Feint of Art:

by Hailey Lind

  “Well, you see, here’s the thing—”

  I got no further. Apparently the desk clerk had a pretty good idea what the thing was and called in the manager, an extremely polite, middle-aged Pakistani named Rafi who patently did not believe a word of my story. I flashed on a visual of days spent scrubbing motel toilets and nights spent listening to drunks at the local pokey, and almost lost it.

  Maybe it was the genuinely stricken look on my face that convinced Rafi I was telling the truth. Or maybe he calculated that indulging me was his best shot at getting his money. Or maybe he was simply a kind man. Whatever the reason, he ushered me into his office, asked me to sit down, fixed a cup of the most delicious tea I had ever had, and made a phone call that, he said, would take care of things for me.

  We spent the next twenty minutes chatting companion-ably. Rafi showed me pictures of his family and regaled me with stories of his uncle Farhad in Karachi, who was a great fan of Humphrey Bogart and ran an illegal but highly lucrative nightclub called the Casablanca. I countered with the tale of how my uncle Alfred got drunk one night, decided to castrate his Brahma bull Sweetmeat with a twist tie, and nearly lost an ear in the process.

  Ah, memories. By the time Rafi’s teenaged nephew Suresh pulled up in a beat-up silver Toyota Corolla, Rafi and I were chums.

  Suresh drove me around Yountville for nearly an hour searching for my beloved truck, which I finally spied tucked behind a closed service station. I got in, retrieved my wallet, and rode with Suresh to an ATM, where I withdrew enough cash to pay for the motel room, the drive to Yountville, the time it took to find the truck, the tip I felt I owed Rafi for his understanding, and the jar of curry and package of naan that Rafi said was the best I would ever taste. Back at my truck, Suresh drove off with a wave.

  I settled into the driver’s seat, but when I turned the key in the ignition I heard a whining, straining sound that was nothing like its usual rumble. The CHECK ENGINE light came on, so I climbed out of the cab, lifted the hood, and checked the engine. I was going to need a whole lot more instruction from the truck if this was going to work.

  I slammed my fist on the fender. That did not help.

  Looking around, I realized that Yountville was a forlornly sleepy little town on a wintry Sunday. The brilliant sunshine and puffy white clouds of yesterday had given way to dismal overcast skies and rapidly cooling air.

  My dead cell phone being of no use, I hiked, resigned, toward the highway, where I found Ernie of Ernie’s Gas Station open for business and delighted to charge me seventy-five dollars to tow my truck less than half a mile. At the garage, Ernie popped the hood, inspected the engine, and presented me with a laundry list of problems that might or might not be the cause of my current misfortune. It would be at least an hour before he would be able to get to it, though I saw no evidence that ol’ Ern was doing anything else.

  I kept these thoughts to myself. The last thing I needed at the moment was to offend the one person who could remove the final obstacle between me and the road home.

  After spending a few minutes flipping through the tattered magazines in Ernie’s unheated and grimy waiting room, I trudged over to a coffee shop a few blocks away, only to find they did not accept credit cards. I spent my remaining two dollars on a watery cup of coffee, and glumly nursed my persistent headache. Last night’s meal of buffalo wings, cheeseburger, fries, vodka martinis, and Anti-Whachahoochis was not sitting well. I must have looked as miserable as I felt, because a sympathetic waitress slipped me some dry wheat toast when I explained that I had no more money.

  An hour later I trudged back to the service station, where Ernie, grinning dementedly, said he had been able to fix my problem for the low, low cost of two hundred forty dollars. Plus, he fixed my broken window for only another hundred fifty. Unlike the coffee shop, Ernie was more than happy to run my credit card up to its spending limit.

  As for the X-man, he was dead meat. I would hunt him down to my dying day and when I found him I would kill him with my bare hands.

  Or with the evil elf—now that would be an appropriate use of creepy garden statuary.

  Chapter 9

  The paint color known as Indian yellow was derived from the urine of cows fed an exclusive diet of mango leaves. The use of this acid yellow will date a work of art to before 1900, the year the pigment was banned.

  —Georges LeFleur, “Tools of the Trade,” unfinished manuscript, Reflections of a World-Class Art Forger

  Around five that evening, I limped into Oakland. It had been a very slow trip home. Halfway there, the gray skies that followed me from Yountville turned into a drizzle, always a dangerous thing in these parts since, although many Bay Area drivers hailed from less temperate climes, most were now incapable of driving in any conditions other than bright, arid sunshine. I fought my way through the snarled traffic, parked behind my building, and plodded up the stairs to my apartment, bone-tired. All I wanted in life at this moment was a long, hot soak in the bathtub, something bland to eat, and an early bedtime. It had been quite a weekend.

  The phone started ringing as I was fiddling with the dead-bolt lock, so I wrenched the door open, dumped my things on a chair, and snatched up the receiver. As I fielded a call about which candidate I should elect to the school board, I noticed something was amiss.

  I was not known for my spic-and-span housekeeping. I liked a clean living space as much as the next person, but tidying up was not high on my list of priorities. And even if it had been, after a long day in the studio or on a job site, the last thing I was in the mood for was vacuuming. As a result, my apartment often gave the impression of having been ransacked on a daily basis. Some people, my mother most famously, would have been astonished that I could tell that anybody had been here. But I knew immediately that my apartment, although not torn apart like the Dusty Attic, had been gone through carefully.

  I said something to get rid of the campaign worker—something subtle like “Comrade, I only vote for the Communist Party”—and hung up.

  I looked around my living room, unsure of how to proceed. Was the intruder still here? I snuck into the kitchen and peered around. No one there. That left two rooms. I grabbed a cast-iron skillet from the top of the stove and tiptoed grimly down the short hall to my bedroom.

  One might think that my recent encounter with the Hulk would have encouraged me to be more circumspect than to blunder about armed only with a skillet. But the truth was, I was exhausted, hungry, hungover, out a whole lot of cash, and not in the mood to be reasonable.

  I approached the partly closed bedroom door and threw it open. It made a satisfying crashing noise as it bounced against the wall before swinging back and slamming shut in my face.

  Damn.

  I turned the knob and pushed the door open again, more slowly this time.

  Nothing. No one.

  I poked around, holding my breath while checking in the closet and under the bed. I was not sure why I thought a lack of oxygen would improve the situation. The bedroom was empty.

  Tiptoeing back down the hall, I spent five seconds searching the tiny bathroom. A clear plastic shower curtain surrounded the tub, and the only scum in there was the soapy kind. Nothing larger than a small cat could conceal itself behind the toilet.

  Satisfied there was no one in the apartment but me, I checked to see if my valuables were still there. The TV and the stereo were in the living room. That pretty much exhausted the list.

  I was starting to think that this had not been a burglary. Petty crime was a problem in my neighborhood, but I had never been bothered. The other tenants were also professional women, and we were scrupulous about keeping our sturdy front doors dead-bolted and our eyes peeled for each other’s safety. My apartment’s third-floor location would also discourage the average junkie or junior high school kid. A professional thief could manage it, but why would a professional thief bother? Nothing I owned was worth anything. In fact, it was entirely possible that my meager belongings would inspire pity
from a criminal.

  Okay, I sighed. The bogeyman was no longer here and had not taken anything. So what had he, she, or it been looking for? I sat at my desk in a corner of the living room and tried to think. Could it have been one of the intruders from Joanne Nash’s place? If so, how had anyone connected me to her? And even if someone had made that connection, how had they known where I lived?

  That stumped me, so I tried another approach. I was looking into two separate art forgeries: the drawings, which involved Harlan Coombs and Anton; and The Magi, which involved the Brock Museum, Ernst Pettigrew, and Anton. The only links between them were me and Anton, and I had nothing to do with forging them. I started feeling anxious again. I had only a few more days to find Brazil’s drawings and claim my reward money, and so far two people had been killed and Ernst was still missing. I needed to find Anton fast.

  I vowed to try harder. I just was not sure how to do that.

  Frustrated, I picked up the phone. Fourteen messages. Two of the morning calls were hang-ups, and one was from Inspector Crawford, asking to speak with me. There was a message from my father telling me, in his clipped, scholarly way, that he was disappointed to learn that I was charging Anthony Brazil for my services. What, did he think I was going to get involved with characters like the Hulk for old times’ sake? I could feel my blood pressure spike. I took a deep breath, deleted his message, and went on.

  The next three calls were from what sounded like a very old woman trying to reach Thomas Surgical Supply on Fifty-First and Broadway. She seemed confused, but did not leave her number. I felt bad for her. I deleted those messages, too.

  Mary had called to say she would be staying a few more days in Mendocino. Rats. I could use a dose of her cheeriness right about now.

  The next message was from Grandfather, maddening as always, saying he hoped everything was working out and that he was certain Anton was safe. Oh? Care to elaborate, old man? Apparently not.

  Two more hang-ups followed, and then a garbled message from Pete, who lost his English when he became excited. He had called at noon today. He said something about the studio, and unless I was mistaken there were sirens in the background. I felt my stomach clench. The last time I’d heard that many sirens, somebody had died.

  Finally, there were two messages from Frank. He had called shortly after noon to say there was some trouble at the studio, but did not explain. He called again at two, to tell me to get my butt down there ASAP.

  I tried to remain calm, but the truth was I would much rather that my apartment burn to the ground than anything happen to my studio. I could replace the contents of my home with a check from the insurance company and a trip to Target, but the contents of my studio—paintings and paints, business files, drawings and books and reference works, pencils and pastels and brushes—were uninsurable and would take years to replace. And oh my God!—John Steubing’s portrait!

  I looked at the clock on the mantel over the closed-off fireplace and saw that it was five thirty. I snatched up the phone and called Pete, but there was no answer at the warehouse. Mr. Fat Cat Landlord had not left his number, nor did I have it committed to memory. There was nothing for it but to go to the studio. I still had my jacket on and my wallet and keys were in my pocket, so I hustled out the door.

  A second later I hustled back in and grabbed a box of Triscuits to munch on the way to the City. Whatever was going on probably should not be faced on an empty stomach.

  It was then that I saw it, propped in a corner of the kitchen: the ugly bronze elf.

  The X-man had been here.

  Abandoning me many miles from home, penniless and truckless, was not bad enough—he had to break into my apartment and go through my things? Why? What had he been looking for? That clinched it. The X-man must die.

  No time for that now, I thought, as I scrambled down the stairs, Triscuits under one arm, and raced to my truck.

  Sunday evening traffic into San Francisco was awful, the freeway jammed with urbanites in SUVs returning from ski weekends in Tahoe, sunburned, grumpy, and aggressive. As I queued up to cross the Bay Bridge, tapping my toes, munching my crackers, and trying not to panic, I realized that I still had not charged the battery on my cell phone. Idiotic technology. Promised you would be in touch any time, all the time, and then did not deliver.

  As I inched nearer the tollbooth I realized something worse. I had no money. None. I frantically checked the glove box, the ashtray, and the door pockets, then under and behind the seats. I came up with thirty-seven cents, nowhere near the three dollars the nice woman at the tollbooth would be expecting in a few minutes. So what happened if a driver had no money? There had to be some kind of procedure, right?

  There was. They gave out tickets. Expensive tickets.

  Twenty minutes later, newly ticketed and totally frazzled, I finally crossed the bridge, skirted the bay to China Basin, and approached my studio. I pulled in next to my landlord’s Jaguar and had not even planted both feet on terra firma before DeBenton was in my face, eyes blazing, hands on his hips, ready to eat nails.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “There was a fire. Possibly arson.” His voice was cold and accusing.

  My eyes flew to the second story. “Arson! My studio?” I was so scared I was whispering.

  “Yes, your studio. Fortunately, the smoke detector tripped the sprinkler system and automatically dialed the fire department,” DeBenton snapped, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’ve been my tenant for less than a week and you’ve already been visited by the police, your truck’s been broken into, and now your studio has been set on fire. What is it with you?”

  “With me? What is it with me?” I replied, my voice scaling upward. My studio had just gone up in smoke, everything I had spent the last few years working like a dog for may have just been destroyed, I couldn’t pay the rent, much less the rent increase—and this man thought it was somehow my fault?

  As my grandfather always said, the best defense is a good offense.

  “What about putting in a decent security system, Mr. ‘Secure Transport’?” I snapped. “Maybe if you stopped staring at the bottom line for a moment, you’d see that people’s lives and art are more important than your bank balance!”

  As soon as I said the words, I regretted them. True, I was tired and stressed and scared spitless. But it wasn’t my landlord’s fault that catastrophe had sought me out once again. I had started to apologize when a large Bosnian jogged up and scooped me into a bear hug.

  “Thank the heavens, my Annie. The police, they have come and gone. But they say you must go at your earliest convenience to make the further report.”

  I came up for air. “Thanks, Pete,” I mumbled.

  “I’ll need to speak with you when you’re free,” DeBenton said stiffly and stalked off to his office.

  Pete supported me as I began the long climb to my studio, petrified about what I might find. The exterior door to the second-floor hallway stuck again, and I nearly lost it then and there. Pete spoke soothingly and yanked the door open with brute force. “I will lead,” he offered.

  “No, let me go first,” I said. I had to see the place for myself. My mind was numb, processing the facts slowly, but already pondering where I would go from here. Did this mean the end of my business? Had I lost everything?

  As I walked down the hallway I took in the extent of the damage. Everything was soaked—the walls, the floor, the bulletin board in the common area, everything. The firefighters had wrenched open the door to my studio, splintering the wood around the handle and separating the doorframe from the wall. My TRUE/FAUX STUDIOS sign, happily enough, was well varnished and so had not sustained serious injury. I pushed the door open slowly, stomach clenched and dread in every pore.

  “This is abominable,” Pete murmured as we looked upon a scene of utter chaos.

  The cushions from the sofa and the two chairs had been tossed onto the worn Ori
ental rug, and papers and canvases littered the floor. Pigments were scattered liberally over every horizontal surface. Powders, several kinds of paint, pastels, and artist’s crayons had been ground underfoot, whether by the intruder or by the firefighters, it was hard to tell. The loose powders and pastels had mixed with the water from the sprinklers and the fire hoses to create bizarre watercolors on the wide wooden floorboards. Modern art, I thought dully.

  It was hard to take it all in. It was hard to take.

  My attention wandered to a far corner, near the pathetic ficus tree, where there were discernible scorch marks. Picking my way through the debris, I saw that someone had tossed a cigarette butt near an overturned can of turpentine. A good way to start a blaze, though I supposed it could have been accidental. I imagined that criminal types who break in and destroy places weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.

  My eyes searched for John Steubing’s portrait. It had been knocked off the easel and lay facedown on the heavy tarpaulin that protected it when I wasn’t working on it. I approached cautiously and slowly turned the canvas over, then sighed and relaxed a fraction. Oil-based paint did not absorb water, and the tarp had minimized the damage to the canvas. The portrait could be restored. A lucky break.

  Maybe the only one.

  “Who does such a thing?” Pete wondered, as if reading my thoughts.

  I shook my head. As much as I would have liked to blame Michael for everything that was going wrong with my life at the moment, I was willing to bet that arson wasn’t his style. “I don’t know, Pete,” I responded listlessly.

  Were they looking for the drawings, or The Magi? Had whoever tossed Joanne’s shop been responsible for this as well?

  I tried to figure out how long it would take to dig myself out of this mess. I could hire some of Mary’s chronically unemployed musician friends to help clean up, and Mary and I would salvage what we could. Apart from John’s portrait, the only thing with any market value was my computer, which contained all my financial records. I made a mental note to call my insurance agent in the morning. I prayed I was up to date on my premiums.