Nigel said, “Raleigh, hand me that small screwdriver from my toolbox. The one under the-”
“Shut up!” Raleigh said. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Nigel asked.
“It’s a car engine,” Raleigh said. “It’s your van!”
Raleigh bolted for the front door and switched on the driveway lights in time to see the cargo van stopped momentarily at the security gate until the electronic beam caused the gate to swing open wide.
“Hey!” Raleigh screamed. “Hey!” And he began running after the van, which sped through the gate and headed down the hill, followed by an old Volkswagen bug.
“Hey,” Raleigh said weakly as the gate closed with him inside.
Raleigh stood there staring at the left taillight of the VW bug, the right one having burned out. The little car chugged down toward the flatland, growing smaller, its one eye winking at Raleigh Dibble as it descended in the darkness.
Megan Burke had an epiphany as she followed her partner down from the Hollywood Hills after his shocking theft of the van. She thought of how she had told Jonas, “There are some things I won’t do.” But she was doing them. First the old woman’s TV and now this van. And she thought, I am a thief. I have become a common thief. My life is in ruins. Hollywood is killing me.
Nigel Wickland was standing in the foyer, looking forlorn and helpless, when Raleigh jogged back into the house.
Raleigh said to him, “Why did you leave the fucking keys in the van? Goddamn you, why didn’t you put them in your pocket?”
Nigel’s voice was a rasp when he said, “I told you I had left them in the van, you blockhead. Why didn’t you bring them in?”
“The keys were your responsibility, not mine, you fop,” Raleigh said. “Now what do we do? Now what?”
Nigel turned his back on Raleigh and walked back to the unfinished job. He stood under the floodlight, tall and gaunt, his white hair sparkling beneath the glow. Nigel Wickland had a dizzying moment when he felt like a doomed protagonist in a Shakespearean tragedy. And like Lear he screamed.
Raleigh’s shock and terror were pushing him into a kind of somnambulate state, but Nigel Wickland’s primal scream jolted him out of it. Raleigh froze in place, standing in the foyer watching Nigel Wickland collapse into himself and drop onto the floor on his knees. Then the gallery owner started to weep, and he reached for his inhaler and took two puffs, inhaling deeply and holding his breath until he had to exhale and weep some more.
Raleigh tiptoed past him to the butler’s pantry for a fresh tumbler. He threw in some ice cubes and filled it under the tap. When he returned to the foyer, he put it down beside his crime partner and said, “More Vichy water?”
Nigel wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his coveralls and said, “We’re finished, Raleigh. I think I shall shoot myself before going to the penitentiary. I’m too old for prison.”
For the first time the roles were reversed and Raleigh Dibble felt that it was up to him to salvage something from this catastrophe. But what?
He said, “Shouldn’t we call the police? The cops may get lucky and catch them before they get too far away.”
Nigel stopped weeping entirely and let out a scary laugh, shook his head, and said, “You are really the most benighted human being I have ever met.”
“It’s not too late,” Raleigh said. “The cops might get them.”
“It’s too late,” Nigel croaked. “Too fucking late.”
“Nigel!” Raleigh said desperately. “Even if they get the paintings they’ll probably just dump the van down on one of the boulevards and the police might get fingerprints or DNA or something, and locate them. And they might get the paintings back. I’m calling the police.”
Nigel got to his feet then and said, “If you touch that phone, I swear I will kill you.”
“But why not call them, goddamnit?”
“Because, you fucking fool,” Nigel said, “the last thing we want is for the police to arrest the miserable scum who stole my van!”
Raleigh’s mind was racing now as his panic grew. “But they might catch them before they dispose of the pictures and we could get them back and everything could be okay before Mrs. Brueger gets back from Tuscany and-”
Nigel interrupted, saying, “What do you suppose the police would do if they arrested the thieves and recovered the paintings?”
“They’d find out from the crooks where they stole them, and they’d come here and give them back.”
“Think,” Nigel said, “if that’s possible. They would not bring them here. They would impound the paintings as evidence. They would need the owner of the paintings to testify in court that they were taken from her home. And the owner of the stolen van, who happens to be your partner, would also have to testify how and where the vehicle was stolen.” His voice rose when he said, “So you see, Raleigh, it would all unravel like a filthy fucking ball of yarn that a terrier has dragged through a kennel full of dog shit!”
“You can still report the van as stolen,” Raleigh said, his mouth dusty dry, “if you say it was stolen from your gallery or someplace other than here.”
Nigel looked toward the garish floodlight, then at the poster-board counterfeit hanging on the wall, and then closed his eyes and said, “I’ve partnered with a madman. He is insane.” Nigel opened his eyes and said, “For the reason just explained in the Queen’s English, I cannot risk that the police might get lucky and arrest somebody. Because as soon as they make the vile cretin confess, it would all come right here to this house, where Leona Brueger would ask the police how it was that my van was stolen from her driveway on this lovely night. And then the cock-up would be plain even to the stupidest policeman. Even to Leona herself.”
“What will you say if the van turns up somewhere? Maybe it’ll be parked in a red zone and get impounded.”
“Then I shall be notified and will pay the impound fee and pick it up, saying that I lent it to my wayward nephew and look what he did with it. The best thing that could happen now is if the thieves get in a fiery crash and kill themselves and burn the goddamn paintings to ashes.” That made Nigel’s eyes well, and Raleigh thought he might start bawling again.
“And what’s going to happen to us if the thieves take the paintings to an art dealer here in town? Maybe to an auction house and try to sell them?”
“I believe that their provenance would be discovered soon enough,” Nigel said, looking like a man on a gallows. “And the police would be called in without hesitation, and whether or not they caught the thieves, they would end up here at this house, and through Leona Brueger the police would quickly discover the switch. In which case I might decide to test the aging ammunition in my pistol. I’m too old for prison.”
Raleigh sat trancelike while Nigel completed mounting the poster board into the frame belonging to Flowers on the Hillside. After that, he placed the framed poster board on the original hanger and said, “The work is finished and perhaps so are we.”
“I’m getting sick,” Raleigh said, and ran to the powder room off the foyer. When he returned, he was pale and beads of sweat had popped out on his upper lip and forehead. He wiped his mouth with a hand towel bearing the Brueger monogram.
He said, “Nigel, I’m desperate. I have one last idea. Please hear me out.”
Nigel was putting his tools away and folding the light stand and didn’t stop working when he said, “Go ahead. Impress me with your acuity.”
Raleigh said, “What if we take the framed poster-board pictures and get rid of them? Burn them up somewhere or break them into pieces and drop them in a Dumpster. And I drive you home and come back here and call the police and say that home-invading robbers got in through an unlocked side door and put a gun on me and stole the pictures.”
“Oh, that is brilliant!” Nigel said. “I’m sure they would believe a fucking domestic servant who has only been employed here for a matter of weeks. And who happens to have a prison record. Oh, yes, and I wonder what you would sa
y when they asked you to submit to a lie detector? And in the hopefully unlikely event that they catch the thieves, it would make it ever so much easier to figure out what was going on here, especially after they were able to place my van at the crime scene. Oh, there would be such a jolly time at the station house when they brought you in handcuffed. Do you know what the joke would be for weeks to come?”
Raleigh sat down on a carved antique chair with a needlepoint cushion, his chin hanging almost to his chest, and said, “Tell me the joke. I’m dying to laugh.”
Nigel said, “The joke would be, the butler really did it.”
Raleigh’s head was still spinning when he drove Nigel in the Brueger Mercedes to his Beverly Hills gallery, where his car was parked. Neither spoke for the first twenty minutes. Then Raleigh said, “If the paintings never surface, things can proceed as originally planned, right? You’ll help Mrs. Brueger pack and ship all the art to her storage facility just as you said?”
After a moment Nigel said, “Yes. Just as I planned. Except that I’ve spent a few thousand at the photo lab and I’ve lost a van, at least for now. And I believe that I’ve lost several years from my life as a result of this disaster. But if that should happen, I would be so happy that I’d throw a party and invite everyone I know. Except you.”
Raleigh continued his train of thought and said, “So a long time from now, if the switch is discovered when the art is taken from the storage facility, it’ll be blamed on one of the transporters or a storage yard employee, right?”
Nigel sighed and said, “From your lips to God’s ear.”
“A part of me would feel okay if that happened,” Raleigh admitted. “Maybe we dodged a bullet. I could just go back to being what I am and you can go back to being-”
“Bankrupt,” Nigel said.
“Whatever,” Raleigh said. “At least we won’t be in prison if those crooks never get caught.”
“Raleigh,” Nigel said suddenly, and this time his tone had softened. He sounded almost conciliatory. “If anything untoward should happen…”
There it was again, Raleigh thought. Untoward.
“Yes?”
“If something did go wrong sometime down the road… that is, if something came back on you, would you really bring me into it? I mean, haven’t I suffered enough?”
Raleigh turned to gape at Nigel and almost rear-ended the car in front of him at the stoplight. He said, “Haven’t you suffered enough?”
“Raleigh, there’d be nothing to gain by informing on me,” Nigel said. “What could you really profit from saying that you had a crime partner? I could take a second mortgage on my condominium and sell my business if I had to do it. I could put half of everything I realize from the sale into a trust account for you. I’d do it, gladly.”
“You really are a piece of work, Nigel,” Raleigh said. “Please forgive my clichés, but you are a piece of fucking work.”
“So you’d bargain with my freedom just to curry favor with a prosecutor and have maybe a year or two lopped from your sentence, is that it?”
Raleigh said, “I’d trade your ass to have two months cut from my sentence. Or two weeks. I’d do it for no sentence reduction at all, just to see how you handle your inferiors in the prison yard, you pompous flouncing popinjay!”
There was no more said until Raleigh parked behind Nigel’s gallery, where they unloaded the light stand, floodlight, and toolbox.
Nigel Wickland said, “I don’t suppose we shall need to see each other after tonight.”
“Not in this life,” Raleigh Dibble replied, and headed for the Hollywood Hills.
There was just enough room to park the Volkswagen on Jonas and Megan’s street, so Jonas had to double-park the van beside the car of a tenant who seldom went anywhere at night. They were excited when they got the bundles inside and removed the tape and the mover’s blankets.
Jonas picked up the largest canvas and placed it on the back of the sofa, leaning it against the wall, and then he stepped back to appraise it.
“It’s what you call an Expressionist picture,” he finally said to Megan.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, it’s a picture where the expression on the person’s face tells you what the artist had in mind.”
Megan said, “You can hardly see the woman’s expression if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“That’s the way Expressionists paint,” Jonas said. “You have to look through the fuzzy brushwork and guess what she’s thinking.”
“Do you think it’s really worth five thousand?” she asked doubtfully.
“Just look where it came from. The crib up there in the Hollywood Hills is worth gazillions.”
“Where will we sell it?”
“I don’t know. Not at a swap meet, that’s for sure. We gotta do some research.”
“How about the other one?”
“Not as much,” Jonas said. “It’s smaller, and flowers are overdone these days. All the swap meets have lotsa framed pictures of flowers. But we might get a few Franklins for it.”
“Do you think you’d better get rid of the van? The cops probably have a report on it by now.”
“Yeah,” Jonas said. “I’m gonna dump it over on Normandie after I wipe off all my fingerprints. Gimme a dish towel, will ya?”
When they got out to the street, Jonas was barely seated in the van when 6-X-32 pulled up behind him with red and blue lights on and gave a short toot on the horn. Megan, who was about to get into the VW bug, saw them and headed back to the apartment, having to force herself to walk slowly.
Hollywood Nate approached on the driver’s side of the van and Flotsam on the passenger side, shining his streamlight in on Jonas’s hands. Nate said, “License and registration, please.”
“Sure, Officer,” Jonas said, his chin quivering. “What did I do wrong?”
“Do I have to tell you it’s illegal to double-park like this?” Nate said.
Jonas was so relieved, he felt like crying, and said, “I’m sorry, Officer. I had to make a delivery for my boss. I been working all day and this is the last stop. I’m sorry. Please don’t write me a ticket.”
Jonas tried hard to keep his hand from trembling when he offered the driver’s license to Hollywood Nate, hoping that the registration was in the glove box. Nate didn’t even bother to take the license from him. He looked at the side of the van and said, “Wickland Gallery. This doesn’t look like a gallery neighborhood.”
“We sell good art and crappy art, Officer,” Jonas said. “Real affordable stuff. You and the missus should stop by sometime if you’re thinking about-”
“Crappy art,” Nate said. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever have another missus and need anything crappier than I’ve got now.”
With that, Nate turned and walked back to the radio car. When they were cruising again, Flotsam said, “Why didn’t you write that one? Double-parker, dude. One for the recap.”
Nate said, “This recession’s been tough on working stiffs like that kid. Besides, all my bones hurt. I just wanna sit in our shop tonight and think of ways I can burn the fucking Goth House to the ground.”
“That reminds me,” Flotsam said, taking out his cell phone to check on Jetsam for the second time.
When the black-and-white pulled away, Megan ran to the Volkswagen and headed toward Normandie Avenue. She drove south for a few blocks until she saw the Wickland Gallery van just past Melrose in front of a liquor store. Jonas was already out and walking northbound when she picked him up.
“I was so scared, Jonas!” she said. “I thought they had a report on the van and you were busted.”
“I’m starting to think I can talk my way outta anything,” he said. “He didn’t even look at my license, so I can’t be connected to the van even if they pick it up. Two cops in one day have tried to hack me and I’m still here. This might be, like, kiss-met.”
“What?”
“It means that destiny is calling. Something big is in my fu
ture. You’re lucky you hooked your wagon to a star!”
“I only hope I didn’t hook my wagon to a wagon,” Megan said. “A beat-up old Volkswagen that might end up driving us both straight to jail.”
NINETEEN
Raleigh managed to get to sleep as the rising sun was providing the citizens of Hollywood, California, with new hope on the cusp of autumn. Just as he was beginning to dream, the phone rang. He sat up when he heard Rudy Ressler say, “Raleigh, it’s Mr. Ressler. How’s Marty?”
During all the turmoil at the Brueger estate, Raleigh had hardly thought about the old man, and hadn’t even phoned Cedars-Sinai since Marty Brueger was admitted.
“He’s fine, Mr. Ressler,” Raleigh said. “You and Mrs. Brueger have nothing to worry about. I’ll let you know if there’s any bad news at all.”
“You won’t have to,” Ressler said. “I’ve booked a flight. We’re coming home.”
This time the blast of fear sent blood surging through Raleigh’s skull. He jumped out of bed and stood naked and tense. “But Mr. Ressler,” he said. “You have several weeks left on your vacation rental. Mr. Brueger is fine. Stay and enjoy yourself.”
“To tell you the truth, it’s not all that enjoyable,” Ressler said. “The villa isn’t what it was cracked up to be. The toilets work half the time and the water’s never hot enough. This guy Silva who’s supposed to be our translator is a greedy little wop who’s always in our pockets for something or other. I’m not enjoying it at all and neither is Mrs. Brueger. We’re leaving here.”
Raleigh caught his breath, swallowed hard, and said, “I see. Do you know when you’ll be arriving at LAX?”
“Not yet,” the director said. “I’ll let you know. We’ll expect you to pick us up.”
“Of course,” Raleigh said. “I’ll be in the big Mercedes.”
After he hung up, Raleigh Dibble experienced the terror of being utterly out of control. The boiling heat in his head topped a roiling stomach that sent him to the bathroom again.
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