by Max Cossack
Maybe he could get out of this bush league town and its podunk college. And though L’Amination and the millions it might bring him were a nice starting point, now that Soren knew a Venezuelan was involved, a Venezuelan maybe with access to international revolutionary connections, Soren saw himself at the possible start of a bigger role in the coming American revolution.
18 Tania
As soon as he hustled Roper out the front door, Soren speed dialed Tania on his primary auxiliary cell, the one he used for DCA business.
She picked up right away. “Soren. I didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon after last week’s conference. You’re so sweet.”
“Are you available right now?”
“Soren, it’s 8 PM.”
“So?”
“So a woman likes some advance notice. I got things I’m doing.”
“It’s DCA business.” Tania was the first call graphic artist for the Minnesota DCA—posters, websites, and the like. She’d come up with their banner—the black fist on the black sickle on a field of red.
“Okay then. Though I was sort of hoping this was a personal call.”
“Could be both. But I’ve got some emergency work for you to do right now.”
She said, “You know me. Whatever you want.”
“Text me your address, will you?”
Ninety minutes later, Soren was driving past rows of big Highland Park houses on Childress Street, looking for 1891. There wasn’t any house with that address. He cruised around, then thumbed the phone for Tania.
She said, “I’m waiting.”
“I can’t find 1891.”
“Sorry, it’s 1819. Must have transposed the numbers.”
“Got it.” Soren cruised down to the other end of the block and found her house right away.
Tania opened her door. She was a short woman about forty with dark wiry hair and a nice round body that Soren had always appreciated.
She said, “Sorry about the mix up. I must have done my dyslexia thing again.”
He stepped in. “You’ve got dyslexia?”
“Come this way,” she said, leading him into her studio. “A lot of artists do. Something to do with the way our right and left hemispheres work in our brains. I console myself by remembering that Leonardo da Vinci was dyslexic too. They say that’s why he wrote backwards.”
“Really,” Soren said, already bored with the subject. He leaned the painting on the floor against the wall. “Can you copy this?”
She shrugged. “No sweat.”
“How long do you think it will take you?”
“No longer than it took the original artist to slap together this abject piece of crap.”
“Which is?”
“An hour or two. At most.” She cocked her head. “You want me to improve it? Wouldn’t be hard, believe me.”
“No. Under no conditions.”
She said, “This thing really sucks, you know. It’s not even amateurish.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Okay,” she said. “You going to stick around for a while after?”
“I’d love to. But I’ve got to take the original and the copy back and replace the copy where I got the original. Then get home.”
“What about after that?”
“Tomorrow, maybe. Otherwise, tough to explain to Sylvia.”
She stood against him and kissed his lips. He felt the ripeness of her body against his. She said, “Noon, then. I’ll make your trip worthwhile. You know that. And I’d work faster if I knew I had something to look forward to.”
Soren smiled down at her. “You win. But one more thing.” Soren disengaged from her and walked over and turned the painting face against the wall. “You also have to copy this signature on the back exactly.”
ILIANiUS
She said, “Ilianius? Did someone try to convince you this is an Ilianius?”
“Don’t worry about what it is or isn’t. Just do as I ask.”
“This is DCA business, right?”
“Absolutely. So it’s also confidential, got it?”
“Got it.” Then, “You know, I can do more for the DCA than just paint. I have other abilities.”
He beamed a reassuring smile. “I know that. We’ll talk about all that later.”
“Thanks. Now have a seat in the living room while I take care of it.” And she set to work.
19 The Magnifying Glass
The next afternoon, Gloria, Gus, Hack, and Mattie were downing a few Chumpsters at the Madhouse. Gus didn’t figure Soren Pafko would ever lower himself to come out to the Madhouse, so he promised it was safe.
Hack reviewed his own performance at Pafko’s house as “magnificent,” but Gus knocked it. “A magnifying glass?” Gus asked. “I bet you looked like an idiot. Should have blown your cover right there.”
Hack said, “I thought it gave me a nice aura. It’s something an art appraiser might carry.”
Gus asked, “Did you do any research at all for your role? Have you ever actually seen an art appraiser at work?”
Hack said, “Not per se. But once I saw a PBS documentary about famous art frauds.”
“Did anyone in this TV documentary you saw use a giant Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass?” Gloria asked.
Hack said, “No. That was my own invention.”
Gus said, “I’ll bet Gloria’s seen a real art appraiser at work.” He turned to her. “Right?”
“Lots of times.” She told Hack, “I promise they don’t carry giant magnifying glasses.”
Hack said, “They should. They wouldn’t blow it so often.”
Gloria said, “Sometimes I think every museum in the world has some fakes.”
“You mean wallpapered with fakes,” Gus said. “Experts are the easiest people in the world to sucker.”
Gloria said, “Hey, I’m an expert.”
Gus said, “On what?”
Gloria said, “Beside the point. Anyway, why should having knowledge make anyone a sucker?”
Gus said, “Too much personal stake in what they think they know.”
“Which they don’t,” Hack said.
Gus added, “And too much ego.”
Gloria said to Gus. “You have a lot of experience fooling experts, do you?”
Gus lifted his bottle and chugged some beer and set the bottle back on the table and wiped the back of his hand across his beard.
Hack said, “I bet Cali and Humberto have fooled a few experts in their times.”
He and Gus clinked bottles.
Gloria said, “How crooked are you guys?”
Gus said, “Actually, Hack’s shamefully honest.”
Hack said, “Gus was always the problem child. Even back in kindergarten.”
Gus nodded.
Hack pointed his finger at Gus. “Remember that time you tried to unload that used car on me? I specifically insisted on four doors. You showed up with a two-door.”
“So?”
“Did you really think I couldn’t count to four?”
“Just testing for alertness, Partner.”
“I’m alert enough to count past two.”
“And it was a comfort to verify that,” Gus said. “I was presenting you with options.”
“I counted seven other distinct specific options you also lied about.”
“I was helping you out. Educating you. There’s a lot of dishonest people out there. You need to learn discretion. You’ve always been naive. If I don’t teach you, who will?”
Hack said, “I asked for six cylinders. This wreck had four. I asked for fuel-injection. I found a busted carburetor. I asked for disk brakes and good tires. The thing had no brakes and bald tires.”
Gus said, “Good you took a test drive, then.”
“Test slide is more like it.”
Gus said, “But didn’t I come through in the end with the dandy little red 1973 Audi Fox, which you are in fact still driving even as we sit here swilling beer today? Now that I think of it,
the beauty that saved your life?”
Hack said, “That much I give you. She is a sweetheart.”
Gus pointed his big thumb at Gloria. “Now that’s downright unacceptable. My obligation to educate you never ends. Obviously, it’s sexist to refer to an automobile as a ‘she’. The preferred pronoun is ‘it’.”
Hack said, “Cars have pronoun preferences? And how would you of all people know what’s sexist?”
Gloria said to Mattie. “Remind me please why we’re here with these two?”
Mattie smiled. “You’re here for hate. I’m here for love. That’s all we got to remember.”
“Love for me?” Hack asked.
Mattie said, “Love for LG. He’s a sweetheart. Pafko’s cheating him out of his chance to do great things.”
Gloria said, “But I don’t hate Soren Pafko.”
“You should,” Gus said.
“I hate what he does and what he stands for,” Gloria said. “Not him personally. There’s a difference.”
Gus said, “No there isn’t.”
20 Señor Abarca
Soren was waiting outside his house when Roper swung by in an antique Audi Fox and drove them both to St. Paul. As they settled into their cruise down the highway at a sedate forty-five miles per hour, Soren asked Roper, “Don’t the rattles and squeaks bug you?”
Roper frowned. He hit the gas pedal hard and zoomed up to nearly fifty. For no apparent reason, he began to veer within the lane markers. To avoid bouncing off the passenger door, Soren braced his right hand against it and put his left hand on the seat beside his butt. Once they approached St. Paul and began to run into traffic lights, Roper braked hard at every single one.
Soren kept his mouth shut the rest of the way.
Roper’s route took them down Shepard Road. He exited onto West Seventh and soon after that hung a right. He drove two more blocks and pulled over to the curb and stopped.
Roper pointed to a small blue house set back about eighty feet from the street. The front yard was parched and weedy. No trees grew. The house’s slattern red brown clapboard siding cried out for a paint job.
Roper said, “That’s Señor Abarca’s temporary headquarters.”
“That?”
“Señor Abarca likes to keep a low profile.”
Soren asked, “You coming in with me?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Roper said with a thin smile. Soren could see Roper detested Soren and resented having to bring Soren to Abarca. Clearly, Roper was hoping for the worst.
Roper’s hostility didn’t surprise Soren. After all, by forcing Roper to take him to Abarca, Soren had bested the man. Since childhood, Soren had understood that someone with so many of his own skills and accomplishments had to accustom himself to the envy and jealousy of those with fewer. That was just the way people were.
The two got out of the Fox. Soren slammed the passenger door, hoping he could shatter something. He imagined a car-shaped pile of metallic red dust and little pebbles of rust on the pavement. But the bucket only shuddered and remained intact.
Roper’s eyes narrowed at Soren’s door-slam, but he made no comment. He said, “This way,” and led Soren up the front sidewalk leading towards the house. The sidewalk took them past the front of the house to a door on the left side. Roper stepped up onto the small concrete stoop under a pillared portico. He knocked an odd rhythmic knock.
The door opened. A swarthy black-haired barrel with a pock-marked face scowled at them from the middle of the doorway, most of which he took up.
Roper said, “Good morning, Enrique. We’re here to see Señor Abarca.”
Without a word, the cask stepped back and with one thick arm waved them in. Once Roper and Soren passed him, he stepped outside through the door and looked both ways and stepped back in. In a single smooth motion he noiselessly closed the door.
Soren surveyed the inside of the house. Straight ahead was a narrow hallway. Off to his right was a little room. Through the little room’s open doorway Soren saw a long table with three laptops, before which sat three women with their backs to him, busily keying. On the wall above the table hung a wide LCD screen the size of a sports bar television. The screen displayed a bright relief map of northernmost South America. From left to right it sketched Colombia, Venezuela, and Guyana, all in green. The map highlighted mountain chains in yellow. Blue ribbons that obviously represented rivers meandered through the green.
Their escort Enrique tracked Soren’s glance and glared at Soren and padded over and closed the door to that room. “No need see,” he said in a heavy South American accent, then waved them down the hallway.
Roper and Soren moved down the hall as directed. Enrique followed close behind. Soren realized he would be leaving this house only if Enrique chose to let him. Soren granted himself a little mental smile and a kudo—the awareness of risk brought a tasty little thrill.
Fifteen short steps down the hall they reached a small room towards the back of the house where a thin, olive-skinned bearded man in an expensive suit sat on an old black microfiber couch. He was texting with his right hand on an Apple iPhone nestled in the palm of his left. Soren recognized the phone as the latest model; he owned one himself. The olive-skinned man glanced up, clicked something on his phone and laid it down on a coffee table. He said, “Well, Roper?”
Roper said, “Señor Abarca, this is the man I told you about, Soren Pafko.”
From his seat, Abarca inspected Soren up and down, head to foot, and back to head again. Soren stood stolid and made a point of looking poised, letting Abarca appraise all he wanted. After a pause sufficient to establish his cool, Soren nodded and said, “Señor Abarca, how do you do.”
Abarca said, “Refresh my recollection, Roper. Why is this man here?”
Soren said, “I’m here about the painting.”
Abarca frowned. “I believe I directed my question to Mr. Roper.”
Roper said, “He’s here to sell you that painting you wanted to pick up. L’Amination.”
“Oh yes,” Abarca said. “L’Amination.” He took his phone off the table and glanced at its screen, then began to punch the screen with his thumbs as if keying another text.
“That’s correct, sir,” Roper said.
Abarca looked up as if surprised they were still there. “Well, gentlemen, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is the price,” Soren said. “Mr. Roper offered me only thirty thousand dollars.”
Abarca looked back at his phone at his text. “As I instructed him.”
“That’s not really enough,” Soren said.
Abarca did not look up again. “That is a very generous offer, Mister—what did you say your name was again?”
“Professor Soren Pafko.”
Abarca looked up and inspected Soren again. Abarca said, “Why is that name familiar?”
Soren said, “You may have read something I wrote.”
Abarca asked, “For example?”
“I’m Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at Ojibwa College of Minnesota. I have published a lot.”
“On what subject?”
“I’ve published extensively on the omnipresence of the narrative mode of world-representation and world-building, with an emphasis on non-aestheticized uses of verbal and non-verbal languages.”
“Really.” Abarca arched one eyebrow. It seemed to Soren the man’s expression hovered on the edge of an open sneer. “Sounds very…academic. By contrast, I have spent all my life and all my energies focused on action. In the real world.”
A slender woman slid into the room past Roper and Soren and handed Abarca an iPad. Abarca glanced at it, fingered something on the screen, nodded at the woman and handed her back the iPad. He said to her, “Tell Armendariz to take care of the situation. He knows the method. My order here suffices as his authorization. Once you confirm he has completed his task, compensate him from the special fund.”
Without a word, she nodded and disappeared back into the hous
e. Soren couldn’t help noticing she was taller than average and had an athletic build, almost like a teenage boy, although she wasn’t boyish at all. He watched her make her way down the hallway and then turn left and out of his sight.
When Soren turned back to Abarca, the man was eyeing him with a sardonic smile.
To change the unspoken subject, Soren said, “I’ve also written extensively on Venezuelan politics.”
Abarca’s eyes widened. “Of course! That’s it! Soren Pafko!” He spoke sharply. “Roper, why didn’t you tell me who this man is?”
Roper said, “I thought I did.”
Abarca dropped his phone onto the sofa and stood. Without taking his eyes off Soren’s face, he said, “Roper, you may leave.”
Roper said. “Are you certain that’s what you want, Señor Abarca?”
Abarca swiveled his head like a lizard and glared at Roper through lidded eyes that glowed almost yellow. “When have you known me not to be completely certain whom I want around me and whom I do not want around me?”
Roper shook his head and turned and walked out through the same doorway and down the same hallway the woman had used.
Abarca said, “Enrique, you may depart as well.”
Enrique vanished wordlessly like smoke through the doorway. Abarca tiptoed over and closed the door after Enrique. He pivoted like a dancer on his toes. His previous cold expression transformed into a huge grin. He opened his arms wide and stepped forward and embraced Soren in a mighty hug. The crushing strength in the arms of such a slender man caught Soren by surprise.
“Camarada,” Abarca said. “Te doy mi abrazo de amistad.”
With his right hand, Soren patted Abarca’s back in a weak uncertain return gesture. “I’m sorry?”
Abarca stepped back and searched Soren’s face. “Forgive me, please. I thought you knew Spanish.”
“I must admit I don’t.”
“But your writing on Venezuela is so perceptive, so”—Abarca shook his head—“so ‘on target’, as you North Americans say. In its nuances, in the nicety of its detail, in the gradations of significance of seemingly tiny events others missed. I just assumed you knew our language. That you must have read and understood original sources and spoken yourself with eyewitnesses in our own language.”