The Painted Gun. Bradley Spinelli
the second thing: don’t you ever”—I leaned in and hacked him a good one through the Daffys—“fuck with me again or I will chop your balls off. You’ll get man titties that make these”—I nosed the gun at his chest—“look buff.” He grabbed his thigh, bit his lip, and gave me the look of a fat kid who just had his lunch money stolen. “You tell anyone I was here and it’s”—I whispered close to his ear—“snick snick.”
I moved to the door. He had one hand on his wound and one over his wet eyes.
“Hey Alan,” I said, “Conrad called you Samoan, but Punihaole? That sounds Hawaiian to me.”
“What do you care?” He was blubbering.
“Al . . . this isn’t personal. This is business. You fucked with me, I gotta fuck with you. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. I’m starting to like you.” He didn’t answer but seemed to calm down a little. “Seriously. Punihaole?”
“My mom’s name was Tuitama. She’s Samoan. My dad’s Hawaiian: Punihaole.”
I grinned at him. “So your dad likes big women, huh?” He didn’t say anything, but stifled a grin. “What’d you do tonight, Alan?”
“I—I stayed home and watched TV.”
“Good boy, Al. I’ll be seeing you.”
I let myself out.
* * *
I walked back to Market and down to Gough to catch a cab. No one saw me walk out of Al’s place and that was dandy by me. I felt good, almost too good, like I had gotten away with something but didn’t quite know what. I had crossed a line somewhere. I was in it now, there was no getting out. But since Ashley was painting creepy snapshots of my life, I guess I was always in it. The fact that I didn’t know what I was into no longer made any difference.
I sat on the left side of the cab and rolled down the window and looked out at my bay . . . I was becoming the part, I realized. I’d always been a quick study, and the way Conrad Jones—if that was his name—had worked me over taught me exactly how to get at big Al. There wasn’t a twinge of regret in my bones for the way I had frightened him, terrorized him, threatened him. Any asshole who hung around a pool hall waiting to get hired as a thug deserved what he got.
But I still had nothing. My only real lead—the gallery—was dead as Dalton. I didn’t know how Al and Conrad had caught on to me but it didn’t matter—Al didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground and Conrad wouldn’t be as easy to intimidate. He was clearly the brains of the team and wouldn’t crack easily. Al was just a big dope gone astray, but Conrad . . . something about the way he cut the canvas off the stretcher, the way he barked at Susan. . . He was the worst kind of man—one incapable of remorse.
I had the cab let me out at 101 and Grand Ave. and walked the rest of the way home. I chain-smoked until I was out, thinking about it all.
8
The next morning I woke up hacking and took a long, hot shower. I whipped up a quick breakfast of poached eggs on toast and went back to square one: the painting in my garage. I looked at it for a solid hour but saw nothing I hadn’t seen before. Me, the barber, the signature, the date . . . it was good brushwork, good composition, and a good likeness, but I’m not an art critic. I’m an info guy, and the information I needed was, where is the artist?
I went down to the Schoolhouse Deli and worked the pay phone.
“Good morning, Dalton Gallery, this is Susan Dalton, can I help you?”
“Susan, hello. My name’s David Crane.”
“And what can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry to bring up a difficult subject, but I was in the gallery the other day. The day your brother, ah . . .”
There was a stiff pause on the line. “I see. And what exactly do you want?”
“I don’t want to trouble you, Miss Dalton, but I was hoping I could come down and ask you a few questions.”
“I’ve already told the police everything—”
“I’m not with the police, Miss Dalton, I’m a journalist, and it would be a big help to me if you could spare a few moments. Can I come down this afternoon?”
“I can’t . . . I can’t talk about it here, it’s too—”
“Let me buy you lunch.”
She chewed that over. “All right. Meet me at Zuni at one o’clock.”
Expensive taste, but the hell with it. I was a rich man.
* * *
I was there early, fiddling with a fork as a surrogate cigarette and eyeing the door. Susan came striding in about a quarter past the hour, looking very smart in a skirt and a suit jacket, her blond hair pulled back severely, dark shades on her face. She had the same thin lips as her brother, but on her face they lent an air of elegance and mystery, like she knew something but you’d have to beg to get it out of her. Seeing her for the second time, I realized what I hadn’t quite noticed the day before at the gallery: she was hot stuff. The conservative clothes couldn’t hide the voluptuous body straining against the fabric.
I caught her at the bar and fumbled through my introduction, showing her to the table. I was relieved when she said she wanted a drink, and we ordered Bloody Marys and I grabbed the bull by the horns and ordered a dozen oysters—Malpeques, Kumamotos, and Wellfleets. Turned out she had been a freelance journalist before getting into telecommunications and had done gigs over at the Chronicle, so we cut up and cracked jokes about my old cronies, laughing like college kids. She was getting comfortable and I thought if I could get her at ease it would all go smoothly. After a mutual laugh at the expense of one of my drunk ex-editors, she got strangely quiet.
“David.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry . . . about what happened to you with the Guardian.”
“Oh . . . you heard about that.”
“Yes. I didn’t recognize your name at first, but when you were talking about . . . Anyway, I put it together.”
I shrugged. “You live, you die.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“I hope you don’t blame yourself.”
“It’s done. Really.” I signaled the waiter just to change the subject, but our food was already coming. We ate quietly, stealing glances at one another. I thought I felt her stockinged leg brush mine, but I was sure it was my imagination.
When we both had frothy cappuccinos in front of us, I opened it up: “How familiar are you with the workings of your brother’s gallery?”
She shifted in her seat. “I was Jeffrey’s . . . unofficial consultant from the very beginning. I know nothing about art, but I know a thing or two about business, and I know how to deal with people. Jeffrey . . . was not a people person.”
“He lived alone, I take it?”
“Yes. He had a lover every now and then—he was gay, I guess you knew that. But the gallery was really his life. It was all he thought about. He loved art, he hated artists, and he couldn’t get enough of either.”
“Do you have any idea why he might have been killed? Did he have any enemies, any—”
“No. Really, I haven’t a clue. This whole thing has been like a roller-coaster ride. I’m trying to get his affairs in order, our parents are coming out for the service, and meanwhile I’m trying to keep his gallery from going under. That’s all he would have wanted.”
I let that linger a bit, taking in the ambience of the fading