Angel With a Bullet (18 page)

“And you don't think it's dangerous?”

“Dangerous?”

“You've been attacked twice, Dix. Once while you were with a gallery owner who's in Kingston's pocket and then—”

I interrupt. “How many headlights does a Chevelle have?”

“Depends on the year. Why?”

“Say an early to mid-70s model.”

Frank scratches his head. “A lot of the old Chevys sported four. Again. Why?”

“You got me thinking about the alley in Chinatown. The car had four headlights.”

“And your flying attacker—”

“Landed on the roof of an old Chevy,” I finish.

“That's what I'm saying. You've obviously pissed someone off, and I don't think—”

“Where is it?” I interrupt again.

Frank rolls his eyes. “Where's what?”

“That's what my attacker said: ‘Where is it?' I wonder if he meant Diego's painting. The one I had with me last night.”

“You said you dropped it.”

“Yeah, I tripped over King William in the lobby when I came in.”

“Hold on, I'll go look.”

With Frank gone, I turn to the computer and check my e-mail. Aside from a few medical advisories on how to lengthen my penis so I won't be embarrassed in the locker room ever again, there are two e-mails from Stoogan. I don't need to read them to know what he wants, since the headers give away his intent: “Where's my story, Dix?” and “Cover or not? Need to know ASAP.”

I fire back a quick reply: “Will know more today. Interviewing Kingston. Few loose ends.”

Loose ends? When I boil down what little information I have, I'll be lucky to pull together a short obit, never mind the cover feature. Of course, that's where
Dixie's Tips #12
comes in:
Never let them see you sweat—even if you're wearing wool underwear in a sauna
.

Frank returns with the painting.

“It was under the stairs,” he says. “Where do you want it?”

I think about it. “How about your place? I was planning to give it to Diego's family when they show up, or to his agent at the Gimcrack to sell for them.”

“And in case this is what the break-in was about …”

I'm stone-faced. “I would rather it be with someone who sleeps with a gun and isn't afraid to use it.”

“Ah, so if I'm attacked?”

“Aim for his balls, then the kneecaps, and if that doesn't stop the bastard, two to the head.”

“A bullet to the balls usually gets their attention,” says Frank.

“True, but I wouldn't take any chances with this one.”

_____

“Anything happens or you just don't feel safe, you'll call, right?” says Frank.

“Don't I always?”

“Yeah, but I don't want you thinking you're taking advantage and should maybe let it slide this time. I would rather be pissed at you for calling than pissed at you for dying.”

“Sweet.”

Frank's mouth twitches. “I'll look into that car. Dented roof and four headlights, right?”

I nod. “And if there's a dead creep on the roof, chances are good it's the right one.”

Twenty-six

Sam opens the apartment
door and invites me inside. She looks older: pale and creased, nail marks cutting into her stubbled scalp. Her normally bright eyes are lost beneath swollen lids. A night of tears has left hollow cheeks stained with salty tracks.

“How is she?” I ask.

“Still sleeping.” Her voice is unusually weak. “Ruth said she'd wake up sometime this morning. She'll be hungry, thirsty, and in desperate need of the toilet. Apart from that, Ruth says she'll be fine. She took a blood sample to run some tests.”

“You should get some rest too.”

“I'm OK, just worried and a little scared.” She tries to smile, but her eyes fill with tears. She clenches her teeth, angry with herself. “We had a fight. At the club. When she wasn't here when I got home, I didn't know what … then I heard screaming at your …” She sighs heavily. “I don't want to cry anymore.”

I step closer, wrap my arms around her, and hug tight. Although stiff at first, Sam slowly relaxes until she melts into me, her face buried in my shoulder.

“I'm so sorry, Sam,” I say. “You'll never know how sorry.”

Her body trembles as more tears flow. But like the fighter she is, her strength soon returns. She loosens her grip to wipe her eyes with a tightly bundled tissue.

“I don't blame you, Dix,” she says quietly. “I'm just thankful it wasn't worse.”

Sam reaches down and lifts my bandaged hand.

“When I saw that knife sticking through your hand … I just … rushed him, I guess.”

“Good thing too. I was out of options.”

“I don't believe that,” Sam says. “You even cracked a joke.”

I smile. “Too many John Wayne movies with my dad.”

Sam's eyes lock on mine, her eyebrows knitting into a serious black line, while her piercings accent the storm within. “What did he want?”

“Not sure. He may have been after a painting.”

“A painting?”

“One of the final ones by the dead artist I'm writing about. I found it at his studio and brought it home for safekeeping. Bad decision, I guess.”

“How did he know you had it?”

The question gives me pause; the answer uncomfortable.

“Only one person saw me at his studio.”

“That narrows the list.”

“Considerably.”

“Is it valuable?”

I nod. “Diego's new collection hasn't been selling, but his death will change that. This last painting is different. It's more unique in that he took another, more successful artist's work and tore it to shreds to create a new piece. That gives it controversy.”

“And controversy sells,” Sam interjects dryly.

“Every time.”

“So this is about money?”

I shrug. “It usually is.”

Sam clenches her teeth. “Fucker deserved to die.”

“I agree, but”—I hesitate again—“it doesn't look like he did.”

“What?”

“The body is gone. So is the car he landed on.”

“But that's a—”

“Two-story fall, I know. Frank wondered if I was hallucinating.”

“
I
wasn't.”

“No. He was real.”

Silence falls between us and I callously begin to worry about time.

“Can I see her?” I ask.

Sam leads me to the bedroom. Kristy is curled in a ball on the queen-size bed, her breathing calm and regular. Her face has been washed and her slinky dress replaced with comfortable pajamas. Sam and I smile like proud parents looking in on their young before closing the door and walking back to the front room.

Awkwardly, I clear my throat and try to find the best words to fit my upcoming request.

“I can read you like a book,” Sam says, a touch of brightness returning to her eyes. “What do you need?”

I feel like a heel. “I was going to ask Kristy before all this trouble, but now I …”

“Just spit it out.”

“I need to borrow the Bug.”

I look down at my feet in embarrassment, but when I look back up, Sam simply hands me the keys.

“Just don't smash it,” she warns. “Or Kristy will kill us both.”

Twenty-seven

The drive to Napa
Valley is hot and sticky, but with the top down on Kristy's classic '79 VW Bug and my face buried beneath an industrial layer of makeup to disguise just how badly beat-up I look, I don't care.

I even found a pair of sunglasses stuffed in the glove box to prevent the sun from blinding me as it glares off the buffed electric-yellow hood. The only downside is the glasses are a vibrant shade of butterfly pink with tiny red hearts on each corner. If I meet any studly porn-star hitchhikers along the way, my cool is blown.

Leaving the city behind, I pop a Barenaked Ladies CD into the six-speaker deck, press down on the gas, and try to relax. The warmth of the morning combines with the Percs to soothe my aching muscles as I exit Highway 29 and turn onto the lazy, winding roads of wine country.

The sweet mossy scent of wildflowers and oxygen-rich foliage fills me with a sudden desire to pull over for a lazy picnic of liver paté, crusty sourdough bread, and a bottle of chilled Chardonnay. I could lie back in the grass and let the birds chirp my troubles away.

As it is, I keep driving, the words of “It's All Been Done” strumming in my ear.

Sir Roger Kingston lives in the mouth of the valley on a winery that
Forbes
claims rivals both Robert Mondavi and the Christian Brothers. Unlike those two, however, Kingston doesn't allow tourists the opportunity of a fruitful mid-afternoon tour. Instead, he is known to invite only the golden parachute crowd of business elite and political dignitaries—among them four former presidents—for weekend excursions.

The tastiest rumor I heard about those weekends is that Kingston ships in wild boar and leads his own hunting expeditions in a fenced-off game reserve.

Apart from rumors, little is known about the man's private life. He pops up at charity events throughout the city, donating money, shaking hands, and slapping the mayor on the back, but once he steps off the stage, the media is
persona non grata
. Try and take his picture or ask a question unrelated to the event and his handlers shut you down faster than a jogger with the runs.

Personally, that's never bothered me as much as it does the mainstream press. Everybody has the right to not talk to the media, so long as you don't bitch about how that makes you look when reporters have to get their information from other sources.

After two hours of self-absorbed, wind-in-my-hair bliss, I come to an electronic gate guarding a private road that I recognize from an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for American Express. Made from crushed mother of pearl shell and imported New Zealand sand, the glistening white road is rumored to need constant maintenance and grooming at a cost of $50,000 per year.

A camera on top of the ornate steel gate focuses its glass eye on me. I take off the sunglasses and smile demurely, since I don't want to crack the false face I've painted on. Though if I was the guard, there's no way I'd allow a sorry-looking wretch like me inside.

The gate opens silently and I feel a bit like Dorothy's anal-
retentive cousin. Instead of the swirling, curling yellow-brick road, I drive down a path so straight and white it could have been designed by a dentist. On each side of the bleached road stretches row upon row of such perfectly uniform vines that I am a little surprised the grapes don't wear blaze orange jumpsuits with serial numbers stenciled on the back.

As the Bug's near-bald tires crunch along, the vineyards give way to acres of lush green lawn and I catch my first glimpse of Kingston's summer home. The building is no ordinary mansion—it's a genuine castle.

Piecing together the details from newspaper files, the story goes that a once-powerful aristocratic landowner in Britain—cousin to Queen Elizabeth II, twenty-second in line for the throne, and (if a certain NYT-bestselling mystery writer is to be believed) a possible direct descendant of Jack the Ripper—fell on hard times. Kingston supposedly offered a price for the supremely British castle that couldn't be turned down. Coincidentally, that was also the year that English-born Kingston was knighted for his charitable contributions to preserving British heritage.

With his knighthood secured, Kingston returned to America and brought the castle with him, shipped brick by brick across the Atlantic.

In the New World, however, he must have felt the medieval architecture was a touch on the drab side. To brighten it, he had every ancient stone sandblasted smooth and dusted in a spray of white sand and crushed seashell until it sparkled like something born in the cryogenic depths of Walt Disney's imagination. All sense of history was erased in one smooth stroke, leaving nothing in its path but a garish monstrosity.

The driveway ends in a large parking area in front of a crystalline moat. The moat is spanned by an ancient drawbridge that appears, from the well-oiled links of chain attached to each corner, to still function.

I park and walk to the drawbridge. I take my time to give my throbbing muscles time to warm and stretch. The moat looks inviting. Instead of sharks, alligators, or sharpened metal spikes beneath the surface, it's filled with huge carp the color of tropical fruit. Of course, there's no guarantee that Kingston hasn't trained the giant goldfish to eat human flesh. I move on, not wanting Bubbles to be jealous that I am admiring other fish.

Once across the drawbridge, I stand before two huge slabs of oak, twenty feet tall and studded with brass and iron. A pizza-sized knocker in the shape of a lion's head yawns at me. Warily, I lift the heavy iron bar clutched in the lion's mouth and release it. It hits the door with a heavy thud rather than the roar I am hoping for.

Somewhere within the hallowed halls, a gentle chime echoes.

The massive doors slide open on greased tracks with the gentle purr of a hidden generator. Waiting inside, a tall, regal gentleman stands stiffly. He is just as I imagined on the phone: impregnable British face; milk-white complexion; short, perfectly trimmed black hair; neatly pressed charcoal tuxedo. A poster child for the vanishing craft of butlery.

“Oliver, how are you?” I boom enthusiastically.

“I am afraid that I am not Oliver, Miss Flynn,” he says without emotion.

“But I talked to you yesterday.”

“That would have been my brother. My name is Oxford.”

“As in the dictionary?”

“Quite.”

I whistle. “Two butlers. Impressive.”

“No, miss. I am the lone butler. Oliver is Sir Roger's gentleman's gentleman and private secretary.”

“Ahh,” I say, as though I understand the difference.

Walking into the bright and spacious cobblestoned courtyard, I glance skyward. A glass roof, anchored at each of the four turrets, offers the impression that I am still outside, but without the worry of having to suffer nature's mood swings. Again, every stone is drained of its original texture and color. Even the hand-carved water fountain in the center of the courtyard, where the lord's men once watered their horses after battle, hasn't escaped the painter's brush.

I wonder what it must have been like centuries ago when all the inhabitants of the castle, soldier and servant alike, gathered around the fountain to wash clothes and exchange the gossip of the day.

The thought opens my eyes as to why Kingston wanted a castle of his own. It's the dream of every six-year-old who ever read about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

“This way, miss,” Oxford says, indicating a fortified door to the right of the fountain.

I follow, running my hand along the wall in the faint hope I might feel a long-dead pulse.

Behind the door, Kingston stops pretending it's a castle. Luxury assails at every turn. Indian carpets, Italian tile, every door a hand-carved masterpiece. Most of all, I notice the art.

Paintings and sculpture fill every crevice. My lower jaw unhinges as I pass paintings by famous impressionists hanging alongside modern abstracts.

“In here, miss.” Oxford indicates a carved set of double doors that are made to resemble a giant book.

I head in that direction, but just before entering I notice a tiny black chalk sketch that appears to be a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. It sits on the mantel of an unused fireplace in a tiny study off the hall, like an old family photograph you've forgotten to put away.

“Is that genuine?” My voice is a whisper.

“I believe it is, miss.”

“Wow. Can I take a closer look?”

“Certainly. I shall await your return.“

Up close, the sketch is even more magnificent, but not just in an artistic sense. To actually own something by such an historic visionary is so far beyond my comprehension that I have a hard time absorbing it. And it's just sitting there, like an afterthought.

I shake my head in both disbelief and a touch of disgust at the dark side of a society that celebrates such greed. I return to Oxford in front of what I assume must be the library.

“If you would care to wait inside, Sir Roger will be with you shortly.” The butler pauses and his tone becomes less stuffy. “Forgive my asking, miss, but do you need anything for your hand?”

I lift my bandaged left hand to see the palm is stained with blood as though in stigmata.

“I'll be fine,” I say. “Driving must have loosened a few stitches. The Bug's a standard, so I needed both hands.”

Oxford's face does a little dance between perplexed and confused before he decides to simply nod.

“Please make yourself comfortable.” He closes the door and leaves me alone.

_____

The room is
the size of a dance hall, surrounded on all sides by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The colored spines of the books create a wonderful abstract that reminds me of pixel art, elongated rectangles taking the place of perfect squares. Yet aside from the books, the rest of the room is practically bare.

An ice-white marble fireplace dominates the center of the outside wall. Its hearth is large enough to roast a whole pig or a belligerent servant. In front of it, arranged on a thick Persian rug, the only furniture is two white armchairs and an ice bucket on a silver stand. Near the chairs, I spy the brass legs of a large easel; the rest of it, including the painting it must be holding, is hidden beneath a spotlessly white sheet. It appears my host has a flair for the dramatic.

Intrigued, I walk to the easel but am stopped by the contents of the ice bucket. Inside are four bottles of beer. Two are an imported Australian brand I have never heard of, but the other two are Warthog Ale.

How in hell does he know my favorite beer?

“Help yourself, Dixie,” says a warm, deep voice. “You've had a long drive.”

I turn to see a handsome, lantern-jawed man with a battery-cable spark in his ocean-blue eyes. The eyes are set deep in an unlined, tanned face and crowned by soft blond eyebrows that are too perfectly shaped not to have been waxed.

Looking much younger up close than from across a crowded room, Kingston is wearing a white explorer's outfit: fitted shorts cut high on the thigh to show off muscular legs, short-sleeved shirt cutting tight on toned biceps, white socks, and hiking boots. He also carries a handgun in a canvas holster strapped to his waist. All he needs is a pith helmet and I would have replied, “Dr. Kingston, I presume.”

I pluck a bottle of Warthog from the bucket. “Thanks,” I say. “Don't mind if I do.”

Oxford had the foresight to supply a silver bottle opener; unfortunately, with the fingers of my left hand immobilized, it doesn't do me much good.

“Would you mind?” I hold out the bottle.

Kingston strides forward in a masculine gait and obliges.

He gestures to the chairs. “Please, sit down.”

As I sit, Kingston grabs one of the Australian beers from the bucket and twists off its cap. He takes a long swallow.

“Ahhhh,” he sighs. “There's nothing like Aussie brew.”

“I thought you were English,” I say.

“I was born there,” he says matter-of-factly. “But I prefer to split my time between Oz and the States. More
simpatico
.”

“In what way?” I ask.

“Every way that counts.”

It's a dead-end answer. I either have to back up and try another route or let it go.

“You're younger than I expected,” I say, trying a new approach.

Kingston grins. “Wealth doesn't come with age, Dixie. It takes brains and balls.”

“Unless you inherit it,” I argue.

His eyes narrow. “Inheritance is for the weak.”

“You never got any?”

“The only thing my old man gave me was a cuff on the ear and a thirst for beer. The rest, I earned.”

“Or stole,” I say, before quickly adding, “according to some reports.”

Kingston's face hardens, but only for a second. “It's rare nowadays to find an opponent who isn't afraid to speak her mind.”

“I didn't know we were competing.”

“Always. In this game, everyone you meet wants what you have. Some are carrion and some are hawks. Remember that.”

We both finish our beers at the same time.

“Another?” He makes it sound like a challenge.

With the Percs running through my blood stream, I really shouldn't. I drop my empty into the bucket. “Sure.”

Kingston uses the opener on a Warthog for me before twisting the top off his Aussie brew. Oddly, he never bothers asking about my bandage.

“So what's under the sheet?” I ask, guessing it's probably Adamsky's latest masterpiece with which he hopes to impress.

“My latest acquisition. Would you like a peek?”

“Sure.”

“First, I have to tell you its pedigree.”

With dramatic flair, Kingston rises to his feet and stands beside the draped canvas. His voice is smooth and melodious—the gift of a natural showman, politician, or con artist.

He begins. “This artist was a man who painted from his very soul. A tortured being who believed every canvas he filled contained a piece of himself. But, as is the way of the world, he was forced to sell each piece in order to buy food, shelter, more paint, and canvas. With a stroke of luck, the artist soon became noticed and then became wealthy, but still he continued to pour his heart into his paintings. Each new piece commanded a price twice that of the one previous.”