“Not good, huh?”
“He’s an abstract painter, the sort who looked at Jackson Pol lock’s stuff and thought he could do that. Do you remember a little documentary film called The Day of the Painter?”
“Refresh my memory.”
“A fisherman lives in a shack on the shore. He sees some Pollocks in a magazine, so he buys some buckets of paint and a big sheet of plywood, puts it on the foreshore next to his shack, and paints it white with a roller. Then he stands on his deck a few feet above the plywood and spills dollops of paint onto the white surface of the plywood. Finally, he goes down to the foreshore with a power saw and cuts the plywood into smaller squares, then he sells them as abstract paintings.”
“That’s a funny idea.”
“That’s the kind of painter Mr. Sharpe is. If someone criticizes the work, then they just don’t have the artistic taste or mental capacity to appreciate it, and he raises the price.”
“He actually gets
galleries to show this stuff?”
“No. When everybody turned him down, he hired a publicist to plant stories in the papers about him and then started selling out of his studio. He gets a prospective buyer down there, and he’s quite a good salesman, spewing gobbledygook about passion and genius, and people fall for it.”
Their dinner arrived, and Stone tasted the wine.
“Tell me about the drug rumors,” Stone said. “I suppose that’s what they are-rumors.”
“Well, yes, but not entirely. I know someone who bought half a kilo of marijuana from him, and I’ve heard secondhand stories about his dealing in coke: not little bags, nothing smaller than an ounce, but as much as a kilo.”
“Why has no one put the police onto him?”
“The buyers are not going to turn him in-he’s their connection-and the nonbuyers don’t know about it, I guess.”
Stone found Sharpe’s card in his pocket and looked at it. “That’s a pretty expensive part of SoHo these days, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Since I’ve been aware of him, he’s moved twice, both times to a bigger and better place. He bought the building he’s in now; he has a garage on the ground floor, his studio on the second, and his apartment on the third. He rents out the two floors above him.”
“How did Hildy become involved with him?”
“I’m not sure, but she probably met him at an opening much like tonight’s. That’s the sort of event where he does his trolling.”
“What can you tell me about Hildy’s relationship with her father?”
Rita sighed. “I love Philip, and I wish I could say that he’s the sweet, adoring, indulgent father and that Hildy is an ungrateful little shit, but it’s not really like that. Philip is an enclosed man, and he doesn’t let much into his life that isn’t art or people associated with it.”
“He told me that he thought he had left too much of her upbringing to help,” Stone said.
“That’s an understatement. After his wife died, he hardly saw Hildy. I doubt they had a meal together when she was between the ages of six and sixteen. Her grandmother hired the governesses, chose the schools, and complained about his parenting or lack thereof, but she never hauled him into court and tried to take Hildy. I don’t know why. By the time Hildy started fucking her teacher it was too late, I guess. She was acting out big-time to get back at Philip for his neglect, and I think she still is, with Sharpe.”
“And he has a low opinion of Sharpe?”
“It wouldn’t work for Hildy if he didn’t. She got him to look at some slides of Sharpe’s work once, and he reduced it to the visual drivel it is in a few pointed sentences. Then he pissed off Hildy by refusing to go down to Sharpe’s studio and look at his stuff.”
“The relationships are circular,” Stone said. “Hildy hates her father for ignoring her, so she chooses a man like Sharpe to annoy him, then Philip hates the guy’s work to belittle him, and that reinforces Hildy’s opinion of her father.”
“Neat, isn’t it?”
“Yes, except for the drug sales and the fortune at risk. If Sharpe got busted while Hildy was there, she could be charged as an accessory. I mean, she must know what he’s doing.”
“I don’t see how she couldn’t, but who knows?”
“Then there’s her trust. I suppose Hildy has no regard for money.”
“About the same regard as most young people who’ve never had to give money a thought, because it was readily supplied by parents who used it to keep them from underfoot.”