The Sculptor

Chapter 45

“I thought we agreed we were going to take a break today,” said Cathy.

She stood in the doorway to their bedroom—naked, save for the button-down shirt of Markham’s which she wore drawn tightly around her. They had spent that Sunday together driving along the coast—had ended up in Newport and strolled along the cliff-walk before taking in a late lunch at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. Upon their return to the safe house, the fax from Rachel Sullivan had already arrived: the coroner’s report, as well as a list of names taken from the East Greenwich Police investigation on the death of Damon Manzera—both requested by Sam Markham the evening before. Cathy had made the FBI agent promise to let them wait—convinced him that nothing could be done with the information until the following morning. And after another evening of wine and lovemaking, the once shy art history professor could not help but feel a certain amount of pride that her feminine wiles had won out yet again.

“It’s 12:15,” said Markham. “Ante meridiem. Technically it’s now tomorrow—haven’t broken my promise to you, have I?”

“I guess not. But you woke me up.”

“Sorry.”

Dressed in only his underwear, the FBI agent lay on the sofa in the common area—which also consisted of two recliners and a television, two desks complete with computers and printers, a copier and a fax machine, as well as an entire wall dedicated to the twelve video monitors that continually displayed surveillance from the building’s exterior, its second and third floor corridors, as well as its parking garage.

Sullivan’s fax lay scattered about on the floor—cast aside by Markham in deference to his copy of Slumbering in the Stone. Cathy sat down beside him.

“What’s got your attention now?” she asked.

“Wasn’t able to learn much from the fax, so I started reading again about David.”

“And?”

“I guess the thing that keeps jumping out at me is how tall the statue is—seventeen feet, you say?”

“Yes. You can’t really grasp its size, its magnificence until you see it in person.”

“But the way it was sculpted—the head and the upper torso, the hands slightly out of proportion to the lower half of the body—you say in your book you think this was intentional on Michelangelo’s part?”

“Yes. There are a number of theories about this. As I’m sure you’ve read, the enormous block of Carrara marble from which David was originally sculpted had already been worked by a couple of other artists—one of them being a student of Donatello—and then ended up being neglected in a courtyard for almost thirty years before the twenty-six-year-old Michelangelo was commissioned to finish the project in 1501. Some scholars believe that Michelangelo had to work from a figure that had been blocked out earlier. However, I believe that the marble wasn’t nearly that far along when Michelangelo got to it. And as the guild that originally commissioned the statue had intended for it to sit atop the buttress of a cathedral—a plan that was later abandoned—when viewed from below, the proportions of David would be correct.”

“It took him a little over three years,” said Markham, reading. “And the statue ended up being installed outside the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio.”

“Yes. A representation of the biblical David whose defeat of Goliath and the Philistines came to symbolize the triumph of the Florentine Republic over its rival city-states, Michelangelo’s David was initially placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio—a fortresslike palace that served as the old seat of civic government in Florence. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Hard to believe nowadays that the Florentines would have allowed what has become the most famous statue in the world to be subjected to wind and weather and pigeon poop before moving it indoors to the Galleria dell’ Accademia almost four hundred years later.”

Markham was silent—his eyes fixed on a photographic detail of David’s waist.

“You’re thinking about where he’s going to display it, aren’t you?” said Cathy. “You’re thinking about what to do in case we don’t catch The Michelangelo Killer before he creates his David.”

“Actually, I’m thinking about where he’s going to get his material.”

“What do you mean?”

“We know from our investigation thus far that no young males with a physique resembling the statue of David have been reported missing—a physique one can assume the killer will have a hard time finding among the population of male prostitutes from which we now know he’s drawn.”

“Yes.”

“Well, as I mentioned earlier, there’s the unusual proportions—the relationship of the torso to the statue’s lower half. The Sculptor would not be able to accommodate for that the same way he did with his Pietà—that is, by using more than one body, piecing it together, and then hiding the joints underneath the figure’s clothing. No, like Bacchus, the statue is nude, and thus theoretically the killer would have to use only one person—would have to be very selective in choosing his material. And so, ironically, what on the surface would seem like the simplest of the three statues in actuality will be the most difficult for him to achieve.”

“Unless he is planning on correcting Michelangelo’s intended forced perspective. Meaning, the killer intends to adapt the proportional ratios to be viewed straight on.”

“Yes. But the physique, the musculature of David is so well known. That in and of itself will take a lot of searching. Much more difficult to come across another famous Rhode Islander on the Internet—the way he most surely saw the figure of his Bacchus in the photographs of Tommy Campbell. You saw them, didn’t you? The pictures of Campbell taken on that beach in Rio a couple of years ago with his model ex-girlfriend?”

“Yes,” said Cathy. “So you’re thinking The Sculptor may go looking for his David at a local beach? A swimming pool, perhaps—someplace where he would be able to get a good look at his material?”

“Perhaps for the body, yes—but for the other part, most likely no.”

“What other part?”

“As I said, one would think that, theoretically, The Sculptor would have to acquire a single body that resembled the statue of David. However, what about the statue’s penis?”

“What about it?”

“It’s uncircumcised.”

Cathy was silent. She understood.

“As you state in your book,” said Markham, “whereas the historical David, being a Jew, would have most certainly been circumcised, Michelangelo was consciously sculpting his David in line with the classical Greek aesthetic, which would have seen a circumcised penis as mutilated. Such a detail will thus be of supreme importance to The Sculptor—something he will have to account for. So you see, it’s clear that it is going to be exponentially more difficult for The Sculptor to acquire a body that both looks like David and also has an uncircumcised penis. Hence, I’m willing to bet that the killer will be searching for the latter separately, and thus plans on attaching it to his David afterward—perhaps beneath an epoxy-sculpted line of pubic hair.”

“So you’re suggesting then that we try to beat him to his material? That we focus on finding out not only where he’s going to find a body like David’s, but also a penis like his as well?”

“Yes. Either that, or we try to bring him to us.”

“What do you mean?”

“From what we know about this guy—his intelligence, the solitary sort that he is, and the fact that he now knows the public is on to him—where would be the safest place for him to go shopping for his David?”

“The Internet.”

“Yes—a place where he can browse and study his material like he most certainly did with the images of Tommy Campbell.”

“So you’re saying we might be able to lay a trap for him?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Cathy. It’s a long shot but—in addition to all the other leads we’ve been following, including the new Manzera connection—we can post an ad on Craigslist and some of the other Web sites known to be used by gay men. Put a picture up of a guy with a physique like David’s, and advertise our John Doe as a local uncircumcised male seeking companionship. I’ve looked into these sites myself when we were pursuing the male prostitute angle. Some of these men—many of whom are undoubtedly prostitutes themselves—are not shy about advertising the details of their privates, including whether or not they are circumcised. If we make our John Doe such an irresistible target—that is, create a profile for someone who looks like David and has the uncircumcised penis to boot—The Sculptor might not be able to resist killing two birds with one stone.”

“But how do you know The Sculptor hasn’t already acquired his penis?”

“Because, in order to get the proportions right he’ll have to find his David first. I made that mistake with the Bacchus, Cathy—when I thought The Sculptor would have experimented with the goat before acquiring the top half of his satyr. I’m not going to make that mistake again. Of course, it’s obvious The Michelangelo Killer won’t be able to find a seventeen-foot-tall man. However, if he finds someone with the right proportions, regardless of his height, he’ll have a better idea of what size penis to look for in order to retain the aesthetic proportions of the original. If we can save the killer all that trouble with an ad on the Internet, we might just be able to catch him.”

“But do you think The Sculptor would fall for something like that?”

“I don’t know, Cathy. But right now, it’s the only thing I can believe in.”