At least the weirdos who ran Café Karma kept the dive warm. Downright hot. A big and tall kind of guy to begin with, Darrel was drowning in clothing, sweating in his black wool shirt and black tie, black corduroy sports coat, and heavy black gabardine slacks tailored in Germany and inherited from his father. His quilted black ski jacket was draped over a horribly hand-painted chair, but he kept the sports coat on to conceal the department-issue.45 in its X-harnessed cowhide shoulder holster. No problem hiding his unauthorized boot gun, a nickel-plated.22. It nuzzled his calf, snug in his left custom-stitched elephant-hide Tony Lama.
Katz had on what he’d worn every night since the weather had turned: a fuzzy brown and white plaid Pendleton shirt over a white cotton turtleneck, faded blue jeans, black and white high-top sneakers. Over his chair was that ratty gray wool overcoat-pure New Yawk. How could he keep his feet warm in those Keds?
Two Moons sipped coffee and ate his dinner as Katz finally freed the now-silent pager. Over by the pastry case, the multipierced Goth waitress who’d served them-or tried to-stood gazing into space. She’d taken their order with vacant eyes, then had proceeded to the coffee machines, where the detectives watched her spend six straight minutes foaming Katz’s Green Tea Chai Latte. Six and a half, to be precise: The detectives had timed her.
Staring into the foam, like it held some kind of big cosmic secret.
Darrel and Katz had exchanged knowing glances, then Two Moons had muttered under his breath about what was really cooking in the back room. Katz had cracked up, his big red mustache rising and falling. This month, another team was handling narcotics.
Katz studied the number on the pager and said, “Dispatch.” A bit more fumbling in another pocket and he produced his little blue cell phone.
Another meal cut short. Two Moons ate fast as Katz called in. He’d ordered as close to normal as possible at this loony bin: a mushroom burger with chipotle-spiced home fries and sliced tomatoes. Specifying no sprouts, but they’d stuck a tumbleweed of the stuff on his plate anyway. Darrel hated it; it reminded him of cattle fodder. Or something picked out of a comb. Just looking at it made him want to spit. He removed it and wrapped it in a napkin, whereupon Katz immediately grabbed it and snarfed it down.
If it were up to Katz, they’d be here every night. Darrel conceded that the food was consistently good, but atmosphere was another issue. With its snaky walkway embedded with pebbles and shards of mirror glass, antiwar petitions tacked to the Technicolor walls of the tiny entry, and cell-like rooms full of mismatched thrift shop furniture and incense fumes, Karma was what his gunnery sergeant father used to call “hippie-dippie left-wing lunacy crap.”
Somewhere along the way, his father had changed, but Darrel’s army-brat upbringing stuck with him. Give him a burger and plain old fries in politically neutral surroundings.
Katz reached dispatch. The office had been moved out of Santa Fe PD to the county building on Highway 14-police, fire, city, county, everything integrated-and most of the dispatchers were no longer familiar voices. But this time was different: Katz smiled and said, “Hey, Loretta, what’s up?”
Then his face grew serious, and the big copper-wire mustache drooped. “Oh… Yeah, sure… Where?… You’re kidding.”
He hung up. “Guess what, Big D?”
Darrel chomped on his burger, swallowed. “Serial killer.”
“Half correct,” said Katz. “Just a killer. Blunt-force homicide on Canyon.”
Canyon Road was very high-rent, just east of the Plaza in the Historic District, a narrow, leafy, quiet, pretty place lined with gated compounds and galleries and expensive cafés. The hub of Santa Fe ’s art scene.
Darrel’s pulse rate quickened from forty to fifty. “Private residence, right? Not a gallery at this hour.”
“Oh, a gallery, amigo,” said Katz, standing and sliding into the ratty gray coat. “Very much a gallery. The d.b.”s Larry Olafson.“
2
Hands encased in buckskin gloves, Two Moons drove, gripping the wheel as the car coasted down Paseo de Peralta, the main street that horseshoed around the city center. Snowdrifts lay across the piñon branches and juniper brush, but the road was clear. It was three weeks before Christmas, and the farolitos with their muted sepia candlelight rested on rooftops all over the town. As usual, the trees in the Plaza had been strung with multicolored lights. Still plenty of time, Darrel figured, to head over to the outlets and buy presents for Kristin and the girls-if he could ever get some time off.
And now this.
Of all people.
Lawrence Leonard Olafson had hit Santa Fe ten years ago like one of those sudden summer storms that shatter the sky in midafternoon and turn the desert air electric.
Unlike a summer downpour, Olafson had stuck around.
The son of a teacher and a bookkeeper, he’d attended Princeton on scholarship, graduated with a BA in finance and a minor in art history, and surprised everyone by eschewing Wall Street. Instead, he’d taken an entry-level scut job at Sotheby’s-gofering for a haughty American Paintings specialist. Learning what sold and what didn’t, learning that art collecting could be a disease for some, a pathetic attempt to social-climb for others. Kissing butt and fetching coffee and making the right kind of friends and moving up quickly. Three years later, he was department head. A year after that, he negotiated a better deal at Christie’s and took a bevy of rich clients with him. Another eighteen months and he was managing a white-glove gallery on upper Madison, selling European as well as American. Cementing more connections.
By age thirty, he owned his own place in the Fuller Building on West 57th, a high-ceilinged, softly lit vault where he peddled Sargents and Hassams and Friesekes and Heades and third-rate Flemish florals to Old Money and Slightly Newer Money Pretending to Be Old Money.
Within three years, he’d opened his second venture: Olafson South, on 21st Street in Chelsea, heralded by a soiree covered in the Voice. Lou Reed music, sunken-eyed Euro-trash, prep school arrivistes, and neo-moneyed dotcommers vying for cutting-edge contemporary pictures.
Juggling both locations, Olafson made a fortune, married a corporate attorney, had a couple of kids, and bought a ten-room, park-view co-op on Fifth and 79th. Solidified yet more connections.
Despite a few rough patches.
Like the trio of Albert Bierstadt Yosemite paintings sold to a Munich banking heir that was most likely the work of a lesser painter-the experts’ best guess was Hermann Herzog. Or the unsigned Richard Miller garden scene unearthed at an Indianapolis estate sale and flipped overnight to a Chicago pharmaceuticals heir who displayed it in his Michigan Avenue penthouse with great hubris until the painting’s provenance was shown to reek.
There’d been a few more misadventures over the years, but each incident was tucked safely away from the media because the purchasers didn’t want to look stupid. Besides, Olafson had been quick to take the paintings back and make full restitution, offering sincere apologies and claiming honest error.
Everything was going swimmingly until middle age took root, a time when everyone who was anyone in New York went through some kind of life-enhancing, soul-altering major spiritual change. At forty-eight, Olafson found himself divorced, estranged from his children, restless, and ready to conquer new vistas. Something quieter, and though he’d never abandon New York, Olafson had begun to crave a clear contrast to the New York pace. The Hamptons didn’t cut it.