Greg Iles - Dead Sleep

“What’s in the box?”

“A painting. Please, sit down.”

I gesture at the crate. “You work up here? This looks like your apartment.”

“It’s a special painting. It may be the last time I see it in person. I want to enjoy it while I can. Would you like an espresso? Cappuccino? I was about to have one.”

“Cappuccino.”

“Good.” He walks to a blue enameled machine on a counter behind him and starts to fill a small mug. While his back is to me, I move to the open crate. There’s a heavy gold frame inside. Peeking between the box and the frame, I can’t see much, but it’s enough: the upper torso and head of a nude woman, her eyes open and fixed in a strangely peaceful stare. Wingate is dispensing the cup as I back away.

“So, to what do I owe this pleasure?” he asks the wall.

“I’ve heard good things about you. They say you’re a very selective seller.”

“I don’t sell to fools.” He sprays out some steamed milk with a flourish. “Unless they know they’re fools. That’s different. If someone comes to me and says, ‘My friend, I know nothing about art, but I wish to begin collecting. Would you advise me?’ This person I will help.” Another hissing jet of steamed milk. “But these pretentious WASP millionaires make me puke. They took art criticism at Yale, or their wife majored in Renaissance masters at Vassar. They know so much, what do they need me for? For cachet, yes? So fuck them. My cachet is not for sale.”

“Not to them, anyway.”

He turns with a grin and offers me a steaming cup. “I love your accent. You’re from South Carolina?”

“Not even close,” I reply, stepping forward to take the mug.

“But the South. Where?”

“The Magnolia State.”

He looks perplexed. “Louisiana?”

“That’s the Sportsman’s Paradise. I’m from the home of William Faulkner and Elvis Presley.”

“Georgia?”

I’m definitely in New York. “Mississippi, Mr. Wingate.”

“Learn something every day, right? Call me Christopher, okay?”

“Okay.” After Ron Epstein’s characterization of Wingate, I half expected the man to make some crack about Mississippi being the home of the lynching. “Call me Jordan.”

“I’m a huge fan of your work,” he says with apparent sincerity. “You have a pitiless eye.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Of course. You don’t shy away from horror. Or absurdity. But there’s compassion there, too. That’s why people connect with your work. I think there would be quite a demand, if you were inclined to market it as fine art. Not much photography really qualifies, but yours… no doubt about it.”

“You’re not living up to your advance billing. I heard you were a son of a bitch.”

He grins again and sips his cappuccino. The pure blackness of his eyes is startling. “I am, to most people. But with artists I like, I’m a shameless flatterer.”

I want to ask him about the painting in the crate, but something tells me to wait. “It’s been said that a photograph can be journalism or art, but not both.”

“Such crap. The gifted always break the rules. Look at Martin Parr’s book. He turned photojournalism upside down with The Last Resort. Look at Nachtwey’s stuff. That’s art, no question. You’re every bit as good. Better in some ways.”

Now I know he’s bullshitting me. James Nachtwey is the preeminent war photographer at Magnum; he’s won the Capa five times. “Such as?”

“ Commercial ways.” A glint of mischief in the black eyes. “You’re a star, Jordan.”

“Am I?”

“People look at your photos – stark, terrible, unflinching – and they think, ‘A woman was standing here looking at this, recording it. With a woman’s sensitivity. A woman has stood this, so I must stand this.’ It floors them. And it changes their perspective. That’s what art does.”

I’ve heard all this before, and while largely true, it bugs me. It smacks of Not bad, for a girl.

“And then there’s you,” Wingate goes on. “Look at you. Hardly any makeup, and still beautiful at – what? – forty?”

“Forty.”

“You’re marketable. If you’ll suffer through a few interviews and an opening, I can make you a star. An icon for women.”

“You said I’m already a star.”

He barely skips a beat. “In your field, sure. But what’s that? I’m talking pop culture. Look at Eve Arnold. You know who she is. But if I walk downstairs and ask a hundred people on the street, not one will know. Dickey Chappelle wanted to be a household name. That was her dream. She schlepped all over the world, from Iwo Jima to Saigon, but she never became what she most wanted to be – a star.”

“I haven’t schlepped all over the world to become a star, whatever that means.”

A feral gleam in the eyes betrays a new level of interest. “No, I believe that. So, why? Why do you traipse from pillar to post, cataloguing atrocities that would shock Goya?”

“You haven’t earned the answer to that question.”

He claps his hands together. “But I already know it! It’s your father, isn’t it? Dear old daddy. Jonathan Glass, the legend of Vietnam. The shooter’s shooter.”

“Maybe you are a son of a bitch after all.”

The smile widens. “I can’t help it, as the scorpion said to the frog. It’s my nature.”

Some of the biggest bastards I ever met were charismatic, and Wingate is no exception. My gaze settles on the crate between us.

“And the way he died,” Wingate exults, “shooting a Pulitzer-winning roll of film. That’s mythic. Then his daughter follows in his footsteps? It’s a legitimate phenomenon, no hype required. We could do a double show. Talk about free publicity. Who controls the rights to your father’s images?”

“I don’t believe my father died in Cambodia,” I say in a flat voice.

Wingate looks as though I just told him I don’t believe Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“Okay… so… that’s even better. We could-”

“And I’m not interested in exploiting his work for money.”

He shakes his head, his hands imploring. “You’re looking at it all wrong-”

“What painting is so wonderful that you have to keep it this close to you?” I interrupt, pointing at the packing crate with my free hand.

Momentarily off balance, he answers without thinking. “It’s a painting by an anonymous artist. His work fascinates me.”

“You like looking at pictures of dead women?”

Wingate freezes, his eyes locked onto mine.

“Are you going to answer my question?”

He gives a philosophical shrug. “I’m not here to answer your questions. But I’ll answer that one. No one knows if the subjects are dead or not.”

“Do you know the identity of the artist?”

Wingate sips his cappuccino, then sets his mug on the counter behind him. I slip my hand into my pocket to feel the cold, reassuring metal of the Mace can.

“Are you asking as a journalist?” he asks. “Or as a collector?”

“All I can afford to collect is experiences and passport stamps. I figured you could tell that with one look at my shoes.”

He shrugs again. Shrugs are a major part of this guy’s vocabulary. “One never knows who has money these days.”

“I want to meet the artist.”

“Impossible.”

“May I see the painting?”

He purses his lips. “I don’t see why not, since you already have.” He walks around to the open side of the crate, braces his feet against the bottom, and reaches in for the frame. “Could you give me a hand?”

I hesitate, thinking about the claw hammer, but he doesn’t look like he wants to bludgeon me to death. Having been in situations where people wanted to do just that, I trust my instincts more than some people might.