by Mike Befeler
“Did he divulge anything worthwhile?”
“I didn’t have a chance to spend time with him alone,” Pitman said.
“Okay. Let me take a shot at him.” I sauntered over to where my target stood with a group of two women and two men.
One of the men was describing how he had discovered new art talent in the beach communities.
I jumped in. “Yeah. All you have to do is hang out around the graffiti wall here in Venice. There’re all kinds of talent. Artists like Mallory Pitman.”
The bald man crossed his arms. “Pitman did some interesting work in Colorado but hasn’t produced anything since he moved to California.”
“That’s because he’s been pursuing culinary art,” I said.
“Culinary art?”
“Yes. It’s the latest fad. Turning the presentation of food into an art form.”
He turned away from me and resumed the conversation with one of the men. After a few minutes the others departed, and I was left with Baldy.
“I understand you work closely with Clint Brock,” I said.
“Where’d you hear that?”
I leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Word gets around. You seem to have connections with a dealer in Beverly Hills as well.”
He shot straight up like I had thrust a corncob up his fanny. “Who are you?”
“I’m Paul Jacobson.” I reached out a hand.
He avoided it like I had forgotten to wash after visiting the little boys’ room.
I eyed him. “I’d think you’d be more friendly toward a patron of the arts.”
“You’re no patron. You’re just a snoop.”
“So my reputation precedes me. How’d you decide to enter the money-laundering business, anyway?”
“This conversation is over.” With that he stomped away. I watched him hook up with Brock. They both looked over toward me and then put their heads together. I was making all kinds of friends on this lovely evening.
Chapter 19
I decided to find Quintana and after circling the room saw him standing off to the side, watching Clint Brock. Approaching him, I said, “I’m glad to see you have your eyes on one of the suspected villains. I still think Brock, Theobault or both are the prime movers of crime in this community.”
Quintana turned toward me. “There are many interesting people here tonight, including you, Mr. Jacobson.”
“Nah. I’m not nearly as fascinating as this artsy-fartsy crowd. And you should check out Louis Autry.” I scanned the room. “I don’t see him right now, but he has some special deal going. I think Brock also sells paintings to that dealer in Long Beach.” I pointed toward the short squat guy. “He, in turn, resells them to Autry in Beverly Hills. A nice chain to cleanse some illegal money.”
Quintana looked thoughtful. “Yes. There could be something to that.”
“Good for you, Detective. You’re starting to see the light.”
“Now if you’ll excuse me.” He shot off and disappeared into the crowd.
So much for a significant exchange with the good detective.
With nothing better to do, I looked for the carrot top and spotted Pitman by the munchies.
“Okay,” I said to him while he masticated. “I’ve stirred up the hornet’s nest. Let’s see what happens. By the way, have you seen Theobault? I haven’t spotted him recently.”
“No. He seems to have disappeared.”
I shrugged. “I’ll look for him later. Now I need your expert opinion on an artistic matter.”
“Sure.” He licked his fingers.
I led him toward the door to Brock’s office, which was open a crack. “Quick. Duck inside.”
We moved quickly, and I closed the door behind us. I marched past Brock’s large desk and opened the door to the storage room. “I read about this in my journal. There should be some artwork here for you to check out.” I entered and turned on the light.
“Take a look at these paintings. Could be Muddy Murphy’s work.”
Pitman began moving canvases. “Very interesting.”
“What’d you find?”
“See the signatures at the bottom.” He pointed to three paintings he had lined up against the wall.
I stared at what appeared to be two intersecting letter M’s all in the same shade of orange.
Pitman put a finger to his chin. “That looks like Muddy’s signature, but there’s a problem.”
“Problem?”
“Yes. All three signatures are the exact same color. A little-known fact that I learned once when I bought Muddy dinner: he always used different shades of colors to sign his name. He never would have repeated the identical color formulation like on these three paintings.”
Then I understood. “So the signatures are forged.”
“Yes. And the paintings are knockoffs.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve studied Muddy’s work.”
“I’ve studied it too,” I said, staring at a picture with colored blobs thrown on the canvas. “Most of these paintings look like someone upchucked.”
Pitman clicked his tongue. “Muddy’s pictures have texture and consistent brushstrokes. For once your observation is correct. This picture doesn’t exhibit Muddy’s flair for composition.”
“So we now have Brock pawning off fake Muddy Murphy paintings after he or Theobault knocked off Muddy to drive the value up. But if you can spot the fakes, aren’t there others who would reach the same conclusion?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure anyone else knows of Muddy’s signature idiosyncrasy.”
“So Brock could easily go on having someone produce Muddy Murphy pictures with forged signatures and doling them out from his infinite inventory.”
It was all starting to fall in place. “It’s not Theobault at all.” I punched my right fist into my left hand. “This is all Brock. Theobault believed I was working for Brock and that’s why he had someone follow me.”
“What are you talking about?”
I shook my head. “Man, sometimes your memory is as bad as mine. I told you this afternoon how the guy with bushy eyebrows who works for Theobault had been tailing me.”
His eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah. Now I remember.”
“Theobault had him spy on me. When I confronted Theobault earlier tonight, I found out that he suspected me of being in cahoots with Brock. Theobault’s not the murderer. Brock is.”
“If that’s the case, we better get out of here,” Pitman said, twisting his head to look over his shoulder.
“You go ahead,” I said. “I want to look through the inventory a little more.”
Pitman shot out of the storage room like his stomach was calling him to return to the feeding frenzy.
I scanned the storage area. There had to be three hundred paintings here. At ten thou a pop, this represented three million dollars of potential income.
Brock had put quite an operation into place. I turned to go back to the reception, but my path was blocked.
“What are you doing in here?” a voice demanded. Brock stood there with the bowling ball from Long Beach.
“Just admiring your Muddy Murphy collection. When are you going to be offering these for sale?”
Brock narrowed his eyes and turned to the short squat guy. “You’re right, Harvey. He’s definitely interfering in matters where he doesn’t belong.”
Brock grabbed my arm and dragged me out into the office. He pushed me down into an easy chair that matched the blue couch facing the mahogany desk. Then he extracted some heavy twine from a cupboard and proceeded to tie me up and bind me to the chair.
“Hey, this is no way to treat an old guy,” I shouted.
“Enough noise.” Brock stuffed a handkerchief in my mouth and secured it with a strip of duct tape.
“This should work out well,” Brock said to Harvey. “I was wondering how we’d get him aside, and he’s conveniently obliged.”
“The old goat won’t know what hit him.”
Harvey chuckled.
I wanted to tell him to watch who he called an old grazing animal but couldn’t utter more than a muffled gurgle.
Brock patted me on the head. “We’ll carry out the rest of the plan after the reception is over.”
The lights went out and the two of them left the office. I heard a key in the door and knew no one else would be wandering in like Pitman and I had done. Damn. My snooping had landed me in deep yogurt.
I tried to move my arms behind my back, but I was securely constrained. Crapola. I had been too wrapped up in looking at the fake paintings to consider that Brock might show up, and now I was really too wrapped up. As my eyes adjusted to semidarkness, I swiveled my head. Nothing within reach, not that I could move anyway. I tried to lift up. The chair was too heavy to move even a fraction of an inch. I could twist my head, but that was all. I faced a window that overlooked an alley, dimly lit by the remaining light of dusk. No one there, just a bunch of trash bins. It would be a perfect time for a break and enter. No such luck. I continued to assess my options.
None.
My arms and shoulders began to ache. I shrugged my shoulders and wriggled my arms as much as possible, which wasn’t much.
Hell. What kind of manure dump had I landed in? I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach on where this would all end up. I needed to find some way to get out of here. But in my current condition, I could do nothing but wait for my captors to return. Having memorized everything in the room including a dimly visible plaque on the wall, probably from the Society of Abusive Art Dealers, I peered through the window at the alley again. I could barely see the brick wall of the neighboring building. Then a figure appeared pushing a shopping cart. I could make out a person in an oversized overcoat and baseball cap who bent over one of the garbage bins. His hands and arms disappeared into the container, and then periodically a hand emerged to drop something into the shopping cart.
I tried to shout, but only a faint sound emerged from my gagged mouth. Even if I could catch his attention, what good would it do me?
The street person finished one can and proceeded to the next. This must have been a prime spot for good pickings as he took his sweet time.
Then off to the side, I spotted another figure. This appeared to be a big kid with a baseball bat. He approached the homeless man, who must have heard something as he jerked his head around just as the kid swung the bat.
I tried to scream again. Nothing.
The homeless man ducked and the bat struck the wall across the alley.
With amazing agility the street guy grabbed the kid’s arm, and the bat disappeared from my line of sight. Then with hands and feet, the homeless man proceeded to beat the snot out of the kid. I wanted to cheer.
Finally the kid had enough and half ran, half limped out of the alley, holding his arm.
The street guy watched the retreating figure for a moment, then straightened his baseball cap and returned to the garbage can to continue collecting junk. Finally, he put a lid on the last can, added the baseball bat to his collection and pushed the well-laden shopping cart out of sight.
So much for my evening entertainment. I could have used that guy to help me with the art-dealer mafia.
Now my thoughts returned to my predicament. I had to shortly deal with an irate, criminal, mayhem-embracing art dealer and his equally ugly cohort. And I didn’t have any damn bargaining chips.
Pitman was my only ally, but the red-topped twerp couldn’t get into the locked room and might not have even known that I was still in here, trapped and immobile.
With all this time on my hands and since I couldn’t even as much as twiddle my thumbs, I set my clunky old mind to work at trying to connect the pieces of this crime jigsaw puzzle. Brock was the kingpin of this operation. It was obvious from the way he had taken charge when he found me snooping in his storeroom.
Both Vansworthy and Muddy Murphy had gotten in Brock’s way and been eliminated. With Vansworthy gone, Theobault definitely benefited from taking over the partnership, but that had been a convenient ruse for Brock in deflecting attention from himself. I now suspected that Theobault was innocent. He had someone follow me because he truly believed I was hooked up with Brock. What a joke. As if I would be part of his scumball operation. Theobault just didn’t appreciate what a sweet guy I was.
Brock had set up the perfect moneymaking scheme. With income from the auto-sweepstake scam, plus handling real and fake Muddy Murphy paintings now that the value had increased, it was almost like printing money. Then he had his connections with the Long Beach and Beverly Hills flunkies to provide a neat chain of laundering. I had inserted myself in the gears of this well-oiled machine. No wonder Brock wanted me out of the way.
And the automobile-contest scam. An employee of Vansworthy had been involved. I had my suspicions that Brock had set that up as another diversion away from himself. I would have to see if Brock would divulge anything to support this idea. I just had to find a way to get out of my current predicament. And I didn’t know if I wanted time to myself or for Brock and company to return to see what would happen next.
My reverie was interrupted by the sound of a key scraping in the lock of the door. I heard a creaking sound and the light flashed on. Then my nemesis and his short henchman strolled over to stand in front of me. “Look, Harvey, our intruder is still here.”
The short guy came over and stuck his face two inches from mine. “Enjoy your rest in the dark?”
I mumbled through the cloth in my mouth.
“He can’t answer.” Brock leaned toward me. “I’ll even let Harvey remove the gag if you promise to be quiet.”
I nodded my head.
With a satisfied smile, Harvey ripped the duct tape off my mouth along with a little skin.
I spit out the handkerchief.
“Have a good time by yourself?” Brock asked.
“Just peachy,” I replied.
“You didn’t doze off by any chance?”
“No. I stayed awake thinking about you, Brock.”
He chuckled. “Too bad. When I had that nice chat with you and your wife after your wedding, I learned how you forget everything when you fall asleep. If you had nodded off, you wouldn’t remember why you were here or what had happened.”
“No such luck. I remember it all very clearly.”
“Maybe that can be remedied.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“I have something to tell you, Brock.”
He paused and stared at me.
“I have you all figured out.”
He sneered at me. “Do tell.”
“You used one of Vansworthy’s employees for the automobile-sweepstakes fraud. That way if anything went wrong it would reflect on Vansworthy. When the minion was arrested, I suspect that Vansworthy put two and two together and realized you had your grubby hands in the affair. I bet dollars to doughnuts that you bumped off Vansworthy to keep him from squealing about your money-laundering operation and the source of income being that automobile-contest scam.”
Brock chuckled. “Very good, Mr. Jacobson. Go on.”
“And the Vansworthy death cast suspicion on Theobault because of the partnership between Theobault and Vansworthy. The police must have been tracking that motive.”
“Right again. At first I was surprised that they didn’t immediately arrest Theobault.”
“That’s because the cops are waiting for you, Brock.”
“I don’t think so. After tonight they’ll know that one Paul Jacobson is the mastermind of the crime wave here in Venice Beach.”
“Even Detective Quintana will never believe that my tangled brain could have conjured up all these murders.”
He wagged a finger at me. “I think the police will be convinced of what you’ve done. It was very convenient that you stumbled onto the scene. The police didn’t go after Theobault because they’re suspicious of you, Mr. Jacobson. You obligingly argued with Vansworthy the night before he died. Then whe
n Muddy Murphy made noises about planning to destroy my inventory, I had to eliminate him. You once again stumbled right in to help me. Besides, it was time for Muddy’s paintings to ratchet up in value.”
“You seem awfully complacent telling me all this.”
“It won’t do you any good.”
I felt a shiver run down my spine.
Brock opened his hands toward me. “You gave me the perfect cover when I had to kill Muddy. Having heard of your episode with the candleholder at the church, it gave me the ideal way to hide my involvement in Muddy’s murder and point suspicion at you.”
Bingo. I thought back to what I read in my journal. “So you obviously wore a glove to bash Muddy over the head with the candleholder that had my fingerprints on it.”
“Very convenient, I must say. And on top of that I overheard you arguing with Muddy before he met his demise.”
“Damn.”
“Your temper gets you in lots of trouble, Mr. Jacobson. Like tonight. You made quite a scene with Theobault.”
Uh-oh.
“I even understand a police detective saw that whole encounter.” Brock guffawed. “He’ll remember that when Theobault turns up murdered.”
Pucky. I had stepped in it again.
Brock leered at me. “In fact, you’re going to have a chance to spend some time with Theobault very soon.”
“What the hell are you saying?” I asked.
Brock smirked. “We have quite a surprise waiting for you.”
“Maybe we should take this old putz for a little car ride,” Harvey said.
Brock gave me an evil grin. “Yes. I think it’s time for a trip over to Theobault’s office.”
Theobault’s office? Now what?
“The police will be all over your butt,” I said.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Jacobson. If you’re expecting that crazy Pitman to notify anyone, he thinks you went home sick.”
“Now I’m really feeling sick,” I said.
“Good. Let’s go.” Brock took a Swiss Army knife from his drawer, opened the blade and sliced through the cord holding me in the chair. Then he unceremoniously grabbed my shoulders and yanked me upright, sending pain shooting through my stiff arms. He pushed me toward the door, and I stumbled forward.