Jake took a sip of coffee from the vending-machine cup. It was cold now and he wondered how long he had been standing there, lost in his head with the what-ifs and the dead.
He turned away from the bed and walked out into the hall. His father’s old room was three doors down and he went to see if they had finished the final coat on the wall. For some reason, he needed to see that bloody portrait erased from history.
It was well past visiting hours but with Jake firmly entrenched in a homicide investigation, drop-in privileges had been approved. It was the hang time after the patients had taken their meds but before the first rounds of the nighttime staff, and the floor felt empty. There were no old ladies shuffling along in their robes, wheeling IV stands like divining rods to the smoking section. The only noise other than the sound of his boots on the battleship linoleum was the distant chant of classical music and the more immediate sound of a thin, reedy snore. An ice machine hummed off in a small corridor that led to the utility elevator. Other than that, it was quiet.
Jake pushed the door to the room open, worried that they had already filled the space with another patient. The single wedge of light from the hallway exposed an empty bed. He expected to be greeted by the smell of fresh paint and disinfectant but recognized the metallic scent of blood as soon as he was inside. He closed the door, locked the deadbolt, and flipped the light switch.
The bloody portrait still clung to the wall, the pigment baked to black.
Jake stared for a second, wondering why it hadn’t been painted over. He looked at the featureless face, mesmerized. But something had changed—a one-inch line of masking tape ran around the portrait. He stepped closer and saw notations on the tape. There were pencil-marked arrows around the masking-tape frame, pointing outward, with the words CUT OUTSIDE TAPE printed in handwriting that Jake recognized from somewhere.
Before he had backed up a full step, he realized that the handwriting was David Finch’s and he was having the painting removed.
He thought about the mercenary little fuck paying the hospital for the portrait. Then his mind’s eye focused on Finch, in his tailored suit, standing self-importantly under a spotlight on the salvaged floor in his Soho gallery. He’d stand poised just right while the final work by the great Jacob Coleridge was hoisted into place by two workmen using a lift. He thought of the way he would market the piece, leaving a few raw nubs of stud extending beyond the skin of sheetrock like denuded bone. It’s so raw, he would say. So primal. The best work Coleridge had ever done. His last, too.
Price?
He’d shake his head sadly, eyes downcast as if embarrassed at having to discuss something as crass as money.
But you must have an idea of a price!
He’d look insulted, as if the potential client hadn’t understood what he had said. Then he’d slowly let a pensive look bleed into his features, as if the thought of parting with the piece had never crossed his mind but he was beginning to give it some thought. Sure, he was a gallery owner—but he was also an art lover. And some pieces you simply couldn’t put a dollar sign to. But the sincerest thing he’d say, while placing his hand conspiratorially on the potential client’s arm, is that there just isn’t a price on friendship. And Jacob Coleridge was—had been—his friend.
Forget Damien Hirst, Jasper Johns, and Willem de Kooning (hand placed reverently over his heart). Did they ever paint in their own blood? I don’t think so. They were/are great. But they were/are not Jacob Coleridge. Coleridge’s work was known for its truth. And after all, what could be more truthful than sacrificing yourself for your art. Bleeding for your art.
Then he’d look back at the painting and say maybe it should go out into the world with someone who would appreciate it. Maybe it deserved to have a loving home. Then he would raise his hand, twitter on the precipice of indecision for a second, then put it back in his pocket, shaking his head and saying, No, I couldn’t. He was a friend.
How much?
A friend! Finch would repeat, fraternal pride in his voice. Wipe a single tear from the corner of his eye.
And after a perfectly measured pause, he’d say, Fifty million dollars.
After all, you didn’t rise to the top of a field so full of navel-gazing as modern art without possessing consummate skills in both theatrics and bullshit. A PhD in ass-kissing didn’t hurt.
The toe of Jake’s boot dented the sheetrock and stopped at the stud behind, puffing out a white cloud of dust. The wall shuddered and a suspended acoustic tile spun to the floor. The second kick, a little higher and to the right, went through the sheetrock, punching out a neat square hole. Another ceiling tile fell like a dry leaf.
By his third kick there were footsteps in the hall. They passed by, searching for the noise.
On his fourth they doubled back.
He reached down into his boot and pulled out the knife he had carried there since he was a teenager. Instead of the clumsy Mexican-made switchblade of his youth, his hand came up with a Gerber titanium airframe knife; standard issue for FBI personnel.
Someone tried the door. Rattled the knob.
“Fuck off!” Jake roared, and thunked the blade a quarter inch into the wall at the top corner of Finch’s indicated cut-lines. He slashed down, the carbon steel sliding through the yellow topcoat, and the wall hemorrhaged white dust. He drew the knife down, then across the bottom, and up the other side.
“I’m getting the key,” a voice said from the other side of two inches of maple.
Jake hauled the bed over to the door, jammed it up against the frame, and locked the wheels; it wouldn’t stop a determined man but it would slow down a single nurse. Then he went back to his father’s blood, pulled the knife out of the wall, and slid it back into his boot.
He kicked out the bottom corners, wrapped his fingers around the ragged dusty skin that hung in shreds around the holes, and flayed a massive strip off the wall in one clean yank that uncoiled him from a crouch to an overhead reach. He took the painting off in five irregular patches, bits of blood and white dust floating in a small weather system above the floor. A few small scabs of paint and blood remained and he kicked and punched these in.
He folded the five latex-and-blood-covered parchments into a quick ball, kicked the bed away from in front of the door, and snapped the big stainless thumb bolt open.
Out in the unsure light of the corridor, a nurse was bounding toward him, jailer’s keys jingling in her hand. She slowed to a shuffle and barked, “What were you doing in there?” She stopped a few paces away, looking like she’d just realized that she was alone in a dark corridor with a six-foot-two madman who tore up hospital rooms in the middle of the night.
Jake held up the folded skins of the painting. “I was told this was going to be painted over. Not sold. Not salvaged. Painted over.”
“That’s medical waste. The hospital can do whatever they want with it. I was told—”
Jake took a step toward her and she stopped, backed quickly up.
His long arm came up, his finger aimed at her head. “I don’t give a fuck what you’ve been told or what you think you have the right to do, lady. This is going to be destroyed. You grok me, sweetheart?”
Her face shifted emotions for a few seconds before the elasticity gave way to a rigid stare. She stepped aside and Jake walked on down the hall, his boots leaving a dusty trail, the portrait of one of his father’s demons tucked under his arm.