All around me are people named things like Alexandru Hurt and Yaviso Idelhoff and Lo White-Land. Names designed to ring. To sound interesting. Everyone here would melt if they weren’t important.
“Do I hear 305? Anyone?” the auctioneer asks. “Current bid on the floor is 300,000.”
People fidget in their seats like they have diarrhea. They lean in and discuss budgets with their accountants and look around the room to see who has interest. Will the piece be viewed with envy if they buy it? Envy is the goal.
A hand holding a white paddle goes up. “305.”
When the bidding is done, everyone leaves to celebrate—I’m unsure what exactly—in a private gallery on the floor below. It’s a break before the next auction.
The place is an incubating nest and the temperature is the same as warm piss. Everyone’s so relaxed their lids droop to their knees. There’s a director in from Santa Monica. His cinematographer’s sniffing through the crowd and rounding up any prostitutes that look worth while. There’s a lesbian heiress to a lotion empire and all her baby-bird sycophants. But the worst one, is this self-made guy from Silicon Valley. Has a real chip on his shoulder to prove he’s just as rotten as the rest. They’re all blind drunk. People slip up and talk about slaves and yachts made of skin and secret factories hidden underneath Mt. Rushmore.
“I had him suck my clit for a hundred dollars,” a woman tells the people standing next to us.
“And?” A man wearing an Audemars Piguet is practically drooling.
“Everything gets boring, darling. He’s back making sculptures of old telephones or whatever with the rest of the grant-ers.”
Her crowd is pleased. “Ha! Ha!” “You’re too much.” Hahaha!”
We back away slowly. John and I are here to document the up-and-commers of the art world, to see why they are coming out of nowhere and landing here at Christie’s with massive price tags. Who exactly is manipulating art prices so they properly serve as tax havens for the rich, and if it is the Zodiac. Right now though, some things are much more interesting. These people are the rarest of freaks.
“Right there,” John says pointing to a massive blown up photograph. There’s a huddle of people vibrating around it. “It’s like a bug zapper to them.”
We walk over to get a better look at it and the freaks. A plaque underneath says it’s new work from a photographer named Arno Junker. It’s titled, “The Riding Crop Has Many Uses.”
I look up and see the face of a man in exquisite pain. He loves whatever’s being done to him and his mouth is agape and in the back of his throat, if I squint and look closely, there is a small symbol. The Zodiac’s.
“I guess we found a lead,” John says.
“Should we bid on it?” I ask. The crowd around us looks hungry. Their faces are all hacked up from surgery, so they can’t really do the expression, but it’s in their eyes.
Back in the seats in the bidding room, the photograph is up on stage. His sweating masochist face there in the frame, moaning down at us.
“Five Million,” a man says, his bid drawing gasps.
“Have another plan?” John whispers to me. Five million is a bit outside the retainer and per diem I’ve been given for this story.
I tell him the plan and we watch as the winning bidder waits for his prize to be wrapped up. The curators actually take it out of the frame and roll it up and stick it in one of those tubes like the guy’s just bought a poster. This further confirms our theory the art here at Christie’s is just a front.
“Grab it!” I say as the man passes us on his way out.
John trips him and the tube goes flying, bouncing down the aisle towards the door. I jump up and go for it.
“Give us the thing you fucking fuck!” I say when the man beats me there. I pry his fingers away. His pants are halfway down because John still has ahold of the other side of him.
“You goddamn junkies!” the man yelps. “How did you even get in here?”
“Press,” I say. I get the last fat finger unclamped and the tube is free. John lets go of the guy’s ankles and we’re off.
We don’t look back. There is nothing more dangerous than looking back once you’ve upset a Soft White Underbelly.
Running through the streets, I haven’t felt this good in years. We have the hot mint blow up. It’s a beautiful day. We run past spangers and people with blankets laid out on the street like tablecloths. On the top of the tablecloths are velvet paintings of Elvis and Sinatra and Dolphins.
Then I hear it.
The screeching noise of vans. The type that have been sitting outside my windows ever since I started the story. There’s five of the rushing bulls. The Zodiac has finally been lured out and he is mad.
“Shit,” I say. We move faster, pushing people out of the way.
I can hear the engines huffing right behind us. I look back. I’ve made a mistake—you never look back.
A man leans out of one of the van’s windows and I finally get the first good look at the Zodiac’s face. It looks exactly like the face of François-Henri Pinault. And now it all makes sense. But I don’t have time to think because he has a Remington at his shoulder and he is taking aim.
He starts shooting, but mostly he’s hitting the people around us. The gun, a piece of art. The blood and death too. This street has become his art. And the air and time and the universe around us. Art in the mind. Art, the soul. Every blinking node and he owns it all.
Really, I’m just happy to be gone from the Hell that was the auction. At least we’re out on the street and far away from the huddles of diets and fake teeth. Of implanted face cheek, ass, and cock.
We’re no more around people who describe things as mesmeric. Transcendent. Resplendent. Nothing out here is “grandiose abstraction.” This is the real deal.
The vans catch up and I drop the tube and put my hands in the sky.
“OK,” I say. “You’ve caught us.”
The Zodiac Killer smiles. His teeth are bean-colored. “You’re a persistent guy. Fine then, you’ve got your interview.”
We head to his apartment on the Upper West Side. John gets dropped off on the way, because his band is working on a new album and he doesn’t have time to waste.
It takes like what seems an hour to get to the top penthouse, and when we get there, all the windows have clouds outside them. Like we’re sitting in a cloud. The place filled with newspapers and paints and canvases. There’s bottles of thick brown liquid. It smells like hamburger meat and oil paint. Next to the TV is a sculpture of a green man presenting his ass. By the window is a large aquarium filled with cuttlefish.
“Please sit down,” the Zodiac says, pointing to a brown leather couch with rips in the armrests.
After coffee, we talk about his master plan. He tells me about how he is all the new artists on the Christie’s scene. He has been selling his works to fund his project with the cuttlefish. He talks about large format. Mixed media. Installations. Actors and rockstars and people who own companies. They all come and bid so they can keep their money and keep looking like they just got wiped down with moist towelettes. Slick bald heads. Pink cheeks. Beards sharp or tastefully haggard. Hermes. Herringbone. Crocodile. Dogskin. Mutant shark fin hats. Glasses so thick and rosy they see the whole damn world in rose. But inside, everyone is full on envy and hate. They are all clawing to be important. Bids go up and eyes blaze. This is how he gets him money to research a way towards infinite life. If you can stand looking at it, he tell me, the Soft White Underbelly is full of oil.
He shows me a new piece he’s working on.
“It’s like heroin to these people,” he says gripping the frame. “You sure know something about that, don’t ya kid?”
The painting is simple and beautiful. It’s trite and ugly also. Perfect. Dark nods come over me. Soft contusions like pillows.
The Zodiac goes over to a record player and puts on Johnny Thunders’, “You Can’t Put Your Arm Around a Memory.” He tells me all the best love songs are about heroin. All the best art is terrible in ten months. Things like that draw envy, then evaporate. It’s the best way to gather and hide money.
Hours later we’re still on the couch in the Zodiac’s penthouse. The TV is on and I’m just waiting for a moment to get up and flee. We watch Hellraiser 2—the one where they go to Hell and see the Leviathan.
