“Fiona what?”
“Fiona bored.”
She returned to whatever she saw in her cup. I thanked her for her time and took a stroll.
Thirty-fifth Street took me five blocks west of where I was parked, down by the brewery and its satellite, the Trolleyman Pub. Beyond the brewery were some offices and a warehouse for Pet Foods. Across from the warehouse was a concrete structure that was sufficiently funky it had to be a warren of artists. Next to the building was an art gallery. Next to the gallery were the bathtubs.
There were two of them, stuck vertically into the ground so they looked like concave shields, or a set of urinals, or tympana, or something else of indeterminate significance. What they seemed to be were gateposts bestride the entrance to an open space that sported a menagerie of stone and metal sculpture that had most likely been crafted in the studios that surrounded the lot.
The apartments combined both studios and residences. The exteriors were decorated according to the style of their occupants—some with abstract sculpture in the windows, others with chiseled mounds of stone and glass out front, several with elaborately colored door panels, some emblazoned with somber aphorisms in the manner of Jenny Holtzer, such as the one that read, LIFE MUST IMITATE ART, WHY ELSE WOULD I BE BENT OUT OF SHAPE?
Number 8 was upstairs. Its only decoration was an eight-by-ten glossy taped to the door at eye level, a reproduction of Marilyn Monroe’s nude calendar photo. When I knocked on the door, nothing happened.
The windows of both Richter’s studio and the adjacent apartment were covered with black plastic. The street and sidewalks were empty; nothing was moving but clouds and a yacht down the distant canal. There being no reason not to pry, I did so, with the aid of a credit card and some muscle.
When I closed the door behind me I created something close to absolute darkness. As I flipped on the light to erase it, I inhaled a bouquet of scents that was a mix of sweaty socks and stale beer and something far more toxic that probably had to do with photo chemicals. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I got a surprise.
Gary Richter was living in his studio, all right—the far end of the room was an atoll of clothing heaped around a lumpy futon and decorated with chunks of coral that turned out to be terminal sneakers and empty beer cans. But the mess at that end of the room had been created by the artist; the mess in the work space was otherwise: Richter’s space had been tossed, by person or persons unknown. I listened for sounds of interest from outside and when I didn’t hear any I got down to business.
The desk was a former card table, legs folded under, that rested on a pair of flimsy file cabinets whose contents had been scattered around the room like dozens of manila playing cards. The top of the desk was cluttered with bills and receipts and the similar effluvia of life, but any semblance of order had been shattered. Containers of pencils and paper clips and stamps had been dumped into the mix as well, but robbery hadn’t been the motive since at least five dollars’ worth of quarters was in evidence in a ceramic cup, presumably destined for parking or the laundry.
The only thing that jumped out at me from the jumble on the desk was a brochure from something called the Photo Academy. Its list of classes ranged from Basic Black and White to something called Cibachrome Masking. Richter appeared on the list of instructors opposite two courses—Form and Figure and Advanced Light Control. The bio under the heading Featured Photographers didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already.
I noted the address of the school in my notebook, then pawed through what had formerly been the contents of the file cabinets. Mostly they were folders containing his stockin-trade—photographs of nude women in a variety of poses from the artful to the erotic—covering the entire spectrum of propriety. I guessed that sort of schizophrenia was common to the business, the way poets writing porn is not unknown to literature. But the purpose of the intruder hadn’t been to collect modern art—there were easily a hundred photos in view that had slipped from their folders as they’d been tossed aside as unimportant. Some were quite good to my uncultured eye, better than a lot of the stuff I saw on the occasions when I perused copies of Modern Photography on the shelf of the local library. But the intruder hadn’t been interested. The reason was probably significant.
I leafed through the pictures and the file folders with care, but there was no clue to the purposes of the thief, just an overabundance of flesh. Some of the pictures were familiar—I’d seen several of the models on the wall at Erospace next to the names of other photographers, and I’d seen one of the models a few minutes earlier at the Still Life in Fremont Café. And some of the pictures weren’t nudes at all, but rather formal portraits of dozens of clean-cut young people of what I guessed was high school age—I couldn’t figure that one at all. When I looked for pictures of Nina Evans, I couldn’t find any.
The only other files contained business correspondence and expense and income data. I looked through them without knowing what I was looking for, noting Richter’s communications with magazines from Stud to Mirabella and with outlets from Erospace to something called the Craig Butera Gallery. He spent a lot of money on equipment and he earned a decent living from the sale of his work as evidenced by copies of his tax return. His business income on the 1993 Schedule C was $27,452. Good, but not great—Gary must still be on the hustle, and no doubt sending stuff to Hustler.
I made a search for an address book or Rolodex, but didn’t find either. What I did find was a file full of releases signed by his models that allowed Richter to do with their images what he would, apparently without restriction—I shuddered to think why anyone would sign such a thing. I made note of the models’ names, then returned the releases to their folder.
I looked through the closet and chest of drawers and kitchen cabinetry as well, but there was nothing in any of them that wasn’t expected and nothing from the saucepans to the boxer briefs that couldn’t have used a good washing. There were some oddities among the ruins—a jar of Vaseline I assumed was a sexual lubricant until I remembered that photographers sometimes smear jelly on their lenses; a variety of development chemicals but no enlarger, which indicated his darkroom was elsewhere; a host of lighting devices; and a nest of filmy lingerie heaped in a cardboard box, ready for the next assignment from Swank.
And two last items. One was a thirty-eight police special that was stuck inside a pillow next to the futon. When I sniffed I didn’t detect the fumes of recent discharge, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. The other item was a stone, small and flat and pointed, lying on the floor by the door. I didn’t realize what it was until I picked it up—an arrowhead, jagged and sharp and lethal. When I put it in my pocket, I experienced a detectable pang of wrongdoing.
My final stop was the west wall, where Richter had hung his harem—a dozen photographs, wrapped in plasticine, arranged in a rectangle, stuck to the wall with pushpins. Each was of a naked woman, and each woman faced the camera in a formal pose that was made ludicrous by her facial contortions. The women mugged, they sneered, they looked cross-eyed, they looked like fish and squirrels—Richter seemed to have a sense of humor. But what was more noticeable than what was tacked to the wall was what was missing. There was a hole in the comic collection, a void in the upper-right quadrant: one of the models had been edited out; I was certain it was Nina.
CHAPTER 9
“So what do we do now?” she asks.
“I videotape you, then interview you.”
“Interview? What kind of interview?”
“Something to see what kind of person you are and what kind of mind you have.”
“What is this, Miss America or something? What difference does it make what kind of mind I have? I’m here because of my body and we both know it.”
“The mind-body distinction is passé; we believe that spirit and flesh are one and that in the right hands the camera reveals both the inner and outer selves. We want both to be unexceptionable.”
She is tempted to dispute him, to declare that her mind a
nd body travel separate paths that often result in painful collisions, but she opts not to because she is not sure how much of herself she wants to reveal to him. So she shrugs. “What do I do now?”
“Go stand by that wall.”
She plucks at her T-shirt. “Off or on?”
“On, for the moment. We’ll do dressed first, then nude. Nothing fancy—just basic position and movement. We’re only interested in infrastructure at this point.”
“You saw my infrastructure at the Drew exhibit.”
“I did; he didn’t.”
“Mr. Big? The guy who’s behind all this?”
“Mr. Big. Right. Now, if you’ll sign this release, we’ll get right to it.”
Again, she thinks of Gary. “I don’t like releases.”
“And we don’t like lawsuits.”
If Gary Richter didn’t already know his place had been tossed, he would certainly know it the minute he set foot in the door and if he had any sense, he’d go to ground until he found out what the invasion was about. I was out of my element—Seattle’s streets and alleys were as foreign to me as London’s, while a guy with as many enemies as Richter would know them all—so the chances of running him down weren’t good. I went out the door, made sure it locked itself, then took six steps to my left and knocked at the adjoining apartment.
The man who answered was wearing shorts and an eye patch and looked as if he had been out in the yard playing with mud. When I remembered the conglomeration in the next lot, I guessed he had been throwing a pot.
“What?” he demanded with the egoism common to most great artists and too many lesser talents.
“I’m looking for the guy next door. Gary Richter,” I added when he didn’t say anything. “Know where he is?”
He blinked his single eye. “No idea.”
“Know where he has his darkroom?”
“No idea.”
“Do you know the whereabouts of a woman named Nina Evans? She’s a model who was working with him.”
He lifted the patch and massaged the drumhead of skin that stretched across the socket. “No idea.”
I smiled at his attempt to disgust me. “I wonder if you happen to know who trashed his place.”
A brow soared like a tern lifting off a log. “His place is trashed?”
“Yep.”
“Good.” He grasped the door and began to close it. “Does that take care of it?”
“Not nearly,” I told him, then flipped my adopted card into the depths of his studio before he could close the door in my face.
When I got back to my car I cast about for other leads; the only one I came up with was the Photo Academy.
The offices were in the shade of the monorail track near the corner of Fifth and Denny. As I walked down the block a train passed overhead, smooth and silent and untroubled by the sludge of street traffic. It seemed like a good deal; I wondered why no one was riding it.
Fittingly enough, the school had a photo gallery in front with offices behind a counter in the rear and classrooms up and down a set of metal stairs that were attached to the back wall. While I waited for the woman at the counter to finish telling a man about the policy on refunds in case he decided not to continue the course, I browsed through the exhibit in the gallery.
In contrast to Erospace, the offerings were pretty tame. The title of the show was “Seattle Scenes,” and most of the photos depicted the out-of-doors: mountains and trees and streams; tugboats and houseboats and ferries; gardens and markets and malls. In contrast to the colorful landscapes, a series of black-and-white shots caught my eye from across the room.
Even here, Gary Richter was an iconoclast. His subject was a stripper; in each snapshot she was in a different state of dishabille, wearing an expression of weary wantonness. The marquee above a shot of her reporting for work in her street clothes read, THE BLITZ CLUB. In the third picture of the series, the lady was naked except for her high heels and was tickling herself with a boa. Her mons was shaved and the bulb of naked flesh was tattooed with a garland of leaves and flowers. What will they think of next?
When the woman had finished her spiel, I approached with an impromptu scheme. “Are you here for the fall schedule?” she asked when I reached the counter.
I shook my head. “I’m here for some help.”
She looked disappointed. “I’m not an instructor, I’m afraid. The staff won’t be in till evening.”
My sheepish expression was only partially fraudulent. “I got married a few weeks ago. Second time.”
“Congratulations. I’m getting married in December myself.”
“Hey. Great. I hope you’ll be as happy as I am.”
“Thanks. So how can I help you?”
“It’s kind of awkward. Maybe even weird. What I want is a really nice portrait of my wife. Not portrait, exactly, but study. You know.” I blushed and fidgeted.
“Study?”
“Figure study. You know. Nude. Maybe a series: front, back, and side. Triptych. Is that what they call it when there’s three? She’s so damned beautiful, I want to … well, you know.”
Her look made it questionable that anyone betrothed to me would do justice to a camera lens. “I’m still not sure how I can help you. You want to learn how to do it, is that it?”
I shook my head. “I want to hire someone. A pro. But I don’t know who to send her to. I don’t want some sleazeball, obviously, or an amateur just in it for kicks. I want someone serious and professional and not too expensive, who’ll do a nice job and get everything out of Edna she’s got to give. She’s shy. I mean, she wants to do it and everything, but she’s nervous. She’s Lutheran,” I added, as if that would explain everything.
“Maybe a female photographer would be best. We’ve got several wonderful women on staff, I’d be happy to—”
“I asked Edna about that. She said she preferred a man. A woman would make her even more nervous, she says.”
“Why?”
“She says a woman would be too critical, that a man would understand what we were trying to do and not pass judgment on … anyway, someone told her about a guy named Richter. They said he was good and they gave me the number of his studio but I haven’t been able to reach him. I figured he’d probably moved and when I saw his name on your brochure, I figured you could tell me how to get in touch with him.”
“Gary Richter. Yes. He’s one of our instructors. But I’m not sure I can—”
“I’m prepared to pay full rate if he and Edna decide to give it a go. If he’s teaching here he must need the money.”
She bristled. “Our instructors are highly successful photographers. They teach in order to give something back to the profession and to encourage others to pursue a career that they themselves have found fulfilling.”
“I didn’t mean he was a loser, I just—”
“Are you still obsessing on Richter?”
The voice was low and resonant and issued from a woman who had come into the gallery without my noticing. I’d seen her two hours earlier, in the café in Fremont, taking stock of her cup and her life.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.”
“Fiona, right?”
“Right.”
She had gotten spiffy in the interim—black tights with a red silk shirt over the top, an oversized shirt with black dots all over it. Her complexion was dark, possibly Middle Eastern; her hair was wound on the top of her head in a way that showed off an elegant neck and finely chiseled ears. Her legs were long and thin and straight, the base of a dancer or model.
I grinned. “You’re the one it was too early to hit on.”
“Yeah. I was rude, wasn’t I?”
“I’m used to rude. I hardly notice anymore.”
“Well, I apologize. I’d just lost an Eddie Bauer shoot I was up for, and I was pissed. I guess I took it out on you.”
I opted to maintain my charade. “Then you can help me find Richter? To do the nudes of my wife?”
“I
f you’re really who you say you are, which I doubt, you don’t want him.”
“Why not?”
“Gary Richter is a carnivore,” she said, with at least as much savagery as the words implied.
“What do you mean, carnivore?”
“I mean he preys on women. He uses his skills as bait, and lures them into a professional relationship, then maneuvers them into a position of need and subservience. He devours them, he chews them up and spits them out, he treats them like raw meat when he’s not treating them like garbage.” She gathered breath for one last lambast. “Gary’s a control freak, a sadist, a misogynist, and a liar. He’s the last person on earth you should find for your wife.”
A phone rang at the close of the diatribe and the woman behind the desk broke off her thrall and went to answer it, reluctant to forgo the next installment of the assassination of Gary Richter.
I looked at the woman in the red shirt. “Have you got a few minutes?”
“Why? I’ve told you all you need to know about the man. There are plenty of other photographers who—”
I lowered my voice. “I’m not looking for a photographer; I’m looking for Nina Evans.”
She frowned. “But you said—”
“I’m a private detective. The things I say are only true in context. I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee and discuss Mr. Richter in more detail.”
She glanced at a clock on the wall. “I’m the model for the five o’clock class, so I … hell. Sandy was late last week, and she always lectures them for twenty minutes while I sit on my stool freezing my ass off. There’s a café around the corner. The legendary Five Point.”
“I’m afraid I’m not up on the local legends; I’ve only been in town twenty-four hours.”
“Where from? Wait. I remember. San Francisco.”
“Right. Where you got hijacked by a Dead Head that looked like Mick Jagger.”
She reddened and grabbed my arm and led me around the corner to the Five Point. Along the way we met Kitsap the Indian, in the form of a bronze statue of him with his hand extended toward the first ship that sailed into Puget Sound, in the year 1792.
Flesh Wounds Page 8
