Unknown - The Genius

My headache returned, with gravy.

Mixed in with my confusion was a strong sense of annoyance that she’d been wasting her time planning destructive installations involving one-ton sea mammals when she could so easily produce shit that people would buy.

I don’t know whether Andrade and Trueg thought I was having a breakdown or what, but when I said, “It sure looks like the real McCoy,” they nodded sympathetically, the kind of nod you give a crazy person to keep him calm while the men in white coats get their nets out of the van.

Trueg said, “Hang on, show’s not over yet. We also found this in her apartment.”

Andrade opened his desk again—what was he going to pull out now? A picture of Kristjana and Victor having tea?—and handed me another bagged piece of evidence, this one containing a half-completed letter, written in the same tiny, threatening hand as the two letters I had supposedly gotten from Victor himself. It said, many times, LIAR.

“Why does she think you’re a liar?” Andrade asked.

“How the hell do I know?” I said. “She’s insane.”

LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR

“If you ask me,” said Andrade, “this would seem to lend some credence to her claim about having done the drawings.”

LIAR

“You said those first two letters came from the artist, right?” Trueg asked.

“I thought so.”

“Well, this looks like the same person to me,” he said. He looked at Andrade. “Benny? What do you think?”

“I think so.”

Trueg smiled at me. “That’s our professional opinion. Same person. So she fooled you once, I don’t see why she couldn’t do it again.”

“But.” I picked up the letter. LIAR LIAR LIAR. “Don’t you think—I mean, she’s threatening me, why don’t you arrest her for assaulting me?”

“Well,” said Trueg, “that’s not so straightforward, either. She admits to sending you the first two letters—”

“All right,” I said. “There you go.”

“—and she says she was going to send another. But then she tells us that the first two were intended as some kind of practical joke.”

“You have got to be—”

“And when you got jumped, she started to worry about implicating herself, so she stopped sending them. She’d written half of the next one but she didn’t finish it, and that’s the one we found. This one.”

“And you believe her?”

Trueg and Andrade looked at each other. Then they look at me.

“Yeah,” said Trueg. “I do, actually.”

Andrade said, “That was my instinct, as well.”

“She offered to take a polygraph.”

“Oh come on,” I said. “This. This is … So what are you saying—that she’s the one or not.”

“We don’t know,” said Trueg. “She might have arranged for you to get beat up, but it wasn’t her who did it. At eleven forty-five she was at a party across town. All the other guests we talked to swear she was there from ten until at least one in the morning.”

“She could get them to say that,” I said. Even to my ears I sounded paranoid.

“That’s true,” Andrade said kindly.

“She could get someone to do it for her,” I said.

“That’s true, too.”

I said, “I don’t know what else to think.”

“Right now we don’t have anything we can charge her with that’s going to stick. Maybe, like, harassment for those first couple of letters. But I gotta be honest with you, I don’t think they’re going to bother. She says it was just a joke.”

“Do you find this funny?” I demanded, holding up the letter.

Trueg and Andrade exchanged another look.

“Well,” said Andrade, “not a hundred percent funny.”

“But like sixty percent,” said Trueg.

I stared at them. Why did everyone kept finding my distress so amusing?

“Maybe more like thirty,” Trueg said.

Andrade said, “Essentially, we’re where we were before. We’ll keep looking for the art to pop up. In the meantime you can relax about those letters. I don’t think you’ll get any more of them.”

I nodded dumbly.

Said Trueg, “Wheels within wheels.”

I LEFT THE STATION IN A FOG and stayed that way until my meeting with Samantha. She saw me and immediately asked if I was feeling all right. I explained to her what the detectives had told me and she said, “Wow.”

“Indeed.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Indeed.”

She grinned. “Well, allow me to add a little clarity to your life.”

She told me that she had found James Jarvis, the man who, thirty years prior, had survived an assault reminiscent of the Queens murders. He now lived in Boston, where he taught marketing at a community college. Samantha had spoken with him, and although he claimed not to remember much, her gut told her that he was holding back. Having dealt with many victims of sexual assault, she believed we would get more from him face-to-face; the telephone made it easier for people to detach themselves and to repress

frightening memories. And when, the next day, the assistant director at Green Gardens called to let me know that while he couldn’t send out copies of the photographs, we could come have a look for ourselves, Samantha and I decided to make a trip of it.

Wednesday morning two weeks later, we boarded a puddle-jumper from LaGuardia to Albany International Airport. The previous evening’s weather report warned of an incoming nor’easter, and I expected a long delay, if not a cancellation. But that day dawned bright and clear; the terminal’s picture windows threw long rectangles of sunlight, a big blank filmstrip through which Samantha moved, illuminated, toward me. She wore lavender corduroys and a black sweater and no makeup; she swung a battered duffel bag, and when she stood at the ticket kiosk, she hooked her thumbs into her back pockets. I stood off a ways, looking at her, reluctant to break the spell she had cast around herself, and when I finally did come over to say hello and she smiled at me, it was hard not to tell her how lovely she looked.

We got our tickets and boarded a bus that took us across the tarmac to a rickety-looking prop plane, its wings glistening with deicer. There were only thirty seats, and as we took our places across the aisle from each other, Samantha turned her attention out the window, to the maintenance worker spraying down the blades.

“I hate flying,” she said.

I took her at face value. Who doesn’t hate flying? Especially these days.

But I underestimated her. At every bump—and in a tiny plane, you feel them—she clutched at the armrests, sweat beading at her hairline.

“Are you okay?”

She was pale. “I just really hate this.”

“Do you want some water?”

“No, thank you.” The plane dipped and her whole body tensed. “I’m not like this,” she said. “It started after Ian died.”

I nodded. I did a quick risk assessment and, hoping I was making the right decision, reached across the aisle and took her hand. She held on to me for the remainder of the flight, letting go only to allow the beverage cart past.

I DIDN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ALBANY except that Ed Koch had once referred to it as a town without a decent Chinese restaurant, and as we pulled out of the airport I saw the wisdom of his words. A limp sense of obligation compelled us to take a spin past the Capitol, which proved an ostentatious red-and-white mess, an attempt at dignity in a place obviously discredited by time. In hindsight, it might’ve been prudent of the first New Yorkers to reserve judgment a bit before choosing their capital. What seemed important three hundred years ago—an abundance of locally procurable beaver pelt— might eventually matter less than, say, being the worldwide center of culture and finance. But we’ll not Monday-morning quarterback.