It was an order, not a suggestion.
The rental was dropped off at the gallery and I loaded the paintings into the backseat of the Japanese generic-mobile. Man, I was old. I still recalled a time when one car looked different than the next. “Not no more,” as my old friend Crazy Charlie Rolex used to say. Those days, like the majority of mine, were past. I was relieved that McKenna was still around the corner salivating over the crime scene. It would have been a bit awkward trying to explain to him what I was planning to do with the paintings. Many years had passed since I’d come anywhere near working a case, but the lying came back to me like riding a bike. You work a case, you start lying to everyone. More often than not, you even wind up lying to the person or persons who hired you. Sometimes especially them. The one person you can’t lie to is yourself.
As I drove out of Sea Cliff, away from the fussy Victorian houses and the quaint little shops on the main street, I thought about what must have been going through McKenna’s mind. He couldn’t have been any more confused by what had happened to my car, the hog-tied and headless teddy bear, and the cryptic warning than I was, because it didn’t seem to make any sense at all. I still had no idea what had become of Sashi Bluntstone or who had taken her or why. My stumbling around had only just begun and it had netted me very little in the way of progress. I hoped that was about to change.
When the earpiece to my phone beeped that I was getting a call, I felt myself getting more than a little aroused at the memory of holding Mary Lambert in my arms. I imagined I could still smell the intoxicating scent of her sweat and perfume and I rubbed the tips of my fingers together, recalling the feel of her hardened nipples beneath the lace of her bra and silk of her blouse.
“Hey, there,” I said in the best bedroom voice I could manage.
“What the fuck’s the matter with you, you sick or something?” It was Brian Doyle.
“Or something, yeah. What’s up?”
“The Bluntstones are broke, Moe.”
“Broke broke or just broke?”
“Broke broke. They’re mortgaged to the balls and their only assets are the kid’s paintings.”
“How about the house?”
“The thing cost two million and my bet is they’re still paying off the closing costs. I got more equity in my baseball card collection.”
“You collect baseball cards?”
“No, but I’m just saying.”
“How about available cash?” I asked.
“Less than ten grand and that ain’t gonna get them too far. Maybe the next time you’re over there, you should check if they’re hiding scratch in coffee cans or flour jars ‘cause they ain’t got shit elsewheres.”
“Thanks, Brian, and thank Devo for me.”
“No sweat, boss.”
“Fax the stuff over to my house, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Look, just send me the bill…” He was gone.
Declan Carney’s studio was in an old loft building within shouting distance of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge on Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City. This Queens neighborhood, just across the East River from Manhattan and Roosevelt Island, had undergone tremendous change and gentrification in the last decade or so. As Manhattan became even more unbearably expensive, people looked for places to live where they could still have a short commute to work and ready access to the city. Like Williamsburg before it, Long Island City was now an increasingly hot part of town. The thing about LIC, though, is that it was more industrial in its previous incarnation than Williamsburg, and not all of its factories and warehouse buildings had been converted into fabulous living spaces for expatriate Manhattanites.
Carney’s building was as yet untouched by the shifting tides of the churning real estate market. It was covered in a coat of soot and dirt so thick that it was nearly impossible to tell the exact shade of brick that made up its exterior walls. Carney was probably afraid to have the place cleaned for fear it might crumble without the filth to hold those walls together. I pressed the doorbell and waited for a voice over the old call box, but the door just buzzed and clicked open. I thought about taking the old-style freight elevator up and reconsidered when I saw the ratty shape it was in. At least the stairs were solid. I found Declan Carney on the top floor in a studio that looked like part sci-fi movie set, part photo lab, part artist’s loft, and it seemed about as well organized as a bowl of spaghetti. Once I saw the man himself, I quickly forgot about the disorganization and remembered Rusk’s warning about the man’s idiosyncrasies.
Dressed in a blue, red, and yellow Hawaiian shirt, red tartan kilt, white tube socks, and Earth Shoes, his weird looks didn’t stop with his attire. He had a bleached platinum Mohawk hairdo, brown and gray Hasidic sidecurls, a soul patch that grew five inches past his chin, and a Fu Manchu mustache that was braided at the tips. Then I realized there wasn’t a tattoo or piercing on him. I guess he saw the question in my eyes, or maybe I asked it. I don’t really remember.
“Tattoos go against all of my culture’s beliefs and I am afraid of pointed objects. I grow faint at the thought of an injection. You do not think I would permit some untrained technician to drill me with a machine that your Thomas Edison invented to make print copies.”
“Huh?”
“You did not know that the mechanism used for tattooing was a retrofitted Thomas Edison invention? Some fellow just added an ink reservoir, sharpened the point, and adjusted the cycling of the machine and, as some of your kind say, voila!”
“Sounds barbaric.”
“I will not disagree.”
I wanted him to speak a little more because he had a peculiar accent that wasn’t, as his name suggested, Irish. Actually, I’m not sure I had ever heard any English speaker with an accent like it. And then there was his oddly referencing things like “ your Thomas Edison” and “some of your kind.”
“Where are you from?”
“Skajit,” pronounced ska-JEET, “a planet four hundred million light years away from earth in the galaxy we call Plasnor.”
He answered with a disconcerting nonchalance and a straight face. It was as if I’d asked him the time and he said three o’clock. Before I could utter another sound, he pointed to the bubble-wrapped paintings at my side. Paintings which, once I’d beheld Declan Carney, I’d nearly forgotten.
“Those are the artworks you wish me to authenticate?”
“They are.”
“Sashi Bluntstone’s, correct, Mr. Prager?”
“How did you-”
“Wallace Rusk telecommunicated with me about the possibility of your arrival. Please leave the paintings.”
“How about a receipt?”
I thought Carney was going to break into tears. He was not only insulted, but wounded by my request. Apparently honor was meaningful to the people of Skajit.
“I meant no disrespect,” I said, playing along. “It is customary to ask because the paintings aren’t mine.”
That seemed to make him feel better. “I will do as you ask.”
He rummaged around for a piece of paper and found one under a can of turpentine. He scribbled on the paper with a pencil and handed it to me. It wasn’t much, but it was something and I sensed it was all I was apt to get. I accepted it gracefully.
“Thank you for understanding. How long do you think it will take?” I asked, pointing at the three paintings.
“At least several days, depending on the tests, but by the Holy Doctrine of Thalmador, my conclusions will be beyond reproach.”
“Wallace Rusk said you were good.”
“A strange man, Wallace Rusk.”
