lam said the shipment had been delayed and promised to get in touch when it arrived. Such inconveniences were not unusual, especially in wartime, so the money was duly returned to the paymaster and the deal was tabled. But not for long.

  On Sunday, when Yun Gee brought word of Lam’s death, Ricky was hauled in and forced to explain what had happened. Standing meekly before the boss, terrified that he was about to suffer the same fate as Lam, he was relieved to learn that he would simply be shipped off to Chicago.

  Never raising his voice but with a reproachful coldness that chilled Ricky to the bone, the boss ordered him to visit Yun Gee on Monday, assure him that On Leong was not involved, then be ready to leave and tell no one where he was going or why.

  A slender hand emerged from the silk sleeve and gestured dismissively, sending Ricky away with a final caution. “You will never again speak of this regrettable incident. You say it was an accident. That may be so, but accidents can be costly. Let us hope that this one is not too expensive.”

  Fortune favored On Leong. The tong’s only costs were one long-distance telephone call and two tickets on the Broadway Limited.

  Wifredo Lam, The Jungle, 1943. Gouache on paper mounted on canvas, 94 ¼ x 90 ½ inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Inter-American Fund © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

  Afterword

  Many of the characters in this fictional narrative were real people who lived in New York City in October 1943, when John J. O’Connell (whom I demoted to his earlier rank of Detective Sergeant) was a chief police inspector serving under Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine. Milton Helpern, MD, later known as “The World’s Greatest Medical Detective,” was the city’s deputy chief medical examiner, and Barney Josephson was the proprietor of both Café Society Uptown and Downtown. André Breton was broadcasting for the Voice of America, and Harold Rosenberg was working for the Office of War Information. Peggy Guggenheim was presiding over her gallery, Art of This Century, and her cousin Harry, a former ambassador to Cuba, was the cofounder and president of Newsday. Alfred H. Barr Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, was fired by the museum’s president, Stephen C. Clark, in October, when Lena Horne was in town, appearing with Duke Ellington’s orchestra. All the artists who populate the story (none of whom were involved in drug smuggling) were there, too.

  All, that is, except one.

  After escaping from Nazi-occupied France in 1941, Wifredo Lam and his lover, Helena Holzer, traveled to Cuba, where he created his most famous painting, The Jungle, in his Hav
ana studio in 1943. He and Helena married the following year; they divorced in 1951. After the war, he divided his time among Cuba, France, and the United States, and later established a studio in Italy with the Swedish artist Lou Laurin, whom he married in 1960. Revered as the most distinguished Cuban artist of the twentieth century, he died in Paris in 1982.

  About the Author

  Helen A. Harrison, a former art reviewer and feature writer for The New York Times and visual arts commentator for National Public Radio, is the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, New York, and an authority on twentieth century American art. A native of New York City with a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Adelphi University, she also attended the Art Students League, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and Hornsey College of Art in London before receiving a master’s degree in art history from Case Western Reserve University. Among her many publications are exhibition catalogs, essays, book chapters, reviews and articles, and several non-fiction books, including Hamptons Bohemia: Two Centuries of Artists and Writers on the Beach, co-authored with Constance Ayers Denne, and monographs on Larry Rivers and Jackson Pollock. She and her husband, the artist Roy Nicholson, live in Sag Harbor, New York. You can visit her online at helenharrison.net.

  Check out the next book in the Art of Murder Mysteries series, An Accidental Corpse, available August 2020.