Authors: Joseph Wambaugh
There he goes again, Raleigh thought. Precisely.
Nigel put the ladder where he wanted it and placed the umbrella lights at each side of the largest painting, The Woman by the Water, which looked to Raleigh to be almost four feet tall and nearly five feet wide.
Nigel stood on the first step of the ladder and said, "Move that light a bit to the left. They must be level with the painting."
Raleigh did as he was told and Nigel said, "That's too much. Come back half an inch. There. That's good. Now do the same with the other one. I've got to make sure to line it up so that there's no perspective."
"Okay, just get it done!" Raleigh said.
Still looking through the viewfinder, Nigel said, "And I must get the piece as big as I can get it within the frame."
Raleigh was sweating and thinking, It's only the lights that're making me sweat. I'm not really that scared. Then he blurted, "What if Marty Brueger comes here to the main house and starts banging on the door?"
"Bloody hell!" Nigel said. "I'm trying to compose this shot!"
Raleigh's courage was leaking out like the sweat that was running from every pore, and he said, "What if somebody comes by for some other reason and catches us? What would we say?"
Nigel sighed and stepped off the ladder. He took the inhaler from his pocket and had a puff. He waited a moment and said, "Well, then, we would simply tell them that as Mrs. Brueger's art adviser, I decided to photograph the paintings to have the pictures put onto greeting cards as a surprise for my dear client."
"And then what would we do?"
Nigel took a deep breath, blew it out, and said in sheer exasperation, "And then of course we would abandon this little project and I would go back to being a gallery owner on the verge of bankruptcy. And you would continue as a domestic servant who will spend his old age living off welfare and Social Security. Now, will you please act like a man so we can proceed and get this job done ?"
Raleigh glared at him for a long moment, feeling the anger swell his throat. This flouncing Nancy boy was telling him to act like a man? But all he said to Nigel was "Okay, let's proceed."
Nigel got back on the ladder and aimed the camera again. Before he shot his first picture he calmed himself by talking, and he said, "I chose these Impressionist pieces precisely because Impressionist art is blurry. It is, after all, the artist's impression, is it not? The Impressionist artist is not interested in photographic clarity. They're perfect for our needs."
Raleigh gave up counting the shots that Nigel took. Finally Nigel said, "Voila! It's done. Now to Flowers on the Hillside." "Damn!" Raleigh said. "That took too long. The second on
e w
on't take as long, will it? Marty Brueger will be waking up pretty soon."
"Not a problem," Nigel said. "The second one will go fast."
For the very first time, Raleigh took a look at the other painting. It was a blur of colors that suggested a field of flowers on a hillside with something that looked like a windmill in the distance. "This one's worth almost as much, huh?" Raleigh asked. "It's a lot smaller."
"You have no idea," Nigel said, moving the light stands and the tripod. "Flowers on the Hillside could possibly fetch even more than The Woman by the Water. Now, let's position everything exactly as we did before."
At that moment, Raleigh had a head-slapping thought: What if these paintings did bring in way more than a million as he'd fantasized? What if they brought in 2 million? How would he ever know? What if Nigel told him that the recession is bad in all the cities he'd mentioned? What if he claimed that he could get only $300,000 for both pictures? How would he ever know if Nigel was lying? He quelled his suspicions by reminding himself that this was only the first phase of the scheme.
Raleigh decided that he needed to work out some details with his prissy partner before Nigel came back to do the switch. But how would he do that? He knew nothing about the European auctioneer and what the art could reasonably fetch. Was he completely at the mercy of Nigel's true intentions? The more he came to dislike Nigel Wickland, the more worrisome the scheme became.
Ten minutes later the phone buzzed from the cottage and Raleigh uttered a choked-off cry. Then he said, "It's Marty Brueger!"
Nigel lowered the camera and said, "Go tend to him, then. Christ, he's virtually senile. You can handle it." And he went back to composing his shot.
Raleigh hurried out the side door and ran to the cottage. Whe
n h
e entered, Marty Brueger was in his pajamas, looking as though he'd forgotten why he rang.
"Yes, Mr. Brueger," Raleigh said. "Do you need something?" "My teeth," Marty Brueger said. "Where's my teeth?" "Aren't they in the glass where they usually are?"
"Don't you think I looked there?" the old man said.
"We'll find them, Mr. Brueger," Raleigh said. "Why don't you just sit in your chair and relax and watch The Girls Next Door? That Hugh Hefner's really a card, isn't he?"
"It's not on now, Raleigh, and I can't find the most recent videotape."
"You don't need videotape anymore, Mr. Brueger," Raleigh said.
"All of your favorite shows have been recorded for you, remember?" "I always forget how to do that TIVO shit," Marty Bruege
r s
aid.
"I'll go over it again with you," Raleigh said. "Everything's there for you anytime you want to watch: You just go to your stored programs and select whatever you wish."
"Even Showbiz Tonight?" Marty Brueger asked.
"Every single episode," Raleigh assured him. "You've got them there waiting for you."
"I still need my teeth," the old man said.
"I'll do a thorough search for them," Raleigh said.
"If you find them, I'd like to go to one of those new trendy places for dinner," Marty Brueger said. "Like Mr. Chow's."
"Mr. Chow's has been around a long time," Raleigh said. "It's not new but it's still very popular with movie people."
"Spago isn't new anymore either, is it?" Marty Brueger asked. "No, sir," Raleigh said. "I think it's older than Mr. Chow's. And you might see some celebrities there as well."
"It's funny how time plays tricks on your memory," Marty Brueger said. "Do famous people still go to the Polo Lounge for lunch? People in the business who're my age?"
Raleigh thought, There's nobody in the business your age, but he said, "I think so. I'll find out for sure."
"Talking about restaurants has made me hungry," Marty Brueger said. "Maybe I'll stroll up to the house and look for something in the fridge that I can eat without teeth."
"No, no, Mr. Brueger!" Raleigh cried. "Just sit down and relax. I'll fix you something tasty for a snack, but first you need something to chew with, don't you?"
"I'll tell you, Raleigh," Marty Brueger said. "It's a sad time in a man's life when his dick's gone missing and he can't even find his fucking teeth."
While Raleigh Dibble searched for Marty Brueger's teeth, Jonas Claymore and Megan Burke were driving toward Woodrow Wilson Drive, eyeing many potential targets, as well as checking their maps and addresses for any homes belonging to stars or celebutants.
"I think Outpost has some juicy targets," Jonas said to Megan, who had downed two perks and was zoning as he drove. "But I like it way up here, too."
"I think we're going to die like Bonnie and Clyde," Megan said bleakly.
"Who?"
"The old movie? You know, about the bank robbers? A guy and a chick rob banks and it's all a trip until they get shot to pieces. I think that's how we'll end up."
"Who wants to get old?" Jonas said.
"Yeah, but it might be nice to get old enough to walk in a bar and buy a drink without showing a phony ID. Is that asking too much?"
"You got no imagination," Jonas said.
"Yes, I do," she said. "I can imagine us checking out like Bonnie and Clyde now that we've decided to really go bad."
Ignoring her, Jonas said, "I musta seen a hundred houses that look good to me. Like that one there."
He pointed out one of the many Spanish Colonial Revivals, usually done in the mission
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or hacienda-style with a red-tile roof and white-plastered walls. This one was large, with a detached guesthouse and a solid barrier of junipers that almost hid the main house from view except from the road above. Jonas pulled to the side and stopped.
"Get out for a minute," he said.
"What for? I'm tired!"
"You're always tired," he said. "Get out."
Megan opened the door, mumbling, got out, and shuffled along behind him. He strolled over to the junipers and pulled two of them apart, peeking in at the property.
"See," he said. "This place has more land than the others. Do you know what land costs up here?"
Megan just shook her head, and Jonas said, "Plenty, that's how much. I bet there's a tennis court down behind there. This is the kinda place we should go for. But not now. Look, there's a van down there by the garage. It says something on the side but it's parked at an angle, so I can't read it. Probably a delivery guy or a plumber or something."
"Can we go home now?" Megan said.
He said, "What we gotta do is come back here sometime when there's no car in the driveway and no gardeners around and ring the bell."
"There's a big gate," Megan said.
"We ring the bell at the gate," Jonas said. "There must be one. And if there's no answer we go over the wall and check it out and see what we can see."
"And what if there's another dog like last time?" Megan said. "Maybe a vicious guard dog?"
That stopped him. His back was still sending him message
s f
rom time to time. He said, "Okay, we'll come by a couple more times on other days before we try out a house like this. Meanwhile, we can go for more conventional places where we can see the yards and figure out if there's a guard dog or not."
"Let's go home and I'll call my mom," Megan said.
"For what?"
"I'll beg her for a loan of two hundred. I'll say that I'm staying with a friend and we're being evicted on Saturday unless we can come up with the money. She always says she'll never give up on me. I'm her firstborn and I don't think she'll let me down. Not that I'm proud of it." She paused and said, "I just need a taste of ox."
Jonas pressed hard on the small of his back, groaned, and said, "I wonder why God is letting me get knocked on my ass so much lately?"
Raleigh Dibble found Marty Brueger's missing dentures in the trash can by the toilet, but how they got there was anybody's guess. He figured it was the result of too much Irish whiskey. If the old man had any cash to speak of, that probably would've ended up shit-canned as well. But only Raleigh had access to the modest checking account at the local bank that Leona Brueger had left for groceries and other items in order to keep the house running smoothly while she was gone. She had opened the account with $4,000 and told him to phone her in Tuscany if any sort of emergency came up requiring more funds.
"Mr. Brueger," Raleigh said, "why don't you sit in your chair and watch Oprah or something? I'm going up to the house now to make you a nice snack. How about one of my special omelets?"
Marty Brueger nodded and said, "Got any more whiskey in the butler's pantry up there?"
"No, but I'll run out and get some later," Raleigh said.
"Why don't I go up there with you and look?" Marty Brueger said.
"No, Mr. Brueger!" Raleigh said. "Just rest. There might be another bottle. I'll be right back."
"I'll have all the rest I need pretty soon," the old man muttered.
Raleigh was a wreck by the time he got back to the house. But he was overjoyed to see that the floodlights had been turned off in the great room, and the tripod was lying on the floor. Nigel Wickland had finished.
Raleigh said to him, "Did you get it done the way you wanted ?"
"It's a wrap, as they say in Hollywood," Nigel Wickland said with a satisfied grin. "The next trip here will be far briefer. These are all conventional frames, even if the paintings are not of a common size. It'll be easy enough to make the poster board fit nicely. I think Sammy Brueger had them reframed with those ghastly ornate monstrosities in the past dozen years or so."
Raleigh was so relieved, he felt like sitting down. Now he had a headache, and he was a man who seldom got one. "When're you coming back?"
"It depends on how it goes at the lab," Nigel said. "I'll apply as much pressure as I can to my friend and I'll offer him a bonus of several hundred dollars if he can speed up the process. But it can't be done overnight, you know."
"Will you call me as soon as it's done?"
"Of course," Nigel said. "But be careful never to use your name if you ever ring my office again. And don't use my name when I ring you here. We must proceed precisely as planned."
We're going to come to a new understanding before we're through, Raleigh thought. But all he said was, "Yes, precisely."
Chapter
Fourteen.