Killing Critics

by Carol O’Connell

  “He’ll want to take advantage of the publicity on the murder. Also, he has to unload the work as fast as he can. It’s such a crock, it even strains the credulity of the amateur collector.”

  “What about the artist who died with Aubry? Was he any good?”

  “Peter Ariel? Well, for a dead junkie and a third-rate hack, he had one hell of a run on the secondary market. But what a critic thinks of his work doesn’t matter.”

  “Explain.” It was an order.

  He obliged her. “Collectors don’t listen to art critics anymore. They listen to their accountants, who tell them how the artist is doing in the primary market. Then, they can make projections on the staying power in the secondary market.”

  “What is this, Quinn? Are we talking art, or stocks and bonds?”

  “Same thing. The actual art means very little in the greater schematic of finance. The initial buyers paid a low price for Peter Ariel’s sculptures. After his death, the work was worth a small fortune on the resale market. The early resale buyers were ghouls who collect souvenirs of messy homicides. The amateur collectors misunderstood, bought the work at the inflated price, and held on to it too long. Once the ghoul market was saturated, the price declined to the cost of the artist’s materials.”

  She stopped walking, and he stopped. By only standing there, she was tethering him to the same square of the sidewalk. “You never mentioned any of this to Markowitz, did you?”

  Now how did she manage to frame a question as an accusation? “No, I didn’t. The focus was always on Aubry, not Peter Ariel.”

  She resumed her purposeful walking, and he kept pace with her, still tethered. “There was another artist mentioned in Bliss’s review-Gillian, the vandal artist. What do you know about him?”

  “He has an exhibition of photographs in a gallery at the end of this block. You might find it diverting.”

  “Photography? I thought vandalism was his style.”

  “Wait till you see the photographs, Mallory.”

  They entered the Greene Street gallery by way of a narrow stairway to the second floor. The rough steel door opened onto a large white space filled with light from loft windows lining the street front. People were milling around, some looking at the photographs on the wall. A man stood by a desk, holding sheets of slides to the light. Done with one sheet, he tossed it onto a pile at his feet and went on to the next.

  Quinn pointed to this man. “Some artists spend a hundred hours on a single painting, and the gallery director spends a minute looking at twenty slides of their work. Occasionally, I time them. Call it a hobby. This man’s about average, a minute an artist.”

  They drifted to the collection of photographs on the near wall. The work was an amateur’s effort in bad lighting, with no eye for composition. The first photograph was of a crack in an old statue. Gillian’s signature was printed in the fresh wound. All the rest were much the same, differing only in the statuary. Each work of art was harmed by a chip or a crack and signed by the assailant.

  Mallory looked bewildered for a moment, but made a quick recovery. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Vandalism of priceless art? Yes. There’s a more interesting show in the next room.” He took her arm and guided her into the adjoining gallery space.

  “At least it doesn’t smell,” said Mallory, counting the spilled garbage cans. There were twelve in all, contents strewn about the floor. He led her down a clear passage, sans garbage, saying, “I want you to know that the garbage was authentically spilled, and not purposefully arranged this way. The artist is a purist. He has integrity.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Yes, but it’s also true.”

  Other people stood in ones and pairs, inspecting garbage spills. One young man, wearing the art student’s slashed-at-the-knee-for-no-good-reason blue jeans, was standing in the corner making notes on the half-eaten guacamole which he had found in the garbage spill that he was fondest of.

  “So why doesn’t it smell?” she asked.

  “The gallery owner thought it might put off the paying customers. It’s coated with resin. The artist didn’t like that. He wanted it to rot naturally.”

  “Naturally-he’s a purist.”

  “Now you’ve got it, Mallory.”

  “And that show in the front room, the vandalism?”

  “All the statues are from the Greek collection of a major museum, and they don’t want to encourage any more of this. The museum director gave me a ‘No comment,’ but I noted all the statues had been removed. When they go on display again, there won’t be any trace of the damage.”

  “I bet they bought out the show.”

  He nodded. “You’re right, they did. This show will close as soon as their check clears the bank. They were very good-natured mugging victims. Rumor has it they ransomed the negatives, too.”

  “I just can’t believe this,” she said.

  “New York City. What’s not to believe?”

  Twenty minutes later, Quinn was sipping espresso under the green awning of a sidewalk cafe on Bleecker Street and ferreting out Mallory’s tastes in art. It seemed she only liked minimalism, and only because it was neat and clean, not cluttered with tony metaphors and messy paints. She had no use for any extraneous line or shape.

  When she was done, he said, “Well then, why not take a blue pencil to James Joyce, edit out all the extraneous stuff that doesn’t really further the plot? Most people don’t understand the metaphors anyway. So we could probably whittle Ulysses down to a manageable short story.”

  He was smiling now, because she was smiling, and he was helpless to do otherwise. He wondered where she had learned that beguiling trick. An old memory brought him up short, as he realized she was perfectly mimicking the smile of the late Louis Markowitz. He was startled, but also confident that it did not show.

  He continued as though nothing had happened, as though he had not just seen a ghost. “And then we’ll have literature that’s more accessible to a thirteen-year-old subnormal. Why make people reach for art, when they can pick it up off the floor?”

  Her hand went up to say, Enough, I get the point. He went on anyway. And so began Mallory’s first lecture on the other language, the metaphor of subject, the symbolism of object, the poetry evoked by color and shape, by texture and line, what was said by the immediacy of a single violent stroke of a brush or the subtle shading of a pencil.

  And then she asked, “So where’s my metaphor in the garbage and the vandalism?”

  “All right, you win.” He sensed that winning was the main thing with her, the very key to her. “You’re still planning on attending the ball tomorrow night?”

  “Yes, and I still need an interview with Gregor Gilette. You’ve got that covered, right? He’ll keep it quiet?”

  He smiled and let her take that for a positive response. “But you must let me help you with something else. The opening for the next Dean Starr show is by invitation only. I could have Koozeman invite you.”

  “I don’t need an invitation-I’m the police. Riker says you weren’t planning to review the first Dean Starr show. So I have to wonder why you were there that night.”

  Like Riker, she had saved her best cut for last. Her style, however, was a departure from her partner’s-not a blunt and clumsy accusation, but a trap. She only stared at him now, defying him to lie to her and try to get away with it.

  “Riker was right, I never review hacks. A bad review is counterproductive. Repetition of the name is fame in New York City. I only went to the opening for the food and wine. It’s so rare to find hors d’oeuvres served in galleries anymore.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously, Mallory, you can hardly believe I went there to appreciate art.”

  The woman ceased to drag her rolling wire cart, which was partially covered by a tarp. Tired, she leaned on the cart handle as she watched the art critic leaving the Bleecker Street cafe with the young blond woman. Quinn held open the door of a small
tan car. The young woman disappeared into it and drove off. Now he crossed Bleecker Street and approached the woman with the wire cart. He looked into her eyes, where it was winter of weak iris skies and clouding cataracts. He nodded to her, and a bit of paper passed from his hand to hers as he passed her by.

  Her palsied hand jolted the cart. Trembling fingers pulled back the tarp as the woman peered inside it, eyes fixing on a tea tin, believing she had heard a thought. Snow drifted through her mind and she lost the threads to where she was and why she was. The dead child’s brains gently remembered for her. “Move on,” urged the voice from the tin. The woman nodded and moved on down Bleecker Street.

  She seemed a collection of things found and put together. Her four skirts were a concert, whispers of dead leaves shushing along toward Lafayette and turning south on that street. Her head of iron-gray hair wobbled on a slender bird’s neck. She crossed wide Houston with her free hand tucked in, giving one arm the appearance of a useless wing, atrophied or broken.

  She tripped on the curb and lurched suddenly, upsetting the cart. The tea tin went tumbling as the cart settled in a gutter. The tin was rearranged among the other contents layered over and around it. A crusted knapsack spilled a shiny stream of bottle caps, broken pins, tin silverware and other small found things-pretty only, good for nothing.

  The woman righted her cart and veered east on Houston. Forgetting, minutes later, that the dead child’s brains had ever spoken, she turned a corner onto Essex Street. Trash cans seemed to grow there in abundance. She looked over her newfound wealth with the eye of a connoisseur. A flash of metal caught her eye with a ricochet of sunlight. There, on one trash can, was a knife. It was crack-toothed and broken-handled, but still good for cutting meat. She stared at it until the voice from the tea tin cautioned, “Forget.”

  But the mad persistence of memory won out. She began to shake. A cold miasma of fear settled about her shoulders and forced her to her knees and to ground. She clawed at her hair, eyes bulging at what memory was showing her, sobbing, shuddering, screaming, screams quieting now to moans as the dead child’s brains called up the blessed snow of forgetfulness.

  Emma Sue Hollaran was sedated when her body was being transferred to the operating table. The nurse partially draped her in a green sheet. Her exposed legs were marked in sections with black crayon lines like the diagram of a cow in a butcher shop.

  Her eyes slowly roved the small operating theater and the familiar gowned figures of the surgeon and the nurse. Another familiar person was the anesthesiologist. Since this man spoke not one word of English, she was certain that he was not certified to practice medicine in this country. So she could assume he worked cheap, and she never complained.

  The plastic surgeon’s face hovered over her for a moment before her eyes closed, and her mind was swept away in the anesthetic whirlpool. She was well beyond feeling the first stroke of the scalpel as it cut into her body.

  A long hose was inserted into a bloody hole in her left thigh. The music of youth and beauty began with squishy suction noises, the siphoning of fat sucking to the steady beat of the motor which powered the wildly upscale vacuum cleaner. What came out of her was the color and texture of yellow chicken fat, grease and blood. Another hole was made on the inside thigh, and the ugly bits of her body collected in a glass jar at the end of the hose. Another hole was cut in her skin, and another for the next leg-more globules slopped into the jar.

  In a dream state she heard a voice say, “Time to roll the meat.”

  More holes were made in the back of her knees. The long rod was moving under her skin, minding the black marks of the butcher shop diagram. The vacuum cleaner was slurping up fat, ripping away pieces of her body with its greedy incessant sucking.

  Two hours later, her eyes were open again. The surgeon was standing over her, saying a polite variation of You’re nuts-totally insane! His exact words were, “At your insistence, I removed more fat than I should have. You’re going to need rest for at least three days, if not longer. No lifting, no bending, no stairs. Going to a dress ball is absolutely out of the question.”

  “Bullshit.”

  The Manhattan Charities Ball was a networker’s dream. Every power figure in the city would be there. But best of all, Gregor Gilette would be there. She was nearly ready for him. Her triple chin had been suctioned away to a mere double roll of flesh. And her legs would be svelte beneath the tight wrap of a ball gown that was not designed for dancing, and most certainly not designed to be worn by the likes of Emma Sue Hollaran.

  “So how’s Doris?”

  Dr. Edward Slope pushed back the Plexiglas face guard and looked up at her with a quizzical eye.

  Kathy Mallory was one of few cops who could make idle conversation over the open chest of a dead man. The only thing that bothered him was that she never made small talk.

  Now he left his assistant the chore of bagging the body parts and replacing them in the open cavity. He removed his gloves and gown as he walked Mallory to the door of the autopsy room. “Doris is just fine.” He tossed the bloody garments into a disposal bin. “She wonders why you never come by for dinner.”

  “And Fay?”

  “Oh, you know kids. Last week she wanted to be a veterinarian, and now she’s decided to be a musician. I can see the tuition bills rolling in from Juilliard now.”

  “Is she giving you any problems?”

  “We’re working it out.”

  “So you’re going to keep her?”

  “She’s a little girl. It’s not quite the same as returning an unsatisfactory pet to the Puppyland Kennels. And Doris is already planning on grandchildren. You could say it’s a done deal. So now you’re doing civilized small talk. Helen would be proud of you, Kathy.”

  “Mallory,” she corrected him. “So, can we talk body parts now?”

  “Sure.” He plucked a file from the rack and held the door for her. The air in the hall was warmer, and the odor of death was exchanged for the strong disinfectant smell of chlorine.

  His office farther down the hall had the smell of stale cigar smoke, and a hint of the aftershave he slathered on for his wife’s sake. “You’re lucky Starr’s gallery dealer didn’t want to waste money on embalming.” As he sat down to his cluttered desk, he waved her to a leather armchair. “So tell me what you want first. Markowitz would’ve wanted to know what he had for breakfast.”

  “Did he die instantly?”

  “No, by the blood flow, I’d give him a full minute to live.”

  “I want to know why he didn’t scream. He’d just been stabbed. That must have hurt like hell.”

  “Not necessarily. He had enough drugs and wine in his system to dull the pain of major surgery. And the back isn’t the most sensitive area of the body. You’d be surprised how many people have reported not realizing they’d been stabbed in the back. They know something’s happened. There’s a localized pain, but they’re not aware of the penetration. I can tell you there’s evidence of long-term drug habituation.”

  “Same as Peter Ariel, the artist who died twelve years ago.”

  She handed him a copy of his own autopsy report on Ariel. He scanned the lines, and finding the entry he wanted, he nodded his head. “Both artists used the same combination of drugs. It’s a heroin cocktail with some interesting additives. Why in God’s name are you digging around in that old case? It was over and done with twelve years ago.”

  “It’s being reopened… quietly. We never had this little chat, okay? So, the heroin cocktail gives me a link to Peter Ariel.”

  “Well, no it doesn’t. You won’t find the exact same combination. They have brand names now. Even if the combo is close, a lawyer could argue that link is no stronger than two people sharing the same blend of tobacco or coffee beans.”

  “What about the weapon?”

  “I agree with the first postmortem. Ice pick probably. But you were right, it couldn’t be the one they found by the body. It had to be at least six to seven inches in leng
th. I’m guessing the point of the weapon was filed down. The rod was thin for an ice pick, and razor sharp. No tearing on entry. Very smooth, very neat. There wouldn’t be any blood splatters on the clothing of the killer. It’s the perfect weapon for a public killing.”

  “I need another link to the old murder.”

  “Frankly, outside of the drugs, I can’t see the similarity at all. The first crime was brutal, insane. Kathy, I don’t-”

  “Mallory,”she corrected him as she always did. They had played this game for all of the five years since she had joined the police force and forbidden him to use her given name.

  “Well, you’re still Kathy to me. I’ve known you since you were ten.”

  “Eleven,” she corrected him again.

  “Ten. You lied that extra year onto your age. You put it past Helen Markowitz, but you never fooled me. So don’t expect me to treat you like a cop, when every time I look at you I see a ten-year-old brat. You haven’t changed all that much, Kathy.”

  “Mallory.‘’

  “All right, what else do you want from me?”

  “I want to know about the detail that Markowitz held back.”

  “I have no idea what you mean. We never discussed the case after the autopsy. I know Markowitz didn’t believe it was Oren Watt, but I did.”

  “I know the old man was holding out-that was his trademark. There was something he didn’t want anyone else to know, not even his own men. It was a real bad year for department leaks. It seemed like every damn detail of a case wound up in the tabloids. He knew Oren Watt was lying when he confessed. I know the old man had something, and he used it to trip up Watt. It was something about one of the bodies, wasn’t it?”

  “That was twelve years ago. I’ve worked on a great many bodies since then.”