The commissions, p.44
The Commissions, page 44
“Maybe not,” I said. I’d meant it as a joke, but as I heard myself say the words, they felt true.
“Whatever,” she said, with an icy chill. “Semester is over. And I can’t promise to maintain regular hours for your endless flow of customers.” And suddenly I felt bad. Because only then did I realize how insensitive I’d been. Last Danielle knew, a strange man had come into town and taken a local prostitute to who knew where, killed himself, then sent me a posthumous message which I ran off chasing for what I said would be a day or two, and after a week hadn’t even thought to let her know I wasn’t also dead. And that’s when it occurred to me that maybe Danielle hadn’t been the only one who’d been closed off and hiding beneath a shield of sarcasm. Which is when I knew for certain that I would be leaving Amsterdam, and that the only part of my time there I would miss would be Danielle.
26th Street, San Francisco – Patron asked to be unnamed
“Do whatever hours work for you,” I told her. “And feel free to use my studio and computer as much as you need. Make yourself at home, and I’ll let you know when I’m heading back.”
She was quiet for a moment, and in the silence I sensed anger. It was as if she and I had been living in a state of holding our collective breaths, and finally we were ready to let them out. Only too long had passed, and all the things we should have said were no longer an option. She hadn’t asked if I’d found Tulip, and I was glad. Francesca had intentionally left Amsterdam without telling anyone, and I was sure she preferred never to be found again. Which meant that Kitty, Danielle, and anyone else who’d been left wondering, they were just going to have to stay wondering. It was sad, the distance between Danielle and me, but it at least spared me having to lie.
“Cool,” Danielle said. Then she hung up. It would be the last time we spoke.
Ross Alley, Chinatown, San Francisco – Patron asked to be unnamed
A couple of days later she sent me a text: Read your damn email! On average I checked my email every two to three days, but since I’d been in Switzerland I hadn’t checked it at all. I logged in, and amidst the hundreds of announcements that proved every form of human communication eventually devolves into a barrage of advertisements you never signed up for, I saw an email from Danielle. It read that she had completed her research in Amsterdam and was moving to Majorca. If I didn’t return before she left, she would slip her keys through the mail slot. I understood then why she’d written and not called. Because when I phoned her, I got an automated recording saying the number was no longer in service. Her text to me must have been the last thing she did before removing the SIM card. I was starting to feel uncomfortable about being the last person people communicated with before significantly changing their lives.
* * *
Back to the story drawer. I know this is only a draft, but I also know Adam. He will find every dangling plot point and note it as if he were a third-grade math teacher chastising me for forgetting to carry the one—and yes, I know that’s a mixed metaphor. Call it an homage to Ronnie. Just as I know that pointing out the holes in the story is Adam’s job as editor. But I want to beat him to it. So I’m making my own list. Here goes:
Crystal. I searched for Kris Tao along with every possible name combination of Kris, Tao, Crystal, Tally, and Lake, and found nothing of relevance. I assumed this had been Larissa, having scrubbed her former lover from the web. I still daydream about running into Tally one day.
I also wondered if the reason she and Larissa had split was because Tally had in fact killed Faith and Kai. If so, it would make sense that neither of the two young women could have stayed with the other following such an event. Larissa, in her devotion to nonconforming ethics, might have been able to forgive Tally—might have even helped her start a new life, as she’d supposedly done for Martin—but Tally surely would have had to move on in order to forget the past and rebuild her life. Which I believe would have been equally true even if Tally hadn’t done the killing. Learning the truth about Faith was a devastating enough blow to her version of reality. Whether she’d responded with a gun or not, leaving everything behind would have been the only way for her to move on. Or who knows, maybe Tally and Larissa were just two young people who had a fleeting love affair. Theirs certainly would not have been the first.
What next? My commissions. While my studio had been untouched by the fire, it had been ravaged by water damage. Firefighters had literally chopped a hole in the ceiling with axes. I managed to recover all of my drawings from my flat files, though most were stained with what can only be described as smoke-water. Many of my patrons told me to keep the advance they’d paid, saying we could figure out the artwork later, and several wrote me checks for “future art”—a term that I adored and would later make use of—though was less about purchasing art than their way of supporting me in a difficult time. I was a bit overwhelmed, actually, at how supportive my patrons and fans ended up being. It never occurred to me that so many people would step forward to offer support. One fan even gave me a place to live, so that when the three months of insurance lapsed at the City Mews, I got to live rent-free in a two-story house on Twin Peaks.
I got back to work as quickly as I could. My throat took longer to heal than it took me to get back to drawing. I was able to have my smoke-filled brushes retrieved from my condemned building and set up a temporary studio in the City Mews. Larissa bought me a new digital camera and computer to replace the ones she’d already bought me—which I hadn’t asked her to do but greatly appreciated—and in no time I was cranking out drawings. Which was exactly what I needed. Getting back to work was my way of creating structure and putting solid ground under my feet. It wasn’t the first time—and it surely wouldn’t be the last—that I would use my work as a cornerstone on which to rebuild my life, and I was grateful to have it. I began with the Stinson drawing. I still had days booked at Jerry Garcia’s former beach house, and I took advantage of every one. Aside from enjoying the fresh ocean air in my damaged lungs, I was able to get the drawing done in time for Steven to give to his wife. A slew of new commissions came in too. Fun stuff, like Ross Alley in Chinatown, home of the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory; the palm trees in Precita Park; and, “anything from Duboce Triangle,” which were the kinds of drawings I loved to make. I got to stroll the lovely neighborhoods of San Francisco until a composition called to me. Never had I been so pleased to be the drawing monkey Larissa had deemed me to be.
The only commission to go awry was, appropriately, not even a true commission. It was the drawing for the local community group raising funds to restore the Conservatory of Flowers. I’d done everything I could to make the dilapidated structure look glorious, making a full-color drawing and even going so far as buying a dozen dahlias and setting up a still life to infuse the drawing with life. But the organizers of the private auction hated it. “Too pretty,” they said. Apparently they’d wanted a drawing of how the building looked in its devastated form. “You’re a master of cracks and imperfections,” I was told. “We wanted a drawing capturing all of those details, to remind donors of the wretched state they helped save the Conservatory from.”
Telephone Building, San Francisco – Commissioned by Ben Mori
Filoli Gardens, Woodside, CA – Patron unknown. Unfortunately, due to either the fire, bad record-keeping, or my faulty memory, I am unable to say who commissioned this drawing or why.
It was a befitting irony, seeing that I would have loved to have drawn the building that way. And despite them arguing with me that they’d conveyed this desire clearly, I was certain I would have remembered such a strange request. They asked me if I could change it, and I literally laughed in their faces. I told them never mind, I would keep the drawing. At least then I’d be able to make some money from it. To which they said, “No, no. We’ve put you through all this trouble,” and begrudgingly said they’d take it. By that point I was just annoyed and said no. If they wanted the piece, then they had to give me half of what it brought in at auction. They were offended but I didn’t care. Ultimately we agreed I’d get a third of the sale, but of course, in the end—even after the drawing fetched double what I would have charged to make it—I told them to keep my third, as my contribution to restoring the historic greenhouse. I didn’t even get a thank-you. Funny how the ones who want you to work for free think they can treat you the worst and make the most demands.
Next in the drawer is the Miata, which was destroyed in the fire. Another irony not lost on me, considering that for six months I’d been parking on the street and had pulled my little yellow ride into the garage only hours before Kai lit a match. That poor car. It had gotten the shit beaten out of it, then had its gas drained to set the blaze—which I was told by the fire department. The insurance company gave me a whopping thousand bucks in compensation. Less than I’d paid to get it out of impound.
Oh, and of course there’s Brian. I wouldn’t want to forget my dear twin brother. If you could see me right now, you’d see I’m shaking my head. Freaking Brian. Eventually he did call me back. After twenty minutes of him boasting about his newfound celebrity in China, he was even less impressed by the idea that he might be a father—or about my house having been set on fire—than he was about the Mill Valley cop he’d pissed off. “My guess is she’s probably not the only one,” was all he had to say about potentially having a daughter. Which Larissa found hilarious. And made me think I might actually be the uncle.
On that topic, while in those days the ability to determine which of identical twins had fathered a child was out of reach, the technology is now as easy as ordering pet food online. But in order for a test like that to be run, someone would have to get close enough to Larissa to get her DNA. Which she’s made even more impossible than the test was all those years ago. As I’ve already noted, Larissa isn’t talking to me—and not just to me. As anyone who has heard of Larissa Huxley knows, she’s probably the most famous recluse since Howard Hughes. Making not just sorting out fatherhood, but getting her to corroborate or refute Martin’s story, impossible. Which is an irony befitting our time: one of the most influential architects of the digital information age refuses to speak to anyone. If ever there was a cautionary tale, Larissa’s seems to be it. How she came to be that way is a story for another book—and one I would most definitely get sued for writing. Though it is a story I would like to someday tell. I suppose we’ll just have to see how this one goes. For now it’s just going to have to remain in the drawer of dangling plots.
And while we’re on the subject of information, here’s a little bit of trivia for you: The house Faith Chadwick lived in is called the Whittier Mansion, which has an even more sordid history than having been the residence of an uncredited blackmailer, pimp, and all around schemer. In the 1940s, the thirty room sandstone was purchased by the Nazi government as a consulate. The consul, Fritz Wiedemann, had been one of Hitler’s closest friends—right up until the führer discovered Wiedemann was having an affair with the Hungarian princess he’d been infatuated with, which was when Adolf shipped his old buddy Fritz off to San Francisco. According to Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, Wiedemann had been known around town as a playboy, until the u.s. government could no longer ignore the atrocities of the war in Europe, and sent him back to the Nazis as they joined the fight. So yeah. You could say that the building has had more than its share of shady residents.
Oh, and I almost forgot—Betty. I should have thought of her sooner—then and now. Poor thing, she had to learn about the fire by coming upon the scene. Five-forty-five in the morning, sun not even up, arriving as she did every day to open the shop only to find a scorched building. She ran home and called Adam at the office, except he hadn’t gone to work that morning—opting to see me instead—so he didn’t get her message until the afternoon, which meant that for half the day she was left worrying I might be in the hospital or dead. When Adam finally did get her message, he phoned her back and calmed her down, then rang me at the hotel. Ocampo had just left, having told me about the killing of Faith and Kai. I could barely think let alone talk, but I was able to listen as Adam told me that Betty was going to take the unexpected time off to fly back to Honduras and care for her sister. The next day, at Thanksgiving dinner, Larissa asked me how I was going to help Betty now that she was out of a paycheck, and when I replied that she was leaving, Larissa offered to buy her plane ticket. “It’s the least I can do,” she said. “After having tricked her into letting me into your place.”
Whittier Mansion, San Francisco
Which reminds me of one more story: The evening after Larissa and I hiked the Battery to Bluffs trail, when I began the drawing of Marshall Beach, she and I ordered dim sum and watched an episode of Glory Days, Brian’s new show. Larissa had been able to get the episode onto her laptop, by way of what she called a P2P network, something she said had just been released to the online community, and to which she’d contributed a great deal of code. At the time I had no idea what she was talking about, but now of course I understand that it had been one of the first major global file-sharing networks. As for the show, Brian played a debonair American industrialist courting a wealthy widow. Everyone spoke Mandarin, except for Brian, who spoke English with a Texas twang and had all his dialogue subtitled in Chinese. So while we watched the entire episode, he was the only person we could understand. Afterward, Larissa said, “I’m not sure I should have watched that. Even though I know he’s acting, that character is how I’ll forever think of him.” Which was a painful reminder of why Brian had gone to China in the first place, having been typecast by pretty much all of America. Still, it was fun to see him on TV again.
Noe Valley, San Francisco – Commissioned by Angela Windin. She gave me keys to her unit, then left for the day. She had a very large and rambunctious puppy who I played with and gave a few treats from the jar on the counter. That night I got a call asking what I’d done to her dog. Apparently she’d returned home to find her place destroyed and the pup having thrown up all over her bed. She loved the drawing, though.
* * *
I’m sure there’s still a slew of random items in this story drawer—the literary equivalent of loose rubber bands, user manuals for long-discarded electronics, and leftover hex nuts for an Ikea shelf that apparently doesn’t need them seeing that it’s still standing—but there’s one subject that warrants more than being tossed into the catch-all box of leftovers: Martin Zorn, aka Nathan Cohen, aka El Resbaladizo. Interestingly, try googling El Resbaladizo, then going to images. There’s a kids’ book about fishing, and a lot of “slippery when wet” road signs, but far down in the list you’ll see a wanted poster with a sketchy rendering of a man’s face. It looks a bit fake—though so do a lot of the other wanted posters I found—and the portrait is a bit vague. But I can tell you, had I been on vacation in Mexico and seen that poster, I would have paused and said, “That could be Martin Zorn.” And so I’m choosing to believe that this is one part of the story that Martin couldn’t have fabricated—or, rather, that he could have, but the foresight and effort it would have taken would have been beyond meticulous, and I just don’t think Martin was that hellbent on convincing me. A postcard with a return address as a clue, even a wedding ring to spur my curiosity, those I can see, but to have a portrait drawn and poster dummied up, then planted on a website dedicated to cartel memorabilia seems a bit much. Though of course I can’t really know. He was known to have taken a page out of a CIA handbook in the past. And surely something like this would fall under the category of creating deep cover.
Also, I did some poking around on the Internet and believe I found Martin and Francesca’s former employer: Stepan Ivanov. A nasty character, to be sure. He’d been gunned down outside a restaurant in Bangkok in April of this year, shortly before Easter, as Francesca had said. Three men with automatic rifles put thirty-two bullets into his body, his security detail curiously nowhere around. There was a long and thorough article about a significant number of arrests made by Interpol and the dismantling of what was considered one of the largest crime syndicates operating between Europe and Asia. But no mention of Martin Zorn or Nathan Cohen. Which of course was to be expected. Though there was nothing in it to refute Martin’s participation, either, which is equally unsurprising. Meaning that he—or Francesca—could have easily done the same research I had and reverse-engineered a story to fit facts that already existed. It would have been a lot easier than faking a Mexican wanted poster.
As for the rest of Francesca’s narrative, I’ve made a decision: Regarding Martin’s version of what supposedly happened in San Francisco, I will concede, it is possible. But so are theories about aliens building the pyramids. Which is the problem with not having witnessed events yourself. But it doesn’t matter. Because what I’ve decided is, parsing out who actually killed Faith Chadwick and Kai Sjugard—or even Joe Chadwick—is irrelevant. What is relevant is to set the record straight about Faith. To tell the world who the woman truly was.
That said, I’m not sure I can get away with not offering my opinion—from readers, critics, or, more important, Adam. So, if forced to answer whether I believe the story Francesca told, I will say no. No matter how convincing Martin’s tale, there is no alternative version to this story. When I think back to after the shootings, Larissa and Ronnie may have been tight-lipped about what had happened, but they were always that way. And while I was a bit of a mess—still recovering from having almost choked to death and failing to save Taylor—I don’t remember having any sense that they were keeping secrets from me—certainly not one as big as having covered up two murders and helped a wanted man flee the country. But again, I don’t know, nor do I think it matters.
