The Bubble Gum Thief (22 page)

“Coleman’s really that bad?” Victor asked.

“That wasn’t even at Coleman, but it’s all the same. And bad? That was a
good
day. That was the best day I ever had. Not just one time, either. That day, I had hundreds of times. But that’s still not a normal day. Most days don’t go smooth like that. If every day were like that one, though, don’t think I’d be where I am right now. Have I told you enough? Birdy and Loo killed Rex the next
morning. And Reed? He was spread down by Skinhead Fred later that night, treated like a woman.”

Since she wasn’t there to learn about Skinhead Fred, Dagny tried to get the interview back on track. “Did you talk to anyone in prison about your bank robbery?”

“Hell, I don’t tell nobody nothin’. In here, everyone’s innocent and they don’t say otherwise.”

“Surely you told someone.”

“Wouldn’t tell you if I had.”

“Why not?”

“Talk in here’s confidential. I ain’t saying nothin’.”

“You tell anyone about what you said about the angels? How ‘the sins of the angels remain with them in heaven’?”

“Maybe. Someone else use it?”

“You tell me,” Dagny pressed. Regina’s face was hard to read, but Dagny was certain she knew something.

“I don’t know nothin’. We don’t get no papers here.”

“Of course you do,” Victor said, pointing to an inmate at another table who was reading a newspaper.

“I’m saying I don’t read them, is all.”

“Regina, if you know something, telling us could help you out,” Dagny reminded her.

“It can’t do shit for me. Can you bust me out for helping you? Can you tell me that right now?”

“It might get you an earlier release. I can’t promise you anything. But we can see if we can move up the parole hearing a bit. Maybe make things easier for you while you’re here.”

“You’re about two years too late on that one. No one was making it easier on me, so I had to do it myself. Now you can’t promise shit. I ain’t unhappy here. This side is real nice. Martha Stewart put this place on her list of five. That told me right there that it wasn’t a bad place to be.”

“How’d you pay for your surgery, Regina?” Dagny asked.

“Ain’t none of your business.”

“I’m investigating a crime, Regina. It’s my business.”

“Oooh, scare me then. What you gonna do? Lock me up for not tellin’ you nothin’?”

“How’d you pay for your surgery, Regina? I know the state doesn’t pay.”

“Then you’re real smart, I guess.”

“Where’d the money come from?”

“Ain’t no money, fool. Act of charity. And I don’t know nothin’ more, so don’t even try. Don’t even know the doctor’s name. White guy, though. Or maybe there ain’t no doctor at all, ’cause I’m done talking.”

“That’s not actually lunch,” Victor said, motioning to Dagny’s glass of water. They had stopped at a truck stop for lunch. Victor had ordered a bacon double cheeseburger. Dagny had asked for water.

“I’m not actually hungry.”

“I’ve never seen you hungry.”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Victor.”

“Fine.” Victor leaned back and crossed his arms. “I know what this is, though. I’ve got a sister.”

“You want to go for a run, see who’s in better physical shape? You want to talk about eating? ’Cause it looks like you’re trying to fill out those suits again.” Dagny immediately regretted her outburst. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Victor said. “It’s okay. It’s just—”

Dagny’s phone rang. She looked at the screen. Brent Davis.

“What is it?” she asked.

“No hello?”

“What is it?” she repeated.

“They found a stolen Matisse under J. C. Adams’s bed.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Beats me,” Brent said.

“Where is it now?”

“Cincinnati.”

“Do they think it’s the second crime? The fourth?”

“Neither. It was stolen two days ago from a home in Buffalo. CPD found it today.”

“Under J. C. Adams’s bed?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Why were the Cincinnati cops there in the first place?”

“As far as I can tell, that’s your fault. McDougal forwarded Beamer the results from the prints you took and CPD got a warrant. Don’t ask me what they thought they would find. I think they were just harassing him—they seem to have some kind of vendetta against the guy.”

“Where’s the painting now?”

“Cincinnati field office.”

“How long is it staying there?”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Where’s Adams?”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Okay.”

“I repay my debts, Dagny.”

“Debt paid.”

“You did not hear this from me. You heard this from CPD. You heard this from Santa Claus. But you did not hear this from me.”

“Agreed.”

After hanging up, she caught Victor up on the news and then called the Professor.

“I’ve narrowed it down,” he said. He’d been working on a profile.

“To what?”

“To nine hundred sixty-two suspects.”

Well, it’s a start, Dagny thought. “Why did you send Adams’s prints to CPD?”

“I wanted to see if something would happen,” the Professor said.

“Something did,” Dagny replied.

March 24—Covington, Kentucky

Dagny pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, tied her sneakers tightly, then took the elevator down to the lobby of the Embassy Suites and ran out into dark. It was four thirty, and the streets were empty. She ran east a couple of blocks, then headed north on the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, leaving Kentucky and heading over the Ohio River into Cincinnati. Once across, she circled the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, a large undulating block of travertine stone and copper panels. She headed west toward Paul Brown Stadium, where the Bengals usually lost.

Her left leg gave way, and she tumbled to the ground, spilling to the concrete and scraping her knee. Dagny looked back to see if something had tripped her, but nothing had. Blood dripped down her leg and onto her sock. She leaned against a light post, gathering the strength to stand. A dirty middle-aged man sidled up to her. Dark stains spotted his flannel shirt and torn jeans, and he smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in days. His hair hung over part of his face, and Dagny couldn’t see his eyes. He stepped in front of the streetlight and became just a silhouette.

“Excuse me, lady, but my car broke down and I need just a few dollars to get gas. Someone stole my wallet and my cell phone battery died.” He held up a cell phone to make the point. “I have to get to my daughter, who was left behind at a party by her friends, and I don’t really want to leave her there. Bunch of wild boys—and I don’t trust them. Is there any way you could lend me five dollars, just so I can get the gas and get her home? I’ll take your address and send you back six.”

“I don’t have anything on me,” she said, and it was true. “I wish you luck with your daughter.” The homeless man started to scuffle away. “Hey,” Dagny called out to him. “What’s your daughter’s name?”

He stopped, turned around, and regarded Dagny for a few seconds. Then he shrugged and walked away. She thought about how shrinking cities like Cincinnati were scarier than big cities like New York and DC. In big cities, people were everywhere and there is safety in numbers. But something awful could happen in the middle of downtown Cincinnati and no one would ever know.

The FBI’s Cincinnati field office was located in the John Weld Peck Federal Building, across from the Potter Stewart United States Courthouse and within a single block of three Starbucks shops. Dagny sipped a Venti cup of plain black coffee from one of them on the world’s slowest elevator ride to the ninth floor. When the doors finally opened, the local SAC, Chuck Wells, greeted her.

“Fabee’s here,” he warned.

“Why? Is it time for a press conference?” When Wells laughed, she knew he was on her side.

He led her past a sea of half-manned desks. Everything was a muted shade of grey—the carpet, the walls, the chairs, even the food. The drab furnishings of the DC field office seemed inviting compared to this. They found Fabee standing in a conference room, staring at the recovered Matisse, which was on the floor, leaned against the wall.

“Dagny,” Fabee said, with his Texas twang emphasizing the last syllable of her name. “I want to thank you for the work you did in Bethel.” It sounded sincere, but lots of things
sound
sincere.

“I didn’t get much, Assistant Director Fabee.”

“Sometimes it’s the stuff that you
don’t
get that matters.” It was the type of thing that sounded true, and then didn’t, and then did again.

“This looks like it matters,” Dagny said, nodding at the Matisse.

“Yeah, it might. How’d you hear about it anyway?”

“I’m in good with the CPD.”

“I’m sure. Where’s Victor?”

“Sick.” This was a lie. Victor had stayed in Coleman to find out who paid for Regina’s surgery.

Dagny studied the painting. It felt familiar, but Dagny couldn’t remember where she had seen it before. Maybe in book or at a museum? A topless woman sat in a wood chair, strumming a guitar. The lines were rough and had a sketched feel. The woman’s eyes were black dots, her eyebrows black lines. The fingers of her left hand blurred together, gripping the neck of the guitar like a claw. Her mouth was slightly open. Maybe she was singing. She wore a long white skirt that hung down to her ankles. Black shoes, or perhaps socks, covered her feet. Behind her, a mass of cloudy dots was arranged in curved lines that suggested an audience. Dagny dug her camera out of her backpack. She stood five feet from the painting, adjusted her angle to reduce the glare, and took several snapshots of the Matisse. Had she seen it before? No. But the unsub had given it to them for a reason, so she was going to find out everything she could about it.

The flight to Buffalo was miserable. The Williamsons were worse.

Ted Williamson was a slight, effete man in his early fifties. Dagny could see his bare scalp through the sparse black hair
combed across it. Williamson wore a blue blazer with six gold buttons on each sleeve, and a red ascot. He tore his glasses from his jacket pocket, studied Dagny’s credentials carefully, and handed them back to her.

“A man of my position has to be very careful,” he said. “Please come in.”

The front foyer was larger than any room in Dagny’s house. A curved staircase descended into the room, each step at least eight feet wide; the middle six were covered with plush red carpet, held tightly to the staircase by gold rods. She suspected that the Oriental rug beneath her feet cost more than her Prius. Williamson saw her looking at the rug and then looked down to her feet.

“Shoes by the door!” Williamson barked, clapping his hands three times. “Shoes by the door!”

Dagny looked over at Williamson’s feet, clad in brown suede loafers, and wrinkled her nose.

“These are house shoes,” he explained. “I don’t wear them outside.”

“Bureau protocol requires that I wear footwear while working.”

Williamson’s wife, Barbara, was waiting for them in the living room. She wore a red kimono that would have looked absurd on the tall, bony Caucasian woman if it hadn’t been so beautiful. Her hair was tied up in a bun, with two chopsticks pinned through it. “My wife is in a Japanese phase,” Williamson whispered.

“I understand,” Dagny said, though she really didn’t.

For the next hour, they recounted the events of the night of the theft. Dagny was more interested in the painting itself.

“When we bought it, we couldn’t find it in any books on Matisse,” Mrs. Williamson said. “But I call it
The Guitarriana
, which is Spanish for a female guitarist.”

Dagny had taken four years of Spanish in high school and was pretty sure that “guitarriana” was not actually a word. “How
did you know it was an actual Matisse if you couldn’t find a record of it?”

Mr. Williamson answered. “The seller had commissioned an expert to authenticate the painting; but you can’t trust that, of course, so we had three other experts study the painting, too, including Raúl Manuel, who wrote the book on Matisse.”

“What do you mean when you say he wrote the book on Matisse?”

Mr. Williamson jumped from his chair and raced out of the room, then returned a few seconds later, out of breath. He handed Dagny a hardcover book. “He wrote the book on Matisse,” Williamson explained.

Dagny leafed through the biography, which seemed to deal equally with Matisse’s life and his artwork. “So Mr. Manuel—”

“
Señor
Manuel,” Mrs. Williamson corrected.

“So
Señor
Manuel concluded that the painting was authentic?”

“As did the other experts,” Mr. Williamson said. “Technique, materials, subject matter—there was no question in their minds.”

“We were careful,” Mrs. Williamson interjected, “since it was a private auction and the previous owner was undisclosed.”

That seemed strange. “Why was he undisclosed?”

“Sometimes that’s how it works,” Mr. Williamson explained. “We bought it from Cecil Rowanhouse. You’ve heard of him, I assume?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“Well, he’s well known in
our
circles,” Mrs. Williamson said. “He handles transactions for those who desire anonymity. An
interesting
man,” she added, with disapproval evident in her voice.