Take Five

by Batten, Jack;

  “Back way, I Spy. We came up a path behind the houses on this side.”

  “Nobody keeps me informed,” I Spy said. He hung up in what I took to be a show of pique.

  Biscuit finished his tidying, and within minutes, our little troupe was back at Maury’s Caddie. Nobody said much on the drive home. Maury played no bebop. Under better circumstances, I would have invited the two gents in for a celebratory beverage. But on this night, I settled for handing Biscuit the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black he’d earned. The three of us shook hands all around, and I went into my house alone.

  It’d been a bum couple of days. The copy Grace Nguyen had made of Company of Fools wasn’t where I thought it would be, and Isabel MacDougall, the Janetta housekeeper, hadn’t emailed me the copy she’d promised of Sunday’s guest list for the Janetta reception. I’d sent Isabel two polite emails asking what the holdup was, but neither drew any action. It was true, much of my deducing about the case was theoretical, maybe even fanciful, but I still thought I was headed on the right path. It was circumstances that were running against me. Not theories.

  I made myself a vodka on the rocks, a pure and bracing drink. A couple of swallows, and I got on my computer and composed a third inquiring email to Isabel. This one wasn’t polite. I took another large sip from my glass and let the vodka run down my throat, straight into the old bloodstream. For a moment, I felt reinvigorated if not exhilarated. In that moment, I pressed the send button on my computer. The not-polite email was zinging its way to Isabel.

  I leaned back in the chair. Was there anything else I could do to rescue the investigative process?

  A good sleep might help. I went upstairs to try it out.

  33

  In the morning, an email from Isabel waited on my computer. An attachment came with it. Sent 3:41 a.m., I noticed. Was something worrisome keeping Isabel up nights? Or did she naturally gravitate to late hours?

  The email said:

  I had second thoughts about handing over the guest list. Now I’ve had third thoughts. Herewith the list. See what you can do about not letting my dear Elizabeth get in any deeper than I think she already is. Yours, Isabel.

  I felt a small surge of fresh hope. Maybe the list would get my sleuthing cranked again.

  I brought up the attachment, printed it out and set about the business of studying the list over a steaming hot cup of Kenyan.

  It had twenty-one names. The first eight were Chinese, leading off with the Wang husband and wife. Their given names were Elvis and Trixi. Something meaningful seemed to have been lost in the names’ translation from Chinese to English. Or maybe Mr. and Mrs. Wang actually chose these inelegant monikers for use when mingling in North American circles. For all I knew, the Wangs might have a staff person assigned full-time to cooking up names in all of the world’s non-Chinese languages. But, come on, Trixi? Elvis’s name came with its own history, even if it spoke to narrow-minded me of music the world could have done without. But “Elvis” at least had the appeal of striking a chord in my memory. The memory was recent, not old-timey. Very recent.

  I hustled outside to the recycling blue bin, and shuffled stuff around until I found the business section of Thursday’s Globe. Back at the dining room table, I topped up my coffee cup and turned through the business pages until I spotted the short piece I remembered noticing about Elvis Wang’s mission to Canada. He was a billionaire. “Said to be the fifth- or sixth-richest man in all China,” I read. According to the article, the Wang multi-fortune came from Internet technology. I was never sure what that embraced, the damned term “Internet technology.”

  “Mr. Wang,” the article told me, “owns a piece of almost everything IT-related among China’s teeming billions.” Not the usual restrained Globe phrasing, but there was no mistaking the meaning as far as my sleuthing was concerned. Elvis was such an obscenely rich guy that it would cost him comparative chicken feed to snap up twenty-seven ancient pieces of clay priced at a few million smackers for the lot.

  As the Globe went on to report, Elvis Wang was presently in our fair land for a six-day dash of meetings with the titans of Canadian banking, industry and politics. The prime minister was sparing a half hour for Elvis on Monday before he and his gang winged home. But as a sideline to the tour, I was figuring, Wang intended to dabble in illicit porcelain figures.

  I went back to the guest list. It was no problem classifying the rest of the Chinese names. Had to be Elvis’s entourage. Advisers, translators, gofers. Everybody in the entourage, Trixi aside, was a guy. Farther down the list were some Italian-Canadian names. I’d say these were Lou Janetta’s best buds plus spouses. That left the bottom name on the list. An eye-opener. It opened my eyes as wide as they could get. Hugette Jennings.

  She was the young woman I’d recently met at the Levin. The museum’s deputy security person. What was she doing on a list otherwise made up of her betters and superiors? No question, she had to be Elizabeth Janetta’s guest. But why was a Levin employee invited to the gathering at all? If my theory was right, Elizabeth was in the act of scamming the Levin big time. For what reason was she including among her guests somebody who worked at the Levin? Hugette would be a witness, witting or unwitting, to Elizabeth’s piece of skullduggery. And not just an ordinary Levin employee. She was a security person. But was it possible she was also a scammer? In on the deal with Ms. Janetta? This needed research, putting the situation mildly.

  I sipped some coffee. It was cold. I had two choices. Either hang around the house long enough to make fresh coffee or hustle up the street forthwith, and bring Charles the neighbour further into my confidence vis-à-vis the Levin. I weighed the alternatives. I needed to share the load of the whole boondoggle with somebody who was savvy to the Levin and its functioning. Charles was the only person I knew who had the credentials. I considered the decision for another few seconds. It wasn’t much of a choice. I dropped the idea of the fresh coffee, put on my Nikes and skedaddled in the direction of Charles’s house.

  Charles was in his front yard, lounging on the iron bench, holding in his hand an industrial-sized coffee container.

  “Crang, my good fellow,” he said, holding up the metal thing. “Join me for a cup?”

  “Not that humungous, Charles. But, yes, coffee, thanks.”

  I sat on one end of the iron bench while Charles wasted no time completing his run for the coffee. He handed me a conventionally-sized mug. It was an attractive green in colour, but the handle of the thing looked askew, and the shape of the bottom was none too flat.

  “One I made myself,” he said, nodding at the wobbly mug. “In my own ceramics period.”

  I tasted the coffee. “Sensational,” I said, meaning the coffee, not the mug. “What’s the brand?”

  “Sumatra, old chap.”

  “I may have to rethink my coffee future. This edges out Kenyan, I’m thinking.”

  Charles smiled. “You’ve come with a paper in your hand,” he said, pointing a finger at the guest list.

  “It needs your keen eye and keener brain,” I said.

  I told him Elizabeth Janetta was throwing a party tomorrow afternoon, though I held back on what I expected to take place at it.

  “These,” I said, handing Charles the piece of paper, “are the guests.”

  “Ah, the Wang chappie,” he said immediately.

  “He’s crossed your path?”

  “His lady wife visited the museum yesterday.”

  “Trixi.”

  “Spelled quixotically,” Charles said.

  “No ‘e’ on the end.”

  “Unfortunate name under any circumstances.”

  “Was Trixi at the Levin, do you think, to check out Company of Fools in particular?”

  “No idea, old lad,” Charles said. “I was stuck downstairs on tickets. Melissa said she was generally keen on ceramics, the Wang memsahib was. And very knowledgable, according to Melissa.”

  “Melissa is who?”

  “Top dog at the museum,” C
harles said. “Lovely person. Melissa Novak, our director.”

  “Ms. Wang got special treatment, did she?”

  “One assumes as much, old bean.”

  “The plot thickens.”

  Charles sat back on his half of the iron bench, leaving me to turn awkwardly if I wanted to address him directly.

  “I can tell you’re just busting with something newsy, Crang, me old lad,” Charles said. “If your aim has been to prick my curiosity, you’ve scored resoundingly.”

  I told him my whole story, some of it fact, some conjecture. I talked about Grace Nguyen’s role as the creator of a Company of Fools copy, all twenty-seven pieces. I put Elizabeth into the picture as the mastermind, Rocky as chauffeur and assassin, the phantom third guy as I didn’t know what. I wound up with a description of Elizabeth’s scheme to peddle the copies to Elvis Wang as the real thing.

  “Good lord, man, we must convey this tomfoolery to Melissa,” Charles said. “Without delay. I’m gobsmacked. Elizabeth Janetta, really, I don’t understand the woman.”

  I waited a beat or two. Then I said, “You finished being indignant, Charles?”

  “Not nearly.”

  “Because I changed my mind this morning about the dimensions of what’s afoot.”

  “By jove, you’re full of surprises, Crang. Get along with the rest of the story, old fellow. Riveting. But is it possibly far-fetched?”

  “What I think now, the updated version, Elizabeth’s not peddling Grace Nguyen’s copy of Company of Fools to Wang. No, she’s dealing the real and original set of ceramic pieces. That’s what she’s got in process, and the thing that enables the transaction is she’s switching the Nguyen copies for the originals in the display case at the Levin.”

  Charles straightened up on his half of the bench. He looked like he might do one of his splutters. “Sounds preposterous,” he said. But he didn’t splutter. He just continued with his concerned demeanour. “Still possible, I will concede, old sport,” he said. “By gad, this is devious beyond measure, if you’ve got it right.”

  “Before we go further,” I said, “let me redirect your attention to the guest list. Check out the name at the bottom.”

  Charles turned back to the list. “I’m damned. Hugette Jennings? I never would have thought she and Elizabeth were best pals. Mind you, I’m not intimate with either of them. But around the museum several days a week, as I am, we volunteers get gossiping, try to keep abreast of Levin politics and intra-office feelings, romantic liaisons and so on. I have to say none of us ever paired these two off as palsy at any level, old fellow.”

  “What sort of person is Hugette?” I said. “How did she get the Levin security job?”

  “That part’s vastly gripping, if I do say so. And all of us volunteers say it all the time. Hugette is much, much overqualified for the security job. She happens to have a very good MFA from York University. Three years back, she applied for a curator’s opening at the Levin. Failed to make the cut, she did. Very downhearted in the result, I’m told. Begged for any job, as long as it was at the Levin, and got offered the security appointment. Very demeaning experience for her, I should think. Nevertheless, she’s hung on all this time, hoping for a second shot at curating. But it’s just never happened for poor sad Hugette.”

  “She’s bitter?” I said.

  “Who knows?” Charles said. “She keeps herself to herself. God knows she’s cranky much of the time. One doesn’t want to cross Hugette. Never, never, never.”

  “That could be motivation.”

  “For what?”

  “For throwing in with Elizabeth’s scam.”

  “Revenge you mean?” Charles said. “And a cash payoff from Elizabeth at the same time?”

  “A persuasive combination.”

  I finished the last of my coffee, stood up and tried to balance the mug on the iron bench. It insisted on tipping over.

  “Got a few minutes right now?” I said to Charles. “We might check Company of Fools at the museum.”

  “See if the one on display is real or fake?” Charles said. “Right you are. It’ll bring us up to date. Give us the ultimate proof perhaps. But I’ll tell you, Crang old fellow, we mustn’t get carried away without some powerful backup evidence.”

  “You’re not as convinced of what I’m saying as you seemed to be a few minutes ago?”

  “Don’t want to go off half-cocked, old chap. My wife accuses me of doing that too often. Tendency to sudden enthusiasms, that sort of thing. Followed by falls to earth just as suddenly. But by all means let us get going to the Levin. See if I can’t make up my mind.”

  At the Levin, the guy manning the counter waved Charles through free of charge, one volunteer to another, but he hit me up for the regular eight bucks. We took the elevator to the fourth floor, and after no more than two minutes of hovering over the Company of Fools exhibit, Charles pronounced what we were examining was the intact original.

  “Tell you what to keep your eye out for, old trout,” he said. “Certain lines and creases in the figures. Look there at the jester with the pig face, he’s got a pronounced marking down his left torso. Notice that? Nothing untoward about it. Wrinkling, one might call it. The wrinkling’s just a product of the figure’s advanced age. It happens to porcelain just as it happens to us Homo sapiens. With the caveat that the porcelain never dies. Not yet at any rate, not between 1774 and now.”

  “I’m following,” I said, not sure whether I was happy the figures hadn’t been switched for fakes. I still thought my theory was solid. It was just that the moment when it was borne out by events hadn’t arrived yet. There were still more than twenty-four hours to go before Elizabeth’s party for the Wangs.

  “Something else in identification is specific to Fools,” Charles said. “Focus on the jester with the giraffe face. Got that, old sport?”

  “Far right in the first row.”

  “Concentrate on the area just above the beast’s left eye. See that in the forehead?”

  “The gouge?”

  “Not quite that bad, do you think?” Charles said. “Gouge-like perhaps. It shouldn’t be mistaken as a defect in the ceramist’s work. The indentation resulted from someone dropping the piece or otherwise mishandling it. Probably happened in the late nineteenth century. Ever since, the gouge, as you refer to it, has identified the giraffe among the ceramic cognoscenti. I have my doubts that a copyist, your Grace or anyone else, would include it in their attempt at forgery.”

  “Good to know,” I said.

  Charles led the way to seats on the bench across from the cabinet.

  “So now what, Crang, my old spinner of suspense?” he said.

  “What I’m talking about, the swiping of a work of great ceramic art, all for the benefit of a rich man,” I said, “it’s common enough in the world of the visual arts in general?”

  “Indeed it is,” Charles said. “According to the literature, rich collectors do it all the time. Bastards that they are, these wealthy laddies hire professional thieves to commit designated burglaries. Man wants a Monet? Thief’s only question is, how big a Monet? He breaks into a gallery in, say, Barcelona, whose only valuable painting on offer is the aforesaid Monet. Next thing anyone knows, or rather I should say, the next thing no one knows, the priceless work is hanging on some sodding selfish idiot’s drawing room wall in Mayfair or Beverly Hills or Tokyo.”

  “So the case I’m speaking of, the slippery stuff with Elizabeth and Elvis, it’s a variation on an established crime in the world of art?”

  “One could say.”

  “I just did.”

  “Hmm, yes, old bean.”

  “If Elvis is dealing with Elizabeth for Company of Fools,” I said, “then he’s home free as soon as he gets his hands on the collection. No Canadian authority, the customs or security people or whoever, is going to search a rich guy like him and his party. He takes Company home, and forever after, he displays it to nobody except his very best friends just like your guy with th
e Monet. Same thing. Only difference is, given China’s teeming billions, Elvis’s best friends may run to a couple thousand people.”

  Charles’s expression gave away his doubts.

  “What’s wrong with my theory, Charles?” I said. “The substitution at the Levin of the Grace copy for the real thing only needs to hold up for a day or two. Long enough for Elvis to clear out of Canada. After that, nobody’ll have a clue where the original has got to.”

  Charles didn’t look any more reassured.

  “What are you thinking, Charles?” I said.

  “I’m not turning my back on you, old chap. But bear with me if I withhold my final judgment.”

  “Withhold until when? What more do I have to produce if I want you all the way on side?”

  “Why not we try this, old boy? You take a watching brief on Company of Fools over there, and if something more evidentiary comes to your eye, summon me post-haste. I’ll be at your side in a flash. Supportive all the way.”

  “But until then,” I said, “you’ll sit on the fence?”

  “There remains room for query,” Charles said. “Put another way, I wouldn’t feel steady on my ground if I trotted along to Melissa Novak at this moment. Therein lies the ultimate test. What would Melissa say to the story of Elizabeth, Company of Fools and so forth? As things stand, if I related our fears to her, she might kick me in the hindquarters.”

  “It’s a smoking gun that’s lacking?”

  “I myself am tilting in your favour,” Charles said. “But I need a smidgeon more to win over the top Levin crowd.”

  “Especially Melissa.”

  “Quite so, old chap.”

  “I’ll be back to you, Charles,” I said. “Count on it.”

  34

  Across the street from the Levin stood a brick business building, four storeys high, the same height as the museum. The building had an Italian restaurant called Bartello’s on the ground floor. It was there, at Bartello’s, eight hours after my conversation with Charles in front of the Company of Fools display, that I sat down to dinner all by myself.