“Hey, Thinnes, you lucked out. Custer’s rematch didn’t make the morning papers.”
Thinnes walked over to look at the Sun-Times Ferris had spread out on the table. He flipped it closed and pointed to the headline: CARDINAL CHARGED WITH SEX ABUSE. “He seems to have saved our asses. God bless him.”
Oster, seated at the other end of the table, demanded, “Ferris, what the hell are you doing here at this hour?”
Thinnes was surprised. Oster usually ignored Ferris’s bullshit.
“OT,” Ferris said.
“Like hell. You switched shifts with someone. Evanger finally ask you to do some work?”
“Take it easy, Carl,” Thinnes said. He gave Ferris a look, then asked Oster, “So who killed Bisti?”
“The wife,” Oster said. “It’s always the wife. Or husband, or boyfriend. Nine times outta ten.” He gave Thinnes a “you know that” look.
“Yeah, well. I’d like something more than statistics to take to the state’s attorney.”
“You got her, literally, red-handed. What more do you want?”
“A motive would be nice. You know. He was screwing around. Or she was screwing around. Or she just took out a policy that’d pay off the national debt.”
“Five’ll get you ten, she’s got him insured up the gazunk.”
Thinnes’s beeper started to vibrate. He shut it off and glanced at the number before he said, “You can check it out, along with their credit and whatever.” It was Evanger’s home number. He wondered what Evanger wanted. “And start looking for that Indian woman,” he told Oster. “Irene. Check the American Indian Center, on Wilson. Maybe they got some kind of registry. She’s probably Navajo.”
“What’re you gonna be doin’?”
Oster wasn’t arguing, Thinnes knew. He’d made it plain he’d sooner let Thinnes divide up the work.
“Thought I’d drop in on the autopsy. You’re welcome to come.”
“No thanks. Seen one, you seen enough. I seen enough.”
Thinnes had seen enough, too, but he didn’t say so.
Eighteen
Evanger was waiting in the upper level of the McDonald’s at Dearborn and Randolph, at a table by the window. Thinnes was too tired to eat by the time he got there. He bought a large coffee—his fifth of the day—and joined Evanger. The window overlooked the State Street ice rink, which wasn’t open yet. No ice.
Thinnes sat across from the lieutenant. If there’d been anyone to notice, they’d have made an odd couple—a lanky, laid-back, rumpled white man, and the sharp, straight up, wideawake black. An odd salt-and-pepper team. But there was no one to notice. Two teenaged Hispanic males—employees—leaned on the tray-return/trash cabinet, shooting the breeze. A business type studied his Wall Street Journal while he slurped his coffee. A young black couple was all over each other in a back corner, staring into each other’s eyes, doing who knows what under their coats.
“They stuck me on a jury!” Evanger said, with the same surprise in his voice Mob chiefs have been heard to show announcing that they’ve been indicted. “And this thing could last for weeks.”
Nothing so far Evanger couldn’t have told him over the phone. Thinnes looked at his watch.
Evanger took the hint and got to the point. “I need a favor.” His face gave nothing away as his eyes made an inventory of the room.
Thinnes followed suit. No additions to the roster. No bad guys. No other cops. He stared at Evanger. The lieutenant had always had a reputation for being clean—as clean as a man could be in a place as political as Chicago—but he’d never asked Thinnes for a favor before. A favor he couldn’t ask over the phone had to be something against the law or against regulations. Thinnes didn’t want to hear it. He felt like he had when he’d heard the news about Magic Johnson—like he’d been sucker punched. It seemed as soon as you found someone you could look up to, you found out something about him you didn’t want to know. He wondered if Evanger, too, had AIDS.
On the sidewalk below them, pedestrians crowded and bumped one another. Traffic stopped for the red on Dearborn. A Streets & San truck parked illegally on the south side of Randolph, behind Thinnes’s illegally parked Caprice. The truck driver took out a paper and made himself comfortable while his buddy dodged traffic, crossing to McDonald’s.
Evanger removed a pile of file folders from his briefcase and put them on the table. He tapped the pile. “Old cases. I signed off on them but I didn’t have time to read them. Now with this trial…”
Thinnes felt, suddenly, weak with relief.
“…Would you read them over? See if there’s anything we missed?”
The chief insisted on detective supervisors reading over all the open homicide cases every six months. Evanger wasn’t supposed to delegate it. Especially not to one of the dicks.
Thinnes said, “Sure. Why not?”
“Then take them back to Records?”
Thinnes nodded.
“Thanks,” Evanger said. “I owe you.”
Nineteen
The Robert J. Stein Institute of Forensic Medicine. Office of the Medical Examiner. Better known as the morgue. Thinnes parked behind the modern white stone structure and entered by the door near the loading dock. The guy on intake duty greeted him with, “Yo, Custer. Yo’ redskin’s already been scalped.”
He was right. The autopsy was already underway by the time Thinnes entered the room. He wondered if someone with clout had called to expedite the process or if it was just a slow day. Dr. Cutler, the pathologist, was a light-skinned black man with a neat Afro, who reminded Thinnes of Greg Gumbel without the attitude. He said, “Detective,” when Thinnes came in. “Your victim was killed by a single stab wound to the chest. Hit the heart. He bled to death.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Doc.”
“Off the record, your cutter is probably a woman or someone who’s never been in a fight.”
“Okay, Carnac. Tell me the question.”
“How do I know?”
Thinnes waited.
“The angle of the wound suggests that, if the victim was standing—and I understand from your officer there weren’t any chairs in the room—he was stabbed overhand. Like Jessica Walter did it in Play Misty for Me.”
“Just one blow?”
“I thought I said that.”
“You said he was killed by a single wound to the heart. You didn’t say if there was any other damage.”
“Picky. Picky. Picky. You want to get technical, I can give it to you in medicalese.”
“I’m just trying to establish whether he saw it coming.”
“I’d say no. No defense wounds. Beyond the fatal wound, not a scratch on him. He did have a hickey.”
“I haven’t heard of anyone dying of those lately.”
Cutler laughed. “You could think of it as a hesitation mark for suicide by AIDS.”
“You’re an optimist.”
“Comes with the territory.” He pointed with his scalpel. “Look at the bruising around the wound. The knife went in far enough and hard enough to do that. I’d say it was someone really strong or really angry.”
“Too bad you can’t say which.”
“Whichever suspect is one or the other. That’s probably your doer.”
Thinnes shook his head. “I’ve got one that’s strong and at least a half-dozen that were pissed. Any chance he could have gotten out the name of who did him?”
“Nah. Well. Anything’s possible, but probably not. But I understand you have witnesses. Why not ask them?”
“I will. But I always like corroboration.”
Twenty
“Thinnes!” Rossi growled. “The museum just called. They want to know why we haven’t released the crime scene. They’d like to open up sometime soon. I’d like to know, too.”
“I wanted to get another look at it—maybe go over it with someone who knows something about art.”
“Well, make it fast. It’s bad enough we haven’t got the suspect. No
use stepping on well-connected toes, too.”
“Yeah,” Thinnes said. “You never know if they’re connected to an ass you might have to kiss.” He was pretty sure Rossi couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. Good. He picked up the phone.
“Who’re you calling?”
“An art expert,” Thinnes said, mildly. He held the phone in the air and looked expectantly at Rossi.
Rossi snorted and walked away.
Thinnes cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder while he punched in Jack Caleb’s number. It was probably stretching things to call Caleb an art expert, but he knew a hell of a lot more about it than Thinnes.
At the next table Swann, who’d been listening, said, “You be dissin’ the lieu?”
“You know what loo means in England, Swann?”
Swann showed all his teeth as he grinned. “No, but I’ll bet it’s fulla shit, too.”
When Thinnes pulled over to the curb on Michigan, Caleb was waiting with two large Starbuck’s cups. He got into the Caprice and handed one to Thinnes, who signaled a right and headed west. They were south of the museum, but it was easier to go around the block and make a left back onto northbound Michigan at a light than to try a U-turn in Loop traffic. Thinnes took a sip of the coffee, then wedged the cup on the dash. Caleb had noticed or guessed how Thinnes liked his coffee—two sugars, no cream. Little things like that made the doctor more likable but scary. It quickly developed, though, that the coffee was a kind of bribe.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you last night,” Caleb said. Thinnes looked at him sideways. If he was nervous or repentant, it didn’t show.
“Yeah?”
“David Bisti was a patient of mine—Briefly—Years ago.”
Thinnes was suddenly furious, but he hid it. Caleb wouldn’t reveal privileged information even to help the police. They’d had the argument before and had agreed to disagree, but he couldn’t resist asking, “Whose side did you say you were on?”
Caleb refused to be needled. He handed Thinnes a videotape Thinnes hadn’t noticed he was carrying and said, “For your eyes only.”
“What’s this?”
“The tape of a therapy session I had with him. At the time David asked for help, my partner and I were experimenting with videotape as a means of picking up on more of the nonverbal content of therapy sessions. I got David’s permission to tape our conversation. I think he may have thought I meant on audiotape, though—our video camera is hidden. You never met David. The tape might give you some idea of what he was like.”
“Why the sudden ethical reversal?”
“In a perfect world, we could choose between wrong and right. But in our imperfect world, we’re stuck with choosing between more wrong and less wrong. And it’s not as if you’ll sell tickets.”
Thinnes nodded. “Thanks.” He slid the tape under the files lying on the seat between Caleb and himself, where it wouldn’t be seen by anyone looking in the windows. “What was your impression of him?”
“He was very talented, but narcissistic and manipulative. A passive-aggressive personality.”
Passive-aggressive. That explained the nothing-happened-and-besides-I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-him reaction they’d gotten out of so many who’d known the man.
“And there was something else.” Thinnes waited. “I’ve heard writers say that what sets them apart from nonwriters is a sense of isolation, and a feeling of being different from others, of always standing apart, observing.”
“So?”
“It’s also true of fine artists. David was a fine artist. And he felt alienated. But I think he gave up therapy, in the end, because he couldn’t bare his soul—not just to a white man, as he claimed—but to anyone. It was more an individual thing than racial. He never asked me for a referral to a Native American therapist. At our last session, he told me he’d joined a commune, and what its members had in common was that they were all artists who had enough Indian blood to make them outsiders to the mainstream culture.”
The security guard who let them in told them the two men in blue overalls, sitting on carpet rolls in the lobby, were waiting on Thinnes’s okay to replace the ruined carpet in the upper gallery.
Thinnes told the guard they’d be as quick as they could, then led the way up to the lower north gallery. He waited without showing impatience while Caleb looked around, and let him set the pace into the next gallery, the one below the mezzanine. Earlier, he’d gone over the room himself. Now, while he waited for Caleb’s verdict, he studied one of the pieces.
Thinnes didn’t get it. The price list Caleb had given him said, “Bids start at $15,000.” Thinnes wouldn’t have given two bucks for the thing—it looked like something some kid made before he was old enough to draw. The title was Man Dying. Thinnes would have liked to replace it with blowups of Bisti with the hole in his chest and his blood leaking out. That was a man dying.
Caleb came up behind him, and Thinnes said, “Fifteen grand, huhn?” He turned to see the doctor smile.
“Probably not a bad investment.”
“You’re serious!”
Caleb shrugged. “Scarcity usually drives up the price.”
“That means someone’ll pay fifteen grand for this piece of shit so he can sell it to an even bigger asshole for twenty. What if he can’t find a sucker? He’ll write it off?”
“That depends on what kind of collector buys it,” Caleb said. “If he’s just trying to make a profit and guesses wrong about it, he’ll write it off. If he buys it because he likes it, and if he’s lucky or has very good taste, he’ll do well. But even if he’s unlucky or has eccentric tastes, he won’t lose anything.”
“So, would you buy any of these?”
“I bought one.”
Thinnes walked over to read the title of a landscape he’d noticed, earlier, the only thing in the place he’d have given houseroom. He ran down the price list until he found the description: New Mexico #27, oil on canvas. Courtesy of Dr. James Caleb. NFS.
“The rest of this stuff…” He waved to indicate everything and asked, “People like it?”
Caleb frowned as he thought about it, so his nod seemed contradictory. “People who understand it do. For the most part.”
As they climbed the steps to the mezzanine, Thinnes said, “I guess I belong to the Lyndon Johnson school of art appreciation. I know what I like, and this ain’t it. You might as well go down to Cabrini-Green and hang a frame around the shit they write on the walls, or shovel some of the crap from any vacant lot in the city into a box and call that art. What’s the point?” Thinnes pointed to a Navajo sand painting advertising beer. “Besides taking someone for a bundle?”
“An artist usually tries to make the viewer experience something.”
He sounded like one of those teachers who desperately wants his students to get it, and Thinnes was just half listening as he looked for anything he might’ve missed earlier. His only real interest in Bisti’s stuff was whether any of it might have made somebody mad enough at Bisti to kill him. He shook his head and pointed at an abstract “installation” that gave him the creeps. “You couldn’t give this stuff away at a Starving Artists’ Sale.”
“David’s work may not be beautiful, but it seems to have achieved the ultimate in artistic expression.”
“What’s that?”
“Aroused one of his viewers to the most extreme of emotions. No artist can be more successful than that.”
“What is art?” As soon as he asked he was sorry. The conversation was degenerating into an art lecture.
“A formal definition?”
Thinnes shrugged.
“The embodiment of form in a medium.”
It was the sort of thing you got when you looked up something in the dictionary and got half a dozen other words that referred you back to the first word. It was like wrestling fog; he felt his eyes glazing over. “What’s form? What’s a medium?”
“Form is a sort of container for the idea behind the wo
rk.”
“Like paint?”
“Not exactly. Paint would be the medium. What the artist does with it is form. David’s use of paint, his form, is quite different from Picasso’s.”
They walked up the ramp to the exhibit’s final gallery, the one where Bisti died. Thinnes stopped and faced Caleb.
“So if I got it right, an artwork is like the cylinder in an engine, and the idea behind it’s the gas mix. If the design’s good, and the compression and timing are right, the artist can get a lot of mileage out of a work.”
“Exactly!”
“Some of the museum regulars were pretty worked up about this stuff.” He pointed at the three-part painting titled Triptych. “Is it any good?”
The panel on the left was a still life, subtitled “City Indians,” a vase of wilting flowers whose heads were whitewashed Indian faces. The right-hand panel, “Reservation Indians,” was a parched, weed-choked landscape with trash and abandoned vehicles, sagging wire fences, and dilapidated buildings. The scraggly flowers in the foreground had white faces with a wash of Indian red. The large, central panel showed a panoramic view of forested mountains, streams teeming with fish, plains with deer and buffalo, and an overarching rainbow. The dark faces of the “Natural Indians” were sunny, smiling flowers in the foreground.
“It’s not his best work,” Caleb said. “It’s too obvious and commercial. Great art works on deeper levels. Frequently, long after you thought you’ve gotten the idea of a masterwork, something will bring it to mind, and you’ll have an experience of ‘Aha! That’s what that was really about!’ ”
Twenty-One
“What did you get out of the wife, Thinnes?”
The squad room was nearly empty—just Thinnes, Oster, and two Property Crimes dicks. And, now, Rossi. He was supposed to be working nights. In spite of the museum’s involvement, the Bisti case wasn’t sensational enough to keep supervisory personnel on OT. Rossi shouldn’t have been in for hours. Thinnes wondered why he was still around, but he didn’t wonder enough to ask. He said, “I haven’t talked to her yet.”
The Death of Blue Mountain Cat Page 6
