Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3)

by Lance Charnes

  He’s got a Wikipedia page that tracks his story, even with his real picture. I guess the federal probation system isn’t interested in him. There’s plenty on the wider web about Demeter Systems, a bunch on the one in Bangalore, but a fair amount for the Texas one. The company’s site is nice, mobile-friendly with lots of pictures of happy farmers with happy cows. There’s even a photo of McCarran out in a field with a bunch of geeky-looking guys and one hottie (not Savannah). Another hit’s for a press release on the Google website announcing Demeter’s buyout.

  The Trey McCarran I met seems to get around. He appears semi-regularly on the company’s Facebook page, though he doesn’t have his own profile. He’s quoted in magazines with exciting names like Progressive Farmer and Dairy Today. He pops up now and then in Fort Worth, the local lifestyle magazine. I spend $49 of the client’s money to get McCarran’s data from an aggregator I used at the gallery to get the dope on clients. What they give me is more detailed than Hoskins’ sheet but not nearly as messy as some of my ex-clients’.

  Is McCarran for real? I wonder about that while I finish my sandwich and my Drake’s 1500 pale ale. He seemed awfully curious about me and not too anxious to talk about himself. The normal rich guy’s favorite thing to talk about is himself.

  Maybe the Cowboy Way is to not brag.

  Am I so used to people having an angle that I see shadows where there aren’t any?

  Something else crawls out of my brain while I’m in the elevator.

  Bandineau said something at lunch that didn’t make an impression until now. We need to know—now more than ever—who we’re doing business with.

  I wish I’d caught that right then so I could’ve asked. Why “now more than ever”? What’s changed? Does he know the feds are looking at him? Does he think I might be an undercover fed? Not that he’d tell me the truth, but even the lie would’ve been interesting.

  I stand at one of my suite’s windows and watch the forests of lights blink and shimmer. Watching but not seeing. My head’s busy with the Hoskins problem.

  How do you know somebody’s really who they say they are? ID? That’s easy to fake. Talk to their friends? They may not be real friends, or even real people. Social media? Real people cook up fake profiles (ask anybody on a dating app); why can’t a fake person?

  I can probably get Olivia to get the client to vouch for me. I can maybe get Olivia to dig up other random people who’ll be willing to say they know Hoskins. They’ll just be voices of people Lorena’s never heard of. Probably not enough.

  Plus, Lorena wants to know about Hoskins’ collection. I had to design one for him on my first project, so at least I have that already. A list is one thing, though; seeing canvases on walls is another.

  Bandineau’s hot to talk to my “contact” at LACMA. It sounded like it could be a deal-breaker for him. How’ll that work?

  One by one, my options fall on the floor and break. By the end of my second minibar beer, there’s only one option left. It’s hideously complex and it’s got at least a thousand different ways of going wrong. But it’s the only thing I can think of to get the job done.

  And it has to happen in Los Angeles.

  Hoskins lives in L.A. So do I. So do a lot of people who know me: FBI agents, ex-clients, people whose businesses or lives I destroyed with my testimony, vendors who got screwed out of money we owed them when the FBI shut down the gallery. If one of them recognizes me, it’s game over.

  The whole game. Hoskins’ identity, his credibility with Lorena and Bandineau. I’d never get another shot at them. The project would be over.

  I can’t risk that. Too much is at stake.

  Freedom.

  Yeah, that. I’m like Pavlov’s pooch; I think of that word and I start to drool. If I do this thing and it goes bad, I won’t get that freedom. I’ll be lucky to keep what I have. If I don’t do it, the project’s basically over. I won’t get any farther with Bandineau or Lorena, won’t move on to the next link in the chain, won’t get the client what he needs. What I need.

  I spend a lot of time grinding this over, coming at it from different angles. I pace a couple miles around the suite’s living room. I pick up the discarded options, try to piece them together, see if they’ve changed since I threw them away. They haven’t.

  Finally, it comes to me: you can’t think your way out of this.

  I remember a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy is trying to get through some insanely lethal puzzle palace in Petra and he comes to a point where the clue is, make a leap of faith. It looks like he’ll fall into a bottomless hole if he does anything. Indy solves the puzzle (not a spoiler—he always does) in his typical sideways manner and moves on, but he does have to make a leap of faith.

  Maybe I do too.

  But it’s a long damn way down.

  Olivia asks “How may I help you?” once we get past the usual greetings.

  “Three things. Can you ask the client if anything’s changed with this project recently? I heard something today that makes me think it has.”

  “Change of what sort?”

  “I don’t know. Something that’d make the two subjects jumpy.” The “two subjects” being Lorena and Bandineau.

  “I’ll need to ask Allyson. Only she can speak with the clients. By the by, she would like a progress report.”

  Great. “It hasn’t even been a week yet.”

  “I’m certain she’s aware of that. Please send it to me this evening unless you fancy an impromptu visit.”

  Given how we left things after Vail, a visit’s the last thing either of us needs. “I’ll send you something in a while. Second: the client needs to vouch for me with the gallery. They made it clear this isn’t optional.”

  “Oh, dear. Right, noted. And your third wish?”

  “Three more wishes?”

  “No. That violates the rules of magic. Choose wisely.”

  I explain Lorena’s challenge and Bandineau’s need to talk to LACMA. Olivia waits until I’m done before she pelts me with questions. Can you do X? Did you consider Y? Everything I’d already thought of and dropped in the trash. She runs out of ideas after a while. I’m not looking forward to the obvious next question because she won’t like the answer.

  “What do you propose?” That question.

  I make my leap of faith. My brain’s been working on this for a while and it’s filled in a lot of details while I’ve dealt with other things. It still feels like I’m describing a movie while I lay out the plan.

  Olivia’s ominously quiet after I finish. She sighs, clears her throat. “This will be… expensive.” Her accent makes even bad news sound good. Not that this is news.

  “It’s gonna cost a mint. It all depends on how happy the client wants to make the feds.”

  “This is, of course, vital to the success of your project.”

  “If we don’t do this, the project’s over.”

  “I see.”

  More silence. The longer she doesn’t say anything, the more nervous I get. Just asking for this could end the project—or my part in it.

  “I’ll have to ask Allyson, of course. But it does sound like a spot of fun. Tell me more.”

  I’m up by seven the next morning—sheer luxury, considering I usually have to be out the door at four to get to work—and run a three-mile loop that takes me down to the waterfront (called “the Embarcadero” here), through the Financial District, and back to Union Square. I see boutique coffee places setting up their outside tables and sandwich boards next to bushes homeless dudes are sleeping in. I pass well-scrubbed human whippets out doing their jogs or power walks in their Under Armor and high-end Nikes, dodging street crews power-washing barf off the sidewalks. I spot a ragged guy snoring at the foot of the palatial glass-and-granite Apple Store overlooking Union Square.

  The local TV news is all about some tech dude who ODed on some kind of high-powered heroin, the third one this month. I guess the
y’re not as smart as they’re supposed to be.

  My work phone rings while I’m shaving. It’s Olivia. “Allyson’s convinced you’re barking mad.”

  “She’s not the first one. What else did she say?”

  “The client has approved your proposal. Allyson will be watching very closely, so you’d best make a good job of it.” It may be interference on the line, but I think I hear a little chuckle. “Let’s make Mr. Hoskins a living person, shall we?”

  Chapter 13

  55 DAYS LEFT

  Frank Petri once told me, “Ya gotta have a story, kid. The mark buys the story.”

  During my stay at Federal Prison Camp Pensacola (a.k.a. PEN, and yeah, we laughed about that), I worked in the library with Frank, who was doing seven-to-ten for a lot of charges that were different ways of saying “con man.”

  According to Frank—who’d gone twenty-six years on the grift before getting sent up, so I figure he knew his stuff—a con is like an advertising campaign. You have to hook a mark’s heart, not his brain. Why else do you think Budweiser has so many ponies and puppies in its ads? Why do charities use pictures of babies? That charity should run a picture of the number 429,000, because that’s how many people died of malaria last year. Instead, they have some cute little girl with dirt on her face, crying. “Esperanza’s mother died of malaria last year. Help save her father. Give to…” And the wallets open. Stories do that.

  What I really need is to tell Bandineau and Lorena a story to stoke their warm feelings toward Hoskins. Giving Lorena a look at Hoskins’ Amex card? Tactical mistake. That’s like showing her a bank statement. It may satisfy her brain, but not her heart.

  Hoskins needs a narrative.

  Like, why’s he interested in art? Why does he want the Nam Ton wares so much? What will he bring to Bandineau’s scam? All very personal, and all best shown rather than told.

  While that swirls around my head, I think: Bandineau alone? Invite Lorena, too? That feels wrong to me for a reason I can’t put my finger on. Maybe she’s not as invested as Bandineau? I can’t take that chance.

  Savannah? Hmm… she’s invested. I think she’s playing her own narrative involving Hoskins. She’s been flirting with him since they (we?) met. If she buys into the tale I’m telling—and she’s already partway there—she can help convince Bandineau.

  Maybe I should’ve been nicer to her. I can still fix that.

  I need to drop them into an ongoing story about who Hoskins is and why they want him on the team. There’s only one setting where I can do that.

  That’s why I proposed to Olivia that we invite Bandineau into Hoskins’ home. He can see some of Hoskins’ collection, then meet the LACMA guy.

  Two things about this idea absolutely scare the shit out of me.

  I’ve already mentioned the L.A. thing. I still don’t know how that’ll work. I have to stay away from any vendors or workers we used at the gallery. I need to stay out of Beverly Hills entirely or somebody might try to run me over with their Bentley. I’ll be on red alert every time I go outside.

  The other problem: Bandineau’s certainly been in rich people’s homes and knows what they look like. Likewise Savannah. Luckily, so have I.

  Unfortunately, we don’t have time to meticulously prop the venue. I’m at fifty-five days and counting, which can go by like that. We need to surround the marks with activity to keep them from looking too closely at things. Distract them, play on the social inhibition against tossing somebody else’s drawers in their own house. Which means a lot more people involved, and a lot more moving pieces.

  So all I have to do is build Hoskins a home, write a play… and make sure nobody in the real world knows.

  The house is key. If the house and its location aren’t perfect, the rest doesn’t matter.

  Hoskins—like me—is an ex-architect. He won’t live in some nasty McMansion or an overblown Versailles replica. He’d probably design and build his own home. We can’t do that.

  If he bought a house, it’d have a good design, and probably an interesting one. He likes old things, so it’s probably an old house with character rather than some white cube on a hill. Since he’s not into publicity, he won’t have a famous house. People keep track of buildings designed by Wright or Schindler or Neutra or Gehry; they know who owns the Chemosphere (the UFO-looking place on Mulholland) and the movie-star homes. So as much as I’d love to score a Case Study House, it ain’t happening.

  The house needs to be big enough to be credible. The bigger it is, the harder it’ll be to prep it, and the better the odds that somebody will get into places they shouldn’t. I decide that Hoskins doesn’t do big parties at this home (I’m sure he has others; I need to figure out where); anything with more than a dozen guests goes to an event space.

  We can trade off size for view and keep the apparent price high enough to get our point across. This means the Hollywood Hills, Laurel Canyon, Beverly Park, Beverly Glen, and Bel Air, all in the Santa Monica Mountains where the other Masters of the Universe have the whole L.A. basin at their feet literally as well as metaphorically.

  It’s possible to rent mansions (and everything else) in L.A. Some agencies book them by the night, like Airbnb for the one percent. We can’t use those. The last thing we need is for Bandineau or Savannah to leaf through a Los Angeles magazine, see an ad, and realize it’s Hoskins’ house in the picture.

  Likewise, it’d be useful if the deed’s held by a corporation or trust in case somebody gets the bright idea to research the ownership.

  I email Olivia my longish checklist. After a few minutes, she replies, You neglected to mention the color of the drapes.

  It’s good to know she can do sarcasm. Not purple. It’s a wish list. Do the best you can.

  Once I’m back in L.A., I send McCarran a picture of my pot, then repack it carefully until I have some reason to display it. Too bad; it’s just as pretty here as it was in the gallery.

  McCarran sends me a picture that evening. His Nam Ton bowl is gorgeous. The ghost-white sides flare out from a narrow footring to a slightly everted rim; the interior is entirely cobalt blue. It surprises me how much I want it. All his email says is, “Keep in touch.”

  While Olivia’s trying to nail down a house, I work on the second most important part of Hoskins’ story: his collection.

  We don’t need the whole thing at his home, just enough to convince the marks he has one. The list I made almost a year ago included all real paintings that had sold at auction to corporate or anonymous buyers. That makes tracking their current locations next to impossible (a good thing), but also means we can’t get to them (a bad thing).

  There’s an easy-ish answer to this problem. Unfortunately, it falls in an extremely gray legal area. Since the original paintings aren’t available, I don’t have a lot of other options.

  I browse through the Studio Direct website’s “fine art reproductions” (legal forgeries) catalog, jot down some names, then call a guy I know.

  “Simpson Boutelle, at your service.” He could fill an arena with that voice.

  “Hey, Sim. It’s Matt.”

  “Matthew, m’lad! Brilliant to hear from you again. And so soon!”

  Boutelle’s a huge, hairy painter from the middle of England. I think J.K. Rowling modeled Hagrid after him, minus the unhealthy habits. He does legal work for Studio Direct, and did semi-legal work for the gallery and completely illegal work for me on my last project.

  He dials his volume down to eleven. “Tell me, m’lad… do you need another Sargent? I’ve done nothing but Velasquez since the new year and I’m fit to top myself.”

  He’s got a thing for pre-Modern portraitists going back to the Baroque, but his heart’s in the late nineteenth century. “Sorry, Sim, not this time. But I do need some canvases. Do you know any artists who do Impressionist or Post-Impressionist pieces for Studio Direct?”

  “Well…” He hems and haws a bit, which usually means there’s
a long explanation coming. “We all know one another to some extent. We’re a small brotherhood, you know, toiling away, noses to the millstone—”

  “‘Yes’ or ‘no’ is fine.”

  “Well, yes. If you must know.”

  “I must. Do any of them do side work, like you? In-the-style-of pieces?” In other words, do they make new Van Goghs and Monets?

  “Ahhhh.” I can imagine him waving a thick finger at me. “I get your meaning. You are, of course, referring to work they do for their own entertainment and development as artists?”

  “Of course. Do they?”

  Boutelle clears his throat dramatically. “You understand, of course, that we all do what we must to keep our work fresh for the customers. A gent can grind out only so many copies of Las Meninas or Water Lilies—” he makes both names sound like “cholera” “—before he has to clean his palate, shall we say. Do something original. All in good fun, don’t you know.”

  I should’ve done this in the morning when I still had the energy to deal with Boutelle. Unfortunately, he would’ve still been asleep. “Nobody else is listening, Sim. You can stop dancing now.”

  He puts on his stage-whisper voice, which is like most people’s normal speaking voice. “How can you be certain?”

  “Nobody’s arrested me lately.” Here’s where I add conspiracy to commit fraud to my growing list of sins. “I’d like to buy some of those side projects.”

  “Oho!” I have to jerk my phone away from my ear. “You ought to have said that first, m’lad! I’m certain we can help. What do you need?” I can hear him clearly even though my phone isn’t on speaker and it’s a foot away from my head.

  “Bring it down, will you? Listen: I’m looking for late Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Fauvists. Nothing later than 1910. No marquee names. If something’s a direct copy, I need the title. Every piece needs to be signed. You know what I mean, right?” I mean, signed by the dead artist whose style they’re borrowing.