Still Lives(60)

He could have caught me easily. He could have even locked me in. But he didn’t. I look back at the gallery. Steve Goetz is standing in his bank of glass windows, a silhouette, staring after my escape. He didn’t stop me. He’s not afraid of me. Or, rather, he’s not afraid of being caught in his game. I like games, he said. I’d hate to find out what other games he is playing, but I don’t think he knows where Kim Lord is. I think he was genuinely hoping I would tell him.





21

Piano music trickles over the sound of clinking glasses at Luster’s Steakhouse. I hunch alone with a Manhattan at the dark and velvety bar, staring into the bovine carcasses in a huge glass cooler just beyond the dining area. Red meat, marbled with white fat, dangles from hooks. The torsos are motionless, but their skin-stripped shapes look so bare it almost appears as if they are slowly revolving, showing every side. Occasional fog patches cover the glass, blurring the carnage to a crimson haze.

My whole body is caked in sweat, and I have to keep pulling my blouse loose so it doesn’t stick to my damp chest. Every time I do, the air-conditioned breeze touches my breasts and I shudder at the memory of CJF Gallery and how empty it was as I bolted away from Steve Goetz.

I’ve called Yegina three times already. No answer.

I leave her a message. “Hi, I left the office in a rush. I thought I was getting stomach flu, but I guess it was just a little food poisoning. Are we meeting at Luster’s? That’s where I’m heading now. Hope everything’s okay.”

It surprises me that she didn’t answer. I have a bad feeling about her brother, but I can’t check my e-mail without a computer.

Someone passes behind me, and Hendricks sits down, two stools away. He is wearing a faded black T-shirt with a spiky skull-propeller thing and the words CORROSION OF CONFORMITY on it. There’s a new cast to his face now: it has gone from sleepy to sharp. He also seems inexplicably longer and taller, like an animal extending from its hole.

“You look surprised to see me,” he says.

“I’m not sure this is where we’re supposed to be.”

I meant about meeting Yegina later, but Hendricks nods and glances into the meat cooler. “Me neither.”

An awkward silence falls. Where do I begin?

“You called me because you were worried about someone,” he says. “Who?”

“It’s gotten more complicated than I thought,” I say.

“Try me,” he says.

I take a breath. I can’t look at him. “Did Janis Rocque ever try to buy one of Kim Lord’s paintings? I mean, a more recent one?”

Hendricks doesn’t answer right away. I sneak a peek at him. His expression is a cross between curiosity and regret.

“Is that what you were investigating?” I say.

He jerks his head at the giant carcasses.

“Can we continue this somewhere outside?” he says.

We rise and leave the dim, dark air-conditioned interior for the cooling night, the surge of skyscrapers around us. Above each table, the heat lamps are on, their dull fires glowing. Beyond them, I catch sight of the line of red street-pole banners with Kim-as-Roseann-Quinn smiling down on us. Hendricks knew what I was going to ask. I feel triumphant but fearful. If I’m right about Steve Goetz, if Ray Hendricks knows, too, then why isn’t the collector a suspect in Kim Lord’s disappearance?

We sit down at a patio table, suddenly close and alone. Hendricks is older than I am, but not much older; he has the faint facial lines that you start to get in your thirties.

“Okay,” he says. “Tell me again why you called me.”

“I know about Steve Goetz,” I say plainly. “I think you do, too.”

He threads his fingers slowly together until his hands knot into a single fist.

“They exhumed Kim Lord’s body this afternoon,” he says slowly. “Her corpse was discovered a few hours ago in the Angeles National Forest. Sniffed out by someone’s dog.”

I must be gaping, because it feels like my whole face is spilling open. My palm slides over my mouth.

“There was a significant blow to the skull,” he says.

In my mind’s eye, I see an anonymous female head, hair streaked with blood, and then my imagination fails and my shoulders start shaking.

Kim Lord is dead. Her unborn child as well.

I put my fingers over my eyes and try to press the image from them.

“Maggie,” Hendricks says.

I feel him move nearer to me, and then pull back.

I breathe in hard to keep from crying. I don’t want to cry in front of him.

“I wasn’t sure how you’d take it,” he says, almost to himself.

“What caused the blow?” I say. “Do they know? How many days was she there?”

“I only have the details I told you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you? Why are you wasting your time with me?” I say, blinking back tears. “Don’t you cops have better things to do now that you have a body?”

“I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator,” he says. “But you’re right. Janis Rocque wanted to buy a painting by Kim Lord and she couldn’t,” he says. “And when a woman of her power and wealth can’t get what she wants, she gets ticked. Ticked enough to pay someone a ridiculous sum to find out why.”