The Painter: A Novel (40 page)

I couldn’t find my card key and I pounded on the door and Sofia let me in. She had paint smudged on her face and in her hair and her arms were open.

The painting she made me was the first one she’d made in three years. She called it
Backstroke
. She was excited and proud. It was a bearded man swimming lazily on his back in an ocean devoid of women or drama. Sitting on his belly was a family of four otters, all smiling the way otters smile. It was very good. Clean and full of humor and life.

The morning TV magazine story ran three days later, a full fifteen minutes. 9News wanted to be the first, and they put the pedal to the metal. How did they pull this shit off so fast? There was a brief bio, a sort of photo album collage of me surfing as a grom (tyke surfer); Pop’s death in news clippings; me with my buddy Jan looking handsome and disturbed as a junior in the yearbook, unkempt dark hair blowing, blue t-shirt with a hole in the shoulder, the expression far off, like trying to focus on a bird who is moving into a greater distance; running away to sister in Santa Rosa; the San Francisco MOMA where I went one day to stay away from the neighborhood cops after a fight, seeing Winslow Homer and Van Gogh and Matisse for the first time; the fascination then passion, art supplies, enrolling in the SF Art Institute; a photo of the painting that won the jury prize at the spring contest; Taos; me and my truck, me with fishing rod, me and Cristine and Alce, me at easel in studio, everything you’d expect, most of it out of the book Steve had commissioned, then: news flash, famous painter shoots bar patron! TV news now, shots of Santa Fe State, me in orange jumpsuit smiling, my release, growing fame, slew of paintings, their images, what a couple of critics said, the book about me, the exhibits, then: the radio interview in which I crush the interviewer’s hand. Gone viral. An artist who spoke for the working classes, a loose cannon, a big, passionate, physical man. Then: death of famous painter’s daughter, mug shots, TV news
now of an ambulance, a gurney, I turned away. Divorce, gambling. Second marriage, Maggie as a pinup with bunny tail, Paonia, a current shot of my house—that made me sit up—they were trespassing clearly, then: news flash: murder on the Sulphur.

And then it slowed down and Cindy De Baca began to narrate the chain of events, the cracking of a poaching ring by the Feds, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the brothers, their dovetailed operation between Colorado and Arizona, documented cases of horse abuse, animal deaths, ASPCA allegations, the fight between me and Dellwood, the little horse. Then: death of Dellwood. The old brawler-artist the local fishermen call Hemingway is a person of interest. A barn burning, an interview with Willy who clearly did not want to talk but wanted to set the record straight. Then: an ambush, shots through the window of Santa Fe society family, my biggest collector, suspect brother Grant, then murder of Grant. Is Jim Stegner the Vigilante Artist? Did he see himself as the Eliminator of Bad Men? That was the question. And:
In a twist that could only occur in a volatile art world, Stegner’s recent paintings are in such high demand they are going for double what his work previously commanded. And requests for shows are increasing. In the last week, the Harwood Museum in Taos has … We may ask ourselves: should allegations of murder dramatically increase an artist’s stock?
Then Wheezy chiming:
There are, as of now, no allegations
. De Baca:
What?
A shot of her shoving her mic into Wheezy’s face
And now we ask Detective John Hinchman, Santa Fe PD homicide and lead investigator on the Grant Siminoe murder case: Why isn’t Jim Stegner a suspect?
Wheezy finishing a paper cup of coffee just like a screen detective, grinning heartily into the camera:
Because, Cindy, he is not a suspect!
Tight on her face, her look of moral shock. Okay, now I officially did not like her. Wheezy again:
And by the way, Cindy, the death of Grant Siminoe has not been classified as a murder
. Forgiving chuckle. De Baca:
What! A man is shot in
the head and his truck and his body crashed into a gully in the middle of the night?
Perfectly pitched incredulity backed by the common sense of all New Mexican viewers.
Why? Why??
Wheezy, grinning, patient didact:
Well, in this business we call them extenuating circumstances
.

Then a survey of my paintings since the first murder. The dates of the killings, and other seminal events like the arson, flashed at the bottom of the screen while the paintings that were finished at about the same time revolved across the top.

I couldn’t stop watching. It was completely compelling. The Albuquerque station was clearly gunning for an Emmy. Sofia sat beside me on the plush couch with her mouth half open, speechless. It struck me how riveting the story, how maudlin: that she was dumbstruck. An event as rare as a full solar eclipse.

The centerpiece of the whole story was the interview just outside the hotel, if you could call it an interview. Given that I’d said two words it was surprisingly impressive. I mean it made an impression. It confirmed everything the story had been building to—a grand insinuation, pretty much case closed, that murder finds a man, especially a rugged artist-vigilante, reticent and mercurial, and lights a great fire under his art, and his art, well, is pretty much genius.
BUT
—it cannot and never will justify breaking the law—
AND CERTAINLY NOT MURDER! NOT EVER!
That seemed to be the takeaway. I found the remote on the floor and flicked off the tube. Sofia turned to me.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, right?”

“We’re gonna have to get you better sunglasses, Jim. Wraparounds. Or maybe just a full burka.”

“Huh.” I was just sort of staring at the black flat screen that mirrored the light from the windows, staring at it as if it were a quiet pool that mirrored the morning and had just revealed the flash of like a three foot trout.

“Maggie was really pretty. So was Cristine. Makes me feel a little insecure, to tell you the truth.”

“Huh.”

“Jim!”

“Wha?”

“Snap out of it! Say something. Jesus. That was crazy.”

“It was crazy.”

I thought: It was. For one, to see your life wrapped up in a quarter of an hour. It was like going to your own funeral. Was that me? Nah. No way. For two, was I such a crazy bastard? Had I been that impulsive and violent my whole life? I felt so gentle most of the time. I really did. I swear.

The room phone rang. It would be Steve. Steve wondering why my cell phone was probably buried under trash in my truck. He had, remarkably, stayed out of the program, except a shot of him in pressed jeans and pink oxford waving like a beauty queen and disappearing into his office, the door closing. I was amazed. Uncharacteristic discipline for him. How could he resist? He’d been smart enough to know that the skyrocketing value of my
work did not need his interpretation, that in this case discretion and modesty for once contributed to the mystique. They perpetuated the narrative of the outsider artist suddenly besieged by a fascinated popular culture and resisting it with all his might. Playing hard to get. His dealer, too. The mainstream seemed to love that: something authentic for once! Something that didn’t cave and crave at the first glare of regional television. The public treasured their Joe DiMaggios, their J. D. Salingers. I didn’t answer the phone, I couldn’t do that right now. Steve would be needing to crow. To somebody. My dramatic emergence from the sticks was thrusting him into the spotlight and it might make him a rich man. I mean, I was already a well known artist, but this was different. When Sofia went for the phone I stopped her.

She was in the middle of the big plush carpeted room. She seemed a little stunned herself. She stood there.

“I know,” I said. “Getting drunk is looking pretty good.”

She blinked. Then that impish smile crept across her face. She folded her fingers around the bottom of her shirt and lifted it off. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her wonderful breasts lifted as her arms went over her head, then they fell and buoyed like launching boats finding their float. I laughed. She had a way of cutting not to the quick but to my joy. Maybe it’s the same thing.

“You wanna get distracted you crazy vigilante?”

I shook my head.

“Not in the mood?”

Shook my head.

“Let’s go get some breakfast,” I said. I was shaking all over. “Let’s walk over to the plaza and have café con leche and eat huevos rancheros and pretend.”

“Pretend what?”

“That life is simple. That we can do what we want.”

The Pantelas were used to throwing big parties, but this took the cake. Cars were parked all the way down the driveway in the pines and out to the gravel road where they lined both sides. Couples in engraved cowboy boots that weren’t meant for walking held each other’s hands and tottled up the hill. We drove with Steve who promised to leave when we did, who slowed his Range Rover and opened his window and waved and made passing comments to everyone as we passed. This was his moment.

The pueblo house was built for autumn. Around the carved front entrance and all along the ledges at the tops of the stick ladders were bundles of Indian corn and strings of crimson chilies and piles of flame colored squash. My hand itched to paint it. Everything except the security guy on the main roof in fatigues, a shooter with an M4 assault rifle. There would be others, no doubt, keeping a perimeter, and probably some in plainclothes inside. That Pim had planned the party at all, so soon after the shooting; that he had let the target—me—anywhere near his kids again. But that was Pim: it was his way of saying: We don’t let the bad guys rain on our parade. We don’t let them win. For a moment, as the three of us were about to step inside, I wondered if he would be furious at me for putting his children in danger, ever, and I realized in the same moment that this was his way of forgiving me.

Leave it to Steve to time our entrance. We were an hour late. We came through the door past two more uniformed security men who checked our invites, and the crowd parted and something like a guffaw of pleasure and fascination billowed out of it, a little like a gust whomping the alders. Or the loud gasp at a hanging. I scared most of them I was sure, and the paintings inspired love, and I was a genius and under investigation for two murders and I was the dark celebrity of the hour, and here was the beautiful young lover-model we have all been reading about and and and. The mixture was high octane. The sea of admirers parted in a crush. Drinks were spilled.