Hollywood Hills (42 page)

"Jesus wept!" Nigel said incredulously, looking at the door to the storage room, which was ajar. "Is that what you really think? That I hired a couple of blokes to pretend to steal my van so that I could cut you out of the arrangement?"

"That's what I think," Raleigh said.

"On my word as a gentleman," Nigel said, "my van was stolen by unknown persons. Full stop. End of story."

"You're no gentleman, you son of a bitch," Raleigh said, smoldering now.

"Get out, Raleigh," Nigel said. "You're making a fool of yourself."

Raleigh watched Nigel's face very closely when he said, "And how about the girl in the candy-striped dress?"

"The what?" Nigel said instantly.

He was good, Raleigh thought. He didn't flinch. But the tic at the corner of his eye began working overtime. "Valerie, if that's her name."

Nigel felt truly gob-smacked. How did Raleigh know that Valerie had come here? He said, "Please explain yourself, Raleigh. You're not making sense."

"You're a conniving bastard, aren't you?" Raleigh said. "Me, I'm just a dumb old ex-con who's a servant for rich people and makes their meals and wipes their asses, just like you said. But now I realize that I was actually pretty content with my lot in life until I met you. Now that I see what you are."

"This is going nowhere," Nigel said. "Whatever I tell you won't matter. You're simply overwhelmed by paranoid thoughts. Believe me, I wish as much as you do that we'd never met, but if wishes were fishes, as they say."

"Tell me about the girl in the candy-striped dress," Raleigh said.

"Tell me about darling, adorable little Valerie. Why did she come to see me? That's the only thing that puzzles me. What was that all about? Was she doing a little work on her own as a private agent? Maybe she wanted to see what other art was in the house so she and her thieving partner could steal more from Leona Brueger? I can't figure out that part of it. Why did she come to the Brueger house? Tell me that much, if you know."

Nigel Wickland was more exhausted than he'd been when they'd done the switch and watched it all implode with the stealing of the van. He was more exhausted than he'd been anytime in the past several days when he'd worried that the police would come to his gallery to say that they'd caught a man with his van and some blanket-wrapped paintings that he would need to explain. He was drained. Raleigh Dibble had most of it wrong but enough of it right. He had let himself be trapped by a fool.

Then it came to him. "Ruth," Nigel said. "Ruth mentioned the girl in the candy-striped dress to you, didn't she?"

"You kept her a secret from me," Raleigh said.

"Bloody hell," Nigel said. "Yes, I have kept some things from you, but for good reason, trust me."

"I'm all ears," Raleigh said, "like a cornfield in summer. Enlighten me, Nigel."

"They truly stole the van," Nigel said. "A man I've never seen and the girl we both know as Valerie. Will you at least believe that much?"

"Go on," Raleigh said.

"She's a smart girl, infinitely smarter than her crime partner, whom I've never met. She saw the Brueger name and address on the framer's tag that's stapled to the stretcher bars, and she figured out that something was wrong with my claim that the paintings belong to me. She went to you on her own to try to work it out, and I guess she charmed you into inviting her into the house, where you generously showed her around. And she saw The Woman by the Wate
r a
nd Flowers on the Hillside. All because you showed the goddamn paintings to her, Raleigh. You caused all this. It's all your fault, not mine!"

"I've never stopped wondering about the generosity of the thieves," Raleigh said. "You, know, the way they gave back your van as a show of good faith?"

"They're not master criminals, those two," Nigel said. "They're addled drug addicts who got extremely lucky. You saw Valerie. Couldn't you see that she's physically unwell?"

"And they took your twelve thousand and gave you back the paintings as promised, right along with your van, didn't they?"

"Good lord!" Nigel said. "No, I haven't paid them anything yet because I haven't heard any more from them since Valerie came here and blackmailed me. All because you invited her into the fucking house."

"And did she tell you how much more money she wanted not to break it all down for the police or for Mrs. Brueger?"

"No!" Nigel said. "I've been waiting to hear from them. I decided that your nerves were so frazzled you couldn't take another shock like this, so that's why I wasn't going to tell you until I received their demand. Don't you understand?"

"You were protecting me. That's kind of you," Raleigh said.

"I was protecting both of us. Believe me, this has become so convoluted I don't know where I am half the time. I knew that you couldn't possibly deal with more stress. Of that much I was certain."

"So all we can do is wait to receive the new instructions from Valerie or her partner, is that it, Nigel?"

"That's about it," Nigel said. "We must wait."

"That's not about it," Raleigh said. "I have another plan in mind."

The buzzer sounded in the office, indicating that someone had entered the gallery door on Wilshire Boulevard.

"Oh, Christ!" Nigel said. "I should've locked up. Will you excuse me for a moment?"

Nigel got up and left the office, and when he entered the display room, he turned and said, "Raleigh, if you want coffee, it's on the table by the restroom door. Help yourself."

Jonas Claymore, who was standing in the middle of the display room, heard what Nigel said and realized that the gallery owner was not alone.

It was hard for Nigel to repress a sneer of disgust when he saw the gangling, disheveled young man in a hooded gray sweatshirt looking at him with a crazed expression. Nigel thought that the Beverly Hills police should do a better job in keeping panhandlers from harassing the business owners along Wilshire Boulevard.

"I'm afraid we're closed," Nigel said to Jonas. "I'll be locking the door as soon as my last customer leaves."

Without a word, Jonas scowled, turned, and slouched across the display room to the door with Nigel following after him. When Jonas stepped out onto Wilshire Boulevard, the gallery owner locked the door behind him, pulled a blind over the glass door, and placed a "Closed" sign in the display window.

Okay, you prissy asshole, Jonas thought. We'll play, but it's my move. He walked around to the alley and saw that the gallery had a large sliding door big enough to accommodate a van. There were two parking spaces in the alley, one of them containing a red BMW roadster. Yeah, that's his, Jonas thought. A fag car.

He hurried to his VW bug, moved it to the end of the alley, and sat there watching the rear door of the gallery, thinking he'd trade three Franklins for just half an ox at this moment. An elderly woman left the door of the jewelry store behind him to empty a trash container in a Dumpster. Jonas eyed her in his rearview mirror and she looked to him like an undercover cop.

When Nigel Wickland had finished locking up and turning ou
t t
he lights, he returned to his office and found himself looking at the muzzle of a gun.

Raleigh was standing by the door to the storage room, and he said, "Let's you and me have a look in here, Nigel. If the paintings aren't here, we'll take a ride to your condo and look for them there."

And at last Raleigh Dibble saw something that he had longed to see ever since the entire misadventure had begun. He saw something that he knew too well from his own experience. He saw real fear in the face of Nigel Wickland.

"What're you playing at?" Nigel said, and Raleigh was pleased to see that the tic at the corner of Nigel's eye had intensified.

"I'm not playing," Raleigh said. "Not anymore."

"Please, Raleigh!" Nigel said.

"You're looking at a desperate, angry man," Raleigh said. "I believe that I'll spend many years in prison if I don't put this thing right, and that's what I'm going to do tonight, one way or the other."

"You won't use that," Nigel said. "You can't!"

"I will certainly kill you, Nigel," Raleigh said, "if you don't walk into that storage room right now. And then I might kill myself. Don't test me."

Nigel didn't just walk, he skated. He seemed to glide along the floor with his hands held in front of him palms up, as though to ward off any bullet that Raleigh might fire. When he stepped into the storage room, he switched on the light.

"You see," he said, "there's nothing here but store supplies ..." "How about your van," Raleigh said.

"Go ahead and search," Nigel said. "This is ridiculous." Raleigh said, "Get me a flashlight. It's too dark in here." "On the workbench," Nigel said. "But I'd like you to put th
e g
un away."

Raleigh saw the toolbox, the one that Nigel had had the da
y t
hey removed the paintings from their frames and installed the replicas in their places. The small flashlight was in the top tray. Raleigh took it out and said, "Turn around, Nigel, with your hands held high."

"What're you going to do?" Nigel said, sounding like he might weep. Sounding the way he did on the night that the thieves stole the van.

"Just be very still," Raleigh said, shining the beam into darkene
d c
rannies and inside cabinets and even up to the exposed beams. "Satisfied?" Nigel said. "Can we stop this charade now?" "Not yet," Raleigh said.

When Nigel heard the door to the van open, he said, "For god's sake, Raleigh!"

"Do not move a hair," Raleigh said. Then he shined his beam inside the van and saw the familiar blanketed bundles.

"Raleigh ... ," Nigel said, unable to immediately come up with more than that. "Raleigh, Raleigh ..."

"Do I need to have you take these out and open them?"

Nigel turned his face and spoke over his shoulder, saying, "I swear to you that I didn't know anything until the girl Valerie marched in here today with the paintings. I gave her the twelve thousand and she marched out again."

"And you were going to tell me about it when you got around to it, weren't you?"

"Can I put my hands down?"

"No, but you can turn around and face me."

Nigel turned, hands still held high, and said, "I couldn't tell you! All you've been talking about lately is how much you've regretted what we've done. You wanted to return the paintings to the house. I was afraid you would do it. I wasn't going to tell you about this until I shipped them to Europe and made the deal. Then I was going to surprise you with your share of a million dollars. I swear it's the truth, Raleigh!"

"You're amazing," Raleigh said. "You're an utterly amazing liar and four-flusher."

Nigel then began wheezing and reached frantically for his inhaler, but Raleigh said, "Move those Joan Crawford hands very slowly, Nigel."

Nigel said, "I ... I ... can't... can't catch my breath!"

"Slowly," Raleigh said, and Nigel complied, taking two puffs from the canister and inhaling deeply.

When his breathing improved, he said, "We can still make this work, Raleigh. There's no real harm done. You can't turn back now. Let me do what I was going to do. Half a million, Raleigh. Tax-free!"

"Very carefully, toss me the van keys," Raleigh said.

Nigel took his key ring from his pocket and tossed it ten feet across the storage room to the floor. Raleigh picked it up, returned the flashlight to the toolbox, carried the toolbox to the van, and put it behind the passenger seat.

"Get in the van behind the wheel," Raleigh said.

"This is madness," Nigel said. "Madness!"

"Get in!"

Nigel scurried to the van and got in the driver's seat.

"How do you open the sliding door?" Raleigh asked.

Nigel's voice was nearly inaudible when he said, "I have a remote here in the van."

Raleigh sat in the passenger seat and said, "Open the door." Nigel pressed a remote clipped to the visor, and the door slid open.

"Drive," Raleigh said. "I think you know where."

"Madness!" Nigel Wickland said.

Jonas Claymore started his engine the minute the storage room door slid open. He saw the cargo van drive out and the door slide shut again. Darkness was arriving sooner now that Los Angeles was experiencing its version of autumn weather. It was too dark for
Jonas to see if the gallery owner was alone in the van. The other man in the office could have gone out the front door, for all he knew. Alone or not, the gallery owner would be coming back for his little red car, but Jonas opted to tail him rather than just to sit there. There might even be a better place to confront the sissy and make him give Jonas what was coming to him. And anyway, the crystal had made Jonas feel too supercharged to wait.

Jonas had to control himself as he drove in the early nighttime traffic. He didn't figure that the gallery owner would be looking for a tail, so he could get close, but in the heavy traffic he couldn't get close enough to see if the man was alone in the van.

He almost lost the van on Sunset Boulevard when it turned north on Fairfax. He picked it up again going east on Hollywood Boulevard but lost it for a moment when it made a left turn on Sierra Bonita. He picked it up again when it was eastbound on Franklin, and he lost the van completely when he was stopped by a traffic light on Outpost Drive. Jonas sat meth-crazed in his VW bug, and he banged on the steering wheel and kept his other hand on the horn, screaming out the window at the cars, at the traffic light, and at life in general.