Feint of Art: (18 page)

It all happened so fast. Just as the Hulk entered the room, Michael stepped out from behind the door and slammed the fragile porcelain onto the back of his head, shattering the vase into a thousand pieces. He followed up with what looked like a karate chop to the neck, a chop that the Hulk blocked with his gun hand while punching Michael in the gut with his other.

Michael grabbed the gun and they wrestled for control, walking in a strange embrace backward into the hallway, before falling to the ground and rolling toward the stairs. Michael was putting up one hell of a fight, but the Hulk outweighed him by at least fifty pounds.

I could not tell what, if anything, Michael’s plan was, but I knew I was being no help at all. I grabbed a large, sharp piece of the broken vase with the idea of stabbing the Hulk with it, but the hallway was so narrow, and the two men were flinging themselves about with such energy, that it was impossible to be sure of landing a good jab without inadvertently wounding Michael. Just as I spied an opening and was moving in for the kill, the men started tumbling down the stairs.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and tried to discern whose grunts were whose. When I opened them again I saw that the men had landed at the bottom, where they continued their deadly duel, thrashing about amid the broken furniture and shattered pottery of the shop. I half ran, half slid down the stairs and looked about frantically for something better than a broken vase with which to attack the Hulk. A big leather book? A tacky watercolor? An evil elf?

The elf statuette lay on the floor near the back window, where Michael had dropped it after smashing the windowpane in what now seemed like far more innocent times.

The elf was bronze. It was heavy. It should work.

I snatched it up and started circling the struggling fighters, trying to time their movements and work up my courage. Finally I took a deep breath and rushed in, swinging the heavy elf around and down somewhat at random.

I might have screamed. I don’t remember.

The evil elf glanced off Michael’s brow on its way to smacking firmly against the Hulk’s crown. Both men went down.

The Hulk stayed down.

Michael crouched on the ground, his rear in the air, groaning and swearing like a drunken sailor. After a moment he rocked back on his knees, pressed the heel of his right hand to an area just above his right eyebrow, and glared at me.

“Jesus Christ, Annie! You
hit
me!”

“I didn’t mean to. Besides, I hit
him
harder,” I said, pointing to the Hulk, who lay unconscious and bleeding on the floor. “Let’s try to see the big picture, shall we?”

Michael did not answer. He also did not look so hot.

“Maybe we should get you to a doctor,” I said uncertainly.

“I don’t need a
doctor,
” he spat. “I need a
drink.
Badly.”

I looked over at the Hulk, who was still motionless, and bit my lower lip anxiously.

“Do you think I killed him?”

The Hulk groaned as if on cue.

“I think that’s a ‘No,’ ” Michael replied. “Let’s go before he comes around.”

We sprinted out the back door into the cool evening air, down a dirt alley to the road beyond, and around the corner. I started toward my truck and skidded to a halt.

It was not there.

Michael gestured toward his Jeep.

“I moved it.”

“You did
what
?”

“I moved your truck. I’ll explain later. Get in the Jeep, Annie.”

“Where is it?” I was furious at his high-handedness. I needed my truck.

“
Get in the goddamn Jeep!
” Michael shouted.

Since we were fleeing a crime scene containing one dead body and one very angry Hulk, my fear overrode my fury, and I decided to worry about the truck later.

“You drive. I’m a mess,” Michael said, tossing me the keys.

We hopped in. My hands were shaking. I tossed the evil elf, which I was still holding, into the backseat.

“What the hell is that?” Michael demanded.

I ignored him until I got the engine started and the lights turned on. “What does it look like? I kind of forgot I was holding it. Besides, it’s evidence. It may have some of the Hulk’s blood, maybe some of your hair and skin and stuff, too.”

“Blech,” he said.

I slammed the Jeep into gear and peeled out, spewing gravel behind us. I heard some sputtering from the passenger seat and looked over to see Michael laughing weakly. The pain from his head wound was probably preventing more energetic guffaws.

“You’ve spent the last how many days looking for fabulously valuable artwork, and you wind up stealing an ugly bronze
elf
?”

“You focus on the strangest things, Johnson,” I responded as we bounced along. Jeeps were not famous for their smooth ride.

I spared Michael a glance. He had stopped laughing and he looked awful. He had an egg-sized bump on his forehead, abrasions on his cheek and chin, and his upper lip was beginning to swell. I, on the other hand, did not have a scratch on me, and I felt a surge of gratitude toward him. Whatever else Michael was, he was not a coward.

I pulled up to the stoplight at the highway and signaled a left turn. I could hardly wait to get home to Oakland, shut the blinds, and crawl under the covers with a heavy tire iron, a shot glass, and a cold bottle of Absolut.

“Take a right,” Michael directed, pushing in the Jeep’s cigarette lighter and pulling a package of wet wipes out of the glove compartment.

“A right? Why? Where are we going? And this is no time to smoke.”

“We’ll go into town, find a place to wash up, and get a drink,” he said quietly. “There’s still the small matter of a dead body. We have to call the cops. Give me your gloves.”

I ground my teeth. I hated it when others were nobler than I. Fine. We would do the right thing. Anyway, there were worse ways to spend a weekend than visiting Napa. Especially when being chased by scary men. I turned right and we headed toward the town of St. Helena.

Once we were under way, Michael helped me to strip off the gloves, then held the red-hot cigarette lighter to the fingertips, filling the Jeep with the toxic stench of burning latex.

“What are you doing?” I yelled, and cranked my window open, blasting us both with the cold evening air.

“Destroying evidence. Fingerprints can be lifted from latex gloves. This should take care of it.” He did the same to his, after which he took out a penknife, ripped the remnants of the gloves into pieces, and threw the shredded bits out the window.

Frankly, his criminal expertise was starting to worry me. Whoever Michael X. Johnson was, he was suspiciously competent when it came to breaking and entering, finding dead bodies, and fleeing from threatening strangers.

“How do you know all this?” I asked him. “And do you always have wet wipes in your glove compartment?”

“I read a lot. And I used to have a slobbery dog. He lives with my sister in Fremont now,” Michael said, then closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the seat.

“I need a drink,” he said after a minute.

“You already said that.”

“It’s still true.”

“I need food,” I said.

“Again?”

“What do you mean, ‘again’? I haven’t eaten since lunch,” I said self-righteously. “You should probably eat something too. As my grandfather says, ‘Starve a cold, feed a flesh wound.’ ”

“Your grandfather sounds fascinating,” he commented dryly.

“You have no idea.”

—Georges LeFleur, “How to Market
Your Forgery,” unfinished manuscript,
Reflections of a World-Class Art Forger

 

Twenty minutes later we were sliding into a padded orange vinyl booth at Tiepolo’s Tavern, a dimly lit hangout favored by the unyuppie set. The X-man was a sorry sight, though I supposed I didn’t look so hot myself. Tripping over dead bodies and beaning Hulks with evil elves had kind of taken the spring out of my step.

Michael winced and sighed as he relaxed into the booth. A young blond waitress in hip-hugger jeans and a cropped T-shirt brought us water and complained about the rude customers. Michael nodded sympathetically as he surveyed the Grand Tetons inside her push-up bra.

She took our order for two vodka martinis, a jumbo serving of extra-hot buffalo wings, and two Tiepolo’s cheeseburgers with fries. The drinks arrived quickly, and disappeared just as fast. We ordered another round.

There was little conversation as Michael and I lost ourselves in our thoughts. When the food arrived I savored the spicy heat of the buffalo wings followed by bites of crisp, cool celery dipped in tart blue cheese dressing. The burgers were served in red plastic baskets, piled high with glistening hot French fries. As if we had done it for years, Michael and I moved with choreographed precision, he seizing the ketchup and squirting, I grabbing the salt and sprinkling. Then we dove in. For several minutes we ate and drank in companionable silence. Michael emptied his basket first and started eyeing mine, but he was plumb out of luck, as I finished every scrap.

I sat back and sighed, feeling more human. Since the second round of martinis had gone down so well, we put in another order. After all, we both needed what my mother used to call “Dutch courage,” which seemed rather unfair to the Dutch, since they were not the only ones who drank to work up their nerve.

“We have to call the cops, remember?” I said. “Just how do we go about this? You seem to be the resident expert.”

“We phone in an anonymous tip.”

“Give me your cell phone,” I said, holding my hand out. My battery was almost out of juice.

“It’s in the Jeep. Use the pay phone.”

“What if the cops trace the call?”

“That kind of thing only happens on television,” he said loftily. “You really should spend more time reading.”

I thought that was rude, even if it was true. I tried again. “Don’t the cops have caller ID on their phones?”

“How should I know?”

“You claim to know they don’t trace calls.”

“Even if they do have caller ID, what difference would it make? It’s a public phone, and we’ll be leaving soon anyway.”

“Should I call it in?” I figured it was high time I started acting like a woman and taking the initiative, even though I could think of a few things I would rather do than call the cops to report a dead body.

Be Agnes Brock’s love slave, for one.

Michael smiled. “Why don’t you just let me take care of it?”

My first reaction was relief. My second was annoyance. Did he have to sound so bloody condescending?

“No, really.
I’ll
do it.” I inched my way out of the booth. “Give me some quarters.”

Michael raised an eyebrow but reached into his pocket and handed me several coins.

I marched across the bar and down a short hallway to the restrooms, where a pay phone hung on the wall between two swinging doors marked COWBUDS and LIL’ FILLIES.

I stared at the phone. Whom should I call? 911? I knew from watching TV that the emergency lines
were
recorded, and I did not want my voice captured on tape for possible criminal prosecution. Plus, it was not an emergency in the strictest sense. Poor Joanne would not be going anywhere, and even though I might go to hell for thinking it, I didn’t care if the Hulk recovered or not.

Fortunately, the number of the non-emergency police line was written in large red letters on the front of the phone, along with the fire department and rescue squad phone numbers.

But exactly what should I say? “Hello, you don’t know me, but I’d like to report a suspicious murder.” Short and sweet. I dropped the quarters in, panicked, and depressed the lever. The coins jingled back out.

A suspicious murder? Was there any other kind? Something that stupid would raise eyebrows on its own, prompting the cops to begin a trace, so they could come and arrest me, even though I was mostly innocent.

I decided to go to the bathroom, because otherwise I might blurt out something incriminating under the pressure to pee. I hurried into the LIL’ FILLIES room, did my business, looked in the mirror, raised my chin, squared my shoulders, and emerged, ready to beard the dragon.

Michael was on the phone. “Good evening, Officer. I should like to report a crime,” he said in an upper-crust British accent.

Now why hadn’t I thought of that? Hadn’t I brought down the house as Eliza Doolittle in the John F. Kennedy Jr. High School production of
My Fair Lady
?

“Officer,” he continued in a voice that sounded as if his mouth was full of mush. “I just saw a man break into the Dusty Attic on Landacre Street. Big chap. Rather ugly. Square head.”

He hung up and smirked. “Got tired of waiting. Now was that so hard?”

I trailed along as he strutted back to our booth.
Big jerk,
I thought resentfully.
What I wouldn’t give to show him a thing or two.

Then I remembered.

When we walked into the tavern, I had spotted an air hockey table in the rear, near the pool tables. Air hockey was the one and only game I excelled at. I was so good, in fact, that when I was in college the occasional weekend tournament had kept me in pocket change.

I tugged on Michael’s shirt and nodded toward the table. He followed my gaze and raised his eyebrows in a silent challenge.

Grabbing my drink, I sauntered over to the table, Michael hot on my heels. I parked my glass on a ledge behind me and took up my post at one end of the table, Michael facing me on the other end.