American Quartet (3 page)

“Speak to my kids,” Gladys snapped. Teddy was on the extension and shouted for his wife to get off the line.

“It’s on page one,” he growled. “And there’s a picture of the eggplant. The mayor is very defensive. And the Board of Trade is raising hell. We’re all on the griddle. Got to find the bastard.”

“They want things safe in their Disneyland,” she murmured. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t cancel the weekend. “He’ll want something every day now.”

“He just got off the phone with me. I got a pep talk and he’s authorized overtime.”

“The eggplant? What makes him so generous?”

Bruce came in wearing a short striped robe, his curly hair glistening. He put a cup of coffee on the bedside table and threw the
Post
on the bed. She picked up the paper and read the headline: “MURDER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY.”

“It’ll sell papers,” she told Teddy. “Pick me up in an hour. I’m at Bruce’s.” She hung up and jumped out of bed.

“Sorry I blew up,” Bruce said. “I got greedy.”

“I like you greedy,” she said, cuddling him.

“Previous experience gets me edgy. My ex-wife’s career became her everything.”

“No comparisons, please.” She felt the brief panic. It was bad enough being secretly, sometimes vociferously, jealous. It’s a dead ember, he had protested.

“It’s my morning for apologies. I wanted us to start out on a perfect note.”

“It did,” she said, caressing him.

“At least arrange it so you can be with me to see the fireworks at Remington’s. From his place you get a clear view.”

“I like the fireworks from here,” she said, insinuating her hand under his robe.

“It’s an annual thing. Everybody is coming.”

“Everybody?” She knew he loved surprises like this. “I’ll settle for just us coming.” It was the kind of double entendre they both loved.

But suppose he does lose his seat in Congress, a voice inside her speculated. It didn’t wait for an answer.

“
THERE
,” MRS. Damato whispered. “A life.”

They peered into the cramped room, heavy with the acrid smell of paint. Pigments permeated the warped wooden floor that creaked as they stepped forward. Painted canvases lay helter-skelter along the walls, mostly city scenes. She flipped through them hurriedly, recognizing the Hagerstown main street.

“I thought they were good. Nobody else did.”

“Did he?” Fiona asked. Teddy and Inspector Al O’Leary from Hagerstown PD still thumbed through the paintings. O’Leary pulled one out and slanted it to catch the gray light of a fading rainy summer day.

“Harper Street. I grew up there,” he said in his flat Maryland accent.

Mrs. Damato’s eyes were watery in their deep padded sockets. Her grief seemed to have resharpened her features, which had run to flesh. Her olive skin was pinched and when she spoke, she showed yellowed teeth with large gaps. Whatever money was left over obviously had gone to feed her husband’s artistic obsession.

“Maybe I was too supportive,” she shrugged.

“They weren’t bad,” O’Leary said, still looking at the pictures.

“Too photographic,” Mrs. Damato complained. “That’s what they told him. In twenty years he never sold a single one for more than fifty bucks.” Her reddened nostrils quivered, and a sour odor emanated from her body, familiar to Fiona. She had often observed a particular smell about the grief-stricken, which undermined her professional indifference. She was better, cooler, with the dead.

Teddy had begun to take Polaroids of the paintings.

“His work was the most important thing in his life,” Mrs. Damato said regretfully.

The paintings were failed attempts at expressionism. The memory of Hassam’s “Allies Day” popped into Fiona’s mind, a complete image, powerfully stated. How Damato must have envied the painter’s talent.

“And in there?” Fiona asked gently, nodding toward a door. She turned the knob. The door was locked.

“A closet. He had the key. This was his place,” the widow said harshly, revealing the battle lines of their marriage.

Fiona fiddled in her pocketbook, checking the make of the lock with the keys on her ring. They were Damato’s. She found the correct key and opened the door.

“I never touched his things,” Mrs. Damato whined.

There was no light in the closet, which was filled with canvases placed face-in. Fiona drew one out and brought it out to the light. Behind her, Mrs. Damato coughed nervously. Teddy stopped taking pictures.

“Jesus,” O’Leary gasped.

Fiona felt the exhilaration of surprise. The girl in the picture was nude, her flesh and blonde hair luminous in its natural grassy setting. She was just this side of puberty, a bud opening, glorious and unmistakably erotic. There were nearly half a dozen paintings in the closet, all depicting the same girl. As Fiona laid all the paintings against the wall the effect was startling. It was the dead man’s artistic apogee.

Mrs. Damato stared at the pictures, making gurgling sounds.

“You know her? Fiona asked gently. Mrs. Damato did not respond. So this was Damato’s dirty little secret, Fiona thought. He had certainly put his heart into it. From the way Mrs. Damato glanced away, Fiona sensed the recognition. The point had to be pressed slowly. The trail had now begun.

Mrs. Damato moved back and sat heavily on a wooden chair, as though her own weight had become too much of a burden.

“They’re beautiful,” Fiona said. “Your husband was a talented man.” It was designed to be a con, but she really meant it. By comparison, the other paintings seemed pale wasted images.

“She doesn’t look more than fourteen,” O’Leary said angrily. “The whore. I got girls in that school.”

Mrs. Damato was playing with her fingers, watching them blankly. The dead, Fiona had learned early in the game, always took their revenge on the living.

“Maybe he did it from imagination,” Fiona said, stalking now.

“The hell he did,” O’Leary shouted.

“Will you please . . .” Fiona snapped. She touched the woman’s shoulder. Mrs. Damato lifted helpless lugubrious eyes. “You do, don’t you?”

The girl in the picture seemed to reach out of the canvases, revealing her arrogant disdain, shattering the myth of innocence. The nipples on her rising young breasts seemed rouged in the exquisite sunlight, and between her legs was the hint of a pout.

“We’re looking for your husband’s killer, Mrs. Damato,” Fiona said. It was time to confront reality. The man’s guilt had died with him.

“It looks like Celia Baines,” Mrs. Damato said hoarsely. “One of his students. I think two years ago he gave her private lessons.” The effort exhausted her; her voice was a whisper.

“Yeah,” O’Leary croaked. “Dirty-minded somebitch.”

“Will you please shut the hell up?” Fiona snapped again. Teddy told him to take it easy.

“Hotshot big city cops . . .” O’Leary sneered.

“It’s bewildering,” Mrs. Damato said, finding her voice again.

“He was not like that at all.” It was a confession of a lifetime of sexual indifference. The smell of the woman seemed to fill the room, stifling the odors of the paint.

“I thought I knew him.”

They found her behind the counter of the McDonald’s on the edge of town. She was older, fuller, and although attractive in a teenage way, hardly the powerful pubescent image in the paintings. There was, however, no mistaking her identity. When she opened her mouth, she completed the destruction of the dead man’s fantasy.

“Let me,” Fiona had urged. “You two gumshoes will frighten her.”

The place was nearly empty and Fiona and the girl, Celia, sat in a corner booth away from the two men, who munched on Big Macs. Occasionally, O’Leary would glower at them from across the restaurant.

Her police badge had frightened the girl at first, but Fiona recognized she was a sieve to vanity.

“I wish I had hair like that,” Fiona said. It was the color of a wheat field in the morning sun, a perfect articulation of the painter’s image. Fiona wasn’t sure she meant the painting or the reality before her. Up close, the girl was duller, her blue eyes clear but reflecting a dim intelligence.

“You got nice red hair,” the girl said. Fiona nodded her appreciation.

“A terrible tragedy about Mr. Damato,” Fiona began slowly.

“Yeah. Jeez.”

“Mrs. Damato said you took lessons.”

“Yeah. I like to drore.”

“Was he a nice man?”

“He was okay. A little creepy.”

“How so?”

“You know, funny.”

“Funny-looking?”

“You know. Woppy.”

She felt sorry for the girl. Her looks had obviously spoiled her. A pampered darling of the working class. She was the kind of girl whom hard hats whistled at and greasers pawed in drive-in movies. In towns like this, no one was a virgin past thirteen. She could imagine the scenario of seduction. “You ain’t getting into my pants,” a protest that would be moot ten minutes later. Fiona laid the Polaroids on the table like a called poker hand.

“Dirty wop bastard.” Her eyes didn’t leave the pictures and she flushed down to her neck, leaving a scarlet blotch on the soft skin under a cheap gold chain.

“You want to tell me about it?”

“Why should I?”

“The man was murdered.” Fiona let it sink in. The girl’s lips snarled. “Maybe your old man found out about it.”

“Sheet,” the girl said, showing a lipstick-stained smile. It was obviously the wrong tack.

“Where were you last Tuesday?”

She was an unlikely suspect, yet the question jarred her. Like everyone else, she, too, had secrets.

“You think it was me?” The girl seemed genuinely startled.

Fiona shook her head. She needed to calm the girl. Her frail defenses were no match for a professional attack. Besides, Teddy had already talked to the manager, who reported she had worked the breakfast shift that morning. But guilt came out of specifics. Everybody felt guilty about something and Celia was no exception.

“You won’t tell?” the girl asked in a sly voice. It was the modus operandi of her young life: not telling. It had only made whatever guilt was inside her more painful.

She spoke calmly, her eyes shifting, glancing occasionally at Teddy and O’Leary. The girl didn’t tell everything, Fiona was certain; but enough to provide the remote possibility of a motive.

Damato had persuaded her to pose. She had done so reluctantly, but it felt good. They would go up to this secluded place in the Cumberland mountains. Not far. He played with himself, she admitted. It was as far as she would go. “I wouldn’t let him put his greasy hands on me.”

“Did he try?”

“They all try,” the girl said bitterly.

“Did he try with any of the other girls?” Celia’s concentration had already wandered.

“Do I look pretty?” she asked, fingering the pictures. “He said I was a masterpiece. He said I was very special.”

“You look magnificent,” Fiona agreed.

“Really?” The girl’s eyes brightened, emerging momentarily out of their dullness. She sighed. “Why would anyone want to kill him? He wasn’t that bad.”

“Did you feel sorry for him?” Fiona asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.” The girl had grabbed at that and Fiona knew instantly that Damato had indeed put his hands on her. “He was like a big baby. When I got tired, we played.”

“Played?”

“You know,” she shrugged.

Fiona knew. She also knew that the poor girl would soon be hounded, humiliated. There was no protecting her. Hagerstown was a small town with a single newspaper. The best she could do to postpone the inevitable was to impound the paintings as evidence.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it out of the papers.” She tried to charm O’Leary, knowing it was a futile gesture.

“It’ll hurt the investigation,” Teddy pressed. But she had already seen the small town cop in O’Leary chomping at the publicity bit. It was impossible to control the situation. She had made a bad mistake in offending O’Leary.

“I’ll work with you,” the cop lied transparently. He hadn’t forgotten her put-down.

“My fuse is getting too short,” she told Teddy as they drove back through the Maryland countryside. A fog had risen in the high spots as Teddy moved the car cautiously through the almost impenetrable haze.

They had moved fast, interviewing as many people as they could. Damato’s students. His fellow teachers.

“When it hits the papers, they’ll all clam up,” Teddy said. “And they’ll make a pervert out of the poor bastard. Juicy stuff.”

They had packed the six paintings into the back of their car. Mrs. Damato showed no reluctance to part with them. Her life was already in flames.

“I feel sorry for her kids,” Fiona sighed. “The garbage slops over.”

“It’s never clean,” Teddy agreed.

They had combed through the house, the yard, everywhere, looking for other pictures of young girls. And they had talked to Celia’s mother, carefully avoiding the truth of her daughter’s relationship with Damato. They’d find out soon enough. The girl’s father was an alcoholic drifter, with neither the will nor the energy to seek revenge. Besides, his alibi was airtight. He was home sleeping off a drunk. Mrs. Damato, too, was well accounted for.

“It’s a motive,” she said. “Especially if we find an outraged parent with an old revolver hidden in a drawer. The eggplant will love it.” Fiona closed her eyes, beat.

“O’Leary will be pissed off when he finds we took the pictures,” Teddy mumbled.

In her mind, she was speculating, following the trail. Damato had tried it again. He was caught at it. He was followed to the museum and shot. Open and shut. Simple logic. Too simple. It simply didn’t mesh with her instincts. The car’s rhythm nudged her to sleep.