by Jeff Johnson
The big guy was breathing heavily by the third flight of stairs. As we climbed, I marveled at the hideously sculpted landscape. The terraced levels were dotted with exotic shrubs and miniature trees, all tortured into bizarre shapes. Nature as a surgical exercise, my least favorite motif. When I considered that the creature who lived there was connected to the theft of the most remedial art in my personal collection, I almost laughed out loud.
We finally arrived at the front door, a huge reinforced glass affair that looked like it had been pried off the front of a Denny’s. The panting driver tapped a sequence of numbers into a keypad, shielding it from my view with his broad back. There was a camera above the door pointed right at me. My gaze trailed up to it and I stared into it without expression.
The driver pushed the door open.
I followed him in and instantly cringed. The entire tableau was transparently designed for a breathless entrance after the flight of steep stairs. The entryway was the white of skim milk, almost watery. Bleached tile buffed to mirror reflectivity stretched across the floor to meet with emergency room, bone colored walls, all under the jagged glass sculpture of a chaotically lit chandelier. On the far wall opposite the door was a huge painting done in shades of red that ranged from bright arterial to dried scab, a splattery fever dream that might have been the last work of a tribe of wrecked howler monkeys stolen from a pharmaceutical test facility.
The driver looked at me and harrumphed, mistaking my expression for impressed. He smiled with satisfaction and sucked in his stomach, empowered to be a part of such imposing surroundings. My hand closed around my lighter instead of the steel ball bearing as I glanced away from the horrifying canvas.
This will not go well, I thought.
I followed him into what might have passed as a waiting room in a sterilized, futuristic hospice for CEOs. Several low white couches were clustered around a massive glass table that rose to about knee height. A jumbo plasma TV on the far wall silently spooled stock data below a muted commentator. The floor-to-ceiling windows along two walls had a panoramic view of other people’s rooftops.
Thankfully, there was a bar in the far corner. I wandered over to it under the watchful eye of the driver and inspected the constellation of bottles. A predictable range of spendy scotch, cognac, single-cask bourbons and some high-end vodkas. Expensive vodka was a waste of money, but it showed bar status in the same ignorant way as the painting in the entryway showed an undisguised misinterpretation of value. I poured three fingers of Lagavulin 21 into a crystal glass and plopped in a couple of ice cubes.
“Quite a view,” I commented to the driver, gesturing broadly at the fog-soaked windows and rooftops. He shook his head.
“I can’t believe the size of your mouth, little guy,” he growled.
“Great big dick, too.” I sipped the scotch. Amazingly good.
I could hear the driver’s teeth grinding as I sat down and focused on the TV, where I studied the ticker tape and pretended to know what I was looking at. Two sips later there was a buzz somewhere behind me. I turned a little and watched the reflection of the big guy in one of the windows as he answered an intercom box and nodded a few times.
“Mr. Dong-ju is on his way down,” he announced. He actually stood at attention, hands behind him, his big jaw jutting forward.
I swirled my scotch, and then with the perfect timing that has often graced my existence, I leaned to the side and farted. Then I fired up a smoke.
Nicky Dong-ju swept into the room flanked by two tall, skeletal blondes who both wore skimpy black dresses and extra heavy jewelry. Dong-ju himself was slightly less than six feet tall, barefoot and wearing worn karate pants and a white linen shirt that was unbuttoned to reveal a hairless, muscled chest and the six-pack abs that came from long hours at the gym. Most men with his build were slightly off balance, but Dong-ju was not. His tanned bare feet gripped the ground over his center of gravity with the hard-won grace of a seasoned fighter. He was Asian around the eyes, but his hair was long and curly, almost permed, and brownish rather than black, held back in a high knot tied off with a strip of leather. He was holding a martini glass in one blunt, callused hand.
“Darby Holland,” he boomed, beaming at me with giant white horse teeth. “We meet at last!”
I raised my glass to him and his smile widened. I could almost see his one-pound molars.
“You found the bar. Good.” He winked at me. “How was your flight?”
I wondered if he knew the names of my cats.
“Short,” I replied.
Dong-ju settled across the acre of glass he used as a coffee table on one of the albino couches and instantly struck a pose of total relaxation.
“How do you like my home?” he asked, making an encompassing gesture with his free hand. He had very bright, attentive eyes that wandered over my face with what appeared to be genuine curiosity.
“I’d love to meet the designer,” I replied.
He cocked his head in a quizzical way, his grin almost imperceptibly morphing into a smile as ambiguous as a wordless business card. Curious.
“That would be a very expensive lunch. But then you do have money, don’t you? I’ve researched you, Mr. Holland, I’m sure you don’t mind. You’re not like our mutual acquaintance, Mr. Bling. No, no, you’re a working artist and a man of principles.” The word “artist” rolled off his tongue with an almost undetectable sarcasm, so subtle it might have been imaginary, as did the word “principles.” He snapped his fingers.
“Ashtray for Mr. Holland,” he directed to no one in particular. His eyes and the smile returned to me. “An artist. That’s why I ask you about this place. For your impressions.”
I cleared my throat. “I didn’t fly down here to give you some kind of free tutorial, dudeboy. Frankly, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. So how about you give me my shit back and quit fucking with me. Then we can forget all about each other.”
Dong-ju was delighted. “Ah, of course. But let’s talk first. You flew all this way!”
Dong-ju gestured at my glass with his. An instant later one of the Prada women poured another two fingers of Lagavulin into my glass and plopped in another ice cube with a pair of stainless steel tongs. I looked up at her and she licked her ruby lips.
“I could never trust a man who didn’t have the sense to properly bloom a fine scotch,” Dong-ju said pleasantly. “Rare hooch deserves a rare cup to drink it from. That crystal is from Prague, the Iron Prague. Might have too much lead in it, but the cubes are distilled water. So, balance of a sort.”
“Yummy.” I took a big pull and nodded my appreciation. His look of amusement never wavered.
“It all comes back to Jason Bling, doesn’t it,” Dong-ju said, still watching me closely. “You’re angry and I don’t blame you, so let’s start there. Jason is a poor liar, and of course a tragically inept businessman. He owed an acquaintance of mine a sizable sum of money, and as a favor I assumed the debt. It’s as simple as that. I honestly had no idea he’d stolen the Roland Norton flash art from you, but now that I am aware of their provenance, I can assure you that they will be returned to you before you leave.”
I sipped my drink. The chemical smell of the place was beginning to sink into my clothes. If I actually walked out, I’d smell like new car for days.
“Why Roland Norton?” I asked. “He was a nobody. A turn-and-burn hack. OG, as in original gutter.”
Dong-ju shrugged with his martini glass. “To be candid, I’ve been buying tattoo art and memorabilia for investment purposes for a few years now, ever since my broker discovered the emerging market potential. Art is never a bad investment, Mr. Holland, as I’m sure you know, and tattoo art is certainly no exception, especially considering how popular your trade has become. There is a finite amount of work from Norton’s era and other collectors have been gobbling it up in recent years. I can appreciate your enthusiasm for getting it back. Once Jason turned his—or rather your—collection over to me, I found another Nor
ton piece in England and a third in San Diego. It’s become one of my many hobbies.” He took a minute sip from his glass and then uncrossed and recrossed his legs, watching my every expression.
“What about Bling?” I asked.
Dong-ju pursed his lips. “Jason and I will work this out. He was a bad boy, but that just means he has to work for me for another few years. It’s actually a plus for him in the long run. He’s artistically maturing now that the stakes are high. I run a little operation of my own, you see. Nothing like your venerable Lucky Supreme. It just happened. One of the many small businesses I own that I’ve never even set foot in. My personnel department, advertising, it’s all run from the warehouse you visited.”
“Huh.” It was pointless to point out that “maturing” for a tattooer like Bling meant perfecting his turnstile, herpes-cannon business ethic, or that the profoundly artless splatter in Dong-ju’s entryway exempted him from anything approaching art criticism. He continued before I could interject anyway.
“So back to Roland Norton and our little boy Bling. How in the world did you find him? I assume he was hiding in some way. The tattoo world can’t be all that big. I’m curious. A rumor mill alert? A ‘Tattoo Industry APB’?”
“It doesn’t matter. He stole something, I’m getting it back. He had to lie low for a few years and I sort of kicked his ass a little bit. He’s been punished enough as far as I’m concerned. Once I get home safe and sound—” I shrugged. “I call it all good.”
Dong-ju nodded. He sipped his martini before continuing.
“The way it works in situations like this is that I return your property to you and take up the dispute with the party who sold it to me, which has been done. You in turn stop any legal grievance filed against me and it’s like we never even knew each other, just as you suggested. I’ve had provenance issues before. Never again.” He still seemed at ease, reclining with great leisure, but his crossed leg was bobbing a little.
So the feds had been there already, I realized, bringing up a potential provenance grievance as a subtext for their bigger agenda, namely bringing the hammer down on him. Probably right after I’d been grilled by them. Amazing. Things were moving faster than I’d imagined.
“Why’d you send your people after me?” I asked.
“I’m sorry!” he exclaimed, sitting up so fast that some of his martini sloshed out of his glass. “I thought you were some kind of baby criminal associate of Bling’s! I had no idea you were his former boss or that he’d stolen anything, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. Believe me, it was all a mistake. Calling the police on you seemed like the responsible thing to do. My spare driver was instructed to follow you to the state border and return home. Keep in mind, that was before we had a clear picture of your identity or your intentions. I don’t know how the truck stop episode unfolded, but I’m tempted to believe he was being threatened as he claimed. I hope you can forgive me.” He set his dripping glass down in front of him and put his iron hands together in prayer.
“I guess I can see that,” I said diplomatically. He really was a fantastic liar.
“Of course you can,” Dong-ju replied, gushing a little. “You’re a businessman. And as far as business goes, I’ll gladly repurchase the Roland Norton flash from you for an equitable price, plus any more of his work you may have come across as well, after your provenance has been re-established and all this has settled down. If you’re interested, an agent of mine will contact you in a month or two. Take everything home for now and hang it up, do whatever you want with it, but I’d like to make you an offer.”
Too easy. Some kind of new angle was in play, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t fathom what it might be. Dong-ju had been too slippery thus far for the storybook ending he was trying to sell me, but I decided to put the brakes on my inner asshole, at least for the moment. Dong-ju nodded. He held his drink up and one of the women replaced it with a fresh one. I lit another cigarette.
“Have you … Are you familiar with the term tulipomania, Mr. Holland?”
“Nope.” Delia had told me all about it.
“Tulpenwoede. A form of … madness. I engineer modern variations on that classic theme. I do this with a variety of commodities. Watches. Automobiles. Market guidance, through the Invisible Hand. I won’t bore you with all of the details, but consider. The value of old tattoo flash art is in a speculative phase. No baseline value has been established. An early market example of solid baseline formation is the work of Sailor Jerry. Now Ed Hardy. These are names you know well. Now, the merits of the art itself don’t exactly matter to me. But the consumer value does. You see, if, for instance, I buy all of Roland Norton’s work from various places, I can actually establish a baseline value by how much I pay for it. As an investment strategy, it’s impossibly simple and it almost always works. ‘It takes money to make money’ is the phrase attributed to this kind of market manipulation.”
“And it’s legal,” I said. He nodded enthusiastically.
“It most certainly is. Now, I suggest you call England and find out what I paid for the Norton piece I located there. You see, I’ve already started. Once I got those first pieces from Jason, I saw the opportunity and I took it. I’ll pay the same price for yours once the provenance is clear, or …” He shrugged and sipped. “Or you can hang them back up, but their value will decrease rapidly. My two purchases were not enough to establish the baseline, and to force a correction, I’ll have my broker lower the opening bid on the next one we locate to ten dollars, or dump the ones I have for pennies on Ebay. It’s not blackmail I’m talking about, Mr. Holland. It’s just business. I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules. So, you see …” He let it dangle.
It was depressingly plausible. If everything he’d said was true, or even half true, then he really was an art critic after all. I sighed. OPEC, the diamond trade, Mexican drug cartels, wine … so much of what people bought was based on the illusion of value he was talking about creating. All he really wanted was to eat more numbers than other people.
“C’mon, Mr. Holland,” he whispered softly, urging me, watching me think. “Play with me.”
“Fair enough,” I said in a neutral tone. I was so disgusted that it made me tired. Dong-ju clapped his hands in delight. He looked like a painted robot.
“Excellent!” he cried. “I love business! Jessica, bring the coke! Lizelle, why don’t you make yourself useful and bend over that couch, just like I taught you. Let’s see if Mr. Holland here can drive two hard bargains in one day. I have a feeling he might surprise us.”
One of the blondes materialized at my side bearing a platter-sized onyx slab in both hands, a mountain of pure white snow in the center. The pile was so deep that paper straws stuck out of it, freestanding. She set it gently on the plane of glass before me, her focus totally on the coke, her mouth almost watering at the sight of it. The second woman climbed on to the sofa beside me and lifted her skirt, stuck her pudenda in my face, and then glared back at me with mean, freezing eyes. Her tongue was candy pink when she slowly ran it over her collagened upper lip. I looked from her empty face to her ass. She wasn’t wearing panties. I was sure that at that same moment Bling had done a fat rail of nearly pure coke and then mounted up for a long public workout on one of those creatures, pumping away with his drippy dick like a rodeo windup toy. The whole scene had an undercurrent of replay, an every Friday night kind of feel. I looked at the seemingly pristine butt and shook my head.
“I better get,” I said, but I did give the blonde a playful slap on her skinny rump. I couldn’t help it. It was hard and cool and plasticky.
“Milo,” Dong-ju snapped. “Get Mr. Holland his case. And move it!”
Dong-ju was suddenly, instantly enraged. A light sheen of sweat bloomed over his upper lip and across his forehead, giving him a shine. Without a backward glance, the blonde in front of me pulled her skirt down and walked over to the bar. The coke was whisked away by her counterpart, and the two of them fell on the pile like starvi
ng wolves tucking into ground beef. Dong-ju didn’t spare them a single glance. Instead, he took a tiny sip of his martini, watching me intently. His face was red and his leg was really pumping.
Milo the driver appeared with an expensive portfolio case moments later, the treated leather kind used to transport maps or blueprints. He set it down at my side, panting quietly.
“About time, you motherfucking sloth,” Dong-ju spat at him. “Get your big ass back on the treadmill for fuck sake. What the hell do I pay you for?” Dong-ju looked back at me and rolled his eyes.
I opened the case. All fifteen pieces were there. I started to take them out when Dong-ju tutted.
“Take the case. You’ll need it at the airport.” He studied me with a forced politeness, visibly trying to control himself. I nodded and zipped the case closed.
“Thanks,” I said, rising. “I’ll consider your offer. And sorry about the dude at the truck stop.”
Dong-ju waved dismissively. Milo the driver stiffened at this and his jaw muscles stood out.
“Later days,” I said. Dong-ju paused before answering, and when he did he had a predatory light in his eyes.
“And better lays,” he said. My neighbor Flaco’s reply. I kept my face carefully blank. Nicky Dong-ju had been watching me closely all week, maybe longer if he knew little details like that. It was chilling to think that I hadn’t noticed.
Milo escorted me back to my rental car. The trip down the stairs was even worse for him than the trip up. He worked the stairs like he was wearing stilts, his knees clearly shot. I followed him, watching his meaty hand sweep beads of the fog’s moisture from the handrail. When we got to the bottom, he gestured at my rental and leaned up against the Mercedes, lit up a Nat Sherman.
“Your boss is a dick,” I said.
He grunted. “Tell me about it.”