The Museum of Desire

Chapter 24

I picked him up in front of the station at six thirty-five p.m. Dressed as close to stylish as I’d ever seen: gray suit, black shirt, skinny brown tie. Pointy black oxfords instead of the desert boots.

I said, “New shoes?”

“Italian. Rick’s.”

We took the Seville at his request: “We’re talking art and your wheels are a lot more aesthetic.”

The drive downtown was a surprisingly smooth cruise on the 10 East slowed by construction detours and the need to navigate mostly empty one-way streets.

I found parking at a lot on Sixth and we walked to Hart Street, passing dark storefronts and several homeless people with placards, all of whom Milo ignored. No less altruistic by nature than with the legless man; preoccupied.

We stood across the street watching as a swarm of people crowded the sidewalk in front of Verlang Contemporary. A sign in the window read Melted Visions: An Opening.

The two neighboring galleries remained dark, as were the jeweler and the building’s top two floors. The only other illumination on the block came from The Flower Drum motel’s empty lobby. Clerk sitting alone in a glass-encased booth working his phone.

Milo said, “Hipster crowd. Think we can fake it?”

I pointed to the tie. “That doesn’t do it, we could go arm-in-arm if you don’t tell Robin and I don’t tell Rick.”

He laughed but not for very long. Narrowing his eyes, he watched the crowd for a few seconds. A single car passed. Then a bicyclist wearing a knit cap, pedaling a rattling one-gear with effort.

“Okay, here we go.”

No security at the door, just a thin girl in a matte-black dress and matching hair offering every arrival a plastic flute of something amber-colored and bubbly followed by a nearly inaudible “Welcome.” Her eyelids were smeared with something waxy and charcoal-colored. Hollow cheeks, painted-on eyebrows, the right-hand arc pierced by a little black ring.

The robotic greeting and a faraway stare said human contact was a contagious disease.

Not even a glance at Milo’s tie.

The gallery was jammed with mostly thin people and a few obese exceptions drinking when they weren’t moving their lips. The layout was a single long room painted flat white and floored in scarred pine. Track lights suspended from a central beam fifteen feet above showcased twenty or so large canvases.

The artist: Geoffrey Dugong.

Milo said, “Isn’t that some sort of seal?”

“Sea cow.”

“Now I know why I brought you.”

The thickest clot of chatterers had collected in the center of the room, as if herded by a sheepdog. More eyes on one another than the art. Milo and I circulated slowly and gingerly so as not to be noticed. No need to worry, not a lot of other-directedness going around.

We finally arrived at the edge of the crowd and got a look at Geoffrey Dugong’s work.

The name of the exhibit was literal: loose acrylic renderings of the same white candle in various stages of liquefaction over a black background.

We took one-page bios from a stack on a card table. Dugong’s bio specified little beyond his birth in Key West, Florida, and his work on fishing boats. On the flip side, a brief note by the gallery’s owner, Medina Okash, was even less informative. Written in the least comprehensive language on the planet: artspeak.

Milo said, “Now I understand.”

We edged past a couple of the paintings. A man with a narrow goatee long enough to be constricted in two spots by gold rings said, “I did this one when I was thinking about migraines and perspiration.” Midforties, long, wild curly gray hair, deeply tanned, hawk-face. When he spoke, nothing but his mouth moved.

The woman listening to him said, “Sweat purifies. Lakota or Chumash?”

Beard-ring walked away from her. She turned to a bald, scowling man behind her. “I like his attitude, maybe we should buy one.”

“Are you fucking crazy? He’s an asshole.”

“Exactly, Dom. We could use some of that energy. A little pushback to the Warhols.”

Bald walked away. The woman, alone, saw us and smiled.

Milo said, “When I hear sweat, I think Turkish bath.”

“That’s true,” said the woman. “Are you an artist?”

“More of a craftsman.”

“What’s your medium?”

“Rare.”

We walked away. The woman looked at the painting, then into her purse.

We made our way to a corner with another card table, this one used for empty glasses. Our bubbly, untouched, found a home. Milo worked his phone and pulled up an image.

Pie-faced woman in her thirties. Blue-gray eyes, pageboy dyed the purplish gray of an old bruise, complexion pale enough to suggest Kabuki makeup.

Medina Okash was more into biography than her featured artist. Born thirty-six years ago in Seattle, B.A. in fine arts from the University of Oregon, certificate in curatorial science from the Gurnitz Institute in Bern, Switzerland, employment at a minor New York auction house followed by stints at Lower Manhattan art dealers.

She’d opened her own gallery six months ago.

Her mission statement: Be fearless.

Armed with the image, finding her was simple. Same everything except for the hair, now electric blue. She held glasses in both hands, drank from each in turn as she nodded at whatever a pair of men in matching black suits and red T-shirts was telling her. Identical twins down to the anorexia. They traded off speaking, one sentence at a time.

Medina Okash’s head moved from side to side, following the duet. A couple of times she threw back her head and laughed loud enough to be heard over the crowd.

Milo said, “Friendly, maybe that’ll extend to us.”

The merriment seemed staged to me. I said nothing as we waited. When the twins drifted away, we walked up to her.

Appraising smile. “Hi, you two.”

Milo said, “Good show.”

“Geoffrey’s a force to be reckoned with.” Okash looked at her drinks, then at our empty hands. “Don’t like Prosecco? It’s muy tasty.”

Milo patted his gut. “Moderation.”

“Is for people who doubt themselves,” said Medina Okash, placing a fingertip on his gut and rotating slowly. “Feels luscious and gorgeous to me.”

Milo managed a smile. The things we do in the call of duty.

She switched to me, fingertipping my turtleneck precisely over my navel. “A little more L.A.-toned for you... ooh, an innie. So where do I know you guys — the Harrison thing last month? Or was it Art Basel Miami?”

Milo flipped his lapel just wide enough to show her his badge.

Generally that evokes shock. Medina Okash’s affect didn’t change. “Police. Let me guess: Benny.”

Milo nodded. “We came by earlier but you were closed.”

Okash took in the crowd behind us. “Obviously, this isn’t really a good time so if you could come back tomorrow — ya know, scratch that. Time is nothing more than the longest distance between two places.”

I said, “Tennessee Williams.”

A painted eyebrow arched. She knuckled my arm lightly. “A cop who appreciates literature. Let us chit and chat.”

We followed her to a door at the back of the gallery. She opened it and waited as we stepped through. Brushing Milo’s arm as he passed. Doing the same to me and adding an instant of hip-to-hip pressure.

Expressionless throughout the contact; the who-me? demeanor of a kid trying something naughty.

The back room was a storage area set up with floor-to-ceiling vertical racks. Every gallery rear I’ve seen is crammed with canvases. Verlang Contemporary housed less than a dozen paintings, all wrapped in brown paper.

Medina Okash said, “I’m assuming you’re here because Marcella told you Benny worked here.”

Flat voice, matching eyes.

Milo nodded. “You know Marcella McGann.”

“Not well enough to know that’s her surname,” said Okash. “To me she’s Marcella the woman who takes care of Benny. She got Benny hired.”

“Did she.”

“Oh, yes. She showed up one day, told me about the place she worked, and asked if I could help out by giving one of her residents something to do, he liked to draw. My first thought was, Who needs the complication? Then I thought, You’ve always appreciated outsider art, Medina. Why not help an actual outsider?”

“What did Benny do here?”

“Swept up, straightened, accepted deliveries. If I was here cataloging he’d let me know someone was at the door. I’d send him to get food if a yummy truck was nearby. Mostly he just hung around. No problem, very sweet. And actually very diligent. At first Marcella or someone else from the home would walk him and pick him up. Then, maybe a week in, he began making the trip himself.”

I said, “Did he ever report any problems during the walk?”

“Never,” said Medina Okash. “So he still hasn’t come home? That’s not good.”

Sympathetic words. But no affect to match.

Milo said, “When did Marcella drop by?”

“Saturday morning.”

“Do you remember what time?”

“Maybe... ten? I came in through there.” Pointing to a second back door. “I wasn’t open for business, caught up prepping for the show. I heard pounding on the front door, figured some homeless person is going bonkers, went out to see. If it looked sketchy I was ready to call 911.”

“Have you done that before?”

“Not yet but one needs to keep one’s eyes open, right?”

“Right. So Marcella was the one knocking.”

“She and some guy. He’s just standing there but she’s waving her hands and looking agitated. I let them in and she goes on about Benny not coming home the day before. You’re here so I guess he still hasn’t.”

Milo said, “He’ll never come home, Ms. Okash.”

“What do you mean?”

Out came the card.

Okash read it, eyes scanning slowly. “Really? Oh, fuck, that’s disgusting. That is truly disgusting. What the fuck happened?”

Not shocked; annoyed.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Milo. “Did Benny show up for work on Friday?”

“Sure, the usual, around elevenish. Normally, he leaves between two and four, I’m flexible. That day I had to be out for the afternoon, got back at four thirty and assumed he’d left.”

“Benny was here by himself.”

Okash folded her arms across her chest. “He wasn’t a child and the deal wasn’t I had to babysit him.”

“He could just let himself out.”

“The door self-locks.”

“So Marcella showed up Saturday. You’d heard nothing from her the day Benny didn’t come home?”

Okash’s eyes turned icy. “All these questions. I have to say I’m starting to feel uncomfortable.”

“About?”

“Being questioned like a suspect. I did someone a favor, that’s all — and yes, turns out Marcella did call me on Friday. I was busy, didn’t check for messages.”

“Don’t mean to upset you,” said Milo. “It’s just in cases like these we need to talk to everyone.”

“There’s talk and there’s inquisition.”

The door to the front room swung open hard enough to bang against the wall. Letting in crowd noise and Geoffrey Dugong. The painter’s body canted forward.

Unlike Okash, an animated face: eyes blazing, cheeks flushed, mouth working.

“You leave me the fuck alone out there! I’m supposed to talk to these fuck-brains by myself?”

Okash regarded him the way a pedestrian looks at dogshit. “I’ll be out in a second, Geoffrey.”

“You better — who the fuck are you?”

Milo said, “Maybe potential clients.”

Dugong’s head snapped back. “Yeah. Fine. Doesn’t give you the right to fuck up my opening.”

He stomped out.

Medina Okash said, “Artists.” As if she couldn’t care less.