“You’re talking like a wack job,” Raleigh said. “Whadda you mean, no harm?” Realizing that his diction was slipping, Raleigh lowered his voice and said, “You’re talking about entering her house and stealing her paintings!”
“She’s an ignorant arriviste, like most of my clients,” Nigel retorted. “She cares nothing about Sammy Brueger’s art or any art. She told me that she wouldn’t mind if the house burned to the ground with all the paintings in it. Everything is insured to the hilt.”
“And what the hell happens to me when she figures it all out and calls the police?”
“She won’t figure it out, Raleigh,” Nigel Wickland said. “She’s culturally ignorant. She barely looks at any of her art, and I can promise you that only a close inspection by an expert could detect the switch. That may happen a few years from now when she bothers to take the paintings from the storage facility where they’re going. She’s told me they’ll all be stored when she moves away from the house, and I guarantee you that’s where they’ll stay for a very long time because she doesn’t care about any of them. In fact, she’s commissioning me to box each piece and personally supervise the trucking transfer to her preferred storage facility.”
“Hellooo!” Raleigh said. “So what happens when she does get around to collecting them and maybe putting them up for auction with some art dealer like you? Somebody’ll spot the switch for sure!”
“That’s the beauty of my idea,” Nigel Wickland said. “After they’re crated and ready to leave Casa Brueger, I’m going to make sure that the crate containing the switched paintings is a different manufacture from all the other crates, and that the crate shows subtle signs of having been tampered with. The people who transfer these things are just ordinary truckers who will notice nothing. When the switch is finally discovered years from now, the theft will be blamed on someone who works at, or has access to, the storage facility. Leona will collect from the insurance policy and nobody will be harmed except for the insurer, and when has anyone felt sorry for insurance carriers? It’s foolproof, Raleigh.”
Raleigh was silent for a moment and then said, “How much money could the paintings bring? Realistically.”
“They could be sold easily in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Bern, or even Berlin. I’ve personally contacted a discreet European auctioneer who believes he can get at least six hundred thousand U.S. dollars for The Woman by the Water. The other piece of Impressionist art that I have my eye on is called Flowers on the Hillside, and he assured me that it should bring an equal amount. Raleigh, you and I will be dividing at least a million dollars after expenses. Tax-free! No more tending to dotty old men for you. And enough money for me that I can perhaps keep my gallery open until this goddamn recession ends. Plus there’s a special bonus for me in that these two wonderful pieces of art will end up with someone who truly appreciates them and not with some vulgarians in the Hollywood Hills.”
“Half a million,” Raleigh said, and the sound of it brought a catch in his throat. When he spoke again he said, “When did you find out about me, Nigel?”
“Find out what?”
“That I’m an ex-convict. Someone who might seriously listen to your ‘foolproof plan’?”
“The first night we met,” Nigel Wickland admitted. “When you were gone to the gents, Julius Hampton talked about you. He said that you’d had a bit of difficulty with the law and had been in prison. You see, Raleigh, he had a background investigation done by a private investigator when he hired you. Perhaps you didn’t know that.”
Raleigh was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, “Nobody accepts an ex-con at face value. They all have to dig, and distrust you, and pay you less than they’d pay somebody who’s ten times worse but never got caught. Someone who’s done lots worse things than not paying enough of the taxes that the government gouges you with.”
“I know how ex-convicts get shat on,” Nigel Wickland said, putting his manicured fingers on the back of Raleigh’s hand and patting sympathetically. “So yes, I confess that I did think you might be more amenable to my idea than the average person would be. But I could also see immediately that you were a man with imagination and ambition.”
“Now you’re going too far, Nigel,” Raleigh said. “Quit while you’re ahead.”
“You look a bit peaky,” Nigel Wickland said, eyes widening. “Are you in, then?”
“If this goes sideways and I get busted, I’m ratting you out to the police and making the best deal I can for myself,” Raleigh Dibble warned. “You better understand that up front.”
“Fair enough,” said Nigel Wickland. “I’m not worried, Raleigh. Not at all.”
“You will be if you end up inside with lots of other guys who had foolproof plans,” Raleigh said. “And state prison, where we’ll go, is a lot worse than Club Fed, where I did my time. In a state lockup you’ll learn to sleep on your back with one eye open.” Looking at Nigel Wickland, he added, “But maybe you’re not so scared of that part.”
“That was unnecessary, Raleigh,” Nigel Wickland said. “Homophobic humor is beneath you.”
TEN
Up, up. get the fuck up!” Jonas Claymore said to Megan Burke, who had been awake most of the night, vomiting.
It was 10:30 A.M. and she was exhausted, and still suffering from withdrawal aches even though Jonas had taken the last $100 from his checking account and bought them half an ox. They divided and smoked it late in the evening after dining on a Fatburger that neither of them really wanted.
“I don’t feel well,” Megan said, lying on the double bed they shared, her makeup from last night smeared all over her face.
She looked like a blow-up doll that somebody had let the air out of, he thought. She looked like the corpse in one of those slasher movies, where the guy with the knife likes to paint their dead faces. Jesus! How did he get himself into this relationship?
“We gotta do some work today,” he said. “We’re dead broke.”
Megan dragged herself into a sitting position, feet on the floor, and said, “I’ll get another waitress job as soon as I feel better.”
“Don’t try to clown me,” he said. “You ain’t gonna feel better till you stop jonesing. And you ain’t gonna stop jonesing till you give up the beans and norcos and perks. Because you can’t handle any of it.”
She yawned twice and said, “And you can, I suppose.”
“I’m a recreational user,” Jonas said. “I know my limits. But you? You’re all smoked out.”
“Sure,” Megan said, shuffling across the bedroom to the bathroom. She sat down and continued, “You’re always in control, aren’t you?”
“That’s disgusting,” Jonas said. “Can’t you close the door when you piss?”
She answered by slamming the door without getting off the toilet. Then she said, “You’re the one that got fired. Get mad at yourself, not at me.”
“I didn’t get fired. I quit.”
Megan didn’t answer. She was nauseated and started dry heaving.
“Why can’t I catch a break?” Jonas said to her impassive calico cat.
Then he dressed in a Warner Bros. sweatshirt that he thought made him look like a studio employee, along with relatively clean jeans and tennis shoes.
When Megan started to dress in another T-shirt and shorts, he said, “Why can’t you call one of your old cock-blocking roommates and borrow some share wear? And for chrissake, brush the moss off your teeth. Any more, it’ll look like you invented a tooth sweater.”
By noon on a hot Los Angeles day, they were cruising in Jonas’s fifteen-year-old VW bug in the Birds, those streets on the western side of the Hollywood Hills named for feathered friends, like Nightingale, Robin, and Oriole.