‘Where are you?’ he asked suspiciously; the kid was meant to be in Panama City.
‘My place, here in New York.’ Gabriel’s voice was tentative, fearful.
‘I told you to stay away for at least three months—’
‘I tried, Felix. I got lonely. It was driving me crazy,’ he whined.
‘Jesus! Do you know what you’ve done? I can’t afford any possible complications with
this current sale. I’ve got the Foundation breathing down my neck, not to mention Felicity’s art broker. It’s a goddamn balancing act and the last thing I need—’
‘Listen! There’s something far more important. I came back early this morning and, Felix, I’ve had an intruder.’
The strand of Maxine’s damp hair sitting on his pillow flashed into Felix’s mind.
‘What do you mean, an intruder?’
‘A woman claiming to be my aunt conned her way into my apartment.’
‘What’s this got to do with me?’
‘Well, the thing is, Felix, it doesn’t appear she’s taken anything – which is totally weird. Like, I would rather the bitch had stolen something, then we’d know she was like a thief or something.’
Listening, Felix’s mind began spinning; there were too many similarities to his own experience. He breathed out to steady his voice before answering.
‘Calm down, you sound paranoid. What did this woman look like? Do you know?’
‘Big, African-American, about 60… scary, according to my janitor, but then he’s five foot and about 54 pounds so everyone’s big to him.’
‘So it’s some crazy who’s maybe seen you around and developed some weird obsession.’
‘How did she know where I lived?’
‘Maybe she followed you home? Besides, you can buy that information if you know the right people to ask.’
‘Felix, I’m not feeling good about this. I need protection.’
‘You need to fucking disappear, I told you that, yet here you are, again.’
‘Don’t threaten me. You forget you need me more than I need you,’ Gabriel snapped, surprising Felix with his aggression. A second later his tone softened: ‘I could buy protection for fifteen Gs.’
‘If you need money, all you have to do is ask.’
‘Okay, I need fifteen Gs.’
‘I’ll transfer the funds later today.’
‘Thanks. When am I going to see you?’
‘Gabriel, I’m not going to go through all that again; it’s not a good time right now. Maybe in a month or so when the sale’s gone through… Meanwhile change your locks. The phone’s prepaid, right?’
‘Always.’
‘Good, lay low for a few more weeks. And, Gabriel: don’t let this rattle you, baby. It’s all going to pass, then it will be business as usual.’
The call clicked out and Felix had to fight the impulse to pick his mobile up again and ring someone he knew who could make both Gabriel and any residual trouble disappear. A memory of the first time he saw Gabriel floated into his mind. He’d been talent scouting four years earlier at the postgraduate shows and, after seeing three other art-school shows in one day, had found himself in the Fine Art department at Parsons. Most of the young artists had been thoroughly underwhelming and Felix, depressed by the lack of originality, had begun to theorise that perhaps there were only set expressions of rebellion, which had been repeating themselves with depressing regularity since the late Seventies: the body-fluid artist – tedious drawings made with either menstrual blood or semen, invariably around the themes of gender/sexuality/sexual violence; the I-am-alienated-by-urban-landscapes artist – kitsch photographs of Fifties American suburbia or video installations with flat-toned voice-overs describing the minutiae of kitchen utensils; the political artist – obligatory references to the Middle East, women in veils and a torn US flag; the abstract graphic I-use-dots artist; and finally the found-object-as-art guy.
But in the middle of this mind-numbing visual cacophony was a small alcove full of the most painterly work Felix had seen for the last decade and, despite the rather banal subject matter, the paintings showed extraordinary craft. Each suburban landscape had been executed with painstakingly precise brushstrokes, the planes of colour rich and deep, as if a far more mature and practised artist had painted them. They also strongly reminded Felix of another, more famous and long-dead, painter’s work.