Rinaldo was a fixture of the downtown scene, a poet, a sponger, a scene maker. And he had a legend. I mean, the name demanded one. So he was the illegitimate son of a French Resistance fighter who abandoned him and a minor Mexican muralist who died young.
Rinaldo is a critic. Thirty years ago, the art magazines kind of used him to keep watch at the crossroads where art and the underground intersected. People were starting to pay attention to the downtown scene. Victor Sparger had started getting hot. Victor had gone through a careful rebellion, done graffiti, nailed broken glass onto boards. Rinaldo Baupre had a small part in his rise. But mostly Victor managed himself.
By then I’d met Louis Raphael through a young photographer, Norah Classon. Norah loved Louis like he was a little brother. He was this skinny, Caribbean kid, living on the street, bumming money and cigarettes and a couch to crash on.
I’m supposed to say I got knocked out the first time I looked at his work. Like everyone else apparently did. And that I could kick myself for not having the fifty bucks or whatever he was charging for a painting. In reality, the first time Norah talked me into letting Louis stay at my place I was pissed off because he got paint on my walls. And he was apologetic and cleaned it up. That was shortly before Rinaldo discovered Raphael. Like Columbus finding America is how my wife described it. That is, America was always there, big and rich and unexploited. A lot of Indians knew about America. But Columbus talked it up where it counted.
Rinaldo was the same way. Others had the goods. But he had the contacts. And a talent for spinning. Most people can’t do it. Publicity is the magic that spins gold. And once Mr. Baupre had done that for you, he never let you forget it. Rinaldo was always real nice with me. He was too smart to insult headwaiters or gate keepers. To our faces. And I was always polite enough. But I’d gotten to see him in action with Norah Classon.
To give him credit, he saw what she had done and made sure that others noticed too. Of course, then he wanted her first born. For Norah in the days before she had children, that meant her work. And he claimed a major chunk. “Oh, this is beautiful! Darling, I must have it!” That kind of thing. He told people that he hadn’t just discovered Norah Classon, he had shaped her art.
Norah I were stepping out back then. She had gotten a one woman Soho show. He wrote the auction catalog and wanted his name bigger than hers. When she objected, he decided to sink the whole deal.
One night in the packed bathroom at the Mudd Club, I was trying to fight my way through to the can. And I heard the unmistakable voice of Mr. Baupre saying, “I’m the only hose in this hick town gas station. You want fuel baby, you line up here. The spot right where you’re standing is where I discovered Louis Raphael. You don’t know who he is!”
Someone said something I couldn’t make out, a couple of other people got mentioned. Then I heard Norah’s name and Rinaldo said, “Not if she begged. Ms. Classon is over and done. She’s screwing doormen now. The next step is busboys.”
And, yeah, I saw red. But I knew that decking Rinaldo wouldn’t help Norah. These days I’ve got a private investigator license. I’m entitled to carry a gun if I ever want to. But a Swiss Army knife is about all I usually pack.
Back then, I was still learning. I already knew enough, though, to stand aside and wait.
As Rinaldo made his way out of the room, he looked at something in his hand, grimaced and threw it aside. Curious, I recovered it and stepped out of the club. Under a light on Milk Street, I unfolded a matchbook for the Thunder Ranch Bar and Grill in Wilkes-Barre. Thinking it was a joke or a camp, I was ready to toss it aside.
And this figure appeared, a radiant being, I guess I’d say. My first thought was that you were an acid flashback from the sixties. Then you spoke one word. What you said was,
Rumplestiltskin.
I didn’t remember any hunter in that story. But I went home and re-read it slowly, taking my time with every word like always. The girl whose future depends on her weaving straw into gold and the little man who appears and does it for her fit perfectly. She becomes queen but he’s going to take her child if she can’t guess his name. I still didn’t see where I fit in. Then I reached the part where the queen sends out a messenger to scour the countryside for the secret name.
He’s the one who comes back just before the little man appears to claim the baby and says, “At the edge of the forest where the fox and the hare say good night to each other … ”
What he goes on to tell her is that he’s seen a bonfire and a little man dancing and heard the song with the name Rumplestiltskin in it. But that stuff about the fox and the rabbit gives him away. He’s a hunter. It makes sense. Who else would she have sent out to comb the woods?
So I made a couple of calls, took a little trip down to Pennsylvania. I found the trailer park outside Wilkes-Barre where a certain Mona Splevetsky lived.
Oh, there was a dance and a song all right. Thursday was polka night at the Thunder Ranch and I got her drunk and she boogied and told me all about her son Marvin.
For people like Rinaldo their most important creation is themselves. With anyone else I would have called it the old and sorry tale of an unhappy kid who leaves his past behind. But I wasted little sympathy on Mr. Baupre.
Unlike Rumplestiltskin, Rinaldo didn’t put his foot through the floor when Norah Classon said the name Marvin Splevetsky. He was real angry. But it had so much power over him that he begged her to keep it secret and gave her back her career.
3
Areminder of my next case is also here at Ling’s Fortune Cookie tonight. That scary looking lady waiting for Victor Sparger to appear is Edith Crann, the producer of Raphael! The guy with her is an Italian industrialist. Her fourth husband. Edith’s face is amazing, tragic but unlined, pained but cold, crazy but contained.
Bankrolling the film was a way of enhancing her investments. Edith Crann was the first important buyer of Louis’ work. She had no idea of why it was good. But Rinaldo advised her and took a commission.
In the movie, Rinaldo and Victor have turned Edith into Louis Raphael’s muse. It seems that the tragedy of losing her daughter is supposed to have made her sensitive to the plight of a kid thrown out on the street by his family.
Back at the time their daughter disappeared, I worked for Edith and her first husband, Harris Crann. I had been hired as a bodyguard-chauffeur for young Alycia. It didn’t take me long to recognize Mrs. Crann.
Everyone around knew she was an evil queen or a wicked stepmother. The only question was which story. Cinderella? Hansel and Gretel? I heard bartenders and waitresses, people who had worked for her, actually discuss this.