Stealing With Style

by Emyl Jenkins

I peeked around the back of the secretary-bookcase. The dealer, clearly a woman who'd heard and seen it all, was standing with one hand on her ample hip. With her other hand, she pulled the little figure toward her and squinted at it over her glasses. "Where'd you get it, honey?"

  "At an estate sale out in Queens. I go to them on weekends."

  "You did good. It's real. And in good condition. What's wrong with Layton's?" She dropped her chin to her chest and peered over her glasses. "Why didn't they want it?"

  "Well, they did at first. Said it would go in the next Deco sale," the young girl said. "Then . . ." Her voice trailed off.

  "What changed their minds already?"

  The shoulders of Anna's coat moved up and down when she shrugged. "My boss said they had too many of them for the upcoming sale. Now I'm stuck with it."

  "So why don't you just keep her? Show her off? Bet she'd look good in your digs."

  When there was no reply, just another shrug of Anna's shoulders, the dealer pressed on.

  "So that's it, huh? You really do need the money. What'd you do? Buy something you shouldn't've? Get Mumsey and Daddy-O to help you out."

  "It's not like that." That desperate tone was creeping back into her voice.

  "Look at you. Rich girl. Cashmere coat. Job at Layton's."

  "It's not like that," Anna repeated. "I have . . . other responsibilities." Her voice dropped to a whisper in this empty place. "A little girl."

  "Tell your husband to get a second job."

  Anna said nothing.

  "Oh."

  "I want to make a life for her."

  The old dealer turned and placed the bronze and ivory figure on the shelf behind her, her bracelets clanging as she did so.

  "I'll give you a thousand," she said. She whipped out her pocketbook and counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills.

  "Take my advice. Find yourself a nice young rich lawyer, honey. New York's full of 'em. All right? Forget trying to buy and sell. That's for the pros. Play up what you've got. Your looks."

  I waited until I heard Anna's heels thumping on the steps before emerging from my hiding place. I watched her start down the stairs, tall, straight, glamorous, even from the back. Her voice had that husky Marlene Dietrich mode, except when she seemed desperate-then it had a certain shrillness to it-but whose wouldn't under the circumstances?

  Chapter 15

  Dear Antiques Expert: I am beginning to look for a mahogany secretary-bookcase for the living room. I found two in a really nice antiques shop. What puzzled me is that they looked almost exactly alike, but one tag read "American, circa 1780. $75,000, " and the other tag "English, circa 1780. $25,000. " Since they are so much alike and even made about the same time, why is there such a price difference?

  Many more secretary-bookcases were made in England in the later 18th century than in America. That was America's Revolutionary period, and even once the war was over it took years for the young country to become established. England also had a much larger well-to-do population who could afford such pieces at this time than did America (secretary-bookcases have always been expensive). In this instance, rarity explains why the American one cost three times as much as the English one.

  THE DEALER WAS rearranging a group of gold charms inside the display case where the figurine had stood just moments before. Her heavy bosom rested on the top of the case while she fiddled with the objects laid out on red velvet beneath her.

  "Excuse me. Do you know anything about those things over there?" I pointed to my former hiding place.

  "What do you need?" she asked, without glancing up.

  "The secretary-bookcase over there. Do you know if it's English or American?"

  From her humped-over position the dealer glanced around me, toward the other dealer's booth.

  "Oh!" I exclaimed, as if noticing for the first time the Art Deco figure. "That statue behind you?"

  The woman straightened up and turned around.

  "That one. There. On the second shelf. The thin, kinda slinky one. With the shawl."

  "She's a beauty," she exclaimed, taking the figure down. "Just came in, in fact. Won't be here long. Have a fellow coming in to see her this afternoon. The good things never last any time. She won't last the day."

  So all these other things aren't very good, I was tempted to say, going after the logic-or lack of logic-in her sales pitch. But, of course, I didn't. It's just that antiques dealers' selling ploys have always amused me.

  "You know, my grandparents had a figure that looked like this one," I said.

  "Honey, everybody's grandparents had one. Everybody who was anybody, that is. And if they didn't have one, you need to have one to prove your grannies were somebody."

  I smiled inwardly, remembering the many nineteenthcentury oil paintings of anonymous men and women I'd been called on to appraise as my clients' great-great-grandparents. It had always amazed me, how, after years of hanging in the dark, dusty recesses of some hidden-away country antiques shop those very paintings quite miraculously could be identified as the long-lost portraits of my clients' dear, dead ancestors. Ironically, this discovery coincidentally happened about the time those ancestors' "descendants" had socially arrived.

  There was one thing people had in common, Mother once told me: the craving to claim blood kin to somebody well-todo. If they can't do it in the present, they'll do it in the past, she'd added.

  "These figurines? I don't get it," the dealer rattled on. "But if it's your taste ... Me, I lived through Art Deco once. Back in the twenties and thirties. No reason to do it again. I sold all that stuff back in the fifties, figures included. Nobody thought they were art then." She drew the r out as long as she could. "And they didn't when your grandmother bought them either. Nothing but set-around stuff then. Whatnot decorations."

  The old woman threw her head hack and laughed. "Oh, these days the highfalutin art critics have a lot to say about these little darlings. I read in some antiques magazine that no other art form expressed the new women's movement of the 1920s like they did. Humph. Hogwash."

  Running one finger along the figure, she raised her eyebrows and gave me that woman-to-woman look that knows no generational bounds.

  "Art? Ha. Those dirty old men hack in the 1920s couldn't believe their luck. After all those years of women in high collars, buttoned-up shoes, and laced-up dresses ... and suddenly they could have a figurine of a girl with her skirt up to her crotch and perky little boobs sitting out in their living rooms? Wasn't anything `arty' about it. I sold all my Deco stuff. I was glad to get rid of it."

  Her heavy bust heaved. "Shows how much I know. About that time, Deco got hot again. Que sera, sera. But this one?" She squinted over the red rims of her glasses at the figurine in her hands. "Yeah ... I can see why you think it's art, if you want to call it that. Specially compared to the stuff they're making these days. This one took some skill and time to make. Not like that computer crap they're calling art nowadays. Nah. Don't get me going on that."

  "May I see her?"

  "Sure, honey. Sorry. I get going sometimes. At my age, I can do it." She laughed as she handed the figure over to me.

  "You say she just came in?"

  "Yeah. Pretty young thing, the girl who brought her in. Seemed to know what she had, but needed cash worse. I got a deal. Bought it cheap. I can let her go for ..."

  The dealer hesitated while giving me the once-over. She glanced at my hands to see my jewelry, but I still had my gloves on.

  "You aren't from around here," she said, stalling.

  "No. My accent always gives me away. Virginia. But I know a little something about these figures. I need to learn more," I said for no reason at all.

  She looked at me quizzically, no doubt wondering why I had let her go on so, if I knew what I was looking at. "I have to make a profit," she said defensively. "Ones like these are selling for ten thousand dollars at auction."

  While she'd talked, I'd examined the figure. This one was quite different from the
ones I'd seen assembled at Sol's, but I had seen some similar parts in the boxes and lying around. This was a girl right out of the 1920s in her fringed skirt, high heels, and Spanish shawl draped around her shoulder in a seductive, come-hither way. The tilt of her head, her playful pose, the way she hugged one arm about her reminded me of a picture of my grandmother in her college yearbook.

  What was the saying? Your parents have atrocious taste. Your grandparents have acceptable taste. Your great-grandparents have superlative taste. These figures from my grandmother's generation were just old enough to hold a fresh charm for me, even if my mother had pooh-poohed them in my youth.

  Ha! Mother said out of nowhere. Your grandmother used to wear short skirts like that. You still have her shawl somewhere. You'll probably want to wear it now. Your grandmother was quite a looker. Wore her hair in a bob. Learned the Charleston and Lindy, too. They called them the Roaring Twenties. Well, she told me even though she looked the part, things sure didn't roar where she was.

  "I guess it's the romance of it all," I said.

  "I could let her go for $6,250," she said.

  That would be a cool $5,250 profit in just a matter of minutes. But what were the chances of my biting? Of her making the sale? Next to none.

  I thought about most of the dealer's inventory that hadn't moved in weeks, months, even years, not to mention the monthly rent she likely paid for her twelve-by-twelve-foot stall.

  "That's a fair price," I said, carefully putting the figurine down. "She's worth it." I looked the dealer straight in the eye. "If I had the money, I'd buy her. Right now I don't."

  "If it's the money, have you thought about a repro?" she asked, smoothly shifting gears, trying to salvage the deal.

  The dealer was already starting to ease her way down to an other bay of shelves. She returned with a slightly larger figure, this one a dancing girl with a long green pleated skirt swept up and held in her hands at her sides. She put the figure between us.

  "Six hundred ninety-nine dollars. You can buy her for five hundred from the manufacturer off the Internet or twenty-five thousand from a dealer who's trying to pass her off as being old-as being the real McCoy ... in a shop or on the Internet." She laughed.

  I was tempted to buy the figurine so I could show Sol what even the fakes were selling for. There was no way I could convince him to come see for himself, I was sure of that. Right now, though, I was more concerned with learning everything I could from my new friend.

  "You know, I don't even know what your name is," I said impulsively. "I can't tell you how helpful you're being. Like you said, lots of dealers would try to slide this one by me as real ... like it was a real steal."

  The dealer drew herself up. Obviously I'd struck a nerve.

  "I'm Sterling Glass," I said, extending my hand.

  "Look, honey, all antiques dealers aren't bad. We aren't all like the con men out there on the streets trying to sell fake Rolexes and Chanels. In here, if I make a mistake it's one thing. But I'm not a crook." Her yard-long collection of bracelets hit against one another as she shook her pointer finger with its bright red fingernail at me.

  "I meant it as a compliment," I said, drawing my hand back.

  "Just checking." She sneered slightly, then smiled. The years certainly had not made this crusty gal any gentler.

  "Maribelle Mason. Been in the business since I was twentyfive. Been in business fifty-plus years and, in life, eighty now and counting. And you know what?" she asked, shifting her full weight toward me, "I learn something every day. And so can you if you keep your eyes open. Look here," she said, taking up the reproduction figure she had just brought out and shaking her good. "Know where I got her?"

  I shook my head.

  "From a collector. Big-time collector. He got taken but was so humiliated he wouldn't take her back and retrieve his money. His pocketbook could afford the mistake. His pride couldn't."

  "How could you tell she was a repro?"

  She waved my question away like it was child's play. "Told you. I've already lived through Art Deco. The first time round." The dealer took off her glasses and with her crooked finger pointed to her eyes. "I've got the eye. Like an artist's eye. I can tell. Here, let me show you."

  Maribelle adjusted her red glasses, pushing them higher on her nose, and placed the two figures next to one another.

  "It'd be better if we had the real one just like the repro," she said. "But this will do. All right. Look here, now." She pointed to a tiny line running along the side of the reproduction figure's face. "See that? It's a mold mark. This is poured plastic."

  Maribelle traced the line along the figure's face. "Why that line makes this little doll look like she's been under the knife for a face-lift." She ran a finger along her own face, pulling her skin tight. "Think I should have one?"

  She let out a hearty laugh, let go of her skin, and kept talking. "Just kidding. See? It's not carved. You won't find that line in the real one, see?"

  She tilted both figures toward me.

  "What about the difference in the sizes," I asked. "Does that have any significance?"

  "Nah. Not really. Lots of the original figures came in several different heights. But here's something that does matter. See, the plastic one is starting to have a little yellow tinge to her complexion. Like she's a smoker. That happens to plastic. It gets creamy. Lemon yellow. Not ivory. Now feel the bodies," she said.

  "But what about piano keys," I asked, taking off my gloves so I could touch the figures. I could hear Mother calling me to come inside to practice those dreaded scales and arpeggios when I was a child. "Wash your hands, first, Sterling," she'd always say.

  "Nice," Maribelle said, nodding toward the cabochon ruby and diamond ring that Hank had given me one Christmas.

  "Thank you."

  "Soap and water. Just wash the keys off with soap and water. Now feel along here," Maribelle instructed me, pointing to the reproduction figure's profile. "Sometimes this can be hard to tell if you haven't had a lot of experience, but the crevices and edges in the new figures are rounded, smoother ... less sharp. They aren't as deep. That's because the old molds were better made. Better defined. Better crafted. The new ones? Pffff." She blew them off in disgust.

  My thoughts ran back to Sol and his obsession with the old molds.

  "How can I tell?" Maribelle laughed as I ran my fingers first over one, then the other, like a kid learning Braille. "I have the eye and the touch, and the years. Lots and lots of years."

  Maribelle reached into her pocket.

  "Here, take my card. Who knows? You might find yourself in the money one day. I'll still be here."

  A COLD WIND was whipping up off the East River when I left the mall. For some reason I was no longer the least bit interested in lunch. Layton's was a good nine or ten blocks away, but I hated to waste the three or four dollars it would cost me to get there by cab, no matter how cold it was. There was no real urgency to get to the auction quite yet. Just walk fast, I told myself. And I needed time to think. I stuck my hands in my pockets and tucked my head down. Block after block I passed watch and camera shops, then more antiques and finery shops: crystal chandeliers, Oriental porcelains, and embroidered tablecloths, and all at unbeatable sale prices. Half the stores were going out of business-the same way they have been for the past umpteen years.

  Between the cold air and the brisk walk, it didn't take long for the hunger I hadn't felt just minutes earlier to kick in. I stopped at the pretzel cart near the corner. I was counting out my money when who should walk next to me and wait for the light to change but Anna.

  With her was a man, a head shorter than she and stocky in that squared-off, thick-shouldered way. He obviously was not happy.

  "I told you you wouldn't find anything here," I overheard him say. "You shoulda hit another of those house sales. No good steals are gonna be along here, not in this high-rent district."

  "Well, I'm tired of getting up at 4 A.M. to hit another house, Ralph."


  "Okay. You've told me that already."

  "And you've told me ten times that I wouldn't find anything along here," Anna snapped hack. "But listen to me. Some of these guys fence all sorts of things in their back rooms."

  "Okay. I'm tired of fighting about it. Look, you try one more place, then we're getting out of here. I'm not wasting any more of my time. We'd be better off hitting junk shops out in Yonkers."

  The light turned red.

  I had turned my hack to Anna and her companion, the moment I'd recognized her. But half of me wanted to get a good look at him. My other half wanted to bolt out of there.

  Only when I felt the swish of rushing bodies moving past inc off the curb and onto the street did I dare look up and search for their hacks in the fleeting crowd. Anna and Ralph Whoeverhe-was had stepped out from the pedestrians moving up the street and stopped in front of a store in the next block. When Anna went in, Ralph hung back, paced around a few seconds, then moved up to the next storefront and blended in with other window shoppers. If only he'd turn around so I could see him.

  Clearly Anna was the front. With her looks she could charm an Alabama buzzard off his roadkill.

  It didn't make sense. From their conversation, it sounded like they were trying to buy goods. But Anna wa, c!!ing the figure in the mall. I filed the thought away while I craned my neck to see what Ralph would do next.

  His outline I thought looked remarkably like the thick blob of darkness that had swept past me in Joey's alleyway.

  I lost any appetite I might have had. I'd walked five blocks already. Only five more to go. Forget the money. I'd figure some way to charge the cab to Babson and Michaels. I stepped into the street and stuck out my hand.

  Chapter 16

  Dear Antiques Expert: I recently saw a mirror with a highly polished black frame decorated with birds and butterflies and Oriental scenes. Some of the details, such as flower petals in the scene, were raised, which I'd never seen before. When I told the owner how much I liked it, he wrote down the description and price for me. His note said it was "japanned. " Did this mean it was from Japan?