Artist's Proof (9 page)

Lonnie chose to assist Jackie and their handyman in bringing up half a dozen of my best paintings; I was assigned to entertain the guest. “I think she's a little sweet on you,” Lonnie managed to whisper as she passed me on her way toward the basement door.

“So,” I said, turning to Ms. Turkinton with a show of interest, “you're big
D?
”

“Fort Worth, to be precise,” she replied. “Does it matter?”

“Sid had his eye peeled for a rhinestone belt,” Lonnie called from the basement stairs. She had her ear tilted to miss nothing.

“That's Daddy's belt,” Tess purred. “I'm afraid Bryn Mawr and the Sorbonne knocked the last rhinestones out of mine.”

That surprised me; neither school had knocked the Texas twang out of her. But she was too self-confident to wonder if she had been patronized—and probably too secure to want to lose the accent. She didn't even look to me for my reaction to her showoff bio. She had already left my side to get close to a painting Jackie was propping on a chair. She leaned over it and squinted: She may have been fighting off eyeglasses. She was wrong; they would have softened her angular good looks.

Still bent toward the painting, she cocked one arm behind her and snapped her fingers; it may have been the way she called her horse, but this time she meant for me to trot over. I went at a slow walk.

She didn't notice. “So far I like this one best,” she said. That meant shit; I must have said something like it half a dozen times to Lonnie while gritting my teeth over her lousy drawings back at the Art Students League.

Tess glanced around at the other paintings being set up. “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” she said. To be fair, there was no way she could know she was enraging me further. She said, finally, “Am I wrong, or do I find in your work an unusually healthy dose of German Expressionism?”

More bullshit. Not quite throwing caution to the wind, I said, “Tess, I just paint them. Whatever you find, you get to keep.”

Now she turned to look at me. She gave me a flash of the generous smile, and then, “Did I say something to offend you? Because I'm on your side. If you don't explain your work to me, how am I going to explain it to Daddy?”

“I have no idea. If I could explain my work I'd do that instead of paint it. If your daddy takes one of my pictures, he and it will have to get to know each other all by themselves. You and I would just be in the way.”

Tess's smile had long since gone. She said, “My, we are just a little bit touchy, aren't we?”

Lonnie had come up from the basement lugging a painting, and she had caught the last exchange. Her alabaster face took on a purple tinge. She shot me a look and turned sweetly to Tess. “Is there something I can help with, Tess?”

But Tess had forgotten what we were debating. She had locked on to the painting Lonnie was carrying. “That's the one Daddy must have meant,” she gushed. “The one he told me he especially liked.”

A moment of sadness had passed over me like a scudding cloud. I hadn't seen the canvas since I'd brought it in to Lonnie months ago. It was my portrait of the nude, fragmented Cassie Brennan.

“Yes,” I heard myself saying from somewhere in the middle distance. “It's one of my favorites, too.”

It was the first thing I had said in agreement with Tess, and I could see that Lonnie approved.

S
EVEN

D
ADDY SHOWED THREE
minutes later, direct from “some high-collar directors' meeting I'd have come out a winner if I'd passed.” He was pretty much the free-spirited Texan a casting director would have sent—leather faced and squint eyed, surrounded, figuratively, by tumbleweed. He wasn't wearing boots or a multigalloned hat, but that may have been a grudging concession to New York. His expensive suit bowed discreetly to western tailoring, and it was cleverly cut to conceal a massive gut. He was fifty-something, as good-looking as his daughter but with a strong Roman nose instead of her turned up one, and a voice that often boomed, whether he wanted it to or not.

Tess ran to peck him on the cheek, skillfully sidestepping the big belly to do so. He accepted the homage and slapped her on the rump. Wild horses at play.

What would attract this cartoon of a man to an idiosyncratic nude, heavy on the impasto? My shattered, scattered, multilimbed, twin-faced take on the ill-fated Cassie Brennan?

But
Seated Girl
was the painting he wanted, no question. After a final routine squeeze of his daughter's neck he pushed her gently aside and went for it with the purposefulness of his mount heading for the stable.

“Yeah, that one—that's the one hit me when I came in the other day. I could make out like it was otherwise, Leona, try to jerk you around on price, but we're two grown-ups here. What's your best deal? What would you charge your momma for it?”

Lonnie grinned tightly and went pale, but said nothing. She never spoke prices; she once told me that doing so made her feel like a rug merchant. She extended an arm, and Jackie rushed to hand her a clipboard with my pieces and their prices listed on a computer printout.

“It's number nine,” Lonnie said, handing the clipboard to Turkinton.
“Seated Girl.”

“
Seated Girl,
my ass,” Daddy said. “Girl with World Class Hooters.”

“Daddy,” Tess admonished and rolled her eyes heavenward by way of apology. The moment Turkinton showed up the tough independent woman had become Daddy's little girl.

Turkinton was looking at the price list. “Mmm,” he said thoughtfully; he managed to make even “Mmm” boom. Then, “Leona, when did the cost of a brush and a few squibs of paint go through the ozone layer?” And then, “I suppose a frame is an extra, huh?”

“I can recommend a good framer,” Lonnie said smoothly. “Franz will know exactly what to do with this canvas.”

“Mmm,” Turkinton said. And waited. For a price concession, I assumed.

Impasse filled the room.

Lonnie was not going to be diddled. She sized up the situation and drifted over to another, smaller, painting—totally abstract and loose as a rag doll. A good canvas, but in a different voice.

“Mr. Turkinton, might I suggest this as a sensible place to begin collecting Shales?” she murmured smoothly. “It's a work central to Sid's themes, but somewhat less of a strain on the pocketbook.” And then, briskly, “Number six on the list in your hand,
Untitled Number Three.
” It was of course a negotiating ploy: She was testing his balls.

Neither of them knew Cassie was dead, so it was unfair of me to harbor the thought, but they were like a couple of cadaver merchants dickering over the price of the corpse.

Turkinton didn't even look at the price list. “
Untitled Number Three
is not talking to me,” he said. “I'm not getting so much as a belch.”

He waited another moment, then shoved the clipboard back in Jackie's hand. He may have decided he had a better chance waiting out the millennium than Leona Morgenstern.

“Number nine is the one I've got to have,” he said. “That naked little girl.” He turned to me. “But I tell you, Sid, I'd have preferred her with fewer legs and more titties.”

“Dad-
dy,
for God's sake.”

Turkinton paid her no heed. He was giving me the full piercing squint he used against a relentless Texas sun. I was afraid that having failed with Lonnie he was going to start bargaining with me, and I have zero bargaining know-how. But he was on a new tack. He boomed, “How'd you come to paint this little girl?”

“The usual way. She sat. It was a job. Why do you ask?”

“You caught her. Real good. In separate little bits, but I can glue them together right side up in my head. That's her, all right.”

“You”—I almost said
knew
—“know her?”

“Hell, yes, I know her. Carrie? Cassie. She didn't say she posed for you.” He was studying me narrowly. “I wouldn't mind getting some of that.”

“Modeling work?” I had decided to play it dumb. “Real boring. Takes patience. Where'd you meet her?”

“She's a hired girl for a friend of mine. Out on Long Island. Where you do your painting.”

Now I understood where we were at. “Your friend is Mikhael Sharanov?”

“That's him. You knew she works for Misha?”

“A drawing of mine hangs in his living room. You may have seen it.”

“Very good, Sid. Misha must be a big fan. It's the only picture in his house.”

Where was he coming from? I said, “And that drawing made a fan of you?”

“Enough to have you looked up. Truth? I've been Misha's guest at the beach three or four times this spring. I took Tess with me just last week. Misha's a fine host, a
mi casa es su casa,
so take it, please,' kind of fella. I was looking for a thank you that would be appropriate and also surprising.
Seated Girl
fills the bill.”

“I'm flattered, Mr. Turkinton, but a gift of”—out of respect for Lonnie, I checked myself from saying the formidable dollar figure—“a painting?” Lonnie was shooting daggers at me; I wasn't doing our side any good, but something made me push on. “You could have gotten away with a couple of pounds of Godiva chocolates.”

Turkinton chuckled his appreciation. “Sid, you must know the story of the Texan whose son wants golf clubs for his birthday, so he buys him St. Andrews and Pebble Beach?”

“Daddy, you are a
card,
” Tess giggled.

“Fact is,” Turkinton went on, and he was trying to moderate the boom, “Misha and I are doing a little bit of business together. Trying to. You'd be surprised how something
personal
—not chocolates—can grease the wheels when you're paying a man back for his hospitality.”

He laughed. “Which hospitality might be his way of greasing
my
wheels.” He cocked his head slyly. “I never said that, you understand?”

Sharanov and Turkinton. They could be the spider and the fly. But which was which? “How well do you know Sharanov?” I asked.

“Well enough. He near knocked my socks off with that Russky nightclub he runs out there in Brooklyn. An honest-to-God money-making machine.” He turned to Leona, who was standing by fidgeting; the conversation had veered dangerously off the only subject she was interested in.

“Leona, remind me to write you a check before we leave,” he said casually. “Send the little
Seated Gal
out to Franz and make sure she gets delivered to the address at the beach Tess will give you.”

Deal. Leona broke out an ear-to-ear grin and a burble of appreciation. Turkinton waved it aside and returned to me. He had just given me a healthy head start on my share of Sarah's school bill, and I was elated but also determined not to show it; why should he think I had gotten the better of the deal?

Turkinton wasn't interested in my reaction. He was saying: “What I'm going to do, Sid, is duplicate Misha's restaurant thing in Dallas. The whole package—maybe bigger, if you can picture that. We're ready for it. The last few years we've taken on all the French and Italian chowdowns we can handle. I'm betting I can sell the Russian scene from bleenies right up through beef strongenuff.”

“Stroganoff, Daddy. And I told you, it's a stew that's full of
sour cream.
” Tess shuddered for her innocent father.

I shuddered for him too. For his well-being. He was buying my painting, so I had a rooting interest in his staying healthy, at least for the next few days. If he was a con artist, I needed him to wait until his check to Lonnie cleared before he tried a swindle on Misha Sharanov; that foolish error could lead to his turning up in some distant airport, portioned out in a set of matched luggage.

“So you and Sharanov aren't set yet on your deal?” I probed.

“We're down to the short strokes,” he said dismissively; he had tired of the subject. “Listen, Sid, Tess and I are heading out for a couple of steaks. We'd be pleased to have you join us.”

He was not likely to reveal any more about his relations with Sharanov and I could think of no other reason to spend an evening with this pair. “I'd like that,” I lied, “but I promised some buddies I'd join them for dinner.”

“What buddies?” Lonnie asked; she was making it clear with eloquent facial tics that it would be a sound business move for me to cultivate this pliant customer across a yard of charred beef and a parade of bourbons.

“My old gang,” I said. “They still go to Muccio's Friday nights.”

That much was true; a few of the guys I went through the police academy with continued to meet for sentimental reasons, or maybe out of inertia—certainly not for the food—at a primitive Sicilian restaurant off Mulberry Street that had been the best we could afford in our early days on the force.

Lonnie's expressive eyebrows were saying, Your stomach could take that joint in your twenties; is it up to it in your forties? But she kept her mouth shut: Tess had the floor.

“Mr. Shale, I am a little bit dismayed,” she said, mock-coquettish, a coiled spring at the back of her voice. “Daddy and I don't get turned down that often.”

Her father was watching her with amused interest. “I know
you
don't, Tessy. I sure as hell do. Maybe I'm the fly in this strongenuff.”

I said quickly, “Nothing like that. Let's do it another night. I'll call.”

“Or we'll call you,” Tess pouted, not much nourished by my vague offer. “I'm sure Leona knows how to find you.”

This party was going rapidly downhill. Before it hit bottom I repeated my feeble excuse and beat it out of there.

Another thought had sneaked into my head, and it expanded to fill it as I made for the door: Wouldn't Turkinton stop his check when he heard that the subject of the painting he was buying to charm Sharanov had been brutally murdered?