Through the Grinder (19 page)

The couple seemed oblivious to the change in the tone of our conversation, but the Japanese businessmen were now glancing in our direction, too.

Torquemada gripped my arm, none too gently.

“Will you both please follow me to my office,” he said with forced politeness.

I shook my arm loose from his grasp as I followed the dealer through the gallery to a door marked
PRIVATE
. He quickly unlocked it and motioned us inside. Torquemada followed Matteo and I through the door and closed it quickly.

The office was small and stark, with off-white walls displaying framed posters announcing Death Row gallery shows. An Apple computer with a sleek, thin monitor sat on the desk and a slew of art books and catalogs packed a set of tall shelves. Stacks of black leather artist’s portfolios leaned against the length of one wall, and the corner of the room, behind the desk, was dominated by a human skeleton posing with a silver tray in its hand, as if it were serving lunch. There were some items on the tray, but Torquemada spoke up before I got a good look, calling my attention away.

“Now what is this all about?” Torquemada demanded, his face florid. “I already spoke to a police detective. If you two are more of the same you should at least identify yourselves as such.”

“We’re private detectives investigating the death of Sahara McNeil,” Matteo smoothly stated without a second’s hesitation.

“What’s to investigate?” Torquemada said, his arms wide in an open shrug. “She was flattened by the Sanitation Department, end of story.”

“You don’t seem broken up about it,” I noted.

“No, I don’t, Ms. Cosi. And neither would you. Little Sally was a below average sales representative whose inability to schmooze the clientele and the artists we represent nearly cost me one of my best clients.”

“Mars?”

Torquemada laughed. “Hardly. Poor Mars, a.k.a. Larry Gilman, is nothing but a wannabe.”

“I have it on good authority that he has a record as a violent felon. That he may have committed murder,” I replied.

“He was a co-defendant in an assault charge that was downgraded from manslaughter. Larry got into a bar fight with some Puerto Rican punk over a girl and the kid died later. Larry-the-murderer didn’t even do hard time—just parole. Likes to play it up, though. Thinks it’s good for his resume.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You have to have at least a modicum of talent,” Torquemada replied. “
Mars
was strictly fan-boy. Japanese Manga meets Jackson Pollock. Really quite derivative. Sometimes I move his stuff to the Goths who can’t afford to purchase the real thing.”

“Like one of those fine clown paintings, you mean?”

“They may not be profound, Ms. Cosi, but they were produced by a mind bold enough to grasp a much darker vision of the universe than Larry Gilman’s. Or most definitely, yours.”

Yes, most definitely, mine,
I thought,
and thank goodness.

“How would you characterize the relationship between Larry Gilman and Sahara McNeil?” I asked.

“A lapdog to its master. He worshiped her. She tolerated him. Sahara moved art for Larry. She even let him come over to the gallery for long, soulful chats.” Torquemada examined his nails and sighed.

“Sahara probably liked the attention, but I doubt very much there was any more to it than that. She was ten years older than Larry in age—and light years ahead of him in education and sophistication. She had a degree in fine arts, Larry was a Jersey boy who’d dropped out of high school. What could she really find attractive about a crude post-adolescent no-talent?”

Torquemada moved to the leaning stacks of black leather portfolios and tossed one onto the desk.

“Mars came by earlier today, brought me these.” He flipped open the leather folder.

Inside were pictures painted in acrylic. Ten of them. The same woman in every one. I recognized her flaming red hair and green eyes from Cappuccino Connection night.

“Sahara McNeil…”

The pictures were wonderful, luminous, highly idealized portraits. The kind of pictures a passionate young man would paint in the throes of heated infatuation.

“I can’t even sell these,” Torquemada said, his voice pained and regretful. More melancholy than irritated, he closed the portfolio. “They look like pictures of fairies or something. Who’d buy them?”

Who indeed? Obviously none who shopped for fine art at Death Row Gallery
.

I studied Torquemada’s resigned expression. One thing still bothered me. “You said Sahara McNeil almost cost you a high-end client. Who might that be?”

Torquemada moved behind his desk and sat. I tried to keep my eyes from straying to the skeleton hovering in the corner behind him, silver tray extended in an offering.

“Seth Martin Todd,” he said as Matt and I took seats across from him.

“The name doesn’t ring a bell,” said Matteo.

“Yes, well, I’m not surprised,” Torquemada replied, somewhat defensively, I thought.

“It just so happens that Seth Martin Todd is going to open a one-man exhibition at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles next week. His paintings now command huge sums of money. Money that generates commissions this gallery needs to survive. Sahara jeopardized my trusted relationship with Mr. Todd.”

“How?”

“Todd accused her of underselling one of his works,” Torquemada replied. “He blamed Sahara for a canceled appearance on
The Charlie Rose Show,
and also for mishandling an exhibition of his work at MoMa.”

“Did Mr. Todd threaten Sahara?”

“On a number of occasions. But he threatens everyone,” replied Torquemada with a wave of his puffy pink hand, “—even me.”

“So he’s just another wannabe? No danger at all?”

“I didn’t say that, Ms. Cosi. Seth Martin Todd is the real deal. He murdered two people. One of them his wife.”

Matteo leaned forward. “So he’s in jail? Or still facing trial.”

“The charges against him were dropped on a technicality. The murders occurred in Vermont and the small town sheriff who was the arresting officer botched the chain of evidence. A high-priced lawyer got all of the evidence against him thrown out in a pre-trial motion. Todd got off without even a trial, and the notoriety made his work highly sought after among a certain class of collectors.”

“Does Mr. Todd live in New York City?” I asked.

Torquemada snorted. “If you call Queens New York City, then yes.”

He opened a drawer, pulled out an index file, and drew out a business card. “Here’s his address. Give him my regards, if he’ll even see you.”

Matteo’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, he’ll see us.”

“He refused to meet with the representative of the World Trade Center Memorial Commission yesterday. I wanted to send the man over, but Todd said the representative wasn’t morally or ethically fit to judge his work.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Todd has got a problem with men. A rooster complex. He’s superficially charming around both sexes, but he truly prefers to deal with women. Especially if it has to do with his career. In my opinion, it’s the secret of his success…his way with the ladies, I mean. My boy Seth has charmed his way to the top.” Torquemada offered me a malevolent smile. “If you’re very lucky, my dear Ms. Cosi, he’ll work his magic on you.”

Sitting next to me, Matteo shifted his weight and folded his arms tightly. I could hear the tension in his voice when he asked, “Does that magic include murder?”

“Seth has his personal ghosts to deal with,” said Torquemada, his attention straying to the skeleton behind him for a moment. “We all do.”

Then he looked at me. “If you think Seth murdered Sahara, you’re wrong. He felt nothing but contempt for Sally and her bourgeois background. Seth’s power as an artist comes from the knowledge that he destroyed something he loved. That the one person who meant more to him than life itself died at his hands.”

The bald man’s gaze strayed to the skeleton behind him again. “I understand Seth,” he continued. “In a way, I know how he feels. I didn’t kill my wife, but I stood by and watched her die.”

He looked back to us, but his eyes were distant as he kept talking. “Madeline had a taste for the needle…heroin…That coupled with her inability to measure anything correctly caused her to have an overdose. But she’s still here, with me.”

Call me naïve, but it took me a few seconds to understand that he was referring to the skeleton. That medical school anatomy specimen standing behind his shoulder was the mortal remains of Torquemada’s late wife.

Good god,
I thought.
This place really is a horror show.

“I can’t forget her, you see,” Torquemada said. “At least Mars was healthy enough to let go, to bring those pictures to me. To never look upon the dead face of Sahara McNeil again.”

“Thank you for your time,” I said, rising quickly. Matteo followed my lead. Before I turned to leave, however, I couldn’t stop my eyes from straying morbidly to the contents of the tray clutched in the late Mrs. Torquemada’s hands.

I saw a syringe, a spoon, a clear plastic bag of white powder, and a candle burnt down to the wick. There was also a shrunken object that looked like a turkey neck—whatever it was, it was definitely organic.

Matteo glanced at the tray, too, and I heard his breath catch in complete horror. “Jesus Christ, man!”

Matt’s outburst set off Torquemada, who rose quickly and nearly pushed us out the door. “You’ll never understand,” he said angrily. “There are many ways to be faithful, to keep one’s promises…I have been faithful, in my fashion.”

Matteo grabbed my arm and the next thing I knew, we were both out in the street, sucking in fresh, cold air like a pair of trapped miners resurrected.

“Thank goodness we’re out of there,” I said. Then I turned to Matt. He looked pale. That surprised me—frankly, his outburst surprised me, too.

“Since when have you been so squeamish?” I asked him. “You’ve seen bones before. And New York City creeps.”

“It wasn’t the bones that got me, or that creep Torquemada. It was the thing lying on that tray,” Matteo said, hustling me along Thompson Street.

“The needle? The heroin? The turkey neck?”

Matteo shook his head. “That wasn’t a turkey neck, Clare.”

“Then what was it?”

“When I was in Africa some time ago, two men were convicted of rape. After their trial certain body parts were removed as punishment.”

“My god,” I choked, “then that was—?”

“You heard the man,” said Matteo, nodding. “He remained ‘faithful,’ in his ‘fashion’…”

A
FTER
we left Death Row Gallery, Matteo and I walked to the R line and boarded the uptown Broadway local—the train Valerie Lathem died trying to catch.

At Times Square we switched to the Queens-bound 7 train for the ride out to Long Island City. The 7 train travels underground from Times Square to Fifth Avenue, and on to the deepest level of Grand Central Station. Then it races through a tunnel under the East River and emerges to run along an elevated track across the middle of Queens to Flushing’s Shea Stadium and the end of the line.

Among the 7 train’s passengers, Hispanics and Asians dominated, along with East Indians and a smattering of florid-faced Irish newcomers who had migrated from the Emerald Isle to Woodside, Queens, to be among their fellow émigrés. Matteo and I would be getting off before we reached that tiny Irish enclave. We were heading to a far less pleasant place, a nominally industrial area of Queens known as Long Island City, which was in transition to residential zoning—in other words, we were going to an old factory district that spirited urbanites had begun to homestead.

Despite our wretched experience in the bowels of SoHo, or maybe because of it, I found the train’s hypnotic underground motion sending me into a daydream—back to Bruce Bowman’s unfinished house, where my skin still faintly tingled from the hours he spent touching me, our last coupling in his four-poster bed.

Until recently, the transit authority ran an older scarlet-painted train along this line, known as the redbird, with drafty, noisy old cars so loud on some sections of track it made conversation almost impossible. The new cars were sleek and quiet, but Matteo and I still chose not to converse. I remained in my reverie, and beside me on the hard, plastic orange seat, Matteo sat with arms folded, staring into the distance, looking as though he’d gone somewhere else, too.

I roused when the train emerged from its tunnel, the glaring light of late afternoon bursting through scratched windows. Then the track inclined and the 7 Local became elevated, crossing over a deserted railroad yard covered with puddles of mud and melting snow.

Despite long and extensive work on the tracks, and the new train, the 7 line still looked dismal and worn in places, like an impoverished cousin of the Manhattan lines, with their restored mosaic-tiled stations.

Century-old elevated 7 stations like the one at Queens Plaza were a throwback to the Industrial Revolution—no-frills steel-framed structures on tall iron stilts, with several levels of concrete platforms and wooden tracks. When the subway clattered into that station, it sounded to me like the old wooden roller coaster I used to ride at a local amusement park growing up.

We disembarked just after Queens Plaza, at the Thirty-third Street stop. From its narrow concrete platform, we had a magnificent view of the Empire State Building across the river, burnished by sunset’s golden rays. We walked down three long flights of stairs to Queens Boulevard, one of the borough’s two major thoroughfares. While we waited for the light to change, a tide of traffic flowed by in three crowded lanes. It was here, over the roar of the engines, that Matt and I began to argue.

“This is a bad idea, Clare,” Matteo said. “Why confront Seth Martin Todd now? Today? We already know he’s killed—twice. Why enter the predator’s den?”

“You
know
why. It’s something I have to do for my own peace of mind.”

“We could let Quinn handle it. Police detectives
must
do more than eat Krispy Kremes and chase divorcees, right? Let that faded gumshoe earn his salary for once.”

“You don’t have to insult Quinn,” I said. “He may be wrong about Bruce, but he’s not a bad cop. And I do intend to let him handle it…I just need to give him an ‘it’ to handle. Come on, we’ve got a good lead here. You’re usually up for a challenge.”

Matteo’s face was stone. “A challenge is one thing, Clare. But now you’ve got me escorting you to the home of a murderer, and I don’t like it.”

I sighed. “You don’t want me to go alone, do you?”

“I don’t want you to go at all.”

“Well, I am. So it’s your choice.”

Matt rubbed the back of his neck, then shook his head. “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

“It’s really the perfect opportunity,” I said, trying to sound encouraging as we crossed the busy street. “Torquemada said Todd blew off a member of the World Trade Center Commission, and that he runs on charm, right? So I’ll pretend to be another person from the WTCC, and while he charms the heck out of me, I’ll pump him for information.”

“What am I supposed to do while you’re, uh, pumping him?”

“You will wait outside. Torquemada said Todd had a problem with males in authority.”

“No, Clare. That’s
really
not a good idea.”

“Of course it is. If I’m not back in a reasonable amount of time—say thirty minutes—you can call the cops. You can even call Quinn. This isn’t his usual stomping grounds, but—” I threw Matt a look. “I’m sure there’s a Krispy Kreme around here somewhere.”

Matteo returned my look but said nothing.

The sun was touching the horizon now, and streetlights were flickering on as we moved north up Thirty-third, a largely commercial area of auto body shops, steel finishers, furniture makers, and garages—closing up now or closed already.

In the distance, there were several tall loft-type manufacturing buildings, and they appeared to be at least half vacant. This was not a residential neighborhood, and no one had bothered to clear away the snow. It lay on the street and sidewalks in dirty layers. There were no stores, or diners, supermarkets or newsstands, either. As far as city living went, this was certainly the proverbial “urban frontier.”

As we moved past a vacant lot that some Hispanic teens were using as a ball field, I felt feral eyes watching us—and was suddenly regretting the decision to wear my brand new, thousand dollar, floor-length shearling. The chic coat was the perfect garment for garnering admiring glances in the streets of SoHo, but far from the smart thing to wear in Long Island City.

After the teens gave Matteo and me a second and third look, Matteo offered them a sneer of his own. They quickly returned to their game.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Clare, this it not a great neighborhood,” Matteo said evenly.

“If you can make a Jeep trip through bandit country to Jiga-Jiga, I think you can protect us both in the jungles of Long Island City.”

“In Africa I carry a gun.”

Twilight descended quickly as we turned right, into a narrow, dead-end alley between two tall manufacturing buildings. On our left, through three separate eight-foot, barbed-wire-topped chain link fences, a large black dog snarled at us. The building on our right—a six-story manufacturing and warehouse structure that covered nearly the entire block—had the same address as the one printed on the business card Torquemada had handed me.

“Here we are,” I announced brightly.

Matt grimly scanned the shadowy alley—still paved with its original cobblestones—and the dark windows on the buildings, through which no interior lights shone. “Yeah. Home sweet home.”

We walked to the far end of the dead-end block, stopping before a windowless steel door, a bare unlit bulb above it. In the last dying light of the day, I read the sign.

“
Tod Studios
. This must be the place, but I wonder why he misspelled his own name. His business card spells it ‘Todd’ with two D’s.”

“It isn’t a misspelling of his name,” Matteo replied. “
Tod
is the German word for
death
.”

“Oh.” I took another look at the strange door on the stark building and shrugged. “Well, on that note, I’ll say good-bye.”

Matt tugged me back by the sleeve of my shearling. “Let’s synchronize our watches. Thirty minutes,” he said, fingering his Breitling.

“Got it. Now get out of sight.”

From a hidden vantage point, Matteo watched as I pressed the button beside the door. I heard a loud, warehouse-style bell echo through the massive, empty structure.

It took so long for anyone to respond that I thought I’d be spending my whole thirty minutes just standing there, in front of that door. After about ten minutes, I heard footsteps. The bare bulb above the door suddenly glared to life and, with a shrill metallic squeal, the door swung open.

A slight blonde man with tousled hair and sharp features stood in the doorway. Though tall, he was so slim I decided I probably outweighed him, and his complexion was pale and unhealthy looking. But there was both intelligence and energy behind his sky-blue eyes, and he seemed open and friendly. In fact, the only unsettling thing about Seth Todd was the fact that his hands and arms were stained with a wet, dark red liquid all the way up to the elbows.

“Gosh, I hope that’s paint,” I said.

To my surprise, the man laughed—and so did I.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“You can if you’re Seth Martin Todd.”

He nodded. “At your service, and you are—?”

“Clare,” I answered. “I understand you submitted a proposal to the World Trade Center Commission?”

“Pleased to meet you, Clare.” Seth Todd thrust out his hand to shake mine. Then he noticed it was still covered in blood-red paint.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. Then we both laughed again.

A perfect romantic comedy moment,
I thought,
except for the fact that this guy murdered his wife.

“Come in,” Seth Todd said, using his scuffed Skechers to open the door wide enough to admit me.

With a quick, uneasy glance over my shoulder, my eyes found Matteo’s silhouette, far down the alleyway, lurking in a doorway. I turned toward Todd and entered.

“Go on inside,” he said, directing me to a large, open door with his elbow. “I’ll join you after I clean up.”

I crossed the threshold and found myself in a large, barren industrial space with oil-stained concrete floors, a high ceiling, and visible plumbing and heating ducts running up the plaster-free brick walls.

This area of the warehouse looked like it had once been a loading dock. Two huge garage doors in the wall faced Forty-third Avenue, and a cold draft leaked through the joints.

Though there were tall windows lining both sides of the room, strategically placed in the days before electricity to admit both the morning and afternoon sun, it was now getting downright dark outside, and much of the massive interior space was slipping into shadows.

Now that I was inside the building, I understood why there were no interior lights visible through the windows. Todd used only a tiny corner of the massive space for his work area, and only that part of the room was lit—by three naked light bulbs hanging on long cords from the ceiling.

There were several chairs—none of them matched—a few stools, and several easels with various paintings displayed. Some were abstract, but not all. There was an oil of an old Gothic church, and another of a farmhouse that reminded me of Andrew Wyeth’s work.

Todd’s current work in progress rested on a large easel in the center of the workspace, a six-by ten-foot canvas covered in various shades of scarlet—from the color of bright blood freshly spilled, to the dull crimson of a new scab, to the dark brown blot of an old bloodstain. Though abstract, the elements came together to evoke an emotional impact. The artist showed real genius in his selection and arrangement of the hues, shapes, and textures.

“Would you like some tea?” Seth Todd asked, appearing at my side with a steaming silver pot and two white ceramic cups.

“Thank you,” I said as he set the cups on a low wooden table and poured.

“Please take off your coat. Sit down.”

I slipped off the shearling and threw it across the back of an overstuffed armchair. He pulled over a battered chrome bar stool with a black cushioned seat and sat across from me. I sampled the tea and found it savory—a Darjeeling with a subtle fruity tang.

“I actually prefer coffee,” Seth Todd said apologetically, his Skecher heels resting easily on the bottom cross bars of the stool like a teenager in an episode of
Leave it to Beaver
. “A good Kona, or a Blue Mountain would be great about now, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping, so no caffeine after six
P.M
. My friends say I should switch to decaf, but I’d just as soon skip my evening cup as resort to such desperate measures. The poet Dante forgot to write about that ring of hell reserved for those who oppose caffeine.”

I laughed out loud.
My god,
I found myself thinking,
if I hadn’t been told he was a killer, he’d be a man after my own heart.

“My sentiments exactly,” I told him. “I’m a bigger coffee afficionado than you could possibly imagine, but I have to admit that this tea is delightful.”

“I bought it in Chinatown, a little store on Mott Street called Wen’s Importing. I won’t touch anything other than leaf.”

I scanned Seth Todd’s work area. It was, as far as I could see, a typical artist’s studio. Tubes and jars of paint. Brushes. Pencils. Canvas and paper. There were some pen-and-ink and pencil sketches tacked to another easel. Human studies, mostly. Faces and figures, several portraits obviously drawn from life—none of them slashed or stabbed or brutalized in any way. But my eyes were constantly drawn back to the large red canvas that dominated the room.

“That’s a powerful painting,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied, his eyes watching me. “It was commissioned for the foyer of the Seattle-based software firm, Gordian Incorporated. Their brand new headquarters building was designed by Scott Musake and Darrel Sorensen. Really amazing.”

He spoke about several other commissions—for the Tokyo headquarters of an electronics firm, a skyscraper in Sri Lanka, and the grand ballroom of a Paris hotel still under construction. He also managed to drop the fact that his work was displayed in several museums and galleries around the world.