The front door chimes weren’t quite as loud as the Vatican’s on Easter Sunday, but they were close. The pope didn’t come to the door. Apparently, I didn’t even rate a parish priest. A chubby, rather pleasant-faced black woman in her forties in a nurse’s get-up came to the door instead.
“How can I help you?” Her voice lilted with the song of Haiti.
“Mrs. Barrows-Willingham, please.”
“Who is calling?”
“Just give her this, okay?” I handed the nurse a folded piece of paper and a business card. “She’ll understand.”
“ D’accord, okay. Ne quittez pas, just a moment, please.”
She disappeared, closing the door behind her and locking it. Nothing so welcoming as a closing door and a deadbolt clicking shut in your face. I wasn’t fretting over it. The lady of the house would be coming to fetch me soon enough. The deadbolt clicked open and the mighty glass and wood door pulled back once again. Standing there in all her pinched glory was Mrs. Sonia Barrows-Willingham, only she hadn’t come to fetch me. No, instead, she stepped out of the house, pulling the door closed behind her. She smelled of cigarettes and decay. I guess I half expected her to look scared at being found out. Wrong again. She looked positively thrilled… well, as much as a dour-faced woman could look thrilled.
“Oh, I’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t I, Mr. Prager? Have you come to spank me, to threaten me, or blackmail me? Whichever it is, please get to it, I’ve got a husband up on the third floor who insists upon dying by the inch and he’s in a particular amount of distress today.”
She was good, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham, very good. She was prodding me, probing to see just what kind of manipulation I was susceptible to. I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. This clenched fist of a woman who had the largest collection of Sashi Bluntstone’s works used her spare time to go online and rip Sashi apart. Her blog was called Sushi Cuntstone Cooks and offered recipes, the ingredients of which included raw bits of Sashi Bluntstone’s anatomy. And the dishes were served on trays and in Bento boxes inspired by Sashi’s paintings.
“Sushi Cuntstone, very cute, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham. I particularly like your recipes for Sashi-me.”
She laughed or made a little barking noise, which I supposed passed for laughter, and looked at me I was like a main course. “Candy told me about you, that she was thinking of hiring you. You know, Mr. Prager, I get the impression that she has a father fixation on you, but one with a rather disturbing sexual element to it.”
“We weren’t talking about Candy.” I made sure to stay calm. “We were discussing your twisted hobby.”
“Oh, do grow up, Mr. Prager. Welcome to the new millennium. Sashi Bluntstone as an entity is as much my creation as any of her paintings are hers. You might ask sweet Candy about that when next you two speak. I arranged for Sashi’s first showings. I bought her first paintings. I created a market for her work. Me, not that buffoon Max, not Candy, not that fool Randolph Junction. Me! And in this new age, there is no market without controversy. Yes, Mr. Prager, I even helped create that. Who was it, do you suppose, who whispered in the ears of people like Nathan Martyr, a man who in spite of his legendary shortcomings and lack of talent as an artist, worked and studied very hard to achieve whatever success he managed? Can you even imagine how painful it is for the many worthy artists in the world who toil in poverty and rejection to swallow the success of the Sashi Bluntstones and Thomas Kinkades of the world?”
“I think I can.” I wasn’t lying. I remembered the bitter taste in my mouth when guys who couldn’t find their own dicks without a road map made detective. No one said life was fair and the job was even less fair than the rest of life. So I had to swallow it as the parade of gold shields passed me by. Yeah, I knew exactly how those other artists felt.
“Well, then you must understand the need and inevitability of blogs like Sushi Cuntstone Cooks and all the others. Resentment, jealousy, envy are in endless supply and they help drive the market. It’s part of an investment strategy, nothing more.”
“Okay, I get that. I also get that Sashi’s paintings have plummeted in value over the last years and I look around and I see who has the most to gain from her disappearance. That would be you, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham.”
“Indeed. An astute assessment on your part. My collection is now valued almost as highly as it was before the disappearance. In fact, I’ve recently added to it.”
“I know,” I said, “Forty grand worth.”
That caught her by surprise. “How could you know that? Did that ass Junction-”
“No, I was standing right there in the gallery, a few feet from you as the two of you bargained. I agree with you, that painting you bought is no ‘Red Waves.’”
“I underestimated you, Mr. Prager. Maybe Candy was right to seek your help. You seem a resourceful man. Try not to be big-headed about it, though. My husband was once a most resourceful man. Now he defecates into a bag and has a catheter shoved into his bladder through his penis.”
“Fair enough, so let me just ask. Did you-”
“No, I had nothing to do with Sashi’s disappearance. Once she was a delightful little girl. She has, however, become a rather dreadful and morbid child. I confess to feeling that about her, but I have no wish for harm to come to her, however much I might profit from it.”
“Oh, so you have your limits?”
“Some, yes. As much as I would profit, the money is almost beside the point. The ground under the garage on this property is worth more than all of Sashi’s paintings at their highest value. My husband is quite wealthy and I didn’t exactly enter the marriage as a pauper. So, no, Mr. Prager, I do so hate to disappoint you, but I had nothing to do with Sashi’s going missing.”
“Did you know that she was kidnapped, that there was a ransom demand?”
Again, she seemed caught off guard, as if she were looking for a left jab and I landed flush with a straight right to her liver. “I’ve heard nothing about that.”
“You will. My guess is the story will break later today. Even so,” I said, “it means she may not be dead and all the value that got built back up will vanish.” She didn’t like that and I piled it on. “What’s the matter, Sonia, I thought it wasn’t about the money?”
“Please excuse me, I have to get back inside.”
“One more thing.”
“If you must.”
“If Candy came to you for ransom money, would you help her?”
A crooked line appeared where Barrows-Willingham’s mouth used to be. “We will just have to see about that, won’t we. Good day to you, Mr. Prager.”
I stood stone still and watched her retreat back into her house. I actually reached around and touched the butt of my. 38. I thought about shooting her through the door, but realized that as much sawdust would come out of her when the bullet passed through as would come out of the door.
TWENTY
Jimmy Palumbo was waiting out front of his house at four so we could head into the city without wasting time. While his place was a bit worse for wear with several mismatched cedar shakes on the front facade, a missing downspout on the garage gutter, the lawn ragged, and the bushes untidy and overgrown, it wouldn’t take much to get it back into nice shape. And though it wasn’t in the same class as the Barrows-Willinghams’ massive Gold Coast manor, Jimmy’s house was on a fairly secluded, lovely street south of Montauk Highway in Babylon. It was also appealing because all the lots down here had docks in their backyards on West Babylon Creek that led out past Santapogue Point and into the Great South Bay, Fire Island, and the Atlantic beyond. I knew the area pretty well because one of our biggest wine customers belonged to a nearby yacht club and had taken Aaron and me out on his boat a few times.