While Finch kept an eye on the road traffic, Nita filled him in.
“During the war, we had quite a number of refugee artists from Europe staying in New York,” she began.
“We had some of ’em out here, too,” interjected Finch. “Used to come in the summer, get out of the hot city. Liked to hang out near the beach in ’Gansett—Amagansett, that is. I think that’s when Pollock and his wife first showed up.”
“Well, they were in the city in October 1943, when this killing went down,” Nita continued. “An artist called Wifredo Lam was found dead in his studio on West 10th Street. It looked like he was a robbery victim, and whoever killed him dressed up the body in an elaborate costume. Long story short, that wasn’t what happened at all.”
“What kind of costume?” Finch wanted to know.
“You ever hear of the Surrealists?” she asked. Finch nodded, and told her they were among the wartime summer visitors.
“Then maybe you know that they play games designed to unlock the unconscious mind. At least that’s the idea. Anyway, one of their games is called ‘exquisite corpse.’”
Finch’s brow furrowed. “You mean they kill somebody, or pretend to?”
“No, that’s just what they call it. Don’t ask me why. It’s a drawing game, usually played by three or four people. The first person draws a head, and folds the paper over so the next person can’t see it. The next person adds the next part of the body, folds it over, and so on. When it’s unfolded, the figure is all mismatched parts, the weirder the better. That’s the exquisite corpse.”
“What’s that got to do with the dead artist?”
“His body was decked out to look like one of those drawings. At first we didn’t know what it meant. He was Cuban, so the detectives thought it might have something to do with Santería, the Cuban version of voodoo. I’m Cuban—at least my family’s originally from Cuba—so they put me on the case to try to figure it out. But that was a phony lead. The outfit was a parody of the Surrealist game.”
“What was the point o’ that?” Finch asked.
“To throw the cops off in the wrong direction.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It was. Fitz and I were only beat cops then, so we didn’t get all the details until later, but even before they knew what the costume meant, Lam’s artist friends were under suspicion. Turns out one of the wives had an affair with him back in Europe, before she got married, and when he came to New York he tried to light the flame again. They had a fight, she knocked him over, and he hit his head. It caused bleeding in his brain and killed him. It was ruled an accidental death.”
“So this guy Lam and Pollock were friends in the city?”
“Yeah. Not close, but they all knew each other, went to the same parties, showed their stuff in the same art gallery. Fitz and I went to a couple of their exhibits. We didn’t understand the pictures at all. Some of them were just full of funny shapes, and the ones that did have things you could recognize were all distorted. The Surrealist stuff is just plain creepy.”
“You should see Pollock’s paintings now,” said Finch. “Look like piles of colored string all jumbled up, or yesterday’s leftover spaghetti dinner. There’s one hangin’ in Dan Miller’s general store down the road. Dan took it in trade when Pollock couldn’t pay the grocery bill. He says it’s an aerial view of Siberia. Might as well be, for all it means to me.”