Death of an Artist (23 page)

“I thought kids never questioned the reality they experience,” Tony said. “Like someone color-blind who doesn't know it, or question what he sees unless tested.”

“But she questioned it as an adult, and as an adult came to know that the child had been searching without the words to tell anyone about it.”

Tony nodded. He thought Stef died without finding answers. He glanced at Van, but she was intent on cars trying to change lanes ahead as traffic inched forward again, and he didn't say any more.

After another prolonged silence, feeling that she was stepping onto forbidden territory, she said, “I looked up that shooting incident in New York. A lot was written about it at the time, and there are several different versions of what happened. Will you tell me about it?” She didn't dare look at him again, but she was aware of his stiffening posture, his withdrawal.

Traffic moved and she inched forward again. Hesitantly she said, “There are such contradictory accounts that I began to wonder if any of them was right.”

“It's okay,” Tony said tonelessly. He looked out the side window. In a monotone he said, “A kid walked in on his father beating up his mother while a neighbor stood by drinking a beer. The kid got his father's gun and began to wave it around. The neighbor ducked out and called 911. I was a couple of blocks away and was the first responder. The door was open and I just walked on in. They were in the kitchen, her eye was swollen shut, her lip split and bleeding. And the kid was holding a handgun. He was desperate for a way out. He didn't want to shoot anyone, he wanted his father to stop beating his mother. Seventeen, intense, eyeglasses, and desperate for a way out. I was giving him an out. I said I'd testify against the father, his hands were bloody, and the law would deal with him. The kid was listening and I kept talking, how violence just leads to more violence. Stop now before someone gets hurt. Like that. Then the others came in with their guns drawn, and in a flash the kid slipped into panic mode. Scared thoughtless, all rationality gone, just pure panic. They began to shoot simultaneously, the team and the kid. He wasn't aiming at anyone, he couldn't have aimed at that point. He went down and so did I.”

In a voice so low it was almost a whisper, Van asked, “How could they have blamed you? Some of the accounts said they found you at fault. How?”

“Internal review,” he said, his face still averted, his voice still toneless. “They did what they're trained to do.” He thought, but did not say: shoot first and assess the situation when they get around to it. “I should have disarmed the kid when I got there. I should have drawn my own weapon, shot him if necessary. What the team saw was that a kid had the drop on a cop and they reacted appropriately. Case closed.”

“Good God! And one of your own guys shot you in the hip, shot you in the back.”

Tony did not respond. The review found that twenty-six rounds had been fired, seventeen hit the boy. One hit Tony directly. A ricochet got his knee. One of the final questions before he was dismissed repeated in his mind:
Why did you go in without drawing your weapon first?

“It had been three to five minutes from the time 911 was called, and no shots had been fired. I didn't believe any would be. I could hear their voices when I got near. That kid didn't want to shoot anyone.” He lifted his coffee and took a drink.

“The family got a settlement, didn't they? It didn't go to trial, they just collected a lot of money. A newspaper story was that she had fallen and he was helping clean the blood from her face. The neighbor said that was right, he saw her fall. And the boy's mother confirmed that account. My God! How much is a life worth?”

After a moment of silence Tony said, “Let's play one of those broadcasts you bought from Bud.”

“In my bag,” she said, pointing to the big handbag she had put on the floor.

Tony pulled the CDs out, one written by Archibald MacLeish, staring Agnes Moorehead and Orson Welles. Too heavy, he decided, and loaded the other one, an episode of
The Inner Sanctum
. He and Van exchanged skeptical looks when it started with the squeaking, squealing door, and the ominous voice of the host. It was a ghost story. In spite of himself Tony began to listen; the broadcast play drove out the bitter memories of that day, that desperate boy he had not wanted to hurt. He could have taken him out, he knew, a disabling shot, not one meant to kill. He could have done that, but he hadn't wanted to hurt the frightened kid. Instead, he had gotten him killed.

The ghost story played: a small group of people forced to find shelter by a blinding snowstorm, an antiquated, run-down hotel, and the eerie happenings, since become clichés, but new in the forties, and effective, suspenseful, even frightening.

When it ended, Van said, “Wow! Bud's right, it sucks you right in. You participate, build scenery, get involved. Television and movies don't do that. You're just a passive observer.”

They talked about the radio play, how good the sound effects were, how involved they had become, about the traffic that had begun to flow, how those who could do it flocked to the coast to escape the heat of the valley, and other things. They did not refer to the shooting incident again.

In the Coast Ranges Tony began to adjust the air-conditioning, then turned it off and they opened windows. The cool marine air felt heavenly, Van said. Tony agreed.

It was seven forty-five when they pulled into the driveway at Marnie's house. She met them at the door with Josh at her side. He grabbed Van in an embrace. “I want to show you something,” he said, tugging at her hand. “And you, too, To—Mr. Marso.”

Tony laughed as they went into the living room. “Hey, Josh, if your mother permits it, you could call me Tony, the way my pals do.” Van's mouth tightened and she shook her head.

Ignoring her, Tony said to Josh, “The guys I put in jail always called me Mr. Mauricio, or sometimes Lieutenant Mauricio, but my pals call me Tony.”

“Tony!” Van said indignantly. “That's a dirty trick.”

“Mom,” Josh said, “can, I mean,
may
I call him Tony like his pals do?”

“Since he said it's all right, I guess so,” she said with a reproachful look at Tony.

Marnie ducked her head, smiling. She often thought that Van went too far in reacting to Stef's upbringing, went too far in the other direction.

“Come on, Mom and Tony,” Josh said. “See, I have three trains put together already, and I'll get the engine done tomorrow. Gramma and I got paint today, red paint. I'll paint them, and when it dries, I'll take my train to school for show-and-tell.”

“That's great,” Tony said, examining the completed coaches. “It's going to be one good-looking train. I was afraid it might be too hard for you, and I was dead wrong. Good job!”

“You two sit down and relax,” Marnie said. “Josh has eaten and had his bath, and it's just about bedtime for him. What do you want to drink?”

On the coffee table was a platter of crackers, cheese, cold cuts, olives, and shrimp. Van said a bourbon and ice water, and Tony said that sounded just right. She went upstairs to wash her hands, and Tony washed his in the lavatory off the kitchen. Marnie brought the drinks and they sat near the wide windows and watched the blue sky turn into a sunset mix of muted colors.

When Van took Josh up to read a story and tuck him into bed, Marnie said, “Did you find out anything new today?”

Tony told her what all they had done, what Freddi had said, about Bud and the search of Dale's apartment. She listened without comment. He felt that he could almost hear her thoughts: more of the same.

Marnie got up to take a lasagna from the oven, add vinaigrette to the salad, and slice a loaf of bread. Van came down and they had dinner.

Tony waited until coffee was poured, then said, “I know how disappointed you both are that things aren't moving faster, we're not getting the results we want, but this is the way it works. Look at it from Dale's perspective. He's being squeezed and the pressure will go up. He can't get his hands on the art, and his big bidding war is on hold for an indefinite period. He owes money to Delacroix, and if he fails to meet his obligations in a timely fashion, their agreement could be revoked altogether and he'd be out of the gallery. That's a standard clause. He knows that. On Wednesday he'll find out about the audit. We know he owes Delacroix about forty thousand, his apartment is expensive, and the lease on that fancy car is, too. If he's delinquent on anything, he's in trouble. The only option he has right now is to bring pressure on the stable of painters he's signed up, but that's problematic, too. I think that after Wednesday, he'll want to make a deal with you, Marnie, something to break the impasse and let that bidding war go forward. He'll probably see his attorney, instruct him to make proposals and do it fast. And you'll stall, send him to your attorney with instructions for him to stall.”

“There's something else we could do,” Van said, leaning forward. “Write a letter to Dale's sister, something like, did you know Dale made seven hundred thousand from those old tapes? Ask—” She looked at Tony. “What's Bud's grandfather's name? Do you have his address?”

“Jeez,” Tony said. “You were born to conspire. Yeah, I have his name.”

“I'll write the letter and get it in the mail tomorrow. Anonymously, of course.” She looked thoughtful for a second, then said, “I wonder what he did with all that money? It wasn't even quite half when he bought into the gallery.”

“He was in France and Italy for several months,” Tony said. “And I imagine he lived like a Saudi prince while there, spending sprees, designer clothes, custom-made suits, the works. Maybe too many jaunts to Monte Carlo.” Tony shrugged, not really caring how Dale Oliver had managed to get rid of close to half a million dollars in less than six months.

He sipped his coffee, regarded Marnie and then Van with a sober look. “I think he's going to get pretty desperate by the end of the week, and desperate people often do very foolish things. I don't know what direction he'll take, but I suspect it won't be very smart, and we'll have to be ready to deal with it.”

 

18

T
HAT
NIGHT
V
AN
took her calculator to the kitchen table and played with numbers. Dale owed over forty thousand to Delacroix, but even if he got his bidding war and collected 25 percent as agent and another part of whatever the gallery would make, it would not be enough to cover his debt. Say he got the prices up to thirty thousand altogether, she thought, still not enough. Even if he got twice that much, it wouldn't be enough. He couldn't count on his stable of artists to all come through at once. They might bring in another ten thousand or so.

To kill Stef for a few thousand dollars was so outrageous, so hideous, it was pure evil. She felt that she couldn't contemplate such evil, such malevolence, and she went out to the deck where she watched the town lights go out until she was chilled. She continued to sit inside, huddled under a blanket for a long time, finally gave it up, took a hot bath, and went to bed and a deeply troubled sleep.

Tony was on his own balcony that night drinking bourbon and water. He had done the numbers in his head on the drive back to the coast, and it didn't add up, he thought. Van was right, all they were learning about Dale Oliver was more of the same, little or none of it admissible as relevant in a murder case. He used unsavory, but probably common, business practices in the art world, the problem with his sister was a civil matter to be settled in a different court, or by mediation or something, not relevant. If he had been involved in a scam at the dealership or adjacent used-car lot back East five years ago, let New Jersey handle it; it was not relevant to the murder of Stefany Markov.

He had seen too many cases crumble, he brooded, to believe that this would be any different. It would never get to a jury, to trial. No prosecutor would move it forward since it was based on nothing more than suspicion, and a shady past. There was no real evidence that would be admissible.

Tony knew he had done it, and that day he had learned how he had done it. He closed his eyes and watched the scene unfold in his mind's eye.

Dale was Delmar Oliver's son, he'd grown up knowing about sound effects, how they were produced and used. He tapes a scream lifted from television. Any night of the week you could hear a scream or two. No problem. He walks a dozen or so steps in his apartment, then tape records a door opening, followed by his own anguished cry. He probably practices that part many times until he gets it right. Again no problem. He drops something and gets that on tape. Not likely to have been his cell phone. Why risk ruining a perfectly good phone? He places his phone on the sofa, faced away from him, and goes to the other side of the room to utter more agonized words, her name a few times, then on to his little home office, not out of range of the phone, but distant enough for Freddi to almost hear his words, and he fakes a call to 911. He turns off the tape recorder at that point.

The day of the murder, he has his pigeons lined up, the various sound effects coordinated, a narrative background. He and Stef load some artwork in the van. He puts the little truck at the foot of the stairs. Stef goes up to shower and dress, and he picks up one of her paintings, an oil that isn't likely to be hurt and can be reframed. He takes it upstairs, out to the passage and stairs, and smashes it on the banister, tosses it over. Back to the bedroom where Stef has put on some clothes, but not her shoes. Doesn't matter, he decides, and clips her, knocks her unconscious. He carries her limp body upstairs, to the passage, and rolls her down the stairs. He wants her to have a lot of bruises, abrasions, a broken bone or two would be okay. Those injuries will hide the mark left when he hit her in the head.