Death of an Artist (21 page)

Freddi obviously was not happy, her distress was clearly written in her pained expression.

“Freddi,” Van said hesitantly. “I don't understand. What's wrong with that?”

“Wait,” Freddi snapped. “I kept looking at my artists, my regulars, and there's another one who dropped out. He's at the same place in his career as Moira, a time of exploration, of trying out this and that, finding strengths and weaknesses. Finding a personal direction. I called Loretta over at Blue Skies, and she wasn't sure, but later she called back and said it's the same there. Two of her young artists are gone. She knows where one of them works and tracked him down at his job. It was the same story. Dale has found him an outlet.”

Freddi leaned forward at the table and said furiously, “That bastard is building a stable! Collecting a group of dependable artists who can produce art on a regular basis. Sign them up for the next four, six, whatever number of works, pay them up front, and as soon as it appears they're reaching the first goal, provide a new contract, a new advance. It's a death trap for them. They spend the money just about as soon as they get it and face months of work without another cent coming in. They seldom can afford to buy back the contracts, if there's even a clause that permits it. The work is scanned, sent to Photoshop, and is ready to go into production as print cards or, more often now, e-cards, glanced at and discarded, deleted. Forgotten.”

“They don't have to keep signing new contracts,” Van said. “I mean, it isn't as if there is enough money involved to live on.”

“Often there's a binding option clause that can be hard to break without legal help, and they can't afford that. And if they do manage to get out from under, they realize that they have to start over. They've picked up bad habits that have to be broken, working too fast with too little thought, skipping the final touches that can make or break a painting, no exploring, just more of the same kind of thing, over and over. The little bit of money hasn't meant a thing, and the years have been a complete waste. Worse,” she said bitterly, “something they loved to do, needed to do, turns into nothing more than assembly-line work, drudgery that they end up hating.”

Freddi took a long drink of iced tea. “Sorry, I'm just so goddamn mad I can't bear it. One more thing. Late last fall, a couple of weeks before Christmas, I went out to the coast to see what Stef had been up to over the past few months. I did that often, since she would paint something and stash it away without anyone having a glimpse of it. Anyway, there were two recent paintings, either of them superb alone, but together altogether stunning. I begged her to let me show them, not to sell if she didn't want to go there, but more like museum pieces that people could look at and enjoy. She was reluctant, but finally agreed. I had them up two days, only two days, and she came to town and took them away. She was upset with her decision, said it was a mistake. And that was that.

“A few days after Stef's death, I had a call from an extremely wealthy woman who comes in now and then, usually looking for garden sculpture. She reminded me that over the winter she had been in and had been intrigued by a pair of paintings by Stef. Those two that I had up for only two days. One painting is a little girl at tide pools, and the other is tide-pool life. This customer wasn't looking for paintings at that time and moved on. But she said she had been haunted by that wild little girl, and in her mind's eye she was darting from one pool to the next. Finally, in March or April she had come back, only to find them no longer on display. I wasn't there that day and my assistant Bonnie Jean didn't know what to tell her and turned her over to Dale. When she called me, it was to ask if we still planned a big show of Stef's work, with both pictures included, and if she still had a preview privilege.”

Freddi shrugged. “I told her the estate ordered an inventory and an appraisal and it will all take time. I'll let her know.”

“He made the same promise to them both,” Tony said.

“Of course,” Freddi said. “The dot-com millionaire knows he wants
Feathers and Ferns.
Plus two others to be decided. She knows she wants a painting that's haunting her that happens to be one of a pair. Won't it be interesting if it turns out that those two catch his eye also?”

“Dale wants them to bid against each other,” Tony said, “run up the price all around.” He believed the dot-com guy would fixate on the tide-pool painting as soon as he saw it. It was a gorgeous piece of work that would go beautifully with
Feathers and Ferns,
and no longer even a possible purchase for Tony. A bidding war would simply clinch the fact. He was sorry that he would never see it on his own wall.

“I'm surprised that she even displayed the painting she called
Searching,
” Van said. “That was a self-portrait of herself as a child, really personal to her.”

“I saw it at the house,” Freddi said. “I talked her into letting me show them both. She was so upset, it was as if she had not been able to sleep until she got them back.”

Freddi began to make wet rings on the tabletop, moving her tea here, there. Watching it, she said in a deceptively low voice, “He's been backstabbing, double-dealing, double-crossing, conniving, plotting, lying from the day he got here. I'm not going back until Wednesday, when the auditor gets there. He advised me to get in touch with the security company, to change the locks, and he'll bring a strapping young man, he said, who will make sure Dale doesn't remove anything. I won't tell him in advance, of course.”

Freddi looked at Tony, then at Van, and her fury, although under control, was still there. Quietly she said, “If there's any discrepancy, anything at all out of order, I'll have him charged and I'll make certain that the media have the story.”

After Freddi left, Van leaned back and blew out a long breath. Gravely she said, “I believe he's made her angry.”

Tony nodded and equally gravely said, “I believe she wants to blow him out of the water.” He looked at his watch. “How long will it take to get to the Audio Magic shop?”

“I'd like to allow half an hour. It's all the way across town in the northeast, and I don't know those streets.”

“Time for a cup of coffee. You want one, too?”

*   *   *

V
AN
PULLED
UP
to the curb outside Audio Magic Studios at a few minutes before two. It was blistering hot, the sky cloudless, the sun like an acetylene torch.

“He said two, so let's wait in the car,” Tony said. The air-conditioning was straining, but it was doing its job.

This was a warehouse, industrial district with wood-products wholesalers, plumbing supplies, packaging … No pedestrians were in sight. It was close to the airport and also close to Interstate 205. Van began plotting her route home, on the interstate, a Portland bypass highway that connected to I-5 miles south of the city. On down to Salem and cross the Coast Ranges from there. That way she could avoid most of the early onset of rush-hour traffic, she decided.

A bicycle appeared and drew near on the sidewalk. The rider wore a helmet and was in shorts and a T-shirt. His arm and leg muscles bulged and looked oiled, they were so wet with sweat. He stopped at the car and Van rolled down her window.

“Tony?” the young man said, leaning over, peering in. “Come on in. I'm Bud.” He motioned toward the studio entrance, then pedaled a few times to reach the door, dismounted, and unlocked the studio. He entered and was leaning his bike against the wall when Van and Tony followed. He hung his helmet on the handlebar, ran his hand through his hair, which was plastered to his scalp, then said, “Bud Budowsky,” rubbed his hand on his shorts, and held it out.

It didn't help much. It was wet when Tony shook it. “Tony Mauricio, and this is my associate Dr. Markov.”

Bud looked Van up and down, grinned, and said, “Hi, Doc.”

She grinned back. “Hi, Bud.”

They were in a small, dun-colored entry foyer. A single door was on the left side and a staircase on the right. The space was stifling and airless.

Bud opened the door and motioned for them to come in. Cool, fresh air swept over them as they entered the room. It was spacious, with a pair of desks right-angled to each other, a computer on each of them. Simple straight chairs had been scattered about seemingly randomly, and sound equipment was everywhere. Speakers hung from the ceiling; turntables, DVD players, tape players were on various surfaces, tables, desks, shelves. A freestanding CD rack was filled to capacity, and shelves were filled with cassettes. Something Tony thought was a mixer took a lot of space on one side of the room. The walls were covered with photographs, sometimes overlapping in the profusion.

“You guys want a cold Coke?” Bud asked, opening a refrigerator.

Tony said no thanks, but Van said, “I'd like a Coke.”

“You got it,” Bud said. “Hot. I had to get stuff in the mail, and, man, it's big-time hell out there.” He handed a can to Van, popped a second one, and drank. It seemed he was going to down the entire contents before stopping.

Tony was looking at a photograph. From the twenties or thirties, he guessed. Five or six people at a table, a pitcher, glasses. The same people were in other photographs. He recognized Orson Welles. A couple of the others looked vaguely familiar.

“That's the original crew at Mercury Theatre,” Bud said, joining him. “Orson Welles started it up in New York State. GE had its own radio station and they aired a show as a tryout or something, but people loved it and they kept going. Later, after Welles did
War of the Worlds
back in 1938, the Campbell's soup people began to sponsor it and they called it the
Campbell Playhouse,
but it was the same group. That broadcast of
War of the Worlds
caused a nationwide panic, it was so real. That's what radio can do, make it so real you want to go hide in the basement. My grandad worked on sound effects. He said old Delmar came along right after that, and he was a genius. Those were the golden years of radio dramas, the thirties and forties.”

Bud leaned in closer to a photograph and put his finger on an unkempt-looking man standing near a microphone. “Look at that beer belly.” Then he singled out a woman turned halfway away, talking to someone else in the background. “And she looks like she's a hundred years old. But it doesn't matter. It's the voices that count, and with the right sound effects they become a young couple eloping, or Fred and Ginger dancing cheek to cheek. Audio magic. Hey, Doc, you ready for another one?” He held up his Coke can.

“I'm fine,” Van said.

He got another can from the refrigerator, and before he started drinking again, Van said, “Bud, what exactly do you do here?”

“Oh, I thought you knew. See, when I was a little kid, eight or nine, Grandad had me out somewhere one night, and driving home, he found a radio play running. We listened to it, and when it was over, I said something like I was scared out of my skin when I saw that guy on the airplane wing. Grandad laughed and laughed, and he said, ‘You're a radio man, my boy.'”

Van glanced at Tony, who was grinning, and she waited for Bud to get around to answering her question.

“He had moved in with us in L.A., and he began to let me listen to his old reel-to-reel tapes of shows. I couldn't get enough. Then when old Delmar moved out there and bought a little house, Grandad would take me along when he went to visit with him. They talked about the good old days and I listened to Delmar's tapes. I went off to Caltech and Delmar kicked. Grandad asked a neighbor to let him know when a yard sale, estate sale, something like that, was posted. He planned to buy a few things Delmar had. But when the estate sale came up, there wasn't a tape in sight. They were all gone. That was when he gave me his collection. He said I was the only one who knew about them, what they meant, and he wanted me to have them before they vanished into thin air. Anyway, a couple of months later he heard that the whole collection was for sale by Dale Oliver. Lots of those guys kept in touch, you know how they do, old-timers. Anyway, bids poured in, and the price began to climb. Pretty soon there were only two guys bidding. One made screws and nails and junk like that, but apparently it paid off real big, and the other one owned feedlots and he was loaded. The feedlot guy dropped out at seven hundred thousand and some change. The screw guy ended up with them.”

“Good heavens!” Van murmured, and Tony said, “Wow!”

“Collectors,” Bud said. “My bunch is worth more, they go back to the very beginning. They're in storage, climate controlled and everything.”

“But how does that explain what you do here?” Van asked after a moment, during which Bud chugalugged his drink.

“Getting to that. While I was at Caltech, before Delmar died, Grandad came across a cassette, Delmar's sound-effects library. His house was a mess, tapes everywhere, cassettes, stuff scattered all through the house. He had no idea what all he had, but Grandad found the cassette and asked if he could buy it. Delmar said no, but he could have it. He had no use for it anymore. And when I said I intended to start this studio, Grandad gave it to me, so I had a base to start with. I do sound effects for groups putting on radio dramas around the country. They never really died out all the way, but television killed them for the big time. University groups, independent stations, community stations, local public broadcasting, groups like that, still put them on now and then, and I provide the sound effects. I do documentaries, too, and sometimes commercials, anything that needs sound effects.”

He emptied his can, burped. “How it works is, they send me a script by e-mail. They say how much time they have, one act or two, whatever, and I read through it and start to gather the right sound effects and eventually put together a disc that's just sound effects, nothing else unless it's music for background. That sound-effects library is the starting point, and I'm adding to it all the time. Anyway, when it's done, I e-mail the sound effects to them and send them a disc. They read their lines with the effects disc running, and they follow the cues on my disc, you know, footsteps, a door opens and closes, and the dude says hello or something. They usually record a final disc of their own with everything in place, sound effects, the spoken parts, music, and they're ready to air it.”