“Are these masks popular?”
“The price doesn’t make them too popular—but tourists from New Jersey are buying them since that murder.” Predictably, the body in six had leaked to the press; and just as predictably, the press had gotten most of the details wrong. “We sold a few today.”
“How many?”
The salesman went to a filing cabinet and pulled out a drawer. He thumbed through invoices. “Three.”
“Can I see those?”
Cardozo reviewed the sales slips: there were two on charge cards. One sale was for cash. Joan Smith, 3 Park Avenue, 350 plus twenty-eight eighty-eight sales tax.
He thought about that. “Joan Smith paid cash?”
The salesman made a trying-to-remember face. “First sale today. She was here at five to ten, real impatient because I didn’t open the door till ten. Some people are that way. It says ten to ten on the door, they gotta get in at five of.”
“You always take the customer’s name on a cash sale?”
“Sure, we send them our catalogue.”
Cardozo laid himself ten-to-one odds there was no Joan Smith at 3 Park Avenue; twenty-to-one if a 3 Park Avenue even existed, it was an office building. “Do you remember what she looked like?”
“Average height, nice figure. She was dressed real SoHo punk. You know, designer garbage bag. Blond hair, natural I think; she was wearing a big studded leather belt, celebrity shades.”
“What do you mean, studded belt? Like s.m.?”
“Like high-trash fashion. A lot of big fake gemstones.”
It seemed strange to Cardozo: first sale the day after a holiday weekend, anxious customer, close to four hundred dollars cash in hand. As though a leather bondage mask was one of those items you absolutely couldn’t start the day without, like cream in your coffee or gas in your tank or your first cocaine fix.
“Got a phonebook?”
“Sure.” The salesman hefted a dog-eared copy of the Manhattan White Pages over the counter.
The book listed plenty of J. Smiths and a few Joan Smiths, none at 3 Park Avenue. There was an N. Kushima on Prince Street in SoHo, and Cardozo wrote down the number. “I’d like to buy one of your masks,” he said.
“We’re sold out.” The salesman’s expression held a hint of guarded helpfulness. “But since you’re NYPD, I could let you have the store sample—I’ll mark it down to a hundred.”
“Do you take VISA?”
“Sure do.”
Cardozo held out his hand. “My name’s Cardozo. Vince Cardozo.”
“I’m Burt.”
Cardozo called N. Kushima from a booth, said he was police and needed to talk with her.
“I’ll be home another half hour,” she said.
The woman who opened the door to him was a small Japanese with a face like a walnut; she was wearing jeans and sandals and a paint-splattered hospital smock, and her hair was tied up in a checked handkerchief.
“Come in, please.” The only thing Oriental about her was the face. Her accent was pure New York, an incongruous mix of Jewish and street Hispanic. She smiled crookedly.
He stepped into a loft flooded with yellow light. The sun had come out, and the space was lush with potted plants on windowsills, on tables and stands; an eight-foot avocado tree was growing out of a ceramic urn on the floor.
The paintings on the walls were six-foot canvases with barbed wire nailed to them, Adidas jogging shoes and babies’ mittens and burlap sacks impaled on the barbs, red paint and lucite-encased viscera spewing from the sacks. The intestines looked real, as though they’d come from a butcher shop or autopsy room.
She stood there looking at him looking at the paintings.
“Yours?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Is that the way you feel, or just the way you want other people to feel?”
“Ours is a savage age. I’m sure a policeman sees sights far more dreadful than any of these. I’m having a cup of miso, would you care for some?”
“No, thanks.”
“Please.” Her gesture encompassed chairs and scattered floor pillows. She sat in a peacock chair, drew her legs up, and looked at him. “How may I help you?”
He took the two leather masks from their bags and laid them on the floor in front of her. “Do you recognize these?”
A frown of caution darkened her forehead and she sipped carefully from her cup. With her foot she pushed the Pleasure Trove mask contemptuously aside. “That one is a vulgarization.” Her foot hovered above the other. “This one is mine.”
“How can you tell?”
“How does a mother know her children? I made it. It is me.”
“How many did you make?”
“Only five. Five is my limit—above that I am a whore.”
“Who bought the mask from you?”
She was sitting there, sipping her miso.
“I know nothing of who buys my works.”
“I want the buyer.”
“My gallery handles all sales—Lewis Monserat on Prince Street.”
Cardozo carried the masks through narrow SoHo streets filled with rushing, lurching traffic.
The Lewis Monserat Gallery on Prince Street was quietly impressive, with a high skylighted ceiling, a calm atmosphere, and no visitors.
The receptionist sat at a large desk, a prim woman wearing a blouse with a Peter Pan collar. She smiled at Cardozo’s approach, but when he showed his shield and asked to speak with Mr. Monserat the smile was gone.
“I’ll see if he’s in.”
She went into another room, closing the door behind her.
Cardozo used the time to look at the exhibit, paintings of faceless figures who seemed to get smaller and lonelier as the canvases got larger.
The woman reappeared and ushered him into the rear office.
A man with a head of black hair that looked as though he’d marinated it in olive oil rose from behind a desk and held out a hand. “Lewis Monserat. How can I help you, sir?”
He was wearing a very well-cut, expensive Italian suit. His large, expressive eyes gave Cardozo permission to drop into the studded leather chair.
Cardozo took the Kushima mask from the brown paper bag and placed it on the desk.
“You sold this. Who bought it?”
Monserat reached out and lifted the mask. He turned it over, then inside out. When he finally spoke, his voice had quiet resonance. “This has a slight resemblance to the work of my client Nuku Kushima, but—”
Cardozo cut him short. “Miss Kushima has identified the mask. Who bought it?”
Whatever had been cordial in Monserat’s manner abruptly vanished. The silence in the room was suddenly flat and harsh.
“It’s against gallery policy to release our client list.”
“I’d appreciate your reversing that policy.”
“Wait one moment, please.” Monserat rose and went out into the gallery. Cardozo could hear him making a phone call.
On the desk, a nineteenth-century carriage clock struck four delicate chimes.
Monserat returned. “You cannot compel me to release that information without a court order.”
“Who says?”
Monserat’s gaze met his levelly, coldly. “My attorney—Mr. Theodore Morgenstern—I’m sure you’ve heard of him?”
“Would you get him on the phone, or do I need a court order for that too?”
Smiling acidly, Monserat picked up the telephone. He dialed, handed Cardozo the receiver, and sat back.
“Ted Morgenstern,” an officious voice said.
“It’s Vince Cardozo.”
He and Morgenstern had collided in courtrooms, in judges’ chambers, before grand juries: often enough to hate one another’s guts. A public yet shadowy figure for over three decades, Morgenstern had made his reputation and fortune acting as broker in business deals, criminal justice deals, political hostage deals, international arms and spy deals, real estate deals—and those were just the deals that were public knowledge.