Ghost Hero Read Online Free PDF Page B

were American cartoon characters. Mickey Mouse, in his white gloves, harvested rice. Donald Duck, along with Daisy, Huey, Dewey, Louie, and an army of shirted and pantsless waterbirds, strolled the Wall. Yosemite Sam inspected the terra-cotta warriors. Outside the Temple of Heaven the Simpsons posed for a family photograph.
    Bill, jeans exchanged for pressed wool slacks, lifted his eyebrows in bored recognition as we walked around. Giant letters on the wall announced this show as C OLONY: N EW W ORKS BY P ANG P ING- P ONG.
    “Please tell me that’s not his real name,” I whispered.
    Bill glanced over a price list and artist’s statement he’d lifted from the reception desk. “You’re in luck. Pang’s his family name. He uses the name ‘Ping-Pong’ as an integral part of the ironic self-referential essence of the meta-situation on which his paintings comment.”
    “Oh,” I said. “That’s much better.”
    Besides us, the giant room held only five people. Four were in the back, among the canvases: an elegant older woman in high-heeled boots, frowning at the Fantastic Four in Buddhist robes; the rotund man beside her, gesturing and murmuring in what seemed to me a smarmily intimate fashion; and a pair of young men whose clothes and haircuts were so painfully hip they had to be art students. The place had the hushed, intense feel of a library. No: the anxiety-tinged air of a classroom during a final exam.
    The gallery’s fifth occupant was a fashionably emaciated, lank-haired young man at the front desk. When we came in he gave us the narrowed eyes of a proctor; when that didn’t chase us out, he iced us, going back to whatever important work he’d been doing before we’d had the effrontery to walk through the door. This charmer, as I knew from my Googling, was Nick Greenbank, the fellow we wanted to see.
    We took an unhurried, but in Bill’s case pointedly apathetic, turn around the gallery. I tried to interest him in this painting or that, showing him details like Captain America and Superman in coolie hats. He shook his head and waved me off each time, until finally he sauntered back over to the desk, me in frustrated tow.
    It’s hard to ignore Bill when he looms, though Nick Greenbank did a better job than most. Finally looking up from his computer screen in badly hidden exasperation, he asked, “Can I help you?”
    Bill leaned on the counter, smiled, waved a hand around, and in a conversational tone and a thick Russian accent, said, “Thees ees crep.”
    “Vladimir, please!” I hissed. “I’m sorry,” I said distractedly to the affronted young man. What had affronted him was Bill’s rude dismissal of the work; what was distracting me were the blindingly ostentatious gold rings on Bill’s fingers, which matched the chains around his open-shirted neck, but which I was sure he hadn’t been wearing a few moments ago. “Mr. Oblomov hasn’t had much exposure to recent Chinese works. I brought him here hoping—”
    “She vass hoping I buy, den she make fet commission. But I don’t buy crep. Leessen, boychik.” Bill leaned in closer and dropped his voice. “I like beautiful. Vy you tink I let her take me around? She ees beautiful, dah? Now, deess Chinese, dey used to paint beautiful. Pine trees, bamboo, all dat. Not Meekey Fucking Mouse. Now I hear”—he let the smile fade and drilled the young man with his eyes—“I hear det von of dem still does.”
    Bill can do a good eye-drill, especially in Russian gangster mode. Nick Greenbank blanched, making his already-pale skin a nice contrast to his black silk shirt.
    “You’re talking about classical Chinese art.” He swallowed and tried to recover, drawing on reservoirs of disdain to soothe his rasping voice. “From the dynasty periods. We don’t handle that. I suggest—”
    “I suggest you pay attention, boychik. Dere’s a fellow I’m very, very interested in.”
    From a position a discreet step behind Bill, I frantically but subtly