End of Secrets Page 12

  She was on her feet the moment they disappeared into the elevator. She rushed through the crowd and, instead of waiting for an elevator, pushed through the heavy door to the stairs. She descended all fifteen flights two steps at a time, cornering with her inside hand anchored hard against the railing. With her other hand, she extracted a wireless earpiece from her pocket and called Jones by voice command. He answered just as she emerged from the hotel.

  “Which way?” she asked, looking up at the camera. He didn’t miss a beat, as if he’d been sitting there watching the feed the entire time.

  “Uptown. Toward the Sixty-Sixth Street subway.”

  She spotted them on the crosswalk at Sixty-Fifth Street.

  “What’s the plan here, Kera?”

  “I don’t know yet. For now I just want to see where they’re headed.”

  “Kera, you heard the director. We’re supposed to be finding missing people, not tailing Canyon while he goes barhopping on a Friday night, which, by the way, I can do from right here.”

  “We’ve been tracking him with HawkEye for a week and it’s gotten us nowhere. I want to get close.” She knew she should have told Jones that Canyon might have made her at the bar. But she didn’t.

  She kept a half block between them until they descended into the subway station. Kera swept her Metro card at the turnstile in time to see them cross under the tracks and head up the stairs toward the downtown platform. An express train exploded through the station with a force that rattled her brain. When she reached the platform, she searched in both directions, finally spotting Erica leaning over the tracks to get a look up the tunnel. Kera edged closer, taking cover behind a group of Juilliard students. She wanted to be no more than one car ahead of Canyon and Erica when their train came.

  On the opposite platform, a bum played a flute, its woody notes echoing off the tile walls in unflattering pools of sound. Finally, another rumble, low at first, then piercing, and the headlights of a downtown 1 swung into view. Kera waited for Erica and Canyon to disappear through the doors before she boarded the adjacent car. Through the smudged windows, she could see Erica sitting midcar, her head thrown back against an ad for the new Jalen West album. Canyon was standing in front of her, leaning against a vertical bar.

  “I’m on a downtown 1,” Kera said in a low voice.

  “I can see that,” Jones said in her ear.

  She glanced up. There was a camera at each end of the car.

  “Perfect. How ’bout letting me know when it looks like they’re about to bail.” Kera turned her back and sunk down in her seat so that she wasn’t visible through the windows between cars.

  After Twenty-Eighth Street, Jones told her that the girl was standing up. “They’re getting off at Twenty-Third,” he said thirty seconds later. Kera stepped through the doors at the last second and shuffled streetward, spotting them just before they disappeared into the city at the top of the stairs. She picked them up again aboveground and allowed some distance to open as she followed them west. They were headed into the industrial blocks adjacent to the West Side Highway.

  “All right, Kera, how far are you planning to take this? You know I don’t have eyes on you once you get past Ninth Ave.”

  “All the more reason for me to stay on them.”

  Though it hadn’t achieved any special reputation for crime, this part of town was abruptly darker and quieter than the arteries of Chelsea that throbbed with nightlife only a few blocks to the east. She wondered briefly if she should stop. She tossed a wary glance back at Eighth Avenue before hurrying across the street to keep Erica and Canyon in sight.

  Jones’s voice was in her ear again. He seemed to have accepted that she wasn’t turning back. “What do you see?”

  Kera stopped.

  “Hang on,” she said. It was quiet enough to whisper now and still be heard. Erica and Canyon had disappeared midblock. They were no longer in front of her. They had traversed the island to within earshot of the West Side Highway, and now suddenly, Kera was alone. She stepped across the street, slowing as she came even with a door she thought they might have entered and then finding cover in the shadows of a construction site.

  “What’s going on?” Jones wanted to know.

  “I lost them outside a building on Twenty-Second. It looks like an auto body shop.” A pale orange fluorescent light flickered and buzzed over an aluminum door set into a brick wall soiled by layers of graffiti.

  “We’ll check it out tomorrow, OK? Don’t go in there alone.” It went without saying that they couldn’t call for backup on an unauthorized tail. Gabby had been clear: no NYPD, no Feds. Jones was right. The only reasonable thing to do was to hustle back to Tenth Avenue where she could flag down a vacant cab. Then she could come back during business hours and get a good look at the place. She sat thinking for a minute, hoping a better plan would come to her.

  A figure approached on a bicycle. Kera watched from the shadows, intending to let the cyclist pass before making a break for more civilized streets. But the cyclist hopped the opposite curb and braked to a stop at the corner of the brick building. It was a young woman—Kera noted the ponytail under the cyclist’s baseball cap as she dismounted, locked her bike to a chain-link fence, and entered the building through the aluminum door. Kera exhaled, unaware she’d been holding her breath.

  “Kera?” Jones said.

  Punches of laughter burst from down the block in the opposite direction. She turned to see two young men spilling out of a cab at the corner, walking toward her. They crossed the street and disappeared into the building. Like the woman on the bike, they hadn’t used a key to get in. The door was unlocked.

  “I’m going in.” She felt her legs carrying her across the street.

  “Kera—”

  “And I’m getting off the phone. I can’t be seen with this earpiece. I’ll call you when I’m out.” She hung up before Jones could protest. And with a quick, right-left glance to check that the street was clear, she reached for the doorknob.

  She found herself in a near blackness defined solely by two opposing exit signs. The room was large. She smelled car oil and dusty concrete. Over the sound of her own heart came another noise, another rhythmic thump, which took her a moment to understand was a bass line. The music drifted from an opening somewhere on the far side of the room. She squinted, impatient for her eyes to adjust. Gradually, she discerned the outlines of what appeared to be a large garage housing a half-dozen taxi cabs in various states of disrepair.

  Then she noticed the painting.

  The canvas hung over an open doorway directly across the room. Dark red, blue, and green brushstrokes swirled around a darker core resembling, she thought, either the Milky Way or a human eye decorated with heavy makeup. Kera moved toward the painting, stepping silently between two cabs. The thump of the music grew louder, and she could feel the driving beat tickle the concrete underfoot. Her senses worked double-time, taking things in, identifying them, entering them into the matrix that informed her decision to keep going or to retreat. She picked up cigarette smoke, fragments of a garbled conversation. She kept moving. The voices grew louder. There were people just around the corner—two female voices and a male voice. They were discussing Background Noise Pollution, which had to be the name of a band or else their conversation was completely unintelligible.

  She peered through the threshold. The smokers were standing on a steep stairwell that disappeared beneath the garage. The guy, spotting her, waved a casual welcome and then returned to his discussion. Kera nodded as she squeezed by and started down the steps, descending farther into the building as if she’d been invited.

  She entered a cavernous basement space that made no sense in the context of the grungy auto shop overhead. The wall through which she’d entered was exposed, rust-colored brick. The remaining walls were constructed of smooth concrete. They all featured wide, floor-to-ceiling paintings that matched the style of the piece over the doorway upstairs. In one corner a short-haired DJ s
pun dance music from an elevated booth. A keyboard and drum set rested on a platform extending from the far wall. Two bars stocked with liquor were arranged between flickering tea candles.

  Kera moved along the edge of the room, getting a feel for the space while she considered the paintings. The van Gogh swirls gave them life, but it was not clear what they were meant to depict. At first she thought she was looking at human features. But the longer she looked at them, the more abstract the paintings became. They seemed to mock scale the way a picture of the inside of an atom can at the same time look like an unbound galaxy.

  “Figure it out yet?” The voice came from over her shoulder.

  “Excuse me?” she said, turning. “Oh.” His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck where smooth flesh pulled against the sturdy contours of his collarbone. Dark, meticulous hair shot up from his forehead. What startled her were his eyes—a moody hazelnut color of uncertain depth. The surveillance footage had not been able to pick up on that. He was looking past her, up at the wall. She followed his gaze back to the painting, assessing the shapes and colors. “I think it’s an ear canal,” she said. “Or a wormhole.”

  “Those are very specific interpretations,” said Charlie Canyon.

  “I didn’t mean to project. Don’t tell the artist,” she said, and then caught herself in time to play it off. “That is, I’m sorry, you’re not—?”

  “God, no. The artist is the girl over there by the yellow canvas. Marybelle Pickett. Sort of improbable, isn’t it, a girl so tiny churning out these massive works?”

  They were standing close enough to the canvas that color filled Kera’s vision from one side to the other. “I think I like it. Whatever it’s supposed to be.”

  “She’s an important artist,” said Canyon.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because her paintings expand our awareness of the world, rather than distract us from it. She’s going to be famous.”

  Kera didn’t know the art world from molecular biology, but her gut told her there wasn’t a chance in hell the paintings hung around this basement would ever enjoy a wide audience. They seemed precisely the sort of indie achievements that would be destined for obscurity. Kera searched his face for any sign of irony, but found none. “I’ll have to take your word for it. I’m no art critic.”

  “The opinions of those who call themselves critics matter the least.” When he looked at her, his gaze was piercing, like he knew she didn’t belong here, like he knew everything. “What do you do, then?” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “The drinks were better at the Empire Hotel. If you’re not an art critic, what brings you all the way down here?”

  “I’m a journalist.” She didn’t like how this was going. After watching his every move for a week, she’d assumed she was walking into this with the advantages of surprise and information. And yet she felt like he was a step ahead of her.

  “Are you here on a professional basis?” he asked.

  “Tonight? Yes. I’m researching a story.” Stick to the truth, she reminded herself. As close as possible to the truth. Her training had taught her that, when working undercover, it was important to tell as few lies as possible. Especially about the big things, like her name and occupation. Necessary as they were, lies had a way of becoming very slippery once you started making them up on the fly.

  “About?”

  “About the city’s underground art scene.”

  “Taking a pretty literal stab at it, aren’t you?” he said, looking up at the ceiling.

  “I guess I am.” She smiled and turned toward Canyon, positioning herself so that she could perform a sweeping glance around the room. Erica stood chatting in a group by the small stage.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “About what?”

  “The underground art scene. For a journalist, you don’t ask very many questions.”

  “Are the paintings for sale?”

  “Of course they’re for sale. What else would they be for?”

  “How much does something like this go for?”

  “That’s the fun part. The market will decide.”

  She laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “The market? Most of these people look like they couldn’t afford a cab fare to get over here.”

  “These people don’t want to own the paintings, not most of them, anyway. They want to enjoy them. See? They’re having a good time.”

  “You said the point was to sell them.”

  “It is. But the paintings need to acquire value first.”

  “The artist hasn’t given them enough value?”

  “Oh, they’re most valuable to the artist. But what does that matter? They need to become valuable to others.”

  “And what makes them more valuable to others?”

  Canyon never got a chance to answer her because just then, the energy in the room shifted abruptly. It was nothing overt—no applause, no announcement, no gasps. Just a shift, subtle but unmistakable. Kera looked to the door. The man who had just entered was tall and lean, and his dark hair curled out in waves from underneath a beanie cap. The dim light in the room seemed to be soaked up by his olive skin. His fingers, she noticed as she watched him greet people, were long and beautiful. Bystanders hovered close, their bodies leaning slightly toward him, as if trying to catch a word or two of what he was saying. If he enjoyed the attention, he didn’t show it. His limbs were loose, his back straight—not like someone who was acting proud, but like someone for whom pride was a baseline. His expression was open and radiant. She could not pull her eyes from him.

  The basement was crowded now, and traffic throughout the room spun on two orbits. The man who had just entered was the gravitational center of one. A cinnamon-skinned woman with dark curly hair stood at the center of the other, her thin shoulders thrown back, her fingers pinching the stem of a wineglass. A trio of oversized bracelets slid up and down her forearm whenever she lifted her hand to drink. She wore jeans and a spaghetti-strap top that revealed an inch or two of flesh above her studded belt; a small tattoo peeked out from her abdomen as if it had been tucked into the waist of her jeans.

  “Who are they?” Kera asked.

  Canyon looked at her. When he saw that she was serious, he laughed.

  “He’s Rafael Bolívar.”

  Kera held the name in her mind. She’d heard it before but could not assign to it any meaning. “Is he a celebrity?”

  “Only of the tabloid sort. It’s refreshing, actually, to meet someone who doesn’t know him as that.”

  “And the woman?”

  “Natalie Smith.”

  “The filmmaker?” Kera said, picturing the America ad visible from her office overlooking Times Square and remembering that Parker had wanted to take her to see the film. She wondered if there was a way to tell Parker about this without jeopardizing her security clearance. There wasn’t. Instead, she said to Canyon, “I’m going to see her film next week.”

  “It won’t make it that far,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The studio is going to kill it.”

  “Why do you say that? I just saw an ad for it today. It releases next week.”

  “Wait and see. They’ll pull it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve seen it.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “It’s brilliant. It might have given a real, nonpartisan meaning to the word ‘values’ again. But that, of course, scares the hell out of a lot of religious and right-wing groups. They’ll mobilize. And in a few days, the first reviews will start coming out, and they’ll be horrendous. The studio will get phone calls and e-mails. And because they’re a bunch of pussies, they’ll feel compelled to pull it. You ever notice how the people who most need to see or read something are the most oblivious or resentful of its existence?”

  “Yes,” Kera said quietly. She and Jones had gotten Canyon wrong. They might have proof tha
t he met with the people who had gone missing, but she saw something now that was impossible to see with HawkEye. Charlie Canyon was the kind of guy who would meet with up-and-coming artists at a rooftop bar. He saw the world in the way that an artist did, or at least in a way that was compatible. Which is to say that he saw the world in a way Kera did not, at least not automatically. It was like the paintings. She looked at them first for the literal, surface truth. But after taking a few moments to look at them in a different way, it was possible to see that something both simpler and more complex was going on.

  She shifted her gaze between Natalie Smith and Rafael Bolívar. They were on separate sides of the basement, entrenched in separate conversations, but there was a current suspended between them, unbroken by the intervening crowd. “They’re together, aren’t they?”

  In Canyon’s laugh was a hint of genuine surprise but also something darker, as if he both appreciated her and despised her for noticing.

  “You mean, are they fucking? Jesus, is it that obvious? I underestimated the degree to which they were flaunting it.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that they were flaunting it.” In fact, they weren’t. They hadn’t even come near each other. It just seemed to be a natural fact one noticed when seeing them together in the same room: these two are fucking.

  Canyon, she noticed, was staring at Bolívar, his eyes sharp.

  “You’re jealous.” It was something she probably shouldn’t have said. She braced for blowback, for some sign that she’d crossed a line. But when he turned to her, his eyes had transformed. They were bright with laughter and a little wild.