The Weeping Buddha

by Heather Dune Macadam

  She missed the man Beka had dubbed the guardian angel of the street; who would warn her of danger now? She knelt down in the corner where Bob had been on New Year’s Eve, then pointed in the general direction he had pointed. All she saw were a few stars winking into an indigo sky and the row of buildings at the end of Howard Street. What had he really seen that night?

  Voices drifted up from the stairwell below—Godwyn had met someone in the subway.

  “Did you tell her?” It was Maddie.

  “No. I don’t think it’s any of her business.”

  The tile walls must have been amplifying their voices; Devon leaned back and listened.

  “Cops,” he said. “Keep ’em out of it. You comin’ with?”

  A train heading downtown rushed into the station, its brakes squealing painfully. After a few moments it started off again toward Wall Street. There were no more voices. Curious, Devon walked around the corner to see if they were still there. The platform was empty.

  She walked back up the stairs to the now virtually empty streets.

  Dark had descended suddenly and the downtown street lights seemed yellow and dull, barely lighting her way. Devon was alone in Chinatown, faced with nothing but Gabe’s building at the end of Howard Street. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the key.

  Beka had told her to stay there whenever she needed to and that’s exactly what she planned to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  We awaken to Reality suddenly, and are perceiving phenomena right now.

  —ZEN PHRASE

  Devon opened the front door to the building on Mercer Street with trepidation. She could not help remembering Beka say that sometimes the place gave her the heebie-jeebies. “It feels haunted,” Beka used to complain, “and Gabe is always teasing me because I’m scared to stay here alone, but it’s so big.”

  It was big. Each floor was a 2,600-square-foot loft, not including the ground floor where his sculpture studio was located. The place was worth well over a million dollars now, but Gabe had bought it back in the ’70s for thirty thousand cash. He had always been smart with his money. When he won the International Sculpture Competition grant money, he invested in real estate and rented out the third floor to make sure he always had a steady income. Since then, he’d had some tough times, but he was never broke and never hungry; that’s what had enabled him to continue, he always said. He never had to sell out to survive.

  He also didn’t have to give away his commission to a gallery if he didn’t choose to; he used half of the second floor of his building as a gallery and lived in the other half. On the bottom floor was the studio where he worked on his heavier pieces—he had a welding torch, huge buckets for mixing plaster, and a contraption that helped him pour the contents into molds. There was even a loading dock, which made it easy to ship cumbersome bronzes to clients around the world. When he’d met Beka she was in need of rehearsal space so he shared the top floor with her—the front half functioning as a dance studio, the back half as his place to paint. The basement studio was too dark for painting, and sharing the studio with Beka gave him a chance to observe dancers in their element. Gabe had been better known for his sculptures, but inspired by Beka he had started selling color-splashed abstracts of the human form dashing across an expanse of canvas in the same way she dashed across his fourth floor studio. Like an artist with the Midas touch, his oils had sold as well as his sculptures.

  Devon turned on the stairwell lights. It was a typical warehouse, nothing glamorous or sophisticated about it. Not much different than the loft, actually, except there was no one else inside. She started up the stairs, avoiding the old building’s elevator—she wasn’t about to get stuck in that with no one else around.

  No exhibit was up on the second floor, and if she remembered correctly, Gabriel had not used his gallery in over a year. But there were paintings propped up against the walls, as if someone had been deciding which order to place them in, shuffling them like oversized playing cards to find the perfect combination. Only one sculpture was on display and she’d seen it before. Having Hand was the current title, in honor of a dating joke from the retired sitcom Seinfeld. The piece had changed over the years. One hand grabbed hold of another as they crept upwards in a vertical kind of bronze-ascension. Gabe had told her that it was about getting to the top.

  “But it’s just casts, Gabe,” she had told him. “You didn’t carve the hands; they’re molds that you cast. What’s creative about that?” She had always disliked the piece and didn’t know why Gabe insisted on keeping it on hand.

  “It’s what they say, their shape. I tell my model to think of something, like they’re drowning, and then attempt to cast that emotion.”

  “He’s always trying to capture emotions, Devon,” Beka had warned, “don’t try and figure it out. He lives with me because my art is temporal but he spends all of his time trying to capture it in bronze or oil.”

  “Aestheticism is concrete,” Gabe explained.

  Beka disagreed. “Aestheticism is ethereal.”

  Devon had to admit that the detail on the sculpture was better than it had once been; his materials must have improved over time, but it was still just a bunch of bronze hands. And the latest addition looked as if it were grasping for nothingness between its fingers. “It’s depressing,” she said out loud. “Sorry, Gabe. I still don’t like it.”

  Having Hand was never for sale—Beka said it was always a work in progress and that he never finished it so he could always say he was working on a piece, in case he ever hit artist’s block. It was an interesting idea. Not dissimilar to Hemingway’s theory of never stopping at the end of a chapter, Having Hand had been Gabe’s perpetual first sentence for the next day’s work. Despite her personal dislike for the piece, maybe it had done its job; Gabe had certainly never suffered from artist’s block. She wondered how much it would bring now that its creator was dead, but could not begin to fathom the fickleness of the art world. She owned three Montebellos herself, and with Gabe’s death might have just become rich.

  She turned off the light in the gallery and headed up to the third floor where Beka and Gabe had lived after he stopped renting it out. There were dishes still in the sink, crusty with old marinara, and two goblets with dried-up wine at the bottom of the glasses.Spontaneously, she pulled out her dusting kit and quickly pulled the prints off each glass. One set was definitely Gabe’s, the nick in the right forefinger was there, and the other set appeared to be a man’s hand as well. She continued through the kitchen and into the living area. A coffee-table book of dancers was lying face up, opened to a photograph of Beka and Edilio wrapped seductively around each other like the limbs of a tree entwined with monkey vine. Devon touched the photo sadly, so lovely. She could almost feel Beka’s presence in the room.

  She sat down on the couch, hugged a pillow to her chest, and stared at the photograph. “What happened, Beka? Tell me what happened.” But there was only silence and the occasional thump of the radiators circling steam heat through the cold pipes of the building.

  The ground floor was more like a basement. It was dark, windowless, dank, and smelled of resin and plaster dust, as well as rat turds and mildew. It was not the sort of place she would want to spend the night, and when she turned on the lights half of the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling flickered out. Still, she could see well enough to make a search.

  She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, maybe it was just a feel for where Beka and Gabe were in their lives more than anything else—some hint as to why they were now dead. It was simply a natuthe ral progression after combing the Hamptons house to go through their place in the city; sooner or later Loch and Gary would have had to do it anyway.

  Next to the sink there were six Tyvek paper suits hanging neatly on hangers, just like the ones she wore on a crime scene to keep her clothes clean and to keep herself from leaving trace evidence. The studio was strewn with body parts—plaster casts of limbs and torsos—all shapes and sizes
. Mostly men’s bodies from the look of it. She shuddered. Was this Gabe’s next stage in development? In dripping black brush strokes he had written on the wall, “The Greatest Work of Art is the Human Body.”

  She moved to the back of the studio where the welding, soldering, and casting were done. Much of his work was commissioned by the Japanese, but it hadn’t occurred to her until this moment what a boon being connected to Beka must have been for him. Maybe she had been more than a muse—maybe Beka had been a cash cow.

  Devon knew they hadn’t married for love, but she thought there’d been something more to it than business. Maybe she’d been wrong.Maybe that’s what Beka had really been angry about, that Devon was with someone she loved. Even though they weren’t married, she and Loch had an equal partnership that surpassed what most married couples ever attained—passion and equality. Devon could hold her own against Loch in any given situation. He had never had to save her and never would.

  Loch tried Devon’s cellphone two more times and finally left a message.

  “It’s probably her battery,” Gary suggested.

  “She has a spare.”

  “We’ve been working around the clock, Loch. And she just lost two friends; don’t expect her to be Superwoman this week.”

  Lochwood silently agreed with him and hit the gas as the car sped toward the LIE. He wasn’t worried about her, it was just that she usually followed up on his calls fairly quickly—unless she was in the middle of something important—and that’s what he was really afraid of, missing something.

  Every move she made sent a chill down her spine, and she felt as if she were being stared at. She reached for her shoulder holster and turned slowly to her right.

  Beka was staring at her, a sightless dummy in plaster.

  Devon snorted air through her nose, angry at her own lack of nerve, then tossed a drop-cloth on top of Beka’s white head. “Sorry, Beka, but I don’t need more ghosts than I brought with me.”

  She picked up a bag full of a fine dusty powder. Alginate. It was what dentists used to make molds of teeth—no wonder he was getting better detail in the Having Hand sculpture. She picked up a mold that, broken, looked like it had been the original for the last set of hands. She let her own hand hover above the portion of the mold she’d found; the hand was larger than hers and the fingers looked well-muscled and full of creases, denoting someone who worked hard. There was also the indentation of a ring in the mold. She knew she’d seen it in the top pair of hands in Gabe’s sculpture upstairs but she’d seen the ring elsewhere as well; she just couldn’t place where or on whom.

  Pulling her cellphone out of her breast pocket she noticed that her beeper was missing from her belt. She knew she had put it on last night; she had changed clothes before coming into the city but could not imagine leaving it behind in her locker. Stress was taking its toll on her memory. Her cellphone had a tiny picture of a letter—she had missed a call. The building must be messing up her signal. She pressed the buttons for voice-mail and heard an angry beep. Her battery was out. That was strange; she had replaced it this morning … or was it last night? She could not remember. There was a spare upstairs in her crime kit, but that meant turning around and walking up three flights. Feeling cut off from the world, Devon stood in the middle of the room trying to decide what to do.

  A buzz overhead made her look up. The fluorescent tubes in the ceiling flickered twice, faded to brown, then black. She blinked. Orange spots appeared in the darkness.

  “Shit.” She turned around as the door to the studio slammed shut.

  The wind must have closed it, she reasoned, and took a step forward in the darkness.

  The exit sign glowed dangerously red at the front of the room.

  She steadied her breathing and took another step. There was a definitive click of the barrel of a gun being cocked. A shadow seemed to pass under the exit sign. Were her eyes playing tricks on her?

  Then there was a slight crunch of plaster beneath a foot. Not hers.

  Reaching for her gun, Devon backed up slowly, peering through the pitch black of the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I have experienced great satori eighteen times, and lost count of the number of small satoris I have had.

  —DAIE OSHO

  Loch dropped Gary off at his car with the Plasticine parts they had collected at the crime scene. “Get Frank on that in the morning,” he told his partner. “I’ll call you from the city.” He tried Devon’s cellphone one more time but still got the out-of-service message. The one thing Lochwood Brennen could not stand was having things beyond his control, yet his entire life seemed to revolve around circumstances that were out of his jurisdiction. It was things like his daughter’s life decisions, Marty’s illness, and phones that did not work that made him nuts!

  Deep in thought, he cruised west on the Long Island Expressway toward New York City. What did it mean if Edilio and Beka were having an affair? Did it really change anything? Did it change what happened on New Year’s Eve or further muddle the details? If what he and Gary had learned was true, and they always kept an open mind to the truth, it didn’t explain why Beka suddenly decided to kick Edilio out of the business.

  Loch disliked the conundrum, which, like misfit pieces to a puzzle, only fit halfway in and on the other side stuck out. He couldn’t force things to match, but he couldn’t figure out what exactly was out of place. The only thing he was definitely sure of was that something was not clicking. He flipped open his notepad, keeping one eye on the road as he read his scratches and scribbles regarding the case. There it was, he had to keep reminding himself of that tidbit Beka’s uncle had shared—she had cut her hair once before, after her parents died—that might explain Gabe’s murder, and an affair with Edilio, but did it explain her subsequent suicide? And if Edilio was in on it with her? Money. It had to be financial—two dancers would always be broke, but one dancer married to a wealthy, successful man could take care of the other. If that was true, why would Edilio change the scenario and get rid of her? And why hadn’t he shown up to play the part of a grieving business partner and collect his due? Where the hell in this scenario was Edilio Ferraro now?

  Involuntarily his foot weighed on the accelerator until he was speeding along the LIE at eighty-five miles per hour; he could be in the city in forty-five minutes, he’d done it before. That was one of the advantages of being a cop—speeding. He wasn’t really worried about Devon, just irritated that in this not-so-new information age he could not reach her. And in finding himself cut off from her, he suddenly found that he missed her terribly.

  He began running the license plates of cars in front of him on his police computer. One never knew when a car thief was going to pass by, which was why Loch had more accomodations than anyone else in New York State—he worked even on his drive to work. After three clean sweeps he got bored and decided to call the other woman in his life, his daughter. He punched in another plate as the phone rang twice then went into answer mode. “Brea? It’s Dad. Pick up.”

  “Loch?” It was his mother-in-law’s voice on the other end. “Where are you?” She could be so demanding and critical.

  He shuddered. Family was more terrifying than twenty Joel Rifkins. “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation, Ruth.” He hadn’t meant to sound so defensive and he felt bad that as soon as he heard her voice, he bristled. “Where’s Brea?” he asked more gently.

  “She’s spending the night at Sabrina’s.” There was a pause on both ends, then he heard her quietly say, “She wants to move out.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  He didn’t either but he was damned if he was going to side with his mother-in-law. “She just wants to live a normal life and that’s not going to happen living at home, Ruth.” As if it were a reflex, he punched in another license plate.

  “That’s why I want Marty institutionalized,” she said.

  “That’s not what people do
nowadays.”

  “Then whatever it is they call it. I want her to go someplace where she can get help! We can’t anymore. We’ve done our best, Lochwood.

  It’s time to let go.”

  He could tell that it was hard for her to say those words by the way her voice trembled. “I know,” was all he could say.

  “It isn’t living, and we’re hurting Brea.” It was the first time he had listened to her in a long time, and it was the first time she was making sense. They had a history and not a pleasant one—she had blamed him for Marty’s illness, threatened to take Brea away from him, and fought her daughter’s diagnosis by taking her anger out on her sonin-law. Since then, though, they had developed a working relationship based on a mutual need to protect and help Brea and Marty.Now that same woman was saying, “We can’t help Marty, but we sure as hell can help Brea. I called T.K. Psychiatric. They have a group home that can take Marty and offers a day treatment program for the longterm care of the mentally ill. It’s a good place, Lochwood.”

  He was in shock. “You called them?”

  “I know you said you would do that, but I took care of it. Maybe it’s time her mother made some decisions and stopped leaving it all up to her husband.” He couldn’t help but wonder what had facilitated her change of heart, but he couldn’t bear to ask, so he listened. “I don’t want to lose Brea.”

  Neither do I, he thought, but instead he said, “We both love them, Ruth.”

  “It’s just that we got Brea through high school and I thought now we could relax and be a family, but she wants to run off to Colorado somewhere. Wasn’t Ted Bundy from out west?”

  “Joel Rifkin was from Long Island,” he reminded her.

  “But you caught him, Loch. She’s safe as long as you’re around. How can we protect her all the way out west?”

  “Marty’s your daughter. If you think she’d do better in a group home, then let’s do it. Together—you and me.” He felt an invisible weight lifting off his shoulders. Armistice had been declared and as in so many wars, his ally was none other than his former enemy.