Artist's Proof (24 page)

“This is nothing. You can't get in on a weekend.”

We had kept the talk general and bland on the drive out: how well the kids were doing, the current state of the art market, how much SoHo had changed and how little Quincacogue had. It didn't come easily; we had trouble getting a handle on a dialogue different from our usual one—Lonnie nagging me about my work and me needling her about her commercial bent.

But after a few minutes at our corner table we had smoothed out the social kinks with vodka. The several shots it took to wash down the plates of herrings, smoked fish, and God knew what soon had us swapping reminiscences about our early years together. Before we knew it we were out on the floor dancing to the mammoth retro orchestra that came on duty at eight-thirty.

Motor memory is forever: Once you learn to ride a bike you can go thirty years without, then take off on one with never a wobble. Lonnie and I hadn't danced since well before the divorce, but we fell in with each other as easily as though it was yesterday. We had been pretty good and we were still pretty good, especially with the joints nicely oiled. And Lonnie's supple back and still slim waist felt not much different than they ever had. Better than good enough.

I would never have shown my face at the Tundra if I thought Sharanov might be on hand. But I knew he had still been out at the beach this morning supervising the redecorating of his bedroom, and he was likely to have stayed out, since he was expecting the Turkintons for the weekend. I did glimpse the faithful Nikki at the far end of the room sheepherding the staff in his tux. He glanced in our direction and then quickly away. He must have been keeping tabs on us, but he seemed no more interested in a confrontation than I was.

The dinner passed in a rose-tinted glow. I was, arguably, with the best-looking woman in the room, and we were having a mellow good time. We ate, we drank, we danced; eventually we even sang, if softly. It was only when the check came and I pulled it to me and took a quick peek that I was struck with a dampening thought: The Tundra didn't take plastic.

Not remotely did I have enough cash on me to cover this tab, and I would rather have hung by my thumbs than ask Lonnie for help. I slid the check into a pocket and left the table, supposedly in search of the john.

Instead I found our waiter and drew him behind a potted palm, out of Lonnie's line of sight. “Okay if I give you a personal check?” I said.

He looked me up and down. “Is possible. I must ask the manager.” There was a note of doubt in his voice like a winter wind off the steppes.

I said I'd wait for him not at the table but
right here,
and he took off.

Terrific. I had this flash image. The waiter comes back with Nikki, who says, We do usually take personal checks but in your case we will make an exception. In your case we will beat the shit out of you and throw you into the alley.

I waited behind the potted palm like a hotel detective. A minute or two later I could see Nikki approaching from the entrance foyer, the waiter trailing. Sure enough, the giant was fuming, his face the color of beets. This seemed an excessive reaction to my modest request. When he got close he sent the waiter packing in Russian.

I said, “Hey, Nikki, how you doing?”

His return greeting was “Come wid me,” spat through clenched teeth. Without waiting for a reply he turned and marched back the way he had come.

I followed, but at a less purposeful pace. For a lousy $112 he was definitely overreacting.

He led me through a narrow side door in the foyer into the coatroom, where he ordered the frightened elderly attendant to get lost. She did. This was the coatroom, I recalled, where a body had been found three years ago with two slugs in its chest. Nikki was rummaging around behind some coats. He came out with
Seated Girl.
Part of the brown paper wrapping had been ripped away from the front, revealing most of the two faces, the one looking up and the one looking down.

“What is dis?” Nikki demanded. “What de hell is dis?”

What had happened was that when Lonnie and I parked in the Tundra's lot I realized I couldn't leave the painting unattended in the open flatbed of the pickup, so I had brought it in to the restaurant and checked it. It was tightly wrapped and I can't even guess what instinct had made Nikki rip away the wrapping.

I answered his question. “It's a painting,” I said reasonably. “I'm taking it out to the beach.”

“It is de dead girl,” Nikki said, and his carved yam of a face actually trembled. “Why? Why you bring dat here?”

“Easy does it, Nikki.” He was looking at the portrait hypnotically, almost in awe; I thought of Russian peasants in attendance on an icon reputed to have mystical powers. “It's just a picture I painted.”

“You bring it here to show Mr. Sharanov. To make him feel bad. Get it out of here.”

“I intend to. Just as soon as I pay this bill.” I was holding it out.

He snatched it out of my hand and crushed it; he would brook no delays. “Get out! You hear me? Take dat picture out of here
now.
”

“Sure. Absolutely. I'll get my lady and pick up the painting on our way out.”

“Do it.”

I went back to the table and threw a couple of tens down for the waiter. “Come on,” I said to Lonnie. “We're leaving.”

She said, “Now? Don't you have to pay the bill?”

“No,” I said, and flashed her a confident smile. “We've been comped.”

*   *   *

F
IVE MINUTES INTO
the drive back to Manhattan Lonnie was fast asleep, a casualty of the vodka. As she nodded off her body movements told me she was wrestling with a decision: Should she slump down with her head resting on my shoulder, or in the other direction? The latter choice offered the hard and probably cold surface of the door and window, and she began sliding toward me. But not far. She soon checked herself. And tilted the other way, settling firmly against the doorpost.

I made sure her door was locked.

*   *   *

A
T WEST ELEVENTH
street she stirred as I eased the Chevy to a stop in front of her brownstone. She forced her eyes open. Not many women look good when they first wake up. Lonnie always had, and she still did. I would have invited myself in with the excuse of needing a cup of coffee against the long drive on the expressway, but what would have been the point, with Alan up there, asleep or studying? And even without Alan, was anything likely to develop that would be of interest to my libido?

While I weighed this useless question Lonnie pecked me on the cheek and opened her door. “Don't bother getting out,” she murmured. “It's late and I can manage. Nice evening.” She was cold sober.

As she climbed down, the brisk night breeze seemed to give her a jolt of energy. She said, “Sid, not to nag—that's the last thing I want to do—but would you please at least think about doing some work with sales potential? If you'd take on portrait work I could land you a commission in five minutes. How painful would it be to paint the teenage daughter of a stock broker or Wall Street lawyer sitting on her favorite jumper or cuddling the family dog? How about it? Sid, would you at least consider what I'm suggesting?”

The air had definitely gone out of my balloon. I said, “I can't paint animals. I never know what they're thinking. Find me a teenager I can paint cuddling the family fortune.” And I slammed the door.

She shot me a What's the use? look and turned to march up her stairs.

And with Cassie Brennan lying in the flatbed behind me for company, I began the long drive home.

T
WENTY-TWO

I
N THE MORNING
I bowed to the inevitable and called the only lawyer in the area I knew, Tony Travis, a man about my age who had an office over the hardware store in the village. The word was that Travis had been eased out of a Wall Street firm when a drinking problem kept him from making partner, and after his wife dumped him he retreated here to do a little lawyering and a lot more drinking.

I first met him at the bar at Pulver's, and we would run into each other there once in a while, but nowhere else. I don't think I had ever seen him when he wasn't drinking. I had no idea how good a lawyer he was, but I suspected he came cheap, because how heavy a hitter can you be in an office over a hardware store? Cheap was what I needed.

I called him at his office, and he said he could see me at eleven. His voice sounded different—crisper and firmer. This would be the sober, prelunch Tony Travis. Good; my grand jury appearance on Monday was scheduled for 11
A.M
.

The call to Travis forced me to face up to another I had to make. But rather than phone Lonnie at home and get into a dialogue that could end in a blowup, I called the not yet open Leona Morgenstern Gallery. After taking a few deep breaths to steady myself I left a message on the machine:

“It's Sid. I've been thinking about the sensible suggestion you made last night. You're right, I can do portraits. Alan has told me the one of you I did when you were pregnant with him is hanging over your working, if smoky, fireplace. Not a great spot for it, and I hope you're not making a statement. Anyway, as you know, I am facile, and can work in many styles. It's a curse.

“Here's what I'm getting at. Besides Sarah's school fees, I'm going to have a lawyer's bill before long that I don't think I can get comped. So, yes, if you can find me a portrait commission I'll take it. No animal companions, if possible, but I'll happily take on a composition with two human heads. Two heads pay better than one, right? As you can tell from my choked voice, I am calling with a mouth full of humble pie.”

*   *   *

I
HAD LOADED
my drawing gear in the pickup, and after the session with Travis I drove up to the bay and parked at a dead end on the water where I had never sketched. I put in a couple of therapeutic hours on half a dozen drawings, not all of them good. I had gone several days without drawing, and it took a while for my fingers to get a fix on the dense vegetation at the front of the rocky bay, so different from the spare seascapes I more often drew these days.

As usual, my eye was on the scene I was drawing, but my mind was somewhere else—in this case back at Travis's office. Our meeting had gone about as I had expected. Travis was familiar with the Brennan murder from the heavy media coverage and from village gossip, and it was his opinion that I had nothing to worry about from the grand jury—even though, he wanted to make sure I clearly understood, his practice was almost entirely in real estate and his opinion might not be much better than mine.

The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes, including the times we had to stop talking because of the piercing sound from the key-making machine in the hardware store directly under the office. I was pretty sure Travis would not deduct those nonproductive periods from his billing time. The prelunch Tony Travis was all-business.

When we finished our meeting—neither of us having brought up the subject of a fee schedule—Travis walked me through his secretary's room and down the stairs to the street, chatting amiably all the way. I figured he had turned the billing meter off when he left his desk (would he have the nerve to charge me portal to portal?), so I stood with him outside the front door and let him ramble. Half a dozen years on the east end had just about rubbed prep school out of his voice.

Eventually he looked across the street to the municipal building and pointed out Nora Brennan's window on the second floor. He said, “She hasn't been in since her daughter's death. It's strange to glance up there and not see Nora behind her window, bent over her desk. Talk about your workaholics, she's in five mornings a week, winter and summer, well before eight.”

He could see the question I was forming. He said, “Of course
I'm
not around before eight, but that's what they tell me. Nora opens that office and she closes it.” He shook his head in wonder at the sheer energy that took.

I said, “That schedule didn't give her much time for the family, did it?”

“The husband's basically out of the picture. And the girl was an independent soul. But close to her mother. I'd see them together over a quick lunch at Mel's, two busy working gals, Nora dispensing wise advice, the daughter listening, taking it all in. Do your kids take advice from you? Mine tell me to go sell it.”

I hoped in my case he wasn't putting too high a price on it.

*   *   *

I
TOOK ANOTHER
look at my drawings of the bay when I got home and decided I didn't like a single one of them. Something had to be bothering me for the work to have gone that badly, and I supposed it was my cash flow situation. I would have to put that out of my mind. Sure.

There were two phone messages. Olivia Cooper reported that she was about to leave the city, and she was reminding me that I was expected for dinner at her beach place tonight. She spoke her Southampton address slowly into the machine.

If I had been able to come up with an excuse at this late hour that didn't make me look like a jerk I would have canceled Cooper. Kitty Sharanov's graphic description of her with Sharanov in a tangle of steaming bodies had robbed me of my taste for the evening.

The other call was from Tom Ohlmayer. He was sorry he had missed me when I was in town. What he wanted to tell me yesterday I probably knew by now: The punk who was pursuing me on assault charges had been shot dead during a taxi robbery. But now Tom had a piece of news on another subject. I would like this, but I would absolutely have to keep it under my hat.

I expected item two to be a report from Washington on Tess Turkinton's fingerprints. Not a word on that. What I got was a vague rumor from “somebody” in the department: Mikhael Sharanov was about to be placed under arrest. Tom assumed that if the rumor was true Misha was being tagged for Cassie Brennan's murder. And wouldn't I be relieved to hear that?