by Max Cossack
The whole thing had gone just the way Gus promised. And she was having fun. More fun than she’d had in a couple of years. This Gus was definitely a fun guy to hang out with. She was also beginning to understand why he was dangerous.
15 Soren’s Exciting Discovery
Soren parked in the Ojibwa City Minnesota State Bank parking lot and turned off his car. He took his iPhone out of his jacket pocket and searched the Internet.
What he found in just two minutes told him why the word ‘Ilianius’ had tickled his memory and why, if he could get his hands on the painting, his life would change forever.
Just that moment he had less than two thousand dollars in his personal account. Luckily, the College subsidized the campus DCA chapter as a student organization. Since Soren was Chief Organizer for the entire state of Minnesota, he was signatory on the Chapter account.
In the current emergency, he could pay Gloria from the DCA account and replace it later out of the thirty thousand he would get selling L’Amination to this guy Roper who had emailed him, or better yet, selling it for millions on the open market.
He paid for the Cashier’s Check she wanted and put it in his pocket and drove back to the campus. But when he unlocked his office door and stepped inside, the painting was gone.
He sprinted down the two flights of stairs to Gloria’s office. Her door was closed. He knocked, but there was no answer. He twisted the knob. Locked. She must be away teaching.
He texted her: “Call me, please. Soren.” He went back upstairs to wait in his office.
Three hours later, she texted back: “I’m in my office. Feel free to drop by.” Two minutes after that he was at her door.
When he opened it, he saw a young woman sitting in her visitor’s chair. The student looked up at him. Gloria smiled and said, “Sorry, Soren. I’m with a student. Could you try again in an hour or so?”
“No problem,” he said.
When he came back in an hour she was with another student.
This happened two more times.
When he came by again at six, she was in the hall in her jacket, closing the door behind her. “Oh, Soren, sorry. I’m about to leave for dinner. Can this wait?”
“I have the money.”
“Oh, that. Yes. Well.”
“Well what?”
She said, “I’ve changed my mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“It wouldn’t be fair or honest to take ten thousand dollars for that painting. I just couldn’t do it.”
“But we have a deal. I’m here to follow through.”
“I know.” She reached over patted his shoulder. “But I know”—here she fixed a look straight in his eyes—“I’m telling you as honestly as I can that I know for a fact that the painting isn’t worth whatever you might imagine. And that name on the back adds no value whatsoever.”
“What it’s worth to me is for me to judge.”
“Usually, yes. But not in this case.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She said, “It means I can’t sell you that painting for ten thousand dollars.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“I mean I can’t. It wouldn’t be right.” She turned and walked away down the corridor.
Soren stood planted, watching the bitch walk away from him like he was nobody.
Rage simmered in him. Of course. While he was doing his research, she must have been doing her own. And now she had just confirmed his suspicion that the piece of crap on top covered an original Ilianius. Otherwise, why would she turn down ten thousand dollars?
The bitch was gone. It was six o’clock and the building was empty. This was his chance.
He sprinted back upstairs to his office and grabbed a pair of paper clips out of his desk drawer and straightened them out and rushed down again.
The lock on Gloria’s door was flimsy junk. It took him two minutes of jimmying the paper clips around in the keyhole to pick it and open the door. He went inside and grabbed the painting and came out and locked the door behind him. He took the painting back to his Prius and laid it carefully face down on the mat behind the back seats and covered it with a blanket. He drove home.
16 Sven’s Hot Mug
Mason Offenbach thought he might be in a kind of Eden. Of course, he knew he was only at Sven’s Hot Mug, a downright grubby Ojibwa City coffee house. But Sven’s could have been a sort of Eden, if Eden’s original Owner had furnished that original Garden with beat-up couches and bruised wooden chairs and scratched-up coffee tables and one particular woman.
Because Eve—in the person of the one and only Deirdre Katzenberger herself—sat on one of those chairs across one of those tables from Mason, delicate chin in hand, bestowing rapt attention as he struggled to come up with credible notions for a DCA comic strip.
Mason knew nothing about comic strips or how they were made. He didn’t even read comic strips. He thought they were stupid. Along with graphic novels. He couldn’t tell the difference between the two things, if there was a difference.
For lack of anything better to say, and maybe because it had worked for him before, he said, “It’s dialectical.”
“Really? I’ve never understood what that means.” Her hair was a sandy color, like wheat.
“It’s like Hegel only upside down.”
“I don’t know much about Hegel.”
Neither did Mason, but why stop now? “Hegel invented dialectics, you know, the philosophy of how things change, but Hegel was talking about a world of ideas. One idea is the thesis and the other is its opposite—you know, the antithesis. So there’s a contradiction. And if the ideas come together you get a synthesis, which resolves the contradiction.”
“Interesting.” Deirdre’s eyes were kind of gray blue, maybe like turquoise. Or slate. Hard to say in the indoor light. Maybe if they went outdoors. Later a picnic, maybe? By the Ojibwa River? On the banks, in the soft grass, under a spreading oak, with a blanket?
Mason said, “But Marx turned Hegel upside down when he said the thesis and the antithesis and the synthesis and the contradictions are all aspects of the material world, the world made out of things, and not a world of ideas like Hegel said.”
Deirdre nodded. Her tiny Adam’s Apple bobbed almost imperceptibly in her soft neck. “I see.”
There was a long silence. Deirdre looked around the room, first at the ceiling, then at the furniture, then at the two bearded customers hunched over a chess board.
Mason had never actually been to Sven’s before. He’d heard it was hip. From the expression on Deirdre’s face he wondered if he’d made a mistake. She looked really bored. He couldn’t think of a single smart thing to say.
Deirdre said, “I have a book about that stuff in my room. Professor Pafko sold it to me. I tried to read it, but it’s kind of hard to understand.”
Reassure her? “I know. I had some of the same trouble.”
“The book’s at home,” she said.
“Too bad you didn’t bring it,” he said. “We could look at it right now together.”
“In my room,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
She pronounced her next words distinctly, like she was talking to an unusually slow child: “I think it would be a good idea if we looked at the book together. At my place. You can explain it all to me there. The book is in my room.”
Mason froze. All he could force through his locked throat was one word: “Okay.”
17 Roper
At seven PM sharp, Soren heard a knock at his front door and raced to pull it open.
Soren had the house all to himself. Sylvia was out at some woman thing.
On his stoop stood a solid stocky man in a light blue windbreaker. The man looked to be in his thirties or early forties. He had dark brown straight hair and wore a short neatly trimmed black beard. He said, “Professor Soren Pafko?”
Soren said, “Yes. And you’re Fred Roper?”
“Yep.
Glad to meet you.” Roper offered his hand. Soren shook it and moved back from the door to make way. “Please come in.”
Roper stepped in and looked around.
Soren said, “May I offer you some coffee or tea?”
“No thanks,” Roper said. “Do you have Icelandic glacial water? That’s all I drink these days.”
“I have filtered mountain stream water,” Soren said. “But I don’t know where it’s from.”
“That’s okay. Didn’t really expect it out here in the boonies.”
The comment put Soren vaguely off balance. Was Icelandic glacial water something he was expected to know about? Plus, this man Roper didn’t seem as desperate as he sounded in his emails. He sported an arrogant expression. He seemed brusque almost to the point of being rude.
“I don’t want to seem brusque or rude, but I’m pressed for time,” Roper said. “May I see the painting?”
“This way.” Soren led Roper into the living room. Soren had hung L’Amination on the wall. Soren stepped back and gave Roper a chance to look at it.
Roper showed none of the enthusiasm Soren had expected. He frowned. “Take it down off the wall, will you?”
“Of course.”
Roper said, “It’s beautiful, of course, just as I remember it when it hung in the library at my grandfather’s estate. As a young man, I stared at it for hours. I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“I understand.”
“But I want to examine it. Just to confirm one little thing.”
Soren said, “I assure you it’s the same painting Gloria Fiorenzi sold me two months ago. See for yourself.” Soren stepped up to the wall and grabbed the painting by its edges and pulled it first upwards and then off the nails he’d used as hooks. He lowered it carefully to the floor and propped it against the wall.
Roper took from his jacket pocket a giant magnifying glass like the kind in Sherlock Holmes books. He stepped up to the painting and knelt to inspect it through the magnifying glass, starting at the painting’s lower right-hand corner. He began to hum the famous tune from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He moved his examination up the right side of the painting and then across the top and down the left side to the painting’s bottom. He muttered something Soren didn’t catch about “impasto” and “brush strokes.”
He stepped back and shook his head slowly.
Soren asked, “Is anything wrong?”
Roper ignored him and took a cell phone out of his pocket and turned his back and held the phone close to his chest so that Soren couldn’t see its screen. Roper thumbed the screen a few times, glancing back and forth from phone to painting and back to phone again, as if comparing the painting with something. He nodded, then sounding exactly like Mister Spock from Star Trek, he said, “Fascinating.”
“What’s fascinating?”
Roper turned and patted Soren on his shoulder. “To someone with my breadth of interests, everything.” He stepped to the painting and bent and lifted it and turned it around to face the wall. The word shone in thick black brush strokes from the back of the canvas:
ILIANiUS
Roper nodded in satisfaction. “I’ll take it.”
Soren said, “I don’t think I said I would sell.”
“Not even for thirty thousand dollars?”
Soren said, “I’m just wondering, that’s all.”
“Wondering what?”
“Why are you so eager to buy this piece of crap?”
Roper stared at him. Soren met him stare for stare.
Roper swallowed. He said, “What on earth do you mean?”
“It’s no masterpiece, is it?”
“I thought you loved it.” Roper said.
Soren said, “For a while, I couldn’t figure out what anyone could love about this wretched imitation of a Disney animation cell. But I’m starting to get an idea.”
“Then you’re one up on me. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Soren said, “Come on, we both know what’s going on here.”
Roper said, “For sure I don’t.” Roper shook his head. Roper was going for innocence, but Soren had no trouble seeing through the man’s clumsy bad acting.
Soren said, “I looked up the name ‘Ilianius’.”
“So?”
“So.” It was clear Roper was trying to bluff his way through. But Soren had never seen so many obvious tells on a human face. Roper’s jaw hung down and his eyebrows were lifted like a cartoon character’s. This guy was just a terrible actor.
“I just told you. I looked up Ilianius.”
Roper smacked his right fist into his open left hand. “Dammit! I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
Soren felt a surge of triumph. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Don’t rub it in.”
“There’s another painting under it, right? By Ilianius?”
“I don’t know that.”
“But you suspect it, don’t you?”
Roper flopped down on the sofa. He put his knuckles to lips as if to bite them. He looked up, a defeated expression on his face. “To be honest, yes.”
“And Ilianius was Rad Ilianius’s grandson.” Soren turned and began to stride back and forth as he spoke, the way he did during his classroom lectures. Pacing while he talked always gave him the feeling of being dynamic, being on the move, ideas bubbling out of him so fast even he could barely keep up with his own mind. For sure his students always went for it. Bigtime.
Soren turned and pointed a dramatic finger at the painting. “And I heard a while back on Public Radio that someone discovered an Ilianius that his second-rate artist friend had painted over. And instead of being worth three hundred dollars, because of what was under it, the canvas was worth millions.”
“Not quite right,” Roper said. “Only if the painted-over work was a nude. Otherwise, not so much. Ilianius was famous for his nudes.”
“But if there is an Ilianius nude under there, we are talking millions of dollars, right?”
Roper said. “It’s more complicated than that.”
Soren stopped his pacing and looked at Roper. “Complicated? How?”
“It just is.”
“You still want to buy my painting? You’ll have to do better than that.”
Roper gave Soren a deep hard stare, apparently intended to be ominous. “There’s a third party involved.”
“So?”
Roper said, “He’s a challenging individual.”
“So am I. What’s his name?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“But you want the painting, right?”
A brief silence, then Roper sighed. “His name is Abarca. I’ve already told Señor Abarca about our deal. And he’s waiting for the painting. In St. Paul. Right now.”
“What’s this Abarca got to with anything?”
“He’s my principal. I’m only his agent in these matters. It’s his money. He’s not someone I want to disappoint.”
“Why not?”
Roper clenched his teeth, frustration written all over him. “I don’t want to, that’s all. And neither should you. And he won’t be happy if you don’t sell.”
Soren shrugged. “That seems more like your problem than mine.”
Roper sighed. “No, it became our problem when you agreed to meet me. Señor Abarca is old-school. He has a very rigid sense of honor. He believes firmly that a deal’s a deal, and I have personally witnessed him go to extraordinary lengths to enforce that principle.”
“I’d like to meet this man—Abarca, you said his name is?”
Roper gave his head an even more ostentatiously ominous shake. “Trust me. You really don’t want to meet Señor Abarca.”
“What kind of name is Abarca, anyway?”
“Señor Abarca hails originally from Venezuela.”
Pafko said, “That intrigues me. I’ve taken a lot of interest in Venezuela. Did you happen to see the articles I wrote on the imperialist banks and their destructive role in Venezuela?”
Roper said, “No. Missed them.”
“On the DCA website. The Huffington Post and Salon and Buzzfeed and a bunch of others picked them up. ZNN had me on a panel. And after that the Post and the Times were quoting me for a while as a highly touted expert. Without personal attribution, of course.”
“Without attribution?” Roper brought his right hand to his chin, as if considering. “But it’s not out of the question that you have a point. I suppose it might give you an opening with Señor Abarca if you could show you have been a longtime supporter of the Venezuelan revolution.”
“Of course I am. I am after all the Chief Organizer of the local DCA.”
“DCA?”
“Democratic Communists of America. Minnesota section.”
Roper raised his eyebrows. “Also intriguing. Señor Abarca will certainly respect that.”
Soren spied an opening, although he wasn’t yet sure to what. “My articles spark a lot of interest and attention in general. Did I mention ZNN interviewed me? You can watch me on YouTube—I’m all over. But if Mr. Abarca is Venezuelan, maybe that’s one more thing he and I have to talk about.”
Roper said, “And maybe those credentials and fourteen bucks will buy you an earthen mug of locally sourced nitro brewed coffee.”
Smartass. Soren said, “I don’t see where you’ve got a choice. Señor Abarca doesn’t sound like the kind of man you want to return to empty-handed.”
Roper said, “I suppose it’s your funeral.”
Soren felt a surge of confidence. Riding high. Controlling the situation.
Roper said, “And it doesn’t look like you’re leaving me any choice.”
No, Soren wasn’t leaving Roper any choice. Because Soren had the germ of an idea. Soren spun out the play on words in his mind: the germ had not yet borne fruit, but he could imagine it sprouting. Having the painting in his hands was a tiny seed he could nurture into a complete regeneration of his life. And even in its current germinal state, his idea required him to deal with real gardeners, not yard men like this pathetic Roper was turning out to be.