Buy Back (27 page)

His eyes darted toward the catering people.

“Call your wife, Timbo, and have her bring the paintings right away. We’ll switch them out.”

His eyeballs were swimming in tears, and they dripped off his careful little mustache onto his jacket. He stepped close to me, one hand still on the wall. “I only did it to save my job. It was just when she was in trouble with Rosenburg last year, and I figured, well, I figured if two of his paintings went missing from storage just before they were to be hung in the new wing, that she lost his paintings, well, McCracken would lose her job, I’d keep mine. A man has a right to his job. I work hard. I know I’m not the best at what I do, I know that, but…”

“I understand, Atkins. That’s why I’m here to help. Tell me something. What did you think when you saw these two paintings suddenly appear here?”

Atkins sniffed deeply, trying to compose himself. “Forgeries, plain and simple.”

“Did she suspect you took the originals? Did you mention this to anybody?”

His head vibrated, shaking his chin “no” very rapidly. “It was my ace in the hole. If she put the screws to me, I’d blow the lid on those two paintings with Rosenburg. Never came to that. A man has a right to his job.”

I smiled at the two paintings, then at Atkins. “Don’t worry about it, Timbo. You’ll still have your ace in the hole. Just get the paintings here. Only put them in storage. That way you don’t have them, the museum does, and the forgeries are still on the wall. How would McCracken explain that?”

Tears clung to his waxed mustache, but a laugh and some drool burst from his lips. “Ha, yes, well … ha!”

I let my friendly deportment fade. “I need something in return for helping you.”

His eyes widened. In the last sixty seconds he’d gone from weepy to laughing and now to terror. “What?”

“You were here Sunday night when the paintings were stolen. Why did you have a meeting with the guards at the time that you did? Did you steal them?”

Now he looked aghast. Aghast means insulted, but also sort of disgusted.

“Tommy, I did not steal any paintings. I wouldn’t have worked that night if McCracken weren’t here. Whenever she’s here late I get a call and do a spot inspection. Makes me look good. She can’t fire me if I’m diligent, can she?”

“Let me get this straight. She stays late, or in this case shows up at three in the morning, and you automatically show up, do a spot inspection, call a meeting of the guards?”

“I’m sure she knew I only did the spot inspections when she was here, but what could she say? I got the call at two in the morning that she had showed up after a dinner party to collect some files to work on at home for tonight’s event. So I raced in to do an inspection.”

I smiled. McCracken showed up for the very purpose of having Atkins show up and pull the guards. “Call your wife; get those paintings here as soon as possible. Call me when they’re here.”

Atkins scurried from the room.

I took one of my business cards and wrote on the back:

I went outside and asked around among the limo drivers. I found the one who drove Lee J. Rosenburg and handed him the card for delivery. Now all I had to do was wait for the paintings to arrive, so I crossed the boulevard and found a deli. I walked out with a cup of coffee, and my phone vibrated.

“Bridget?”

“I just got a threatening call.” Her tone was flat.

“What did they say?”

“That they knew you were staying here, and that they’d kill you and me.”

“That all?”

“Yes … Tommy, I need to get out of here, but I don’t know how. I’m trapped, and they know where I live.”

I wondered how Jimmy Robay found out I was staying with Bridget. Blaise? Not Carol.

“Stay put. I’ll come by in a car service. I’ll take a look around, and then call you to come down and jump in if it’s safe, OK?”

I hailed a town car, and it was a Blue Diamond. I told him to take me to Bond and Union.

“Driver, were you working last Sunday?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Did you pick up anybody at Donut House and take them to the Williamsburg Savings Bank?”

His dark eyes met mine in the mirror. “Boss, how you know this?”

I sat forward. “So you did pick up someone from Donut House on Sunday?”

“Yes! How you know this?”

“You drove this person to the Williamsburg Savings Bank Building, early, say nine o’clock or ten?”

“Please, how does boss know this?”

“All I knew was that a Blue Diamond driver picked this person up. I’ll give you twenty dollars if you tell me everything that happened, what the person looked like, everything.”

“It was a woman, in an orange hat and scarf. Not tall, not big, normal. An American, white.”

“Hair?”

“Yes, I think so.”

I sighed. “What color? Black?”

“I don’t know, boss. The hat is what I saw.”

“Did she talk on the phone, make any calls?”

“Yes, she was talking with someone named Jimmy. I remember because my name is Jimi. I am from Pakistan.”

“What did they talk about?”

“Hmm. I don’t know. I think maybe about paint.”

“Paint? Or paintings?”

“I am not sure, boss.”

“Would you know her if you saw her?”

“It is maybe yes.”

We came to a light, and I showed him the picture of McCracken on my phone.

His head bobbled. “No, boss, I not remember this person.”

“Why?”

He made a gesture with his hands indicating big tits.

“The one you drove, not big tits?”

“No, I did not see.”

My phone vibrated.

“Davin? It’s Detective Doh. This is his place, alright.”

“How are the cats?”

“Tearing the place apart.”

I smiled. That meant they were healthy.

Doh continued. “The Holiday Inn people aren’t happy about the damage.”

“You can throw some extra charges onto the indictment. Catnapping, destruction of property. You arraigning him tonight?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He isn’t here.”

“Where is he?”

“If I knew I would be there instead of here. Gustav’s still on the loose, and there’s another love letter.”

“Were the others translated?”

“Uh huhn. Love letters to your girlfriend. They mention you, too, Davin. He calls you an oaf.”

“An oaf?”

“That’s a big fat person.”

“I know what oaf means.”

“I don’t have to read this latest letter to know that he’s out to get you. He has a weapon, too. Must have bagged it out in Coney from the Russians. Soviet made. The assembly instructions are here on the table. Not really a gun. Somebody here says it looks like an automatic grenade launcher.”

“Are you telling me that I should be careful?”

“I’m telling you not to go anywhere or do anything until we find Gustav. Stay low. I don’t care about you, Davin, so much as I worry about Brooklyn and innocent people when this idiot starts firing this missile launcher out in the open. I don’t read Russian, so I don’t know exactly what this thing can do, but a lot of people could get hurt if he finds you in a public place. We have people on your apartment, all over the Smith Street area. He can’t be that hard to find. There’s empty boxes of medical tape and gauze all over the place here. He must have white bandages covering most of his face.”

“I’ll stay as low as I can.”

“Make it lower.” He hung up.

I instructed the driver to pass the green loft slowly three times before we pulled up in front. I rang Bridget. Just a few people walking their dogs on the street.

“Coast is clear. I’m out front.”

I looked at the time and hoped Atkins’s wife, Jan, was close to the museum with those paintings. The museum gala for the board wouldn’t last all night. Atkins would need that distraction to make good on tucking the Mondrians into storage.

The car door opened, and Bridget climbed in next to me.

Jimmy Robay climbed in after her. “Driver, to the scrap yard.”

The car lurched forward, and the driver said, “Boss!”

I looked at Bridget and Robay. “What’s what?”

Robay just smiled like he had a seed stuck in his teeth, and Bridget tried to look anywhere but at me.

“Boss! This is the one.”

I locked eyes with Bridget, then with the driver in the rearview.

“I tell you, boss. This is the one I pick up on Sunday, the one at the Donut House.”

Bridget was in her red beret and scarf.

I looked out the rear window. There was a car following right on our bumper.

“Sit tight, Davin.” Robay smirked.

My stomach felt like it was full of gravel.

Bridget was Ms. French.

Bridget was Molly Lee.

“SO LET ME GET THIS
straight, Jimmy.” The dull night glow of industrial Brooklyn out the window was quiet as a cemetery. The town car passed under the subway trestle. The scrap yard was ahead on the left, the Gowanus Expressway twinkling in the sky beyond it.

“McCracken was in a jam and had read about Dunwoody Exports in the news, knew they reproduced paintings and were shady. She came to Molly Lee here to replace two missing Mondrians with fakes. Molly helps her, but then you put the squeeze on McCracken, the way the mob does, and threaten to expose the fakes on the wall unless she continues to do business with you. Or maybe McCracken isn’t so innocent, and it was a business deal for McCracken to make ends meet at the museum. Doesn’t matter. Same difference. McCracken was feeding you guys the occasional art from museum storage while trying to hold on to the collection and not dig her own grave. Or in the case of the four Henris that were stolen through the roof hatch, McCracken grabbed three to sell to Molly and said all seven were stolen.

“Molly here is under the radar after last year’s publicity over Dunwoody. She’s gone back to her previous profession—not too much of a stretch to think anybody who ran massage parlors knew the business from the ground up. She does this to make ends meet until the next scam, or until this one is over, meanwhile speculating on industrial property waiting for zoning changes. Along comes Huey, a customer at the green loft, who spills the beans about his Whitbread heist. So Bridget hijacks the heist to get at some of the Whitbread’s main collection, the good stuff on display, not just the art in storage, so you call Sheila. McCracken shows up to make Atkins pull the guards, and she goes into the closet and just brings them to you. A lot safer than letting the goofballs take them. Huey gets the payoff from you at Billy Bank, puts it in storage, but Bridget filches the key when he drops by for some afternoon delight. Then Huey gets killed. It looks like a pattern with Jo-Ball’s death, and I’m the common factor, so I must be at the center of it. So you both got close to me to see what I was up to. Kootie and Frank panic and look unreliable, so you paid them off to bring them close and then sent guys to tweak them once you had them tagged. They knew the paintings never left the museum.”

They didn’t say anything.

They didn’t have to. I was really just laying it out for myself, so I could understand it, finally. If I was wrong about any of it, I was sure they wouldn’t have told me. Why would they? Didn’t matter to them anyway. I was on a ride to a necktie party.

Necktie party? That’s dark humor. The necktie is a noose. That’s figurative, which means that I didn’t think they meant to hang me, just kill me.

“Then realizing I’m a loose cannon, Bridget contacts me and brings me in close to where she can keep an eye on me. Even has me move in with her. Then the fake letter from Ariel, the call about being in danger. Cute.”

Bridget kept her eyes down but whispered, “You had to be a good guy, didn’t you? Like your dad. Which is how you’ll end up.”

Neither of them would look at me. Robay seemed tense but confident. Bridget Molly Lee French had her arms folded. Hell with it: I’m going back to calling her Bridget. Bridget didn’t want to be there, to be an accessory to murder, but I could see why Jimmy would want her there. If he was going to tweak me, she would have to be there, too, to make it one big happy conspiracy, nobody tells on nobody. Robay was there to make sure Eye Bags didn’t let me get away. Like a good businessman, Jimmy was there to oversee the completion of a crucial detail personally. I thought briefly about trying to appeal to his business side, but he was no dummy. Once you take a guy for a ride, there’s no letting him go, it’s a done deal.

Gab wouldn’t get me out of this. I was going to have to find a mousehole to squeeze through. Where I’d find that hole I didn’t have any idea; I’d just have to play it by ear. Which sucked.

Ahead the giant grabbers were lit by spotlights, motionless, their giant claws resting on mountains of shredded rusty steel ten stories high.

Monday night I had come down to meditate at the scrap yard, the night I found the cats gone. I had seen Gustav that night for the first time. He could have killed me right there, but he was just tracking me, hoping I would lead him to Yvette.

Monday. The scrap yard was karmic, the circle of life, a whole of parts, destruction and renewal, positive energy.

Friday. The grabbers eyed me from the heaps, executioners, negative energy.

I was probably going to be fed to one of these monsters, my body buried under ten thousand tons of rusty metal for a trip to a smelting plant in China. The flies and maggots would have a leisurely time taking my body apart over that long sea voyage.

My situation was transformative, and I was forcing myself not to experience anxiety that would obstruct the flow of energy. My ace in the hole was my strength and size. Of course, like I said, a gun can trump that card.

“Pull up at the scrap yard gate.” Jimmy patted the driver on the shoulder and handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “You never saw me, you never saw her, you never saw him.”

“Yes, boss.”

“I ever hear or see of you again and you die, but first you watch your family die. Got it?”

The poor little Pakistani driver was trembling so violently that he couldn’t even answer.

At the gate, I found Eye Bags was standing at my door, wearing one of those foam neck braces. He flashed a gun, then held it back under his coat.