EASELS - An Excerpt from A REAL PIECE OF WORK

Jean René lived in a converted warehouse in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. I knew this area well. Francis Falcone, a “business associate” who provided services similar to mine for somewhat more nefarious clients, had a lair nearby. René’s building, part of an abandoned factory complex, faced the East River. Even in the cold, I could smell the fetid water. A single streetlight struggled to keep the area lit, the dirty snow sucking up any brightness, leaving everything gray.

I had called René’s number from the restaurant, and after getting his answering machine three times, concluded he wasn’t home. Svetlana waited in the car while I picked the locks. Once inside, I called her on my cell phone. She came upstairs.

“Solve it yet?” she said brightly.

“Wiseass.”

It was a giant loft, all open-concept, with rows of steel columns that divided the space into four areas. First, as you walked in, an office and a living room with a massive TV. Next, a kitchen-dining area. Then a painting studio, then a bedroom/bathroom suite walled off with frosted glass. Everything was decorated in ultra-modern style. And capping it off was view of glittering Manhattan across the river.

“Soak it in, sister,” I said. “Here’s how the other half lives.”

I tossed her some latex gloves and together we gave the living room and kitchen-dining area a cursory search.

“Okay, you take the office,” I said. “I’m checking out the studio over there.”

I cracked my knuckles and strode across the loft. Chrome utility shelves stored plastic jars of paints, and in the middle of the space was a stainless steel work surface, like the dissecting tables used in morgues. A pair of large, H-frame easels with magnifying lamps attached stood side-by-side near the windows. Both were empty. I went over and examined them.

The easel on the left was spotless. The one on the right had blotches of dried paint on its tray and on the floor beneath it. Meanwhile, there wasn’t a single watercolor, sketch or cocktail-napkin doodle anywhere. Not even a blank canvas. I was on my haunches staring at an empty painting rack when Svetlana tapped me on the shoulder.

“Anybody home?”

“Notice anything odd?” I said.

She crossed her arms and looked around. “It is surprisingly clean.”

“I’m not talking about what you see. I’m talking about what you don’t see. Like how there’s not one painting here. Don’t you find that strange?”

“Perhaps he sold them all.”

“Maybe.” I jumped to my feet. “Come here, let me show you something.”

I pointed at the shelves on the two easels, where until recently canvases had stood.

“See the dust lines? The same on both easels. I’ll bet there were two paintings here for quite a while.” I went behind the easels and examined the crank mechanisms that raised and lowered the canvases.

“And, my dear Watson…”

She waved down her body. “Do I look like a Watson?”

“No, thank God.” I tugged her arm. “Note the absence of dust on the screws. The dust-free sections are equal in length on both easels.”

“Exciting,” she said.

I loosened the top clamps on both easels and carefully lowered them until I saw dust lines on the wood. They were at the exact same height.

“So, what can we conclude from all of this?”

“That Jean René is out of Swiffers?” she said.

“Come on, I’m in my element here.”

Svetlana gazed out at a glowing Manhattan. Her lips curled into a smile.

“Two paintings of identical size.”

“Right. Now, I don’t know much about painting, but it doesn’t make sense that an artist would work on two paintings of the exact same size at the same time.”

“Many artists work in series,” she said.

“Maybe so, but then why is there no paint on the left easel? What if…”

I went to the left easel, positioned the magnifying lamp where a canvas would go, and looked through it. Then I stepped over to the right easel and pretended to make brushstrokes. Svetlana spoke up in a bizarre Ukrainian-British accent.

“By jove, Holmes, I think you’ve got it!”

“By jove?”

“If you can say ‘simmer down,’ I can say ‘by jove.’”

“Fair enough,” I said. “It looks like René was copying another painting, but we don’t know what painting or where it’s gone to. Hey, are there any Ziploc bags around?”

She snapped one out of her Gucci handbag.

“Impressive,” I said. “What else you got in there?”

She shook her head. With a clean painting knife, I scraped up some paint beneath the right easel. I put the flakes in the bag and tucked it away.

“You never know. So, what did you find?”

“Not much.” She yanked a stack of file folders out of her handbag and dropped them on the steel table. The metal gonged. “Just a bunch of dossiers, one artist’s obituary and a phone bill with fifty-three calls to Shanghai.” She inspected her fingernails.

“What, no clues?” I sifted through the folders.

There were a dozen of them. One by one, I opened them under the warm overhead lights. Six were of Chinese painters and galleries based in Shanghai, with a few in Hong Kong. Inside were glossy photos of paintings and a few art catalogs in Chinese. I skipped ahead to the folders with Western names: Megan Gallant, David Birchfield, Lindsey Bourassa, Jamal Carter and Shay Connolly. Paper-clipped to Jamal Carter’s folder were his obituary, dated a week ago, and a clipping from The Post describing how he had been killed by a mugger in Tompkins Square Park. I skimmed the other folders—that is, until I got to Ms. Connolly’s.

Besides a catalog, there was a postcard with a painting on the front—a nude portrait of a redheaded woman, rendered in such lifelike detail that it could have been a Playboy centerfold. I licked my eyeteeth. The description was on the back: “SHAY CONNOLLY, THE NUDE SELF-PORTRAITS — AN ONGOING SERIES.” The show was at Mallorca Galleries on East 73rd.

“And this was next to the phone.”

Svetlana handed me a Mallorca Galleries business card with an appointment written on it: “Contessina, 1:30 p.m.” The appointment was in a few days.

“Day Planner?” I asked.

“No.”

“Find Serif’s name anywhere?”

“No.” Svetlana pointed at the redhead. “They are your—how you say?—like the rock that destroys Superman?”

“Kryptonite? Nah.” I studied the postcard for a moment then tucked it under the other stuff so it wouldn’t distract me. I nodded at the pile of clues. “Nice score, by the way.”

She shrugged and slipped the folders in her bag. “I just looked in the right places.”

“What about the bedroom and bathroom?”

“Neat as pins,” she said.

“Any photos we could use?”

“Not one.”

“Odd,” I said. “All right then, let’s go.”

At the door, I gazed across the loft at the easels.

“Curious about those paintings.”

“But there are no paintings,” Svetlana said.