Hit List

Five

Keller speared a cube of cheese with a toothpick, helped himself to a glass of dry white wine. To his left, two young women clad entirely in black were chatting. “I can’t believe he really said that,” one announced. “I mean, just because you’re postmodern doesn’t mean you absolutely have to be an asshole.”

“ Chad would be just as big an asshole if he was a Dadaist,” the other replied. “He could be a Pre-Raphaelite, and you know what he’d be? He’d be a Pre-Raphaelite asshole.”

“I know,” the first one said. “But I still can’t believe he said that.”

They wandered off, leaving Keller to wonder who Chad was (aside from being an asshole) and what he’d said that was so hard to believe. If Chad had said it to him, he thought, he probably wouldn’t have understood it. He hadn’t understood most of the words the two women used, and he hadn’t understood anything of what Declan Niswander himself had had to say about the paintings on display.

The show’s brochure contained photographs of several of the works, along with a brief biography of the artist, a chronological listing of his one-man and group shows, and another list of the museums and private collections in which he was represented. The last two pages were given over to Niswander’s own explanation of what he’d been trying to do, and Keller knew what most of the words meant, but he couldn’t make head or tail out of the sentences. The man didn’t seem to be writing about art at all, but about philosophical determinism and the evanescence of imagery and casuistry as a transcendent phenomenon. Words Keller recognized, every one of them, but what were they doing all jumbled together like that?

The paintings, on the other hand, weren’t at all hard to understand. Unless there was something to them that he wasn’t getting, something that the two pages in the brochure might clarify for someone who spoke the language. That was possible, because Keller didn’t feel he himself understood art in a particularly profound way.

He hardly ever went to galleries, and only once before had he attended an opening. That had been a few years back, when he went to one in SoHo with a woman he’d seen a couple of times. The opening was her idea. The artist was an old friend of hers-an ex-lover, Keller figured-and she hadn’t wanted to show up unescorted. Keller had been introduced to the artist, a scruffy guy with a potbelly, whose paintings were drab and murky seas of brown and olive drab. He hadn’t wanted to say as much to the artist, and didn’t know what you were supposed to say, so he’d just smiled and kept his mouth shut. He figured that got you through most situations.

He tried the wine. It wasn’t very good, and it reminded him of the wine they’d served at that other opening. Maybe bad wine was part of the mystique, bad wine and rubbery cheese and people dressed in black. Black jeans, black T-shirts, black chinos, black turtlenecks and sweatshirts, and the occasional black sport jacket. Here and there a black beret.

Not everyone was wearing black. Keller had shown up in a suit and tie, and he wasn’t the only one. There was a variety of other attire, including a few women in dresses and a young man in white overalls spattered with paint. But there was, on balance, a great deal of black, and it was the men and women in black who looked most at home here.

Maybe there was a good reason for it. Maybe you wore black to an art gallery for the same reason you turned off your pager at a concert, so as to avoid distracting others from what had brought them there. That made a kind of sense, but Keller had the feeling there was more to it than that. He somehow knew that these people wore black all the time, even when they gathered in dimly lit coffeehouses with nothing on the walls but exposed brick. It was a statement, he knew, even if he wasn’t sure what was being stated.

You didn’t see nearly as much black at the museums. Keller went to museums now and then, and felt more at ease there than at private galleries. No one was lurking in the hope that you’d buy something, or waiting for you to express an opinion of the work. They just collected the admission fee and left you alone.

Declan Niswander’s paintings were representational. All things considered, Keller preferred it that way. There was plenty of abstract art he liked, and he tended to favor those artists he could recognize right off the bat. If you were going to make paintings that didn’t look like anything, at least you ought to shoot for an identifiable style. That way a person had something to grab hold of. One glance and you knew you were looking at a Mondrian or a Mirу or a Rothko or a Pollock. You might not have a clue what Mondrian or Mirу or Rothko or Pollock had in mind, but you wound up regarding them as old friends, familiar in their quirkiness.

Niswander’s work was realistic, but you didn’t feel like you were looking at color photographs. The paintings looked painted, and that seemed right to Keller. Niswander evidently liked trees, and that’s what he painted-slender young saplings, gnarled old survivors, and everything in between. There was a similarity-no question that you were looking at the work of a single artist, and not a group show in celebration of Arbor Day-but the paintings, united by their theme and by Niswander’s distinctive style, nevertheless varied considerably one from the next. It was as if each tree had its own essential nature, and that’s what came through and rendered the painting distinctive.

Keller stood in front of one of the larger canvases. It showed an old tree in winter, its leaves barely a memory, a few limbs broken, a portion of the trunk scarred by a lightning strike. You could sense the tree’s entire life history, he thought, and you could feel the power it drew from the earth, diminished over the years but still strongly present.

Of course you wouldn’t get any of that in Niswander’s little essay. The man had managed to fill two whole pages without once using the word tree. Keller was willing to believe the paintings weren’t just about trees-they were about light and form and color and arrangement, and they might even be about what Niswander claimed they were about-but the trees weren’t there by accident. You couldn’t paint them like that unless you honest-to-God knew what a tree was all about.

A woman said, “You can’t see the forest for them, can you?”

“You can imagine it,” Keller said.

“Now that’s very interesting,” she said, and he turned and looked at her. She was short and thin, and-surprise!-dressed all in black. Baggy black sweater and short black shirt, black panty hose and black suede slippers, a black beret concealing most of her short black hair. The beret was wrong for her, he decided. What she needed was a pointed hat. She looked like a witch, no question, but not an unattractive witch.

She cocked her head-now she looked like a witch trying to look like a bird-and looked frankly at Keller, then at the painting.

“There are a few artists who paint trees,” she said, “but it’s generally the same tree over and over again. But in Declan’s work they’re all different trees. So you really can imagine the forest. Is that what you meant?”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“Oh, sure you could,” she said, and a grin transformed her witch’s face. “Margaret Griscomb,” she said. “They call me Maggie.”

“John Keller.”

“And do they call you John?”

“Mostly they call me Keller.”

“Keller,” she said. “I kind of like that. Maybe that’s what I’ll call you. But don’t call me Griscomb.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Not until we know each other a great deal better than we do now. And probably not even then. But I wonder if we will.”

“Know each other better?”

“Because I’m good at this,” she said. “Chatting ever so engagingly with a fellow tree-lover. But I’m not very good at getting to know someone, or getting known in return. I seem to do better in superficial relationships.”

“Maybe that’s the kind we’ll have.”

“No depth. Everything on the surface.”

“Like a thin skin of ice on a pond in winter,” he said.

“Or the scum that forms on the top of a mug of hot chocolate,” she said. “Why do you suppose it does that? And don’t bother working out an answer, because Regis is about to introduce Declan, who will then Say Something Profound.”

Someone was tapping a spoon against a wineglass, trying to get the room’s attention. A few people caught on and in turn shushed the rest. Things quieted down, and the glass-tapper, a willowy young man in gray flannel slacks and a maroon velvet blazer, began telling everyone how pleased he was to see them all here.

“Regis Buell,” Maggie murmured. “It’s his gallery. No wonder he’s pleased.”

Buell kept his own remarks brief and introduced Declan Niswander. Keller had known what the artist looked like-there was a photo in the brochure, Niswander with his arms folded, glaring-but the man had a presence beyond what the camera revealed. Perhaps the paintings might have suggested it, because there was a passive strength to him that was almost arboreal in nature. Keller thought of the old hymn. Like a tree standing by the water, Niswander would not be moved.

Keller looked at him and took in the wiry black hair graying at the temples, the blunt-featured square-jawed face, the thick body, the square shoulders. Niswander was wearing a suit, and it was a black suit, and his shirt was black, and so was his necktie. And was that a black hanky in his pocket? It was hard to tell from this distance, but Keller was fairly sure it was.

He looked like his paintings, Keller decided, but his appearance was also somehow of a piece with the two pages of artsy twaddle in the brochure. The twaddle and the paintings hadn’t seemed to go together, but Niswander managed to bridge the gap between the two. Like a tree, Keller thought, tying together the earth and the sky.

And wasn’t that an artsy-fartsy way of looking at it? That’s what happened when you put him in a place like this, he thought. Next thing you knew he’d be wearing black.

Mourning, if all went well.

“I don’t know about this,” Dot had said the other day. “I probably shouldn’t even run this by you, Keller. I should stop right now and send you home.”

“I just got here,” he said.

“I know.”

“You called me, said you had something.”

“I do, but I had no business calling you.”

“It’s not the kind of work I do? What is it, addressing envelopes at home? Telemarketing?”

“Now there’s something you’d be great at,” she said. “’Hello, Mrs. Clutterpan? How are you today?’”

“They always say that, don’t they? ‘How are you today?’ Right away you know it’s somebody trying to sell you something you don’t want.”

“I guess they figure it’s an icebreaker,” she said. “They ask you a question and you answer it, they’re halfway home.”

“It doesn’t work with me.”

“Or me either, but would you ever buy anything from some mope who called you on the phone?”

“The last time I got a phone call,” he said, “I hopped on a train to White Plains, and now I’m supposed to turn around and go home.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Can we back up and start over? A job came in, and it’s what you do, and there’s no problem with the fee.”

“And I’ll bet the next sentence starts with but.”

“But it’s here in New York.”

“Oh.”

“It happens, Keller. People in New York are like people everywhere else, and sometimes they want somebody taken out. It’s hard to believe there are New Yorkers with the same callous disregard for the sanctity of human life that you get in Roseburg, Oregon, and Martingale, Wyoming. But there it is, Keller. What can I tell you?”

“I don’t know. What can you tell me?”

“Obviously,” she said, “this has happened before. When a New York job comes in, I don’t call you. I call somebody else and he comes in from somewhere else and does it.”

“But this time you called me.”

“There are two people I’d ordinarily call. One of them does what I do, he makes arrangements, and when I’ve got something I can’t handle I call him and sub it out to him. But I couldn’t call him this time, because he was the one who called me.”

“And who did that leave?”

“A fellow out on the West Coast, who does the same sort of work you do. I wouldn’t say he’s got your flair, Keller, but he’s solid and professional. I’ve used him before in New York, and once or twice when you were busy on another assignment. He’s my backup man, you might say.”

“So you called him.”

“I tried.”

“He wasn’t home?”

“Phone’s been disconnected.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he’s not going to hear me unless I shout at the top of my lungs. I don’t know what else it means, Keller. Plain and simple, his phone’s been disconnected. Did he change his number for security reasons? Did he move? You’d think he’d give me his new number, but I don’t send him much work and I’m probably not one of the low numbers on his Speed Dial. In fact…”

“What?”

“Well, I’m not even positive he has this number. He must have had it once, but if he lost it he wouldn’t know how to reach me.”

“Either way-“

“Either way he hasn’t called and I can’t call him, and here’s this job, and I thought of you. Except it’s in New York, and you know what they say about crapping where you eat.”

“They don’t recommend it.”

“They don’t,” she said, “and I have to say I agree with the conventional wisdom this time around. The whole idea is you go in where you don’t know anybody and nobody knows you, and when you’re done you go home. You’re out of there before the body is cold.”

“Not always. Sometimes you can’t get a flight out right away.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

“I’m a big believer in keeping things separate.”

“Like crapping and eating.”

“Like crapping and eating. New York ’s for you to live in. That leaves the whole rest of the world to work in, and isn’t that enough?”

“Of course three-quarters of the earth’s surface is water,” he said.

“Keller…”

“And how much work do you get up around the North Pole, or down in Antarctica? But you’re right, there’s a lot left.”

“I’ll call the man back and tell him we pass.”

“Hang on a minute.”

“What for?”

“I came all this way,” he said. “I might as well hear about it. Just tell me it’s a connected guy, has a couple of no-neck bodyguards with him night and day, and I can go home.”

“He’s an artist.”

“At what, mayhem? Extortion?”

“At art,” she said. “He paints pictures.”

“No kidding.”

“He’s got a show coming up. In Chelsea.”

“I heard there were galleries opening over there. Way west, by the river. Is that where he lives?”

“Uh-uh. Williamsburg.”

“That’s in Brooklyn.”

“So?”

“Practically another city.”

“What are you doing, Keller? Talking yourself into something?”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “The thing is, Dot, it’s been a while.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And the last one, that business in Louisville…”

“Not a walk in the park, as I recall.”

“It actually went pretty smoothly,” he said, “when you look back on it, but it didn’t seem so smooth while it was going on. We got paid and everybody was happy, but even so it left a bad taste.”

“So you’d like to rinse your mouth out?”

“Is there a lot of fine print in the contract, Dot? Does it have to look like a heart attack or an accident?”

She shook her head. “Homicide’s fine, and as noisy as you want it.”

“Oh?”

“So I’m told. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be, unless it’s an object lesson for a player to be named later, but if you can arrange for the guy to get decapitated at high noon in Macy’s window, nobody would be the least bit upset.”

“Except for the artist.”

“Keller,” she said, “you can’t please everybody. What do you think? You want to do this?”

“I could use the money.”

“Well, who couldn’t? The first payment’s on its way, because I said yes first and then looked for someone to do it. I don’t have to tell you how I hate to send money back once I have it in hand.”

“Not your favorite thing.”

“I get attached to it,” she said, “and I think of it as my money, so returning it feels like spending it, and without getting anything for it. Do you want a day or two to think about this?”

He shook his head. “I’m in.”

“Really? Brooklyn or no, it’s still New York. He’s in Williamsburg, you’re on First Avenue, you can just about see his house from your window.”

“Not really.”

“All the same…”

“It won’t be the first time in New York, Dot. Never on a job, but personal business, and what’s the difference?” He straightened up in his chair. “I’m in,” he said. “Now tell me about the guy.”

“I used to paint,” Maggie Griscomb said. “Now I make jewelry.”

“I was noticing your earrings.”

“These? They’re my work. I only wear my own pieces, because that way I get to be a walking showcase. Unless I’m sitting down, in which case I’m a sitting showcase.”

They were sitting now, in a booth at a Cuban coffee shop on Eighth Avenue, drinking cafй con leche.

“It’s odd,” she said, “because I like jewelry, and not just my own. I buy other people’s jewelry and it just sits in the drawer.”

“How come you stopped painting?”

“I stopped being twenty-nine.”

“I didn’t know there was an age limit.”

“I spent my twenties painting moody abstract oils and sleeping with strangers,” she said. “I figure my twenties lasted until my thirty-fourth birthday, when I got out of some guy’s bed, threw up in his bathroom, and tried to get out of there without looking at him or the mirror. It struck me that I was older than Jesus Christ, and it was time to quit being twenty-nine and grow up. I looked at all my paintings and I thought, Jesus, what crap. Nobody ever bought any of them. Nobody even went so far as to admire them, unless it was some guy desperate to get laid. A horny man will pretend an enthusiasm for just about anything. But aside from that, about the best most people would do was say my work was interesting. Listen, I’ve got a tip for you. Don’t ever tell an artist his work is interesting.”

“I won’t.”

“Or different. ‘Did you like the movie?’ ‘It was different.’ What the hell does that mean? Different from what?” She stirred her coffee and left the spoon in the cup. “I don’t know if my paintings were different,” she said. “Whatever that means. But they weren’t interesting, to me or anybody else. They weren’t even pretty to look at. I was going to burn the canvases, but that seemed too dramatic. So I stacked them at the curb, and somebody hauled them away.”

“That sounds so sad.”

“Well, it felt liberating. I thought, What do I like? And I thought, Jewelry, and I went out and took a class. I had a flair right from the beginning. These are pretty, aren’t they?”

“Very pretty.”

“And it’s okay for them to be pretty,” she said. “I had to work to keep my paintings from being pretty, because pretty art is facile and decorative and doesn’t wind up in museums. So I did everything I could to turn out pictures that no one would ever get any pleasure out of, and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Now I make rings and bracelets and necklaces and earrings, and I purposely make them attractive, and people buy my work and wear it and enjoy it. And it’s really a pleasure not being twenty-nine anymore.”

“You changed your whole life.”

“Well, I still live downtown,” she said, “and I still wear black. But I don’t drink myself stupid, and I don’t hurt my ears listening to loud music…”

“Or go to bed with strangers?”

“It depends,” she said. “How strange are you?”