The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian Read online

  The courtyard held some garbage cans and a neglected garden. I crossed it and clambered over a concrete-block fence leading to another courtyard, where I peered into a window, then opened it, and then closed it. I retraced my steps, case in hand, scaling the block fence, retrieving my broken toothpick as I reentered the building, finally emerging on the street and walking a few blocks and catching another cab.

  Back at the Narrowback Gallery, Jared let me in and eyed the case I was carrying. “You’ve still got it,” he said.

  “Right you are.”

  “Now is it filled with swag?”

  “See for yourself.”

  “Still empty.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. You keep it. I’ll tell you, I’m sick of carrying the damn thing around.” I walked over to where his mother was eyeing a canvas. “Looks good,” I said.

  “You bet it does. We’re lucky Mondrian didn’t have acrylics to play with. He could have painted five hundred pictures a year.”

  “You mean he didn’t?”

  “Not quite.”

  I extended a finger, touched paint. “Dry,” I said.

  “And as ready as they’ll ever be.” She sighed and picked up a menacing-looking implement with a curved blade. I think it’s a linoleum knife. I’m not made of linoleum, but I’d certainly hate to irritate somebody who had one of them in his hand. Or her hand, for that matter.

  “This goes against the grain,” Denise said. “You’re sure about this?”

  “Positive.”

  “About an inch? Like about so?”

  “That looks good.”

  “Well, here goes,” she said, and she began cutting the canvas off the stretcher.

  I watched the process. It was unsettling. I’d watched her paint the thing, and I’d painted part of it myself, affixing masking tape to the primed canvas, filling in the lines, peeling off the tape when the quick-drying paint had set. So I knew Mondrian had been no closer to the thing than, say, Rembrandt. Even so, I got a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach as the knife slashed through it as if it were, well, linoleum.

  I turned away and went over to where Jared lay stretched out on the floor, writing UNFAIR! on a large square of cardboard with an El Marko marking pen. Several completed signs, neatly tacked to strips of wooden lath, leaned up against a metal table. “Good work,” I told him.

  “They should show up well,” he said. “The media’s been alerted.”

  “Great.”

  “Performance art,” Denise was saying. “First you paint a picture and then you destroy it. Now all we need is Christo to wrap it in aluminum foil. Shall I wrap it up or will you eat it here?”

  “Neither,” I said, and began removing my clothes.

  I got to the Hewlett Gallery a few minutes after three, walking a little stiffly in my suit. I was wearing the hat and the clear-lensed horn-rimmed glasses, the latter of which had begun giving me a headache an hour or so earlier. I handed over my suggested contribution of $2.50 without a murmur and went through the turnstile and up a flight of stairs to my favorite gallery.

  I’d managed to work up a certain amount of anxiety over the possibility of the Mondrian’s having been moved, or removed altogether for loan to the exhibit that was being organized, but Composition with Color was right where it was supposed to be. The first thing I thought was that it didn’t look anything like what we’d thrown together in Denise’s loft, that the proportions and colors were completely wrong, that we’d produced something on a par with a child’s crayon copy of the Mona Lisa. I looked again and decided that legitimacy, like beauty, is largely in the eye of the beholder. The one on the wall looked right because it was there on the wall, with a little brass plaque by its side to attest to its noble origins.

  I just studied it for a while. Then I wandered a bit.

  Back on the ground floor, I walked through a room full of eighteenth-century French canvases, Boucher and Fragonard, idealized bucolic scenes of fauns and nymphs, shepherds and Bo-Peeps. One canvas showed a pair of barefoot rustics picnicking in a sylvan glade, and studying that canvas under a uniformed guard’s watchful gaze were Carolyn and Alison.

  “You’ll notice,” I murmured to them, “that both of those little innocents have Morton’s Foot.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means their second toes are longer than their big toes,” I said, “and they’ll need special orthotic implants if they’re planning to run marathons.”

  “They don’t look like runners to me,” Carolyn said. “They look horny as toads, as a matter of fact, and the only kind of marathon they’re likely to be in is—”

  “Jared and his friends are in position outside,” I cut in. “Give them five minutes to get started. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  In a stall in the men’s room I took off my jacket and shirt, then put them on again and walked somewhat less stiffly to the gallery where the Mondrian was hanging. No one paid me any attention because there was a lot of noise and commotion out in front of the building and people were drifting toward the entrance to see what was going on.

  The sound of rhythmic chanting rose to my ears. “Two, four, six, eight! We need art to appreciate!”

  I stepped closer to the Mondrian. Time crawled and the kids went on chanting and I glanced for the thousandth time at my watch and started wondering what they were waiting for when suddenly all hell broke loose.

  There was a loud noise like a clap of thunder, or a truck backfiring, or a bomb going off, or, actually, rather like a cherry bomb left over from the Fourth of July. And then, from another direction there was a great deal of smoke and cries of “Fire! Fire! Run for your lives!”

  Smoke positively billowed. People bolted. And what did I do? I grabbed the Mondrian off the wall and ran into the men’s room.

  And caromed off a balding fat man who was just emerging from a stall. “Fire!” I shouted at him. “Run! Run for your life!”

  “My word,” he said, and away he went.

  A few minutes later, so did I. I left the men’s room and hastened down a flight of stairs and out the main entrance. Fire trucks had drawn up and police were everywhere and Jared and his troops brandished their signs, dodging cops and throwing themselves in front of portable TV cameras. Throughout it all, the Hewlett’s security staff kept a tight rein on things, making sure no one walked off with a masterpiece.

  I perspired beneath my hat, blinked behind my glasses, and walked right past all of it.

  I caught the six o’clock news in a dark and dingy tavern on Third Avenue, and there was young Jared Raphaelson, angrily asserting Youth’s right of access to great public art collections, then quickly disclaiming all responsibility for the terrorist assault on the Hewlett and the mysterious disappearance of Piet Mondrian’s masterpiece, Composition with Color.

  “We don’t think the kids are directly involved,” a police spokesman told the camera. “It’s a little early to tell yet, but it looks as though some quick-witted thief took the opportunity to cut the painting from its frame. We found the frame itself, all broken and with shreds of canvas adhering to it, in the second-floor washroom. Now it looks as though the kids must be responsible for the fire, although they deny it. What happened was somebody tossed an explosive device called a cherry bomb of the type used to celebrate Independence Day, and it happened to go off in a wastebasket in which some tourist had evidently discarded a few rolls of film, and what would have been a big bang turned into a full-scale trash fire. The fire itself didn’t cause any real damage. It put out a lot of smoke and shook people up some, but it didn’t amount to anything except to provide cover to the thief.”

  Ah, well, I thought. Accidents will happen. And I kept a close eye on the screen, looking for a sign of the quick-witted opportunistic thief. But I didn’t see him. Not on that channel, at any rate.

>   A museum official expressed chagrin at the loss of the painting. He talked about its artistic importance and with some reluctance estimated its value at a quarter of a million dollars. The announcer mentioned the recent robbery-cum-murder at the Charlemagne, in which another Mondrian was taken, and wondered whether press coverage of that theft might have led the present thief to pick Mondrian rather than some other masterpiece.

  The museum official thought that was highly possible. “He might have taken a van Gogh or a Turner, even a Rembrandt,” he said. “We have paintings worth ten or more times what the Mondrian might bring. That’s why this strikes me as an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment act. He knew the Mondrian was valuable, he’d heard what the Onderdonk Mondrian was valued at, and when the opportunity presented itself he acted swiftly and decisively.”

  They cut for a commercial. In Carney’s Bar and Grill, an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment guy in horn-rims and a fedora picked up his glass of beer and swiftly and decisively drank it down.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “What you got in there?” the child de-manded. “Fission poles?”

  Fission poles?

  “Andrew, don’t bother the man,” said its mother, and flashed me a brave smile. “He’s at that age,” she said. “He’s learned how to talk, and he hasn’t learned how to shut up.”

  “Man goin’ fishin’,” said Andrew.

  Oh. Fishin’ poles.

  Andrew and Andrew’s mother and I, along with perhaps four other people, were sheltering ourselves behind a transparent barrier designed to protect bus passengers from the elements, even as its construction had enriched several public officials a few scandals ago. I had one arm around a cylindrical cardboard tube which stood five feet tall and ran about four inches in diameter. I forebore advising Andrew that it did not contain fishing poles. It contained—what? Bait?

  Something like that.

  Two buses came. They’re like cops in bad neighborhoods; they travel in pairs. Andrew and his mother got on one of them, along with our other companions in the shelter. I remained behind, but there was nothing remarkable in this. A variety of buses travel south on Fifth Avenue, bound for a variety of destinations, so I merely seemed to be waiting for another bus.

  I don’t know what I was waiting for. Divine intervention, perhaps.

  Across the street and a little to my left loomed the massive bulk of the Charlemagne, as fiercely impregnable as ever. I’d breached its portals three times, once at Onderdonk’s invitation, twice bearing flowers, and in fairy tales the third time is the charm. But now I had to get in there a fourth time, and everyone who worked for the building knew me by now, and you couldn’t get into the goddamned building even if nobody knew you from Adam.

  There’s always a way, I told myself. What little story had I made up for Andrea? Something about a helicopter to the roof? Well, that was fanciful, surely, but was it absolutely out of the question? There were private helicopter services. They’d take you up for a couple of hours of soaring over the city for a fee. For a considerably higher fee, one such bold entrepreneur would no doubt drop you off on a particular roof, especially if he weren’t required to stand by and lift you off again.

  There were problems, however. I didn’t have the money to hire a limousine, let alone a helicopter, and I hadn’t the faintest idea where to find an avaricious helicopter pilot, and I rather suspected they didn’t do business at night anyway.

  Hell.

  The buildings that adjoined the Charlemagne were no help, either. All were significantly lower than their neighbor, by a minimum of four floors. It was theoretically possible to outfit oneself with Alpine climbing gear and proceed from the roof of one of those buildings, sinking pitons into the mortar between the Charlemagne’s bricks, clambering hand over hand to the top of the Charlemagne’s roof, and getting in that way. It was also theoretically possible to master the lost art of levitation and float halfway to heaven, and this struck me as a little easier than pretending the Charlemagne was the Matterhorn.

  Besides, I had no reason to think I could crack the security of one of the neighboring buildings, either. They’d have security-conscious doormen and concierges of their own.

  Flowers wouldn’t work, not for Leona Tremaine, not for anyone else. Other things get delivered to buildings—liquor, ice, anchovy pizza—but I’d used the deliveryman number and I was sure I couldn’t get by with it again. I thought of various disguises. I could be a blind man. I already had the dark glasses; all I’d need would be a white cane. Or I could be a priest or a doctor. Priests and doctors can get in anywhere. A stethoscope or a Roman collar will get you in places you can’t even crack with a clipboard.

  But not here. They’d phone upstairs, whoever I said I was, whoever I was presumably visiting.

  A blue-and-white patrol car cruised slowly down the avenue. I turned a little to the side, putting my face in shadow. The car coasted through a red light and kept going.

  I couldn’t just stand there, could I? And I’d be more comfortable inside than out, sitting than standing. And, since there didn’t seem to be any way I could work that night, there was no real reason to abstain from strong drink.

  I crossed the street and went around the corner to Big Charlie’s.

  It was a much more opulent establishment than the name would have led you to expect. Deep carpet, recessed lighting, banquette tables in dark corners, a piano bar with well-padded and backed barstools. Waitresses in starched black-and-white uniforms and a bartender in a tuxedo. I was glad I was wearing a suit and I felt deeply ashamed of the sneakers and the fedora.

  I doffed the latter and tucked the former beneath one of the banquettes. I ordered a single-malt Scotch with a splash of soda and a twist of lemon peel, and it came in a man-sized cut glass tumbler that looked and felt like Waterford. And perhaps it was. Stores sold a whole pint of whiskey for what this place charged for a drink, so Big Charlie ought to be able to spend a fair amount on glassware.

  Not that I begrudged him a cent. I sipped and thought and sipped and thought, and a pianist with a touch like a masseuse and a voice like melted butter worked her way through Cole Porter, and I sent my mind around the corner to the Charlemagne and looked for a way in.

  There’s always a way in. Somewhere in the course of my second drink I thought of phoning in a bomb scare. Let ’em evacuate the building. Then I could just mingle with the crowd and wander back in. If I was wearing pajamas and a robe at the time of mingling, who’d think for a moment that I didn’t belong there?

  Now where was I going to get pajamas and a robe?

  I found some interesting answers to that question, the most fanciful of which involved a daring burglary of Brooks Brothers, and I was just finishing my third drink when a woman came over to my table and said, “Well, which are you? Lost or stolen or strayed?”

  “A. A. Milne,” I remembered.

  “Right!”

  “Somebody’s mother. James James Morrison Morrison—”

  “Weatherby George Dupree,” she finished for me. “Now how did I know that you would know? Perhaps it’s because you look so soulful. And so lonely. It’s said that loneliness cries out to loneliness. I don’t know who said that, but I don’t believe it was Milne.”

  “Probably not,” and there was a silence, and I should have invited her to join me. I didn’t.

  No matter. She sat down beside me anyhow, a supremely confident woman. She was wearing a low-cut black dress and a string of pearls and she smelled of costly perfume and expensive whiskey, but then that last was the only kind Big Charlie sold.

  “I’m Eve,” she said. “Eve DeGrasse. And you are—”

  I very nearly said Adam. “Donald Brown,” I said.

  “What’s your sign, Donald?”

  “Gemini. What’s yours?”

  “I have several,” she said. She took my hand, turned it, traced the lines in my palm with a scarlet-tipped index finger. “‘Yield’ is one of them. ‘Slippery When Wet’ is another.”r />
  “Oh.”

  The waitress, unbidden, brought us both fresh drinks. I wondered how many it would take before this woman looked good to me. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, exactly, but that she was a sufficient number of years older than I to be out of bounds. She was well built and well coiffed, and I suppose her face had been lifted and her tummy tucked, but she was old enough to be—well, not my mother, maybe, but perhaps my mother’s younger sister. Not that my own mother actually had a younger sister, but—

  “Do you live near here, Donald?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. You’re from out of town, aren’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Sometimes one can sense these things.” Her hand dropped to my thigh, gave a little squeeze. “You’re all alone in the big city.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Staying in some soulless hotel. Oh, a comfortable room, I’m sure of that, but lifeless and anonymous. And so lonely.”

  “So lonely,” I echoed, and drank some of my Scotch. One or two more drinks, I thought, and it wouldn’t much matter where I was or who I was with. If this woman had a bed, any sort of a bed, I could pass out in it until daybreak. I might not win any points for gallantry that way, but I’d at least be safe, and God knew I was in no condition to wander the streets of New York with half the NYPD looking for me.

  “You don’t have to stay in that hotel room,” she purred.

  “You live near here?”

  “Indeed I do. I live at Big Charlie’s.”

  “At Big Charlie’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Here?” I said stupidly. “You live here in this saloon?”

  “Not here, silly.” She gave my leg another companionable squeeze. “I live at the real Big Charlie’s. The big Big Charlie’s. Oh, but you’re from out of town, Donald. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Charlemagne equals Charles the Great equals Big Charlie. That’s how they named this place, because the owner’s a couple of fags named Les and Maurie, and they could have called it More or Less, only they didn’t. But you’re from out of town so you don’t know there’s an apartment building around the corner called the Charlemagne.”