A Little Trouble with the Facts (16 page)

Charles pouted for a second, then blew an air kiss like Jackie O and backed away. I picked up one of the martinis and decided against it. This was too good. I needed all my faculties. “What did Darla say to Wallace when he asked about them?”

“I didn’t hear that part, either. All I know is after that I went into the inventory log and found she’d erased my notes and penciled in new ones. She had put in the word
sold
next to a few paintings. But in at least a couple of spots I could see that a longer word—
consignment
—had been sort of half-erased.”

Definitely something. Even if I didn’t quite understand what kind of something it might be.

“The next day, she asks me to take a bunch of stretchers over to the warehouse,” he continued. “A truckload, actually. I didn’t think much of it at the time. We sometimes stock up on canvases for our artists. But it was odd, considering that Darla was so keen on getting rid of that space.”

“Blank canvases? You sure they weren’t just white?”

He showed me the whites of his eyes again. “Anyway, there was a fire at the warehouse on Sunday night. The storage space was destroyed and so was everything in it. It could’ve been a fluke. A bunch of other art dealers had stuff down there too. I don’t know if was an accident or—”

This was getting better every minute. “Arson?” I said. “Did she file a claim?”

“I believe so. She told me she thought Wallace might’ve been responsible. He or some of his goons—that’s what she called them. But I don’t know. I didn’t think that sounded right. That guy wasn’t like that. And I mean, I love Darla, but I’ve seen the way she manages things, and I wouldn’t put it past her to, well—Do you see what I’m saying?”

“Sure, I do.” I could see the scenario he was suggesting. Darla secretly sells the art, covers her tracks by replacing the works with fakes, and then attempts to cash in on the insurance. It was shaping up to be a pretty exciting club night. Maybe I’d pose for a photo op with his Charles after all.

“A fire. Sunday night.”

“Yes.”

“The night Malcolm Wallace got dead?”

“I thought he died this week.”

“He did.”

“No, then. A week ago. A week before Wallace died.”

A group of men had formed a daisy chain, rabbit hopping through the lounge. “I’m dancing on the head of a pin,” shouted one on tiptoe. “On the head of a pin!”

“Might he have seen something? Might Darla have wanted him out of the way?”

“It’s possible.” Blondie tented his fingers in his lap and looked down. He might’ve been praying, but I didn’t think so. Maybe he was starting to feel the effects of the Ecstasy. If so, my time was expiring.

“You say that Darla kept these inventory books? Why would she do that if she was up to something criminal?”

“Two sets of books,” he said. “There was another set of books for official purposes. You know, auditors and so forth. We get audited about once every four years. I think that’s a bad idea—highly suspicious, to begin with—and I’ve told her so. And simple math, not her forte.”

This was the kind of detail I could’ve easily turned into a transparent blind item at
Gotham’s Gate
:
“Why does a certain red-haired gallerist keep one business ledger by her door and another in her closet? Only her former clients can guess.”
At The Paper, I couldn’t do anything with it. It had way too many holes, like Blondie’s face.

“Where does she keep the second set of books?”

“In the safe, of course.”

“Do you know the combination?”

Blondie hesitated. “No. Darla likes me, but not that much.”

I thought that over. Was there a way for me to get to those books? Could I ask Blondie to try to find out the combination? That would be putting him at risk, but then, he had already put
himself at risk by meeting with me. What was his angle, if not to show me off to his pals? Without my asking, he answered.

“Are you still in touch with Jeremiah?” The name jolted me out of the calm I was starting to feel there in the dark. What he wants is his tabloid fix. Only I didn’t have anything to offer him, because I’d been detoxing for six months. “No,” I said. “The last time we talked was when I gave him the keys to my loft and he moved in with that woman.”

“I know all about that,” said Blondie, showing me his glowing teeth. “She’s still living there, of course, but he’s not.”

“No?”

Blondie’s eyes lit up. “You don’t know? You haven’t read about it?”

“I don’t read anymore.”

He turned this over in his mind. “You’ve missed some juicy news, Valerie. Your buddies have split. Jeremiah had to replace Angelica in the role of Angelica in
Terror in the City
. You heard about that?”

I shook my head.

“Cast and crew agreed: VJ is no Meryl Streep. She floated right to the top of the tank, like a dead goldfish. Jeremiah replaced her with this lovely young ingenue, Claire something, and about a week into shooting Angelica finds the two of them going at it on some medical gurney. She sued him for breach of contract—both ways, movie and marriage.”

This was juicy news. I was glad for it. But I didn’t ask for more, lest I start to drool. Luckily, Blondie didn’t need any encouragement.

“She really got her claws in. She went after him with about sixteen lawyers. She exposed him as a blow fiend and a philanderer—great stuff! She even turned in his stash and gave the NYPD the name of his dealer, Ken something or other. Now he’s going to be broke too. His town house is already on the market;
he even came in to Darla’s to try to sell his paintings. You have to be pretty bad off to try to sell art to pay legal fees.”

I remembered the canvases up in his attic. All those paintings he’d acquired over the years from trendy artists. “Did he sell Darla his Warhol?”

“No, that already went. Gagosian bought it and a few other little items. Jeremiah collected a lot, but a lot of junk, actually. He didn’t have a very good eye. Not from what I saw, anyway.”

I liked that too. I wanted to ask Blondie a few more questions about Jeremiah, but his face had started to change in subtle ways. His eyes got a little watery. I could see he was swallowing a lot and grinding his teeth.

“I’m just thinking about that guy, Malcolm Wallace,” Blondie said. “Your friend who died. He was bothering Darla, but I thought he was cute. You know? To think that he’s dead, that maybe he died because of…”

“We don’t know anything,” I said. “Could be totally unconnected. Everything’s just speculation at this point.” The words made me feel authoritative.

“It’s just so incredibly sad,” he said, reaching out to take my hand. “I can’t believe how sad that is. Wow, your hands are
really
soft. It feels so nice to touch you. Do you mind if I touch your elbow? I love elbows. That sack of saggy skin?”

Blondie was already rolling. I patted him on the shoulder and told him I’d go find him his Charles. I took my elbow with me.

I slipped out of Twilo across a row of slick naked pecs. It was after five and a new round of club kids formed a line up the block. Yellow cabs hovered like hornets. A girl fell headfirst from a cab. She seemed to want to share a secret with the asphalt. Horns blared. Fists raised. She kept right on blathering.

I love this dirty town, I thought, channeling J. J. Hunsecker.
I checked the lineup and didn’t notice any of the usual suspects. No Sidney Falcos, no Night Rewrite boys, no socialite shutterbugs likely to call in a scoop. It was a clear night. I breathed in the fresh air. The martinis were starting to wear off. I went west.

On Eleventh Avenue hookers were fishing fares at the one-hour hotels. Hairy lugs in leather chaps trolled the cowboy bars. A cluster of teenyboppers squealed as they dodged traffic across the West Side Highway. I turned north, thinking I’d hail a cab once I escaped club land.

It was another muggy night, but a breeze was blowing off the water. I could feel it cooling my neck, drying the sweat off my back. At this hour, most of Twelfth Avenue was shut up tight, heavy metal grates over storefronts.

As I walked, I read the words painted onto the dingy metal, quick scrawls in cursive, letters packed tight: IKE, MIX, Marty & Shawn 4-Ever, PEEK. Three-d letters, EZ, ROT, SNUFF. Names so jazzed with motion they couldn’t be read. On one grate, I could see the edges of lettering, but I couldn’t make out the word. I backed up to the curb but still couldn’t read it, so I backed up some more. Using what Kamal and Cabeza had taught me, I finally saw it. “Seen,” I read aloud. Seen, I thought, as I walked on, picking up speed. That’s right, you are.

I crossed the West Side highway to get a better view of the building. I looked up to the rooftops, the white roller letters COST/REVS, a giant name all full of stars and arrows, DOZE. A big name, NATO, sprawled across a wall. Further up, a huge name painted in black and white across roll-down riot gates: ESPO.

The more I looked, the more I saw. Names were everywhere, all over like roaches in a New York kitchen when suddenly there’s light. As I walked up Twelfth Avenue, I looked down and saw stencils on the sidewalk, a flower missing petals, a laughing face.
There were stickers on the phone posts:
HELLO, MY NAME IS…
ROY and
HELLO MY NAME IS
…BINGO.”

Names scrawled TYRE, tiny illegible scribbles, ergem, ttuffu, big bubble letters, SPY, outlines, jottings, Guru, Anow, doodles, TIE, paint on trucks, JIZ, NST, mailboxes, HC, SIC, stickers plastered on doors,
HELLO, MY NAME IS
…Bigga, scratchiti EXEXEX, a face with crossed out eyes, KAWS, a face in superhero mask, ROACH, loose petals, SIN, AOA, green horse, WOE, a man from Mars, TAR, Aerub Ketsu, Heller, RAE, a white screw, TWIST, letters in circles W, G, letters swinging, letters dancing, KIZA, JRC, a sneaker, VEG,
HELLO, MY NAME IS…
METAPHOR.”

Graffiti was dead now that it wasn’t on trains? That’s what they’d said, and that’s what I’d thought. I’d lived in Manhattan for almost five years, and I’d never seen what was everywhere—the writing on the walls. There were anonymous strangers tagging, jotting, scrawling their names for all the city to read. Hieroglyphics, everywhere, signals, signs. In Times Square they turned neon, they turned massive, they were blocks of names in the sky. “Don’t you know who I am?” they cried out. “Don’t you know who I am?”

My feet chewed up the pavement for a long time and I kept looking until my eyes got weary. I thought about Wallace and I knew that he’d been killed. I didn’t know by who or how. But I knew I’d gotten the suicide thing wrong and I regretted it. I thought about what Blondie had given me and where I could take it. I thought about Cabeza and what he wanted from me and Darla and what she wanted from Wallace. I thought about it all while noting the markings, glyphs, jots everywhere, as if the walls were griots telling stories, inchoate texts I had to decipher and reorder from beginning to end. And soon enough, I’d walked myself all the way back to the Upper West Side.

On West Eightieth Street, I looked down Broadway back the way I’d come. It had been a long walk, but I’d hoofed it. And now a band of pale pink light was pushing up the black curtain of night. I wasn’t in a hurry to go in. I lingered there for a moment. It was nice, at last, to see a sober dawn.

I
slept the next day until noon. It was an old habit with new charms. I didn’t have a headache. I didn’t have to harvest cotton from my teeth. Outside my window, some chirping birds sounded like Mozart.

In the bathroom mirror, I looked at my face. It wasn’t red and beaten. There were no rings under my eyes. I went to the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. I cracked some eggs. I toasted toast and drank a little coffee. I didn’t need coffee, but I liked the way it went down with my toast.

I looked out the window over the top of the roaring A/C. Across Broadway my good neighbors, the people of New York, were walking with bags of bagels from H&H, picking up their gravlax and Gouda at Zabar’s, stopping at the corner kiosk to browse half-price books. There was something comforting about the diurnal life of the Upper West Side, like one of those old-time ten-cent dioramas; slip a coin into the slot and a whole miniature circus lights up and winds into action.

I got dressed in a breezy blouse and jeans and put in a call to Cabeza, telling him I wanted to see the Bigs Cru about Wallace. He said he’d facilitate, and about five minutes later he phoned back. “You’re set,” he said, telling me where to find them. “They’ll be expecting you.”

Downstairs, I bought myself another cup of coffee at Zabar’s
takeout. I didn’t need that one either. It just tasted good. I stopped in at H&H to smell the hot bagels, dropping a quarter in the palm of the panhandler outside the door. Maybe I wasn’t any richer than yesterday, but I felt like I could spare a few coins for my fellow man. I walked downtown to Seventy-ninth Street to catch the 1/9 subway. The train came in a few minutes, and I hopped on, singing a little tune,
“Con los pobres soy, noble soy.”

The first thing I saw as I descended the stairway from the elevated stop at 207th Street was Stain. Not the man, but the mug. He loomed large in black and white on the sidewall at Diaz Pizzeria, chin to brow, ear to ear. It was the face I’d seen now in so many photos, outlined in Magic Marker, blown up five hundred–fold. He was smiling just the same way as he had in Cabeza’s flick, that huge grin like a kindling fire burning up through his face. But this was an older Stain than the one with the peach fuzz; this was a man in his early forties, with age in his eyes, wrinkles fanning out to his temples. It hit me then, powerful and sad, that this would be the closest I’d get to a present-day likeness. The background was already painted blue, and around his head was a giant gold halo, just like in a portrait of a medieval saint.

Bigs Cru was there, too: Clu standing on a scaffold, painting, Wicked Rick, below him on the pavement, and Rx sitting on the sidewalk, his back against the wall. Clu was in the center of Wallace’s eye. He was holding Stain’s portrait in a frame and painting the outlines of the pupil in black. Then he traded cans, switching to brown to make the lighter circles of the iris; the pavement underneath him was littered with used cans and a couple of milk crates were already full of empties.

Wicked Rick was near the curb, his back to me, looking at something on a piece of white paper. At the curb, a couple of teenagers sat on a tarp, hunkered over an artist’s black book. “He’s
got
mad
skills,” one of them was saying. “Look at that arrow, yo.” The other one answered, “It’s too purrrrty. I like it loose.”

“Reporter lady,” said Rx, from the pavement, where he was rolling a cigarette, or possibly a blunt, his long thin legs sprawled out across the macadam. He was glaring up at me, like a cat that never got petted as a kitten and now should never be petted at all.

Clu turned around and gave me the once-over. “You’re the one who came up for the memorial, right?”

“I am,” I said, hoping they’d have forgotten my disappearing act.

Clu nodded ever so slightly, then turned back to the wall as Wicked Rick walked over and took my hand. “We heard you might be on your way,” he said, giving me a big, honest shake. “Welcome.” He was wearing a FUBU Athletics tank top, showing off two shoulder tattoos—a Raphael-style cherub on one and a Tasmanian devil wielding a spray can on the other.

Rx made an audible noise of disapproval, like a
tsk,
and it was drowned out by the louder and longer hiss of Clu’s spray can. Wicked Rick flinched his shoulders ever so slightly as if to shrug off Rx’s
tsk
. The dust of Clu’s spray paint drifted near us like a cloud; it smelled like rubbing alcohol and burned plastic.

“I hope I’m not coming at a bad time,” I said. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about some graffiti writers you might know.”

Rx perked up again, straightening against the wall. He threw some of the empties into the milk crates, making a loud clank. “You going to print their names and addresses in the paper? How about mug shots? You want those too?” Rx said.

“Yo, chill,” Wicked Rick said to Rx. They obviously weren’t in agreement about whether they should talk to me, and I knew exactly who was making which case.

I tried to speak to both of them, in an even tone, at the same time. “I’ve just discovered some information about Wallace’s paintings that you might all find interesting.”

It was as if Rx didn’t hear. “You ran out of that memorial pretty fast. You could’ve just told us you were from that paper and why you were really there.”

Rick shook his head in annoyance and turned to face Rx. “Let it be, now. We already went over this.”

“You did,” Rx said back. “Nobody made up my mind.”

Wicked Rick crossed his arms. “We have to keep trying,” he said to Rx, gently. “We can’t just say no, when someone wants to help. Cabeza might be right. You don’t know. The police haven’t done nothing. They came up here asking us about the Young Lords. They think it was some kind of gang beef.”

“Listen,” I said, trying to clear my throat. “I made a mistake there, at the memorial. I may have made a mistake on the story—”

“
May
have?” said Rx.

Clu’s spray can hiss-hisssssssssed.

“I did,” I said, with the most assured voice I could find. “Definitely, I did. And this is my opportunity to try to make it right. I should’ve been honest at the memorial too. But I was scared. You see, I have to convince my editors to do another story, and I need to get enough information together to justify—”

“To
justify
? Are you shitting me?” Rx stood up. I took a step back, unsure of where this was going. “Oh, I’m not going to hurt you, reporter lady, you’ve got plenty more trouble in store for you—believe it. But if these dumb asses are willing to trust you with anything other than Wite-Out, they making a big mistake, far as I can see.” He looked from Rick to Clu, hoping to convince them yet. Clu shrugged ever so slightly and Rick looked blankly at Rx. “Ah-ight. I want no part.” Rx picked up his jacket off the ground and threw it over his shoulder. He shook his head slowly as he walked past me. He sized me up one more time and still didn’t like what he saw. Then he was off. The two teenagers with the black book got up and followed him.

Clu picked up a new can of Rust-Oleum and turned back to the wall, rattling it up without saying anything. Clink, clink, clink clink—the marble inside the bottle sounded like ringing for alms. He pressed the paint cap and his spray can hiss-hissed.

“Some people are very angry about what happened with your paper,” Rick said after a while. “I know how he feels, and he’s my blood, so I’ve got his back, but we just disagree. Your friend, Cabeza, makes a good point. Some more press on this, I think, could help set the record straight.”

Clu just hissed on above us, creating small clouds of aerosol dust that drifted past us one after another. He placed a white asterisk at the center of Stain’s pupil, and a white cloud drifted. He put a line of pink at the edge of Stain’s lips, and a pink cloud drifted. I sensed I was getting covered in it; the smell was dense, acidic. I raised my hand to cover my nose and realized it was shaking, so I tried to put it into my pocket, which didn’t exist.

“Here’s the outline, in case you’re interested,” said Rick, handing me what he was holding: a computer printout of the image for the wall as it would look when all the colors were added. Next to Stain’s face was the outline of a spray can, which looked as if it had been stepped on and crushed. It spewed letters from its tiny white cap:
R.I.P.
On the other side of the wall were gray tombstones that elongated into three subway trains spreading out into the distance, over a hill and into a city skyline. Wicked Rick said, “We’ll try and give you what you need.”

“I appreciate it. I do.” I took out my notepad, mostly to have something to do with my hands. “You know his old dealer, Darla Deitrick?” I started. Rick nodded. “It turns out she had a lot of graffiti in her warehouse, by some writers who were Stain’s contemporaries. Writers I think you’d know. There was a fire at this warehouse and the paintings were lost. It’s possible she sold them and maybe the fire happened afterward. I’d like to follow up with these writers. I’d also like to understand what kinds of
beefs or gang wars or anything else might have been a contributing factor to Stain’s death.”

Clu’s hissing stopped and he dropped his can onto the pavement with a heavy clunk. He and Rick looked at each other. Rick went to retrieve the can, which was rolling to the curb. “You sure you know what you’re getting into?” Clu said. Since he was a man of few words, I didn’t take these words lightly. “You sure you’re not in over your head? I don’t mean any disrespect, but it won’t be tea and crumpets.”

Rick returned with the empty can and dropped it in one of the milk crates, saying, “Listen, I know you’re trying to do your best, but there are some basic things you need to understand. It’s not like the old days on the trains when the most graff writers would get was a fine or community ser vice. These days, writers who get caught get jail time. Writing is now a felony offense. Most writers working today, out on the street, don’t want anyone to know their names, even if they could get something out of it.”

Clu rattled up another can, this one hard and fast, clink clink clink clink. Rick took my arm and led me to the curb. “You need to understand,” he said again, “graffiti writers aren’t gang members or violent criminals or anything most people think. Maybe a handful, okay? But for most of us, being a writer means being recognized as a solo. An independent somebody with no Crips or Bloods on your back. You see? You write so you don’t get mixed up in all that. Number two: my crew, the three of us, we all go way back to the beginning of this thing—twenty-five years in the game and I never heard of no graffiti artist getting killed over a beef. Not ever. I’m not saying there hasn’t been friction or there haven’t been baseball bats thrown one way or another…but killed? Knocked off a bridge after midnight? Floating in the East River? That’s some sad shit right there. Ain’t none of us ever been so petty to go that far over a buff.”

“There’s something I need to tell you and it might be a little
shocking,” I said. “And it seems to me like it might indicate that what you’re saying isn’t always true. When they found Wallace’s body, there was purple spray paint in his mouth.”

Rick reeled a little. “No shit?” He thought it over. “How’d you hear that?”

I didn’t want to tell him I’d gotten it from Cabeza. I wanted him to think I had sources all over. “I can’t say. Doesn’t that sound to you like it might be linked to graffiti? Is there anyone who would want to see Stain dead?”

He didn’t seem impressed. “No. What it sounds like to me? Somebody’s trying to set somebody up. Cover up somehow. I don’t know. Now you got me all mixed up. You say Darla Deitrick still owned work by other graffiti artists? Malcolm was looking for those. He told me they were missing too.”

“Yes, that’s what I heard.”

Rick walked down the curb away from me and covered his forehead with his hand. Clu was still hissing paint onto the wall behind us. Stain’s face was starting to have more definition, more contoured edges, deeper shadows in his cheeks. I looked at the computer printout Rick had given me. All the cars were covered in graffiti scrawls. One gravestone read, “Malcolm Wallace, 1957–1999,” and two others read, “Writing is a crime; the crime is insubordination.” Dead center of the wall, underneath Wallace’s mug, was his name, big letters, written in the signature style I’d seen in Cabeza’s movie.

“You want to know who would want to see Stain dead?” Rick came back. “Maybe half the cops in the Bronx precincts. Maybe about a third of the force in other boroughs, and a whole lot of moms and pops too, because Malcolm liked to agitate. He liked the fact that graffiti would trip up the cops, would make them get angry—dumb angry. He believed in counterculture in the original sense. His art schools weren’t about painting pretty landscapes. He wasn’t training kids to do what we do—to paint
on legal walls, with the permission of the storeowner, out here in broad daylight. He was trying to create an army of bad asses who would get out there and terrorize the powers that be, in the old style. Not with violence, but by putting their marks on the city in a way the city couldn’t handle. Remind folks that everything isn’t all so perfect. He said, ‘Wherever people are neglected and ignored, that’s a place where writing lives. That’s what graff is about.’ That was Malcolm.”

I could see he was agitated. He chose a can of red Rust-Oleum from the duffle bag and, shaking it, clink clink clink clink, went to the wall. Then he started spraying the
S
of Stain’s name onto the wall, a giant bold letter, letting the emotion out through his arm. He shook the can out again, faster, clink clink, and then hissed new paint, the red hitting the wall, one layer over another as the wet paint dripped and the dust of the aerosol filled the air like a million microscopic gnats. My nose filled with its acrid perfume until I sneezed.

“A lot of people didn’t like Stain’s philosophy,” Rick continued. “But I respected the man. I think what he said was right and the more I think about it now that he’s gone the more I think he was dead on. Our communities have been ignored too long. This so-called boom that’s happening, we don’t see it. How come our subways don’t get renovated? How come our parks are still full of dealers? That’s not true in Manhattan; down there, it’s all squeaky,” he made the sound of a window cleaner. “Is that right? Do you think that’s the way it should be?”