Quick & Dirty

by Stuart Woods

  “Yes, sir.” The pilot did so, and ATC cleared him direct AID, where their car was waiting for them.

  Sol sat back in his seat and squeezed his wife’s hand. “Now we can relax,” he said. “We’ll sleep near Chicago tonight and get an early start in the morning. I’ve arranged a charter flight from New Orleans Lakefront to the Caymans the day after tomorrow, and we’ll open a bank account there, then make our way back to New Orleans and drive west.”

  She gave him a big, wet kiss.

  58

  STONE WAS AT HIS DESK in the late afternoon when Arthur Steele arrived, carrying a briefcase.

  “Have a seat, Arthur. How did it go?”

  Steele placed the briefcase on the desk and opened it. “It went just fine,” he said.

  “May I?” Stone asked, reaching for the painting.

  “Of course.”

  Stone switched on his desk lamp and held the picture up, minus its frame. “Oh, my,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve seen it.”

  “I’d like you to deliver it to Mrs. Tillman,” Steele said.

  “I’d be happy to.”

  Steele took an envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to Stone. “Your fee,” he said.

  Stone removed the check from the envelope, looked at it, and nodded. “Thank you, Arthur.”

  “Don’t miss the board meeting tomorrow,” Steele said, rising. “Two PM. I’ll need your support to convince the members that I’ve done the right thing.”

  “I don’t think they’ll doubt it for a moment.”

  Steele shook his hand and departed.

  Stone locked the briefcase in his safe, then phoned Morgan Tillman.

  “Well, hello there. I was about to call you and invite you to dinner tonight.”

  “Just the two of us?”

  “Yes, indeed,” she replied.

  “I’ll have a surprise for you.”

  “I hope it’s what I think it is,” she said.

  “That, and something else.”

  “Seven o’clock?”

  “See you then.” He hung up and buzzed for Joan.

  She came in. “Yes, boss?”

  “Deposit this, please,” he said, handing her the check, then asked her to write another.

  • • •

  STONE PRESENTED HIMSELF at Morgan’s door, only fashionably late, and rang the bell.

  She opened the door and gave him a big kiss. “Is that my surprise?” she asked, pointing at the briefcase.

  “It’s one of them,” he replied.

  “Let me fix you a drink first.” She did so.

  Stone opened the briefcase, removed the painting, and handed it to her. “I hope you’ll give it a good home.”

  She took it and held it under the lamp. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, and brought it toward her lips.

  “Don’t kiss it!” Stone said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you do, you may have to someday explain to some expert how van Gogh managed to get lipstick on it.”

  She went to the hall closet and came back with the frame that the thief had discarded, and a small tool kit. “Will you rehang it for me, next to the Utrillo there, while I finish cooking? I’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”

  “Of course,” Stone replied. She went into the kitchen, and he put the painting carefully back into its frame and secured it. He went to the wall and held it up to the empty space waiting for it. Then, as he started to reach for a hammer, a corner of the van Gogh struck the Utrillo and knocked it off the wall and onto the floor.

  “Clumsy ass,” he said aloud to himself, hoping he hadn’t damaged the painting. He picked it up and found it to be heavier than he had expected, then he turned it over and discovered that the picture wire had come loose from the eye screw on one side. And as he did, he saw something that startled him.

  Inside the canvas frame of the Utrillo he saw a second canvas frame that fit neatly inside the first. Another painting was concealed there. He found a screwdriver in the tool kit and gently pried the smaller picture out of the larger frame. He set down the Utrillo and turned over the second canvas.

  To his astonishment, he found himself looking at another van Gogh, identical to the one he was about to hang. He picked up the framed one and held them up together, then he walked back to the table he had been sitting next to and put both paintings under the lamp. They matched, brushstroke by brushstroke. One of them had to be a fake, but which one?

  He took a big sip of his drink and thought about this for a moment, then he replaced the second picture inside the Utrillo canvas’s frame, re-secured the wire to the eye, and returned it to its place on the wall. It had been secreted there for a year and a half, and it was unlikely to be discovered, unless he wanted it to be.

  Morgan stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Five minutes,” she said.

  “I’ll be ready.” He finished rehanging the first van Gogh and stepped back to view the wall; the painting seemed at home.

  Morgan called him to dinner at a dining nook off the kitchen with a fine view of the city lights. “Will you decant the wine?” she asked.

  “Sure.” Stone held the bottle up to a candle and poured the claret into a decanter until the dregs started to creep up the side of the bottle.

  Morgan came in with their first course of seared foie gras, and they sat down. “Bon appetit,” she said.

  “Bon appetit,” he replied, then he cut a slice of the goose liver and chewed thoughtfully. It practically melted in his mouth.

  “You seem very quiet this evening,” Morgan said. “Penny for your thoughts?”

  “You wouldn’t get your money’s worth,” Stone replied. “I’m not even sure what I’m thinking.”

  • • •

  AFTER DINNER they took a cognac upstairs and undressed.

  “You’re still very quiet,” she said.

  “I don’t know how to answer you,” he replied.

  She fondled him. “Oh, and here’s my other surprise.”

  “Whatever I was thinking,” he said, “it just flew out of my mind.”

  59

  STONE WOKE VERY EARLY, slipped out of bed, and dressed in the bathroom, so as not to wake Morgan. He let himself out of the apartment and, on the way down, phoned Art Masi.

  “Masi,” a sleepy voice said.

  “It’s Stone. I’m on the Upper East Side, in the Seventies. Can we meet for breakfast?”

  Masi suggested a place on Lexington Avenue in the Sixties. “See you in an hour.”

  Stone walked slowly over to Lex and turned. He reflected that he should feel more satisfied than he actually did; he kept putting two and two together and coming up with five.

  After some window-shopping, he reached the restaurant in time to see Masi getting out of a cab. They shook hands, went inside, got a table, and ordered.

  “You look odd,” Masi said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. There’s an old joke—do you know the difference between a moron and a neurotic?”

  “No.”

  “A moron thinks two and two are five. A neurotic knows two and two are four, but it makes him nervous.”

  Masi laughed. “Which are you?”

  “I haven’t been able to figure that out just yet.”

  “Are you hopeful?”

  “Not really.”

  “We don’t have the van Gogh, do we? No million bucks?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Stone said, taking an envelope from his pocket and handing it to Masi.

  Masi opened it and his eyebrows went up. “This is a check for two million dollars.”

  “Then you’ll have more than a million after paying your taxes—and you’d better pay your taxes because there will be a record of this.”

  “But I did
n’t find the painting.”

  “Neither did I,” Stone said, “but we solved the mystery.”

  “I don’t understand this.”

  “We both worked hard for it, and we should be rewarded, and as for doubling your reward, it makes a kind of sense, because we have two paintings.”

  “Two paintings?”

  “Two identical paintings—both the same van Gogh.”

  “Then one of them is a fake.”

  “Your logic is admirable, but which one?”

  “You’ve seen them side by side?”

  “I have.”

  “And you couldn’t tell them apart?”

  “I could not. Arthur Steele compared it to the color transparency, and he couldn’t tell one from the other.”

  “But he paid the reward anyway?”

  “He did. He hasn’t seen the other van Gogh—I discovered it accidentally last night when I was hanging the first one in her apartment. It was concealed inside the frame of a Utrillo hanging next to it. A perfect fit.”

  “What do you make of all this?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know Mark Tillman, so I can’t guess at his motivation, not with any basis in fact.”

  “I can,” Masi said.

  “Please enlighten me.”

  “We’ve talked about this—when people buy a very expensive piece of jewelry, multimillion-dollar jewelry, they often have a copy made so the wife can wear it in insecure places without fear of losing the original, which is at home in the safe.”

  “And you think that’s why he had the picture copied?”

  “Why else?”

  “He was in what was, for him, reduced financial circumstances, and I think he needed the sixty million to get out of a hole, so he filed an insurance claim. I think he told Ralph, the doorman, to steal it and, when things had cooled off a bit, to fence it and keep half of whatever he could get for it. And if it was never found, Tillman still had the original.”

  “That makes as much sense as anything I can think of. Are you feeling better now?”

  “I am, but not a whole lot,” Stone said.

  “Then two plus two equals four, but you’re nervous about it.”

  “Does that make me a neurotic?”

  “Very probably,” Masi said, grinning.

  “Now, that makes me feel better.”

  Their breakfast arrived, and they ate hungrily.

  • • •

  “TILLMAN WAS VERY SMART,” Masi said over a second cup of coffee. “He would have gotten the insurance money for the fake, and the original was safe on the wall where it had always hung, and nobody was the wiser. It was so simple.”

  “If it was so simple, why didn’t you find it when you and your people searched the apartment?” Stone asked.

  “Because it was so simple. It was hidden in plain sight—well, almost in plain sight. It was right in front of us the whole time.”

  “It was very clever,” Stone said, “or it would have been if Tillman had lived to enjoy both the money and the painting.”

  “Any new theory on why he died?”

  “Well, Pio and Ann have convinced me that they didn’t kill him. If they had, they would have kept the picture.”

  “So it was the cat burglar?”

  “I’m convinced there was no cat burglar. Morgan saw the painting was gone and made up a story that explained both its disappearance and her husband’s death because she was afraid she’d be accused.”

  “Then she didn’t do it?”

  Stone shook his head. “I’ve gotten to know her well, and I don’t believe she’s capable of murder.”

  “Everybody’s capable of murder, under the right circumstances,” Masi said.

  “No, it was an accident. The parapet was being reconstructed and was thus low. He could have gotten too near the edge and tripped.”

  “Or she could have just nudged him a little.”

  “No. They may have had an argument—maybe she told him she wanted a divorce, maybe she was angry, thinking he’d sold the painting without consulting her, I don’t know. But I think he was careless and caused his own death.”

  “Well, you know her better than I,” Masi said.

  Stone looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go see Angelo Farina. He’s in the Carlsson Clinic, recovering from a heart attack.”

  “I hadn’t heard. Wish him well for me.”

  Stone got up and reached for money.

  Masi raised a hand. “No, breakfast is on me.” He smiled broadly and patted his pocket. “I can afford it.”

  60

  STONE PRESENTED HIMSELF at the front desk of the Carlsson Clinic and asked for the room of Angelo Farina; he was directed to the top floor of the building.

  Pio Farina and Ann Kusch were coming out of the room as Stone arrived.

  “Thank you for coming,” Pio said. “The doctor says Dad is out of the woods and recovering. You can go in for a bit, but please don’t overtire him.”

  Stone walked into the room, which was large and included a comfortable seating area for guests. The hospital bed on the other side of the room, surrounded by flickering and beeping screens, seemed almost out of place.

  Angelo’s bed was cranked up to a sitting position; he raised a hand and waved Stone over. He pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed.

  “You look almost as good as I do,” Angelo said.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Stone replied. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Much better,” Angelo said. “I walked into my apartment building and felt a little queasy, and I had a pain in my back on the left side. I don’t remember anything else. I’m told I collapsed into the arms of a doorman, who did all the right things. I woke up here.”

  “I’m glad you did. I want to thank you for the glorious van Gogh you did for me. It’s already in a place of pride in my house. I don’t think I’ll tell anybody it’s a fake.”

  “Tell them it’s an original Farina,” Angelo said.

  “Perhaps I will, once they get over the initial shock. I had dinner with Morgan last evening, partly to give back her van Gogh.”

  “They found it, then?”

  Stone took him through the chain of events that had led to the picture’s recovery. “The final thief sold it back to the insurance company, saving them a bundle.”

  “That was smart. Who was he?”

  “He called himself Sol Fineman, at least for a while. Nobody has been able to find out anything else about him.”

  “Mark Tillman would have enjoyed that story. He was a very tricky fellow himself.”

  “I’ve come to know you’re right about that.”

  “How so?”

  “Last night, while Morgan was making dinner, she asked me to rehang the van Gogh. In so doing, I accidentally dislodged a very nice Utrillo from its place, and I got quite a surprise.”

  “From Utrillo? Nothing very surprising there.”

  “I won’t argue art with you, but tucked inside the Utrillo’s frame I found another, smaller frame. I pried it out and lo, another van Gogh, virtually identical to Mark Tillman’s.”

  Angelo smiled broadly. “Did you now?”

  “I did, and now I have a question for you, Angelo. Which of Mark’s van Goghs is the fake?”

  Angelo laughed. “Both of them.”

  Stone’s jaw dropped. “They are both fakes?”

  “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are both original Farinas.” He coughed a few times.

  “Have some water,” Stone said. He took a glass from the bedside table and held the straw so that Angelo could take a few sips.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “Why would Mark want duplicate van Goghs?”

  Angelo sighed. “Perhaps he was a
belt-and-braces sort of guy,” he said. “Or perhaps he had more nefarious reasons. As I say, he was a tricky fellow.” He began to cough again, and Stone offered him the water, but he waved it away. Stone rang for the nurse.

  She was there immediately, and shooed Stone from the room. He took a seat, and through the open door he heard a periodic beep from one of the monitors turn into a continuous tone. A doctor and another nurse, pushing a crash cart, ran down the hallway and into the room and closed the door behind them.

  Stone waited for the better part of half an hour before the doctor emerged.

  “Are you family?” the doctor asked Stone.

  “No, just a friend.”

  “We did everything we could,” the doctor said, “but we were unable to revive him. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” Stone said.

  “I should call his son,” the doctor said, and walked away down the hall.

  • • •

  STONE DECIDED TO WALK HOME. As he walked through the crisp morning air, he went over in his mind the chain of events that had led to this day.

  He thought about Morgan Tillman. Perhaps she would discover the duplicate one day soon, or perhaps much time would pass before someone came across it. He thought he would let that happen.

  He thought about Arthur Steele. Arthur and his company would never again see the five million Sol Fineman had taken from him, and Stone would hate to see Art Masi have to give back the two million he had worked so hard for.

  He thought about the ten million he himself had pocketed. Still, the insurance company had saved many millions. Perhaps, Stone thought, a large charitable donation would be in order for him.

  He decided not to attend the board meeting that afternoon.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I must give my thanks to the artist Ken Perenyi, who knows all things about the creation, as well as the forgery, of art. His book, Caveat Emptor, tells (nearly) all on that subject, and I hope it kept me from sounding like an idiot on the subject. I own and treasure several of his “re-creations,” and you may find his work for sale on the Internet, as well as, if rumors be true, in many museums and art collections around the world.