Now we were getting somewhere. ‘Good artist, was he? As good as his father, Victor Szabo?’
‘Where on earth did you get that idea?’ Apparently the suggestion was ludicrous.
‘Like I said. Stories are flying around.’ I took the photos out of my pocket and showed her the snap of Szabo with the kid that might have been Taylor. ‘Like father, like son. And from what I’ve heard, there wasn’t just a taste for the booze in old man Szabo’s genes. Marcus inherited a dab hand for the brush. He could knock out a passable version of almost anything, I understand. Not that I’m any judge, but what I’ve seen of his work certainly confirms that view.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You’ve seen it?’
‘It?’
She didn’t say anything for a while. She was too busy giving me the slow burn. It could have popped corn at five paces. Lucky I was wearing my asbestos skin.
When that didn’t work, she tossed her head back and studied the way her cigarette smoke rose in a lazy coil towards the ceiling. I studied it, too. Ascending effortlessly in a solid unbroken column, it reached higher and higher, an ever lengthening filament of spun wire, stretching up towards the embossed tin panels far above. Then, just as its destination seemed within reach, it wavered, broke into an ephemeral mass of swirling spirals, and dissipated.
‘There was never any misrepresentation on my part,’ she said abruptly. ‘I want that clearly understood.’
‘Absolutely.’
She started pacing then, stalking the right approach. ‘If this thing gets taken any further, I want protection.’
Protection? From whom? What the hell was she talking about? ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to be the one that takes the fall?’
Her point taken, Salina moved into negotiating mode. ‘Damn right,’ she said. ‘Marcus’s image production was a perfectly valid form of post-modern discourse, right out there on the cutting edge. His pastiche-parodies of actual artworks effectively deconstructed the commonly held notions of value, authenticity and signature. They were a critical response to the pre-eminence of the so-called famous artist.’ She paced, delivering a dissertation. ‘His pictures were never mere copies. If his images were subsequently misread as such by others, that’s not my problem. It was not my role to impose a monopoly on meaning. Legitimate appropriations, that’s what they were. There was never any attempt on my part to pass them off as originals.’
Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, it’s as simple as that. Eek and ye shall find. Unless my grasp of art-speak was even more tenuous than I feared, Salina Fleet had just told me that Marcus Taylor had been knocking up fakes and that she’d been marketing them for him.
‘And these “appropriations” ’-I hooked my fingers around the word and rolled it over my palate, savouring its supple resonance-‘included a “pastiche” of Victor Szabo? A “parody” of Our Home, perfect right down to the engine number on the motor-mower?’ She nodded. I was on the right track. ‘Like you say, a perfectly valid form of artistic practice. So where is it now?’
That pulled her up short. ‘Christ!’ she gasped. ‘You mean you don’t know. I thought…’
‘You thought what?’
But the shutters had come down. She’d been trading on the assumption that I knew something I didn’t, that I knew who had the duplicate Szabo. Her hands were shaking. She crossed to the door and flung it open. ‘Get out,’ she hissed. ‘You bastard.’ It came to me that she was very much afraid. When she wasn’t acting she was quite convincing. ‘Out. Out.’
‘Who do you want protection from? I can help.’
‘Just leave,’ she commanded icily, her mouth again tearing at a fingernail. ‘I refuse to comment further without a lawyer present. If you don’t get out, I’ll start screaming.’
She didn’t give me much alternative but to do as she asked.
‘Under the circumstances,’ she said, as I stepped past her. ‘I think it best if I resign from the Visual Arts Advisory Panel.’ Since trafficking in dodgy artworks was hardly an ideal qualification for membership, that sounded like a good idea. I didn’t get to tell her so. She’d already shut the door.
Fifteen minutes had elapsed since I’d abandoned Red to his computer game. A couple more wouldn’t hurt. I called the lift up, pushed the ground floor button and stepped back out. Otis elevator smacked his big rubber lips together, growled and slunk away. I leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.
It had burned to the filter when Salina came out her door. She’d put on a pair of gold sling-back sandals and was carrying the small suitcase. She saw me and stopped. She was about to say something unpleasant when the lift arrived. It made a clunking noise and its doors slid open. Standing inside was Spider Webb.
Old blank face himself, shades and all, flexing his jaw like a punch-drunk pinhead. He registered first me, then Salina, ten metres beyond. I registered her, too. She looked like a trapped animal. I stepped in front of the lift, blocking Spider’s way. He stood there, legs apart, sizing me up. The doors began to close. I stepped inside and the doors slid shut behind me.
None of the buttons were depressed. He’d been coming to this floor. Where else? I punched the ground floor button with the side of my fist and we began to descend. I turned to face the door, the way you always do in a lift. ‘You really get around, don’t you?’ I said.
His hand shot past me and hit the red emergency stop button. The lift slammed to an immediate halt, throwing me off balance. Before I could get it back, Spider had his forearm against my chest and my back pressed against the wall. ‘What the fuck you playing at?’ he snarled, breathing Arrowmint all over me.
Under the circumstance, I assumed the question was essentially rhetorical. I kicked him in the shins. He stepped delicately sideways as though avoiding a spilt drink and rammed the ball of his open hand into my solar plexus. I got a little irrigated in the visual department at that point and would have liked a little sit down, if at all possible. ‘Ummphh,’ I said. ‘Whodja ooatfa?’
Spider’s face was pushed so far into mine that when he opened his mouth I read the maker’s mark on his silver fillings. Any closer and we’d have to get engaged. All I could see of his eyes, though, was my own reflection in those fucking mirror shades. Five times in three days I’d seen him, and still I hadn’t seen his eyes. A regular Ray Charles, he was. By the look of the reflections staring back at me, he was doing a pretty good job of putting the wind up me. ‘You know what’s wrong with you, Whelan?’ he said.
By then I knew better than to even attempt an answer. I just stood there, nurturing my inner cry-baby and waiting for the liquidity in my bowels to abate. Spider adopted the softly solicitous tones of a psychotic sergeant major. ‘You get in over your head. That’s what’s wrong with you. You gotta learn to take the hint. Lay off where you’re not wanted.’
He slammed one of Otis’s buttons and the lift resumed its descent. Spider stepped back then and stood, legs apart, casually waiting for it to reach the ground floor. ‘You fucking ape,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to be impressed, am I?’
Actually I was, deeply. In my line of work, it’s reasonably rare to be strong-armed by a gun-toting thug. That sort of thing usually only happens in federal politics. ‘I’ll go to Eastlake. I’ll have your job.’ It sounded pathetic, but it was the best I could do. Fuck the macho shit.
The lift hit rock-bottom and the doors slid open. ‘You wouldn’t do that,’ said Spider, cheerfully. ‘Not to an old mate.’ He made like a head waiter, ushering me out of the lift ahead of him. ‘And you shouldn’t leave your kid sitting by himself in the car like that. You’ll get done for child neglect.’
We stood there, looking at each other. Him in the lift, me outside. Then he smiled. The kind of smile that could stop a clock. He was still smiling when lift doors slid shut.
I turned then and ran. I ran out the front door of the Aldershot Building, down the hill and around the corner. At the intersection up ahead, Salina Fleet was getting into the back of a cab. She must have come down the fire stairs. I hit the Charade at a sprint.