I tuck it in my pocket and then blurt my question to Lynne. “Do you know anything about the cloth behind the figure in ‘Disappearances’?”
Lynne frowns. “The cloth? What about it?” Her question drips with distrust.
Predictable heat floods my cheeks. “It looks like it was painted in a rush.”
“It probably was,” says Lynne. “She told me she wasn’t finished.” She turns to Hendricks. “She wanted to finish it.” Her voice cracks. “She was not suicidal.”
“No,” says Hendricks. “I don’t think so either.” He looks at me again, with sober eyes. “At least not in the conventional sense.”
“Excuse me?” says Lynne.
He turns to her.
“Maybe she didn’t run away,” he says, “even though she knew someone wanted her dead.” He shrugs and reaches out with his palm open, toward a massive all-black canvas propped beside Lynne, as if he sees something hidden inside it. “Or maybe she did.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t touch that,” snaps Lynne. “It’s a Stella.”
Hendricks takes a step back, still absorbed in the painting.
“No, I wouldn’t,” he says in a gentle, respectful tone. “It looks ugly enough as it is.”
I leave them before I can fully hide the smirk on my face.
15
Within the next hour, I lie three times.
First I lie to Jayme, who wants to know what behind-the-scenes stories I’ve gathered for the museum’s annual report.
“I’ve done a few interviews,” I fib. “I already finished the write-up of Evie’s.”
Then I lie to Kaye, who calls with a twang of payback in her voice for my drunken behavior at her post-cancer party. She can’t believe they’ve arrested Shaw and wants to know how I’m holding up, it’s so crazy, is there really a killer on the loose, and oh my God, she can’t even get tickets to the exhibition for three whole weeks, do I think there’s a way I can just sneak her and a couple of her survivor friends in today?
“I wish,” I say, and fumble through an excuse about the fire marshal counting the people in the galleries. “Next week?”
Then I lie to the ArtNoise fact checker who calls about Kevin’s article. “I’m in a meeting right now, but fax me the article and I’ll look at it.” I hang up on her protests.
Then I tell the truth to Phil and Spike, because it is impossible to fib to two grown men wearing fisherman sweaters and Andy Warhol wigs, and carrying sitars. “We did some busking outside today,” says Phil. “How much do you think we made?”
“Honestly?” I say. “Nothing.”
“We had our fifteen cents of fame,” says Phil. “Hey, you could wear a blond wig and be part of our revue. Then we could be Edie Sedgwick and the Andies.”
“Maggie is blond,” Spike points out.
“Yeah, but not the right kind,” says Phil.
I tell them I don’t know how to play the sitar anyway.
“Neither do we. Chad traded us three lessons in exchange for designing his flyers,” says Spike. “He’s an awful instructor, though.”
Chad, as in Yegina’s ex-husband.
“Wretched,” says Phil, sliding the Warhol flop back to expose his broad brow. “Does not bode well for the new business.”
“Business?” I say.
“Teaching music to spoiled Silver Lake kids. Like us,” Spike says. He raises his hand and whack-strums the instrument, Pete Townshend style.
“He’s started a music blog, too,” says Phil. “It’s wildly popular with his mother.”
I don’t have time to listen to more twin patter, because it’s almost ten o’clock. So I feign extreme frowning over my copyediting until they trundle away, instruments banging their sides. Moments later, here’s my chance: Juanita T. Filippa, senior assistant to the director, is following Bas to the elevator. Juanita is wearing her usual conservative navy suit and alert but expressionless gaze, and I wonder what she thinks of the recent events. She is one of the Rocque’s oldest employees, and her manner seems to belong to another era, when cultural legitimacy was dispensed by a ruling class rather than earned from the masses. A thin gold bracelet slides along her arm as she presses the down button.
I wait until the elevator doors close, then another two minutes to make sure Juanita and Bas have reached the ground floor. In the dozen steps it takes me to round the maroon wall of cubes to Juanita’s, my heart starts beating so fast it feels like a flash mob is assembling in my chest.
Juanita T. Filippa has served as assistant to every director the Rocque has ever had. She is a broad woman, but not fat, with brown hair that she puffs into a smooth bob above small gold hoops always glowing in her ears. She sits twenty feet from my door, but I’ve never heard her on the phone. She doesn’t go out for lunch, and whatever she eats, she must consume with catlike neatness, because her desk gleams, crumb-free, under tidy stacks and files. She signs every e-mail with her full name and her full title. If Juanita has any unkind feelings toward the office’s congregation of raging egos, she keeps them inside. If she has a sense of humor, it must be buried somewhere deeper than the tar pits on La Brea.
I know Juanita keeps two calendars, one in a blue leather cover that she brings to meetings, and one on her computer. I figure it will be easier to check the handwritten calendar because I don’t need a password. I stand in the threshold to her cube’s neat expanse, scanning for blue: Upright file marked TO DO. Horizontal file stacked with bills and invoices. Headpiece for phone calls. Virgin Mary candle, the kind you’d buy at a botanica. Framed photograph of a grinning boy, the print faded in such a way that I know the boy is much older now, possibly grown. No blue calendar. The computer screen is dark. I take a breath and step into the cube.
“May I help you?”
Juanita is standing behind me. She’s so short I can see her pale scalp through her parted hair, but somehow it still feels like she’s looking down on me.
“Is that your son?” I say, wishing she would move so I could, so I don’t have to continue standing inside her private space. “He looks just like you.”
“Nephew,” she says, her eyes sweeping over my body as if she suspects I have something stashed under my clothes. “What is it you need?”
“Development said you might have a folder on Bas with his bio and background and stuff,” I say. “They want me to write a ‘meet the director’ type thing for a fund-raising campaign.”
She repeats my last sentence, sounding particularly doubtful. “Who in Development?” she says.
“Hiro Isami,” I say. How easily the lies are coming to me, Maggie of the butterfly earrings, who always stutters through the slightest falsehoods. “He’s new.”
There’s a pause as Juanita digests this, and then she finally steps aside. I stagger out of the cubicle.
“I’ll put something together for you today,” she says, pulling back her chair, sitting down.
I gasp my thanks and don’t dare look back as I leave her threshold. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I see she is waiting, unmoving, hands on her keyboard, screen dark, until I am out of sight. Only then do I hear the beep and sighs of her computer turning on.
16
Two hours later, I’m still wincing about Juanita’s suspicious eyes as I walk to the gym with Yegina, Evie, and Dee. Fortunately Yegina is holding forth on the latest board efforts to jettison our boss. Prominent local artists have begun to voice their concerns about the schlockification of the exhibition schedule. How can a museum founded to predict the future of art defend a glorified car show? “The road to mediocrity is paved with product placement,” said one. “When’s the Art of Cola show, next year?”
“I’m starting to feel sorry for Bas,” Yegina admits. “He came into my office this morning and asked how hard it would be to strike Art of the Race Car.”
Dee and I cheer the news, while Evie looks dazed at the work she’d have to undo. We wind our way between skyscrapers and reach a short down-flight of brick steps. The descent lifts me in my ribs.
“But do you know why?” I ask. “This sudden change of heart?”
“Because it’s a bad idea,” says Yegina, a new note of pride in her voice.