by S. J. Rozan
Like a punch in the gut.
“My God,” Sanger said. “This is a whole new level. It’s so focused, so distilled. And the shell picture”—this was the phrase the art press had coined for the overall painting, the large image that struck the viewer first—“is superb. Glorious in its own right. The light, the immediacy.” He said this with a gleam in his eyes, a true admirer’s thrill.
“Sam, it really is coming along beautifully.” Sherron Konecki spoke like she was about to give Sam a gold star.
“Is this the direction you’re moving in now?” asked Sanger.
Looking at the floor, Sam shrugged. His fingertips played on his thumbs. Konecki said, “Sam?” in a voice that was soft, but in the way of tiptoeing footsteps on creaky stairs.
Sam’s hands stopped moving. He mumbled, “I guess. I don’t know. I never know.”
Sanger beamed. “Well, this one’s marvelous. Do you have any sense of when it will be finished?”
Sam just shook his head.
“I’m afraid there’s no way to tell, Michael,” said the Ice Queen. “But if you’d like to put a reserve on it now—”
“Yes, yes. And if there are more like it…” Sanger turned again to Sam, who could only shrug.
“We’ll have to see whether this starts a new series,” Konecki said. “It’s too early to know yet. Sam’s not one of those capricious artists, always heading off in new directions before they’ve fully explored the aesthetic and technical potential of the work they’ve begun.”
Lemuria handled a few of those artists, too, hummingbirds of style, medium, and content. The gallery’s written materials called them fearless, future-focused, and unsatisfied to play it safe.
“Whatever comes next,” Konecki went on, “I’m sure it will be extraordinary. What it will be, we’ll just have to wait and see. But, Michael, you were one of the first to appreciate Sam’s work. That’s why I wanted you to see this. You can be first to see what comes next, too, if you’d like.”
“I definitely would! Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Tabor. I certainly don’t mean to rush you. Would it be all right if I looked around the studio?” Sanger seemed unsure whether to address this question to Sam or his dealer, so he kept his head in motion between them.
Sam’s face went a little grayer, but Sherron Konecki said, “Yes, of course. Though you understand the pencil sketches aren’t for sale? Sam doesn’t like to part with the sketches, on principle.”
“Oh, no, that’s fine. I’d just like so much to see them, if I may.”
Konecki led Sanger to a wall of soft-pencil studies for the piece on the easel.
“Let’s leave,” Sam whispered to me when Konecki and Sanger had crossed the room. “While they’re not looking. Let’s go get a drink.”
“Are you serious?”
“No. I think she has a taser. But what am I supposed to do? I can’t paint with them here. What do real artists do when people are in their studios?”
“You’re a real artist, Sam. Whatever you do, that’s what they do.”
“Just stand here? That’s stupid. Why can’t they leave?”
“What does Ellissa Cromley do?” I asked that because Sam’s hands had started twitching again. I was hoping I could distract him, keep him calm, until they actually did leave. Not so he wouldn’t make a scene—in fact I’d have been curious to see how Konecki handled that in front of an important collector—but I had more questions for him, and I wanted him to be in shape to answer them.
“Ellissa? She stops painting and has a beer with them. I think. That’s what she does with me. I haven’t been there when anyone else comes.” He added, “It pisses her off that Sherron never comes.”
“Is there a reason she should?”
“Sherron’s always going there to find me. Like just now. And she knows Ellissa from that committee. She looked at her work when the committee started and decided she didn’t like it, but Ellissa says she didn’t really look. Ellissa says she’s the one that got Sherron the golden goose—that’s me,” he clarified, in case I hadn’t caught on, “and the least Sherron could do is really look at her work. Some of the other dealers sort of do, like if Ellissa’s over here when they come and she invites them. But they really only stick their noses partway in. She says literally no one ever goes near her easels.”
Probably because they’re afraid of getting buried in a landslide, I thought, but only said, “Other dealers?”
“The ones who wanted me. Like Ellissa’s gallery did. I liked some of them, but Peter said Sherron would be the best fit. I don’t even know what that means.”
“But the others still come here?”
“They like to look at my new work, how it’s changing. They all say that, without saying why they think it would be changing. ‘Because we got you out of prison, you lucky guy, we made you a free man even though you killed Amy. So go on, paint! Paint all kinds of new things, you’re free! Except you’re not free from us, we can pop in and bother you whenever we want and you have to put up with it because we got you out of—’ ”
“Sam. Sam! Stop.” So much for my project of distracting him and keeping him calm.
Sam dropped his agitated arms and blinked at me. Across the room, Sherron Konecki and Michael Sanger started on a pile of drawings. Sam flinched when Konecki turned over a drawing and laid it on the previous one without aligning them, and then did it again.
“Shit,” said Sam. “Maybe I should go to Ellissa’s studio and get a beer. That really must be what artists do, because it’s what Tony does, too.”
“Tony Oakhurst? He comes to visit Ellissa, too?” I moved a little to my right so Sam would turn to face me and Konecki and Sanger would shift out of his field of vision.
“Don’t be silly. She wouldn’t let him in. Well, she would, because he’s a super-big deal. But he doesn’t come. They don’t like each other very much.”
“Why not?”
“He says her work is weak and gutless. She says he thinks that because she paints women and he’s a big, fat sexist. He’s really not fat, you know, but that’s what she says. She says he’s not my friend, he’s just using me. I don’t know what for. My mom always said I was useless.”
Mom was a bad road to start down. I asked, “Does Oakhurst have a studio here?”
“In this building? God, no. Like I said, he’s a super-big deal. That’s him down there. The whole thing. Office, studio, apartment in the back.”
Sam pointed out the window to a one-story, midblock building with rows of angled skylights. Once, it had been some kind of factory, the skylights providing cheap illumination for laborers. Now, if that was where Tony Oakhurst lived and worked, they provided light for a photographer known for his shadows.
Sam went on, “It must be nice, having a whole building. You can lock the door. Sometimes he calls me and tells me to come over for a drink. I like to go”—he lowered his voice—“except when Sherron’s there. She’s his dealer, too. He’s the one who brought her up to Greenhaven to meet me. I once went over when she was there and when I went to the bathroom, they had a big fight. Well, Sherron was fighting. Tony was laughing, but he was serious, you know? It was about me. So I stayed in the bathroom.”
Potentially distracting, and also intriguing. “About you?”
“Tony wanted Sherron to do something, I think to show some of his work, but she said no, it was over the line and would damage his brand. Like he’s a department store. Or a cattle ranch.” Sam laughed as though reacting to someone else’s funny idea. “And Tony said, ‘You can’t be serious, you’re showing Sam,’ and she said, ‘Painting’s different from photography,’ and he laughed and said, ‘Bullshit,’ and it sounded like Mom and Dad all over again, so I didn’t come out of the bathroom until Sherron was gone.”
Uh-oh, Mom and Dad. That didn’t sound like a fight about Sam to me, but I got that our points of view were different. Something else occurred to me. “Sam, you drink with Oakhurst?”
“We hang out
. Now you’re going to give me the alkie lecture, right? You’re going to tell me Tony’s a bad influence, tsk, tsk, tsk, Sam. That’s what Peter says, and Leslie, too, but she doesn’t like anybody, especially anybody who says I don’t have to listen to her and Peter.”
Poor Oakhurst. Sounded like no one but Sam liked him. “How long have you been hanging out with him?”
“Since I got out. Kind of before that, even. He was on the committee. He used to come visit me upstate. He brought the COs fancy cigars. That’s not allowed—you can’t give them things—but he did. Him and Sherron, she came, too. Not together, except that first time he brought her. Ellissa came, too. After four years of only Peter, not even Leslie, suddenly every Wednesday, it’s Tabor, Tabor, Tabor! The other cons made fun of me. ‘Our baby boy’s famous!’ And you should have seen the guards staring at Sherron. I—”
“Stop. Go back. Oakhurst.”
“I liked it when he came. We’d talk. He’d ask me all kinds of things about how it feels to paint. No one ever asked me that, except Peter when we were kids. It was cool to talk about.” Sam’s face darkened. “Except one day he asked me what it felt like to kill Amy. I didn’t like that. I told him I didn’t remember. I told him to stop asking that.”
“Did he?”
“He asked it one more time, a couple of weeks later. I think he forgot I didn’t want him to.”
“Sam, you hang out with him,” I said. “Could you have been with him the night of either of the murders?”
“Oh.” Sam stopped. He looked out the window, then back at me. “I don’t know. You think maybe? You think he’ll remember?”
“I think I’ll ask him.”
Sam gave me Oakhurst’s studio number. I called, gazing across the street at the skylit building while the phone rang. A young woman answered. Sounding bored, she told me Mr. Oakhurst couldn’t speak to me at the moment. She was about to tell me he’d be available a week from never until I said Sam Tabor had told me to call.
“Oh,” she roused herself to say. “Just a minute.” She put me on hold, where Nina Simone was singing “Sinnerman.” Nina had just started “My Baby Just Cares for Me” when the young woman returned to tell me, “Tony will be back in the late afternoon. Can you come by then? Say four o’clock?”
We said four o’clock and I hung up.
Sam and I watched Michael Sanger, across the room, lean close to inspect the top drawing on a pile. He didn’t touch it, but Sherron Konecki lifted it to show him the one below it. Sam cringed.
“I don’t want to have a beer with them,” he said. “I want them to go.”
I was contemplating whether clearing out Sam’s studio for him was too much like babysitting when a knock came at the door. Sam looked shocked and thrilled, like he’d been spoken to by a burning bush. “Maybe it’s Ellissa. Or Tony.” He rushed to pull open the door. “Oh,” he said. He regrouped, looking surprised but not disappointed. “Hi.”
I started walking over so I could see who it was, but I didn’t have to, because Detective Angela Grimaldi strolled right in.
“Sam.” She nodded neutrally. “And Smith. Sticking close to your client, I see.”
The Ice Queen had spun around at the knock. When she heard “client,” she flashed her blue laser stare at me; then she fixed Grimaldi with it. “Who are you?”
Grimaldi’s navy jacket was cut loose enough to hide her gun, but the gold shield she held out to Konecki told the story. “Grimaldi, Nineteenth Precinct. Just here for a look-see.”
“What are you talking about? Sam’s a free man. You have no right—this is harassment! Get out, now.”
Grimaldi looked at Sam. “Who’s this?”
Sam opened his mouth, but no sound came.
“I swear, if you’re not out of here in ten seconds, I’ll call the commissioner.” Sherron Konecki whipped out a cell phone.
“You have his private number? Aren’t you the lucky lady.” Grimaldi sauntered through the studio. “Sam, you want to tell your watchdog why you invited me here?”
Sam looked like what he really wanted was to melt into the floor.
Konecki turned the glare to him. “Sam? What is she talking about? You invited the police here? Did they say you had to? It’s not true. They have no right to bother you anymore.”
Sam, his hands flailing but his arms not moving, looked at Konecki, at Sanger, at Grimaldi, at me.
“Sam! Come with me.” Konecki turned her back and strode to the far corner of the room. There she stood, ramrod straight, waiting. Sam started in her direction.
It seemed to me his odds weren’t good, so I went, too.
9
Back down on 39th Street, in front of the building that housed Sam’s studio, I called Lydia. “The cat’s out of the bag,” I told her.
“That’s good, it probably wasn’t happy there. What are you talking about?”
I described the scene upstairs a few minutes ago: me trying to lay a lie on Sherron Konecki, suggesting Sam had asked both me and the NYPD to do a security assessment of his studio. For one thing, I was trying to honor Peter Tabor’s request to keep this investigation as quiet as possible. Also, it seemed to me the suggestion of a simple paranoia in Sam might be easier for Konecki to take than his full-blown serial killer delusion. Or the small, but not nonexistent, possibility that he was right.
But Sam hadn’t been able to play along. He’d tried for about a minute, but when your grip on reality is as tenuous as Sam’s, a deliberate lie must be too slippery to hold. He’d spilled the beans—why I was there, what Grimaldi was looking for, what he was afraid would happen next. The Ice Queen had grown, almost unbelievably, paler as Sam babbled on. She’d said nothing, and her expression barely changed; but her glacier eyes would have frozen Sam to the spot if he’d met her gaze just once. Even when he’d talked himself out, he wouldn’t look at her. She turned the ice rays on me, but she hadn’t gotten me out of prison and she wasn’t the source of my livelihood and fame, so all I got was a little frostbite around the edges.
“Well, maybe it’ll fade to a tan,” Lydia said. “What about the collector? Did he run away screaming when he heard about this?”
“He started by staying on the other side of the room like a good boy, politely looking through drawings while this drama went on in the corner and Grimaldi wandered around opening boxes and sniffing rags. But Sam couldn’t keep his voice down. I’m not sure how much Sanger heard, but Konecki had one eye on him the whole time. So did I. Sanger’s face was like some kind of cartoon worry-o-meter. When it hit ‘dismay,’ Konecki stopped the proceedings.”
“How?”
“Adroitly. She interrupted Sam and said she’d heard enough. She told him her concern was for his work and his talent, and that Grimaldi and I were obviously dealing with this other situation, which would no doubt play out fine in the end.”
“There’s positive thinking for you.”
“She said she and Sanger had another appointment, and this would be a good time for Sam to go home and get some rest so he’ll be in top form for the Whitney opening.”
“I’m surprised she’s letting him out of her sight.”
“What could she do? She had a big collector on the hook, with other artists she wanted to show him. Her car was waiting downstairs. She sent Sam home in it. He practically dove in through the back window.”
“What makes her think he’ll show up for the opening?”
“Because she told the driver there’s a bonus in it for him if he parks outside Sam’s building from now until then, sticks to Sam like glue if he goes anywhere, and delivers him to the Whitney at seven.”
“That sounds kind of out of line for an art dealer.”
“Sam actually didn’t mind. The part he heard was, he gets to stay home all day. I think he may be secretly happy there’s someone keeping an eye on him.”
“So he doesn’t kill anyone? It’s not the right time for it.”
“No, but if you’re a werewolf, you worry that any
light might be the moon.”
“That’s too deep for me.”
“Anyway, Sam promised me he’d be at the Whitney. As Peter said, on time and with his pants on.”
“Promised you?”
“But only if I promised him the same thing. So this is fair warning. You have a couple of hours to decide what to wear.”
“I’m going, too?”
“And lucky they’ll be to have you.”
“Isn’t it a big black-tie affair?”
“What, you don’t have a tux?”
“What, you do?”
“No, but I have my funeral suit. And I’m heading out now to buy a black tie.”
* * *
Lydia and I made plans to meet up before the opening and exchange accounts of the day. Then I called to make an appointment at my next destination. The wonder of a cell phone is, by the time I hung up, I was already there.
The office of The Tabor Group took up half a floor of a steel-and-glass 1960s high-rise in the West 40s. The place wasn’t unfamiliar to me. Some of the meetings about Sam’s case had been held here. I thought back to the scene around the conference room table: Peter, worried and uncertain; Leslie, angry and impatient; Susan Tulis, always professional, always kind. Sam hadn’t been there; because of the nature of the crime and the possibility that he was insane (“Possibility?” Leslie had muttered), he’d been held without bail. When the team had needed to talk to him, we’d met at Rikers.
I gave the receptionist my name and settled in the waiting area, where the office’s work glowed from backlit slide murals on two walls. The projects were recent ones, and they struck me as different from the work I remembered. The suburban office building on my left and the three private houses on my right seemed clean-lined, rigorous, and user-friendly, as the office’s work had always been; but I also saw a startling originality and an audaciousness that were new since I’d last been here. New since Sam had gone to prison.
