A Death Before Dying (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)
Page 16
“They’re about as cooperative as a Swiss banker dodging a court order,” Friedman answered. “However, I’ve got an old friend who’s an NYPD captain. He’s promised to pound a few desks.”
“Meredith was involved with someone at Allegro. He was paying the rent. He was doing it all through Allegro, so his wife wouldn’t find out.”
“That’s the way it looks.” Friedman spoke laconically.
“Does Allegro have any branches here? Any connections?”
“Not that I can find.”
“Then maybe one of us should fly to New York.”
Friedman raised a hand in protest. “Not in this weather do I fly to New York. Never. I used to fly bombers, if you recall. I know what can happen, in weather like this.”
“Then maybe I’ll go.”
“Why don’t you give my NYPD guy a chance?”
“Well …” Hastings frowned.
“Meanwhile, there’s one last point about Allegro.”
“What’s that?”
“They own three other buildings in town.” Friedman sailed a paper across the desk. “They’re all commercial buildings. But you might find out something. Why don’t you check them out? Meanwhile, later today I’ll give my guy in New York another call, see what he says. Then fly to New York, if you want to go.”
As Hastings scanned the addresses, he nodded. “Fine.”
11:45 A.M. “The truth is,” Jonathan Taylor said, “it’s demeaning, to show my stuff in the same room with this shit.” As he spoke, he flung out an arm, gesturing to the gallery’s far wall. “It’s self-debasement.”
“I’m not saying it’s not demeaning,” Cass answered, keeping her voice low. “But for God’s sake, Jonathan, be reasonable. You’ve got a show. You’re thirty-six, and you’ve never had a show—not in any kind of a real art market, anyhow.”
“That’s not true.” Fists propped indignantly on his hips, chin truculently outthrust, eyes snapping, Taylor turned to face her squarely. He was a short, muscular, bandy-legged man with a sharply etched face and a longshoreman’s torso. He’d never been known to wear anything but work shoes, blue jeans, a sweatshirt, and a scarred leather jacket. His only vanity was his luxuriant head of thick brown hair, worn medium long and always carefully combed. “What about Tucson?”
She sighed wearily. “Sorry. I forgot about Tucson.”
“If you’re trying to inject a little irony into the discussion,” he said heavily, “you’re succeeding.”
“Oh, Jesus, Jonathan, I didn’t come here to argue. I came to help you hang your show.”
“Nobody told me I’d be sharing a gallery with shit.”
“Galleries are full of shit. You should know that by now. The world’s full of shit. But don’t forget, flowers grow in shit. Beautiful flowers.”
His face quizzical, he studied her for a moment. Then, unpredictably, he smiled. “I’m the flower. Is that it?”
Her smile matched his. “Definitely, that’s it.”
“Well—” As if in fresh appraisal, he looked her over head to foot. “Well, if I’m a flower, then so are you. A very nicely packaged flower. If there were an artist’s lounge in this so-called gallery, I’d take you there and ravish you.”
She moved closer, smiled, arched her body toward him. “Hold the thought.”
“Right.”
The moment held between them, an erotic promise. Then Taylor sighed, turned to face the long blank wall that was his for the next three weeks. He sighed again. “The problem,” he said, “what’s really bugging me, if I’m honest with myself, is that I feel like a whore. I feel like I’m taking money to get into bed with Edwin Corwin. And I can’t think of anything more repulsive.”
“You’re mixing your metaphors. It’s not Corwin’s money you’re taking. It’s their money. The great unwashed public’s money. In fact, technically Corwin will be taking your money, part of it, if he sells anything of yours.”
Sulking now, he stubbornly shook his head. “You know what I mean.”
“I know that people like Edwin Corwin make the reviewers take notice. And reviewers make the public take notice. It’s a fact of life, Jonathan. You may as well face it.”
“Do you think he and Charles are screwing each other?”
Involuntarily she looked over her shoulder, dropped her voice. “Jonathan, for God’s sake.”
“Did you see them, the other night? I thought Charles was going to peel him a grape.”
“If Charles peels Edwin’s grape,” Cass said, “it’s no skin off your ass, to mix another metaphor. You’ve got to learn to lighten up, Jonathan.”
He turned to look at her. “One of the reasons I’m in love with you,” he said quietly, “is that you’ve never told me to lighten up.”
For a moment she didn’t respond. Now her eyes were somber; her voice was pitched to a low, solemn note. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. Truly. It won’t happen again.”
His voice, too, was solemn. “And that’s the first time you’ve ever said you’re sorry.”
Her lips parted in a small, intimate smile. “That probably won’t happen again, either.”
They stood silently for a moment, face to face, smiling into each other’s eyes. Then, sharply shaking his head, he said, “This is what happens when people like us get mixed up with people like Corwin. We’re changed. We’re corrupted.”
“If you feel corrupted,” she said, “then let’s not hang the show. Let’s go home and feed the dog and the cat and then get into bed. Remember, you promised to ravish me.”
He smiled. “So I did.”
“And, furthermore—” With her eyes on the entrance to the gallery, behind him, she broke off. Seeing her mouth tighten and her eyes harden, he turned to face the entrance. It was Charles. Dressed impeccably in a dark three-piece suit, stiff white collar, and gleaming black shoes, Charles went to one of the gallery’s low benches. Sitting down and crossing his legs, adjusting his shirt cuffs and trouser creases, Charles looked at them each in turn. It was a deliberate scrutiny, coldly appraising. In his twenties, elegantly slim, he could have been either a gentleman’s gentleman or a rising young banker. His face was a pale, sallow white. His eyes were dark, unfathomably expressionless. Against the pallor of his face, his small, shapeless mouth was unnaturally vivid, a rosebud red. His dark hair was lusterless, dark and lank, yet impeccably barbered. A large antique opal stickpin adorned his old school tie. When he spoke, his voice was thin. But, compensating, his manner was aloof, foppishly arrogant.
“For your opening, Jonathan, I hope you can find a clean sweatshirt.” As he said it, Charles fingered the opal stickpin. Unlike his body, his fingers were short and stubby: sausage fingers, with nails bitten to the quick. Pointedly he spoke only to Taylor, ignoring Cass.
“Edwin asked me to mention your, ah, dress code, in fact. Artistic panache is one thing. But hygiene is something else.”
“I’d be willing to bet, Charles, that I take more showers than you do. Whatcha say?” Taylor stepped aggressively forward, extending a muscular hand. “Whatcha say, Charles? Bet?”
Charles smiled: a small, pained smile. “I don’t discuss my bathing habits, Jonathan. I’m surprised you do.”
“I don’t, normally. But you brought up the subject.”
Shrugging elaborately, Charles consulted his watch. “I’ve got to meet Edwin.”
“By the way, Charles, how’d your show go? Many commissions for skewered pigs?”
Charles shrugged again. “The reviews were mixed. Predictably mixed. But the good reviews came from the right reviewers. In conceptual art, that’s all one hopes for.”
“How about money?” Mockingly, Jonathan imitated the studied cadence of the other man’s speech. “Does one hope for money?”
The small, smug smile returned. “Gentlemen don’t discuss money.”
“Oh—” Taylor smiled, then burlesqued a deep, ingratiating nod of abject apology. “Oh, I see. Excuse me.” Then, mock-innocently, he asked, “By t
he way, Charles, how long’ve you been a gentleman? I keep forgetting.”
Aware that he was growing angry, therefore losing control, the other man rose to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me …” He half turned away.
“I haven’t hurt your feelings, have I?” Taylor asked, mockingly anxious.
Charles refused to answer, but also refused to turn fully away, leaving the field of honor.
“I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Taylor persisted, “because I have another question to ask.”
The other man held to his stiff, disdainful pose.
“What I wanted to know,” Taylor said, “was whether you think it helped, dropping your last name. Are people impressed, would you say? Or amused? Which?”
“I have to meet Edwin. You’ll have to excuse me.”
Taylor waved airily. “You’re excused, Charles. You’re definitely excused.”
12:15 P.M. The third building on Friedman’s list was 2157-59 Hayes Street. The first building on the list had been a twelve-story office building, the second a small, upscale residential hotel. But 2157-59 Hayes was a two-story storefront, double frontage, with three apartments on the second floor. The building was at least seventy-five years old, probably older. Located only three blocks from the city’s civic center, the Hayes Street building could have begun with a neighborhood hardware store on one side and dry goods store on the other side, with working-class tenants in the apartments above. Following World War II, Hayes Valley had declined, and in the sixties succumbed to a drug blight that overflowed the Haight Ashbury. But in the late seventies, with New York real estate money changing the San Francisco skyline and rapid transit bringing office workers into the city from the suburbs, Hayes Valley suddenly became trendy. Go-go speculators bought up leases, renovated the vintage Victorian buildings, and quadrupled rents. New-wave tenants opened upscale boutiques, restaurants, antique shops, and art galleries. Hayes Valley had arrived.
After parking the Honda in a loading zone and propping his police placard on the dashboard, Hastings switched off his beeper as he strode across the street. Flanked by an antiques store on one side and a small, elegantly decorated French restaurant on the other side, 2157-59 Hayes Street was an art gallery. The gold-leaf lettering on the plate glass was discreet: THE CORWIN GALLERY. The entire show window contained only one painting: a wall-filling abstract that was kin to the paintings in Meredith’s flat.
12:15 P.M. As he bent to fit his key into the Fiat’s passenger-side door, Charles saw it: an orange Honda station wagon, the same color and model he’d followed on Tuesday, from 450 Sutter to the Hall of Justice. The car was coming toward him. The driver, a man, was alone in the car. Signaling for traffic to go around, the man had stopped at a loading zone. Now he was backing the Honda into the loading zone.
At first straightening, involuntarily seeking a better view of the driver’s face as he parked the Honda, Charles quickly crouched down again for concealment. The man got out of the car and began walking across the street toward the gallery.
The man he’d seen lunching with Meredith Powell.
The detective, interviewed on the TV news.
It was important, he knew, absolutely essential, that he remain calm, carefully registering his own responses, his second-to-second reactions. Dispassionately he must begin his calculations, factoring in this instant’s turn of fortune’s wheel.
But first, just as meticulously, he must search his psyche. Was it fear that had quickened the instant’s beat of his heart? Or was it anticipation: the first sting of danger’s flay on untested flesh, himself at the limits and beyond, finally tested, surely supreme?
12:25 P.M. Like Meredith’s flat, the walls and ceiling of the gallery were painted a flat white, with track lighting on the ceiling, also painted white. The floor was thickly carpeted in beige wool. A high-style receptionist sat at a small desk. When Hastings decided to avoid her cool, politely questioning glance, pretending to browse casually, she immediately allowed her gaze to wander into the disinterested middle distance. To her practiced eye, Hastings had obviously failed to match the Corwin Gallery’s preferred customer profile.
Movable partitions divided the large overall space into several smaller spaces. In one of the spaces, a salesman and his client were discussing a huge canvas painted entirely black, with a single thread of color in the center that represented the flesh and blood of an open wound. The customer was a tall blond woman, dramatically dressed in tight white silk pants, short leather boots, an overbulked designer leather jacket, and a flowing over-the-shoulder serape. Her blond hair was fashion-frizzed; her wide, petulant mouth was vivid crimson, her eyes were shadowed a deep blue-green. As she eyed the painting, she stood with shoulders aggressively squared under the layered leather jacket, one hip dramatically outthrust. It was a pose that suggested the cover of a rock music magazine.
Except for a tarpaulin that partitioned off a rear gallery, the other display spaces were deserted. Back in the reception area, avoiding the arch stare of the high-style receptionist, Hastings pretended to examine a piece of abstract iron-studded wooden sculpture. Should he immediately find a phone, call Friedman? Friedman would—
A man materialized in the hallway that led from the curtained-off rear gallery. He wore paint-daubed blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt. His vivid blue eyes were sharp-focused, constantly in restless movement. Taking no notice of Hastings, he strode directly to the receptionist’s desk.
“Do you happen to know,” the newcomer said, “whether I’m going to get any help hanging this show? An electrician, for instance, to hook up the lights?” His voice was don’t-give-a-damn loud, heavily laced with both irony and exasperation.
“The guy should be here by one o’clock,” the receptionist answered. “It’s the lunch hour, you know.”
“He was supposed to be here at ten o’clock.”
She shook her sleek head good-humoredly. “That’s not strictly true, Jonathan. I said I’d ask him to come at ten. But he wasn’t sure he could make it.”
“Will he bring light bulbs?”
“If he doesn’t,” she answered, subtly mocking him with sweetness, “we’ll send him out for some, won’t we?” Playful now, she smiled. This skirmish, Hastings realized, was part of a long-running event: this garrulous man who obviously enjoyed his role as irrepressible artist versus the super-cool receptionist.
Fists propped on hips, the stranger stared down at her. Then, unpredictably, he also smiled. It was a pixie smile that instantly transformed the face, whimsy erasing truculence.
“You know, Gloria, you were cut out for better things than this. Christ, you may as well be greeting customers in a high-priced whorehouse.”
The playful smile widened. “I’m glad you said high priced. It shows you’re perceptive. That’s important in an artist, you know. Perception is a very big deal.”
The artist snorted good-humoredly, casually waved, and turned back down the hallway. Deciding that, odds on, the talkative Jonathan offered a better chance for information than the ice-eyed receptionist, Hastings followed the artist, who was reaching out to pull back the tarpaulin that screened off the rear of the gallery.
“Excuse me.”
Reacting quickly, tensed, the man turned to face Hastings, who held his gold shield in the palm of an outstretched hand. “My name is Hastings. Lieutenant Frank Hastings. I’d like to ask you some questions concerning an investigation we’re conducting. Your name?”
As he studied the badge, the man’s reactions were complex, mingling amusement, interest, skepticism, and quick-thinking speculation. Then, smiling quizzically, he raised his eyes to study Hastings’s face before he finally said, “Jonathan Taylor. What’s the trouble?”
“No trouble, exactly. I’m investigating the death of Meredith Powell.”
“Ah—” Taylor nodded, grasped the tarpaulin, pulled it back. It was a spontaneous, forthcoming response, a good beginning. “Come in here. I’m hanging a show. We can talk.”
“This is Cass Tanguay.” Taylor gestured to the woman, then gestured to Hastings. “Lieutenant Hastings, Cass. He’s asking about Meredith Powell.”
Listening to Taylor say it, watching the other man’s face as he and the woman exchanged a significant glance, Hastings experienced the instant’s quick lift of a hunter at first sight of game. Between Jonathan Taylor and Cass Tanguay and Meredith Powell, there was a connection.
The woman stepped forward, extended her hand. Her grip was firm, her gaze direct. Hastings returned the greeting with pleasure, released her hand with regret, then turned to the man. “You knew Meredith Powell.”
Taylor nodded. “I didn’t know her well. But I knew her.”
“Do you know that she was murdered last Wednesday night?”
“I read about it in the paper. The Sunday paper, I think it was.” As he spoke, Taylor looked around the gallery at the confusion of ladders, paintings propped against the plain white walls, sawhorses and tools. “I’m sorry. No chairs.”
Dismissing the point, Hastings waved. “This won’t take long.”
“Here—” Cass Tanguay spread newspapers on a sawhorse. “Sit here.”
“Thanks.” Hastings did as she asked, waited for them to sit on another sawhorse and a small packing crate. Then, looking at each of them in turn, he said, “Tell me how you knew her. In what connection?”
“The Corwin connection,” Taylor answered promptly. “What else?”
“Why do you say ‘what else’?”
Instead of answering the question, Taylor looked at him sharply, appraisingly. “I guess you’re not, ah, plugged into the local art scene.”
“I guess not,” he answered dryly.
“The reason I asked,” Taylor said, “Edwin Corwin is the great high priest of art in San Francisco, or so he deludes himself into thinking. This is his gallery—” With a mocking flourish, Taylor raised both hands outstretched to the ceiling, perhaps to the heavens beyond. “We’re surrounded by the Corwin aura. It envelops us. It’s a presence.”