Survival Is a Dying Art

by Neil S. Plakcy

  When we walked in, they had just started line dancing lessons, and most of the patrons were on the dance floor. While Lester went up to the bar, I joined the crowd. I had done a bit of line dancing when I was in Philadelphia, so I got into the rhythm of steps and kicks and gallops. Most of the dancers, as Lester had said, were older, from their forties to their sixties, but there were a couple of guys my age. Lots of cowboy hats, boots, and jeans.

  Hard to believe we were in Florida.

  When the lesson ended, I walked over to the bar to get a drink. While I stood there, I talked to a pair of fifty-something men in plaid shirts with pearl buttons. They wore matching wedding rings, white gold with the infinity symbol in tiny diamonds. Would I end up like that? Married to Lester, or someone like him, sharing a passion for art collecting or line dancing or a hobby I hadn’t yet discovered?

  A man with tattoos lining his arms and a gold ring through his nose pushed his way up to the bar beside us. “Anybody seen that bastard Larry?” he demanded. “He sold me a Breitling turned out to be a fake and I want my money back!”

  “You’re a damn fool to buy a watch at the flea market,” one of the other men said. “You want the real thing you got to go to one of those jewelry stores at the mall.”

  “He swore to me up and down it was real,” the tattooed man said. “That it was gray market, made for sale overseas, which was why it was so cheap. When I get hold of him I’ll gray market him.”

  “You won’t have to bother,” I said, and all eyes turned to me. “He wiped out his motorcycle on the highway Sunday night.”

  In the reflected neon from behind the bar, I saw the tattooed man’s face go pale. “Seriously?”

  “I saw his body at the morgue.” I pulled out my Bureau ID. “Special Agent Angus Green from the FBI. Can I talk to you about the watch you bought?”

  “There’s no way you’re an FBI agent,” one of the married guys said. “You’re too young and too cute.”

  “He’s the real thing,” Lester said, from the behind the bar. “Also my boyfriend.”

  “There you go,” I said. “Independent testimonial. I’d like to talk to anybody who knew Larry Kane or bought anything from his booth.”

  I nodded toward a quiet corner of the bar and the tattooed guy followed me. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Chris Jackson. I’m not gonna get in trouble for buying the watch, am I?”

  “Not at all. You’re an innocent victim.” And a dumb one, I added without saying. “You met Larry here at the bar?”

  He walked me through flirting with Larry, admiring the watch he wore, eventually going to the flea market and buying one himself. “From the leather goods stall?” I asked.

  “He had some watches behind the counter, only for special customers, he said. Specially stupid, I guess.”

  “Everybody wants a bargain,” I said. “How’d you find out the watch was counterfeit?”

  “The battery died and I took it into a watch repair place to get it replaced. The guy there told me it was a fake. A really good one, but still a fake.”

  “How’d he know?”

  “The construction date was missing on the bracelet,” he said. “He told me he wasn’t surprised I got taken in, because the watch had the right weight to it, metal parts rather than cheap plastic, and even the date window had the right magnification. That it probably came from Turkey, where they do a really good job of making counterfeit watches.”

  Odds were, the watch he’d bought had come from a previous shipment sent to Venable. “You like the watch?”

  “I loved it. Until I found out I got ripped off.”

  “So go back to loving it,” I said. “Nobody’s going to know it’s a fake unless you tell them. Your repair guy was right, they make quality replicas in Turkey.”

  I got his address and phone number in case I had to get back to him. Then I returned to the bar, where a couple of other guys admitted to having bought wallets and belts from Larry Kane at the Trader Tom’s booth. None of them were aware that they’d bought counterfeit goods.

  “How do you know this isn’t real?” one of the men said. He pushed his wallet at me. “Looks pretty authentic to me.”

  “You really want to know?” I asked.

  “Hell, yeah. If I got cheated I want to know.”

  I took the wallet from him and moved over to where a spotlight shone down over the bar. I looked at it very carefully and finally found the imperfection I was looking for. “This is a really good wallet,” I said, as I handed it back to him. “What did you pay for it?”

  “A hundred and a quarter.”

  “You got a good deal. It’s a quality piece of work – the Damier Graphite canvas feels authentic.” I opened it. “It has the right number of pockets and everything else you’d expect.”

  “But?” he asked.

  “But if you’re paying nearly five hundred bucks for a wallet, you have the right to expect perfection, and the Louis V factory would never let something go out with this double stitch down here.”

  I pointed to the side where the credit cards went. It looked like the stitching machine had made an error, missed a stitch then gone back over it, and the line along the edge was rough.

  He looked closely at it. “Fuck me,” he said.

  “If you paid retail for it, you’d have a right to be pissed. Instead you got a great-looking wallet with a hardly noticeable imperfection for a bargain price.”

  That got guys lining up to show me their belts, wallets and jewelry. I asked every one of them about Larry, and if they’d ever met his boss, but no one had anything to offer.

  I was finally able to take some drink photos for Lester and post them to social media just before his two-hour stint was over.

  “You never cease to impress me,” he said, as we walked out.

  “Why? I haven’t even taken my clothes off yet.”

  He elbowed me. “How much you knew about that counterfeit stuff. And you didn’t make a single one of those guys feel bad about getting cheated.”

  “I didn’t realize you were paying attention.”

  “Sweetheart, you are always on my radar screen,” he said, and smiled.

  He dropped me at my place and we made plans to get together later in the week. Before I got out of the car, I leaned over and kissed him, intoxicated by the alcohol I’d had at the bar, the new car smell of Lester’s SUV, and the knowledge that even while he was working he’d been watching me and been impressed.

  When I got to work the next morning, I stopped at the lab to pick up the documents Wagon had created for me. “Here’s your diploma,” he said, handing me a duplicate of the one I already had, only with the last name changed. “New driver’s license, a prepaid Visa with a thousand dollars on it, a Costco membership card and a Broward County library card, just for verisimilitude.”

  “Wow. You do good work, Wagon.”

  “Anybody who digs too deeply will come up with some questions, but that should get you wherever you need to go, for now. I’ll have a passport for you in a couple of days.”

  On my way back to my office, I stopped at Vito’s. “Last night I went to a bar where Larry Kane used to hang out, and I spoke to a guy who can connect Venable’s booth with a counterfeit Breitling I believe was made in Turkey.”

  “Does he have a bill of sale for it?” Vito asked.

  I shook my head. “He told me he paid cash.”

  “So it’s just his word that he bought the watch from that booth?”

  I nodded. “And the guy who sold it to him is dead.” I explained about the motorcycle wipeout, and my conversations with Chancy Pierre and Larry Kane’s roommate Paul Snyder.

  “You followed all these leads on instinct? The morgue, this BSO detective, the roommate?”

  I nodded. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “It’s better than okay. It’s damn good investigation. And if Kane’s death wasn’t an accident, then it’s possible that Venable is beginning to cut off loos
e ends. Any other employees at the booth? Is it still open with Kane dead?”

  “The market is only open from Thursday to Sunday, so I can’t tell if the booth will reopen until Thursday with someone else behind the counter. In the meantime I’ll focus on getting to know Venable.”

  When I got back to my office I found an email from Frank Sena. Jesse Venable didn’t have the painting in Florida – it was still in Italy. But he’d be happy to meet with me and talk about it. He’d also asked Frank if I was any good as an accountant, because he had a tax filing due August 15 and wanted to find someone cheap to assemble the data his expensive-by-the-hour accountant wanted.

  I logged into the Angus Gray email account I’d set up and sent a message to Venable, letting him know I could meet him at his convenience, though I was working for a client out in Miramar and might need some time to get to him. A few minutes later he responded. He’d like me to come to his house the next afternoon, if I could, and he included his street address and phone number.

  It was like texting, only less convenient. I responded that I could be there at two, and got a confirmation right back. “Supposed to be a beautiful day,” he wrote. “Let’s talk out by my pool. Bring your bathing suit – though my pool is very private if you prefer to skinny dip!”

  I went back to the email Frank Sena had forwarded to me. He’d noted in it that I was smart, cute—and gay. He must have known Venable would like that.

  My first instinct was to write back to Venable and say that I was a professional accountant, and did not meet clients in my weenie bikini. But then I remembered what Katya had said – that it was my goal to get close to Venable, and to gain his trust. Saying no to his first request wasn’t going to get me off to a good start.

  Because of my fair skin, I try not to spend too much time in the sun, but a few weeks before I’d gone to Fort Lauderdale Beach with Jonas, and he’d snapped a photo of me in a pair of tight-fitting bathing trunks in a tropical pattern. I attached the picture to a message that read, “See you tomorrow!”

  Give ‘em what they ask for, right?

  THE NEXT MORNING I went for a run, then showered and dressed in a pair of navy chinos and a white short-sleeve shirt. I slipped my bathing trunks into the messenger bag I carried to and from work, and made sure to include a couple of my new business cards. I emptied my wallet of everything that identified me as Angus Green, Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including my badge, and put it all in a zippered plastic bag. The Angus Gray material went into my wallet.

  My gun stayed in the thumb holster on my hip. When I got to Venable’s, I’d lock it in the glove compartment of my car, because I didn’t see how I could conceal a weapon in my bathing trunks. At least not a lethal one.

  When I got into the office, I looked up Venable’s address in Weston, a rich suburb on the edge of the Everglades, just up the highway from my office. He’d purchased the house on the half-acre lot new five years before for $3.2 million; it had four bedrooms, three baths, and a pool/spa.

  I wondered how much profit he’d made on the bracelet I had sold to Golden Ticket the week before. You’d have to handle an awful lot of transactions to afford a house like Venable’s, which didn’t have a mortgage recorded against it. A bit more searching turned up the fact that it was in a gated community called Heron’s Nest, which boasted over a hundred acres of lakes and wildlife preserves and a “signature two-story gatehouse entry offering unparalleled security.”

  Fortunately, Wagon had provided the driver’s license under Angus Gray I could show the guard at the gate to Venable’s community. And it was a pretty decent picture of me, as those go.

  As I drove along the beautifully landscaped streets, I kept coming back to my question. Did Jesse Venable have a motive to kill Kane, or have him killed? Perhaps I’d learn something in my visit to his house.

  12 – Bathing Beauty

  As Venable had predicted, the weather was gorgeous as I left the office—sunny in the eighties with scattered clouds, a light breeze swaying the palm trees along the highway. I stopped at the guard house and showed my license. While I waited, I slid my gun and holster into the glove compartment and locked it.

  The guard opened the wrought-iron gate, and after a couple of turns and curves, I pulled up in front of a modern single-story house that was miles from the simple place I lived.

  A tall entry was flanked by two wings, one with a three-car garage at the end. Venable stood in the doorway. He was about five nine, and must have weighed well over three hundred pounds. If he was going for a slimming look by wearing a black sweatshirt over black jogging pants, it wasn’t working for him. And I doubted that he’d been jogging in the past twenty years.

  He smiled broadly and reached out to shake my hand. “Great to meet you, Angus. Thank you so much for coming by.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” I said. “I’m still building my client base so I’m willing to do whatever it takes to please someone new.”

  He smiled broadly. “I like that attitude. I understand you’re an art scholar?”

  “Hardly. Just took a bunch of classes in college because I love looking at paintings.”

  “Then you won’t mind indulging me by letting me show you some of my collection before we get started.” He ushered me into a huge living room that looked out at the lushly landscaped pool area. The walls were white, a plain palette to display his artwork.

  A huge painting I recognized as a David Hockney hung on the wall to the right, above a white leather sofa. A young man, nude, stood with his back to us, in the shallow end of a pool painted in brilliant shades of blue, aqua and green.

  A bronze male nude, about twelve inches high, stood on a side table, beneath a pencil sketch of a nude man who stared confidently at the artist.

  Venable was consistent in his collection. Every work, whether a painting, a sketch, a sculpture or a photograph, glorified the male form, and there were enough dicks and asses on display to fill the pages of any of the gay rags that were given out for free at Lazy Dick’s, Eclipse and a dozen other bars around town.

  Of course, what Venable owned was art, and the queens who turned up their noses at Hot Spots would salivate over the men on his walls.

  “Who’s your favorite artist?” I asked.

  ‘Michelangelo. His David is the finest expression of the male form I’ve ever seen.”

  “You’ve been to see it?”

  “In my younger and slimmer days. Florence is a beautiful city, full of amazing art.”

  “My brother is studying there right now,” I said. “A summer program on art history and the Italian language.”

  “And you’re going to visit him, of course?”

  I shook my head. “I’d love to, and he’d love me to come. But I don’t have the money.”

  “That’s the shame of youth,” he said. “The ability to travel but not the cash. Then you get to be my age and you have the money but not the ability.”

  “Which means you can’t travel directly to Italy to get this painting Frank Sena is interested in.”

  He nodded. “I have a contact there who knows my taste in art and keeps an eye out for me. He offered the painting to me, but the provenance is a little hinky, if you know what I mean. When I heard that Mr. Sena was looking for it, and that he had the paperwork to show it belongs to him, I offered to make the connection.”

  “You’re sure it’s the real thing?”

  “All the dots connect. And it’s not that great a painting that someone would go to the trouble to forge a copy.”

  Miriam Washington might disagree with him. She seemed to believe the painting was pretty important.

  “Do you have any photos of the painting?” I asked. “I might be able to get in touch with one of my professors and have it authenticated.”

  “I just have one, and it’s not very good quality. I can ask my contact to send some better ones and let you know when they come in.”

  I agreed to that, and then we shifte
d to the accounting work he needed done. He led me into a large bedroom he’d converted into an office, where a large black and white photo of two naked men swimming underwater hung above his desk.

  “As I’m sure you know, employers have to file quarterly returns for employee withholding,” he said.

  “Form 941, Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return,” I said. “I’ve filled out many of them over the years.” That was completely true, and a couple of the freelance accounting clients I maintained needed that form as well.

  “My accountant has been after me to put in one of those fancy systems where the employees clock in and the software takes care of putting together the data, but it’s just too damn expensive. I’d rather pay to have someone assemble the report manually every quarter.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Every store manager faxes me the time sheets at the end of the week.” He pointed to a stack of pages as thick as an encyclopedia. “There you go. Take a look and tell me when you can get the form finished.”

  “I’ll have to input everything into a spreadsheet.” I picked up one of the time sheets. It listed the employee’s name, the date, time in, and time out. “You have copies of their W-4s?”

  “That folder over there.”

  Larry Kane’s was near the top. At least there weren’t that many employees, though a quick glance showed that Venable’s businesses weren’t strong on employee retention. There seemed to be a lot of turnover.

  I flipped through it all and made some quick calculations. “I can have all this done in about ten hours. Say three-fifty for the work?” I wanted to lowball him to be sure he’d hire me, and hey, any extra cash was good for me.

  “Sounds great to me. So I’ll hear from you later in the week?”

  Could I do Venable’s work during my FBI hours? Or was that double-dipping? I shoehorned work for my regular clients into my evenings and weekends, but I couldn’t very well tell Venable that. “I have some other work I need to finish,” I said. “How about Thursday?”