We all like a bit of crime.
Great writers like Elmore Leonard capture that sense of wild rebellion, make it sparkle and dance in dialogue, conjure low-lifes from the page and leave us wanting more. We read about it and maybe we do it a little. The hand in the till, the sawn-off shotgun perched on the garden fence. Never did like those neighbours.
But what it all boils down to is this, the law is a code that contains our wilder urges, one which the criminal mind seeks to crack so as to get away with what it wants to do. We operate within the law because society wouldn’t function without it.
Now many people think it’s an ass. If you really want to see something criminal look at the art world. Greedy corrupt businessmen milking talent. Maybe they deserve what’s coming to them.
And artists. Caravaggio killed a guy over a tennis match and painted some of the greatest canvases the world has ever seen while on the run from the Mafia. Who said crime doesn’t pay?
Art.
It’s criminal.
ART, Richard Godwin.
My agent doesn’t think my last painting passes muster. Called it a piece of shit. I can hear his loud drawl now.
“Bernie, look, you gotta realise I made you. Without me, you’d be nothing, just another brush pushing cocksucker, so do us a favour and come up with something original, for Chrissake. I got my wife busting my balls, I got overheads, and you give me this shit. Think back to the old days when everyone wanted to buy your works, when Sotheby’s could get a queue lining up for you and forget this trash.”
That’s Lewis for you. He owns a huge labelling factory. That’s how he started out, a sharp kid with his eye on a fast buck. Labels. Loves Warhol, calls art the new branding.
He doesn’t like my landscapes.
I do.
I’ve been doing some traditional landscapes, and I love them. Deepening shades and mysteries in the wood.
I pause to consider. I take in the brushstrokes. There, beneath the trees I’ve painted, you can almost see someone hiding. A killer, maybe. There’s the glint of metal under the anguished heavy boughs.
What flesh may yield its solemn cries to the lacerations of his blade? What unwashed blood? There are no police in the landscape. For who could police the unknown? It is lawless as the first frontier. A rent garment in the wind.
I can hear the phone ringing. I walk through the empty hallway and unhook it from the wall.
“Yes?”
“What took you so fuckin’ long, Bernie? I been calling till the frigging receiver nearly puked.”
“I was working.”
“Good to fuckin’ hear it. Have you come up with a saleable item?”
“I think so.”
“Meet me at six tonight.”
The line went dead. That’s Lewis for you. Never gives you time to get out of an engagement. I’ve got used to his ways.
He did make me a household name with my painting Fluke, then Whirlwind got me my first million. After that there was no looking back. Except that I just wanted to paint landscapes.
You see, it’s all about seeing. Art. You can see things in a landscape. They say Leonardo made a lifetime’s study just out of seeing. Looking. The whirl of steam as it rises and breaks into particles, emerging from a hot cup of coffee. The shape and curl of a woman’s hands.
The problem with Lewis is that he just doesn’t see anything. Except money, that is. I sometimes think he doesn’t like art.
But I see.
As I look from my studio window, I see a woman hide a letter in her handbag and assume an expression of happiness as her lover comes towards her.
I see the unusual curve of a beam of light as it breaks beneath the surface of some rubbish.
And that’s what I paint. The wet oil slapping onto the canvas. It’s all part of the experience.
That’s what Lewis doesn’t understand. Lewis, the man who smells of money, the dealer with a penchant for hookers. Word has it, he covers them in his labels before he fucks them and shouts out ‘I am the commodity King’ as he comes. Branding their flesh must be the biggest turn on of all.
We meet in a crowded restaurant. As usual, Lewis has a cigar in his huge mouth, blowing blue clouds everywhere.
“What the fuck you painted Bernie?”
I look at him with his fat neck, the Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like something stuck in jelly but I can’t figure out what that something is.
“I’m still working on it.”
“I made you,” he reminds me, pointing with his cigar. “Without me the Bernie Maples name would mean nothing. Don’t you forget that.”
“How can I?” I look at his Adam’s apple bob and it hits me. “In fact, Lewis, the idea involves a reworking of the Garden of Eden.”
I can see he doesn’t get what I’m talking about but he likes the wording. Lewis will always reject an idea that sounds traditional, but if I say something is a reworking, he’ll take to it.
Oh, I know how to work him.
He takes his cigar out of his mouth, fingering its fat rotund edge, a strand of saliva stretching from his sticky finger.
“I like it.” He pops his prop back in.
I weigh him up. “The idea is to represent the story today, the whole Adam and Eve thing, but with the violence of the climate of fear we live in.”
He slaps me on the shoulder.
“This is it! I knew you’d come up with it. Adam and Eve? I like it!”
“And it’s a living canvas.”
“A living canvas?”
“Yes. It’s a surprise.”
“I always said you were my best find. Give up these fuckin’ landscapes and make us some fuckin’ money! Waitress!” He orders a round of drinks. “Look at that ass!”
Art. For Lewis it’s just something to make money from. He understands nothing about it. Tonight I’ll prepare the canvas. Tomorrow I’ll invite him round to see it.
I called him and told him to come and take a look at his future.
He sounded surprised.
“You been painting all fuckin’ night?”
“Bring an open-necked shirt.”
“What the fuck you talking about?”
“I want to take a picture of you. It’s all part of the show.”
“No tie?”
“Yeah.”
“The show must go on.” He laughs and hangs up.
I wait.
I clean my tools.
I wash the stains from them.
When he arrives, I’m ready. I’m going to redeem painting and I know just how to do it.
Lewis is wearing a white shirt open at the collar. He stubs out his cigar on the landing. He never smokes around paintings.
Gotta look after these babies is his motto. Any other time he flouts any smoking ban he comes across.
“‘So what we got?”
As he speaks, his Adam’s apple bobs up and down obscenely.
“I’m just going to get my camera,” I say, placing him with his back to the canvas. I pad across the silent floor and approach him from behind. He can’t hear me. I neatly slice his throat with a long knife. Blood spurts across the studio, landing on the far wall.
Lewis starts to choke. He drops to his knees, making strange gurgling noises.
I pick his head up and point at the wall, showing him the shower his blood made.
“Look, you’ve just done a Jackson Pollock.”
Lewis always said how he liked Jackson Pollock.
“Welcome to the living canvas,” I say, turning him round and lifting off the sheet I’d draped over the easel earlier.
The jugular I’d severed pumps away furiously as I aim for the white surface. He sprays for a while before collapsing.
“Never heard you so quiet, Lewis. Glad you like it.”
I remove his Adam’s apple and place it at the centre of the painting, tempting the viewer to pick it off the canvas.
Then I cut him into pieces and add the bits. I suppose you could say it’s a montage. I think it really catches Lewis’s true likeness. There’s something so fleshy about it. It’s an abstract, expressionist piece. I’ve entitled it Dealer. There’s enough of him to make a second, too, and I think I’ll call it The Dollar Bill Ain’t That Pretty.
Think I’ll get myself a new agent.
One who likes landscapes.
BIO: Richard Godwin is a produced playwright and his stories can be found at Disenthralled, Gloom Cupboard, Word Catalyst, Future Earth, A Twist Of Noir, South Jersey Underground, Full Of Crow and Danse Macabre. He will be published in hard copy this month in an anthology by Little Episodes Publishers and another of his stories will be in the forthcoming anthology by Lame Goat Press. He has just finished writing a crime novel and can be found at Twitter http://twitter.com/stanzazone .
