Death Wore a Smart Little Outfit

by Orland Outland

  “No. Got a number, though.”

  “Is that all?”

  “You should have seen what gave it to me. Six four, dark hair, olive skin, and would you believe blue eyes?”

  Doan leapt off the couch. “Give me that.”

  She clutched her purse to her bosom, slipping into Joan Crawford mode. “He’s my man, and I’ll fight to keep him.”

  “Okay, okay.” He retreated to the kitchen.

  “Since you decided to use your housekeeping key to come over and watch my cable TV, did you answer the phone and did you bother to take any messages?”

  “Two calls. It, and the dreamboat.”

  “KC?”

  “Yes. It. He’s coming over tomorrow morning to look at some figures. Why you trust that man with your money is beyond me.”

  “First, because the only thing I learned to balance in school was a book on my head. Second, he is an accountant. I take it the dreamboat was Mark? What did he say?”

  “Oh, he just called to say hi.”

  “Come on, Doan. Mark wouldn’t just call to say hi.”

  “Don’t worry. He had a problem, but I took care of it.” He smiled sweetly.

  “Out with it.”

  Doan sailed past her. “Oh, he and his...husband? Yes. They had a little tiff and he needed somewhere to stay.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “He was just here fifteen minutes ago. To pick up the keys to my apartment. After all, he didn’t want to stay here without your permission, and Lord knows when you’d get home, and with what. Well, I’ve got to be going. I’ve got ... something in the oven.”

  Binky laughed as she went into her bedroom and removed the dress, exaggerating her relief for Doan’s benefit.

  “Stop that,” he commanded from the couch. “You looked wonderful, and you know it.”

  “Sure, and the price was damage to my lungs equivalent to two thousand packs of cigarettes. And if I ever have a child, I am now incapable of breast-feeding.”

  “Flat tits are in this year anyway; yours were too big.”

  “Only for you, and you’re just a critic, not a buyer.”

  “Oh, ho! This is the thanks I get for loaning you my Paris original.”

  “The thanks you get is that I let you shamelessly abuse your maid’s key. If you can afford Paris originals, why can’t you afford your own cable TV? What if I’d brought someone home? Even in this city, the sight of a half-naked man on my couch, in my negligee, is enough to make anyone think twice about staying around too long.”

  “If I had cable, I couldn’t afford Paris originals,” Doan neatly neutralized her arguments. “And you’d never bring a man here.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “No. You’d rather die than have one of your discards actually ...” he clutched his breast in mock horror, “know where you live and thus...be able to see you again! Oh, stars!”

  “So I’m not a romantic. I’m not a cynic, either. Leave me be.”

  “But,” he protested, “if l left you be, I would have no fun at all!”

  “Guess what I got in the mail today?” she asked him.

  “Your trust check,” he answered.

  She ran out of the bedroom. “How did you know?”

  “Remember? No, of course not. Part of my maid job is to do things that you forget. Like get the mail. When the return address is capped with six last names in scrolly - looking type, it’s the family solicitors.”

  “That could have been anything. I could have all kinds of other dealings with lawyers.”

  “Yes, that’s true. That’s why I opened it to make sure. You know, Binky dear, I do love you because you are so much a girl after my own heart, but maybe in this case you are too much after my own heart. If you didn’t spend those checks so fast, you wouldn’t have to work for a living.”

  “I’d have to work anyway,” she countered. “First of all, because I have no real talents other than clever conversation, which leaves me either very bored or doing good works, and if I’d wanted to be doing good works, I never would’ve left Connecticut. So first, I work for something to do. Second, if I didn’t work, I’d never see any new people and we’d have no one to gossip about.”

  Doan paled at the very thought of a human life devoid of gossip.

  “Also, it would deprive you of men to sink your hooks into.”

  “Hooks! The nerve. Speaking of which, I really do have to go...” He pulled off the negligee and pulled on a sleeveless black dress.

  “Homewrecker. Come see me tomorrow. Saturdays are so dull.”

  “I’d love to, but I have to leave the country.”

  “Give me a break. Come over around ten.”

  “I’ll call you when I get back to America!” Doan insisted.

  “Get out,” she said, pushing him out the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Doan shrugged. “Whatever you say, dear.”

  Detective Luke Faraglione, SFPD, Homicide, did not, to the discerning eyes about him, look like a policeman. At six feet four inches, with black hair and blue eyes, dressed as he still was in his tuxedo, he looked like a model. A self-described Situationist at the front of the roped-off crowd at the mouth of the alley decided that Luke had been sent from central casting to play the bad cop, because good cops were always men who looked like Gene Hackman, or Charles Durning, “or someone else you could never sleep with in a million years,” the Situationist drawled.

  The Situationist left the scene of the crime momentarily to fetch his video camera. Luke let him go, as Sergeant Connors already had that name down on his pad as a witness to be interviewed later. Detective Luke Faraglione, SFPD, Homicide, did not, today, feel like a policeman. He certainly did not feel like a model. He felt like spending two weeks in the Caribbean, which he would have been able to do in a few days, if it hadn’t been for this new killing. The Situationist was back, filming everything, having decided that if he got it all filmed before anyone realized that this was a real murder investigation, he could claim the whole thing, including tomorrow’s headlines, was his performance art piece. He might even be able to get an NEA grant for it.

  “Because I could not stop for death,” he drawled, training his camera in for a close - up of the dead man, “he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just myself, and my nineteen-inch TVs.”

  Luke shook his head. “Sergeant, would you escort this gentleman back onto the other side of the ropes, thank you very much.”

  “The victim,” the coroner’s assistant was speaking into his tape recorder, “is a Caucasian male, twenty-six, with green eyes and ... well, green hair. The victim is strapped in a position resembling crucifixion to a wall of twenty color television sets, which are attached to twenty videocassette recorders, all hooked to a generator at the end of the alley, all of which were on at the time the body was discovered. The televisions and VCRs do not, at this time, seem to have been all or part of the cause of death,” he ended with his usual caution. One never knew.

  The top five monitors, Luke noticed, had gone over to snow. When he had arrived several hours ago, they had spelled out, with one word each, “HE DIED FOR YOUR SINS.” The rest of the monitors had all played the same thing, each about thirty seconds off the rest – a tape of the dead man’s interviews, “performances,” lectures, etc. He wondered who would pop for twenty color TVs and as many VCRs for effect, rather than just killing the man. The killer seemed to be not only a certifiable psychotic, but a fairly well-off one.

  “This is,” a shrill voice in the crowd announced, bringing the rest of them to an awed hush, “the ultimate statement.” The crowd parted to reveal an incredibly portly man with a rakish hat and a cloak over his shoulders.

  “Oooohhh ...”

  “The ultimate impertinence.”

  “Aaaahhh ...”

  “The ultimate rebellion against two - dimensional, yes, even three-dimensional limitations of art.”

  “Mmmmmmm ...”

  “It is ... the artist
... as critic! The suicide as statement raised to its ultimate level!”

  “Oh, what a load of crap,” a dour voice interrupted. “This is just the SoMa Killer again.”

  Luke signaled the already overextended Connors.

  “That guy. Go get him, will you?”

  “I seek in my work,” one of the monitors was droning, “to reconcile the Hegelian world with the Freudian, incorporating Socialist Realism, for the full effect I’m, uh ... looking for.”

  “Did having rich parents to support you help you in your early years?” an interviewer asked.

  “No, it made it harder, because I was too, uh ... material in my works. I was looking to create something, uh ... ethereal ...”

  “Don’t listen to that!” the man warned Luke. “Your brain will try and understand it, as if it made sense, and that’s the last thing it is.”

  Luke extended his hand and introduced himself.

  “Anthony Chamberlain, art critic, San Francisco Times. And always glad to be of help to the authorities. At least, now that I’m on the right side of the law.”

  “You don’t look like the criminal type,” Luke told the well-built, ruddy man before him.

  “Family business was illegal,” he said blithely. “Smuggling artifacts and such out of Indonesia before the Vietnam War. So you could say I was raised around art, and when the business went... er, bust, I used it to my advantage.”

  “So now you’re an art critic.”

  “Yes, one of the last true real critics,” he said with characteristic immodesty, “one who can’t be bullied into calling trash great art.”

  “I heard your opinion back there, and wondered if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Be my guest.” Chamberlain responded.

  “From the looks of this, it’s our SoMa Killer again. You've obviously already heard of him. This is the third killing of its kind. The victim is always a local artist, always left in the middle of some sort of...artwork,” Luke said, for lack of a better description. The first one was impaled on a painting composed of long shards of broken glass and pottery glued onto a canvas. The second victim had been sealed in plaster and left with some papier-mâché figures sitting on a park bench. “And this one, well, I’d say from the look of him that he died by electrocution. Each one of the victims, according to people we’ve spoken to, who are supposedly experts in the field...”

  “Hmph.”

  “ ...has been killed and left as part of a work by one school of art or another. Rather than have to ask one of these experts, seeing as how most of them are like that gentleman you had words with, I was wondering if you could tell me offhand if you know, first off, how this one would be classified.”

  “Performance art. All those televisions, for starters. And it’s not unusual anymore for artists to crucify themselves as part of a work. Pity the effect is not as permanent in other cases as it seems to be here.”

  “And is there any artist you know of who...works in all three styles that have been instrumental in the murders?”

  “All three? Lord, no. They’d rather die than do that. Once you’ve got your reputation, it’s a reputation for doing one thing, one way. Change it, and you’ll lose your profitable client base. You know, it sounds awfully silly to declare the death of art; it’s just what people did when the most brilliant modern artists came along and shocked everyone out of their complacency. But what comes out as art today is not exploration - it’s exploitation. Find a gimmick, and be quick with it. Now, if you ask me, just maybe, there’s some poor representational painter out there – maybe even some brilliant modernist whose work really holds some meaning, with reference points outside the Sunday comics and prime time TV. He’ll never make it, you know; his time is past. Not because representationalism or even modernism are bankrupt or no longer speak to us, but because references to comics and TV are the only references anybody gets anymore, and because those other forms are, well, just out of style. Out of style! As if art was as disposable as last year’s cocktail dress. Hearing your genuine talent called outdated is certainly enough to make anyone go mad. I’m lucky; I’m a critic with an audience. But if l had nobody to listen to me, well, the temptation to just start offing those commercial bastards would be immense.”

  “So, in your opinion, we’re looking for either a frustrated artist ... or an angry critic.”

  Chamberlain laughed. “That sounds about right.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chamberlain. You’ve just saved me from a session with another of our art experts.”

  “Always a pleasure to save a soul, Detective, from such a horror as that. Good luck!”

  Luke sighed as they lowered the body and began disconnecting the electronics from the portable generator. He let his thoughts turn to the Caribbean. Who owes me, he thought idly, so much that I can dump this case on him? A year or two ago, he would have recoiled in horror at the idea that he should give up a case to someone else. But a year or two ago, he reflected, he was a plain old cop, the kind that got vacations. He was hoping with all his heart that a long one now would recharge his batteries enough to get him through until his promotion board came up, and he could send someone else to wade through all this crap.

  “What do we do with these TVs, Detective?"

  Luke thought a moment. “Turn them all over to General Hospital? It’s your opportunity to become an artist, Sergeant. Make a statement.”

  Doan was not happy.

  There was a note from Mark on the door. “Roy has forgiven all, I am on my way home, thanx for the couch.”

  “No problem,” Doan murmured as he let himself into the apartment. “I can’t be bothered with anyone who won’t bother to spell thanks correctly, anyway.”

  On top of that, there was a message from Binky on his answering machine. “You might not want to come over tomorrow, as KC will be here. Unless you can tolerate his presence in exchange for a bottle of Perrier Jouet and some napoleons from the Swiss Bakery. Oh, and I talked to Roy; he’s coming over to your place to try and patch things up with Mark.”

  “I have my own champagne,” he said petulantly to the machine, “and I think I’ll drink it now.” But it was gone from the fridge. “Of course. Markie-poo and hubby making up... with my champagne. Probably in my bed, too, for that matter.” Sure enough, not only were the sheets hopelessly tangled, but a condom wrapper had been carelessly left on the table by the bed. Doan did not attempt at this time to see if its contents had also been carelessly left behind.

  “Life,” he announced, “is conspiring against me.” He sighed heavily, contented himself with a glass of cheap white wine and a Twinkie, and packed for his trip.

  Doan’s world tour might have fazed other, less experienced travelers, but Doan had already seen such pedestrian destinations as London, Geneva, and Paris, where he was headed now. In his youth, he had not been averse either to men’s clothing or men’s attentions. His lithe, feline beauty had purchased him more expensive vacations than most people have in their lifetimes. He had trod the Great Wall of China with a billionaire, climbed the Great Pyramid with a fusty Egyptologist, puttered around the Uffizi Gallery with an old WASP, and sailed the seven seas with as many men, all before he was old enough to drink. For Doan, the joy of this trip was not the sightseeing, but the travel - his first chance to ride the Concorde, thoughtfully booked by Eleanor for his convenience.

  London occupied him for only a day. Like any good American, Doan was hopelessly enamored of British royalty. However, when one has already met Margaret, Anne, and Diana, the changing of the guard seems just a little, well, unimpressive.

  Geneva was well prepared for Doan. A town that’s seen everybody from Nazis to Arab sheiks depositing trillions of dollars was not a town to be fazed by a man in a dress. The highlight of Geneva for Doan was that it was smack in the middle of the land of chocolate. It was not his usual habit to make three meals a day of yummy chockie, but then, neither was it his usual habit to visit Switzerland.

  Gro
aning out of his bed the next morning, Doan was not prepared for Paris. Yes yes, it’s a beautiful fossil of a city, living monument to itself, full of treasures etc., etc. The problem with Paris, in Doan’s mind, was that it was always full of Parisians. With the exception of his time in the bank giving over the envelope and instructions, very carefully and slowly in English (more out of spite at their refusal to admit they understood it than anything else), he spent his three hours in Paris with his Walkman headphones clamped firmly on his ears to avoid the sound of spoken French and the evil effect it had on his nerves.

  Collapsing on the Concorde that third night, he thought it was a very cosmopolitan sort of thing he had done, whipping around the world without stopping to ogle anything, as if he made such a trip all the time. Still, he was glad it was over, and he decided he would stay in Bermuda recuperating until Eleanor’s travel expense money was quite exhausted. The possibility of danger to life and limb that Eleanor had hinted darkly at had demolished all his guilt about taking the money. It was, after all, hazard pay. And, he decided, if he was feeling generous, he might even give Binky a call sometime before he returned.

  There was no doubt that Doan had had a greater effect on the world’s capitals than they had had on him. While he had been singularly unmoved by all those monuments to the long-dead, the living denizens of those cities has been singularly moved by him. Even in Paris, the sight of a man wearing a bright blue silk dress with a wide-brimmed red hat walking into a bank and depositing papers as an agent of a world-famous multimillionairess caused a bit of consternation.

  However, Doan had long ago ceased to notice whether or not people were looking at him. He merely took it for granted that they were. This was probably why he had never noticed the man who now sat two rows behind him on the plane, who had been behind him for the last three days. But, then again, the man had been trained to be invisible.

  Doan might not even have been perturbed if he’d known he was being followed. He would have immediately felt less like a delivery boy and more like Mata Hari. He might not even have cared if he’d known the man had followed him all the way to sunny Bermuda.