“In Africa I carry a gun.”
Twilight descended quickly as we turned right, into a narrow, dead-end alley between two tall manufacturing buildings. On our left, through three separate eight-foot, barbed-wire-topped chain link fences, a large black dog snarled at us. The building on our right — a six-story manufacturing and warehouse structure that covered nearly the entire block — had the same address as the one printed on the business card Torquemada had handed me.
“Here we are,” I announced brightly.
Matt grimly scanned the shadowy alley — still paved with its original cobblestones — and the dark windows on the buildings, through which no interior lights shone. “Yeah. Home sweet home.”
We walked to the far end of the dead-end block, stopping before a windowless steel door, a bare unlit bulb above it. In the last dying light of the day, I read the sign.
“Tod Studios. This must be the place, but I wonder why he misspelled his own name. His business card spells it ‘Todd’ with two D’s.”
“It isn’t a misspelling of his name,” Matteo replied. “Tod is the German word for death.”
“Oh.” I took another look at the strange door on the stark building and shrugged. “Well, on that note, I’ll say good-bye.”
Matt tugged me back by the sleeve of my shearling. “Let’s synchronize our watches. Thirty minutes,” he said, fingering his Breitling.
“Got it. Now get out of sight.”
From a hidden vantage point, Matteo watched as I pressed the button beside the door. I heard a loud, warehouse-style bell echo through the massive, empty structure.
It took so long for anyone to respond that I thought I’d be spending my whole thirty minutes just standing there, in front of that door. After about ten minutes, I heard footsteps. The bare bulb above the door suddenly glared to life and, with a shrill metallic squeal, the door swung open.
A slight blonde man with tousled hair and sharp features stood in the doorway. Though tall, he was so slim I decided I probably outweighed him, and his complexion was pale and unhealthy looking. But there was both intelligence and energy behind his sky-blue eyes, and he seemed open and friendly. In fact, the only unsettling thing about Seth Todd was the fact that his hands and arms were stained with a wet, dark red liquid all the way up to the elbows.
“Gosh, I hope that’s paint,” I said.
To my surprise, the man laughed — and so did I.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“You can if you’re Seth Martin Todd.”
He nodded. “At your service, and you are — ?”
“Clare,” I answered. “I understand you submitted a proposal to the World Trade Center Commission?”
“Pleased to meet you, Clare.” Seth Todd thrust out his hand to shake mine. Then he noticed it was still covered in blood-red paint.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. Then we both laughed again.
A perfect romantic comedy moment, I thought, except for the fact that this guy murdered his wife.
“Come in,” Seth Todd said, using his scuffed Skechers to open the door wide enough to admit me.
With a quick, uneasy glance over my shoulder, my eyes found Matteo’s silhouette, far down the alleyway, lurking in a doorway. I turned toward Todd and entered.
“Go on inside,” he said, directing me to a large, open door with his elbow. “I’ll join you after I clean up.”
I crossed the threshold and found myself in a large, barren industrial space with oil-stained concrete floors, a high ceiling, and visible plumbing and heating ducts running up the plaster-free brick walls.
This area of the warehouse looked like it had once been a loading dock. Two huge garage doors in the wall faced Forty-third Avenue, and a cold draft leaked through the joints.
Though there were tall windows lining both sides of the room, strategically placed in the days before electricity to admit both the morning and afternoon sun, it was now getting downright dark outside, and much of the massive interior space was slipping into shadows.
Now that I was inside the building, I understood why there were no interior lights visible through the windows. Todd used only a tiny corner of the massive space for his work area, and only that part of the room was lit — by three naked light bulbs hanging on long cords from the ceiling.
There were several chairs — none of them matched — a few stools, and several easels with various paintings displayed. Some were abstract, but not all. There was an oil of an old Gothic church, and another of a farmhouse that reminded me of Andrew Wyeth’s work.
Todd’s current work in progress rested on a large easel in the center of the workspace, a six-by ten-foot canvas covered in various shades of scarlet — from the color of bright blood freshly spilled, to the dull crimson of a new scab, to the dark brown blot of an old bloodstain. Though abstract, the elements came together to evoke an emotional impact. The artist showed real genius in his selection and arrangement of the hues, shapes, and textures.
“Would you like some tea?” Seth Todd asked, appearing at my side with a steaming silver pot and two white ceramic cups.
“Thank you,” I said as he set the cups on a low wooden table and poured.
“Please take off your coat. Sit down.”
I slipped off the shearling and threw it across the back of an overstuffed armchair. He pulled over a battered chrome bar stool with a black cushioned seat and sat across from me. I sampled the tea and found it savory — a Darjeeling with a subtle fruity tang.
“I actually prefer coffee,” Seth Todd said apologetically, his Skecher heels resting easily on the bottom cross bars of the stool like a teenager in an episode of Leave it to Beaver. “A good Kona, or a Blue Mountain would be great about now, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping, so no caffeine after six p.m. My friends say I should switch to decaf, but I’d just as soon skip my evening cup as resort to such desperate measures. The poet Dante forgot to write about that ring of hell reserved for those who oppose caffeine.”
I laughed out loud. My god, I found myself thinking, if I hadn’t been told he was a killer, he’d be a man after my own heart.
“My sentiments exactly,” I told him. “I’m a bigger coffee afficionado than you could possibly imagine, but I have to admit that this tea is delightful.”
“I bought it in Chinatown, a little store on Mott Street called Wen’s Importing. I won’t touch anything other than leaf.”
I scanned Seth Todd’s work area. It was, as far as I could see, a typical artist’s studio. Tubes and jars of paint. Brushes. Pencils. Canvas and paper. There were some pen-and-ink and pencil sketches tacked to another easel. Human studies, mostly. Faces and figures, several portraits obviously drawn from life — none of them slashed or stabbed or brutalized in any way. But my eyes were constantly drawn back to the large red canvas that dominated the room.
“That’s a powerful painting,” I said.
“Thank you,” he replied, his eyes watching me. “It was commissioned for the foyer of the Seattle-based software firm, Gordian Incorporated. Their brand new headquarters building was designed by Scott Musake and Darrel Sorensen. Really amazing.”
He spoke about several other commissions — for the Tokyo headquarters of an electronics firm, a skyscraper in Sri Lanka, and the grand ballroom of a Paris hotel still under construction. He also managed to drop the fact that his work was displayed in several museums and galleries around the world.
Though he came on a little strong, I found Todd’s enthusiasm for his art and the design work of others infectious. He was a serious painter, but one concerned with his own notoriety, too. Some would probably be bothered by his ambition, but I found it honest and refreshing — at least he wasn’t hiding what he wanted out of life from anyone.