Wallflower (43 page)

The entire process took Aaron just one and three-quarters hours.

M
rs. Malkiewicz, a widow, lived in Ohio City, a historical section on the west side of Cleveland which, after years of neglect, was in the midst of serious gentrification. As Janek and Aaron drove in, they could hear the sound of sawing and hammering around the neighborhood. They saw Dumpsters on the street filled with the entrails of houses being gutted for renovation.

The Malkiewicz residence was the worst-looking house on its block, a narrow wood frame structure with peeling siding and an unshoveled path leading to a badly disintegrating front porch.

Nadia Malkiewicz looked as miserable as her house. A pale, drawn white-haired woman in a cheap, shapeless housedress, she had a bitter, puckered mouth and the beginnings of a mustache on her upper lip. Her greeting, too, was a good deal less effusive than Aaron expected after talking with her on the phone. Janek understood her transformation. A shrewd look in the old lady's eyes told him she saw them as vultures looking to pounce upon her late brother's work.

He also quickly understood something else: Mrs. Malkiewicz had contempt for said work. There were no original Aretzsky paintings displayed on her parlor walls, although there were pictures of another sort, including a large black velvet banner bearing a cloying reproduction of Da Vinci's
The Last Supper.

"
Yuk! That woman!" was Mrs. Malkiewicz's reaction when Aaron asked her about Victoria Archer.

"She ruined my brother's life, not that he had much of one. A failure and a drunkard was what he was! What's worse, tell me, than a failed drunken painter? Slapping paint on burlap all day long—is that any kind of life? My late husband, bless him, was a hardworking man. Forty-five years sweating it out on the flats. And what did he have to show for it when they laid him off? Nothing! Not even his promised pension. 'Sorry, we're bankrupt,' the company said. So that's what you get in this great United States of America. . . ."

They listened to her bitter gripes for half an hour before they could get her to escort them to the basement where the treasure trove of art was stored.

The paintings, Janek could see at once, were being kept under appalling conditions. Forty or fifty canvases were piled unevenly against a rough stone cellar wall. Moisture oozed along the floor, and an old oil-burning forced-air furnace roared on the other side of the room.

When they began to pull the pictures out—the one of Victoria, being the largest, was at the bottom of the stack—he saw that many of the frames were warped and that there were mouse droppings in between.

Still, Janek found the work impressive. No matter that Peter Aretzsky had lived a miserable life, his drawing was authoritative and his palette was vibrant. When, finally, they pulled out the big portrait and set it up, Janek could tell at once that it was the artist's masterpiece.

Melissa Walters had been right: Aretzsky had put great feeling into it. His sense of his subject leaped off the canvas and struck the viewer hard. But it was not the painter's hatred that Janek felt so much, nor his bitterness and disillusionment. Although Victoria was harshly characterized, Aretzsky showed a good deal more of her than mere cruelty. It was, Janek thought, a portrait of an extremely unhappy woman, a woman ravaged by a vast and insupportable inner pain. Yes, she was mean, yes, she was selfish—the glare in her eyes and the set of her mouth made that clear enough. But what Aretzsky showed was a victim, a real human being in distress. And although Janek understood why Victoria had hated this picture and had wished to see it destroyed, he also understood how very wrong she'd been. Compared with the painting he had
seen in Beverly's bedroom, the painting that had haunted his dreams, this was a mature work of art. That first portrait was a poster. This second one was a truly tragic image.

As Janek continued to gaze at the picture, many things became clear. He understood why Beverly had coveted the first picture and built her bedroom altar around it. It was a portrait of her mother as Beverly needed to remember her, while the second picture was too complex to inspire adoration. The Victoria Archer in the second picture was a woman who could make a wallflower of her own daughter. It was that true a likeness, Janek thought.

L
ater, upstairs, he and Aaron tried to strike a deal with Mrs. Malkiewicz, but the old lady wouldn't bargain. She acknowledged she'd been unable to sell a single one of her brother's canvases and admitted freely that he and Aaron were the first people to come around and express an interest in his work. Still, she held firm. Her price was nonnegotiable. Ten-thousand-dollars-take-it-or-leave-it. Not a penny less.

Why? they asked her. She couldn't explain it. She just knew the picture was valuable and she wasn't going to sell it cheap. But we're cops, they reminded her, civil servants; we don't have that kind of dough. Well, maybe not, she said. But ten thousand was still the price.

Janek understood even before Aaron that there was no point in further discussion. We'll think about it, he told Mrs. Malkiewicz politely. We'll let you know tomorrow.

B
ack in the car Aaron was explo
sive.

"You crazy, Frank? You'd even consider paying that? Screw her! And to hell with the picture!"

"Trouble is
I
want it," Janek said.

He explained to Aaron his conviction that the reason Mrs. Malkiewicz set the price so high was that she didn't really want to sell.

"Sure she needs the money. And sure she acts like Aretzsky's pictures are shit. But the truth is she loved her brother, and his pictures are the only things of his she's got. To sell one off is to lose a part of him. Even if we agree to pay her price, I'm not sure she won't back out."

Aaron shrugged. "So what's the point?"

"The point is I need that goddamn picture. So I'll just have to get hold of the money, then handle her very carefully."

"Where're you going to get that kind of bread?"

"I think I know where I can raise it."

Aaron looked at him skeptically. "You're not thinking of Kit?"

"No, not Kit," Janek said. I've got someone else in mind."

B
ack in the motel he dialed Stanton's office in New York. Mr. Dorance was in a meeting, his secretary said. Could he get back to Janek later on?

"No. Tell him it's an emergency."

A minute later a breathless Stanton came on the line.

"What's the matter, Frank? What's going on?"

"I need ten thousand dollars."

"Is this a joke? I'm kind of busy."

"No joke, Stanton. I'm out in Cleveland. I'm on the trail of the person who put that girl up to all those killings, including Jess's. I can't go into the details. It's a complicated case. The bottom line is that there's a painting out here I think I can use to put this person away. It'll cost me ten thousand dollars."

"'Think' you can use?"

"
Yeah, well, it's a long shot. But it's the only thing I got going. You said I should call you if I needed anything. I'm calling. This is what I need to catch Jess's killer."

A long pause. He knew what Stanton was thinking: Yes, he'd made that commitment, but ten thousand was a lot of money. Was there any way he could wriggle out of this? Was Janek off his
rocker?

"You're sure the painting's worth it?"

"No. But that's what it's going to cost."

"Maybe you should have it professionally appraised?"

"Screw that. I need it now."

Another pause. "You're really calling in my marker?"

"I guess you could say that, Stanton, yeah."

"I didn't expect this. Not so soon."

"Neither did I. Believe me, if I had the money, I'd buy the damn
thing myself."

"Well, all right. How soon do you need it?"

"Yesterday."

"I'll FedEx you a check. You'll get it tomorrow morning."

"No check," Janek said. "The seller's nervous. The only way I can close the deal is put cash down on the table."

"I can wire you the money, I suppose. To a local bank out there." He could hear the exasperation in Stanton's voice. "Jesus, Frank! I just hope you know what you're doing!"

"Yeah. Well, I'm just doing the best I can," Janek replied.

T
he following morning at eleven they were back at the Malkiewicz residence with ten banded packs of fresh hundred-dollar bills and a rented van big enough to transport the painting.

Mrs. Malkiewicz met them at the door. She looked at Janek nervously. "I didn't expect you back so soon."

"I've got the money. We're here to take the picture."

He knew the way to do it was to move as quickly as possible, ignore any hesitancy on her part, count out the cash bill by bill while Aaron wrestled the portrait out the door. That way, if she happened to have second thoughts, it would be too late; the transaction would be complete.

It worked out. Mrs. Malkiewicz didn't say a word, although Janek couldn't help noticing her despair. He knew she'd get over it. Ten grand was enough to fix up her house. And she still had a thick stack of Aretzsky paintings rotting in her cellar.

T
hat afternoon they found a carpenter who agreed to crate up the picture in time for the first flight the following morning to New York. Janek and Aaron would escort it back, the fruit of their investigation.

After the plane took off, Janek stared out his window at the sprawling city below. The sky was gray, broken by a few plumes of industrial smoke. Cleveland looked huge and flat, blocks of bleak gray buildings, a grid of iron-colored streets. The Cuyahoga River, famous for once having caught on fire, was crusted with snow, and Lake Erie seemed a vast white frozen waste. It was a strange and fascinating place, he thought, this city Aaron had described as a Rust Belt town of broken dreams. Here for many years iron and coal had been forged into steel, and here, too, the pathology of Wallflower had been forged.

T
he crucial move, Janek knew, would be the delivery of the portrait. Bungle that and he could botch his entire case.

He and Aaron war-gamed the problem. Since they couldn't break into her house and switch the new painting with the old (their preferred solution), they'd have to take their chances on a straight delivery. The trick, they agreed, would be to get Beverly to accept it.

"How about two guys in deliveryman uniforms. 'Parcel, Ms. Archer. Just sign here, please, ma'am.'"

"Yeah," said Aaron,
"
then they bring in this enormous box. 'Hey,' she yells, 'I never ordered this. Get this stinking thing out of here.' See, Frank, it's not like you want to send her a valentine
that all we got to do is slip it under her door. That picture's fucking humongous."

"So there's only one solution," Janek said. "Deliver it ourselves."

"What if she won't take it?"

"We'll leave it on the stoop."

"So she ignores it. Or has it hauled away. There's no guarantee she'll look at it, even if she does take it inside."

"You're right," Janek said. "There're no guarantees about any of it. But if we deliver it to her in the proper context, our odds will improve. By a lot."

H
e called Monika, filled her in on his trip to Cleveland, outlined his plan, then asked her what she thought.

"Strange, a bit morbid, certainly daring," she said. She sounded less excited than he'd expected. "You say you want to shock this woman into a confession. But there's also a chance you'll shock her into a psychotic state. Have you considered that?"

"It's occurred to me," he said. "Frankly, the idea doesn't break me up. She goes to prison or she goes to the funny farm. I win either way. A third possibility is that she laughs the whole thing off. That's the one I'd just as soon not think about."

"Sounds to me like you're out for blood, Frank."

Why was she reproaching him?
"
Wasn't blood what
she
was out for?
"

He imagined Monika shaking her head. "This is difficult for me. My profession is to heal, not to wound."

Suddenly he was irritated. "You say I sound like I'm out for blood—I'm not sure what that means. I'm certainly not about to pick up an ice pick and stick it in her ear. But if you mean tearing the mask off her face, then I guess you're right."

"Oh, Frank . . . I'm just not sure I can help you with this anymore."

But it wasn't her help he wanted now; it was her approval. And that, it seemed, she was not about to give. He didn't understand. She had told him to look to the past, that he would find the secret there. What secret, he wondered, did she expect he would find—the cure to Beverly Archer's disease?

"Look," he said, "she's a vicious, manipulative, dangerous murderess. My job is to put her away."