by Mark McNease
“You ready for the big night?” Danny asked.
Kyle jumped, sending speckles of spaghetti sauce across the stovetop. He’d been lost in his thoughts and hadn’t heard Danny come into the kitchen.
“Well … yes and no,” Kyle said, quickly recovering. “I didn’t want all this attention, you know.”
“Of course you did. You take great photographs, Kyle. You wanted people to see them.”
“They’re on the Internet, anyone can see them!”
“I mean professionally. Artistically. The Katherine Pride Gallery is a big deal, and Kate would never be doing this if she didn’t believe in you.”
“Speaking of the gallery,” Kyle said, about to bring up the dots he’d been connecting since his trip to Brooklyn.
“There’s something I wanted to discuss,” Danny said, interrupting him.
Kyle felt his heart sink. Danny did not often have things to discuss, and they were usually of a serious nature. Otherwise, they simply talked about things. “Discussing” them was on a deeper level, something reserved for grownups who needed to be very mature for the next few minutes. His immediate assumption was that something was wrong with Smelly. The vet would have called that day with the results of whatever tests they always insisted on doing. Was she sick? Terminally ill? He put the spoon down in a dish on the counter and turned to Danny. They could hear Linda on the phone in the living room, as alive as anyone newly in love.
“It’s Margaret’s,” Danny said.
Kyle thought he said “Margaret” and that he was about to hear terrible news for the old woman they both loved.
“Is she alright?”
“She’s fine,” Danny said, realizing Kyle’s misunderstanding. “Not ‘Margaret.’ Margaret’s Passion, the restaurant.” He took a deep breath. “I want to buy it.”
Kyle didn’t quite get what Danny was saying. He leaned back against the counter and waited for more explanation.
“She’s in financial trouble. It’s a very long story, but she lost all her money with that swindler who’s been in the news.”
“The Effron woman?”
“Yes, yes, Bride of Madoff and all that.”
“Margaret Bowman lost her money? But she’s so smart!”
“Smart has nothing to do with it,” Danny said. “And it’s beside the point. She lost her money, that’s that. She’s about to sell the building to these men, I’ve never met them but she’s asked to arrange it. They’re connected to Claude Petrie somehow.”
“Claude?” Kyle remembered having seen him at the Stopwatch that afternoon.
“Listen to me, Kyle, there will be plenty of time for questions later. I just can’t let this happen. Now I know we can’t buy the building, but we could buy the restaurant. It would be enough to get her through, she’s in her eighties for godsake.”
“How much?”
“Do you love me?” Danny said. He slid up next to Kyle and put his arm around him.
“How much, Danny?”
“Five hundred thousand.”
Kyle would have choked if he’d had anything to choke on. He heard the sauce bubbling on the stove, turned away from Danny and lowered the heat. He needed that moment to think of a response.
“We don’t have that kind of money,” he said quietly, knowing this is not what Danny wanted to hear.
“We can come up with half, I know that.
“That’s our retirement money!”
“That we’ll still have,” Danny said. “It just won’t be sitting in IRAs and 401(k)s. We’ll see what it looks like, invested in one of the most reliable, loved, successful restaurants south of Central Park.”
“Yeah, well,” Kyle said, not convinced. “Where is the other half coming from?”
“Excuse me?” Danny said, having heard him perfectly well.
“The other half, Danny, where is it coming from?”
Danny grew quiet, weighing his words. “We have a visitor coming this Friday …”
“You want to go into business with my mother! Are you out of your mind?”
“Not go into business,” Danny said quickly.
“Everything all right in there?” Linda shouted, having heard the surprise in Kyle’s voice.
“Fine,” Danny shouted back, “We’re fine. Tell Kirsten she can’t let you come alone next time.”
Kyle lowered the heat on the sauce and kept stirring, gazing into the pot.
“It’s a loan,” Danny said. “A silent partnership.”
“Margaret won’t let us borrow money from my mother to save her.”
“Margaret doesn’t have to know.”
Kyle thought about it, stirring and stirring. Finally he turned the flame off. “We can ask her,” he said, both resigned to it and dreading the prospect. He already knew she would say yes, but being indebted to his mother was not something Kyle ever imagined happening at fifty-five, and anyone who thought she would be a silent partner didn’t know Sally Callahan. The only time she had ever been silent was the last few weeks when she refused to tell Kyle what it was she wanted to talk about. Now they would both have news.
“You might want to contact Claude if this deal is something you need to stop,” Kyle said.
“I’ll call him first thing in the morning. Margaret already reached out to him. She hasn’t signed anything yet.”
“Speaking of which, I ran into him at the diner. Not really ran into him, he didn’t see us, but we passed his table. He was having lunch with Linus Hern.”
Danny, who had relaxed after getting the hard part over with, was suddenly suspicious. “Linus?” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought they even knew each other.”
“They seemed to know each other well enough.”
Danny filed the information away in the back of his mind, where he could turn it around over and over through the night: Linus Hern having lunch with Claude Petrie. Claude being Margaret’s new attorney. What did Margaret know about him, really? Only what her trusted attorney Evan Evans had told her, and even someone as world-wise as Evans could be fooled.
Just then Linda called them from the living room. “Kyle, Danny! Come, come, I want you to say hello to Kirsten.”
Kyle turned the burners off and the two of them headed to the couch, where Linda was holding out the phone.
“Who wants to be first?” she said.
Kyle and Danny exchanged looks, then Kyle shrugged and took the phone.
“Kirsten,” he said, “We meet at last.”
Kyle glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand: 11:30 p.m. He and Danny had engaged in one of their infrequent but luxurious rounds of sex, beginning with mutual massages. Neither of them had ever been highly sexed, and the comfortable sexual routine that many couples settle into after being together for years was workable for them. It made their sex life something to be savored, an expression of intimacy rather than frenzy.
Despite their weeknight sex, sleep had not come easily for either of them. Danny had been disturbed by the news of Claude Petrie having lunch with Linus Hern. It made no sense, yet the more he thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. He had wondered where these men came from, only a signature away from owning Margaret’s building. He knew altruism was never a motive in business, and whatever promises they made could be broken with the right sleight of hand. And now, a connection to Linus. But for what? Was Linus Hern the man behind the curtain? There were many questions to pose, and Danny had every intention of getting answers to them. He managed to fall asleep thinking of a visit he would make to Claude Petrie in the morning.
Kyle stared at the digital clock and sighed, wondering if he would be able to drift off as well. He had his own obsessions, his own puzzle. He kept turning the pieces round and round in his mind: two dead artists and a dead graphic designer. Two clear murders and a third likely one. All of them connected to the Katherine Pride Gallery. And the man with the limp, who was he? It kept flitting about in his head. A glimpse of someone, a conversation overheard. He k
new it centered on the New Visions show. He and Danny had gone to the opening. It was during the show that Kate Pride had begun to pressure Kyle to have an exhibit of his own. Something small, she’d said. Just his work, not like New Visions, which highlighted a half dozen up-and-comers. The deaths were of people who had all been involved in that show. Were they being targeted? Were there deaths Kyle didn’t know about? A list?
Feeling like he was onto something, Kyle quietly swung his feet off the bed, careful not to wake up Danny. Leonard, who slept between them, quickly uncurled and leapt to the floor, thinking Kyle was going to feed him, while Smelly just raised her head from the floor pillow she kept as a throne, glanced his way, and went back to sleep.
He’d put the show catalog back with the other books in the spare room. Flipping the light on, he hurried to the shelf. He’d been thinking too narrowly, only trying to identify Shiree Leone, the catalog designer. Now he realized the 20-page booklet contained the answers for it all: each death was connected to this particular show at the Katherine Pride Gallery. There had been six artists shown. Two of them were dead. Could this killer have them all in his sights? And was he one of the names left off, feeling his dreams thwarted by an arrogant art gallery owner who couldn’t see his brilliance?
Kyle sat at his desk and flipped open the catalog. Leonard was at his feet, demanding tribute. Kyle absent-mindedly reached across his desk with his free hand, grabbed a few kitty snacks and dropped them on the floor. He ignored Leonard’s pounce as he ran down the biographies of the artists: Devin, Richard Morninglight, Suzanne DePris, Javier Velasco, and a graffiti artist duo named Little Bit and Winter. He could check off Devin and Morninglight, they were dead. He’d have to quickly find out the status of the others. If they were alive, he could warn them. If they weren’t, then his thesis would prove correct.
He needed help. With his job, and the show opening in a few days, his mother coming to town, he couldn’t possibly accomplish everything by himself. He was going to call Detective Linda Sikorsky as soon as the hour was reasonable. She would have the rest of her life to run a vintage second-hand store and be happily married in New Hope. Right now there was a killer in Manhattan who was getting closer and closer, and the Katherine Pride Gallery was his bulls-eye.
Chapter 21
Hotel Exeter, Hell’s Kitchen
Kieran could see the massive, collective light of the city reflected in the clouds as he lay on the mattress staring out the grimy hotel window. Sleep was beyond him, a memory of something that had once been pleasant but had turned on him the last few months. Sleep was now dreaded almost as much as the dreams that came with it.
He stared up into the dark haze that hovered permanently over Manhattan once the sun had fled. New York City produced so much whiteness in the night sky he doubted anyone here had seen a star in years. The billions of tiny fires in the heavens could not hope to compete with the overpowering glare of neon, streetlight and a million apartments rising floor upon floor, their combined incandescence smothering the shine of God Himself. He knew how God must feel, too, overshadowed and forgotten. They were two of a kind, he and God. The difference, he supposed, was that he had no intention of slinking away to hide his impotence behind mystery. Kieran would not content himself with unanswered prayers from the vain and selfish. He would instead exact revenge and leave his name engraved with the great ones. All of New York City, and soon all the nation, would know his name. What the whisperers would make of him then wouldn’t matter. They would be dead.
He listened as muffled sounds of violence echoed through the old hotel. In the month he had been living here he had witnessed little, but heard much. Groans of sex, shouts of rage, the occasional thud he assumed was a falling body. The police did not seem to care much what happened at the Exeter. They only showed up when someone was dead on arrival – or departure, as the case may be – otherwise leaving the denizens of the place to fend for, and devour, themselves. Junkies, drunkards, prostitutes and pimps, all roamed the halls here like living ghosts. They looked right through him, just as he considered them no more meaningful than the roaches he ignored crawling across his floor. The roaches would outlive them all and deserved more respect.
He would be glad to leave this place soon. Its decrepitude had begun to seep into his bones. He was used to the smells in his clothes, in the walls, in the people shuffling up and down the stairs when the elevator was broken, which was often, but there was another smell beneath them, the smell of failure, that he did not want clinging to him much longer. He had not failed; he had in fact succeeded most spectacularly. But if you stand in shit long enough, you will smell like it, and he wanted to be finished and gone before it could not be washed off.
Kieran watched in silence another hour as the sun began to come back, slowly pushing out the darkness. He liked the sun. Sometimes he believed he was the sun, so brightly did he shine. He and the sun together would chase the blackness from the sky and from his mind. Only his heart was out there beyond the edges of the void, broken and scattered and beyond healing. This suited him fine. He needed to be heartless now. Thinking on it, he rolled over, away from the window, and closed his eyes. The day had arrived and it was time to plan.
Chapter 22
Sunrise on 8th Avenue
Kyle and Linda met for breakfast at the Sunrise Café in Chelsea, tucked between one of the ubiquitous nail salons that peppered the city and a neighborhood pet shop called Animal Nation that had weathered the neighborhood’s changes for forty years. Chelsea had been known for half that time as a gay enclave, like San Francisco’s Castro or Chicago’s Boystown. It came about because the place had once been cheap, and bohemian types who could not afford Greenwich Village moved uptown just a few blocks to the once-industrialized Chelsea.
Chelsea took its name from the estate and house of retired British Major Thomas Clarke, who obtained the property in 1750. In time, factories arose in Chelsea, and the neighborhood still bears its working class roots; many of the buildings now housing million-dollar condos and impossibly high-end co-ops were once textile factories and 19th century sweat shops. By the 1970s the area had fallen on hard times … and along came gay people to begin its gentrification. As is the case with changing tides, they were being overrun and priced out by young couples with children, and Chelsea was now a mix with a decidedly healthy dose of gay, but a mix nonetheless.
The Sunrise was one of Kyle’s favorite restaurants. It had only been in existence for nine months. Judging from the empty booths it may not make it another nine, but he loved the interior, with its exposed brick walls, the two old hutches they used to hold dishes, the slowly rotating ceiling fans. It had a rustic feel to it, as did the staff: older, with a whiff of country about them that made them seem out of place, yet very much at home, in the heart of one of Manhattan’s most trendy districts. One of the waitresses, a buxom woman in her sixties wearing a white apron around her waist, had just taken their breakfast order and left with the menus.
Kyle had brought the catalog from the New Visions show with him and was running his fingers over the cover. “It’s in here,” he said. “The answers.”
Linda had not complained about having her first visit to New York in thirty-five years turned into a hunt for a killer. She’d admitted to herself the first day that she didn’t know what she wanted to see here, and had done nothing to prepare – no maps, no itinerary, no places of interest. Kirsten had encouraged her to lay it all out, or at least make a short list of sights to see, but Linda had told her no, she wanted to explore, to see it all before her as if she’d stepped into a wonderland and would decide to go left or right once the road was in front of her. But here she was in a café with Kyle Callahan, the two of them puzzling over a series of murders. Kyle and Detective Linda, an unlikely pair. She knew this is what she would rather be doing. She was not a sightseer, a shopper, a tourist. Maybe that would change when she and Kirsten went places, as they surely would. Paris had always been on her mind, and she’d never
been west of the Mississippi. So many places to see, all the more reason not to think she had to spend her few days here running from building to building, must-see to must-see. She lived only two hours from here; those places could wait.
“What are you thinking?” she said, sipping the especially rich coffee the Sunrise served up.
“I’m thinking it’s someone we won’t find in this book.”
She looked at him, puzzled.
“Someone who wanted to be,” he explained, “but who was left out. Someone who missed the train to fame they think this is.”
“And it’s not?”
“For some, yes, but for just as many, no. To tell you the truth, Detective Linda, I don’t aspire to be more than an amateur photographer. The show Friday is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not going to make me famous, and I don’t want it to. But a lot of these artists” – and he tapped the catalog again – “this is how they measure their success, their value. It’s who they are, and being left out, being rejected, is probably as life-changing as being in the show.”
The waitress returned with their breakfast, each of them having three-egg omelets, toast and potatoes, set it in front of them and quickly left, realizing they were mid-conversation.
“I have to go to a luncheon with Imogene,” Kyle said, as he slid his plate away and opened the catalog. “I need you to do two things. You’re in on this with me, yes?”
