Gwenny June's Tommy Crown Affair

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 6 – The Accomplices

  Little Jinny Blistov sat on the bench at the Steinway and wondered what it would be like to play a Rachmaninoff sonata. DA DA DA, DUM, that was Rachmaninoff, wasn’t it? Gale the Mouth sat on the sofa with me, sipping a Sidecar and luxuriating in knowing what it was like to steal something; something more than a few grapes in the produce section of the supermarket. Something different from the cash she stole from people she played poker with. Gale almost always came out ahead at Texas holdum, except for those few times when the stakes weren’t money, but rather were something more personal, those times when Gale lost on purpose, if you get my drift. She looked at the painting of the Bedgewood woman standing next to the fireplace, and said, “She’s a knockout, like you. Looks great on that wall, but how are you going to invite people in here with that there? People do know about it, right? Famous painting, famous woman, famous Charleston family. You and Roger going to close up the social shop, live here as recluses, never see anyone again except Jinny and me? No more cocktail parties with the Mayor putting his hand on your leg, the Senator inviting you up to his cabin in the woods? Did you think of that before we stole it?”

  Jinny said, “What’s wrong with me and you being here, hanging out, drinking wine and Sidecars?”

  “You’re cute, Jinny, and a really good person to have around when someone takes out a gun and starts waving it around, but you’re not the Mayor or the Senator. There’s more to the good life than you, the ex-Russian gangster, and me the fashionista par excellence, can provide to them. Right?” she said, looking at me.

  “If there were only two other people left in the world, Roger and I would want them to be you and Jinny,” I said.

  “See,” said Jinny, playing DA DA DA, DUM on the keyboard, thinking that was pretty good, very cultured, that he was more than just a gun and heist guy.

  I said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I didn’t really think through what I would do with it after we stole it. It took all my brainpower to figure out how to steal it, and maybe I didn’t have any left over to think about what happens after. I just knew I wanted it and that it would be a challenge to get it. Which it was. And you’re more than just a fashionista, you’re an accomplice, and deserve some of the credit here. We did good, and we can enjoy the fruits of our labor for a while before we have to worry about being stigmatized, socially.”

  Gale sipped her drink and asked Jinny, “What fruit did you get out of this deal? Anything other than sitting in here, looking at this woman from two hundred years ago?”

  “What fruit?" he asked.

  “She just said we should enjoy the fruits of our labor, and I wondered what fruit you got, cause I didn’t get any other fruit. Just this drink, which, I have to say, is really good.”

  Jinny wasn’t looking at the painting, which he appreciated because the woman looks like me, whom he loves, but as a work of art it wasn’t really to his taste. He likes Russian abstract art, like Kandinsky, the real spiritual stuff. He said, “I ate all my fruit the night we heisted it. That was fun, like eating really ripe mangos from Honduras. I’m satisfied.”

  "You ate fruit while we were in the museum?"

  "He's speaking figuratively, hon," I said.

  “Oh." She paused, then said, "So you don’t have any fruit tonight. Me neither,” and she looked at me.

  I knew Gale was teasing, and that she'd gotten her kicks out of the operation, just like Jinny. And just like me. That was a night to remember. Then I got back to her question about what I was going to do with this scorching hot item, sitting in my living room like it had been there since it was painted. “I’ll wait till Roger gets back from France in a couple of months. It can stay here until then, and then we’ll decide what to do with it. If I want people over before then, I can keep ‘em in the kitchen, informal.”

  “What about the cops?”

  Jinny said, “What cops?”

  “The cops that are investigating the theft. Didn’t you read the paper this morning?”

  Jinny had lived in Charleston for four years, since moving from Saint Petersburg after the heist he’d done there with me and Roger, and he still read the Saint Petersburg Times, not the Charleston paper. He said, “Who cares? Did you leave some clues behind? Any diamond earrings with your fingerprints on them, or your cell phone? Any stuff like that? Did you, Gwen? So who cares about the cops.”

  I didn’t care about the cops either, having experienced their inefficiency my whole life, but something Roger had said on the phone stuck with me, and I said, “I’m not worried about the cops, but there is one thing.”

  Jinny looked at me, and Gale said, “What?”

  “The insurance company. Roger said they wouldn’t pay out till they did an investigation.” My friends looked at each other, and then Gale went to mix herself another drink and Jinny went back to composing the notes that follow DA DA DA, DUM, both of them thinking, ‘I’m not going to worry about some paper pusher from an insurance company.’

  I stared at my ancestor and wondered.