“Is this lady your wife?” Viv asked.
“Yeah, my wife,” Jonas said, but amended it. “Well, we’re not officially married, but now that our baby’s here, we’re gonna take care of that.”
Jonas Claymore could not have known that he had exactly the right officer from Hollywood Station at this time to be telling about an infant in need, and Viv Daley said to Megan, “Who’s taking care of your sick baby?”
Megan Burke’s pain threshold had been reached, and she turned her welling eyes to the cop and said, “My… my mom!” And the tears spilled down her face.
“Okay,” Viv said, handing Jonas Claymore’s license and registration back to him. “Make complete stops. You don’t want your baby growing up an orphan.”
“God bless you, Officer,” Jonas said.
When Viv and Georgie got back in the car, he said, “They looked like tweakers.”
“Gypsy, you’re a cynic,” Viv said.
“Didn’t they look like dopers to you?”
“They certainly did,” she said.
“So why’d you kick them?”
“I thought maybe they were telling the truth about a sick baby at home.”
Georgie Adams didn’t say any more about it. They didn’t talk about infants in need.
After Jonas started driving again, he said, “That was fucking fantastic the way you turned on the water! You even had me believing it.”
“I wasn’t acting, Jonas,” Megan said. “I’m hurting.”
“You gotta man-up,” Jonas said. “We got work to do.”
“I can’t,” Megan said. “I feel like I’m dying.”
He looked at her closely then and pulled to the side of the road. He said, “As soon as we get a stake, you’re going to rehab. Here, get your watsons on.” And he reached in the pocket of his jeans and took out two Vicodins that he’d been keeping for an emergency. She snatched them from his hand, popped them in her mouth, and chewed them up.
Nigel had the poster-board photograph of The Woman by the Water nailed snugly in place, and it fit even more perfectly than he had hoped. He lifted the baroque frame under the floodlight and said, “I am a genius!”
“I’ll try to always remember that,” Raleigh said.
Nigel carefully hung the frame with the poster-board impostor in it, stood back, adjusted it on its hanger, stood back again, and said, “Could you tell the difference between this and the original under normal lighting? That is, if you were someone who seldom studied this piece or any of the other art that you own? Simply put, if you were silly Leona Brueger or her idiot boyfriend?”
“I have to say, you did a great job,” Raleigh said grudgingly.
“Okay, now we do the second one and we’re finished,” Nigel said. “Could you get me another glass of that refreshing Vichy water?”
Nigel carefully covered The Woman by the Water canvas with the mover’s blanket and tore off strips of masking tape to secure the corners of the folds while Raleigh refilled Nigel’s glass with tap water and a few ice cubes.
When Raleigh brought the water back, he didn’t see that Nigel had moved one of the paintings. Flowers on the Hillside was leaning against the opposite wall, and when Raleigh stepped around the light stand, he accidentally kicked it and it fell over.
“Goddamnit!” Nigel screamed. “You clumsy fool!”
“I’m sorry,” Raleigh said. “I didn’t see it. You moved it.”
“Bugger all!” Nigel said, as he ran to the painting and picked it up, examining it under the floodlight.
“It fell on the back of the canvas,” Raleigh said. “I didn’t hurt it.”
Nigel took deep breaths to calm himself and said, “All right.” Then he took the water tumbler from Raleigh and drank.
When he put the tumbler down, he said, “We’re bundling this piece now before you destroy it. Help me.”
Raleigh spread the mover’s blankets on the tile floor, and each painting was wrapped separately in a blanket and secured with duct tape.
When they were finished, Raleigh said, “I’m getting these paintings into your van before something else happens to make you have a fucking stroke like Marty Brueger.”
Nigel saw that Raleigh’s waning diffidence had morphed into mounting anger, and he was about to say, “No, I’ll do it,” but instead he said, “Okay, I’m sorry I blew up. Yes, take them to my van, but be as careful as you have ever been in your life. Lay them down on the floor of the van, near the rear door. I’ll secure them in place when we finish here.”
Raleigh picked up the blanketed bundles and started for the door, when Nigel said, “Wait a minute. You’ll need the keys.” He felt his pocket and said, “I must’ve left them in the van.” Then he began to fit the poster-board photograph of Flowers on the Hillside into the smaller gilded frame, having to make more adjustments before getting it shimmed snugly into place.
When Raleigh got outside, carrying a bundle under each arm, there was not much left of twilight. Darkness was falling fast on the Hollywood Hills. He had to lean both bundles against the front fender of the van in order to open the door. After he got it open, he picked up each bundle separately and crawled into the van twice, placing each painting on the floor, neither bundle touching the other.
When he was finished, he closed the van door and heard the phone ring. He thought, Mrs. Brueger!
Raleigh ran into the house, raced across the foyer to the wall phone, picked it up, and said “Hello?”
A voice said, “Hi. My name is Amber. May I please speak to the lady of the house?”
Raleigh said, “She’s on the floor right now,” and hung up. He looked at his watch and saw that it would be almost dawn in Tuscany. His nerves. His goddamn nerves were shredded.
There wasn’t enough daylight left for Jonas Claymore to see clearly from his vantage point, peeking over the wall between two junipers. Jonas whispered to Megan, “What’s up with that? Did you check out how careful he put that stuff in the van?”
Megan could make out the lettering on the side of the van and whispered, “Wickland Gallery. It’s gotta be art or something.”
Jonas said, “Whatever it is, it’s gonna belong to us in about two minutes.”
“You’re going down there?” she said.
“Yeah, go start the engine. When I come over the wall be ready to move.”
“They looked like pretty big things he was carrying,” she said. “Whatever it was might not fit in the VW.”
“We’ll make it fit,” he said, and in a few seconds he had squeezed between the junipers and pulled himself up and over the wall.
Jonas scrambled down the little hill that was planted with ivy to hold the soil. In a moment he was creeping along the cobbled driveway. When he got to the side of the cargo van, he grabbed the handle, opening the door as quietly as he could. He peered inside, and even in the darkening shadows he could see that Megan was right. The two bundles were too large to fit in the VW. He crawled inside and lifted one and saw that it was not heavy. He guessed that they were paintings. He thought that in a house like this they must be valuable. Maybe worth five grand, maybe even more. But they were too big to transport in the VW bug.
He was feeling frustration overload and crawled out of the van quietly, ready to scurry back to safety. But while standing outside the van, the tall young man saw that just above eye level on the roof of the van was a ring of keys, where Nigel had put them. He closed the van door quietly and grabbed them, easily locating the ignition key.
Inside the Brueger house, Nigel Wickland was so overjoyed, he was actually whistling softly, and he just about had the smaller Impressionist painting shimmed into place inside the gilded frame.
Nigel said, “Raleigh, hand me that small screwdriver from my toolbox. The one under the-”
“Shut up!” Raleigh said. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Nigel asked.
“It’s a car engine,” Raleigh said. “It’s your van!”