The Swede: A Novel

by Robert Karjel

  “Tell them to double it, and I’ll do the whole plan myself.”

  It took two days. They, whoever they were, went for it. And it was a gate they wanted, at pretty much any price.

  This was November, and New York would wake up to The Gates at dawn on February 12. The artwork would remain in Central Park until the twenty-seventh. Then there were just a few days left before Ben’s loan inexorably came due on March 1. The time frame was crystal clear. Grip began to read up, received packages of things Ben sent him in Stockholm. Sat during the day in his bulletproof vest in the car between Drottningholm Palace and wherever the king or crown princess were going, then sat in his own kitchen late into the night, browsing and sketching in catalogs, books, and maps. The late-autumn darkness arrived, with all the rains. Then came the clear frosty mornings, and his captain called him up for extra weekends. He drove the royal BMW to inaugurations, sat next to the king when he wanted to drive himself, went to Brussels a few times with the princess.

  Grip likes art. A plan for a New York theft took shape. It wasn’t hard to get hold of the sketches he needed. Several books on The Gates had a map you could unfold to show all of Central Park, with the location of each gate neatly plotted. Same with everything else. As if no detail was too small to be mentioned: the gates were 4.87 meters high, the fabric that would hang from them had been woven from nylon at a factory in New Haven, one of the seamstresses was named Sandy, the cast-iron pieces that would keep the gates in place weighed 275 kilograms each. The park map showed 7,503 lines, exactly where there would be gates. The whole setup fell right into Grip’s lap, ready for him.

  Overall, it was obvious. Where Ninety-Sixth Street entered the park on the Upper West Side, at the Gate of All Saints, leading to a tunnel with a sidewalk. A string of Christo’s gates would follow the road’s curve down toward the tunnel. They would take the last gate. To do it fast, they’d need to set up a truck right beside it, so it could be done on the spot. Besides, there wouldn’t be many people around at that hour. Didn’t everyone know to stay off Central Park sidewalks late at night? The gates were designed to be quickly set up, so they ought to disassemble just as quickly. A truck with a crane, a few simple tools, Grip figured it would take no more than two or three minutes. Put some little plastic cones on the street, blinking lights, men in yellow vests, reflectors—it would all look completely legitimate. And then doing it on the last night, when everyone expected The Gates to disappear. Was it even stealing, when the gates were going to be removed anyway? No weapons—Grip underlined the words. The Gates would be cut into pieces, ground up, melted down. It was a prank to sneak off with one. They didn’t need to arm themselves for such a thing. Despite all that money.

  Three minutes. Something so simple—what could go wrong?

  December. Christmas was the time of year when Ben lived with lies. He went home to Texas, even brought along some of the ties his mother had sent him. During these days, Ernst Grip and the rest of Ben’s real life didn’t exist, not even the virus. Ben would eat breakfast on Christmas morning with the Baptists, share a brandy with his father the night before, and hide all the medications he still needed in the lining of his suitcase, because his mother shamelessly went through everything.

  “I guess you’ll meet them at my funeral,” Ben would say in the apartment, when some old family photo appeared or his father’s drawl played on the answering machine.

  Ben’s white lies around Christmas didn’t bother Grip; on the contrary, they gave him some maneuvering room. While Ben loved a fit man’s body, he’d given up on his own. He exercised only perfunctorily, under doctors’ orders and at the gym. For him, the sea was something nice to observe, not go on or in. The closest he got to waves was the beach terraces of art patrons in the Hamptons. Since Ben had made it clear that he’d go to Texas alone, Grip could revert to his old habit of going away over Christmas for windsurfing and diving. He’d always chosen the sun over elves and fir trees.

  So it was only for New Year’s that Grip got back to New York, and then with a temporary passport arranged by the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok after the tsunami’s terrible devastation. He had come away unscathed, actually hadn’t even noticed when the wave came in, but his luggage got lost in the chaos that followed. Things being what they were, during those days in Southeast Asia—confused—he’d still been able to get to New York.

  Now he would celebrate with Ben and some friends, and also arrange the handover of a few detailed maps of Central Park and a memory stick with the files describing his plan. A few days into the new year, he put everything in a cheap briefcase and left it in the cloakroom at the Whitney Museum, hid his number tag in one of the bathrooms, as agreed, and then took a lap among the familiar paintings.

  When he came back, the briefcase was gone.

  “Your wife was here,” said the woman behind the counter, uncertain.

  “Exactly,” replied Grip, and left the museum.

  Just a prank, he told himself as he stood on the street outside. Just a collection of hypothetical plans. No harm done. He kept it at arm’s length, met none of them in person, nothing could go wrong. As long as they didn’t bring guns. Just wait. The money would be deposited two days before the loans came due.

  On Saturday, February 12, the morning news was orange. Christo and his wife strolled satisfied through The Gates, and already by lunchtime it seemed the rest of New York City realized they needed to get there too. Grip watched the story on Swedish TV’s Rapport that evening, and the images made him feel restless. Beside him stood the king. He’d been receiving new ambassadors at the palace, and then watched the news, along with bodyguards and an adjutant, before Grip drove him back to Drottningholm Palace. The king said something about his youngest daughter wanting to go to New York to see it. Grip nodded without listening. When the news switched to what had become the usual fare—the wave that had washed away half the Indian Ocean beaches, all the Swedes who were still missing—someone turned off the TV with the remote.

  “Shall we go?” said the king.

  It took a second before Grip responded. “Sure,” he said, “of course,” and started walking.

  Days became weeks. Grip kept himself busy, but even if he tried to think of other things, he was constantly reminded of The Gates. It was like trying not to scratch a mosquito bite: a TV commentary, pictures in the paper, an orange plastic bag that blew past. Buddhists may have believed that the color brought peace, but Grip felt only unease when reminded of it.

  He was practicing two-shot series at the shooting range in the police station basement when Ben called. Three days left in Central Park, and a few more before the loans came due and the predators came. The kind of inner state in which he just wanted the time to pass, and was sensitive to phones. Despite the ear protectors, he’d heard the cell phone ring. Grip pulled the ear protectors down around his neck.

  “They refuse to take it!” was the first thing Ben said when he answered.

  “Wait,” said Grip. His heart tumbled as he walked away to be undisturbed.

  “Who, Ben—and what?” he said when he lifted the cell phone again.

  “They refuse to take it unless you go with them.”

  “Who refuses?” repeated Grip.

  “The ones who will actually steal it, who else? That gang, the crew, whatever you call them.”

  Grip hadn’t met them, but he imagined their faces. Some would probably be familiar. “What did they say?”

  “‘Honor among thieves,’ they said.”

  “What fucking honor?” Grip spat out. In truth, he understood exactly.

  Ben’s voice sounded unsteady. “Drawing up the whole plan means you’re in,” he said, as if it were something he’d just learned by heart. “Someone talked to someone who talked to me. Yes, I don’t know . . . but they won’t do it.”

  There was silence. Maybe it lasted half a minute.

  “Say nothing,” Grip began. He was interrupted by a few bangs from the shooting range, then cont
inued: “I know. The calendar’s turning, the days running out. I’m on my way.”

  “Tummy bug,” Grip said, calling in later.

  “Fish, you know,” said von Hoffsten, with whom Grip was supposed to share a shift for several days. “Never eat sushi on a Monday. I’ll see to it. Later.”

  There was a flight from London that evening. Ben was white as a sheet when Grip opened the door to the apartment. Guilt and fear, from floor to ceiling.

  “It’s all right,” said Grip, with a smile that wouldn’t attach to anything.

  Still, when he saw Ben, it was settled. In the dark as they went to bed, with the lights swarming anxiously outside the blinds, the coward within Grip hissed in his lair. The one that wanted to pull out. The one that had always wanted to pull out. The deliberation, the two sides to everything, how plus often turns into minus. The dark truths emerging from the disgusting little creature of selfishness. “Go on, pack up and leave, just choose, will it be one or both of you pulled into the abyss?” It was a slap in the face when he heard Ben’s breathing. That he slept. People like von Hoffsten could always find someone to cover for them, but not Ben. Ben believed in him, even now, with only a few days remaining of what seemed to be life itself. He trusted him, and he slept. Grip could just barely make out his silhouette. The silhouette that was his home, and finally, when he had to choose, his everything. It was then that the coward died, forever. Something collapsed, and all the room’s impressions forced themselves upon him. Not that they were unpleasant, but clear: the smells, the lights from the street outside. As was the pure, hot fear that washed over him when all his escape routes were closed. What remained then, when he finally fell asleep that night and woke up at dawn, was a sense of almost biblical determination that would follow him for many years.

  He went to a meeting like the one where he’d explained his plan for taking the Arp sculptures. A new address in a bad neighborhood. This time, the difference was that Grip would be physically present, albeit in the background. That he was in, that was the important thing. Briefly, they singled him out as “the Swede.” Someone else, a new face, went over who should do what. The man stuck meticulously to the plan Grip had laid out in the briefcase left at the Whitney Museum. Among those gathered, some looked familiar from that night in the Brooklyn workshop, others new. Someone saw him and nodded. It felt like being on the wrong side of a witness confrontation. The edgy driver, wearing the same mottled sweater and hat as last time, tried to pretend he didn’t recognize him.

  Grip had been taken hostage by his own plan. They already had enough men as it was for the hit itself—they’d put him in a place that made no sense, at the last minute. It was obvious. He would stand and “keep track” with a cell phone in his hand, standing on a sidewalk two hundred yards from where the truck would stop. Stand there and watch—to make sure he really had thought of everything, and that he couldn’t sell them out. If it all went to hell, Grip would be along for the ride. The Swede would burn with them.

  They’d gathered in a closed-up pizzeria. The men pulled chairs off the tables to sit with the people they knew. It exposed a division: one side of the room asking questions, while the other already seemed to have it down. Two gangs brought together for a bigger job.

  “No guns,” said the one who led it all. Mutters in reply.

  “But Central Park is full of muggers,” someone said, getting a few laughs.

  “Exactly,” said the man who stood in the middle, and no one laughed. When he wasn’t speaking, his jaw muscles twitched as if he longed to bite into something.

  “It’s a lot of money,” said someone from the side that asked questions.

  “I cannot fucking afford to lose this,” someone beside him added.

  “You, motherfucker, cannot afford to do time either.” It fell like a whip, because it came from the other side of the room. Grip sat on that side, and the man who stood in the middle never even bothered to glance at that side. The support was obvious.

  The driver (Grip remembered that his name was Romeo) took off his cap and threw up his hands. “Should we crack some skulls instead?”

  “This is no bank robbery. Just do the job. No guns.” The man spoke calmly and forcefully, as if dealing with a child. A child he wouldn’t hesitate to thrash. Grip liked what he saw—at the time, he did.

  The murmur of distrust continued.

  “You heard me.” The man’s jaw tightened again. “Are you in or out?” Sirens passed outside. “Well?”

  It was Romeo who eventually stretched, slowly, as if about to yawn. “Obviously, we’re in,” he said, and turned to Grip with a smile. “Now we’re talking.”

  Grip stood completely still in his new short leather jacket and jeans. He would throw them away later that same evening. It was almost two in the morning, and there were more people in Central Park than he’d expected. They were about to dismantle The Gates, but the sounds and voices seemed far away. Sometimes they disappeared altogether. Grip had the lights of Central Park West on one side and the park on the other. A few pathways of The Gates came together on the sidewalks leading away from the park, behind him. A single row continued down in an arc toward the tunnel. In the distance he saw it, the last gate. It was cold. A frosty mist was in the air; ice crystals circled the lights with shimmering halos.

  He’d wanted to get a coffee first, had looked for an all-night spot—but no luck. It gave him an odd feeling of desolation, being in the middle of the city, finding nothing open. He was barehanded, and the thin pockets of his leather jacket gave no warmth. He looked like a pimp shivering on his dimly lit street corner. Another figure stood a hundred yards away. The same silhouette as his own: hands in pockets and elbows straight out at the sides. Stamping now and again in the cold. Eyes checking to see that Grip was in place.

  When some of the men had gathered a few hours before, to take a head count and distribute cell phones, Grip smelled Jack Daniel’s on several and noticed that some had oversize pupils. Romeo had also been there. The mood was anxious. Grip had just picked up his phone and walked out.

  Ten minutes to go . . .

  Five . . .

  Grip blew a little warmth into his hands. A truck came and went. Ten past two, then quarter past. Now they were five minutes late.

  The truck came from the north, not the south as planned, but then turned where it was supposed to. Grip didn’t care about the rest of the surroundings anymore, just followed the truck with a wary gaze.

  A pause, some running around, and then the traffic cones were put in place and the warning lights started flashing, making the reflectors on their jackets shine. Clatter, whiz of pneumatic tools, the crane’s arm stretched out.

  The cold made Grip stamp the asphalt again. The gate’s crossbar was lifted up onto the truck bed, then the two vertical supports. He heard the scrape of metal on the pavement before the first cast-iron foot was lifted clear by the crane. As Grip slowly clenched his hands in his pockets, killing the pain from the cold, the missing coffee crossed his mind. He glanced at his watch without pulling his hand from his pocket. Half past two. Then it came to him, a place that stayed open all night, off in the other direction. He knew it for sure.

  A shiver made him pay attention. A voice, a bit far away, but still too close. Wrong tone, too many fast words. It echoed, at first he didn’t know where it came from.

  It was down by the truck. There was movement around the truck, and the voice was a woman’s. He couldn’t make out the words, but she was protesting—loud accusations.

  Where had she come from? Grip hadn’t seen anyone. The second figure with hands in his pockets stood as still as he.

  What did she want? Why didn’t the truck clear out? Grip saw only reflections and moving feet. No confrontation, but something going on. He couldn’t see her, only heard her voice. Had they gotten caught?

  Then he heard more clearly, a man: “Fuck you, fuck you!”

  And then a shot.

  Grip flinched from the muzzle fl
ash before the sound even reached him. And so the little world of footpaths and trees, not far from the intersection of Central Park West and Ninety-Sixth Street, went still. Calm and quiet, a hole in time. Grip didn’t move from his spot. But soon the truck started to move, on its way. Then it was gone, the gate was gone, leaving behind a heap.

  A small movement—it puffed fast, exhaling mist a few times. Just a shapeless figure at a hundred and fifty yards. Grip turned away and started walking. The second watchful figure did too. Away, along different paths. Grip had houses on one side, the park on the other. He sensed vague sounds and voices, but all infinitely far away. Shifted to another world. His feet got faster. A taxi slowed down and took off again when he didn’t look up.

  “How’d it go?” asked Ben, in a pretended half-asleep voice from the dark bed, when Grip tried to quietly shut the front door behind him.

  “Completely . . .”

  He’d thrown his clothes and the mobile phone into a Dumpster. The clothes he was now wearing had been lying in a box beside it, waiting.

  “. . . no problem. Let’s get some sleep. I want to sleep now.”

  The following day, when they were together just before Grip left for the airport, Ben told him that a woman had been shot at night in Central Park. “You . . .”

  “Nothing like that, no. No one there. No one.” Grip shrugged. “The flight,” he said then, pointing at the clock. “Can’t have food poisoning forever.” He smiled.

  Accomplice to murder.

  Nowhere was it said or reported that a gate had been stolen. Nobody was heard from, not about anything. But the money came in, and the lawyers were never heard from again.

  That night in the park, the last white breaths out of the heap on the ground. Others had made the mistake; the burden had shifted. There was never anything to remind him. Not until three years later, when Shauna Friedman couldn’t seem to get enough of talking about art.