Rogues

by George R. R. Martin

  Max smiled. “I actually think Caravaggio himself might have approved.”

  He closed the file and patted it. “So there you have it. Quite a simple provenance, really. A curse heaped upon a damnation, one of the scholars said. A mirror of its maker, perhaps.” He gave a little shrug. “Or just a beautiful painting. So, tell me. You are satisfied?”

  “I was satisfied, my friend Max, the moment you told me I might buy this at all,” he said. “But I am curious. Why did you come to me? Why not give the painting back to Maslov?”

  “Simple economics. I know Victor Maslov quite well. He would pay me a finder’s fee. Generous, no doubt, but a mere reward. You, on the other hand, will pay me more—still only a fraction of its true worth, but a great deal more—and of course you will never display the painting in public, any more than Victor himself could. If you did, you would face an embarrassing and endless succession of lawsuits as the painting’s former owners tried to recover what at one time belonged to them. No publicity, no trouble. The painting will satisfy your vanity—forgive me, but is it not true? And you will treat it well and leave the question of its ownership to your heirs. As for Victor, he is a realist. I have always treated him fairly. I value him as a client, but I owe him nothing. He lost a painting, I found one. I am neither the thief nor Victor’s police. I am just a simple art dealer.”

  Joe Cooley Barber laughed at that. “Simple indeed,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s good enough for me.”

  “I think I’ll have a glass of wine now,” Max said. Joe Cooley poured him one, and a double whisky for himself. He picked up the phone and reached his business manager, who called their banker. New York, the Bahamas, the Caymans; the money moved at light speed as Max nursed his wine, lost in thought. When he received confirmation from his own banker he stood and Joe Cooley helped him with his things.

  “Done, then,” Max said.

  “As quickly as that,” Joe Cooley Barber said. “The good Lord is smiling, that this troubled painting has found a home in a blessed place at last. A golden new entry in the provenance.”

  The private jet lifted off, giving Max a glorious view of the sun setting over Pikes Peak. He felt a great calmness, and slept peacefully on the flight. Once back in his Manhattan study he telephoned Lonnie Mack, who ecstatically received the news that he would receive half a million dollars for a painting he had nearly tossed out. “You’ll have the money tomorrow,” Max said. “But I must remind you that you must not say anything about this to anyone.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lonnie said, hurt, his euphoria briefly tempered by Max’s caution. “I never talk about my jobs.”

  “Of course not,” Max said. “Just being cautious. Tell me where you’d like to meet. Somewhere safe. You choose.”

  Lonnie thought for a moment, then gave him an address. Max heard him whooping for joy as they hung up.

  Max made another call. “Victor? Max. Quite well, thank you. I have wonderful news. I’ve recovered your painting. Yes, the Caravaggio.”

  He smiled at Maslov’s reaction. Of all his clients, Victor Maslov loved his art the best. “Yes, quite certain. It’s in good shape, considering it’s been hanging in a storage shed for a few years. It had spaghetti stains, believe it or not, but no lasting damage. I’ve had it cleaned in my studio. It’s as good as new. I’m looking into David’s eyes right now.” He lightly touched the shepherd’s cheek. “Such a powerful work, my friend. The triumph of good over evil.”

  Max gave Maslov brief details about how he’d recovered the painting. “Yes,” he laughed. “As easy as that. It was just a lucky call, that’s all. He’s a good kid, Victor. I promised him half a million—a modest fee, I think, even though he took the painting. Yes, good. You’ll take care of that for me? Just a moment, I’ve already lost the paper.” He patted his pockets, then realized the paper was still sitting on the table. He read off the address. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “There’s the matter of your finder’s fee,” Maslov said. “I was thinking five million.”

  “Please, Victor. You’re a good client, but that is too generous.”

  “The painting is worth many times that to me. I thought it was lost forever. I thought my curator took it.” Victor laughed. “All this time, a termite man.” Max knew that Victor’s curator had died in an automobile accident, not long after the theft.

  “I’ll be happy to take your money once the painting is safely back in your hands,” Max said. “For now you just need to send someone for it.” He couldn’t resist a gentle jab. “Someone competent, please. It wouldn’t do to lose it again.”

  The next day, as promised, Lonnie Mack received his cash, neat stacks of bills in an aluminum briefcase delivered by a man he didn’t know. Lonnie had never seen so much money. He took it home to Della with a bottle of expensive champagne, and they began planning a trip to Las Vegas.

  That night the local TV news stations led with a story of a fiery explosion in a trailer park, the result of an apparent propane leak. News helicopters captured dramatic footage of the flames and smoke from the blast, which leveled half a dozen homes and left an unknown number of dead.

  It was the part of the business Max enjoyed least. One could not have Lonnie concocting stories for the press, any more than one could have him showing up on the doorstep in a year, looking for more money.

  Accompanied by two bodyguards, Victor Maslov’s new curator picked up the Caravaggio in person, fairly bubbling with enthusiasm when he saw it. A few days later Victor wired the finder’s fee to Max, less the money that had gone up in smoke with Lonnie.

  Now Max had only to decide what to do with the original Caravaggio, still sitting in his office.

  There were, of course, a few details he’d left out of Joe Cooley’s provenance—particularly about Heinrich Beck, Walter’s younger brother. His journal had ended with a Stasi raid, but not his story.

  The Russians who killed his parents had billeted in Beck’s building for several months, while he remained hidden in the vault below the basement. He emerged only at night to forage for food and water, at rare moments of safety.

  Beneath the trapdoor his father had built, Heinrich filled those lonely months with painting. Though surrounded by beautiful art, he had no new canvas on which to work, so he painted over some of the works he liked least, trying his hand at new ideas, then scraping canvases clean to start again. He also worked at his copies, learning to mimic brushstrokes and color and depth. It pleased him how good his copies were, and how much the process taught him. Among the originals, of course, were those in his brother’s case. The more Heinrich studied the Caravaggio, the more he admired it. He made six copies in all but kept only two, reusing the other canvases. He knew the two copies were the best he’d ever done.

  The Russians eventually abandoned the gallery and he emerged from his hiding hole. Life in postwar Berlin was difficult, but Heinrich was a survivor. Art remained easy to work with and was better than currency if one knew how and had the connections, and of course Heinrich had both. He still had scores of paintings from the cellars that had survived with him, and he began trading. For a long time his business was conducted mostly in secret, buying from the nameless and selling to the faceless, servicing newly humbled Germans who denied the past and bowed now to Russian masters, as they set about learning the new subtleties of festering Bolshevik corruption.

  It was not long before it occurred to Heinrich to sell his own copies as well. It was easy, particularly among the new elite classes who had money but knew nothing whatever of art. Heinrich knew his father would have been appalled, but his father was dead and he was not, and that truth made for the only rules that mattered. He painted new copies and traded and bribed and survived as the war began to recede and Berlin rebuilt and the radio ran hot with a new cold war.

  Walter’s icy note, demanding that he give the crate to the emissary, prompted Heinrich to do what he did. He reacted impulsively, from anger—for shame at what Walter had done to the f
amily name, for parents dead because of Walter’s past, for a note that merely demanded obedience, asking nothing about him or his parents.

  He sent his brother one of the copies, sure that Walter would never know the difference.

  The Stasi raid told him how wrong he had been. They had come at night after the gallery closed and he was alone. They were not only Stasi but former SS, and they had known what they were looking for. They asked him where the original painting was hidden. The more he denied any knowledge, the more they beat him. “You are a fool,” one said. “Your brother left a mark on all his paintings. It was missing from the one you sent.”

  Heinrich did not give up the painting. He decided he would die before he would do that. They nearly obliged him, beating him savagely.

  They helped themselves to a fortune in other works, loading canvases into the back of their truck, taking everything they could carry. Before leaving, one of the men untied his right arm and forced it out over the workbench. “Your brother told us not to kill you,” he said as Heinrich struggled fiercely. “He did tell us, however, to make certain you never fooled him again.” Using a ball-peen hammer, the other man carefully smashed the bones of Heinrich’s right hand, and then each of the fingers, one by one.

  Heinrich Beck never wrote another word in his journal, and never painted again. It took him two years, but eventually he was able to buy the passport of a dead German youth named Max Wolff and bribe his way out of East Berlin, the Caravaggio and one copy rolled up with some of his own paintings. The U.S. customs agent glanced at a few of the canvases and waved the lot through, as the amateur work of a second-rate student.

  Now Max considered what to do with the original. He was an old man, running out of time. Perhaps he ought to think about a legacy. He considered bequeathing it to the village of Stawicki, where it had spent more than three centuries, but that seemed so … profitless.

  He leafed through his old telephone messages, and found one from a newly wealthy Chinese collector who was looking for precious art. Something important, he had said. Something spectacular. He was going to build a museum.

  Carrie Vaughn

  Even rogues need a place to drink and relax, like the Blue Moon Club in the suspenseful story that follows although being in a place where rogues drink and relax, you’d be well-advised to watch your back—even if you’re a rogue yourself.

  New York Times best seller Carrie Vaughn is the author of a wildly popular series of novels detailing the adventures of Kitty Norville, a radio personality who also happens to be a werewolf, and who runs a late-night call-in radio advice show for supernatural creatures. The eleventh and twelfth Kitty novels, Kitty Rocks the House and Kitty in the Underworld, were released in 2013. Her other novels include the Young Adult books Voices of Dragons and Steel; a fantasy, Discord’s Apple; and the superhero novel, After the Golden Age. Vaughn’s short work has appeared in Lightspeed, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Wild Cards: Inside Straight, Realms of Fantasy, Jim Baen’s Universe, Paradox, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and elsewhere. Some of her short stories are collected in Straying from the Path and in Kitty’s Greatest Hits. She lives in Colorado. Coming up is Dreams of the Golden Age, a sequel to her superhero novel, and more books in the Kitty series.

  ROARING TWENTIES

  Carrie Vaughn

  The good thing about Blue Moon is that it’s invisible, so it never gets raided. Bad thing is, being invisible makes it hard to find for the rest of us. You have to have a little magic of your own, which Madame M does, and finding places that aren’t there is never much of a problem for her.

  Madame M has the car drop us off at the corner of Fifth and Pine, and she sends the driver away. I follow her down a damp sidewalk along brick buildings. It’s early enough that the streets are crowded, cars and people jammed up on their way to somewhere else, no one much looking around. A few wheezing horns honk, and the orange from the streetlights make polished steel and frowning faces seem like they’re lit with embers. I shrug my mink more firmly over my shoulders. Madame M’s has slipped down to her elbows, showing off the smooth skin of her back. We look like sisters, walking side by side, in step.

  The alley she turns down looks like any other alley, and that passage leads to another, until we’re alone with the trash cans and a yowling cat, under iron fire escapes and a sky threatening rain. She knocks on a solid brick wall, blocks from any door or window, and I’m not surprised when a slot opens at head height. She leans in to whisper a word, and the door opens. Either a door painted to look like bricks or the wall itself swinging out; I can’t tell and it doesn’t really matter.

  The music of a three-piece combo playing jazz drifts in from down the hall, and it sounds like heaven.

  The doorman, a gorilla of a guy in a brown suit that must be tailored to fit those shoulders, looks us over and nods his approval. He’s got a little something else, extra fur around the collar, on his hands and tufting off his ears. When he smiles, he shows fang, and his eyes glint golden. He’s some kind of thing, far be it from me to guess what. I walk on by without meeting his gaze. A coat check girl who seems normal enough, but who knows, takes our furs, and I tip her well. A clean-cut, scrubbed, and polished waiter guides us into the club proper. There’s a table just opened up, of course, a table always opens up for Madame M. I order soda water for us both, and the waiter looks at me funny because why come to a place like this if you’re not into booze? The booze here is good, top-shelf, smuggled in, not cooked up in some unsavory backwoods tub. Maybe later, I tell him, and he scurries off.

  We’re near the dance floor, in the middle of everything, and the place is full. The band is a white guy on piano, and two black guys on bass and drums, and a microphone stand means someone might sing later, but for now they’re playing something with a bit of a kick, and couples are dancing on a tiny floor down front. At first glance it’s a normal crowd on a normal night, flappers and fine women in evening gowns, men in suits and even a few tuxes. Looking closer I see the odd fang and claw, the glimmer of a fae wing, a bit of horn under slicked-back hair, other bits and pieces I might guess at, but I’d likely be wrong. These folk aren’t drawing attention to themselves, so I won’t either, because then they might start looking too closely at me and Madame M.

  Doorways lead to back rooms where you can find cards and craps whatever else you might fancy. One doorway is covered by a shimmering beaded curtain, and through them and the cigarette-smoke haze beyond I can just make out a grand lady holding court at a sofa and coffee table, surrounded by men in suits and women dolled up like paintings. The scene is vague, like I’m seeing it through etched glass.

  Madame M wants to talk to Gigi, the woman behind the beaded curtain, who runs the place, and I think it’s a bad idea, but I’m not going to argue because M’s smarter about these things than I am. The back-and-forth and the deals, the secrets and the swindles. The things I’m smart about: watching her back and seeing trouble a minute before it happens.

  It’s just the two of us in a den where the gamblers and bootleggers are the least of it. There are people here who’ll drink your blood dry if you let them, others who’ll tear out your throat, and a few who’ll buy your soul, even knowing how little some souls around here are worth. M and I do all right, her tricks and my eyes keeping us safe. A couple of molls out on the town, that’s what we look like, in our colored silk and fringe, bare shoulders and knees, dresses that swish and show off our hips when we kick our heels and shimmy our legs. Sequins and feathers over bobbed hair. They think we’re easy prey, and they’ll be wrong.

  The drinks arrive more quickly than I expect because I think the waiter is on the other side of the room taking someone else’s order. But no, he’s right here, polished as ever, smiling as he transfers glasses from tray to table. The music plays on, and M sips.

  “Something bad’s coming,” she murmurs.

  I’m looking out. A card game’s going in the corner. Nearby, a g
angster’s foot soldier is trying to impress his girl, both of them leaning over their tiny round table while he shows her the gold band on his watch. Her lips are smiling, but her eyes are hungry. She’s trying to get something out of him. A dozen small intrigues are brewing. Mostly, though, people are here to have a good time, to drink some good booze and revel in the feeling of getting away with something bad.

  “Raid?” I answer. “A takeover? Is Rocco finally moving in on Margolis?” Anthony Margolis is the one presiding over the card game. He’s here playing to show he isn’t worried about Rocco or anyone else.

  “No, this is bigger. Everything goes to hell.”

  With her I can’t tell if that’s a metaphor. “This one of your dreams?”

  “Visions,” she said. Takes a sip, leaves a print of red lipstick on the glass.

  “The future?”

  “It is.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Same as always: Keep your eyes open and invest in liquor.”

  She’s thinking out loud, and it makes me nervous. More nervous. I nod to the beaded curtain. “She’s gotta know you’re here.”

  “She’s going to make me ask,” M says.

  “That’s what we’re here for, yeah?”

  “Let’s just pretend like we’re here for a good time.” She leans back, stretching through her back, and puts one arm over the back of my chair. I draw a cigarette out of my clutch, light it, offer it to her. Her gloved and jeweled hand takes it, she draws a long breath from it and lets out a cloud of smoke, her mouth open and lazy. Her foot taps along with the music.

  Her pretending to have a good time looks like the real thing. She could make a living doing anything she put her mind to, but she’s ended up in a place like this for a reason. So have I.

  The place smells of alcohol and sawdust. Nothing is off in the rhythm, waiters and drinks flowing from bar to tables and back, a cigarette girl making the rounds. The card game in the corner is accompanied by a lot of nervous laughter, men pretending like the grand they just lost doesn’t matter while sweat drips onto their collars. If any trouble is going to happen, it’ll come from them, one of the jokers taking issue with another, then tipping over the table and starting a fistfight. The gorilla by the door would have made them leave their guns, so that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about. M and I can take cover easy enough from a fistfight. Bullets, not so much. Being invisible can’t always save you from getting shot in a cross fire.