Authors: Max Allan Collins
Teeth flashed in the beard again. “My dear, at my age I'm afraid it's damn near irrelevant.”
Max returned the smile. He was an engaging old boy. “Would you like to see what I have for you?”
“Oh yes,” he said, with just a hint of innuendo. “I think we've had sufficient conversation to satisfy the social contract, don't you?”
She answered that with a glazed smile.
With her back to Sherwood, she slowly unzipped the bag, slipped the necklace surreptitiously into her pocket, then slid out the painting. When she turned back to him, his mouth dropped like a trapdoor.
After a long moment of staring at the painting, he asked, “Is that . . . that the
real
thing?”
“It should be.” She smiled. “But I won't be offended if you want to test it.”
“Please,” he said.
She placed the painting on the wide desk and, from one of the drawers, Sherwood withdrew a device that he explained was an UVIN. Then, standing at the desk, the painting like a patient on a surgical table awaiting the doctor's skills, he said, “Get the lights, would you please, child?”
Max did as the old boy requested, and the fence fired up the UVIN and ran its rays over the painting. He looked from the painting to her, his expression almost . . . alarmed; and then back down at the painting, going over it again with the ultraviolet light. A crack of thunder made her jump; heavy rain hammered at the windows and echoed down the corridor.
“My dear,” he said finally, “this is indeed a genuine Grant Wood.”
Trying to conceal her excitement, Max asked, “How much?”
“Normally . . .” He shrugged. “. . . six figures, easily. But you may have guessed I don't have that kind of money around here. Actually, I don't have
any
kind of money around here . . . but I know several buyers who do.”
A pulse of excitement jumped in her stomach. “So—what's our next move?”
Somewhere under that beard, Sherwood had worked up a half smirk. “I suppose you trusting me, for a few days, is out of the question.”
“I like you, Woody,” she said. “But not that much.”
“I can hardly blame you. Well, then, here's the situation. If we want to sell this beautiful painting for anywhere near its value, people are going to want to test it. To
see
it tested. . . . For that to happen, I need to have it here.”
Max didn't like where this was going. “What's to keep you from screwing me?”
“Besides my age, and the price of Viagra?” He shrugged. “All I have is my word. Didn't Mr. Vogelsang vouch for me?”
“Oh, sure . . . but who'd vouch for
that
sleazebag?”
“True, true . . . but I assure you, I'm honest.”
“Woody, you deal in stolen property.”
“That's true, but I do it honestly.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “Okay, Woody, you call me, and I'll bring the painting, and whoever wants to see it tested, can see it tested.”
“That would be a workable plan,” he said, “but for two things.”
“Go on.”
“First, my function is to buffer you from the buyers and the buyers from you—I provide insulation of sorts, should—for example—you or my client turn out to be participating in what used to be called, quaintly, a sting . . . is
that
pre-Pulse term familiar to you?”
“That one is,” she admitted.
“Second, rain's coming down like a veritable son of a bitch, and you should not risk taking that painting out into it, even with that zippered pouch of yours.”
Max shrugged with a knowingness beyond her years. “Maybe so, but I'm still not leaving the painting here. You have a nice line of bull, Woody, but I just met you . . . and you may be an honest crook, but you're still a crook.”
He made a clicking sound in his cheek. “That is a fact . . . and this is a commission I could dearly use right now.”
“Fine. Well?”
The fence let out a big sigh. “All right, little lady. Let me make a phone call. There is a client I know who would be perfect for this acquisition.”
“Excellent. Tell me about him . . . or is it a her?”
For the first time, a frown creased the fence's brow. “I can't give you a name or any background—you're compromising my professional ethics enough as it is.”
She said nothing; she was frowning, too.
Sherwood removed a cell phone from his suit-coat pocket. “Do I make the call? I'll do my best to get the buyer to come down right, now.”
“. . . Make the call.”
“But you can't be here.”
Now she was getting pissed. “Woody, I can't
not
be here.”
Sherwood was ahead of her. “No, dear . . . What I mean to say is, you go into the office next door, you can use that hole in the wall to watch and listen.” He pointed to the head-sized hole she'd noted coming in; the aperture was a foot or so behind Sherwood and would give Max the perfect place from which to monitor the transaction.
“I'd still feel better knowing who the buyer is.”
“That is not negotiable, dear. I would protect you, likewise.”
She rose, picked up the metal folding chair on her side of the desk, and there was a loud crack as she snapped the back off it with her two small leather-gloved hands.
Sherwood's eyes flared. “I do like an assertive female. . . . Mr. Glickman is his name, and that's all I know. He's actually another layer of insulation, the agent for a consortium of buyers. What I do know . . . and this should please you . . . is that Mr. Glickman pays top dollar, in untraceable cash . . . tens, twenties, twenty-fives . . . and he never haggles much about the price. For quality such as this, he'd expect to pay a quality price. . . . Shall I make the call?”
A tiny smile formed on her full lips as she said, “Go ahead and drop the dime.”
Sherwood's smile was a delighted one. “You
do
know some pre-Pulse slang, don't you, you little vixen?”
Twenty minutes later, the rain still beating its staccato rhythm on windows, echoing down the hall like gunfire, Max and her Ninja were safely snugged in the office next door when she heard a car door slam outside. She crept to the hole in the wall and assumed a position that would conceal her and reveal the mysterious Glickman.
For his part, Sherwood didn't seem the least bit nervous, and Max realized she was no doubt not the first person to witness a transaction from this hiding place. She did wonder if the porthole had been formed by a dissatisfied client shoving the fence's head through the
wall. . . .
Tucked into the shadows, Max could see through the broken-glass door frames of her private office as two men walked down the hall, passed her without looking in, and strode into Sherwood's office. The two men stayed near the door, and Max couldn't make out anything more than their shapes.
“What happened to the chair?” one of them asked, his voice sounding nasal and somehow muffled.
“Vandals,” Sherwood said distastefully, as he rose, and then his tone warmed up. “Mr. Glickman, I apologize for bringing you out in such vile weather . . .” The painting was on the desk, like a colorful blotter. “. . . but, as I told you on the phone, this is a major Grant Wood.”
The fence, smiling proudly, held up the Masonite board.
“It certainly is,” a rather refined voice replied.
“I, uh . . . haven't met your associate. This is a breach of etiquette.”
“Breach of etiquette?” another, rougher voice responded. “I can think of something worse.”
An icy shiver spiked through Max:
she had heard that voice before
. . . in the foyer at Jared Sterling's mansion. One of his security team! Maurer, the black, clean-cut guard. . . .
“Something worse?” Sherwood said, clearly off-balance.
The pair stepped forward into the fluorescent's path and Max's view. In a black rain-dripping raincoat, Maurer stood on the right, his nose heavily bandaged, while on the left, the other “insulation,” Mr. Glickman, stood in a London Fog, and Max recognized him, as well—his hair in the same iron-gray crew cut, the scars still on his cheeks, each about the size of a dime.
Sterling's security chief.
“I mean,” Glickman said, “trying to sell back a painting stolen from my boss.”
Sherwood's whole body seemed to go slack. “I . . . I . . . I had no idea. . . .”
“It was heavily covered in the media. You work in the art field. Certainly you knew this painting was Mr. Sterling's.”
“But . . . gentlemen . . . I was not aware that Mr. Sterling was your client. I was under the impression you represented a consortium of overseas buyers. . . . Forgive me.”
“No,” Glickman said.
The security guard was reaching inside the London Fog, and Max did not think he was going for a handkerchief. She took three quick steps back, then threw herself at the Sheetrock wall. She burst explosively into Sherwood's office just as Maurer fired the first shot. Max couldn't get to him in time, but in reflexive if pointless self-defense, Sherwood lifted the painting in front of his face.
The nine-millimeter slug tore through the painting leaving a hole bigger than a golf ball, then ripped through Sherwood's head, blowing away a piece of the old man's scalp.
“The painting!” Glickman called, in warning.
But Maurer's second shot shredded even more of the masterpiece before cleaving its way through Sherwood's chest and sending him backward, upending the chair, pitching the painting, which cracked against a wall, while the fence lay on his back, asprawl.
Max leapt, kicked, her boot connecting solidly with the bandage across Maurer's face. He screamed, dropped his pistol, and fell backward to the floor, a hand covering where the blood erupted from his nose, red streaming through his cupping fingers. Glickman had dodged when Max came through the wall, and from the sidelines fired at her, but was off-balance, and missed, the bullet burrowing into Sheetrock. She rushed him before he could get his equilibrium, ducking a wild shot, and kicked sideways, her boot slamming into the man's groin, knocking him into the Sheetrock behind him, air whooshing out of him; he slid down the wall, and his mouth was open in a silent scream.
But Sterling's security chief was no pushover, and hardly a stranger to pain; plenty of fight left in him, Glickman squeezed off another shot, this one whizzing past Max's shoulder, again thunking into Sheetrock.
On the floor near the dead fence (who was on his back staring sightlessly at the ceiling) Maurer—his hands smeared and slippery with his own blood—was scrambling for his pistol; he got hold of it, and raised it at Max, stupidly heedless of how close she and his superior were. Just as the black guard fired, Max dived out of the way and Maurer's bullet missed her and sent up a puff of pink as it punched Glickman in the chest.
The iron-haired security chief's eyes went wide with shock, and he slumped back against the wall. He looked down at his wound, then up at Maurer. His last words were a kind of cough: “You dumb fuck.”
“Oh, shit,” Maurer said, and brought his pistol around, searching for his target, who seemed to have disappeared.
Then Max was suddenly at his side, and grabbed his arm and bent the elbow the wrong direction; Maurer screamed and his fingers popped open and he dropped the blood-smeared pistol. She kept going, applying torque to his shoulder as she cranked his arm around behind him.
The guard was in so much pain, he couldn't even scream.
“One question,” Max said, her voice cold, hard. “Wrong answer, I break your arm.” She applied a little more pressure to make her point; Maurer arched his back and groaned pitifully.
“Ask! Ask!”
“Where can I find Sterling . . .
right now?
”
He tried to twist his head around to see her, but she cranked up on the arm and his head dropped, as he yelped with pain.
“Let's have that answer,” she said, and started moving the hand upward.
“Okay, okay! He's at the Needle.”
Frowning, Max relaxed her grip somewhat, and with the lessening of pain, all the air went out of Maurer, who sagged; she felt if she let go of him, he'd drop like an armload of firewood.
“Space Needle?”
“What the . . . fuck other Needle . . . deal going down.”
“More,” she said, not bothering to punctuate her question with a ratchet of pain; the guy was cooperating now.
“The boss and that Russian, they're selling some shit to some Koreans, there. Up top.”
“
Right
now?”
“Less than an hour from now . . . yeah.”
Max said, “Thanks,” and let go of him.
He stood there unsteadily for a second, his back to her, and he said, “I won't . . . won't cause you any trouble.”
“I know,” she said, chopped him across the back of the neck.
She left behind a damaged painting, a dead fence, a dead security chief, and an unconscious Sterling subordinate, who would have explaining to do about the precious painting he'd ruined and the superior he'd shot and killed.
At least Max still had the necklace in her pocket, the precious object that had sparked so much damage and death, the weight of it suddenly very heavy. She needed this to end the cycle, or she and her brother would never be safe.
Gazing down at Sherwood, she shook her head. The old boy hadn't needed to die, but she felt no guilt or responsibility. He had chosen this path, even if he'd never made it to Easy Street. Still, she had liked the eccentric fence, during their short but significant relationship; and now Sherwood was just one more thing taken from her by Sterling and Kafelnikov, one more comrade slaughtered, like the Chinese Clan. . . .
In the office next door, she put on her amber glasses, walked her Ninja out into the hall and down to the entranceway. Then she climbed aboard, fired it up, and gunned it through the doorway into the waiting storm.
Wind-driven rain slashed at her face as she raced up Broad Street toward the Space Needle, but she didn't mind—it seemed cleansing; she wished the rain would wash away all the dirt and grime and corruption from this foul city, this fractured country. . . .
Parking in a burned-out building two blocks away, and looking up to get her bearings, she was surprised at how huge the structure looked. Naturally, she'd seen the Needle before—you couldn't live in the Emerald City and not notice the Needle—but she'd never paid much attention to it.