But Jake didn’t see there being all that much to discuss. He’d humor Sobel, pretend to be interested. Sobel would say, We could use the bed. And there’s really nothing further we can do for your father. With the accident, he will need constant supervision. Jake would listen, take a few pamphlets on places Sobel promised would take good care of him. Jake didn’t know how much—if any—money his father had salted away. If necessary, Jake would sell the house and the money could go to his father’s new jailer; Jake didn’t want anything from the estate. He had walked out on all claims at being a Coleridge twenty-eight years ago and as far as he was concerned, they could send the money and all those grim paintings up in one big mushroom cloud of beach house and canvas. There was always the veterans’ hospital; Jacob had served his country in Korea and he was entitled to that much.
Only he couldn’t do that—it wasn’t what his mother would have wanted. Regardless of the man Jacob Coleridge had become, she would have wanted him taken care of. And she would have expected Jake to do the right thing. So here he was, standing at the foot of a $2,700-a-night hospital bed, wondering why he didn’t feel a shred of love for the old man. It wasn’t that he hated him—what had once been an actual emotion had burned down to the cinders of disregard.
He thought that maybe, after all this time, he should feel something. Real emotions like anger or regret or disappointment—anything but the vacuum of apathy that couldn’t even swirl itself into any sort of caring one way or the other. Jake had done a stellar job of dragging his emotions out behind the figurative garage and executing them—the same garage where he hid his collection of pornographic holograms of the dead from his regular life. There were images, now numbering in the tens of thousands, of every lost mutilated soul he had ever seen; his sick little fetish that he kept locked away. Along with anything he had ever felt for the man he was staring down at now.
Jake took a sip of coffee from the vending-machine cup. It was cold now and he wondered how long he had been standing there, lost in his head with the what-ifs and the dead.
He turned away from the bed and walked out into the hall. His father’s old room was three doors down and he went to see if they had finished the final coat on the wall. For some reason, he needed to see that bloody portrait erased from history.
It was well past visiting hours but with Jake firmly entrenched in a homicide investigation, drop-in privileges had been approved. It was the hang time after the patients had taken their meds but before the first rounds of the nighttime staff, and the floor felt empty. There were no old ladies shuffling along in their robes, wheeling IV stands like divining rods to the smoking section. The only noise other than the sound of his boots on the battleship linoleum was the distant chant of classical music and the more immediate sound of a thin, reedy snore. An ice machine hummed off in a small corridor that led to the utility elevator. Other than that, it was quiet.
Jake pushed the door to the room open, worried that they had already filled the space with another patient. The single wedge of light from the hallway exposed an empty bed. He expected to be greeted by the smell of fresh paint and disinfectant but recognized the metallic scent of blood as soon as he was inside. He closed the door, locked the deadbolt, and flipped the light switch.
The bloody portrait still clung to the wall, the pigment baked to black.
Jake stared for a second, wondering why it hadn’t been painted over. He looked at the featureless face, mesmerized. But something had changed—a one-inch line of masking tape ran around the portrait. He stepped closer and saw notations on the tape. There were pencil-marked arrows around the masking-tape frame, pointing outward, with the words CUT OUTSIDE TAPE printed in handwriting that Jake recognized from somewhere.
Before he had backed up a full step, he realized that the handwriting was David Finch’s and he was having the painting removed.
He thought about the mercenary little fuck paying the hospital for the portrait. Then his mind’s eye focused on Finch, in his tailored suit, standing self-importantly under a spotlight on the salvaged floor in his Soho gallery. He’d stand poised just right while the final work by the great Jacob Coleridge was hoisted into place by two workmen using a lift. He thought of the way he would market the piece, leaving a few raw nubs of stud extending beyond the skin of sheetrock like denuded bone. It’s so raw, he would say. So primal. The best work Coleridge had ever done. His last, too.
Price?
He’d shake his head sadly, eyes downcast as if embarrassed at having to discuss something as crass as money.
But you must have an idea of a price!
He’d look insulted, as if the potential client hadn’t understood what he had said. Then he’d slowly let a pensive look bleed into his features, as if the thought of parting with the piece had never crossed his mind but he was beginning to give it some thought. Sure, he was a gallery owner—but he was also an art lover. And some pieces you simply couldn’t put a dollar sign to. But the sincerest thing he’d say, while placing his hand conspiratorially on the potential client’s arm, is that there just isn’t a price on friendship. And Jacob Coleridge was—had been—his friend.
Forget Damien Hirst, Jasper Johns, and Willem de Kooning (hand placed reverently over his heart). Did they ever paint in their own blood? I don’t think so. They were/are great. But they were/are not Jacob Coleridge. Coleridge’s work was known for its truth. And after all, what could be more truthful than sacrificing yourself for your art. Bleeding for your art.
Then he’d look back at the painting and say maybe it should go out into the world with someone who would appreciate it. Maybe it deserved to have a loving home. Then he would raise his hand, twitter on the precipice of indecision for a second, then put it back in his pocket, shaking his head and saying, No, I couldn’t. He was a friend.
How much?
A friend! Finch would repeat, fraternal pride in his voice. Wipe a single tear from the corner of his eye.
And after a perfectly measured pause, he’d say, Fifty million dollars.
After all, you didn’t rise to the top of a field so full of navel-gazing as modern art without possessing consummate skills in both theatrics and bullshit. A PhD in ass-kissing didn’t hurt.
The toe of Jake’s boot dented the sheetrock and stopped at the stud behind, puffing out a white cloud of dust. The wall shuddered and a suspended acoustic tile spun to the floor. The second kick, a little higher and to the right, went through the sheetrock, punching out a neat square hole. Another ceiling tile fell like a dry leaf.
By his third kick there were footsteps in the hall. They passed by, searching for the noise.
On his fourth they doubled back.
He reached down into his boot and pulled out the knife he had carried there since he was a teenager. Instead of the clumsy Mexican-made switchblade of his youth, his hand came up with a Gerber titanium airframe knife; standard issue for FBI personnel.
Someone tried the door. Rattled the knob.
“Fuck off!” Jake roared, and thunked the blade a quarter inch into the wall at the top corner of Finch’s indicated cut-lines. He slashed down, the carbon steel sliding through the yellow topcoat, and the wall hemorrhaged white dust. He drew the knife down, then across the bottom, and up the other side.
“I’m getting the key,” a voice said from the other side of two inches of maple.
Jake hauled the bed over to the door, jammed it up against the frame, and locked the wheels; it wouldn’t stop a determined man but it would slow down a single nurse. Then he went back to his father’s blood, pulled the knife out of the wall, and slid it back into his boot.