Collected Stories Page 15

  Arnie looked at him in surprise. “They’re emeralds,” he said. “Don’t you know what emeralds look like?”

  “I thought I did,” Dortmunder said. “So it’s worth something, after all.”

  “Not the way it is,” Arnie said. “Not with its picture all over the news. And not with the diamonds and silver being nothing but shit. Somebody’s gotta pop the emeralds out, throw away the rest of it, sell the emeralds by themself.”

  “For what?”

  “I figure they might go for 40 apiece,” Arnie said. “But there’s the cost of popping them.”

  “Arnie,” Dortmunder said, “what are we talking here?”

  Arnie said, “I could go seven. You wanna try around town, nobody else is gonna give you more than five, if they even want the hassle. You got a famous thing here.”

  Seven. He’d dreamed of 30, he would have been happy with 25. Seven. “I’ll take it,” Dortmunder said.

  Arnie said, “But not today.”

  “Not today?”

  “Look at me,” Arnie said. “You want me to hand you something?”

  “Well, no.”

  “I owe you seven,” Arnie said. “If this shit I got don’t kill me, I’ll pay you when I can touch things. I’ll phone you.”

  A promissory note — not even a note, nothing in writing — from a guy oozing salsa. “OK, Arnie,” Dortmunder said. “Get well soon, you know?”

  Arnie looked at his own forearms. “Maybe what it is,” he said, “is my personality coming out. Maybe when it’s over I’ll be a completely different guy. Whaddya think?”

  “Don’t count on it,” Dortmunder told him.

  Well, at least he had the $300 from the wallet scam. And maybe Arnie would live; he certainly seemed too mean to die.

  Heading back to Broadway, Dortmunder started the long walk downtown — no more things on wheels, not today — and at 86th Street he saw that a new edition of the New York Post was prominent on the newsstand on the corner. Jer–Felicia split was the front–page headline. That, apparently, in the New York Post’s estimation, was the most important North American news since the last time Donald Trump had it on or off with somebody or other.

  What the hell; Dortmunder could splurge. He had $300 and a promise. He bought the paper, just to see what had happened to the formerly loving couple.

  He had happened, essentially. The loss of the pin (brioche, brooch) had hit the lovers hard. “It’s in diversity you really get to know another person,” Felicia was reported as saying, with a side–bar in which a number of resident experts from NYU, Columbia and Fordham agreed, tentatively, that when Felicia had said diversity she had actually meant adversity.

  “I remain married to my muse,” Jer was quoted as announcing. “It’s back to the studio to make another film for my public.” No experts were felt to be needed to explicate that statement.

  Summing it all up, the Post reporter finished his piece, “The double–emerald brooch may be worth $300,000, but no one seems to have found much happiness in it.” I know what you mean, Dortmunder thought, and walked home.

  ART AND CRAFT

  _______________

  The voice on the telephone at John Dortmuder’s ear didn’t so much as ring a distant bell as sound a distant siren. “John,” it rasped, “how ya doin?”

  Better before this phone call, Dortmunder thought. Somebody I was in prison with, he figured, but who? He’d been in prison with so many people, back before he had learned how to fade into the shadows at crucial moments, like when the SWAT team arrives. And of all those cellmates, blockmates, tankmates, there hadn’t been one of them who wasn’t there for some very good reason. DNA would never stumble over innocence in that crowd; the best DNA could do for those guys was find their fathers, if that’s what they wanted.

  This wasn’t a group that went in for reunions, so why this phone call, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of October? “I’m doin’ OK,” Dortmunder answered, meaning, I got enough cash for me but not enough for you.

  “That makes two of us,” the voice said. “In case you don’t recognize me, this is Three Finger.”

  “Oh,” Dortmunder said.

  Three Finger Gillie possessed the usual 10 fingers but got his name because of a certain fighting technique. Fights in prison tend to be up close and personal, and also brief; Three Finger had a move with three fingers of his right hand guaranteed to make the other guy rethink his point of view in a hurry. Dortmunder had always stayed more than an arm’s reach from Three Finger and saw no reason to change that policy. “I guess you’re out, huh?” he said.

  Sounding surprised, Three Finger said, “You didn’t read about me in the paper?”

  “Oh, too bad,” Dortmunder said, because in their world the worst thing that could happen was to find your name in the paper. Indictment was bad enough, but to be indicted for something newsworthy was the worst.

  But Three Finger said, “Naw, John, this is good. This is what we call ink.”

  “Ink.”

  “You still got last Sunday’s Times?” he asked.

  Astonished, Dortmunder said, “The New York Times?”

  “Sure, what else? ‘Arts and Leisure’, page 14, check it out, and then we’ll make a meet. How about tomorrow, four o’clock?”

  “A meet. You got something on?”

  “Believe it. You know Portobello?”

  “What is that, a town?”

  “Well, it’s a mushroom, but it’s also a terrific little cafe on Mercer Street. You ought to know it, John.”

  “OK,” Dortmunder said.

  “Four o’clock tomorrow.”

  Keeping one’s distance from Three Finger Gillie was always a good idea, but on the other hand he had Dortmunder’s phone number, so he probably had his address as well, and he was known to be a guy who held a grudge. Squeezed it, in fact. “See you there,” Dortmunder promised, and went away to see if he knew anybody who might own a last Sunday’s New York Times.

  The dry cleaner on Third Avenue had a copy.

  Life is very different for Martin Gillie these days. “A big improvement,” he says in his gravelly voice, and laughs as he picks up his mocha cappuccino.

  And indeed life is much improved for this longtime state prison inmate with a history of violence. For years, Gillie was considered beyond any hope of rehabilitation, but then the nearly impossible came to pass. “Other guys find religion in the joint,” he explains, “but I found art.”

  It was a period of solitary confinement brought about by his assault on a fellow inmate that led Gillie to try his hand at drawing, first with stubs of pencils on magazine pages, then with crayons on typewriter paper, and, finally, when his work drew the appreciative attention of prison authorities, with oil on canvas.

  These last artworks, allegorical treatments of imaginary cityscapes, led to Gillie’s appearance in several group shows. They also led to his parole (his having been turned down three previous times), and now his first solo show, in Soho’s Waspail Gallery.

  Dortmunder read through to the end, disbelieving but forced to believe. The New York Times; the newspaper with a record, right? So it had to be true.

  “Thanks,” he told the dry cleaner, and walked away, shaking his head.

  Among the nymphs and ferns of Portobello, Three Finger Gillie looked like the creature that gives fairy tales their tension. A burly man with thick black hair that curled low on his forehead and lapped over his ears and collar, he also featured a single, wide block of black eyebrow like a weight holding his eyes down. These eyes were pale blue and squinty and not warm, and they peered suspiciously out from both sides of a bumpy nose shaped like a baseball left out in the rain. The mouth, what there was of it, was thin and straight and without color. Dortmunder had never before seen this head above anything but prison denim, so it was a surprise to see it chunked down on top of a black cashmere turtleneck sweater and a maroon vinyl jacket with the zipper open. Dressed like this, Gillie m
ostly gave the impression he’d stolen his body from an off–duty cop.

  Looking at him, seated there, with a fancy coffee cup in front of him — mocha cappuccino? — Dortmunder remembered that other surprise, from the newspaper, that Three Finger had another front name. Martin. Crossing the half–empty restaurant, weighing the alternatives, he came to the conclusion no. Not a Martin. This was still a Three Finger.

  He didn’t rise as Dortmunder approached, but patted his palm on the white marble table as if to say siddown. Dortmunder pulled out the delicate black wrought–iron chair, said, “You look the same, Three Finger,” and sat.

  “And yet,” Three Finger said, “on the inside I’m all changed. You’re the same as ever outside and in, aren’t you?”

  “Probably,” Dortmunder agreed. “I read that thing in the paper.”

  “Ink,” Three Finger reminded him, and smiled, showing the same old hard, gray, uneven teeth. “It’s publicity, John,” he said, “that runs the art world. It don’t matter, you could be a genius, you could be Da Vinci, you don’t know how to publicize yourself, forget it.”

  “I guess you must know, then,” Dortmunder said.

  “Well, not enough,” Three Finger admitted. “The show’s been open since last Thursday, a whole week. I’m only up three weeks, we got two red dots.”

  Dortmunder said, “Do that again,” and here came the willowy waitress, wafting over with a menu that turned out to be eight pages of coffee. When Dortmunder found regular American, with cream and sugar — page five — she went away and Three Finger said, “Up, when I say I’m only up three weeks, I mean that’s how long my show is, then they take my stuff down off the walls and put somebody else up. And when I say two red dots, the way they work it, when somebody buys a picture, they don’t get to take it home right away, not till the show’s over, so the gallery puts a red dot next to the name on the wall, everybody knows it’s sold. In a week, I got two red dots.”

  “And that’s not so good, huh?”

  “I got 43 canvases up there, John,” Three Finger said. “This racket is supposed to keep me out of jewelry stores after hours. I gotta have more than two red dots.”

  “Gee, I wish you well,” Dortmunder said.

  “Well, you can do better than that,” Three Finger told him. “That’s why I called you.”

  Here it comes, Dortmunder thought. He wants me to buy a painting. I never thought anybody I knew in the whole world would ever want me to buy a painting. How do I get out of this?

  But what Three Finger said next was another surprise: “What you can do for me, you can rip me off.”

  “Ha–ha,” Dortmunder said.

  “No, listen to me, John,” Three Finger said. Leaning close over the marble table, dangerously within arm’s reach, lowering his voice and peering intensely out of those icy eyes, he said, “This world we’re in, John, this is a world of irony.”

  Dortmunder had been lost since yesterday, when he’d read the piece in the newspaper, and nothing that was happening today was making him any more found. “Oh, yeah?” he said.

  Three Finger lifted both hands above his head — Dortmunder flinched, but only a little — and made quotation signs. “Everything’s in quotes,” he said. “Everybody’s taking a step back, looking the situation over, being cool.”

  “Uh–huh,” Dortmunder said.

  “Now, I got some ink,” Three Finger went on. “I already got some, but it isn’t enough. The ex–con is an artist, this has some ironic interest in it, but what we got here, we got a situation where everybody’s got some ironic interest in them, everybody’s got some edge, some attitude. I gotta call attention to myself. More ironic than thou, you see what I mean?”

  “Sure,” Dortmunder lied.

  “So, what if the ex–con artist gets robbed?” Three Finger wanted to know. “The gallery gets burgled, you see what I mean?”

  “Not entirely,” Dortmunder admitted.

  “A burglary doesn’t get into the papers,” Three Finger pointed out. “A burglary isn’t news. A burglary is just another fact of life, like a fender bender.”

  “Sure.”

  “But if you give it that ironic edge,” Three Finger said, low and passionate, “then it’s the edge that gets in the paper gets on TV. That’s what gets me on the talk shows. Not the ex–con turned artist, that isn’t enough. Not some penny–ante burglary, nobody cares. But the ex–con turned artist gets ripped off, his old life returns to bite him on the ass, what he used to be rises up and slaps him on the face. Now you’ve got your irony. Now I can get this sheepish kinda grin on my face, and I can say, ‘Gee, Oprah, I guess in a funny way this is the dues I’m paying’, and I got 43 red dots on the wall, you see what I mean?”

  “Maybe,” Dortmunder allowed, but it was hard to think this way. Publicity was to him pretty much what fire was to the Scarecrow in Oz. There was no way that he could possibly look on public exposure as a good thing. But if that’s where Three Finger was right now, reversing a lifetime of ingrained behavior, shifting from a skulk to a strut, fine.

  However, that left one question, so Dortmunder asked it: “What’s in it for me?”

  Three Finger looked surprised. “The insurance money,” he said.

  “What, you get it and you split it with me?”

  “No, no, art theft doesn’t work like that.” Three Finger reached into the inside pocket of his jacket — Dortmunder flinched, but barely — and brought out a business card. Sliding it across the marble table, he said, “This is the agent for the gallery’s insurance company. The way it works, you go in, you grab as many as you want — leave the red dot ones alone, that’s all I ask — then you call the agent, you dicker a fee to return the stuff. Somewhere between maybe 10 and 25 percent.”

  “And I just walk back in with these paintings,” Dortmunder said, “and nobody arrests me.”

  “You don’t walk back in,” Three Finger told him. “Come on, John, you’re a pro, that’s why I called you. It’s like a kidnapping, you do it the same way. You can figure that part out. The insurance company wants to pay you because they’d have to pay the gallery a whole lot more.”

  Dortmunder said, “And what’s the split?”

  “Nothing, John,” Three Finger said. “The money’s all yours. Don’t worry, I’ll make out. You hit that gallery in the next week, I get ink. Believe me, where I am now, ink is better than money.”

  “Then you’re in some funny place,” Dortmunder told him.

  “It’s a lot better than where I used to be, John,” Three Finger said.

  Dortmunder picked up the business card and looked at it, and the willowy waitress brought him coffee in a round mauve cup the size of Elmira, so he put the card in his pocket. When she went away, he said, “I’ll think about it.” Because what else would he do?

  “You could go there today,” Three Finger said. “Not with me, you know.”

  “Sure.”

  “You case the joint, if it looks good, you do it. The place closes at seven, you do it between eight and midnight, any night at all. I’m guaranteed to be with a crowd, so nobody thinks I ripped myself off for the publicity stunt.”

  Three Finger reached into his jacket again — Dortmunder did not flinch a bit — and brought out a postcard with a shiny picture on one side. Sliding it across the table, he said, “This is like my calling card these days. The gallery address is on the other side.”

  It was a reproduction of a painting, one of Three Finger’s, had to be. Dortmunder picked it up by the edges because the picture covered the whole area, and looked at a nighttime street scene. A side street, with a bar and some brick tenements and parked cars. It wasn’t dark, but the light was a little weird, streetlights and bar lights and lights in windows, all a little too green or a little too blue. No people showed anywhere along the street or in the windows, but you just had a feeling there were people there, barely out of sight, hiding maybe in a doorway, behind a car. It wasn’t a neighborhood you’d want to stay in
.

  “Keep it,” Three Finger said. “I got a stack of ‘em.”

  Dortmunder pocketed the card, thinking he’d show it to his faithful companion this evening and she’d tell him what to think about it. “I’ll give the place the double–O,” he promised.

  “I can’t ask more,” Three Finger assured him.

  The neighborhood had been full of lofts and warehouses and light manufacturing. Then commerce left, went over to New Jersey or out to the Island, and the artists moved in, for the large spaces at low rents. But the artists made it trendy, so the real estate people moved in, changed the name to Soho, which in London does not mean South of Houston Street, and the rents went through the roof. The artists had to move out, but they left their paintings behind, in the new galleries. Parts of Soho still look pretty much like before, but some of it has been touristed up so much it doesn’t look like New York City at all. It looks like Charlotte Amalie, on a dimmer.

  The Waspail Gallery was in a little cluster that had been touristed. In the first place, it came with its own parking lot. In New York?

  A U of buildings, half a block’s worth, had been taken over for a series of shops and cafes. The most beat–up of the original buildings had been knocked down to make access to the former backyards, which were blacktopped into a parking area, plus selling and eating space. The shops and cafes faced out onto the three streets surrounding the U; and they all also had entrances in back, from the parking lot.

  The Waspail Gallery was midway down the left arm of the U. The original of the postcard in Dortmunder’s pocket stood on an easel in the big front window, looking even more menacing at life size. Inside, a stainless–steel girl in black presided at a little cherrywood desk, while three browsers browsed in the background. The girl gave Dortmunder one appraising look, glanced outside to see if it was raining, decided there was no telling and went back to her Interview.

  All the pictures were early evening or night scenes of city streets, never with any people, always with that sense of hidden menace. Some were bigger, some were smaller, all had weirdness in the lighting. Dortmunder found the two with red dots — Scheme and Before the Rain — and they were the same as all the others. How could you tell you wanted this one and not that one over there?