Artist's Proof (21 page)

“I know precisely where your odd little house is and I will pick you up at a quarter to eight. That will give me a chance to browse through your work in the very place where it is created, and maybe you and I can hammer out a deal for one of your paintings. If we cut your gallery out of the transaction, we may do ourselves a hefty financial favor, don't you agree? That Morgenstern woman is a terror. Save me, please, from your aggressive New York women. Stand aside and let the steamrollers through! See you Saturday, Sid.”

Talk about your steamrollers, she had allowed me no options in this deal. I was being flattened for delivery on Saturday night to a restaurant of Big
D
's choice. I would have called back to tell her what to do with her plan, except for that tiny sweetener—the sliver of a chance that I could sell a canvas. From my prayer to God's ear.

N
INETEEN

G
AYLE'S PRESEASON SALE
seemed to be going well; I counted two customers in Gayle's Provocativo when I walked in, twice as many as I had seen in the shop at any one time since the previous fall, and an impressive number for any Wednesday. Gayle was handling both women smoothly; she dangled a smashing Gayle Hennessy cover-up from each hand as she winked a greeting to me and mouthed, “Five minutes.”

I went to the window and turned to face the village traffic; otherwise I would have had to watch what was going on in the shop. Why is it that women who are embarrassed by a vagrant shoulder strap at a cocktail party will fling off their clothes with reckless abandon in a boutique? Gayle had a curtained area in the back for changing, but it was honored mostly in the breach.

Ten minutes later, after one sale and one “Let me think about it” we were alone. Gayle offered me a cup of coffee and a “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” and we settled with our cups in the only two chairs in the shop.

“Just between us,” I began, “I'm nosing around trying to get a fix on who might have done Cassie.”

“I figured you were up to no good when I saw that you weren't wearing your painting clothes. Sid, you're retired. Get back to that jumbo canvas. You think you owe the girl? How well did you know her?”

“Well enough. If I was a cabinetmaker and she'd needed a coffin, I'd have been there for her. What she needs is justice, vengeance, closure. The whole package. She needs a gumshoe.”

“Very pretty.” Gayle was looking at me skeptically. “But it's not like when you were there for me. You can't change anything for Cassie.”

“True. But the living need closure too.” Reluctantly, “I've got a grand jury breathing down my neck.”

Now she understood. “Oh, boy.” She gave me a Why didn't you say so in the first place? look. “Sid, that's got to be a crock. What possible reason would they have to come after you?”

“There's a theory floating around that I was hung up on Cassie. Obsessed. They can go miles on that before it runs out of gas. Their miles and my dollars.”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I teased you about that once or twice, but I never thought for a minute there was anything to it. Sid, I've got enough ego to believe that if you had an itch for adolescents you'd have hit on me when you busted me all those years ago. I was a real tasty dish at seventeen.”

“To this very day.”

She was eyeing me. “Is that why you're here? To get me to stand up for you, swear in court that you don't jump little girls?”

“I hope it never gets to that. No, I'm just poking around, dick style. To see who might know something about Cassie that could help.”

“In my case, I don't see what.” She sprang to her feet and began refolding a pile of tops on a counter. “Cassie got along better with men than with women. If she was going to share secrets with either of us, it would have been with you.” She was faced away from me. “Did she?”

“One. She told me she was a virgin.”

She looked back over her shoulder with a ghost of a smile. “No fooling? If she ever said anything like that to me I'd have washed out her mouth with soap.”

“She started working for you months after she stopped sitting for me. Her status may have changed.”

She thought about that. “I dearly hope so.”

“So what about it, Gayle? You two spent hours together in the shop—sometimes, I would guess, without interruption from a single customer.”

“Thanks, Sid.”

“There had to be some girl talk. If only to pass the time. Confessional stuff.”

“We weren't together that much. The point was for Cassie to watch the shop while I was up in the workroom.” She had run out of merchandise to fuss with and she returned reluctantly to her chair. She pretended to be thinking about my question.

“Let's see. She was a fan of yours, Sid. She thought you were really something. But you must know that.”

“I didn't take it personally. She liked older men, period. They all looked good next to her father. I fell into the category.” We weren't getting anywhere. “Did she talk about her boyfriend? Paulie?”

“Is that his name? Didn't I say you knew more than me? I knew she was seeing someone, but she never talked about him. What's he like?”

I was here to get information, not to give it. “He seems okay. You never tried to find out?”

Her answer was slow coming. “Once.” It was almost as though she was being painted into a corner.

“Yes…?”

Forlornly, “To my regret.”

She waited till she was fully charged, then slammed her coffee cup on the counter and jumped to her feet. “I
knew
it would come to this if we kept jabbering this way. I
hate
having to talk about this.” Her face was knotted with anger. Or was it embarrassment?

“Calm down, Gayle. You're among friends.”

She looked at me, rode the emotion, and decided maybe it wasn't such a big deal. She took a couple of deep breaths and slid reluctantly back down into her chair and began to fiddle with her cup.

Finally she said, “One day a few weeks ago she came to work looking too miserable to hide it. After an hour of stomping and fretting I figured it for a love life problem and maybe she could use some advice from a woman who'd been around the track in fair weather and foul. So I asked. ‘Cassie, you got boyfriend trouble?' The kid shook her head no, but the tears flowed like I couldn't believe.

“It didn't take long to worm it out of her. She had seen something—she couldn't bring herself to say exactly what—that had knocked her flat. About her mother.”

“She was having an affair.”

She gasped, “You knew?”

“Not absolutely.”

“Good for you.” She looked at me with new respect. Then, “Anyway, Cassie was having a hard time dealing with the concept. It was just about blowing her away. I did what I could to give her support. I reminded her that she had never held her old man up as a pillar of the family. Tops, the guy's a bum. I said she had to remember that mothers are also people, they need love same as all of us. Of course, my own mother carried that to an extreme, but I managed to survive it.”

I wasn't sure how much comfort this last would have been to Cassie but I said, “Did that help?”

“She wouldn't hear any of it. She felt as if she'd been let down, tricked, cheated. She was miserable all week. And I never did learn a damn thing about the boyfriend.” That last sounded as if she had said all she wanted to on the subject.

“That's it?” I said. “The whole story? So why were you reluctant to talk about it?”

She slid her butt from side to side in the chair. She wished I had quit pressing, and I could see another major eruption coming. She looked out the window at the Covenant Street traffic and then back at me.

“Because”—this time when she slammed the cup down she broke it—“I was having kind of a thing with the same man. At the same time.”

The words tumbled out of me. “You were having an affair with Jack Beltrano?”

She was on her feet again, wide-eyed. “You knew about that? About Jack?”

“Not about you and Jack, no. But about Nora and Jack, that they were close. Lovers? I couldn't be sure.”

“Then you don't know Jack. If they were close,” she exploded, “they were lovers. Beltrano comes on like a locomotive.” Some of her anger was to cover her embarrassment.

I wanted her to tell it all, but calmly. Over my coffee cup, pleasantly, like a neighbor who'd dropped by to swap gossip, I said, “So how did you and Jack happen to link up?”

Satisfied that I was not being judgmental, only curious, she calmed down some. “It's a small town, Sid. How many choices are there for a woman alone and horny, and the wrong color for most of the locals? Beltrano is an equal-opportunity fornicator.”

So was I, but I had dodged the opportunity with Gayle. I said, “You had a fire upstairs a few months back. Was that it?”

“You remember, very good. It wasn't much. I left the iron on in the workroom one morning. There was more smoke than fire, but it looked impressive as hell, and Jack and a couple of his volunteer guys showed up with boots, hatchets, and foam extinguishers. They didn't bring the truck. They didn't need the truck.” She was starting to erupt again. “Beltrano is a one-man fire truck all by himself.”

“You just called him a locomotive.”

“Did I? That too.” She made a try at a laugh, and failed; it still hurt. “Anyway, he came back the next evening, without the boys, ‘to double-check the wiring.' He happened to mention that he and his wife were separated, and then he checked everything carefully. Very carefully.” She took a beat and added with a regretful smile, “And, I must admit, very skillfully.”

I wanted to be supportive. “About his separation,” I said. “That could be true.”

“Chalk one up for Beltrano. Sid, don't feel sorry for me, I went in with my eyes open. But I was stupid enough to believe after a while that we were beginning to have something. You know? He does have a way.”

For a moment she looked almost wistful. She shook it off and said, “Anyway, when Cassie told me about her mom, I broke it off with Jack. Fast. Back on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard I'd have broken off his weenie is what I'd have done.”

Poor Gayle. She'd come out to the east end at least in part to establish her independence from men, and she'd been badly used by still another man. I said, “You didn't tell Cassie about you and Beltrano, did you?”

She looked at me as if to say, Are you out of your skull?

*   *   *

I
STAYED A
few minutes more to shake Gayle out of the mild funk I had put her in, then I kissed her on her handsome forehead and left the shop to retrieve my pickup. The chief's car was pulled up next to it.

Chuck Scully stuck his head out the window as I approached. “I thought this looked like your heap,” he said. “I've got a message for you.”

“If it came through your office it can't be good.”

“Relax, it's a civil matter. A lawyer called from the New York city attorney's office. He couldn't find you at home and he wondered whether we had you in custody. Not a bad guess, with the badmouthing you're getting these days.”

“What did he want?”

“His number is on your answering machine. It's about that pending police brutality case. He wants you in the city tomorrow to be deposed by the lawyer for the plaintiff.”

I was looking at, probably, a three-hour drive to the Wall Street district, more money to park than the damn Chevy was worth, and three hours of insults from a personal injury lawyer whose wife needed a new spring wardrobe.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Yeah, I thought you might see it that way.”

He was about to drive off. I held up a hand. I don't know why the question popped into my head. “Tell me, Chuck, are Jack Beltrano and his wife separated?”

“What makes you ask?”

“Curiosity. And I'm confused. I've heard it both ways,” I lied.

“Both ways is correct. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. A scorecard helps.”

“How about these days?”

He shrugged. “They were together Monday night. Unless they just happened to fall into adjoining seats at the Sag Harbor movie house.”

Gayle deserved better. So did Nora Brennan.

On another front, so did I. I deserved better than to be dragged into court by the man who put a bullet in my father's brain.

T
WENTY

T
WO TRIPS TO
the city in less than a week constituted cruel and unusual punishment. But with no radio in the Chevy to distract me—it had been stolen on a previous trip to New York—I had the entire journey free to review my concerns. These did not include Ray Drummit and his miserable lawsuit; I would hold off on that nasty item until I saw how the deposition went. For the time being I was free-associating the open window in Sharanov's bedroom, his wrongo bed, and the little I knew about the people who touched Cassie's life, one of whom may have brought it to an end. In the course of nearly a hundred miles I had no luck locking any of these pieces together.

A small distraction kept getting in the way of my efforts. When I came out of the shower this morning—my appointment with the lawyers was for noon—there was a phone message from Tom Ohlmayer at his Manhattan squad room:

“Sid, you can't be happy with the way they're dumping on you out your way, so would you please call me? I've got a news flash that's sure to pick you up.”

Dripping wet, I called. Tom's partner told me he was on another phone and would have to get back to me. I dressed, slowly, in my all-purpose city clothes, and waited. By the time I absolutely had to leave for the city I still hadn't heard from him. That put one more thing on my mind, but at least this one promised to be a plus. Tess Turkinton's fingerprints must have found a match in the FBI's national file.