Picture This (4 page)

Zena nudged me. We ran softly toward the door. Here was the real moment of danger. The light over the door wasn’t bright, but if Bellows looked back, he might see us.

He didn’t.

We slipped through.

We were in a dark room with a tiled floor. Zena led the way—she knew where she was going, and she had a little flashlight.

We tiptoed upstairs, into a hall. Here, the lights were on. Zena took my arm. “This way.”

We stepped through a door. In this room, the lights were off. Zena quickly flashed her light into the dark. A big room, set up like an office. Desk. File cabinets. Two big leather chairs—they gleamed black in the light. Zena stepped behind the desk, but she didn’t sit down. Smart. A chair might creak. Leaning forward, she tapped a key on the keyboard. The computer screen lit up. She whispered, “You see, it is always on.”

I was worried about the light from the screen, but Zena was quick. She found the menu for “Clock Set.” I looked at my watch. 11:05. She set the time back to 10:00. At 11:30, when the alarms were supposed to come on, the computer would think there was more than an hour to go.

“Come,” Zena said, “I’ll show you where we can hide.”

She led me to the back of Green’s office. Here, she pushed against a folding door. We stepped into a small storeroom, its shelves piled high with paper and boxes of office supplies.

How long did we sit there? Forever. I strained my ears. Finally, I heard a door close somewhere, and Zena whispered, “That is Bellows. He always tests the front door and bangs it shut before he locks it. Now he’ll go up to his room, on the third floor.”

It was 11:25. As far as Bellows knew, the alarms would come on in five minutes. We gave him ten. Then Zena pushed the door open and we stepped back into the office. Bellows had turned out all the lights in the house and closed the curtains. I suppose that’s how he kept the house when Green was away. It was really dark. I kept one hand on Zena’s shoulder. Twice, I hit my knees against tables or chairs, but we didn’t knock anything over. Green’s special gallery was at the far end of house. I was glad when we finally reached it.

A fan hummed softly, keeping the air dry for the paintings. Zena flashed the light around, but kept it low, on the floor. The room was shaped like a shoebox. I could see that Green’s paintings were on the long back wall. The windows along the front wall were covered by heavy drapes—strong sunlight hurts paintings.
An easel and a table with tin cans full of brushes and palette knives, and twisted tubes of old paint, stood against the shorter outside wall. I remembered that Green liked to paint. But he hadn’t painted the pictures in his gallery. Very impressive. I almost whistled. I counted them. Eighteen. And at least a dozen were worth stealing, though the three we wanted were certainly the best.

Zena picked them out with her light: Heade’s
Hummingbirds
, Wilfredo Lam’s
Jungle
, and Tom Thomson’s
Red Lake.

Now came the tricky part. I took the flashlight from Zena. Kneeling down, I shone the light up behind the frame of the hummingbird painting. I could see the glint of the wire attached to the painting where it passed over the hanger.

Zena took one of the wire loops out of her bag. I drilled a little hole in the floor, then screwed an eye bolt into it. I then looped the wire over the painting until I felt it catch on the hanger.

“Be careful,” said Zena.

I was. Gently, I attached the end of the wire to the turnbuckle, then hooked the turnbuckle to the screw eye in the floor. My hands were
sweating as I tightened the turnbuckle. One turn... another... tighter... tighter... This sounds complicated, but it worked just like a necktie around a man’s neck. I was pulling down on the long end of the tie.

At a certain point, I was pulling down with the same force as the weight of the painting. Take the painting away, and the alarm on the hanger wouldn’t know the difference... I hoped.

“Be careful!” Zena hissed again.

I took hold of the frame. Steady nerves, as Victor had said. Were mine steady enough? I lifted the painting free of the hanger...

No ringing bells...

No flashing lights...

But I was sure holding my breath.

“You did it!”

“I think you should kiss me,” I said.

“All right!”

“And one kiss each for the other two?”

“Hurry up!”

The other two were easier. Soon, the last of them, Tom Thomson’s
Red Lake
, was in my hand. Zena held her big cloth bag open toward me.

“My kiss?”

“Don’t be silly, Paul!”

“I’m not being silly.”

“There,” she murmured, a moment later. “Now we have to get out of here.”

We tiptoed out of the room, leaving the wires behind. Stretched between the screw eyes in the floor and the hangers on the wall, they looked like strange musical instruments.

We reached the hall outside Green’s office. My eyes were used to the dark and I could see the stairs as we went down to the back door. One creak. We stepped carefully. In a few seconds, we were outside.

Zena grabbed my arm. “Wait!”

“What is it?”

“In his study, by the computer—I was fiddling with my ring. I left it there!”

“You’re crazy!”

“I have to get it! It has my name inside!”

I looked at my watch. “Zena, the alarms come back on in three minutes.”

“Stay here. I have time.”

Before I could stop her, she ducked inside. What was she doing? I stared at the second hand
on my watch. Two minutes... one minute... thirty seconds...

With eight seconds to go, Zena opened the door and came out.

“I found it!” she said. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was breathing fast. Which looked really good, in that tight sweater. But for the moment I wasn’t thinking about her tight sweater, not even about her kisses.

We found Victor, parked down the block. He saw Zena’s bulging bag and started the engine. “Well done,” he said. “How did it go?”

I looked at Zena—who was looking straight ahead out the window. “Fine,” I said, “until right at the end.”

Victor stared at me, frowning. “What happened?”

Keep your mouth shut. Be discreet. What had happened? I didn’t know... but I wished I did.

Moving House

Maybe you’re wondering what happened to the three paintings I’d originally painted for Zena, the reason I was mixed up in all this. Well, the answer was revealed the next morning, in Zena’s apartment.

Think. As soon as the robbery was discovered, police all over the world would be looking for those paintings. Where could we hide them? We needed them to be easy to get at. That way, Victor could move quickly when he sold them back to the insurance company.

Victor’s solution was clever. After the robbery, we took my paintings—exactly the same size, remember—and stretched them over the
paintings we’d stolen from Green. We put my kids playing catch over the hummingbirds. My portrait of Zena went over Wilfredo Lam’s jungle. And my picture of a rocky lakeshore had the honour of covering Tom Thomson’s painting of Red Lake.

The next morning, movers showed up, cheerful fellows with lots of muscle. Drinking our coffee, we watched them pack the paintings, and Zena’s other stuff, into cardboard boxes. Then they loaded the boxes into a van to move her to Los Angeles.

Brilliant. How were the police going to find the paintings in the middle of a move across the continent? My only question was, why L.A.?

“Why not?” said Victor. “Green’s insurance company has offices everywhere. Some criminals may prefer to return to the scene of the crime. I’d prefer to be as far away as possible. Besides, I know Los Angeles rather well. We give the insurance fellows the paintings, they give us the money. Sounds simple, but it will be rather tricky, I think.” His watery eyes widened and he smiled. “Everything depends on the exchange.”

“Sure, Victor. That’s how we get our money. But stay out of jail.”

“You’re such a bright boy,” he said. “Here’s your ticket.”

We flew on separate planes. Victor had even reserved rooms for us in three separate hotels. On the plane, I slept. When I woke up, I began thinking. All my questions about Zena came back. She hated Green, I was sure. What was she up to? And what had happened at the last minute, when she’d run back into the house?

I also had questions about Victor. I looked out the window as we passed over long, sandy wastes of the American desert. Los Angeles. There was something suspicious about this trip. L.A. isn’t a centre for the insurance business. It’s not even a centre for the art world. So what was Victor up to? Was he playing a trick? Pulling a fast one?

Victor called me in my hotel that night. “I have appointed myself social director, camp counsellor, and your chief guide. Let us meet for breakfast, at my hotel, at nine.”

Victor was all smiles the next morning. He had found a store that sold the Toronto papers. “We don’t even rate a line,” he said.

“It’s too early,” said Zena. Without asking permission, I’d given her a kiss as I’d sat down.

“Perhaps,” Victor replied. “But the robbery may not have been reported to the police.” He smiled. “The police will want to catch us and serve the interests of justice. But the insurance company won’t be so moral. They may have told Green to keep quiet, knowing that they might be able to buy the paintings back from us. We may have some breathing room.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t. That’s what I want to talk about, in fact. How are we going to get away with this? Each of us must make separate plans, but even apart we are still linked. If one of us is caught, surely we all will be.”

Victor reached inside his old grey suit and brought out two envelopes, placing one in front of me, the other in front of Zena. “Of course, I will tell the insurance company to give us our money in old bills. But the bills will certainly be marked. In the envelopes in front of you, you’ll find $10,000. Surely that will meet your immediate needs. For a time you won’t have to touch the insurance money at all.”

It was Zena who smiled. “You are so thoughtful, Victor. This will give
you
more breathing room, all right. By the time Paul and I begin spending the marked money, you will be far, far away.”

“Africa,” Victor said. “South America. China. There’s so much of the world I still haven’t seen.”

Late the next afternoon, we met again. Victor had rented a car. He drove us out to the storage lockers where the movers would deliver Zena’s stuff—including the paintings. She picked up her locker key at the desk.

“I think I should take the paintings when they get here,” Victor said.

It made sense. In working out the deal with the insurance company, he’d need to be able to get the paintings quickly.

“Okay, Victor,” I said, “but don’t get any fancy ideas.”

He dropped me at my hotel. Since he had a car, I decided to rent one as well. After all, we were in Los Angeles, home of the freeway. A taxi took me to the nearest Hertz office and I rented a Ford. Twenty minutes later, as I pulled out of the lot, I glanced into my rear-view
mirror. There was Zena, climbing into a rented car herself!

I pulled over to the curb and waited. As she came out of the Hertz lot, I trailed her. She followed the signs and drove straight to the airport. She parked, I parked. She went in, I followed. She went up to a ticket counter, I stayed back, so she wouldn’t see me. She paid cash, I suppose with some of Victor’s money. When she left, I went up to the counter.

“I was thinking of a trip,” I said.

The woman laughed. “Sounds like a good idea to me. Where to?”

I threw a glance toward Zena as she walked away. “Maybe where that gorgeous girl’s going.”

“Lisbon? Portugal?” The woman laughed again. “Won’t do you any good. She bought two tickets, so she must be going with somebody else.”

Lisbon. Well, that’s where she was from. I’d been suspicious so long I was almost surprised that Zena had told the truth. And I was upset. I didn’t want to lose her. Turning away from the counter, I ran after her but by the time I reached the parking lot, her car was pulling away.

Then, the next day, my suspicions turned back to Victor. We met for dinner. Everyone was tense. The paintings arrived the next day. After that came the exchange with the insurance company. Except for the robbery, this would be the most dangerous moment of all.

“You must trust me,” said Victor.

“That’s exactly the problem,” I said.

“Zena isn’t worried, are you my dear?” Victor turned to me. “At the end, she will have the money, and it is you who will hand over the paintings. I will only make the arrangements.”

Victor said he’d already told the insurance company we had the paintings, and now he told us how he’d work the exchange. The problem, of course, was that talking to the company gave them a chance to find us. They could trace his phone calls. “But I’ll use three separate cell phones,” he said. “I’ll put those little cards you can buy in a smoke shop into them. I will only make one call from each phone, and I’ll be in my car, driving. So they can trace each call, but I’ll already be gone, and my next call will be on a different phone, from a different place.” He laid out his three shiny new cell phones in front of him.