“I’m hoping you can,” said Lucas, and he extended his hand. “My name is Bob.”
“Charles Lumley.”
They shook hands. Lucas thought, Soft.
“I have a painting,” said Lucas. “It was willed to me from my grandparents. I think it might be valuable, but honestly, I don’t know anything about art.”
“Who is the artist? Do you know?”
“A woman named Emily Meyers. From what I read, she has quite a reputation up in Maine.”
“Emily Meyers, yes,” said Lumley, nodding his head. “I know of her. Lived in Deer Isle, painted scenes of local life up there, fishermen, houses, nets and traps, landscapes, and the like. Mostly worked in oil but there were some watercolors, I believe.”
“This one’s sorta like, you know, a scene of boats dry-docked in the winter. Like a wintry painting...”
“Do you have a photograph of it?”
“No, sorry. I guess I wasn’t prepared to come see you today. I mean, I was in the neighborhood, and I remembered your shop was here. A lady I met told me about it, said you had worked with her before.”
“What lady?”
“Her name was Grace Kinkaid.”
Lumley’s mouth twitched up into a smile. “Grace is lovely.”
“I’m hoping to maybe sell the painting. I like it and all, but I move around a lot. Doesn’t make sense for me to keep it at this point in my life. Trouble is, I have no idea how to go about making the sale.”
“Well, I could help you,” said Lumley. “What I’d need from you first are good clear photos of the front and back of the painting, size specs, and any interesting facts you can dig up regarding the personal relationship between your grandparents and the artist, if there was any such relationship. Gallery owners call this provenance. Of course, I’d have to see the painting myself, inspect it for authenticity.”
“Okay...”
“Then I would appraise it for you, based on my experience and research. If you decided to go forward and attempt to make a sale, we would come to an agreement on a commission, and I’d get to work. I’d determine which geographic area was most relevant to the artist, and then I’d e-mail my network of galleries and collectors in that area with a brief description of the painting, along with photos.”
“That’d be there in the Northeast, I guess,” said Lucas, giving it his aw-shucks best. “Maine and all.”
“New York to Maine, yes. Many well-off New Yorkers summer up in the Penobscot Bay area. They like to acquire the local art.”
“This has been real helpful,” said Lucas. “I’m completely in the dark when it comes to all this.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” said Lumley cheerfully. “Hold on one second. Let me check on something before you go.”
Lumley sat back down at his desk, pulled his laptop toward him, used his keyboard and mouse to search and scroll. Lucas watched his face go from eagerness to disappointment.
“I checked on some recent sales of Ms. Meyers’s work. She is a talented artist. Was... She died in 2003 — ninety-nine years old. But I have to tell you, in relative terms, her paintings are not very valuable.”
“How not very?” said Lucas.
“Recent sales of her landscape oils have gone for between a thousand and fifteen hundred dollars.”
“That’s real money to me.”
“But not to me, unfortunately. To be honest with you, it wouldn’t be worth my time to represent you. However, I think I’ve given you enough information today to get you started on your own.”
“You have. I appreciate it, too.”
Lucas reached across the desk and once again shook Lumley’s hand.
“I’ll have to thank Grace for the referral,” said Lumley. “Even though it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah, Grace seems like cool people.”
“Where did you say you met her?”
“Didn’t say. It was at Cashion’s. I was at the bar and we struck up a conversation. She was with a blond-haired guy. I remember him because he seemed a little jealous that she was talking to me. Anyway, I heard her talking about a painting she owned, how she’d just gotten it appraised. I asked her who she’d worked with. That’s how I got your name.”
Lucas detected the flicker in Lumley’s eyes. “I see.”
“So long,” said Lucas. “Thanks again.”
“I didn’t get your last name, Bob,” said Lumley, to Lucas’s back, but Lucas kept going and went out the door.
He walked down to the corner at R and approached a bicycle messenger who was wearing a knit hat over his dreads. Lucas had caught him in a rare moment of rest. He asked the guy to ride his bike by Lumley’s shop, take a look inside, and tell him what Lumley was doing. He told him there’d be something in it for him when he returned.
The bike messenger did a quick recon and wheeled back to Lucas.
“He’s on the phone.”
“Cell or landline?” said Lucas, checking the messenger for verisimilitude.
“Landline.”
“Thanks, brother.” Lucas gave him a ten and the messenger sped off.
Grace Kinkaid said that she had never discussed her painting with Billy Hunter. This meant that he had gotten the information about its value from someone else. The logical conduit would have been Charles Lumley. Lumley, most likely, had an arrangement with Hunter. Lumley would identify the paintings first, contact Hunter, and Hunter would move in on his prey. If Lumley was in business with Hunter, he would now phone him and tell him that a young guy had just dropped his description in the shop. He’d tell him that the guy had claimed they’d met in Cashion’s, and Hunter would know that they hadn’t met, that it was a bullshit story, and that the young guy was not a bumpkin trying to sell a painting, but some sort of private heat hired by Grace Kinkaid.
Lucas wanted Hunter, or whatever his name was, to know that someone was looking for him. He wanted to draw him out. Either him or, if he came to ground first, Grant Summers.
Lucas knew this was reckless, but he felt he had no other way to get to them and complete the job. He had decided to be aggressive. He was tired of fucking around.
Back in his apartment, he phoned Grace Kinkaid and warned her that he’d probably exposed her in some way. She seemed unconcerned. She’d had the locks changed on her condo and always parked her car in the building’s indoor garage. She felt that Billy Hunter would never reappear in her life. Grace thanked Lucas for the courtesy call and wished him luck in retrieving the painting.
All she’s been through, thought Lucas, and she’s still got a spine.
He checked his laptop and saw nothing from Summers. He then called Charlotte, not expecting her to pick up, and left a message telling her that he missed her.
He tried to get some reading done, but he couldn’t focus. He didn’t want to smoke any weed or drink alcohol, because he wasn’t ready to relax. Lucas got back on the laptop and wrote Summers another message.
All right, Mr. Summers. As you know, you own the exact Mini I am looking for because of the year, color, features, etc. It’s for my wife, and there can be no substitute. In other words, as much as I hate to admit it, you are dealing from a position of strength. So I am prepared to up my offer, but this will be my final offer. I will pay you $12,000 for the car, cash, provided it is in mint condition as described in your original ad, subject to my inspection before we make the deal. I realize it is difficult for you to leave base, so perhaps you can send someone down to the Washington area with the car as your representative. They or you should bring a clear title and two sets of keys so we can complete the deal on-site. Please give me the courtesy of a reply.