The Murals

by William Bayer

  I waited for her out on the street, watching as she took the dressed doll from the window, carried it to the backroom, locked that door, then came out, locked down the roller screen and took hold of my arm.

  Things are moving almost too quickly, I thought. Not only had she kissed me twice, betrayed her boss, showed me erotic art, revealed confidential information, but she’d declared that she liked a man who wasn’t afraid to go for what he wanted – all signals that she harbored expectations for the evening which I was a little hesitant to fulfill.

  You’re on a mission, Jase, so do what you have to do, Hannah had said. OK, I thought, if that’s what it’s going to take, I’ll do it.

  She guided me to an upscale restaurant several blocks up Zuerichstrasse. Outside, she scanned the menu, described the house specialties and asked if I found any appealing.

  ‘All of them,’ I told her.

  ‘This place is kind of expensive.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ I said. ‘I like good food.’

  ‘Oh, I can tell,’ she said, lightly patting my belly. ‘Am I being too familiar?’

  ‘Familiar’s great,’ I assured her as we stepped inside.

  We spent a good part of the meal discussing outsider art. When I asked her why she was so keen on it, she gave a credible answer.

  ‘It’s so earthy. And the artists are so different. They’re not locked into movements or periods. I love their unschooled self-expression. Yes, some have had training, but most are self-taught. For example, I believe the Ragdoll Artist’s work represents deeply personal obsessions. Difficult to know what drives her, what she’s trying to say. I really like art that’s mysterious.’

  ‘Seems to me she’s expressing the double-sided nature of people, the masks they show the world and faces that betray their inner selves.’

  ‘Of course, on one level, but I think it may go deeper.’

  ‘To something in her childhood perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps some trauma she feels compelled to relive and deal with.’

  ‘Dolls are for children. Perhaps that’s a key.’

  ‘You keep surprising me, Jason.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You’re a very perceptive guy.’

  ‘I’m not sure how to take all these nice things you keep saying about me.’

  ‘Take them at face value,’ she said, then looked down shyly at her lobster bisque.

  I had a pretty good hunch as to what she had planned, but she surprised me as we were finishing dessert.

  ‘I’d like it if you’d take me home,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t really enjoy intercourse. I know that statement’s almost certain to turn a man off. And we are out on a date, aren’t we?’ I nodded. ‘There is something I do enjoy doing with a guy, and if you’re game, I’d like to do it with you.’ She grinned at me. ‘Curious?’

  ‘Very,’ I told her.

  She lowered her eyes. ‘Cuddling. Do you think you’d like to do that?’

  Relieved, I told her that I would like that very much.

  She acted surprised. ‘Really?’

  ‘Actually, it’s one of my favorite things,’ I told her. ‘Anyone can have sex. Cuddling – that’s special.’

  ‘Then we’re still on the same track, two peas in a pod.’

  Yeah, two peas in a pod, I thought. She’s a nice young woman, and, like everyone, she has her needs. This time, fortunately, I don’t have to suss hers out.

  She lived in what she called a ‘bedsit,’ a bedroom/sitting-room combo in a rooming house fifteen minutes from the town center, equipped with a hotplate, tiny fridge and small linoleum-lined bathroom. Art books were neatly arranged on one shelf, family photos on another. Two framed posters for outsider art exhibitions hung on the wall. The bedspread was fluffy, the pillows encased in frilly shams.

  I won’t go into detail about the cuddling. It was fairly innocent. She didn’t get naked, simply took off her watch, earrings and blouse, then lay back on the bed still wearing jeans and bra. I took off my jacket and lay down beside her, took her in my arms and gently stroked her back.

  She explained herself when, after we’d engaged this way for a while, she revealed that more than anything she enjoyed being held.

  ‘I know it’s neurotic,’ she said, ‘but I’m not going to apologize for needing it. I’m so glad to meet someone who understands. Most guys expect sex. I hate the hook-up culture. Guess I’m too old-fashioned for people my age.’

  ‘Don’t knock yourself,’ I told her. ‘You’ve had boyfriends?’

  ‘I have,’ she admitted.

  She told me about her high-school boyfriend, and the one she had at her university, Bristol; the ups and downs of these relationships. As we spoke in whispers, I sensed her drifting off.

  I couldn’t let her do that, couldn’t leave without finding out what else she knew about the Ragdoll Artist.

  When I told her I had to get back to my hotel, she reached down, brushed her hand lightly across the front of my pants, felt my hardness and smiled to herself.

  I read this gesture as vampish. Seemed Connie wasn’t as pure as she let on. Watching her as she got off the bed and heated water for tea, I vowed not to let our hour of cuddling go to waste.

  ‘There’s something I’ve been dying to ask you,’ I said, as we sat opposite one another in the sitting area, sipping and winding down. ‘I’m a little apprehensive about how you’ll react.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said, ‘ask me anything.’

  ‘It’s about the Ragdoll Artist.’

  ‘Ha! Well, I really don’t know much about her,’ she said. ‘And neither does Frau Weber, though, of course, she knows more than me. You see, there’s a middleman, intermediary, whatever you want to call him – a middle-aged man with a short-pointed beard. Maybe older than middle-aged, like late fifties. I’m guessing because I only saw him once. Monday’s normally my day off. That’s the day the gallery’s closed, and that’s the day he comes by. I happened to be there one Monday catching up on paperwork when I saw him arrive. He was hauling a suitcase, the roller type. He rang the bell, Frau Weber let him in, then turned to me and suggested I go out to a café for an hour so she and the gentleman could transact business. The man nodded kindly at me but Frau Weber didn’t introduce us. When I got back, he was gone, but later there was a new ragdoll in the backroom. Frau Weber wanted me to see it. “Isn’t this one a beauty!” she said. I agreed that it was. “Is he the artist?” I asked, referring to the man. She laughed. “No, he’s the go-between,” she said. And that’s all I know … except for one thing. He comes like clockwork on the first Monday of every month. I know because every first Tuesday when I come into work, there’s a new doll in the backroom.’

  ‘So the Ragdoll Artist makes twelve a year?’

  ‘Evidently, but Frau Weber doesn’t sell them all. She holds some back. She says this is how a gallerist creates rarity.’ She paused. ‘Frau Weber’s taught me a lot.’

  Certain I’d found out everything Connie knew, it was time for me to go. Although I recognized that the seduction (such as it was) had been hers, I felt kind of bad about deceiving her. Each of us wanted something from the other. In the end, each of us achieved his/her desired goal. And isn’t that the best kind of deal, the kind when both parties leave satisfied?

  I phoned Hannah from the airport, filled her in. ‘First Monday of the month – that’s three weeks off. I’ll come back then if it’s OK with you, and if the kindly middle-aged man with the roller case shows up, I’ll follow him.’

  ‘Oh, it’s more than all right,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’ll come with you. As for following, I think we’ll need some help with that. So, Jase – who knew you’d be such an excellent detective, a regular Sherlock Holmes? I just hope you didn’t have to do anything contrary to your moral code.’

  My cuddling story delighted her. ‘That’s just so sweet,’ she said. ‘And innocent. Lucky girl to get to cuddle with the great Jason Poe.’

/>   Joan Nguyen

  The police corruption story was at a standstill, as long-term investigations often are, and so far I hadn’t heard anything new from Tony Delgado on the secret CFD arson investigation. I called around, told various fire department officials I’d heard an arson specialist named Gallagher was running a special unit, and to please tell him I’d like to talk to him and pass on my name and number.

  I got stonewalled. No one would admit there was such a unit or that anyone named Gallagher had been brought in to run it. That is, until I got the CFD commissioner’s assistant on the line. She didn’t bother to hide her annoyance. ‘We’re busy here. I’m not running a damn relay station. Call him yourself.’ She rattled off a number and hung up.

  I dialed the number, got Gallagher’s voicemail, left him a message. When he didn’t call me back, I called him again the following day, and again the next, leaving the same message each time, expressing varying degrees of pleading, disappointment and fervor. OK, he didn’t want to give me an interview. I could understand that, but I resolved not to get discouraged. I wanted the summer fires story so much I decided I’d call him every single day until eventually he or someone called me back.

  With time on my hands, I decided to try to locate Nathan Silver, the Cobb family attorney who’d negotiated the deal with Cindy Broderick.

  He wasn’t listed in the attorneys register, but the Times-Dispatch, being an old-fashioned newspaper, has a room full of old city phonebooks. In the 2005 book I found a listing for a Nathan A. Silver, Esq., at the firm Kline, Krechner, Silver & Wales located in the Doubleton Building on East Ninth. The firm was now just Kline & Wales, but figuring someone there might be able to tell me how to reach Silver, I phoned the office, asked to speak to the firm manager, and was pleased to find him helpful.

  ‘Sure, I remember Nate. He was a name partner when I started here. He retired a dozen or so years ago, but kept an “Of Counsel” office for a while. At first he’d come in three, four times a week, then less and less. When his wife passed, he closed up shop. That was maybe six years back. I hear he’s now in assisted living at Desmond House out on Yarrow. Give him a call. I bet he’s still plenty sharp. And I bet he’ll be darn pleased to be contacted by a reporter. Give him my best too, will ya? Tell him I miss the old dog.’

  I called Silver, arranged to see him that afternoon, then drove out to nearly the end of Yarrow. I could tell at once that Desmond House was a posh facility. It had been converted from the estate mansion of General Taylor Desmond, founder of Desmond Steel, a long-abandoned mill in the Calista Valley. It was the huge kind of house the robber barons built between the end of the First World War and the market crash of 1929, when contractors would swarm a site with skilled immigrant Italian carpenters and masons. Constructed in the English Tudor style, it had six chimneys, intersecting slate roofs, and a long cobblestone drive that ended in a turn-about in front of a massive front door with a phony coat of arms above, a nouveau riche industrialist’s fantasy of old wealth and nobility.

  Walking from my car to the entrance, I heard classical music pouring through the open first-floor windows. Entering, I discovered a youthful string quartet playing Schubert in the main lobby. The audience consisted of fourteen elderly men and women seated in a semi-circle on recliners. I recognized the music, ‘Death and the Maiden,’ perhaps not really appropriate for an assisted living facility, but I could tell by their expressions that the old folks were taking the music in.

  As I stood listening, a dignified-looking man, who I guessed was the facility manager, approached, brought his finger to his lips, gestured me aside and in a whisper asked what he could do for me. I told him I had an appointment with Nate Silver. He nodded, led me to the visitors’ room off the lobby, asked me to sign the guestbook and wait until he retrieved Mr Silver the next time the quartet took a break.

  ‘Meantime,’ he said, ‘enjoy the music. Our residents love it when young people come out here to play. This group, performance students at the Calista Institute of Music, are regulars, so I think they like coming out here too.’

  I’ve always loved the energy of that particular quartet, and I thought the students played it well. If this concert was a sample of events provided for residents, I couldn’t think of a better place in Calista at which to spend one’s declining years.

  There was a short pause at the end of the Andante. That’s when Nate Silver appeared.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ he said, offering his hand. With his fine courtesy, thick silver hair and brilliant blue eyes, he exuded an aura of class and ease. The way he was dressed added to the effect – cashmere sports jacket, silk shirt with silk ascot, mirror-polished black loafers. He didn’t come across as a man who required assisted living. When I asked him how he liked Desmond House, he smiled and told me he loved it.

  ‘The suites are luxurious, the food’s great and the people here are lovely. Costs a fortune and it’s worth it. When I used to visit friends here, I knew this was the place for me. After my wife passed, I put my name on the wait-list. Took three years before someone died and freed up a suite. No regrets. I think moving out here was the best decision I ever made.’

  He explained that even though he was retired, and his clients, Horace and Elena Cobb, had passed away, he still felt constrained by attorney–client privilege.

  ‘I’m happy to go on the record so long as you understand there’re things I can’t talk about. And forgive me if you ask me something and I take a moment to recollect.’

  After I agreed to his ground rules, he permitted me to set my phone to record.

  ‘Of course I remember Cindy. Very grown-up and serious even when she was just sixteen. How many young women that age would ask for money to pay for college? Most would want to spend it on a car, clothes and vacations. During her Mount Holyoke years she’d stop in to see me whenever she returned to town. I paid her bills and doled out her allowance. She always brought me a little gift to express her gratitude. That was the deal, and I kept to it, even though my clients had reservations. The reward was supposed to be fifty K, not the ninety-plus this was costing them. I told them if it weren’t for Cindy calling in when she did, they might well have had to face Courtney in court. Was that really what they wanted? Of course not! So wasn’t it worth it to help a nice, smart, under-privileged young woman gain a foothold in life? And wasn’t the money really just a pittance to them? They had no good answer for that and didn’t complain again.

  ‘I was the old-fashioned type of lawyer you don’t see much of these days – a general practitioner who actually counseled his clients. Lawyers today, they just do the client’s bidding. And the clients today, they don’t want counseling. They just want to know how to get away with stuff.

  ‘You know the club downtown, the Mayfair, the one on Main with the big pillars out front that looks like a Greek temple? Now they’ll let in most anyone who can afford the dues, but when I started out in practice, there were no Jews in the Mayfair, and certainly no blacks. God forbid that the Jewish attorney who advised you, counseled you, knew all the intricacies of your personal and financial life, should be allowed to enter that hallowed space! So one day after I dealt with a very personal matter having to do with the Cobb boys, I turned to Horace and asked him point-blank if he’d put me up for membership. Know what he said? That a few years before another member put up David Sachs, one of the most elegant men in the city, owner of a ball-bearing factory, a guy who had a Pissarro and a Chagall in his living room. “They black-balled him,” Horace told me. “If I put you up, they’ll do the same. They’re just not ready to let in a Jew. It’s wrong, Nate. It shouldn’t be that way, but that’s the way it is.” And you know what I thought? “Horace, you’re a coward. So fuck you! Funny, all this time I thought we were friends. Now I understand we’re not.”’

  Listening to him, it didn’t escape me that the black-balled David Sachs was Hannah Sachs’s grandfather.

  He went on, ‘Why am I telling you this? Because of what
happened later. Near the end of his life, Horace called me, asked if we could get together. I’d retired, wasn’t his lawyer anymore, but I said, “Sure, come on over, we’ll chat.” He said, “No, let’s meet at the Mayfair. They have a nice bar. I’ll leave your name at the front desk.” “OK,” I said, “fine, we’ll meet there.”

  ‘This wasn’t the first time I’d been invited by a member for a drink, but it was the first time Horace Cobb invited me. So, all right, we have a drink, then he says he wants to show me around. So he takes me on the grand tour – main dining room, private rooms upstairs, library, gym, glass-enclosed pool on the roof, then down to the wine cellar in the basement. So I tell him, “Thanks for showing me the club, Horace.” And he gives me this intense look. “You don’t get it, do you, Nate?” “What don’t I get?” I ask. “I’m going to put you up for membership,” he says. “You’ll be the first Jew in the Mayfair.” So I look at him. He’s got this stupid grin on his face. I peer right into his eyes. “I won’t be black-balled?” I ask. “Not now you won’t. They wouldn’t dare, not if I put you up,” he says. And you know what I told him? “Not interested, Horace. Too little too late.” And those were the last words we ever spoke.’ Nate nodded. ‘I didn’t bother to attend his funeral.’

  Like wow! This was the kind of delicious revelation I lived for, the kind that told me I had a source with a grievance. Nate Silver was not only a man aggrieved; he was a man who loved to hear himself talk. ‘Nothing better than that when you’re hot on a story,’ my old journalism professor used to say. So I did what I’d been trained to do and took full advantage. Time, I told myself, to go in for the kill.

  Here’s the essence of what he told me:

  Regarding the warrant: ‘Horace Cobb was not only close to Commissioner Jim Hawkes. Judge Neville Brown had served as in-house counsel at his company, and Horace had been a major contributor to the campaign of Judge Stephanie Johnson Bates. On account of that, Horace pretty much had both judges in his pocket. No way in a case involving his daughter would Brown turn down a request for a warrant or pose questions to the applying officer.’