Matchstick Men: A Novel About Grifters With Issues (10 page)

F
rankie’s car is already parked at the docks when Roy pulls up. His headlights are cut, and the music, for once, is off. Roy is glad. He likes crooners as much as the next guy, just not that loud. Not that often. Roy pulls into a space, his tires banging over the warped wood beneath. Hard to see out here. He turns off his engine and waits outside the car. The breeze is warm. He can hear the water nearby, the sounds of the ocean. Smell the dead fish. They rot under the docks, that’s what people say. They get caught at low tide and wedged against the wood. Caught there until the water recedes, and they die, flopping around. Sun bakes down, sometimes they explode. Fish guts under the docks. That’s the smell of the docks. That’s the smell of the ocean. Roy doesn’t come down here a lot.

He waits by the car because it’s too dark to see. Doesn’t even know where they’re going. It’s Frankie’s setup, all of it. If it goes down right, if this Turk character is who Frankie says he is, then it will be worth it. Odds are, he’ll blow it off as soon as he hears the setup. It doesn’t sound right already. Roy doesn’t like bringing
in partners. He doesn’t work with partners, except for those he’s known for a long time. Frankie’s been with Roy for seven, eight years. Running the C together for at least five. They’ve got a good thing going. Before Frankie, it was Hank, and before Hank he didn’t run the con. It’s a lineage, a line of succession. Hank, Roy, Frankie. Clean, no scars. No need to spoil it now. No need to get caught at low tide.

“Roy. Roy.” A whisper, insistent, from behind him.

“Frankie?” He can’t see past ten feet out here. The lights are few and far between, dim. The moon is behind clouds tonight. “Where are you?”

“Between the buildings. Look down, follow the yellow line.”

A thin strip of paint circles the perimeter of the dock, and Roy keeps his eyes down as he goes. Like he’s walking a tightrope. Soon, he can see Frankie’s slim body in a small alleyway between two warehouses. He’s got a duffel bag with him.

“What’s in there?” Roy asks.

“Plastic.”

“For what?”

“For the art. If we wanna transport it.”

“The art.”

Frankie starts to walk. Roy’s right behind him. “The art, the art from—look, let’s just meet with the guy, and you’ll see, okay? Okay, Roy?”

“Yeah, okay, that’s what I said. Let’s meet with him. Go, lead on.” Art, he wants to talk about. What does Roy know about art?

“So you check this thing out?”

“It’s sweet, you’re gonna love it. I tell you, you’re gonna be flying.”

“But did you check it out?” Roy asks. “Everything?”

“I told you. I known Saif two years.”

“From where?”

“I know him, don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, and where from?”

Frankie picks up the pace; Roy tries hard to follow. “Where I know him from? My sister’s boyfriend’s friend, if you gotta know.”

“Tight connection.”

“Fuck you,” Frankie spits.

“All I’m saying is, this thing better be clean—”

“It’s clean.”

“—’cause the last thing I need is to be staring down a barrel.”

“It’s clean,” Frankie insists, “it’s clean. Jesus, you’re a hard sonofabitch to work with, you know that?”

Roy grins behind the darkness. They come to a warehouse door, the small entrance next to the fold-up receiving bay. Frankie knocks once, twice. The door opens.

The warehouse is tall. Twenty, thirty feet. Rafters disappearing after the drop ceiling, low-watt lights hanging down. Crates, boxes litter the floor. Foam on the walls, blocking out noise, blocking out light. Tarps just beyond. Insulated. Roy likes the protection, likes the thought that went into it. Smart.

“Frank!” Inside the warehouse, coming toward them. Happy to see them. “It is good to see you. You look well, my friend.” An accent, thicker than Roy imagined. Doesn’t sound like the other Arabs he’s done business with, but there haven’t been many.

Frankie grabs the arm of the tall, broad man approaching them. He’s dark—dark skin, dark hair. Thin mustache across his upper lip. Sharp nose. Doesn’t look like an Arab. Maybe this is what Turks look like. He kisses Frankie on the cheek, hugs him
close. Frankie hugs back. Roy puts his hands in his pockets. This must be Saif.

He breaks off the embrace and holds Frankie at arm’s distance, pointing at his upper lip. “A little fuzz, yes? Working on that mustache we talked about?”

“We don’t do facial hair,” Roy cuts in.

Saif cups an ear. “You don’t do …”

“Facial hair. Identifying mark. They’ll pick you outta a lineup first thing with a stash like that.”

Saif’s laugh booms throughout the warehouse, sinking into the foam walls. “I like this one already,” he says to Frankie. He goes to hug Roy, gets a hand instead. They shake.

Roy looks at his watch. He’s got nowhere to be, but he doesn’t want to spend the rest of the night at the docks. He can smell the fish, even inside. “Let’s get cooking on this.” He turns to Saif, cutting Frankie out of the conversation. “My friend here tells me you’ve got some slag you want to run. I’ll tell you right now, we don’t fence.”

“I am aware of this,” says Saif. “Frankie tells me this. But this is not your usual … slag, as you said. What I am looking for is a partner, one who—”

Frankie cringes even before Roy reacts. “Partner?” Roy says. “I think you got the wrong impression. We don’t take partners.”

“But surely you must work with others.”

“It’s a give-take relationship, and I take.”

“And Frank?”

“Frankie’s been my guy for years. He was gonna screw me over, he’d have done it a long time ago. You, I’m not so sure about.”

Roy turns to leave, but Frankie steps forward, working his
way in. Trying to turn Roy around. His tone is clipped, fast, nervous. “Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. Roy, Saif is clean, I’m telling you—”

“You can take my merchandise anywhere,” Saif protests, hurt. His volume rises, dark face flushing. “It is the best merchandise. You ask anyone in this town about Saif, they will tell you I am a good man. Ask anyone.”

“He’s just real cautious,” Frankie tells Saif. “He didn’t mean anything by it.” Spins to Roy, who’s already turned his back on the two. “Roy, Roy, it’s clean. You said we’d look at it, you said we’d check the deal.”

Roy sighs. He’s cautious. He’s right to be cautious, he knows. That’s the only way to play it. But caution shouldn’t prevent a deal, so long as the pieces are in the right place. Money is money. “Let’s see what you got,” he says.

Saif nods his head. “I understand your reservations.”

“You do, huh? Good. Then that part of our discussion is over. Let’s see the stuff.”

Saif leads them across the warehouse. Roy takes in all the boxes, all the crates coming through here. “Merchandise comes off the boats?” he asks.

“Directly into my warehouse,” says Saif. “I do the shipping. Home routing. Some makes it to its final destination, some … some are damaged along the way.”

Frankie laughs. Saif joins in. Roy does not. “So if you’ve already got a fence set up, what do you need us for?”

“Again, friend, this is not precisely a … fencing situation. Here, please. Look at this.”

Saif is standing by an open crate, six feet high, the side pried off. He reaches into the darkness and pulls out a painting. Matted,
but unframed. Muted, splotchy colors. Paint thrown onto the canvas. Abstract art.

“It’s a fucking mess,” says Roy.

Saif shakes his head. “It’s a Pollock.”

“Okay, it’s a Pollock.”

“Not exactly.”

Roy looks to Frankie. Did he come here to play games? “What is it, a Pollock or not a Pollock?”

“Both,” says Saif proudly. “Neither.”

Roy gets it. Seen this scam before. “So it’s a forgery.”

“Not quite.” Saif is grinning openly now. He enjoys this.

Roy does not. “I’m about two seconds from gone.”

“Please,” says Saif, holding up a hand. “I will explain.” He pulls the painting closer, bringing it underneath a strong light. “Look in the corner. There, the bottom right.”

There’s a signature scrawled in blue paint. Nothing more than a few squiggly lines, but it clearly does not say Pollock.

“So what is it?” asks Roy.

“There is a man in Amsterdam named Philippe Marat, and he is the finest forger of Jackson Pollock’s work in the entire world. Original Pollocks are nearly impossible to purchase, even for the fantastically wealthy, because there are so few of them on the market. That is where Marat steps in.”

“So like I thought,” Roy says. “It’s a forgery.”

Saif nods. “But not of a Pollock. This is a forgery of a
Marat
.”

Roy catches Frankie’s smile and begins to understand why his partner brought him here. “It’s a forgery of a forgery.”

“Marat’s work is so popular now that he, too, commands large commissions, and now he, too, is quite rich, and has the luxury of reducing his output. The market for Marats has tripled in the
last year, but there are few Marats to be had. That is where my people come in.”

Roy doesn’t know what to make of it. The painting doesn’t appeal to him, certainly. Makes him think about the carpet back home. But some folks like that. Roy’s seen people pay up for morgue photos, for autopsy shots. Roy’s seen it all.

“People pay for this?”

“People pay good money, my friend. When I worked through my European dealers, these sold faster than any other merchandise I have ever moved. I have many artists like this, many pictures. For every Pollock there is a Marat and a nameless man in Africa. For every Rothko, there is a Gardiner and his counterpart in Sweden, and so on. The prices here in the States, they are much higher than overseas. My fences from Turkey could easily—”

“We don’t fence,” Roy says again. “I wouldn’t know where to—”

“But we know guys,” Frankie cuts in. “We got buddies downtown, Roy. We’re just talking about being the middleman here, a go-between. We can’t lose.”

“We can always lose.”

Saif purses his lips, nods his head. “I understand your concern. If you are not interested in the art, there are a great many of my countrymen who have entered the trafficking business. Perhaps—”

“No drugs,” says Roy. “That’s a rule.” He approaches the painting, rubbing his hand along the canvas. The paint is hard, thick. Roy is surprised to find that it has a real texture, a firmness to it. “You’ve got more of these?”

“Hundreds,” says Saif. “And more coming in every week.”

Roy takes a step back, examines the painting once more. Still can’t see the interest in it, but he understands what makes money move. “I don’t know art,” he begins, walking around Saif. “I don’t even pretend to know where to start. Couldn’t tell you who this Pollock or Marat guy is, couldn’t tell you if this is a good fake or a crappy one—”

“I tell you, it is the finest—”

“—but I’m willing to take your word for it. Why? Because Frankie here vouches for you. And because I’m no judge of art. Or fake art.”

“Then I must thank you.”

“But there’s one thing I do know, and that’s the big C. The con. The racket. Don’t know what they call it in your country, but we’ve been doing it over here longer than your people been herding goats. I know all the angles, and I see them coming before other guys even thought of ’em.”

“I have no doubt, my friend.”

Roy eyes the Turk. His clothes, his hair. The way he stands out from the background, as if none of the objects in the room dare to get too close. “Tell me, you know what a mush is?”

Saif smiles, spreads his arms. “Educate me.”

“A mush is just another word for a big black umbrella. Easiest prop there is, but here’s the way it went down: Old days, a grifter would sit in the stands at the racetrack on a rainy afternoon and take side bets.”

“Side bets?”

“Illegal wagers. You’ve got ten-to-one odds on some horse in the fifth down at the windows, but the grifter will give you twenty-to-one on the same horse. Folks wanna up their money, they go to the man in the stands. Anyway, he’d be sitting there
in the rain, taking everybody’s bets, taking in all their money. Cash up front, always. So by the time the race starts, he’s got ten, twenty grand sitting in his pocket and three times that in outstanding wagers, but he doesn’t care who the winner is, ’cause he’s not gonna be around for the finish.

“The second the bell goes off for the race and those horses bust outta the gates, everybody’s watching the action. That’s when the grifter takes his mush, raises it over his head, and disappears into the crowd and all those other black umbrellas, taking the money with him. And no one at that track ever sees him again.

“If we get together on this,” Roy continues, coming back around to Saif, holding his gaze, holding it tight, “and I see you even
looking
to raise your mush, I’ll kill you. Just so we have it straight, I’ll kill you.”

Saif nods his head. His voice is low. “I would expect no less.”

“Good,” says Roy, all smiles and cheer. “Let’s see the rest of this crap.”