Paperback Jack, page 8
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Phil Scarpetti wasn’t listed in the Manhattan directory, which delayed Jacob’s decision to make contact. He didn’t like drop-ins, much less being one, and based on Elk’s comments about the artist’s personality, he doubted he’d be turned away with anything approaching politeness.
He was more afraid of his own reaction. In his youth, he had accepted social slights peacefully (“taken shit,” in barracks lingo). He no longer knew that person. The incident that first time in Pickering’s pawnshop had made him aware of something inside him, something disturbing that might come to the surface suddenly and without warning. The army spent six weeks training a man to act on reflex, without thinking, and no time at all retraining him to use his brain when the crisis was over.
For all his show of British understatement, Elk wasn’t subtle. The day after their lunch, a special-delivery package came containing color reproductions of Scarpetti’s cover paintings: Plainly the publisher didn’t want him to forget his advice to pump the ex-convict for dirt.
Here was the standard paperback palette of bright primaries, the brute imagery. But the brushstrokes were savage: raw slashes, with scant concern for composition or perspective. And unlike the work of other Blue Devil artists, the faces and figures weren’t stamped from a mold. They looked like flesh-and-blood types you saw on the street, each unique. Real people, caught in moments of naked emotion: pain, lust, hate, terror. The images approached vivisection.
There was one Jacob kept staring at: A man in his underwear, sitting on the edge of a mattress in a dingy hotel room, a pistol dangling from his hand between bare knees, a woman in a slip sprawled dead at his feet. His face buried in his other hand expressed a depth of despair beyond imagining.
This was no marketing tool. It was a purge.
Damn Elk, anyway. He had to seek Scarpetti out, if only to catch a glimpse of the animal in its cage.
* * *
The bus carried him away from twentieth-century New York, letting him off in the collapsed and twisted spinal column of old New Amsterdam, where streets doubled back on themselves, running parallel and perpendicular at the same time, with tiny unexpected parks scattered like divots, each equipped with its anonymous equestrian statue. Armed with a tourist’s map from the bus station, he wandered streets barely wide enough to admit a rickshaw, almost colliding with an old woman pushing a cart loaded with piles of steaming onion-smelling dough, and asked for directions three times, until he stood in front of a block warehouse with bricked-in windows and a bay door secured with a padlock. The address, spray-painted on cement, was the one Elk had given him. He turned two corners before he found an unsealed door. When no one answered his knocks he tried the pitted brass knob. It turned and the door opened on freshly oiled hinges—an encouraging sign of life beyond.
“Watch it, brother! You want to lose an eye?”
He froze, his hand still on the knob. The voice, middle-register masculine, caromed off the walls long after it finished. After bright sunshine on snow, the interior was dark as a cave.
“Fire in the hole!”
There was a flash, a sharp crack followed by a wet smack, and a blinding burst of color. Jacob hit the dirt from instinct.
His ears were still ringing when the man spoke again. “Sorry about that, soldier. You never know what you’re barging into this deep in the Village.”
He rose and brushed off dust. His eyes had adjusted. The room was vast. At the far end stood an eight-foot slab of stretched canvas, propped up like a flat on a stage set. A sheet, stained many colors, curtained it on either side. A splotch of violent red and yellow splattered the canvas, running down in rivulets and pooling on the drop cloth at the base. It looked like an evil blossom. On the floor just this side of it slumped the remains of what looked like an army knapsack, burst and smoldering; the odor of scorched cloth filled the room. Wires ran from inside the sack to a two-by-four construction in a corner, braced like a railroad barricade. A man stepped out from behind it, wearing a filthy smock and welder’s goggles. He carried a demolition box with a plunger handle. The wires were attached to terminals fixed to the sides.
Just as he made his appearance, the nibbling flame found something it liked inside the knapsack and flared up two feet, pouring black smoke into the rafters. Hurriedly, the man in the smock traded the box for a copper-and-brass fire extinguisher, trotted over, and snuffed out the blaze with a whoosh. The chemical stench was suffocating.
“Can’t be too careful. Sometimes a charge goes off late. I lost a week’s work last time, and almost an arm.”
Jacob studied the man, but could make out nothing beyond blank lenses and shapeless cotton. “How’d you know I was a soldier?”
“If you don’t want people to know, next time don’t dive. Most people straighten up and clap their hands over their ears. But then, most people knock first.”
“I did. Three times.”
“Shit, I forgot.” He set down the extinguisher and pulled two inches of cotton batting out of each ear. “I thought you were a mumbler.”
“Are you Scarpetti?”
“Who the hell else did you expect to find in this dump? And who the hell are you?”
“Jacob Heppleman.”
“Never heard of you.”
“Robin Elk gave me your address. He might have mentioned me as Jack Holly.”
The goggles went up and down in a nod. “Should’ve known it was an alias. Name like that, I expected a guy with a diamond on his pinky. I liked Chinese Checkers. Wish Elk had gone to me for the cover. Red Cooper loads his brushes like spackle.”
“I’m with you. I’ve seen your work.”
Jacob grasped a hand stained indelibly, corded on the back with veins as thick as hydraulic cables. The grip came just short of punishing. Scarpetti stood just medium height; he looked taller at a distance. When he took off the goggles, they left a perfect mask of clean olive-colored flesh inside a palimpsest of paint. His hair was cut in a flattop, marine style. He had a rectangular face with high cheekbones and a mitered chin; everything about him was square and sharp, like one of those drafting knives with a blade you broke off in sections to get to a fresh edge. Straight lips and good teeth in a smile that didn’t look as if it came cheap. Jacob put him at thirty, although he might skew younger after a good scrubbing.
He found the face familiar. In a flash he knew why. It belonged to all the men in Scarpetti’s paintings. The superficial things—hair, coloring, expression—that had made each appear unique were an illusion; a disguise to obscure the fact that the artist served as his own model.
Jacob realized he was staring. He gestured at the canvas.
“I didn’t figure you for abstraction.”
“Horseshit. You have to be half-mad to be a genius like Picasso, and I’ve got paying work due tomorrow. Geniuses don’t work on the clock.”
“Elk thinks you’re a genius.”
“Dimbulbs generally do. Hank Stratton’s got a bank robber blowing himself up in his next, with a dynamite belt gone wrong. I’m trying for the effect of blood, bones, entrails, and fire all going up in one big splat.”
“You’re right. It’s horseshit.”
Scarpetti’s mouth fell open. Then the good teeth met in a grin.
“Damn! I knew I liked you the minute you hit the deck. You can’t fake real. This is a shortcut, and it stinks. I was sure when I read your stuff you were an artist.”
“I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. But for weeks now everyone’s been telling me to fake it and no one will know the difference. I would. Could you hang a picture you knew something was wrong with on your own wall and live with it?”
Scarpetti met this with no expression at all; a talent Jacob envied. It would have saved him a bundle at poker.
“Are you a drinking man?” the artist said. “Just say you are, even if you throw it in a potted plant. I’ve been saving a bottle of grappa that drunken prick Hemingway gave me when I told him to take his war novel and shove it up his ass: for my wedding, I thought. Only the bitch ran off with a guy that sells pink flamingos.”
“I’m a drinking man,” Jacob said. “And I don’t see a plant in the joint.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The living area was in a loft at the top of an open flight of stairs only slightly less steep than a ladder. An icebox, a chipped enamel sink, and a pump-up gas stove shared the space with a tired armchair and a bed on an iron frame. Bricks had been removed from a window extending below the floor to let in light; old mortar hammocked the corners of the panes like snow. A fluorescent ring shed pale illumination on brown linoleum. The place smelled of stale grease and mineral spirits.
Scarpetti swung open the oven door on squawking hinges and removed a fat jug that at one time might have contained bleach. New York bachelors never baked, it seemed.
At least Jacob assumed his host had stayed single after the pink-flamingo episode. The female touch was patently absent. A paint-streaked wooden stepladder made a drying rack for an odd number of socks.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay on here.” Scarpetti filled a pair of mismatched glasses with clear liquid from the jug. He’d shed his smock, which had been only partially successful in protecting his flannel shirt and dungarees from spatters. “I only pay rent on the loft. The owner lets me use the rest of the place as a studio, but he wants to put in apartments as soon as he can get his hands on the material. The war slowed everything up.”
“Did you serve?”
“They don’t take convicted felons.” His tone was the same as if he’d said he had flat feet.
Jacob accepted a glass and toured the space. Finished canvases hung unframed on bare brick and leaned against it in stacks. He recognized the originals of the prints Elk had sent, among startling new scenes of cigarette-smoking teenagers lounging in alley doorways, beetle-browed army sergeants encircling an undernourished private in a barracks, a woman caught in broad daylight wearing makeup intended for a neon-lit bar, looking like a pathetic clown abandoned by the circus. In every picture, it seemed as if something violent had just happened or was just about to.
“I’ve seen some of these places around town. Do you paint on location?”
“Sketch. Set up an easel anywhere in this burg and in two minutes you’ve got a crowd. I can’t stand people looking over my shoulder when I work.”
“Models?”
“Paint ’em in later. Pay ’em out of my fees. Elk runs his shop on the cheap, using the same models over and over. That’s why all Blue Devil covers look alike. The Chinese girl on Chinese Checkers is a Filipino spy on Mindanao Massacre and a Japanese masseuse on Tokyo Nights.”
This coming from a man who painted himself almost exclusively; but Jacob resisted saying it. “You can’t have much left after paying your own models.”
“I don’t use professionals. They all come with the same stock poses. Getting ’em to break out is like trying to coax a milk horse off its route. Give me a file clerk or a gypsy cab driver. Does that look graceful to you?” He pointed his glass at a woman shrinking away from a man’s raised hand on the floor of a dime-a-dance club. Her lipstick was smeared, her eyes wide, like a wild animal’s.
“Not at all.”
“A pro would’ve done Camille. When it comes to a woman taking a beating, the awkwarder the better. All I had to tell her was what was going on. You just know she’s been there. I found her slinging drinks in a dive on Twenty-Second.”
“When I saw you I thought they were self-portraits.”
“The men, you mean.”
Odd thing to say.
He rolled a shoulder. “There’s a piece of me in all of ’em. Isn’t there some of you in the people you write?”
“Sure. You spend a lot of time scouting prospects.”
“Not really. It’s like deer hunting. Pick your spot, sit down, and sooner or later one walks right up to you. Sometimes it’s pure accident. I was browsing for neckties in Macy’s when I found that palooka there, the one in his BVDs with the dead blonde. Selling men’s cologne.”
“He doesn’t look like it.”
“That was the idea.”
Jacob sipped his drink. It took his breath away. It was pure grain alcohol, a step removed from the paint thinner he was breathing. “What is grappa, anyway?”
“It’s made from the skins and stems left over after they crush the grapes. Hemingway practically lived on it in Spain. It’s cheaper than gin. Makes a terrific aftershave.” Scarpetti climbed onto the bed, propping himself up with pillows. The springs brayed. “Elk said to expect you. He thinks I know everybody on the wrong side of the tracks from Frank Costello on down.”
“Did he say why I wanted to see you?”
“He told me about The Fence. Swell idea. Don’t know why nobody’s done it already. You don’t know any fences?”
“He said I should wing it.”
“The dope. Without a true bill your pet crook would look like Clark Gable and talk like David Niven. And I wouldn’t be doing the cover.”
Jacob sat in the chair. He sank down until his knees were higher than his waist. The grappa was beginning to take effect. The heat climbed his ribs and burned his ears. He got bold. “Did you really pull a stick-up?”
Scarpetti took cigarettes and matches from his shirt pocket, offered the pack. Jacob shook his head. The artist lit one for himself. “I was a stupid kid. I read a piece about Dillinger in Liberty, stole a pint of Four Roses from a drugstore, drank it all in the alley, and went back in waving a Boy Scout knife. Cops were already there. The druggist called them after I swiped the liquor.”
“Elk said you got ten years. Kind of stiff for a kid his first time out.”
“Who said it was my first?”
He dodged that one. “Did you study art in prison?”
“A guy on my block taught it in junior high till the janitor caught him with a girl in the seventh grade. I started out drawing oranges and boxes on the floor by my bunk; by the time I got sprung I was painting the warden’s portrait in oils. You can trade with the guards for almost anything but a nude model.” He grinned. “Yeah, I asked.”
“What was your first professional job?”
“Pen-and-ink illo for Silk Sheets. The art director liked the way I draw tits. Those porno rags could afford to hire nudes.”
Jacob liked Scarpetti. He hadn’t expected to like anyone in the paperback jungle. “How come you still know underworld characters?”
“See, that’s why you need me. You say ‘underworld’ around these gorillas, they’ll feed you to the rats. Why shouldn’t I know them? Not all my models came from Macy’s.”
“Fence shops?”
“Fence shops, flophouses; a newsstand on Tenth Avenue where the black market boys hang out looking for tips. I learned enough in stir to give ’em the office.”
“What if they find out you’re sharing their secrets?”
“Well, if you tell on me, it’ll make Elk awful mad. If I’m in the river he’ll have to use his hacks exclusive.”
“Why risk your neck for me? We just met.”
“I like the fence idea. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life dressing up Hank Stratton’s rotten private eye stories. Listen, you write this the way you wrote Chinese Checkers, I’ll make you a cover they could hang in the Louvre. If Elk holds up his end, you’ll blast Lash Logan out of every barbershop in the country.”
“I wouldn’t enjoy it if the art’s posthumous.”
“Don’t worry; I’m no Baby LeRoy.” He looked at a strap watch. “Help yourself to the vino while I go make a call. I don’t keep a phone in the house. The damn things always ring when I’m painting a nostril. Nostrils, that’s the secret. Get one wrong, you turn Rita Hayworth into Boris Karloff. My answering service is a bartender down the street.” He threw on a paint-stained cotton jacket Jacob had thought was a drop cloth and went out the door.
Jacob didn’t pour any more wine. He wasn’t really much for drink. He got up to clear the fog, studying the paintings. The man was too good for this racket.
He toured an arsenal of painters’ props: blackjacks, pistols, assorted daggers, a bullwhip. He recognized some of the items from Scarpetti’s covers. A pipe rack contained chalk-striped suits, low-cut dresses, and lacy lingerie. A clothes tree was a haberdashery of fedoras, cloches, straw boaters, women’s evening headgear clustered with feathers and sequins. Tawdry costume jewelry spilled from a dresser drawer. After this, a visit to a genuine fencing operation might prove a disappointment.
He found a shabby black portfolio and spread it open on the bed. He was snooping now. It was packed with charcoal sketches on coarse paper, signed with smudged fingerprints: male and female nudes, landscapes, the Central Park pedestrian tunnel, details of hands and feet, a caricature he recognized immediately as Hedda Hopper. The more serious studies bore no resemblance to the subjects Scarpetti used in his cover art: The female nudes were middle-aged and paunchy, the males anti-heroic, with homely or ordinary features and little muscle definition. One of the women was several months pregnant.
“You found my doodles.”
He jumped. Scarpetti had made no noise re-entering. Jacob slapped the portfolio shut and turned.
“Sorry. I’m a nosy jerk.”
“Forget it. I’m just glad you didn’t find my opium pipe.” Scarpetti poured himself another drink. “I wanted to study in Paris, but it kept changing hands. I’d go now, only I can’t take the time. I’m too damn successful for my own good.” He sat on the bed. “You’re all set. Saturday night, six o’clock, one-eleven East Fourth.”
“Rough neighborhood.”
“You won’t find what you’re looking for on Park Avenue. Saturday’s when Irish Mickey drops in to see how much his people are stealing from him. You don’t want to miss him.”
“Irish Mickey’s your fence?”
“Mickey Shannon. The name he raced under, anyway. Back then, the owners liked their liquor from Kentucky and their jockeys from County Cork. His real name’s Isidore Muntz. Don’t tell him I said that. His fuse is even shorter than he is.”
