SAN FRANCISCO
“To be perfectly frank Molly, when you came in here yesterday I was sceptical.... more than a little.”
Howie climbed in behind his desk, forcing his girth into the gap with effort. There were papers everywhere but Molly knew there was an intricate system at work as well as on the half dozen extra-large pin-boards that filled the walls. It only seemed like disarray. Same with his personality; the way he did business. She wondered if it wasn’t all part of the act.
He was still having trouble fitting into the narrow space behind his desk. He made a little grin in apology as he finally got settled. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it.” Molly took a half seat on the edge of his desk. She’d been jogging along the sea front and was still dressed in shorts and a hooded tracksuit, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
“As I was saying,” he said. “I’ll tell you the truth. I was kind of humouring you when you came in with all those paintings before.”
Molly widened her eyes. She folded her arms.
“I thought they were good; don’t misinterpret me there, I wasn’t lying about that, but you know me; at least you should by now. It’s been nine years since we sat together in Economics class. I don’t always play it one hundred percent straight.”
“Like the time you sold Cocaine to half the eighth grade and forgot to tell them it was one hundred percent top grade flour.”
“Til the cops busted me, yeah.”
They both cracked up laughing. “So you saw Jack Catholic’s paintings that I brought in to show you and you decided to scam me,” said Molly.
“Hey, not at all! All I’m saying is that an art gallery is a business and I run that business. I love you Molly, you know that, but friendship is one thing and chucking out a great reputation as a dealer is another.”
Molly frowned, kicking her heels on the desk. She gathered her hands in her lap and became focused on them, blocking out the feeling of sadness and disappointment.
“Don’t get sulky on me Moll,” said Howie, struggling up out of his chair again. “This is a good news day, not bad. When do I ever give you bad news?”
Weak grin. “When you were the one to tell me I flunked Economics.”
“That’s what happens when you spend every class talking with your amusing yet still dashingly handsome seat mate.” He came round the desk to her side and took her hand, drawing the fidgeting fingers away from one another. “Come on beautiful.”
He led her to the door of the office and out to where his receptionist, Zita, was leaning back in her chair, reading what looked like Plato. The reception led out onto the street through wooden doors set into a two-storey glass wall. The glass was made up of large squares that must have weighed a tonne. Molly had always admired at a symbolic level the way the office space split off so perfectly from the gallery itself. It was kind of like work and real life; with the receptionist between to effect the crossover.
“Get busy,” grumbled Howie as he passed the reception desk with its curved shield-like front. Zita crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him behind his back. Molly smiled.
“I saw that,” he said.
“You did not,” she wailed.
Howie held the door into the gallery open for Molly. “I keep firing her but every time she begs on her hands and knees that she’ll work only in return for sexual favours from me, so I take her back.”
“Dream the dream big boy!” shouted Zita as the door closed behind them.
Howie and Molly were laughing again.
This was the gallery itself now. Molly had been there to help him convert it when all it had been was an empty warehouse. When the builders hadn’t worked fast enough, the two of them had stayed up into the VERY early hours operating sanding machines and painting walls with enough tequila inside them to strip the paint right off again. Now, it was the height of taste and style, even if she’d had to offer Howie the occasional guiding hand in that department.
The ceilings had been lowered since the old times but they were still towering, the space was broken up by hanging walls that didn’t quite touch the floor. Everywhere there was art or what amounted to it. Molly loved Jack’s work but a lot of the rest she could take or leave. Only pieces where the artist’s souls wavered in the canvas caught her eye. Portrait, abstract or even still life could reach out to her but so many paintings were simple colour and texture. It was rare for her to find the clarification of expression that made one perfect. That was why she loved Jack’s work. It was exactly what did it for her.
“When I took your paintings on, my gut told me to just stick them in the back room for a few weeks, then return them saying I’d tried them out on a couple of people and the responses weren’t good. I really did like them, I just wasn’t sure if they were saleable. Now, before you look at me like that; anybody else I liked enough to take them on, I would have done exactly that – made up some story and kept them locked away – for you it was different. I wasn’t about to slap them straight into the prime spot in my gallery, but I did show them to a couple of people. I knew I couldn’t lie to you about that.”
“Did you get any interest?”
“Oh yeah. I sold one. I God damned sold one!”
Molly leapt on him, throwing her arms around his big neck. “That’s wonderful Howie! Oh my God, that’s great!”
“I thought that would be it,” he said, “but it wasn’t. I got a call last night just before I knocked off. Flora Lloyd. You heard of her?”
Molly shook her head.
“Rich chick. Fifty/sixty years old. I don’t know. All tentative like. She wasn’t jumping up and down about it. But she asks if she can come in and see some of Catholic’s stuff. She’d heard about it from a friend.” Howie turned and stopped her with his hands on her shoulders. “Now this is what I wanted to show you when I asked you to come down.”
He guided her round to her right.
There were two men and a woman working on a new display, ladders in place, tools lying about. There were barriers up to tell the public that the area was off-limits because a new exhibit was being set up.
“I don’t know how it’ll go,” said Howie. “People aren’t breaking down the door. Yet. But I think there’s just the smallest chance that they will be. If I can maybe build on all the ruckus in the papers lately as well, I think Jack Catholic could be one of the newest names in art. There’s a chance he could be big.”
Molly kissed Howie on the cheek over and over then smacked him one on the lips. “I love you Howie. This is fantastic!”
“Get off me Moll! You’re giving me a woody!”
Molly laughed, just ecstatically happy as she came away and looked again at the display that was going to be erected. It was going to make Jack so pleased. This was all he had ever wanted from his life.
“Ms Butler?”
She glanced to her right to see who had spoken.
There were two men who looked as though they’d only just come in. She didn’t recognise them. One was dressed in a shirt and tie, sleeves rolled up, the other in a T-shirt. The T-shirt one was carrying something in his hands. A box. She didn’t recognise it straight away. He lifted it up and she blinked as the flash took her off guard. A camera!
“We’d like to ask you a few questions Ms Butler,” said the one in the shirt. She was trying to place his face: good looks that were pressed into shrew-like interrogation. “The police have been examining your father’s car that was salvaged from the ocean from where it ran off the cliff-side road.”
Another flash and she blinked again as she staggered back from it. Howie was being rude to them but she didn’t hear his exact words.
The one in the shirt pushed through. “Are you aware of the fact that your father’s car may have been run off the road; that his death may not have been an accident?”
Flash from the camera in her face. She knew this reporter now: outside her father’s house when she first met Jack.
“The car was run off the road by another vehicle.”
Flash.
“Your father may have been murdered.”
Flash.
“I’ve been looking into it Ms Butler. I spoke to your brother. He claims you had a fight with your father the night he died.”
Flash.
Howie was shouting at them but they weren’t listening.
Flash.
“I’ve examined your car,” said the reporter. “It’s parked right outside your house. I’m surprised you made no attempt to conceal the damage to the front wing.”
Flash.
Howie was pushing them back by force, pressing them toward the door. The workmen were helping.
Flash.
But the reporter was shouting over the top of them.
The photographer was holding his camera up high.
“Did you kill your father Ms Butler!”
“Did you run him off the edge of a cliff in your car!”
“How does it feel to murder your own flesh and blood!”
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