The Painted Gun. Bradley Spinelli
look professional. “What is her last name, by the way?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” he said, bored. “She’s a one-name diva.”
“Have you met her?”
“Once or twice,” he replied dismissively. “It was quite enough.”
“How so?”
“She flounced in here demanding more for her work than I could possibly sell it for—portraits, you know. They just don’t go for much these days.”
The word portraits ran down the back of my neck like stray hairs in a shirt collar after a haircut.
He went on, sighing heavily, casting his eyes at the ceiling: “She wanted to negotiate the gallery’s cut, which is nonnegotiable. All lip gloss and no business sense. She’s . . . an artist.” He smiled, the way one smiles at a crazy cat lady.
The ensuing silence threatened to strangle me. He offered nothing else. Apparently, he was done. “Do you know how we could contact her? An interview would be fantastic.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t. She acts as her own agent, and when I tried to contact her regarding her share of the sale, her number was disconnected. I’m at a bit of a loss myself.”
“The sale?”
“The piece she has in the current show. I sold it.”
“To whom?”
He smiled crisply. “That’s confidential, I’m afraid. The painting will be collected when the show comes down at the end of the month.”
“I see. But you said you met her—what can you tell me about her personally?”
He stiffened visibly, his eyes focused over my shoulder. I turned to see a slick-looking young man, not too tall, but brick-like, standing in the doorway. He wore a silver-gray sharkskin suit, many years out of fashion and very much out of place—but since this was the art world, maybe he fit right in. His loafers were tasseled and shined to perfection. He noticed me staring at him and furrowed a pair of stiff, surly looking brows. Dark hair, deep-set eyes, broad nose. I couldn’t place his heritage—not quite Caucasian, but not exactly dark-skinned either. Maybe half-Mexican, or Spanish, or even Italian. His demeanor suddenly relaxed and his lips parted, baring a wide smile generous of teeth but not of intention.
“Oh,” he showed us his palms by way of apology, “I didn’t realize you had a visitor, Mr. Dalton. So sorry to interrupt.” He had a slight accent, a little too much attention on the h’s and r’s. Definitely a Spanish speaker.
“No—no, not at all,” Dalton replied hurriedly. “We’re finished. If you’ll excuse me—”
“Just one last thing, Mr. Dalton. About that number you said was disconnected, could I trouble you—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Crane, this gentleman has an appointment.” He was done with me. “If you’d like to take a look at the piece, I’ll speak with you again shortly.”
“Certainly.” I stood up and looked down on Sharkskin’s snarling brow. He was shorter than me, but not by much, and stocky, with a dangerous, cat-killer look in his eyes. He didn’t make a motion to get out of my way, and I couldn’t get out the door without knocking him over. “Excuse me,” I said, as sardonically as possible.
“Mmmmm,” he purred, giving me a coquettish look that was disarming from such a brusque man, and moved aside just enough to let me pass. The second I was out the door it shut behind me.
I cut down the passageway to the gallery proper, the air-conditioning hitting me like a wall of frozen air and drowning out the stagnant silence.
A bright painting fairly illuminated one end of the hall. It was me, wearing fading blue denim Levi’s, a gray T-shirt, and a tattered green Mr. Rogers cardigan with six missing buttons and four big holes. That’s my sweater, all right. I was bent over my kitchen table, addressing a large envelope, with two more small untidy piles of mail and paperwork on either side of me. The painting had a cool cerulean feel to it, with sharp accents of bright orange in the hair and translucent lime greens highlighting the sweater. Behind my head was a view out the window, barely revealing telephone lines dotted with blackbirds, subdividing a bright, hazy sky, the slight fog reflecting light into the room. My face was bright on one side with the other in shadow, an expression of scattered and nervous concentration on my face. My hand was tense, holding a teal pen with Bayshore Metals written on the side. I did some work for a welder at Bayshore and had a ton of their pens floating around my house. The bottom right corner was dated 1/1/96.
The air conditioner rattled, a yo-yoing, pinging sound from deep in the building, as a similar noise went off inside me.
New Year’s Day, last year. I remembered that night. I’d been working on a big project for a historical fiction novelist and was past deadline; the writer wanted everything before Christmas. I didn’t go out on New Year’s Eve, spent the whole night in my house cranking away, and was rushing to get the package put together and ready to mail first thing in the morning. I remember how stupid I felt when I realized that the post office is closed on New Year’s Day.
This was another fucking snapshot of my life.
I had to find that girl Ashley.
* * *
I hoped Dalton was done with Sharkskin and I could at least get that number off him and see what kind of damage I could do with it. I still had some pretty good connections at Pac Bell and didn’t want to walk out with nothing.
I was surprised to see that Serena still wasn’t back, but the door to Dalton’s office was slightly ajar. I gave it a hard knuckle rap, just in case.
No response.
“Mr. Dalton?” Still nothing. I gave the door a kick with my foot and it swung open partway; I ducked my head in and found the office empty. “Mr. Dalton?” I pushed the door the rest of the way and stepped in. There was a faint scent lingering in the air, and I rubbed my fingers together and took a whiff, realizing that I was only smelling a trace of the gun range on my hand. Then I looked over the desk and I wasn’t so sure. I could see what looked like the top of Dalton’s blond head.
I took another step forward and there he was, tipped back behind the desk, his feet hung up on the edge of his overturned chair, his arms akimbo, and his head askew in a pool of crimson blood. There was a very neat hole right between his eyes, surrounded by a dark, discoloring flash of powder burn. That sound I’d heard wasn’t the air conditioner—it was a pistol fired with a supressor.
My heart was in my throat and my feet were out of the office before my brain knew what hit it. It was only the second dead body I’d ever seen, and Dalton with a bullet in his brain was a far cry from my grandmother laid out in a casket embalmed and waiting for the embrace of the worms. I choked my breakfast back where it belonged and stood there a moment in front of Serena’s empty area, my thoughts racing.
Ashley, missing; Dalton knew something; fifty thousand dollars. Bells went off. Fifty thousand dollars wants this girl found. That’s a lot of dough, even in today’s dot-com roller coaster. That’s got to be the tip of the iceberg—McCaffrey would never cut me a square deal.
Every two-bit gumshoe from every dime-store novel I’d ever read was jaywalking through my mind. My next thought—to call the cops—was crushed underfoot like a cigarette burned down to the filter and tasting of fiberglass. Get out, Crane, just get out. Red exit sign—back of the gallery.
I hotfooted it and found the exit and the typical Do not open—alarm will sound notice. I kicked the bar across the door. No alarm. Fuck it, that’s retrofitting for you, they can’t remember everything. Bright afternoon light, a short trash-can alley. I jumped the chain-link fence and found myself on Minna, and walked calmly around the block to Delores. I found the 101 as quick as I could and headed south.
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