Dead Sleep (30 page)

“You clearly respect him,” says Lenz. “And I suspect you don't give respect easily.”

“You got that right. I think Roger saw a lot of shit in the war. He's got wisdom, and he knows how to pass it on. By example.”

“What about Frank Smith?” asks Lenz.

Gaines makes a spitting sound.

“You don't like Smith?”

“Frankie's a silver-spoon butt pirate from Westchester. He walks like he has a dildo stuck up his butt, and he preaches every time he opens his mouth.”

“What about his paintings?”

Gaines laughs in derision. “The nude fag series? Very tasty. You seen any of them? He cops the old masters so the stuff looks less like porn, then pawns it off on ignorant queens from New York. It's a sweet scam, I'll give him that. I'd try it myself, but I have this aversion to anal penetration. You know? But hey, maybe that's just me.”

“What about Thalia Laveau?” asks Lenz.

Another pause, as though Gaines is debating whether to answer. “She's a tasty piece, if you like dark meat. Which, on occasion, I do. She doesn't look black, but she's got the blood, all right. Darker the berry, sweeter the juice, right?”

“What about her paintings?” asks Kaiser.

“She paints the poor and downtrodden. Who wants to buy that? A few guilty liberals from New England. She ought to go back to stripping.”

“She told you she stripped for money?” asks Lenz.

“A Newcomb art history chick told me. She and Thalia munch carpets together on occasion. Don't tell me you guys didn't know.”

“Do you know a man named Marcel de Becque?” asks Lenz.

“Never heard of him.”

“We're going to want to take some pictures,” Kaiser says in a detached voice. “Our photographer was supposed to be here already, but I'm sure we can find something to talk about in the meantime.”

Baxter slaps my kneee. “
Go.
And if it gets rough, hit the floor.”

He opens the door, and I'm on the concrete, moving up the line of shotgun houses to the sound of R. Kelly coming from a boom box. I nod to the porch-sitters who'll assume from my clothes and the camera around my neck that I'm what I used to be, a newspaper photographer sent down here for pictures of a corpse or drug activity.

The green paint is peeling from the walls of Gaines's house, and the screen on the door is a rusted patchwork of orange and black. I feel a moment's trepidation as I reach for the handle, but the knowledge that Kaiser has a gun settles me enough to knock and go through the door.

The first thing that hits me is the smell. The scents of paint and oil that made Wheaton's studio so pleasant are here smothered by the stink of mildew, stale beer, rotting food, tobacco, and marijuana. Kaiser, Lenz, and Gaines practically fill the front room, which is long and narrow and throws me back to the countless shotgun houses I visited when I worked for the
Times-Picayune.

“Who's this?” asks Gaines.

There's a strange caesura as Kaiser and Lenz judge his reaction to me. I force myself not to look at him by busying myself with my camera. Past the camera I see a brown sofa pitted with cigarette burns and a threadbare carpet stained with drops of oil paint. The walls are bare but for an airbrushed Elvis on one wall and a small but elegant abstract over the sofa. A large easel stands in the corner nearest me, a dirty cloth thrown over it.

“She's our photographer,” says Kaiser. He points at the easel. “Is that painting yours?”

“Yeah,” Gaines replies, and from the sound of his voice I can tell he's still looking at me.

I give him my face, searching his eyes for signs of recognition. They're dark coals set in yellow sclera, and they look permanently wide, like a hyperthyroid patient's, the effect exaggerated by dark half-moons beneath them. A limp black perm hangs over his forehead, and three days' growth of beard stubbles his face. In person, his skin has the sickly white pallor of a snake's belly. It's not hard to imagine him rolling a lawn mower over a live cat.

“Take the sheet off the painting so she can shoot it,” Kaiser orders.

“Maybe I don't want it shot till it's finished.”

“Maybe somebody somewhere gives a shit what you want.” Kaiser walks over to the easel and yanks off the sheet.

Because I expected so little, Gaines's painting is star tlingly powerful. A lank-haired blond woman with a hard face sits at a kitchen table in the harsh light of a bare bulb. She's surrounded by dirty cereal bowls and fast-food bags, and her shirt is open to the waist, revealing small sagging breasts. Her hollow eyes look out from the canvas with the sullen resignation of an animal that has helped build its own cage. It's hard to imagine such truthful art coming from the creature standing across the room, but talent isn't handed out on a merit system.

I set the flash on the Mamiya and start shooting, doing my best to ignore Gaines, whose eyes I feel like greasy fingers on my skin. After ten shots, I turn to the small abstract on the other wall. It's different from Gaines's work, but it looks like an original. Some female art student probably gave it to him after he slept with her.

“Who painted that?” I ask, shooting a snap of the small canvas.

“Roger,” Gaines replies.

“Roger Wheaton?” asks Lenz.

“Yeah.” Gaines moves closer to me. “I can tell you like my picture. You ought to come back later and let me paint you.”

I would laugh were the situation not so grave.

I whirl to find the blond woman from the painting charging into the room. Wild eyes flash in her pale face, and a livid red mark the size of a fist covers one cheek from eye to mouth, the center of it already turning dark.

“Get back in there!” Gaines yells, his right hand balled into a fist.

Kaiser interposes himself between Gaines and the girl, who's wearing only a thin nightgown. “Has this man assaulted you, miss?”

“He fucked me over, is what he done! He's a goddamn liar! He said I was gonna be a model!”

“Have you modeled for him without clothes?”

“Hell, yes! He hardly lets me put anything on. But he don't want to paint, he just wants to fuck. That and get stoned, all day every day. And once he gets stoned, he can't even do that!”

“Get out, goddamn it!”
Gaines screams, raising his fist.

The girl looks at me with a defiant rage. “Don't let them crazy eyes get you, honey, he's a loser.”

“Like you'd know?” Gaines yells. “This lady's got class.”

The woman laughs. “Yeah? That means she don't lay down with trash like you.”

Gaines lunges at her, but Kaiser does something with his foot and suddenly Gaines is on the floor, clutching his knee with both hands. The girl laughs hysterically and points at Gaines.

“I think you'd better come with us,” Kaiser tells her.

“I got nowhere to go he can't find me.”

“We can arrange a shelter. A protected place.”

“For real?”

“You try it, slut,” Gaines groans.

Kaiser looks over at Lenz. “You have any questions?”

The psychiatrist shakes his head.

“Maybe I will go with you,” the girl says to Kaiser.

When he nods, she runs into the back of the house, and after a crash and some scuffling sounds, returns with a purse and a grocery bag filled with clothes.

“You can forget what I said before,” she says. “I don't know where he was three nights ago. He was supposed to come back after the NOMA opening, but he never did.”

Gaines stares up from the floor with murder in his eyes.

“Well, Leon,” says Kaiser. “I think you've got a problem. The NOPD will be in touch.”

“Just a second,” says the girl. She reaches down beside the sofa and comes up with half a glass of what looks like flat beer. She gives Gaines a vicious look, then splats the beer against the painting on the easel. “You got all you're gettin' out of me, scumbag.”

Gaines roars in fury, and she darts through the front door. Lenz follows her, and I'm close on his heels, surprised by how badly I want out of this self-created hell.

“Hey, picture lady,” Gaines calls after me. “You know where to find me when you get an itch.”

I turn back in time to see Kaiser crouch beside Gaines, blocking my line of sight. At first I think he's whispering something, but then Gaines screams like a woman, and the girl starts laughing on the porch. Lenz sticks his head back through the door and stares transfixed as Kaiser stands, face placid, and walks toward us.

“What the hell was that?” Lenz asks.

“I don't have the patience I used to,” Kaiser mutters.

Once on the sidewalk, Kaiser signals to someone I can't see. A man in plainclothes and a shoulder holster jogs up the street, confers with Kaiser, then leads Gaines's girlfriend away. The three of us gather by the opened rear door of the van, and Baxter looks expectantly at his two emissaries.

“What do you think?”

“It's not Gaines,” says Lenz.

Baxter looks at Kaiser. “John?”

“I don't know.”

Lenz snorts. “We've already wasted too much time. Let's go see Frank Smith.”

“He sure reacted to me,” I say softly.

“Like a hound to a bitch,” says Lenz. “That's all that was. You didn't spook him a bit. He'd never seen you before.”

Baxter is watching me. “What did you think about him?”

“I know he seems too obvious. But there was something in him that scared me. Like all that attitude was covering up something else, something that repelled me on a whole other level. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” says Kaiser. “I felt it too.”

“The quality of his painting surprised me. He really sees into the women he paints.”

Baxter says, “He had a painting by Roger Wheaton on his wall?”

“He did,” Kaiser replies. “I'm surprised he hasn't sold it for dope already.”

“We'd better check with Wheaton to make sure he didn't steal it,” adds Lenz.

“Drop all that,” says Baxter. “NOPD's ready to go in now and tear the place apart. Is that what we want?”

“They're bound to find drugs or weapons,” says Kaiser. “We could put him in Angola and see if the kidnappings stop.”

“Do you really expect more kidnappings?” I ask. “Now that we're this close?”

“We don't know how close we are,” says Lenz. “Our interest might cause a more conventional serial offender to slow down, but whoever's behind this has no reason to. For all we know, the painter is a replaceable element in the equation. If they want another woman, they'll take one. They might even do it just to show they can.”

No one questions Lenz's use of the plural pronoun.

“Don't arrest Gaines,” Kaiser says. “If he's involved, we'll learn more by trailing him than jailing him.”

Baxter looks at Lenz, who nods.

Baxter presses a button on the console and speaks into his headset mike. “Ed? Roust Gaines, but if you can keep from arresting him, we'd like you to leave him in place. . . . Same search, everything, just leave him home. . . . Thanks. I'll see you at the four o'clock meeting.”

Baxter takes off the headset and looks at me. “Ready for Frank Smith?”

“He's got to be an improvement over Gaines.”

“Cleaner, anyway,” says Kaiser.

Baxter knocks on the front panel, and the van screeches onto Freret Street, headed for the more agreeable ambience of the French Quarter.

15

“ROGER WHEATON CALLED Smith and warned him we're coming,” Baxter says, pulling off his headset. “Wiretap just picked it up.”

We're parked across the street from a beautiful Creole cottage on the downriver side of Esplanade, the eastern border of the French Quarter. For the past two years it's been the home of Frank Smith.

“Why wouldn't Wheaton warn him?” asks Kaiser.

“We asked him not to,” says Lenz.

“And now they're tearing his house apart and informing him he's going to have to supply skin and blood for DNA testing to compare to the skin we took from under the Dorignac's victim's fingernails.”

“The call actually makes Wheaton look less suspicious,” Kaiser says. “He's not stupid. He knows he's a suspect, which probably means a wiretap, but he made the warning call anyway. That's what somebody does when they're innocent and pissed off.”

“Unless they do it to
look
innocent,” says Lenz.

“Why didn't he warn Gaines?” I ask.

“Maybe he doesn't like Gaines,” Kaiser says with a laugh. “That's not hard to imagine.”

“Did he warn Thalia Laveau?” asks Lenz.

“Not yet,” Baxter replies. “Only Smith.”

“‘I'm very fond of Frank,'” says Kaiser. “Those were Wheaton's words in the interview.”

“I wonder if there could be a homosexual link,” Lenz says.

“Wheaton has never married,” says Baxter. “Why didn't you ask him if he's gay? He's never married.”

“He may be in the closet,” says Lenz. “I didn't want to burn my bridges with him entirely. We can find that out elsewhere.”

Kaiser moves to the rear door. “Frank Smith is openly gay. Maybe he'll tell us.” He looks at me. “See you in a few minutes.”

He and Lenz leave the van and slam the door.

Baxter presses his face to the van's tinted porthole window. “The house doesn't look as fancy as I pictured it.”