by M. C. Grant
“Before he became a name.”
Frank has the kind of disapproving smile that makes children cry.
He sighs heavily. “OK. Let’s suppose you’re right. If it’s not suicide, what’s the motive for murder?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
Frank guffaws so loudly that the two officers turn to stare.
“Excuse me, then,” he says. “While I look for a note.”
_____
“Please don’t touch that,” cries a nasally voice from the doorway.
Frank looks up from the bloodied canvas as a smartly dressed man, a gaily colored ascot swirling wildly around his throat, trots in from the hall.
“Stop right where you are!” Frank yells, a finger the size of a small truncheon stabbing the air.
The magic finger seems to do the trick as the man stops stock still, every part of him frozen except for rapidly blinking eyes and a creepy caterpillar moustache that squirms beneath a long, hooked nose.
A silver-haired officer with a face the color of boiled beets and a gut the size of a vodka-infused watermelon arrives close behind. His lungs are expanding and contracting so rapidly he looks about to have a coronary.
“If you’re going to die, do it outside,” Frank warns the officer. “My crime scene is busy enough.”
Ascot man chances a look over his shoulder at the gasping officer.
“Who are you?” Frank demands.
The man’s neck snaps back around so quickly, I imagine chiropractors wincing in their sleep.
“My name is unimportant, but I implore you not to touch that painting.” The man lifts a white handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth.
Until the handkerchief raises the issue, I can’t say I noticed an unpleasant smell. Some crime scenes are nasty, especially if the bodies have been lying around for a while or the victims really went to town on a greasy last meal. But this one isn’t bad at all, which makes me wonder why.
“Your name,” Frank growls. “And how’d you get up here?”
This last question is directed at the officer in the hallway who is still a noticeably unhealthy color.
The thin man stiffens, but one hand still manages to snake into a jacket pocket to produce a plain white business card with raised gold ink. He holds it out proudly as though it is a double-0 license signed by M herself.
Frank storms forward, using his height to all its intimidating advantage, glances at the card, and snorts.
“Are you saying the officers allowed you up here because you own a damn art gallery?”
The man sniffs. “I don’t own the gallery.”
Frank shoots me a look that says I better swallow the sarcastic comment rising in my throat.
The man puffs out his bird-like chest indignantly. “I happen to represent a very influential art collector in our city. And I am here to take possession of Mr. Chino’s final work before something unforeseen happens.”
“You mean like me taking a knife to it?” Frank asks as he produces a small whittling knife from his pocket.
“Please, sir. I beg you not to deface that painting. It’s so …” His voice is full of wonder. “Incredible. Perhaps his finest work.”
Frank waves the knife lazily in the air, a two-inch blade rising from the handle at the flick of a gnarled thumbnail. “And you knew this bloody thing would be here, how?”
“Mr. Chino left instructions via text message, which detailed when I was to arrive at this location and take possession of his latest work.”
“A suicide note?” Frank asks. “By text?”
“I suppose so, although I did not know that at the time.”
“And yet, you don’t seem too surprised at finding a body on the floor and its head used as a friggin’ paint pot!”
The man shivers like a frightened rabbit, but I have to give him props for not backing down.
He sniffs again. “Mr. Chino has been depressed of late, and he has always had a flair for the dramatic. So although I was hopeful for a …” He pauses to consider his words. “Less messy affair, I cannot say that I am completely shocked.”
“Well, that makes one of us, Mister—Hey, you never did tell me your Goddamn name.”
“It’s written on the card.”
Frank stares at him like a hungry grizzly on a salmon run.
“It’s Blymouth,” says the man. “Casper Blymouth.”
“And who’s the collector?”
“I don’t see the need—”
The man freezes as Frank moves back to the painting and begins scraping some of the blood from the bottom, right-hand corner.
“Kingston!” he blurts. “I represent Sir Roger Kingston.”
Frank lets out a low whistle. “I’m impressed. You can’t blurt a name much bigger than that.” Frank scrapes more of the blood.
Blymouth gasps. “Please.” His voice drops to a whine, and his eyes actually begin to fill with frightened tears.
Frank stops scraping and turns to catch my attention. His grin can now frighten serial killers.
“I’ll be damned,” he says. “This bloody thing is signed.”
“Of course it’s signed,” Blymouth sniffs. “It would be worthless otherwise, and Mr. Chino would not—”
“You don’t find that twisted?” Frank returns to his full height, wincing slightly as both knees crack. “I understand texting the suicide note, that’s human nature. I can even see blowing your brains over a canvas. Why not? But signing it first? That’s whacked.”
“Whacked?” I pipe in.
Frank’s mouth twitches.
Blymouth sighs loudly. “If you two are quite done, I would like to take possession of the painting and leave. The smell is really quite dread—”
“Air conditioning,” I blurt.
Frank cocks one of his thick barbed-wire eyebrows.
“That’s why it doesn’t smell,” I explain. “I didn’t take off my jacket, and with the front door open it’s less noticeable, but the air conditioning is on.”
“Yeah, the place was real cold when we first entered,” agrees saggy pants.
“To keep the scene fresh,” Frank muses.
“Also makes time of death more difficult to pinpoint,” I suggest too quickly.
Frank’s mouth twitches again. “Waking the neighbor with a shotgun blast might help with that.”
“Mr. Chino was no fool,” Blymouth pipes up irritably. “The cool air naturally helps to preserve his work. And if you do not possess the olfactory senses to—”
“Christ!” Frank snaps. “This is why I post officers on the Goddamn door.”
Blymouth gulps.
“Did Chino’s note say how he wanted the canvas cured?” I ask quickly.
Blymouth nods. “Air dried and then sealed with several coats of high-grade, matte lacquer. I have several artists available who can do the job.”
“They’ll need to wait.” Frank’s face turns hard. “Right now it’s evidence, and I need you out of here while I do my job.”
“I must protest! I have—”
“Protest all you like. Just do it outside.”
The beet-faced officer rushes forward in an effort to redeem himself. He clamps a firm hand on Blymouth’s shoulder and yanks him roughly out of the apartment.
“And Colin,” Frank yells at the retreating officer.
The officer turns around, his seasoned face stoic as he holds onto the squirming man.
“Sir?”
“Bag his cell phone,” Frank says. “I want to see that text.”
Blymouth opens his mouth to protest, but Colin isn’t going to mess up twice. He drags the art dealer down the stairs.
“You, too, Dix.” Frank releases an audible sigh. “You’
ve seen enough.”
“Well, that’s whacked,” I say cheekily but quickly take the hint when Frank’s mouth fails to twitch.
Three
I should have headed straight home and crawled back into bed. It was late, I was tired, and Bubbles was likely pining. But that’s one of the troubles with the night crew: we’re not too bright.
The Dog House is a cramped dungeon of a pub two blocks from the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street. Originally built as a coal cellar and storage for a turn-of-the-century boardinghouse, it was converted into a speakeasy during Prohibition and became an unorthodox street church for hippies in the Sixties.
Abandoned for decades, it was quietly reopened in the late Eighties as a place for cops and scoundrels to hide from prying eyes. The owner, bouncer, bartender, and occasional bookie is an ex-wrestler who had a slippery headlock on fame in the Seventies as the Biting Bulgarian Bulldog. In the newspaper archives, he was regaled as every wide-eyed kid’s favorite Friday-night villain.
Ask him about it now and he’ll tell you his loyal fans cheered the loudest when he regularly bit off his opponent’s ear and spat it at the ineffective referee.
“Kids back then were less cynical,” he told me once. “None of them questioned how the wrestlers all magically grew their ears back for the next match.”
When boxer Mike Tyson did it for real in a heavyweight bout against Evander Holyfield, Bulldog shook his head and muttered, “Where’s the magic? Dumb prick.”
Nowadays Bulldog goes by Bill, but his eyes still dance when an old fan recognizes him and asks for an autograph. He even has a Hasbro action figure of himself in full costume perched on the till.
After wiping hairy hands on a black apron with the angry green face of the Hulk silk-screened across the front, Bill hands me a sweaty bottle of Warthog Ale and a shot of tequila, slice of lime hanging off the rim. I use the beer to connect a few wet rings on the scarred mahogany of the L-shaped bar before taking a sip.
“You OK, Dix?” Bill asks. “Kinda quiet.”
“Tough gal like me? Couldn’t be better.”
“Got a story?”
“Dead artist,” I explain. “Old friend, actually. Blew his fool head off with a shotgun.”
“Ah, the Hemingway solution. Grim.”
“You have no idea.”
I pick up the lime wedge, squeeze its juice into the shot glass, and watch the tequila turn cloudy.
“Frank there?” Bill asks.
I nod and take a small sip of tequila.
Bill waits, his hands continually busy drying glasses or refilling marquee bottles from bar-brand gallon jugs.
“You think there’s something wrong with me, Bill?” I ask after another sip.
“Let me think.” His voice is the steady rumble of a subway train. “It’s one in the morning; you’re alone in a dingy bar, drinking tequila and courting advice from a mug so ugly he would give your mother palpitations.” He pauses. “Nah, you’re doing just fine.”
“Thanks,” I say dryly. “You’re a sweetheart.”
Bill grins. “Don’t let that out, I have a reputation to uphold.”
“You too, huh?”
Bill walks to the far side of the bar to serve his only other patrons, two arguing retirees with matching ill-fitting dentures who look like they can barely afford to split a beer between them.
From my stool, I have a clear view of the entire room. Eight feet to my left is the lone washroom that breaks every health regulation in the book and makes me determined to learn levitation; two feet to my right is the bricked-up doorway that once led to a boardinghouse of ill-repute above; and sixteen feet directly behind me is a steel door complete with Prohibition-era peephole that, contrary to fire regulations, is the only way in or out if you don’t know about the trapdoor behind the bar that leads to a dank cellar and a maze of forgotten tunnels that are said to cover most of the block. If you put thirty people in the room, it’s five too many.
Frank usually sits to my left and, as a house courtesy, the wooden stool to my right is reserved for Al Capone, the dead Chicago mobster.
According to local legend, Capone was known to be a regular of the speakeasy whenever he ventured west on business. The bar had a waitress back then whom Bill claims was Capone’s one true love. When she mysteriously disappeared one day, Capone made a decree that no one was to be hired to replace her. And to this day, no one has.
To be fair though, with the way cops and reporters tip, it wouldn’t be a job anyone would clamor for either.
After Capone was convicted of tax evasion, he requested to serve his time in Alcatraz, where (Bill claims) he would sit in his cell, look across the water, and dream about this place and his missing sweetheart. Of course, Bill also claims Capone still visits regularly, which is why the stool is reserved.
Personally, I have yet to meet the man’s ghost, but it’ll be a hell of a story when I do.
The door swings open behind me and I hear Frank’s heavy feet slap the concrete floor. I glance in the mirror behind the bar to see his usual bravado lost between hunched shoulders and a slouched back. He slides onto the stool beside me and runs thick fingers through thinning hair.
Bill pours a tall mug of O’Doul’s Amber—a dealcoholized draft made by Anheuser-Busch with a caramel color, malt taste, and thin head—and slides it to him. Frank sighs with pleasure as he takes a long, slow pull.
“To the blue,” Frank says, lifting his glass to the ceiling.
“May the good Lord watch our backs,” answer the two old-
timers.
Frank nods at Bill to pour two fresh mugs of draught and deliver them to the far side of the bar.
_____
Frank stopped drinking regular beer two weeks after his wife died. The fortnight in between was a time he’s only talked about once, and for some reason, I was the one he trusted to tell it to.
Despite rumors that the public outpouring garnered by my story saved Frank’s career, I didn’t pull any punches. Frank was falling down drunk the night his wife was murdered. That’s a weight only he can carry, but anyone who follows the daily news knows anyone—drunk or sober—can be absent when needed the most.
The medical examiner confessed it took a long time for her to die, the murder weapon being a wire brush like you would use to clean cast-iron pots or a greasy barbecue grill. The killer used it to scrape away her skin until the blood loss, pain, and terror became too much for her heart. Evidence at the scene pointed to a “person known to police” with a record reaching back to junior high and a hard-on for Frank.
Ten days after the murder, the suspect was climbing out the window of a second-story apartment (a laptop emblazoned with a Hello Kitty sticker under one arm, and his pockets stuffed with cheap jewelry and a pink Swarovski-crystal iPod) when a bullet punched through his kidney and dropped him to the alley below. Several witnesses said they were sure he was still screaming after he hit the ground, but the M.E. was unable to determine if immediate medical attention would have saved his life.
When the squad cars arrived, they found Frank leaning against the alley wall, sipping from a flask, smoking gun dangling from his fingers. More witnesses said he refused anyone entry to the alley while he silently watched the man bubble and froth, drowning in his own blood.
A well-oiled snub .38 was discovered nearby with the corpse’s prints on its trigger and grip.
Rumor naturally said Frank planted the gun, but there was never any evidence to back it up.
The daily newspapers and broadcast news delivered the facts plain and true, but that’s not what I’m paid to do.
Instead, I told a story about a young woman from Kansas who loved to bake apple pies with a brown sugar crust, volunteered at the library teaching adults how to read, and married a handsome, young cowboy who took her on a jou
rney to the craziest city in America.
The killer’s background, unfortunately, was tougher to unravel; despite knocking on doors in his neighborhood, talking to social workers and parole officers, and making a hundred phone calls, I couldn’t find a single person with a kind word to say. His father probably summed it up best when he told me, “That boy was born dead.”
A month after the story ran, Frank moved to the stool on my left and Bill began carrying O’Doul’s.
_____
“We found something weird in the artist’s place after you left,” Frank says, tipping back his glass.
“After I was kicked out, you mean?”
Frank downs the beer, places the mug on the bar, and picks up a freshly poured second. A skin of ice slides down the glass.
I wait.
Nothing.
I roll my eyes, hating when he refuses to play.
“OK. What’s so weird?”
Frank digs in the pocket of his coat and pulls out a Polaroid. The snapshot shows a colorful abstract painting that invokes the cold romance of the Northern Lights dancing above Arctic tundra, but as viewed through a child’s kaleidoscope.
“We found that painting between the box spring and mattress in the bedroom,” Frank says. “It’s signed ‘Adamsky’. ”
“Huh. Weird place to keep a painting.” I study the photo closely. “Was Diego trying to hide it?”
Frank shrugs. “If anybody knew it was in the apartment, that’s about the first place they’d look. It’s the only piece of furniture large enough to hide something like that. Place was practically bare.”
Bill moves in and plucks the photo out of my hand. “Maybe he hated it,” he says before tossing it back onto the bar.
Frank and I look up, twin frowns knitting our brows.
“Huh?” I say with my usual intellectual wit.
“It was something Al said.”
“Capone was in?” I ask.
“Yesterday.”
“Damn, I keep missing him.”
Bill continues. “Al was telling me how he liked to put pictures of all the women who ever crossed him under his mattress. He said it was fun to screw other broads right there on top of them.” He begins to chuckle. “Then he would sleep on his back so they had to look at his hairy ass all night.”
