The living area was in a loft at the top of an open flight of stairs only slightly less steep than a ladder. An icebox, a chipped enamel sink, and a pump-up gas stove shared the space with a tired armchair and a bed on an iron frame. Bricks had been removed from a window extending below the floor to let in light; old mortar hammocked the corners of the panes like snow. A fluorescent ring shed pale illumination on brown linoleum. The place smelled of stale grease and mineral spirits.
Scarpetti swung open the oven door on squawking hinges and removed a fat jug that at one time might have contained bleach. New York bachelors never baked, it seemed.
At least Jacob assumed his host had stayed single after the pink-flamingo episode. The female touch was patently absent. A paint-streaked wooden stepladder made a drying rack for an odd number of socks.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay on here.” Scarpetti filled a pair of mismatched glasses with clear liquid from the jug. He’d shed his smock, which had been only partially successful in protecting his flannel shirt and dungarees from spatters. “I only pay rent on the loft. The owner lets me use the rest of the place as a studio, but he wants to put in apartments as soon as he can get his hands on the material. The war slowed everything up.”
“Did you serve?”
“They don’t take convicted felons.” His tone was the same as if he’d said he had flat feet.
Jacob accepted a glass and toured the space. Finished canvases hung unframed on bare brick and leaned against it in stacks. He recognized the originals of the prints Elk had sent, among startling new scenes of cigarette-smoking teenagers lounging in alley doorways, beetle-browed army sergeants encircling an undernourished private in a barracks, a woman caught in broad daylight wearing makeup intended for a neon-lit bar, looking like a pathetic clown abandoned by the circus. In every picture, it seemed as if something violent had just happened or was just about to.
“I’ve seen some of these places around town. Do you paint on location?”
“Sketch. Set up an easel anywhere in this burg and in two minutes you’ve got a crowd. I can’t stand people looking over my shoulder when I work.”
“Models?”
“Paint ’em in later. Pay ’em out of my fees. Elk runs his shop on the cheap, using the same models over and over. That’s why all Blue Devil covers look alike. The Chinese girl on Chinese Checkers is a Filipino spy on Mindanao Massacre and a Japanese masseuse on Tokyo Nights.”
This coming from a man who painted himself almost exclusively; but Jacob resisted saying it. “You can’t have much left after paying your own models.”
“I don’t use professionals. They all come with the same stock poses. Getting ’em to break out is like trying to coax a milk horse off its route. Give me a file clerk or a gypsy cab driver. Does that look graceful to you?” He pointed his glass at a woman shrinking away from a man’s raised hand on the floor of a dime-a-dance club. Her lipstick was smeared, her eyes wide, like a wild animal’s.
“Not at all.”
“A pro would’ve done Camille. When it comes to a woman taking a beating, the awkwarder the better. All I had to tell her was what was going on. You just know she’s been there. I found her slinging drinks in a dive on Twenty-Second.”
“When I saw you I thought they were self-portraits.”
“The men, you mean.”
Odd thing to say.
He rolled a shoulder. “There’s a piece of me in all of ’em. Isn’t there some of you in the people you write?”
“Sure. You spend a lot of time scouting prospects.”
“Not really. It’s like deer hunting. Pick your spot, sit down, and sooner or later one walks right up to you. Sometimes it’s pure accident. I was browsing for neckties in Macy’s when I found that palooka there, the one in his BVDs with the dead blonde. Selling men’s cologne.”
“He doesn’t look like it.”
“That was the idea.”
Jacob sipped his drink. It took his breath away. It was pure grain alcohol, a step removed from the paint thinner he was breathing. “What is grappa, anyway?”
“It’s made from the skins and stems left over after they crush the grapes. Hemingway practically lived on it in Spain. It’s cheaper than gin. Makes a terrific aftershave.” Scarpetti climbed onto the bed, propping himself up with pillows. The springs brayed. “Elk said to expect you. He thinks I know everybody on the wrong side of the tracks from Frank Costello on down.”
“Did he say why I wanted to see you?”
“He told me about The Fence. Swell idea. Don’t know why nobody’s done it already. You don’t know any fences?”
“He said I should wing it.”
“The dope. Without a true bill your pet crook would look like Clark Gable and talk like David Niven. And I wouldn’t be doing the cover.”
Jacob sat in the chair. He sank down until his knees were higher than his waist. The grappa was beginning to take effect. The heat climbed his ribs and burned his ears. He got bold. “Did you really pull a stick-up?”
Scarpetti took cigarettes and matches from his shirt pocket, offered the pack. Jacob shook his head. The artist lit one for himself. “I was a stupid kid. I read a piece about Dillinger in Liberty, stole a pint of Four Roses from a drugstore, drank it all in the alley, and went back in waving a Boy Scout knife. Cops were already there. The druggist called them after I swiped the liquor.”
“Elk said you got ten years. Kind of stiff for a kid his first time out.”
“Who said it was my first?”
He dodged that one. “Did you study art in prison?”
“A guy on my block taught it in junior high till the janitor caught him with a girl in the seventh grade. I started out drawing oranges and boxes on the floor by my bunk; by the time I got sprung I was painting the warden’s portrait in oils. You can trade with the guards for almost anything but a nude model.” He grinned. “Yeah, I asked.”
“What was your first professional job?”
“Pen-and-ink illo for Silk Sheets. The art director liked the way I draw tits. Those porno rags could afford to hire nudes.”
Jacob liked Scarpetti. He hadn’t expected to like anyone in the paperback jungle. “How come you still know underworld characters?”
“See, that’s why you need me. You say ‘underworld’ around these gorillas, they’ll feed you to the rats. Why shouldn’t I know them? Not all my models came from Macy’s.”
“Fence shops?”
“Fence shops, flophouses; a newsstand on Tenth Avenue where the black market boys hang out looking for tips. I learned enough in stir to give ’em the office.”
“What if they find out you’re sharing their secrets?”
“Well, if you tell on me, it’ll make Elk awful mad. If I’m in the river he’ll have to use his hacks exclusive.”
“Why risk your neck for me? We just met.”
“I like the fence idea. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life dressing up Hank Stratton’s rotten private eye stories. Listen, you write this the way you wrote Chinese Checkers, I’ll make you a cover they could hang in the Louvre. If Elk holds up his end, you’ll blast Lash Logan out of every barbershop in the country.”
“I wouldn’t enjoy it if the art’s posthumous.”
“Don’t worry; I’m no Baby LeRoy.” He looked at a strap watch. “Help yourself to the vino while I go make a call. I don’t keep a phone in the house. The damn things always ring when I’m painting a nostril. Nostrils, that’s the secret. Get one wrong, you turn Rita Hayworth into Boris Karloff. My answering service is a bartender down the street.” He threw on a paint-stained cotton jacket Jacob had thought was a drop cloth and went out the door.
Jacob didn’t pour any more wine. He wasn’t really much for drink. He got up to clear the fog, studying the paintings. The man was too good for this racket.
He toured an arsenal of painters’ props: blackjacks, pistols, assorted daggers, a bullwhip. He recognized some of the items from Scarpetti’s covers. A pipe rack contained chalk-striped suits, low-cut dresses, and lacy lingerie. A clothes tree was a haberdashery of fedoras, cloches, straw boaters, women’s evening headgear clustered with feathers and sequins. Tawdry costume jewelry spilled from a dresser drawer. After this, a visit to a genuine fencing operation might prove a disappointment.
He found a shabby black portfolio and spread it open on the bed. He was snooping now. It was packed with charcoal sketches on coarse paper, signed with smudged fingerprints: male and female nudes, landscapes, the Central Park pedestrian tunnel, details of hands and feet, a caricature he recognized immediately as Hedda Hopper. The more serious studies bore no resemblance to the subjects Scarpetti used in his cover art: The female nudes were middle-aged and paunchy, the males anti-heroic, with homely or ordinary features and little muscle definition. One of the women was several months pregnant.
“You found my doodles.”
He jumped. Scarpetti had made no noise re-entering. Jacob slapped the portfolio shut and turned.
“Sorry. I’m a nosy jerk.”
“Forget it. I’m just glad you didn’t find my opium pipe.” Scarpetti poured himself another drink. “I wanted to study in Paris, but it kept changing hands. I’d go now, only I can’t take the time. I’m too damn successful for my own good.” He sat on the bed. “You’re all set. Saturday night, six o’clock, one-eleven East Fourth.”
“Rough neighborhood.”
“You won’t find what you’re looking for on Park Avenue. Saturday’s when Irish Mickey drops in to see how much his people are stealing from him. You don’t want to miss him.”
“Irish Mickey’s your fence?”
“Mickey Shannon. The name he raced under, anyway. Back then, the owners liked their liquor from Kentucky and their jockeys from County Cork. His real name’s Isidore Muntz. Don’t tell him I said that. His fuse is even shorter than he is.”
“It’s walking distance, isn’t it?”
“Only if you know the Village. There are tourists from the ’39 World’s Fair still wandering around lost.”
“I work not far from there. I know my way home and that’s about it.”
“The layout makes sense, if you drink as much as the Dutchmen who drew it up. Come back five-thirty Saturday and we’ll go meet some crooks.”