“I didn’t steal it.”
“You had it copied. I know that much. You got the photo from the insurance people and had it done, I’m guessing by some Albanian acquaintance, maybe somebody recommended to you by your assistant at the gallery, whom I’d fire on the spot if I was you. You didn’t know at the time that the photo wasn’t of the greatest quality, but then I’ve already mentioned that, what, two days ago now? So what I still can’t figure out is why we’re here, and no that’s not existential.”
She purses her lips and shakes her hair. It’s no small effort, but a sentence does eventually work its way out. “It sounds so crazy,” she says, carefully pronouncing each word, “but there is this group of people with some loony name who have been threatening me.”
“ALF,” I say. “Don’t ask me to remember what it stands for, but the A should be for those Albanians I was referring to.”
Her breath catches. “You know them?”
“I do,” I say, while on the stage the first song has ended and the girls are shimmying to another. “And threatening’s not the word. It’s blackmailing. Meaning you stole your father’s painting, and they know it.”
“I didn’t steal it,” she says.
“I’m trying to make this easy for you, sweetheart,” I say, “but I’ll make it even easier. You may not have stolen the painting yourself, but you had it stolen. No one else would have known your father had that painting, nevermind all the other coincidences, which you have to admit are a bit much. So you had the painting copied, you had the painting stolen, wanting enough money to keep your gallery going and for who knows what else. And no, I’m not stopping. I’m going out on a limb here to speculate that the person you called upon to render you this little service was a certain mystery man named Alberto.”
She gasps as if it’s a shock to hear it pronounced aloud. Maybe it is. Maybe she’s that mixed up. “I don’t know what do,” she wails, at the point of tears.
“Why don’t you just start at the beginning,” I say. “Afterwards we’ll worry about forgiveness and all the rest.”
She looks up at me for a moment, then looks down at her empty glass, and then something clicks and she starts talking. It comes out with the force of something she’s kept inside for too long. She’s a good girl, I think, but she’s most definitely been bad. I don’t guess I like her any less for it. Sometimes – and this is a point that others in the department often miss – the good’s not worth much without the bad.
Several months ago, she says, she got a call at the gallery from a collector looking to buy Old Masters. He loved Florence, he told her, and in particular he loved Botticelli. He wondered if she might have anything to sell. Business hadn’t been too good, and her first thought was of daddy’s Madonna, which certain experts had attributed to the school of Botticelli. She humbled herself, she called daddy to ask if he might let her sell it, and really that was her first mistake. They fought, he insulted her, she says, and when she hung up the phone, the only thought in her mind was how to get her hands on that painting. She knew some painters in town. She’d tried to represent some of their work before she opened the gallery. The most talented one was called Alberto Pasha, and she knew he needed the money, so she called him up and offered him some to paint a copy from the photograph she had gotten from daddy’s insurance company.
“Just curious,” I say. “How did you get that photograph? I had to steal mine.”
“Ava Gardner,” she says. “I do a pretty good impersonation. Sit on just about anybody’s lap and do an Ava Gardner impression, you can get pretty much anything you want.”
“Try me,” I say.
“Do you want to hear this or don’t you?” she says. I do, and what I hear is that once Alberto finished the painting, she decided to ask him to take it down to Texas. That was probably stupid too, but she wanted as few people as possible to know about her plan, and she figured that if she paid Alberto well enough, he’d keep quiet. Money wasn’t going to be a problem once she sold that painting.
She gave him quite a bit of money up front. He was scared of flying – I nod sympathetically at this – and wanted to drive, so she gave him the address and drew him a map, even drew him a map of the living room so he’d know where to find the painting. Hell, she even had a key to the front door, knew from some bitter personal experience that daddy wouldn’t hire any help, and also knew that he went to bed at promptly nine-thirty after taking two pills to help ease the pain in his legs. And no security – even in the wheelchair daddy always said he was security enough. It couldn’t have been easier, and for all she knows it was easy. It’s just that she hasn’t seen Alberto since. He was supposed to swap the paintings and return to New York immediately. Daddy would have never known the difference – she didn’t know about the bad photograph at the time – and she’d have had enough money to last her quite a few years. What would have been the harm in that? But Alberto has disappeared. There’s been no word from him at all. She can’t imagine he could sell it himself, but then who knows. And now this blackmail, from people who are apparently Alberto’s friends.
“He must have told them something,” I say.
“I guess,” she says. “He’d done some copies for me before. Galleries do it sometimes for big shows. Some insurance policies won’t even let you hang the originals on the walls.”
“Which brings us to Vail, Colorado,” I say.
“Are they completely crazy?” she asks, searching my face for an answer. “I mean who ever heard of painting fakes to destroy an original? And now they want me to pay them a hundred thousand bucks for a painting I don’t have, while I’m living off credit cards. And how do you intend to pay for that bid?”
“It’s really the gesture that counts, don’t you think?” I say. “But permit me to ask you the same question. Why the hell were you bidding? Why did you come out here?”
“I gave some money one time to this charity. I thought maybe it would bring me some contacts. Now they send me invitations to everything, and I got one for this auction, which described everything they were offering, including the Blue Madonna. They estimated it was worth a hundred thousand dollars. They’re idiots.”
“You must have assumed it was a fake by then.”
“I didn’t know,” she says. “I didn’t know what had happened to Alberto. I thought that maybe if I could find a way to buy back the real painting for just a hundred thousand, then I could still sell it to this buyer for anywhere up to a million.”
“And where were you going to get that hundred thousand?”
“It’s the gesture that counts, don’t you think,” she says, giving me a little wilted smile, and just when I’m starting to pretend there might be some kind of future for Fernanda and me, long lost Jeffrey returns bearing gifts.
“Who’s the lady?” he says.
“International criminal,” I say.
“Where’d you go?”
“Where’d you go?” Tense moment here between Jeffrey and me. On the other side of the room the music stops, there’s a bit of polite applause from the crowd, and the chorus girls shuffle off to the side of the stage.
“I’m leaving,” Fernanda says.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I say. “So what are we drinking, Jeffrey?” He’s got both hands up to his bowtie like he’s making flight preparations.
“Juice,” he says.
“Juice,” I say, raising the plastic cup he’s brought over. Don’t know how he’s managed to do it, but this is not juice. Maybe it was juice once, or at least something purple, but now it’s more that kind of cocktail you get by collecting empty glasses and consolidating. Not that it isn’t refreshing, the Jeffrey Cooler. Sort of like having all the nations of the world coexisting peacefully right there in your mouth. World peace in cocktail form.
“So,” he says, hopping up into the chair next to Fernanda and banging the table again with his feet. “Don’t fool with me, mister.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Jeffrey. J
ust give me two minutes more with the lovely lady criminal here, and I’ll keep my side of the bargain.”
“Lady wasn’t no part of the bargain,” he says.
“Fair enough, “ I say, “but I think as you get a little older, you’ll find that the lady is never part of the bargain, but you make time for her anyway.”
“Not me, mister,” he says. He’s got the table more or less airborne at this point. Powerful little feet, Jeffrey’s. The kid could go right out tomorrow and be placekicker for the Broncos if he could get a little more height on him. That and an attitude adjustment, since nobody seems to have mentioned to the kid that there’s no I in team.
“Could I have a word with you in private, Jeffrey?” He doesn’t like it, but he twists off his chair and stomps past Fernanda around to my other side. “I need you to do something for me,” I whisper, “and then after helicopters we’ll do jet airplanes.”
“Man, you’ve always got something, don’t you,” he says.
“You see that purse she’s got beside her on the next chair?” He cranes his head around me, then nods.
“I need you to have a look in that purse. Top secret, you understand. Maybe stroll back across the room, then ease back and sneak under the table.”
“I’ll handle that,” he says. “What are you looking for?”
“An address book, phone numbers, any information she might have written down. But undercover, Jeffrey. She catches us, we’re dead.”
“You’re dead, mister. Not me. What about money?”
“Only as much as you see fit, Jeffrey. Now get out of here, and I don’t want to know you exist for about another five minutes.”
He scampers off, and we both watch him go. “What was that all about?” Fernanda says.
“Top secret mission,” I say. “Now where were we?”
“I don’t know what to do, Willie,” she says. “I’ve got to find Alberto, but these fakes are going to ruin me first.”
“Actually they’re going to ruin your father,” I say. “Tell me more about this buyer you’ve got lined up. Did Alberto know about him? Could he be trying to sell it to him directly?”
“I’m not that dumb,” she says, as Jeffrey sneaks under the table out the corner of my eye. “And I don’t think I want to tell you the buyer’s name either.”
“I’m not going to try to sell it, sweetheart. I’m just trying to find it, and if you don’t mind me saying it, I’m the professional here.”
She shakes her head, grabs my plastic cup, and takes a little sip of the Jeffrey Cooler as her purse disappears from the next seat. “He’s some kind of big Mexican businessman. His name is Ricardo Queso.”
“You know anything about him? Where he lives?”
“No,” she says. “Galleries get calls like this all the time. Many buyers want to remain fairly anonymous to avoid taxes.”
“Did you describe the painting?” I say, being a bit more investigative here than may be strictly necessary in order to give Jeffrey some time to work under the table.
“I only gave him a vague idea,” Fernanda says. “I hadn’t called daddy yet when I spoke to him. I hadn’t come up with my plan.”
“Sounds like you still haven’t come up with it,” I say, as her purse appears again next to her.
“You’re useless,” she snaps, grabbing the purse as she stands and striding off in a huff. I’ve gotten under her skin, and it’s enough to make you think that if you break one more heart out there, you might just break your own. A man might start thinking back on his whole romantic history, particularly the history of a springboard-obsessed ex-wife he never saw swim, but with Jeffrey there under the table attempting to disassemble my boots, it’s really no time to be dwelling on the past.
“Alright,” I say, pulling up the tablecloth. He’s sitting down there eating crackers. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Kid wriggles up into the chair Fernanda just vacated and hands over a scrap of paper. Professor Barry Farsinelli, it says, and there’s a phone number written under it. The name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it.
“Is that it?” I say.
“Mister she had all kinds of junk in there,” Jeffrey says. “Dirty tissues. Some crackers. That’s all I found with something written on it.”
“What about money?” I say.
“Dollar thirty seven,” he says, shaking his head before looking up at me expectantly. I take a long and easy sip from the plastic cup, pretending to savor the bouquet or whatever.
“You promised!” he shouts up in my face. And then all it takes is another sip or two, and mister I’d be a helicopter with or without the kid. I mean we just leave it all behind – Fernanda, the Albanians, and all the rest. Takes Jeffrey a bit by surprise, I think. I’m talking G-forces and zero to sixty in under four seconds. Get him up there wailing with the sheer joy of it all as we swoop from one end of the room to the other. “Apache, mister, Apache attack helicopter!” he’s screaming, banging his little fists down my hat like it’s the controls, which I can assure you it isn’t.
“Sir,” I hear something in spectacles say as we chop chop past. “Maybe this isn’t exactly the time.”
“The time for what, lady?” Jeffrey yells as he whips through the air, giggling like he’s made of helium or one of your goofier gases. Personally I’d like to get up there with him, but then who would keep the whole air-works afloat? Luckily one of us is considering the technical side of things. Particularly since once we get out into the hallway, making use of the helicopter to escape my creditors, who do we find smoking cigarettes but Kafka, who despite his best efforts at being top secret can’t help but get to feeling helicoptery himself, until I mean we’re all up there, and honestly I’m not sure who’s the propeller and who’s the pilot at this point. What’s certain is that we’re Apache times three, and mister I do feel for the enemy.
13
When the bird finally runs out of gas, Kafka and I find ourselves on two stools at one of the hotel’s cozier bars. Our little adventure with Jeffrey has softened him up a bit, although to tell the truth, the kid really doesn’t need to get any softer. Not exactly cut out for the criminal life, our eight-foot Albanian. He’s drinking whisky like we may not see tomorrow and telling me that Alberto’s been painting copies for years. Fernanda has even found some buyers for him in the past, using the gallery to pass them off as originals. Which means our wayward Fernanda may be badder than I thought, but I doubt that’s bad enough for this mess. The problem is, Kafka tells me, Alberto was getting real pretentious about his art and started letting Kafka and some of the others do the copies. Then he’d take a cut, which to hear Kafka tell it was never much.
“So you’re telling me you even did the one he took to Texas?” I say.
“Texas?”
“Nevermind,” I say. Apparently he and Twiggy have gotten a few steps behind while working on their costumes. Costumes naturally remind me of Havisham, whom I mention.
“She’s in love with Twiggy,” he says. “Sometimes we give her money for information.” Which just about destroys all my dreams of domestic bliss with the gallery assistant, and that’s quite a blow. So I take a sip of bourbon, and then it’s not so bad. About this time I also realize that the bartender hasn’t taken his eyes off me since we sat down. Biceps about as big around as all of Kafka, and he’s agitating that cocktail shaker like it’s an essential part of his exercise program. I’m thinking my Second Chance fame may have already spread to this part of the hotel, but the look he’s giving me doesn’t exactly convey a great love of orphans. It’s more like we’ve met before and he’s still regretting the experience.
“We’re not going to take it anymore,” Kafka’s mumbling. “Twiggy wanted to kidnap you.”
“I wish she’d told me,” I say. “Maybe we could have made a night of it.”
“Now she wants to kidnap Fernanda,” Kafka mumbles, absolutely punishing that whiskey. “No sense of proportion,” I manage to make out. “A
nd in art the proportions are fun-da-mental.”
And so it may be in art, but in the kid it’s another matter entirely. He’s so smashed at this point that he’s about as proportional as a painting by Mister Pablo Picasso, and before I can react, he’s hit upon some new dumb idea and has flapped off again into the endless corridors of the Aurora Hotel. Immediately I slap down a hundred dollar bill on the bar and prepare to make off after him, but before I can get the rotor turning, so to speak, the bartender has dropped one of those arms down on my shoulder and I may be an inch or two shorter. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. “A hundred bucks doesn’t cover four drinks in this place?”
“Keep the money, Willie,” the bartender says. “You know why I’m here, and it’s not to serve you cocktails.”
“Oh boy,” I say, wriggling out from beneath his arm. “That is honestly one of the better pickup lines I’ve heard in hours.” This guy looks like the Russian in a boxing movie – blonde buzz-cut and cold, blue eyes that look like they could throw their own punches. He leans over the bar and pulls me even closer to his face.
“You’re meant to be doing the Lord’s work,” he growls, “but instead you’re on a world tour and can’t be bothered to pray. You know what that means?” Of course I recognize the guy now, a longtime hard-ass named Ralph over in Internal Affairs who’s based in the Midwest. Dropped a barbell on his head while bench pressing, if I recall correctly. Since I don’t often find myself in the Rocky Mountain region, I don’t often run into him, but he’s one of the unimaginative angels they send down when a case takes on unexpected dimensions. Needless to say, I’ve encountered more than a few in my career. I like to call them my fan club. “What that means,” he’s saying, “is that Saint Chief is pissed, and I’m even more pissed to be down here talking to you when I could be kicking back on my cloud.” See what I mean? Guy died and went up probably fifteen years ago, and he’s still acting like it’s some kind of big accomplishment.
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