The Night Cafe

by Taylor Smith

  A shadow passed across the light spilling onto the terrace. Gladding turned. Gauzy white curtains hung across the open doorway and they moved with the breeze like a sultry dance of veils. His mistress, whom he had left in the shower a short time earlier, had come into the lounge. She stood facing him, holding a stemmed glass and a bottle, her sleek body silhouetted against the glow of the lamps at either end of a rattan sofa. The light of the lamps outlined the shapely figure and long legs under the creamy, diaphanous robe she wore. Her dark hair, still wet from the shower, spilled around her shoulders. Backlit as she was, her face was indistinct, but the way she raised the bottle and glass to him telegraphed the question.

  Gladding nodded and she poured him a glass of something bubbly. A celebration, then. She set his glass on the low table by the sofa and reached for another to fill for herself. She wouldn’t come out onto the terrace while he was in the midst of a business conversation. Even mistresses knew better than to run the risk of suspected eavesdropping.

  “And the package that you promised me?” the voice on the other end of the line wheedled. “It will also be ready for the exchange on Friday?”

  Scowling, Gladding turned back toward the ocean. The moon was high over the water now, a huge orb. “Are you suggesting I would not keep my end of the bargain?”

  “No, no, of course not. I would never—”

  “Good. So, Friday then.”

  “Yes, yes, Friday. You have my word. And I hope—”

  Gladding disconnected. The word of a villain, he thought. How reassuring.

  Three

  Los Angeles

  Monday, April 17

  Hannah threaded her way westward through Monday morning traffic on the snarled Santa Monica Freeway. When it slowed to a dead stop, she used one hand to open the car windows while the other rummaged in her shoulder bag for a covered elastic. Gathering her dark gypsy curls into a knot, she inhaled the bright spring morning. Despite the normal heavy commute, an onshore wind had swept away all visible traces of smog, leaving the sky a pristine, aquatic blue. Not even being stuck in an endless line of cars could get a person down on a morning this pretty, the kind that made her fall in love all over again with her adopted city.

  She was on her way to Rebecca Powell’s gallery in Malibu. From there, the two would head over to the Hollywood Hills studio of the painter whose work Rebecca had been commissioned to buy on behalf of Moises Gladding. At the thought of the client, Hannah’s head made a rueful shake.

  Moises Gladding. Girl, you need your head examined.

  When Rebecca had mentioned last night that she was picking up the painting today, Hannah had insisted on going along. For a job involving a character like Gladding, she intended to be involved in every step of the operation, starting with taking possession of the consignment. Not only would she examine the piece closely, she’d also handle the packing. She was damned if she was going to get on a plane carrying anything she hadn’t perused from stem to stern. Listening to her gut was the only thing that had kept her alive this far and she had no intention of abandoning the policy now. Her gut was adamant that having anything to do with the arms dealer could be a can of worms. Travis Spielman’s reaction only served to underscore her own uncertainty.

  Before going to bed last night, Hannah had done an Internet search on both Gladding and August Koon to see what she could learn about them. Both the arms dealer and the artist had mixed press. One investigative piece on Moises Gladding mentioned off-the-record reports that the man sometimes served as go-between when Washington wanted contact with certain people it couldn’t speak to officially—forces opposing the shaky Saudi royals, say, or a Colombian drug lord with useful information about a troublesome trade partner’s bad habits. But if he served as a sometime cutout for the spooks, Gladding was nobody’s creature but his own, capable of ruthless pragmatism when it came to supplying arms to global hot spots regardless of official Washington’s position on a dispute.

  In the art world, meantime, August Koon also had his supporters and detractors. After studying some of his paintings online, Hannah decided she was in the naysayers’ camp. Like the man said, she might not know much about art but she knew what she liked. Koon’s work looked like nothing so much as the time Gabe had accidentally kicked over a tray of finger paints. According to the articles she’d read, some of his larger pieces commanded high six figure prices. Go figure.

  She would have been just as happy to give both characters wide berth, but there was no need to cut off her cash-strapped nose to spite her cautious face. It wasn’t like she’d never crossed paths with a shady character before. Private security work rarely placed her in the company of saints. For ten grand plus expenses, she could stifle her aesthetics and drop off the painting. It wasn’t like she was running guns for Gladding.

  Approaching the end of the Santa Monica Freeway, the vista suddenly changed, the aqua-blue sky downshifting to gray. This early in the season, the ocean was still cold, so no matter how hot the Southern California land mass, when warm air met cool, it turned to dense fog. In the space of less than a mile, the temperature dropped about ten degrees. Hannah shivered in the sudden damp, rolling the car windows back up. By the time she turned onto Pacific Coast Highway, the air was so heavy that she could scarcely make out the crashing surf.

  Rush hour always meant stop-and-start progress on the two-lane highway, which traced the line of Southern California’s beach communities. Lighter northbound traffic allowed her to move a hair faster than the poor saps heading south into the heart of the city, but like most road trips in L.A., this one wouldn’t set any land speed records. She’d been in traffic so long by now that the NPR morning broadcast was repeating stories she’d already heard. When her cell phone bleeped, she snapped off the radio, happy for the distraction, grabbed the phone from the center console and glanced at the caller ID on the screen.

  “Hey, big sister! What’s up? Gabe leave something at your house last night?”

  “No, not that I noticed,” Nora said. “I’m just on my way from the Amtrak station. I put Nolan on the train back to school and now I’m in standstill traffic heading home.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have called.”

  “Oh, believe me,” Hannah said, “if a monkey took the wheel, it couldn’t possibly get into an accident going this slowly.”

  “It’s not the driving. It’s just that I don’t want to interfere.”

  “Interfere?”

  Nora hesitated. “Are you still going with Rebecca to pick up that painting this morning?”

  “I’m en route to Malibu as we speak. Why?”

  “It’s just that…I don’t know. I should probably mind my own business…”

  If it were anyone else, Hannah would heartily agree that yes, she should, but saying so would only upset Nora, who was a sensitive soul and a worrier to boot. Maybe it was a sign of long-delayed maturity that Hannah was finally—mostly—learning to keep her smart-aleck mouth shut instead of bristling every time her big sister slipped into mama bear mode. “Spit it out, kid.”

  “Well…I don’t mean to tell you what to do, Hannah, but I’m really hoping you’ll do this favor for her. You will, won’t you?”

  Hannah said nothing.

  “Oh, I knew it. I’ve made you mad.”

  Hannah sighed. “I’m not mad, but I’m feeling a little pressured here, to tell you the truth. I just can’t commit to doing something because it’s your old roommate and you say I should.”

  “You shouldn’t not do it for those reasons either,” Nora snapped. Then, she relented. “I know you always think I’m trying to tell you how to live your life—”

  “It’s not that.” Although it was, a little. Would there ever come a day, Hannah wondered, when she’d stop feeling like the loser kid sister? “It’s that this is my business—my profession, I mean—and I know what I’m doing. I need to assess the whole picture before I agree to take on a job. It’s what I alw
ays do—although in this case, I’m even more inclined to tread carefully. You may not be aware of it, but this client of Rebecca’s is a real piece of work. Aren’t you the one who’s always nagging me to be a little more careful about what I jump into?”

  It was Nora’s turn to fall silent. Hannah wondered whether it was the “nagging” line that did it. Old family fault lines always ran deep and Nora knew she had a rep for being cautious to a fault.

  “You’re right. But my God, Hannah, did you see her yesterday? She looks like she’s lost about twenty pounds since I last saw her. She stayed on to talk for quite a while after you left last night. You wouldn’t believe what that bastard ex-husband of hers is putting her through. She’ll be lucky to get out of this without a bankruptcy. You know why she’s not getting the house like he promised?”

  “Why?”

  “Because in addition to maxing out every credit card they had—and some she didn’t know they had—he took out second and third mortgages on the house. With the drop in the real estate market, they went into negative equity, totally unbeknownst to her. Of course, California’s a community property state, so she’s on the hook for half the debt. Even after the house is sold—if it sells—she’ll still be in it up to her eyeballs. And the gallery isn’t exactly a moneymaker. They rarely are, Becs says. Having her own gallery was always her dream, but after what Bill’s done, she may have to pack it in and get a regular job just to pay her bills. And don’t even get me started on what happens if she gets sick, as she’s bound to at this rate, because of course she doesn’t have health insurance.”

  “Oh, man, and I thought Cal was a schmuck.”

  “At least he gave you the house.”

  “Yeah, for all the good it did me. Anyway, you’re right, it sucks, big-time.”

  “When you see Becs, don’t let on I told you about all this, okay? She’s mortified by what’s happened.”

  “Not a word, I promise.”

  “And Hannah? I’m sorry. As far as taking on this job for her, you do what you think is best. I know you know what you’re doing.”

  Now there’s a first.

  “Just pretend I never called. I’m really sorry.”

  Hannah rolled her eyes. “Stop apologizing already. It’s no big deal. And Nora?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry about Rebecca. This situation she’s in—it’s lousy, for sure. But you know what they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. She’s going to be okay.”

  “I really hope so.” But Nora’s sigh said she didn’t believe it for a minute.

  The Sandpiper Gallery was across the road and just north of the Malibu pier. If Rebecca had owned the building or the Malibu waterfront on which it stood, her financial problems would be nonexistent, but Nora had said that the property was a rental and not a cheap one at that. It had been Rebecca’s husband, Bill, a wheeler-dealer Realtor with delusions of grandeur, who’d insisted on this pricey location. Apparently he’d had visions of bringing in wealthy clients to buy art for the multimillion-dollar McMansions he was hoping to peddle—except Bill spent more time playing the ponies at Del Mar and Hollywood Park than in flogging real estate. Now Rebecca was stuck with a long-term lease that even Sotheby’s might have thought twice about taking on. How many commissions would you need to cover prime real estate like this and still pay the grocery bill? If the gallery was just some rich woman’s hobby, it might not have been a concern, but as a breadwinning proposition, it was iffy.

  Hannah pulled into the gallery parking lot, empty except for Rebecca’s fire-engine-red BMW. Climbing out of the Prius, she stretched muscles gone tight from the hour spent in traffic. Something moved in the corner of her eye and she swung in time to see three gray pelicans flying in low formation over the choppy waves, hunting for a fish dinner. Or maybe they weren’t hunting at all, just having an exuberant game of follow-the-leader in the morning light.

  Hannah smiled, then reached back into the car, grabbed her soft leather messenger bag, slung it over her shoulder and headed up the gallery’s sand-blown front steps. A sign in the front window said the gallery was closed on Mondays, but there were lights on inside, and when she tried the handle, the door opened and a bell tinkled softly. Instinctively, she kicked the sand off her shoes before stepping onto the gleaming hardwood floors.

  She’d been to the gallery with Nora once before, and a glance around told her that it looked much the same. Hannah was no expert, but something told her that this much kitschy sweetness wouldn’t fly in the serious art world. Although the paintings hanging on the walls looked similar to what Hannah had seen on her last visit, Rebecca had added tables and pedestals on which were arranged lower-priced vases, lamps and other pieces of wheel-thrown pottery—a way to expand the customer base, perhaps, and boost the bottom line.

  The office was nestled into a corner of the gallery behind a long walnut credenza that served as a room divider. Rebecca was at her desk, an antique rolltop number with rows of pigeonholes and a green baize pad. Her head turned as the door closed and Hannah saw that she was on the phone. Rebecca smiled and held up a finger. Hannah waved, then started a slow stroll around, studying the merchandise.

  Three or four fabric-covered movable walls were scattered throughout the long room, providing extra hanging space. On one of these near the entrance were three colorful paintings, each seemingly illuminated from within. One was a view of the mission at San Juan Capistrano, red-orange and fuchsia bougainvillea spilling over the adobe arches of the courtyard walls. In the next painting, gulls wheeled and dove across a sparkling seascape while children gamboled along a sandy shoreline. The third picture was of an old California hacienda peeping through thick foliage. The scenes were familiar and nostalgic at the same time, sucking a viewer in as only a Southern California landscape could.

  “Stop you right in your tracks, don’t they?”

  Hannah turned, surprised. She hadn’t heard Rebecca come up behind her. Nora’s friend was dressed in a gauzy, flowing, peach-colored summer dress, and platform espadrilles whose laces crisscrossed up her legs. Hannah had actually ironed a white cotton blouse that morning and gone so far as to wear a skirt—denim, but a skirt nonetheless. What’s more, the pedicure to which Nora had treated her a couple of weeks earlier still looked good in her brown Joseph Siebel sandals. She’d even put on a pair of dangly earrings, but she still felt woefully underdone next to Rebecca. No matter, she reminded herself, this wasn’t a job interview. She already had the gig, if she wanted it. She just needed to decide if she did.

  “I like this one of the kids on the beach,” Hannah said, turning back to the middle painting. “That dark-haired little boy reminds me of Gabe.”

  “You might have been to that beach with him. It’s just north of San Diego.” Rebecca smiled. “I would consider adding the painting to the payment if you’ll take the Koon to Mexico for me.”

  “Sounds like a bribe.”

  “Guilty as charged. Can I get you a coffee? Some sparkling water?”

  “No, I’m good, thanks.”

  “Okay, well let me just shut everything down and we’ll head over to August Koon’s. That was him I was just talking to. I told him we were on our way.”

  Four

  Rebecca suggested they take her car to Koon’s studio in the Hollywood Hills, but Hannah hesitated. As a matter of principle, she preferred to be behind the wheel—you never knew when the situation might call for evasive maneuvers—but it made little sense to drive two cars. Since Rebecca knew the way, Hannah resigned herself to riding shotgun.

  There were compensations. They dropped the convertible’s rag top once they got inland, away from the thick marine layer, and Hannah leaned back in the BMW’s butter-soft leather seats. There was no easy way to get from Malibu to the Hollywood Hills, but the slow cruise up Sunset Boulevard gave her chance to enjoy the gorgeous spring weather and the view of the rolling estates and breathtaking mansions along the way.

  It should have be
en a relaxing ride, but her ease didn’t last. Maybe it was Rebecca’s platform sandals that made for the herky-jerky ride, gas and brake pedals stomped with equal vigor. Her hands were also in constant motion. If she wasn’t tucking flyaway tendrils into the silk scarf stylishly wrapped around her head or turning the rearview mirror to check her teeth for lipstick, she was dialing through her iPod for appropriate road music. After Rebecca cut off yet another driver, who peeled around them on a shriek of rubber, flipping the bird as he roared past, Hannah regretted not insisting on driving. Her little Prius wasn’t glamorous, but she’d survived assassins in the desert and gangbangers on L.A.’s mean streets, so the prospect of death-by-bimbo seemed undignified.

  “Tell me something,” she said to Rebecca.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why are we picking up this painting? Why didn’t this artist bring it to your gallery?”

  “The great August Koon? He wouldn’t deign to come into a little gallery like mine. He made it abundantly clear when we first spoke that he’d never heard of it. He probably wouldn’t even be dealing with me if I hadn’t been representing a client like Mr. Gladding. Koon is represented by one of the biggest agents in New York.”