It was obvious that it had not been moved since the morning after his mother’s murder.
The last people to touch it had probably been the flatbed guys. Before that, the police. And before that, his mother’s killer.
“Don’t touch anything,” Jake said, holding his own hands up as an example.
“Why?”
Jake ignored her and took out his cell phone. Dialed. “Yeah, Smolcheck, Jake Cole. You have time to do a car for me? Sure. Yeah. No. 1966 Mercedes convertible. Two-seater.”
Pause.
“It was part of a murder scene thirty-three years ago.”
Pause.
“I think so. Local police went through it.”
Pause.
“Returned to the family within twenty hours of the crime.”
Pause.
“Bare storage. Unheated but safe from the elements.”
Pause.
“No, no traffic. No one has touched it. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”
Longer pause.
“Okay, I’ll book storage from here. I’ll do the best I can. Polyethylene and duct tape. Got it. Sure.”
Pause.
“Thanks, Smolcheck. I appreciate it. It’s cold but it’s going to help me with a lateral case. I’ll make sure I go through Carradine. Don’t worry, it will be okayed by the time it gets there.”
Jake hung up and focused on a note taped to one of the scotch bottles: YOUR NAME IS JACOB COLERIDGE. KEEP PAINTING.
Oh, you kept painting, you mad old motherfucker, Jake thought. And what were you trying to say?
He looked up and Kay was gone, back in the house with Jeremy. How long had he been in one of his trances?
He put his hand to his chest and felt his heartbeat. Everything was fine. Fit as a fucking fiddle. When he thought about it, it was amazing what you could live through. Nietzsche had been right. After killing yourself three times with a high-octane mix of China White and Columbian, there was pretty much nothing else on the planet you were afraid of.
Except maybe the past.
29
Jake sat atop an old dented mechanic’s chest filled with brushes, palette knives, and the assorted implements of his father’s trade. It was an old Snap-on model, covered in painted fingerprints, brushstrokes, and random cuts of color. An open but untouched bottle of Coke sat on the concrete floor, bleeding condensation in a wet ring that seeped into the dust. He had one boot up on the edge of the tool chest and he hugged his knee, staring off into darkness decorated like Breughel’s The Triumph of Death. There was no exterior light, and bright bulbs lighted the room.
At first he thought it was the wind. Just an oblong sound that the ocean had somehow kicked up. Then he heard it a second time, the distinct cadence of human speech in its vowels. Someone was yelling. It was a tentative yell, but a yell nonetheless.
“Hello? Hello?”
Jake recognized the voice, the accent. He unfolded himself from atop the tool chest, stood up, and walked outside.
A man in a suit was on the balcony, bent over and peering into the living room. The posture, the hair, the soft pink hands clasped behind his back, the well-tailored suit—hadn’t changed in twenty-eight years. Jake walked quietly up behind him, leaned in, and very softly said, “Hello, David.”
David Finch jumped, banged his head on the mullion, and converted the startled jerk into a quickly extended hand. “Hello.”
Jake stood there for a second, appraising the man. “It’s me. Jake.”
Finch’s eyes narrowed, and he took in Jake with an exaggerated up-and-down. “Jakey?” He examined his face, his big polished smile opening up. “You still look like Charles Bronson.”
David Finch was one of the top gallery owners in New York and Jacob Coleridge had been one of his first discoveries. The two events were not mutually exclusive.
“And you look like a parasite coming to feed on a not-yet-dead cash cow.”
“I didn’t know you and your father were that close, Jakey.”
“Fuck you.”
“Still making money with that mouth?” Finch asked.
Jake took a step closer to the man and opened his teeth in an ugly smile. “What do you want?”
“I sent flowers. Did your father get them?”
Jake remembered the broken vase on the floor. “My father isn’t getting anything anymore.”
Finch looked around the deck. What for? Help, maybe. “Jakey, can we talk?”
Jake thought about the last time he had seen the man. About how he had asked for thirty-one dollars. About how he had been turned down. About the things he had done to feed himself because of that. “No, David, I don’t think we can.” Besides, Kay and Jeremy were inside and Jake didn’t want them to get contaminated by any more of his old life than they already had.
“I need to talk to you about your father’s work.”
Jake thought about the bloody portrait splattered onto the hospital wall. “Dad’s not making a lot of sense on any level, David. The old Jacob Coleridge is on a permanent vacation.”
Finch pointed at the Chuck Close through the window, the eyes gone. “Jacob Coleridge would never do this to a Close. Cy Twombly maybe—maybe. But a Close? Rome could be burning and he’d be the guy defending the museum with an axe.”
“It’s Alzheimer’s, David—not a German opera. Jacob Coleridge is not coming back.”
Finch’s head swiveled in an angry jerk. “I know you and your father haven’t exactly been simpatico, Jake, but I know your old man; we’ve been friends for almost fifty years. We’ve stuck by one another when the going was tough and both of us had plenty of opportunities when we should have taken up other offers in the interest of our careers. But we didn’t because we were a good team. And that only happens when you know someone. Know them intimately. And Jacob Coleridge could be drunk off his ass with his cock falling off from a bout of syphilis and be using someone else’s liver because his was out being dry-cleaned and he’d never lay a finger on a Chuck Close. Too much respect. Too much professional admiration. Never. Ever. No way.” Finch turned back to the painting.
Jake followed his gaze, then looked beyond the painting into the kitchen. Kay and Jeremy were gone. Maybe down on the beach for a walk. He saw his own reflection staring back at him. “If you say so.”
“Did your father have any work in the studio?” The gallery owner asked, the unmistakable lilt of greed in his voice.
“It’s empty. It was filled with crap and most of it’s gone.” It was a lie but Jake didn’t feel like having an argument with Finch. If the sycophantic little fuck had his way, he’d be peeling up the paint-splattered floor in the studio and selling it by the square foot at Sotheby’s in their spring sale of important American art.
Finch stared into Jake’s face for a second. “Jake, you do know that I am your father’s sole representative. We have a lifetime and beyond contract.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Jake’s patience was running out. His old man had fried his hands off and this parasite was here to sniff out a commission.
“That means that I have proprietary rights on his paintings in reference to sales. No one—and that means you, too—can sell a Jacob Coleridge.”
Jake crossed the space that had developed between them in a long-legged stride that would have made Hauser proud. “David, you and my father may have been friends but as far as I’m concerned, you’re a smarmy little bloodsucker who would do anything for his wallet. Do you remember the night I showed up at your house when I left here?”