“A chick your age should be able to bounce back,” he said. “You oughtta take better care of yourself. Do some workouts once in a while. We gotta get some cash to tide us over. When was the last time you called your mom?”
“Maybe a month,” she said.
“Go take a shower,” he said. “Clear your head. Think about asking your mom to give us another loan. Tell her you’ll pay her back with a high rate of interest.”
Megan got painfully out of bed, walked to the little bathroom, and said, “Sure. My mom’s gonna believe I’ll pay her back. Like she believes in honest lawyers and leprechauns.”
“We’re gonna cruise today,” Jonas said. “Nothing serious yet. Just cruising and casing. We ain’t making the same mistakes the Bling Ring made. We’ll make sure we know what’s what before we ever set foot on anybody’s property, unless we spot some easy pickings like we did the last time. Then we go for it.”
Megan sat down on the toilet and said, “How easy was it last time, Jonas? You’ve been flat on your back for days.” And she slammed the bathroom door before he could whine about hearing her pee.
At 12:30 P.M., Raleigh Dibble was sitting in the kitchen of the Brueger home, waiting and clock-watching. He’d done every chore he could think of. He tried to consider every way that Nigel Wickland’s plan could go wrong, but whenever he did, he thought of what it would be like to stroll into a bank and put half a million into a safe-deposit box and some mad money into his checking account. But why did it have to be only half a million? Nigel had told him that his European auctioneer claimed that a million was the least they would get in today’s market for the two Impressionist works. Maybe they’d get 1.2 million. Maybe 1.5 million! Or maybe it was crazy to aim for the stars at his age. But since this was all about art, why not dip the brush of imagination into the colors of fantasy and boldly paint a portrait of a future life? Then again, isn’t that what people who end up looking at the stars through steel bars and chain-link did? Right before somebody pisses all over their palette?
When the phone gave two brief rings, indicating someone was at the gate, Raleigh jumped from the kitchen chair. He looked at his watch and saw it was 12:50. Not precisely 1 P.M., but he was glad Nigel was early. His hands were shaking when he picked up the receiver and said, “Yes?”
“It’s me,” Nigel said.
Raleigh pressed the key to open the electric gate and went to the door. Nigel pulled into the faux-cobblestone driveway in his Chevrolet cargo van and made the circle, parking by the entrance door. Raleigh stepped out and walked to the driveway as Nigel got out. They were both too nervous to even think about shaking hands. Nigel opened the side door of the cargo van.
Raleigh looked at “Wickland Gallery” on the side of the van and said, “I’m surprised you brought your own wheels, Nigel. A man as careful as you.”
“I had no bloody choice,” he said. “I told Ruth that our van needs a tune-up and I asked her to bring her brother’s truck to work today. She said she would, but then she called in sick. Believe me, I don’t want some nosy neighbor asking Leona what the Wickland Gallery was doing at her house while she was gone. But I didn’t think your frayed nerves would withstand a postponement, so here we are. Now that I look around more carefully at this place, there’s no need to be worrying about nosy neighbors.”
Just like him, Raleigh thought. He fucks up and covers by blaming it on my nerves.
Of all the things that Raleigh did have to worry about, he figured the Wickland Gallery van was the least of it. The Bruegers’ mini-estate was secluded by many olive, lemon, and orange trees, and especially by the wall of junipers planted both inside and outside the encircling five-foot wall. He doubted if anyone would notice or even see the van when it entered.
“Help me unload the equipment, will you?” Nigel said.
For the next few minutes, they carried into the house a tripod, two floodlights on lightweight stands, and two umbrella reflectors. Nigel carried the Canon 350 digital camera that he believed was simple enough for him to handle.
The moment they were inside, Raleigh began worrying about Marty Brueger. He ran to the French doors and looked out at the cottage to make sure the old man was inside and not strolling in the garden.
Nigel was trying to take careful measurements of both canvases and he said, “For god’s sake, Raleigh, can’t you relax a bit and help me?”
Suddenly Raleigh’s nerves began to crack, and he said, “How much practice did you do, Nigel?”
“I’ve been practicing nearly every day for two weeks,” Nigel said. “My friend at the lab and I both made different mistakes, but eventually we learned from those mistakes. The last few times I photographed a painting of similar size, it turned out perfectly.”
“Did you use the same camera?” Raleigh wanted to know.
“Yes, and the same goddamn tripod and the same lights. Now please close the drapes and stop fretting. You’re making me nervous.”
It was the first time that Raleigh had ever closed the heavy drapes in that part of the house and he was surprised how dark the great room and corridor became. Then he realized that the drapes were lined with blackout material because the Bruegers used to show movies in that room. There was a screen that lowered from the ceiling at the touch of a button.
Nigel pulled two pairs of latex gloves from his pocket and said, “Put these on. I don’t want our fingerprints on these pieces.”
“Why do we need to worry?” Raleigh asked. “According to you, they’re not even going to notice anything for months. And the moving guys will be handling the pictures, won’t they? Their prints will be all over them.”
“Just do it, Raleigh,” Nigel said. “Why do we have to debate everything?”
Raleigh pulled on the latex gloves and said, “I thought there was no risk here.”
“All the so-called art lovers in this town hang their pictures too high,” Nigel complained as he set up his umbrella lights. “These baroque gilded frames are just what I’d have expected from Sammy Brueger and his ilk.”
Raleigh thought the frames looked okay. And who gave a shit about the frames anyway? He couldn’t stop himself from checking his watch obsessively.
It took Nigel Wickland nearly an hour to carefully remove both canvases from their frames and rehang them from little wires that he carefully stapled to the stretcher bars.
Then Nigel said, “Get me something steady to stand on. A small stepladder, perhaps.”
Raleigh ran to the laundry room and came back with a six-foot ladder, opened it, and placed it behind Nigel. And trying to be helpful, Raleigh turned on the lights over both paintings.
“No, no!” Nigel said petulantly. “We must have the painting lights off.”
After he sulked for a moment, Raleigh said, “I don’t know anything about photography. Will these be developed as slides or what?”
“Digital photos, just as I told you before,” Nigel said. “The lab will download them onto a computer and blow them up to any size we want. And thanks to my trial-and-error rehearsals during the last two weeks, I know precisely how large I want them.”
There he goes again, Raleigh thought. Precisely.
Nigel put the ladder where he wanted it and placed the umbrella lights at each side of the largest painting, The Woman by the Water, which looked to Raleigh to be almost four feet tall and nearly five feet wide.
Nigel stood on the first step of the ladder and said, “Move that light a bit to the left. They must be level with the painting.”
Raleigh did as he was told and Nigel said, “That’s too much. Come back half an inch. There. That’s good. Now do the same with the other one. I’ve got to make sure to line it up so that there’s no perspective.”
“Okay, just get it done!” Raleigh said.
Still looking through the viewfinder, Nigel said, “And I must get the piece as big as I can get it within the frame.”