His eyes track them like prey in a rifle’s sight line, and he sees it in his mind’s eye: bullet propelled in slow motion until it reaches its target, then, wham! a direct hit, aorta bursting, blood spurting out of the woman’s heart, white blouse soaked a deep wine red, body thrown back, the look of shock on her face. Then the man, turning to the woman, eyes darting in every direction trying to locate the bullet’s trajectory, and just when he figures it out, just when they make eye contact, it happens: Kaboom! another round fired right into his head!
He blinks and the pictures fade and there they are, the man, sketchbook tucked under his arm, and the woman, crossing the street, getting into a car, no idea they have just been killed.
He waves down a cab. “Follow that car,” he says as he gets in, and forces a laugh. “Sounds like we’re in a movie, huh?”
The driver, head wrapped in a turban, asks, “Where to, sir?”
“I said, follow that car.”
“Whatever you like, sir.”
He stares at loose strands of shiny black hair that have escaped the turban, imagines wrapping a wire around the man’s neck while thinking up the excuse he will give for leaving his desk so suddenly.
With its colonnaded court and Central Park just across the street, El Museo Del Barrio belied any connection to the real barrio only a few blocks east.
“I used to come here when I was a kid,” I said.
“Really? This place has been around that long?” Terri grinned.
“It was started by some Puerto Rican educators and activists around 1969, I think, which happens to be before my time.”
I hadn’t been here in a while, but inside it looked the same—large room, lots of tile trim, nothing fancy. It brought me back.
Julio and I used to come here when we were teenagers and had nowhere else to go and didn’t feel like getting into trouble. It was the only museum where Julio said he felt comfortable. A couple of times we’d gone to the Met, but he said the guards would watch him like he was going to steal something. I said they were probably right.
“This place was a sort of haven for me and my best friend, Julio.” I remembered the time we were looking at a show of art from the Caribbean Islands. The tour guide was speaking to a class, in Spanish, about the pots and artifacts that had been made hundreds of years ago, and what Julio had said.
Yo, mira, you hear what she said: hundreds of years ago? I can’t get my head around that. The teachers at Julia de Burgos, they always saying there weren’t no history, no nothing, so like I figured all the Puerto Ricans were like me, un mamao, y’know, worthless.
That day had made a difference to Julio. And when he got out of Spofford we’d come up here to see the exhibitions. Later, after he got the job with the law firm, he became a member and started donating money.
Terri crossed the room to check out the brightly colored portraits that covered a wall of doors, Soul Rebels, painted by the artist Yasmin Hernandez.
I started pointing them out. “That’s Julia de Burgos, a famous Puerto Rican poet; and Piri Thomas, who wrote Down These Mean Streets; and I think that’s Eddie Palmieri.”
“What’d you do, Rodriguez, study up before you brought me here so you could show off?”
I hadn’t, but she was right that I was showing off.
Terri pointed to another portrait. “Bob Marley,” she said, and started to sing, “‘No Woman No Cry.’ You’re not the only one who can show off.”
We headed into the main gallery, an exhibition of works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, spare and austere.
Terri pointed at a stack of papers on the floor maybe two-by-three-feet and six inches thick, an image of sand or waves or clouds on top, it was hard to tell. “What’s this?”
“Pick one up.”
“You want me to set off the alarms and get arrested, that it?”
“No, I’m serious.”
She gave me a look, but did it. “Oh. I hadn’t realized it was a stack of the same picture.”
“Gonzalez-Torres wanted his art to be disposable—democratic, you know, just a stack of photocopies.”
Terri rolled up the print. “Maybe I’ll frame it. Free art, why not?” She moved to a wall of small framed statements, and read one: “Center for disease control 1981 streakers 1974 go-go boots 1965 Barbie doll 1960 hula hoop 1958 Disneyland 1955 3–D movies 1952.” She turned to me. “What’s this about?”
“I’d say it’s about juxtaposing fads and cultural phenomena to create unexpected associations.”
“Wow. You’re either too smart for me, Rodriguez, or really full of shit. Forgive me, but art intimidates me.”
“It intimidates lots of people, but you just have to know the language.”
“You mean like the G, with their BSS and CIU bullshit.”
“Exactly,” I said. “For me, art always came naturally, but put an algebra problem in front of me and I go brain-dead. Gonzalez-Torres is a conceptual artist. He works with ideas as opposed to, say, paint and canvas.”
“Sounds a lot cheaper.”
I laughed, and ushered her into another room, walls covered with papier-mâché masks made in the seventeenth century for the carnivals in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
“Jesus!” Terri gasped.
I looked back and forth between a hideous horned fanged devil mask and Terri’s pretty face.
“Can’t tell us apart, huh?”
“If it weren’t for the horns, no.” I laughed, then squinted at Terri.
“What?”
“It’s gone, but a second ago when you looked at that mask, your anatomy—your facial anatomy, that is—rearranged itself into a classic fear face.”
“How so?”
“Your eyes opened and tensed. Your brows raised, and your forehead wrinkled.”
“Not my forehead, Rodriguez. I’m way too young. Go on.”
“Your lips drew back, then opened, and for a second, just a second, your jaw dropped open and quivered.”
“It did not.”
“’fraid so. Dropped wide open—and it wasn’t pretty.”
Terri whacked my arm.
“Sorry, but the classic elements of fear were written all over your face.”
“You know, I see people lying dead in the street and I barely flinch. But I walk into a room with a papier-mâché mask and I freak out.”
“Facial muscles have a mind of their own. It’s totally involuntary.”
“You really know this stuff, don’t you, Rodriguez?”
“It’s my biz, but I’m still learning. And I spared you the anatomical muscle names because I didn’t want to show off.”
“I think you did a pretty good job—of showing off, I mean.” She looked up at me. “So what’s my face telling you now?”
I cocked my head and studied her. “Aside from your raised lip and the one cocked eyebrow—sure signs of disgust and arrogance—there’s a telltale sign of sadness in the downward slant of your outer eyelids, but I think what your face is saying is, ‘Hey, I’m gorgeous and I don’t always know it because I’m insecure, but I think this guy I’m looking at is way cool.”
“Asshole.” She laughed, and raised a hand to hide her face.
“Right on the money, huh?”
“All but that last part about you being cool.” She kept the hand over her face. “Just don’t look at me, okay, Rodriguez? I can’t have you reading my face all the time.”
“Afraid of what I’ll see?”
“Believe it,” she said and slapped my arm.
“You’re hitting me again.”
“Take it as a good sign.”
We ended up in the museum shop where Terri bought a box of Frida Kahlo stationery and I bought some postcards of tacky Spanish-language movies from the fifties.
Outside, a slate-gray sky was framing the naked winter trees of Central Park.
I looked at Terri, pulled her to me, and kissed her.
“Whoa,” she said, her hand pushing against my chest, but not before our tongues had done a lit
tle tango. “You could have asked.”
“I couldn’t take the chance of being turned down.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling.
He feels the bile rising into his throat; the picture of them kissing, vibrating on his optic nerve, sickening.
But what did he expect from her? Maybe she is half Spanish too, like Rodriguez. It was possible, some of them passed.
A school group is heading into the museum and he uses them like a shield to get closer. They are only a few yards apart. He sees them talking and laughing, completely unaware of him. Then the guy raises his arm and the sleeve of his jacket slides back.
He takes a deep breath and ticks off a few more pictures, then pulls the cap lower on his forehead and follows them.
We didn’t make it back to the precinct. We went to my apartment instead. Terri said it was her first day off in a year, but she still felt guilty.
After we fooled around, I pulled myself out of bed and got my pants back on. I wanted to show her my latest drawing.
“It’s still not enough for an identification,” said Terri,
“but there’s something familiar about it. When did you add to it?”
“The other night. I just had a feeling about it.”
She gave me a look, like she was trying to see inside my head.
“Don’t look at me like that.
It makes me feel like a crackpot, the way Denton was looking at me.”
“Oh, Denton just likes to have someone around to torture, and he thinks I’m sleeping with you, so you’ve been elected.”
“How would he know that?”
“He doesn’t. He’s just guessing,” she said, still gazing at the drawing. “What if we got one of the computer nerds to play with this, see what they could come up with?”
“You mean another sketch artist?”
“Oh, don’t look so wounded, Rodriguez, it was just a thought.”
“Well, it’s a sore spot with me. Most of the sketch artists who work on computers have no art training at all. They take a course in moving noses around on a computer screen and they think—”
“Okay, relax. It was just a thought. But do you think you’re going to get more of this face?”
“Maybe,” I said, but had a feeling I would. I thought I might show it to my grandmother too. It didn’t seem so far-fetched these days, particularly with her weird connection to the case.
“And you’ll show it to me if you do.” It was not a question.
It brought up my suspicion or paranoia or whatever you want to call it, that Terri just wanted me around to do my drawings. I don’t know why that annoyed me. I wanted to complete the drawing too.
“What?” Terri asked, looking up at me.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. I’m no face-reading expert, Rodriguez, but I can recognize annoyance when I see it.”
“I’m not annoyed.”
“Suit yourself,” she said.
I walked her out and we didn’t say anything until Terri slid into a cab.
“You know, Rodriguez, if something’s bothering you, it’s okay to say it.”
I tried to think of what I wanted to say, but I’d been tamping down my feelings since I was a kid and all I could come up with was “I’m going to Boston tomorrow.”
Terri sighed, pulled the door closed, and I watched the taxi drive away.
Finally.
He has watched them come out of the building, the woman get into a cab, the man stand in the street until the cab turned the corner. The whole time his lids opening and closing like a camera’s shutter, one fragmented picture after another sent to his brain, again…and again…and again.
35
I pulled myself out of bed around eight. I was feeling edgy and sad but didn’t want to analyze it. I got my art supplies together and headed down Seventh Avenue, the morning sky over Manhattan silver, the tops of skyscrapers dissolving, a talc-like snow turning everything into sculpture.
Penn Station was crowded, people rushing for trains balancing briefcases and Starbucks. I bought a ticket for the ten-twenty Acela Express, which shaved the trip down to just under four hours. I got a seat to myself, and opened the latest issue of Rolling Stone but couldn’t concentrate on the music reviews or a story about Al Gore and his fight to save the environment, my mind going from Terri to the case to the sketch I was trying to make.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture something else: Terri, nude, the first thing that came to me, distracting but hardly relaxing. I exchanged it for a memory: sandy beach, blue sky, my first and only trip to Puerto Rico when I was nine years old, my father beside me, the enormous sand castle that had taken us half the day to build and five minutes for a wave to wash away. I could still picture the soft mounds of the castle’s remains and hear my father’s soothing voice: We can always build another. But I don’t think we ever did.
He watches the man leave, art supplies tucked under his arm, follows him on foot to Penn Station, where he stands on a ticket line, cap tugged low over his features, only three people between them, once again thrilled to be so close yet anonymous. When he hears the man ask for a ticket to Boston, he cuts out of the line, walks back to his building, slips inside behind a couple of workers who are not paying attention, takes the elevator and waits until the hallway is empty, then sets to work on the apartment’s shitty hardware-store lock, which is easy to pop.
The place reminds him of a big cage, no America the Beautiful accoutrements that make life worth living: no Ethan Allen sofa, matching chair, and ottoman; no acrylic nonstain rug. Nothing about the place makes any sense to him—no actual rooms, a beat-up sofa in the center of the space, lamp on a wooden crate that’s been painted blue, bed behind a half-wall, unmade, blankets tossed about, enough to set him itching. He can’t imagine that anyone would want to live like this. Clearly the man doesn’t know any better, more proof that some human beings have evolved and others have not.
He moves away from the bed, afraid it will contaminate him, and crosses the space to a long table covered with dozens and dozens of sketches, pencils, erasers, drawing stumps, sharpeners, graphite and wood shavings, a mess, even worse than the bed.
He switches on the high-intensity lamp and begins to sort through the sketches, studies the man’s style, the way he must hold his pencil to make such marks. It’s not difficult, the line and tone uncomplicated. He hates to admit it, but the man has some talent.
He taps the iPod resting in the docking station, and salsa music blasts into the room, shrill and ugly. He tries to stop it and knocks it to the floor. When he goes to retrieve it, he sees the drawing pad propped under the table, opens it, and freezes.
It’s true, what that reporter wrote! He can hardly believe it. How is it possible? A mud man with such a gift. Of course this is why he has been following him; he just didn’t expect to find it.
He grips the pad, gloved hands shaking as he stares at the incomplete portrait. He is about to rip it from the pad, tear it to pieces, but no, he can’t. The man must never know he was here. He has to think this through, figure out what to do. He closes his eyes and waits. He knows God will tell him.
The train was delayed in New Haven and again in Hartford and I arrived in Boston almost two hours late. I caught a cab, which dropped me in front of the impressive granite-and-glass building that housed the PD and their state-of-the-art DNA and Ballistics labs, as well as a couple of in-house forensic artists I’d met the last time I was here, computer variety, who had obviously failed to deliver, which gave me a slight jolt of schadenfreude.
A uniform led me to Detective Nevins’s office, which was bigger and better than the cubicle she’d had three years ago. The lettering on the door indicated she was now heading up Robbery.
She glanced up and pushed the blond hair out of her eyes. She looked good.
“Congrats on the promotion,” I said.
“You’re late,” she said. “The witness has already left.”
&n
bsp; “Hey, not my fault. The train was delayed. Can you get him back?”
“Not till morning. Any chance you can stay overnight?”
I didn’t see any reason why not. “Sure,” I said, giving Detective Nevins a smile.
She didn’t return it. She raised her left hand and wiggled her ring finger to show off the gold band.
“Wow,” I said. “Congrats again. When did that happen?”
“Year ago. You didn’t think I was going to wait around for you, did you?”
The last time I’d come to Boston she’d been so happy with my sketch she’d taken me out for a drink and one thing led to another.
“When you didn’t call, I wrote you off as just another jerk.”
“That’s me,” I said.
“There’s a hotel in Crosstown Center, walking distance. We’ll reimburse you,” she said.
It has not taken long for God to provide an answer. Though He is busy, He is always there for him. God reminded him that nothing is more important than the mission, the role he is playing pivotal, that he will be remembered, written about, his name passed down by generations of men and women as a martyr to the cause.
He closes the pad that contains his half-finished portrait and slides it back under the table. The cracked iPod he arranges to look like an accident: book plucked from a shelf above the table and placed onto the docking station as if it had fallen, iPod on the floor just below it. He feels pleased to have broken the sketch artist’s toy.
He peruses the man’s drawings, page after page of sketches, and stops at one in particular to study the partially drawn faces, details of features—eyes, noses, lips, a slightly open mouth—and carefully notes again the man’s technique, the way he uses his pencil to create line, tone, and shadow.
He does not think this one will be missed.
He folds the page into his pocket along with a pencil.
At the door he takes his time refitting the lock, getting all the screws back in place.
Outside on the street, he feels calm. Though the man is creating his portrait, it no longer worries him. He will go home, do the work, come back, and finish up.
Anatomy of Fear Page 16
