The Great California Game l-14

by Jonathan Gash

  DEALS are hard for me. I mean, I’d loved to have called off the whole thing and scarpered, with those precious gleaming Jesuit porcelains as payment. But that would have left Magda and Zole, and Gina, and the Californian Game looming a week away. And dead Bill. And Rose Hawkins. And me on the run from everyone on earth.

  So I listened, was offered everything I wanted if only I’d join this heavenly pair and their labours. I was left alone with Annalou for a sordid set of promises while Prez ostentatiously conversed with his special bodyguard of devotees outside in plain view—allowing us time to reach some sort of conclusion, I surmised. I weakened, made promises to return, saying I’d use my services on their behalf all round the religious antiques markets of the world. She sulked, but brightened when I showed fear of my lust being recognized for the sinful thing it was. She slipped me an address in St Louis where she had a private apartment for religious retreats. I pretended to be exalted, thrilled. Which of course I was.

  Then it was Prez’s turn while Annalou went somewhere. I insisted I simply had to write to all the authorities I knew about this terrible fraud that had been perpetrated on this holy enterprise, giving it maximum publicity for the sake of honesty and…

  I got two point four per cent of the investments in the theme park. I insisted on refusing the one per cent of the admission fees to the church Exhibition of Eternity, and said it would be my personal contribution to the work. He watched me go, musing hard, as Glad Tidings walked me out to where Tye and his goon waited by the helicopter. I was wringing in sweat as we ascended into the heavens. See what religion does to you? It’s catching.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  « ^ »

  THE risks in antiques fraud are relative. Other criminals risk the absolute. You’ve never heard of a fraudster involved in a shoot-out, of the “Come in and get me, copper!” sort. Or of some con artist needing helicopter gunships to bring him in. No, we subtle-mongers do it with the smile, the promise, the hint. And we have one great ally: greed. And make no mistake. Greed is everywhere, like weather. You get varieties of it, from tempestuous to a benignity so tranquil you kind of forget that it’s there. But it’s never very far away, thank God. Wasn’t there a European king, heavens preserve us, done for fiddling his investments the year before last? See what I mean?

  Fraud is the daughter of greed.

  Going, that second day in Louisiana, to the house of the famous collector Mr D. Hirschman, it seemed to me that I hadn’t needed to be lucky so far. In each case the marks’ greed had bolstered my endeavours. Their greed had made them overreach — Mortdex’s man Verbane was hiving off a share of the Mortdex millions for himself, so couldn’t afford a whiff of scandal. Annalou, bless her, had succumbed to that greediest of impulses, the craving for me. She’d believed that her obvious charms would seduce me into helping her and Prez to cull still more ancient religious relics to drag in more susceptibles to the fold. Prez’s greed had been more direct—let’s shut this bum up, in a manner beneficial to all.

  I defy anybody to answer this next question with a resounding negative: Have you ever been a fraud?

  Think a moment before answering. That hair tint? That little white lie about being only twenty-four? Your height? Weight? Telling the doctor you honestly stuck to his rotten diet? And saying yes, you really stayed home every night your partner was away in Boston…? Fraud. The Church is at it, governments, the UN, Inland Revenue, emperors and monarchs. But there’s some kind of cons that are morally permitted, it seems. Like spying, like in wartime, like when Scotland Yard does a drugs stake-out and captures dope smugglers.

  Fraud is a necessary part of our personality. No good complaining. We’re all born con artists.

  I would have had great hopes for Zole, if it hadn’t been for that damned dog.

  “WHY did you let him buy that mongrel, you silly cow?”

  “He’s a kid. It didn’t cost. Where’s the harm?”

  “Whose was it?” I grabbed Zole by the throat. The dog growled threateningly so I let him go.

  It was early evening. We were in a street filled with sound and ironmongery, scrolled iron balconies and music bands milling away in every doorway. I was having to shout to make myself heard.

  “You little sod, you thieved it.”

  The dog Sherman was a small white Scotch terrier thing that had seen better days. It kept grinning at me, coming close, wanting an orgy of affection. It forgave easily.

  “Lovejoy. That business at the Deus Deistic Theme Park. Did it work out okay?”

  “It was worth more’n what you gave, Lovejoy,” Zole claimed, cocky little swine. Just how much he’d been worth for a few seconds while holding the porcelain figure, he’d never know.

  “Magda.” I addressed myself to her, forgetting the little psycho with the pooch. “I have an important visit to make. Did you find out about the Benidormo?”

  She told me what she’d learned from the papers—I hadn’t wanted to be seen by Tye et al. feverishly hunting through the dailies for evidence of a bomb outrage in my cooling bed. Unexplained, it seems. Arson, possibly some insurance scam, was being mooted. Ho hum.

  “How long will this last, Lovejoy?”

  My last phone talk with Gina had been that the California Game would be at Revere Mount, five days hence. I’d wired fascimiles of the two Sherlock pages, posted them express, revealed they were fakes, told her what to look for as proof. She’d seemed pleased. So the Hawkins connection was broken, and Sophie Brandau would be as pleased as I. I still had the rest of the places to hack, then the Manhattan Big Two auctioneers, the hairiest problem of all. After that, I might be able to take it on the lam while they went to play their neffie game.

  “Week, give or take, love.”

  “Then?” I went uncomfortable. “Happiness with that Annalou whore?”

  “I dunno what. I can’t plan.”

  Zole’s dog peed on a lamp post. Nice that New Orleans still had lamp posts, though. Zole admired its effort.

  “And us?”

  Meaning her and Zole but excluding me, I hoped.

  “I’ll think of something, Magda. One thing.” I hesitated, took advantage of Zole’s preoccupation with Sherman. “You don’t phone Tye any longer, do you?”

  I shifted from foot to foot while she composed herself.

  “Once, since we started out, Lovejoy.” She added quickly, “I didn’t tell him about the envelope, though.”

  “What’s Tye promised you?”

  She looked into the distance. Some parade was forming up, bands tuning up, people with banners and flowers. Everybody seemed to carry cornets and trombones. Coloured dresses, floral scarves, a couple of floats surmounted by pretty lasses under arches of blossoms.

  “He’s said we might, well, get together.” She looked at me, shrugged. “Some time, y’know how it is.”

  Smooth old Tye. I felt my loyalty evaporate, quick as sweat on a stone. I’d practically saved him on board the Gina. I’d been helpful all along, really. No more. And he knew I’d a helper trailing along, which meant Magda and Zole were now handicaps, no longer allies.

  “You still going to phone him?”

  “No. Course not.”

  I’d got rid of Tye by being so docile while waiting for Mr Hirschman to fit me into his busy schedule, that Tye’d readily agreed to let me go alone to the collector’s home. He was busy making arrangements with Prunella I’d asked for in New York. For a second I thought to question Magda further, but gave in. She could tell me whatever she wanted anyway. I gave her more money, told her we’d possibly be another day here. I wasn’t sure. We’d meet at the waterfront. As we parted, something Zole did stuck in my mind. I grabbed him as he slipped something under Sherman’s collar.

  “What’s that, you little tyke?”

  “Lemme go, Lovejoy.”

  A knife, a shiv about eight inches blade, an etched horn handle. I showed it to Magda, thunderstruck. People in the street took no notice, too occupied watching the loud bands
form in procession.

  “Magda? This child’s got a dagger! For God’s sake, woman! What the hell are you thinking of?”

  She shook her head wearily. “Don’t sheet me, Lovejoy. We look out for each other best we can, okay?”

  “No it’s not okay!” I blazed. “He’s still a —”

  “Don’t say it, Lovejoy!” Zole threatened, all aggression. Sherman growled. I growled back and it gave a canine sort of shrug and settled on its haunches to await the outcome. “I’m no kid! I already stuck three pimps tried to muscle —”

  “You stay a kid until I tell you different, understand?”

  I cast the knife into the harbour waters, and marched off in a fury.

  “We in a strange town, Lovejoy!” he shouted after me. “We gotta carry, man! Or you done.”

  Ever get that feeling that you’re suddenly the centre of a world gone mad? It happens a lot around me.

  “DAM, everybody calls me, Lovejoy,” the collector said. “Would you believe Damski for a first name? Sort of goes with Hirschman, right?”

  A humorous man, but laughing without a crack in his face. His dark eyes were humourless. I wondered if every high-fly collector has a facade of mirth, but then remembered Mr Verbane.

  The house was one of a terrace, a street actually as I know streets. A curved courtyard with shrubs in pots and trellises supporting climbing plants—wisterias, vines, bougainvilleas at a guess, though usually when I’m showing off with plant names women come and correct me. Wrought-iron gates, pavements and garden patios seemed to be the New Orleans fashion.

  We entered through french windows, a comfortable and masculine salon. Hirschman was impassive, rotating his whole body before sitting down, a Bavarian Victorian clockwork automaton. He was pudgy in each limb. Rings shone on his fat fingers. I recognized a pro.

  “It’s your collection, er, Dam.” I could see no purpose in delay. “I’ve come for a proportion of the valuation.”

  “Protection, Lovejoy? You don’t look the type.”

  “Not in the way you mean, Dam. Protection for your unbought, as well as the bought.”

  “But I finish up paying you, that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anti-semitic, huh?”

  “Some of my best friends, et cetera.”

  “Never mind the boughts, Lovejoy. Them I got, a’ready. Tell me the unboughts. I never heard that scam before.”

  “The Kröller-Müller Museum in Holland,” I said. He was too cool. I felt the humidity reach into my clothes and sweat start tickling.

  “I heard of it.” He lit a cigar like a bratwurst, admired his smoke.

  “In that forest, by Arnhem. The robbery took two minutes —smash glass, rush twenty paces into the gallery, grab three Van Goghs, vanish. Remember it?”

  He spread his hands, in mock appeasement. “How’d I remember, Lovejoy? You only just told me. Terrible, terrible.”

  “The police were there in a flash. The crooks were gone in half a flash. The museum still has two hundred and seventy-five works by Vincent, but…”

  “The three have never been found?”

  “Not so far, Dam.”

  “Why come to me, Lovejoy? I’m one of millions.

  “You’ve companies in Japan, Dam. You’ve offices near the Mitsubishi Bank in Tokyo—the one lately held up by the Yakuza street gangs there.”

  “And they pulled the Kröller-Müller heist? That what you’re saying?”

  “No. They’re the ones stole the Corots in France. Like the say-so Corot copy you later exhibited, saying you had it painted the same week, copied from photographs.”

  “You’re alleging my copy’s the genuine stolen Corot? I have certificates to prove —”

  “I’m a divvy, Damski. Any test you like.”

  Which brought silence in on cue, amid smoke and the barking of a dog nearby. I’d been pleased to see the old-fashioned roadstones outside in the street. Tradition dies hard in New Orleans, it seems. I wondered if those marching bands were part of the same tradition. Dixieland? Wasn’t that the stuff they played hereabouts? Or was that Nashville? I’m hopeless with music, though I sing in a choir in my home village —

  “Eh?” He’d just said something momentous.

  “I’m going to have you silenced, Lovejoy.” He sounded friendly, thoughtful. “But first, I’m going to do you a favour. I’m going to explain why.”

  “Silenced?” I said stupidly.

  “As in terminal.” He was at pains to seem reasonable. “Do you know what I’d give for your power to divine, to divvy genuine from fake? Everything. Instead, that power is vouchsafed to an oaf like you. A drifter, on the make for a few miserable dollars.”

  “I’m not like that —”

  “Instead, I lack totally that extraordinary power which you have in abundance. It isn’t that which I find unforgivable. It’s you. You, Lovejoy, are a gargoyle not to be tolerated. There’s one point more.”

  I licked my lips, looked for escape.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve more sense than execute you here, in my own home. I’ll have it done before you leave the city, parts of which can become very fraught and dangerous.”

  “I’ll call the police,” I threatened feebly, wondering why I’d told Tye to stay away the only time I needed him.

  “The other reason is, I’ve come from nothing, Lovejoy. I’ve risen by the exercise of my own brain, astuteness. Triumph of the will.” He smirked at the aptness of the phrase. “Ironical, no? I’m not going to have you coming in here and talking my — my — possessions back into public ownership — ownership of dolts and fools who couldn’t look after them as they deserve to be looked after. They forfeited them. They deserved to. I tried the fools in Holland, the idiots in France, before the jury of my own mind. And found them guilty.”

  “So you transferred ownership?”

  “And shall do more, Lovejoy. Without your assistance.” He smiled beatifically, spent by the effort of revelation.

  “You were the barrister for the defence, Lovejoy. You must pay the price for having lost the trial. Goodbye, Lovejoy. Start running.”

  Shakily I rose and went towards the patio, through the french windows expecting gunshots any minute. Then the street, through the squeaking wrought-iron gates, into music and flowers and people.

  And the lowering dusk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  « ^ »

  THE bar was a walk-in, more like a shop than anything. The windows were skimpily curtained. Lights were on, shedding gold onto the pavements. And the music was a delight—at least, I’d have thought so if I’d not been scared.

  I’d chosen a seat where I could look out. Everybody in the place seemed to smoke. The band was into melodious action. The mugginess meant all doors stood ajar, all sounds mingling. I didn’t want to miss Magda and Zole. Almost as if they were a lifeline.

  That’s the trouble with the confidence trick, especially the extortion kind. It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes—it only takes some nerk to point out that he’s got none, and all barriers are down. I’d tried phoning the hotel, but Tye wasn’t available. Prunella was inexplicably out.

  First time on my own. Why now?

  Anxious, I scanned the gathering dusk. What I’d seen as a harbour front was a river. America’s rivers are so vast I can never tell if they’re the sea or not.

  New Orleans is built in a loop of the Mississippi, between it and a lake, I remembered from Prunella’s maps (where was she for Christ’s sake?). I could see ferries toing and froing to the south side. A few small power boats zipped around. A place on the front advertised boats for hire, but they were shutting up shop. The entire city isn’t all that big, not for the US. Say, seven miles by four, with its Lake Pontchartrain only the size of an ocean. Across the Mississippi the land fritters away into swamps and islands. I’d seen it on our approach to Moisant International Airport. Nice for a holiday, not for escape. Except two men had been looking down at me from a balcony as I’d left Hirschman’
s courtyard, and I was already seeing at least one every few minutes among the people.

  A cluster of tourists—so what was I?—went by, calling to each other. I went among them, walking towards the river as they went. A charter boat, Dixieland music stomping from an upper deck, with fairy lights and a spurt of water from the ship’s side. The gangway was manned by two pretty lasses who wanted me to sign on for the voyage, or at least have a brochure.

  “I’m waiting for my friends,” I said.

  They laughed. “Won’t we do?” and all that. Any other time, I thought.

  Then I saw him. It was one of the two men, no mistake. He was walking slowly along the front, staring into each cafe, bar, restaurant. I wasn’t wrong. I looked about for his oppo, found him. A steady double act, one strolling into each honky-tonk, the other scanning the crowds. Methodical, gradually advancing, eliminating possibilities. Which meant… Oh, Jesus. The other side too, from the ferry concourse. Two more, doing the same, just as anonymous, just as implacable, only they were in jeans and sneakers.

  “Here, miss. I’ll have one, please.”

  “Sure it’s not three?” Mischievous with the smile. I could have thumped her.

  “Eh?”

  “Your friends.”

  Magda, Zole and the dog Sherman arrived, all breathless.

  “Ah, just in time!” I babbled. “Cancel the ticket.” I grabbed Magda’s arm, pulled her across the road and into an alleyway, Zole expostulating.

  “Where the hell’ve you been, you lazy bitch?” I gave her.

  “Hey, stay cool, ma man,” from Zole. I clipped his ear to shut him up.

  “There’s some people after me,” I stammered, trying for calm and failing. “They’re here, on the riverside. I want you to go and phone Tye now. Not tomorrow, not next week—now. Understand?”

  Magda was so sad. She stood there, filled with sorrow. Sometimes women are so frigging useless. I almost knocked her down in my terror. It was bubbling up into my brain, blotting all thought.

  “He checked everybody out, Lovejoy. You too. Gone. And Al and Shelt.”