“It's not like that. But I can't return the paintings. Now, please. It's dangerous for me to even be seen with you.”
He started to walk away, but I followed. “Carlos! What is going on? Why can't you be seen with me?”
“Everyone knows you're trouble, Annie,” he replied more calmly. “Every time there's a problem you seem to be around.”
This from a man who just confessed to grand theft.
Wait a minute. Did Carlos say
paintings
âas in more than one?
“Did you take more than the Chagall?”
“Stop it, Annie,” he implored, his voice low. “The Brock is not hurt. No one is hurt, not really. It's none of your concern. For your own good, you must stop asking questions. Now leave me alone.” He spun on his heel, walked quickly down the street, and disappeared around the corner.
I watched him go, baffled. Art thieves sold the art they stole; that was the whole point of the criminal exercise. So why had Carlos been so insulted by the suggestion? What had he meant by paintings, plural? And what did his son have to do with this? I presumed he meant his eldest boy, Juan, who had been a gawky teenager the last time we met, years ago. Had Juan grown into an art thief?
I needed some answers, fast. This was a job for a serious gossip. This was a job for Naomi Gregorian.
Back to the Brock I went, skipping up the monumental front steps, breezing past the ticket booth, and making a beeline straight to Esther.
I grinned. She beamed.
“I'm so glad you're still here!” I said. “I went out the wrong door, silly me, and need to get back in.”
Esther gazed at me kindly. “Hello, dear. Do you have a ticket?”
“I gave it to you just a few minutes ago. Remember?”
She shook her head. “No, I don't think so.”
“I was looking for a security guard.”
“The security booth's right over there, dear.” She gestured toward the kiosk. “But I can't let you in without a ticket.”
“Butâ” I swore under my breath, returned to the ticket booth, and shelled out another five bucks. Normally I didn't mind giving money to museums, but I made an exception for the Brock. I glowered as I handed Esther the new ticket. She gave me a shaky, wounded look.
I felt like a worm. That look was going to haunt me all night.
“Sure do love the Brock!” I exclaimed. “Thanks so much for your help, Esther! It's always just great to see you!”
Esther's mild blue eyes lit up again, and she smiled sweetly.
I sauntered over to the archway that led to the museum's offices and workrooms, unlatched the velvet cordon, slipped past, reattached it, and hurried down the paneled corridor. Sure enough, Naomi was in her office, hunched over her computer.
“Naomi!”
“Ann? What are you doing here?” she asked, closing the Web page she had been reading. Naomi's pale, nearly lash-less eyes blinked behind oversized tortoiseshell frames, her frizzy red hair was captured in a lopsided French knot, and she was dressed in a boxy brown corduroy jumper that appeared to have been purchased from an outdoorsy catalogue. It had no style to speak of but was perfect for chopping kindling.
“Oh, you know, taking in the new botanicals exhibit,” I lied. “Kudos to the curator.”
“I'll tell her. What do you want?”
“I just bumped into Carlos Jimenez,” I said, plopping into a hard wooden chair. “I haven't seen him for ages. He mentioned something about his son . . . ?”
“Juan? Yes, that was unfortunate. But if he can't be depended on to clean Mrs. Brock's office properly then he has no place here. Is that what you wanted to ask, Ann?”
“Nope. Here's what I wanted to ask: How many thefts has the museum suffered over the last year or so?” When it came to dealing with Naomi, I had learned, sometimes blunt was best.
“I can't imagine what you're referring to,” she dodged. “And I'm very busy.”
“I'll make it quick, then. Has the Brock been losing artwork?”
Naomi pressed her thin lips together. “And how is that any of your concern?”
“I may know someone who could get it back.” Since everyone already assumed I was a player in the art underworld I figured I might as well take advantage of it. “But before I approach my, um,
friend
, I have to know the whole story. No way am I getting my guy involved without some assurances.”
There was a long pause. Just when I was convinced she had decided to call Securityâor, worse yet, Agnes Brockâshe spoke. “There have been some losses, yes. Most of the items were not on display and no one realized they were gone until the annual inventory last month.”
“What's missing?”
“A few paintings by minor artists, as well as several of the less important Pre-Columbian artifacts. Nothing especially important or valuable.”
“Was a police report filed?” No museum liked to admit when its security had been breached, but a police report would be necessary if the Brock intended to submit an insurance claim.
“The Brock family does not wish to pursue it. The Chagall is a separate matter entirely.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because . . .” she blustered. “Because . . .”
“You're just repeating what you've been told, aren't you?”
“I am not!” Naomi said, snatching up the gauntlet I'd tossed at her feet. She glanced at the open office door and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Just between you, me, and the walls, I don't understand why Mrs. Brock's making such a big deal about the stolen Chagall. It's insured, and the rumor is that she was planning to sell it anyway.”
“Sell it? Why?”
“Haven't you heard?” Naomi's voice became more animated. “Agnes Brock and her sister, Ida Cuthbert, had a falling out last year, and Ida's been threatening to sue for a share of the museum. Most of the collections belonged to Agnes' late husband, Herbert Brock, but a few pieces, like the Chagall, came from the Cuthbert family. The workroom scuttlebutt is that Agnes decided to dump the Chagall, which she never really liked anyway, just to spite her sister. The thief took care of it for her.”
“That's so petty.”
“You mean that's so Brock.”
Naomi and I shared a rare grin. “Anyway, I really should be getting back to work. If you have any information on the stolen Chagall I suggest you contact the police.” She turned towards the computer, and logged back onto the Web site, a chat room for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings
.
“I see you're really burning the midnight oil there,” I teased.
“It's research for an upcoming exhibit,” she sniffed. “I'll send you a ticket.”
“Thanks,” I said, though I wouldn't be holding my breath.
I plodded back to my truck, headed west on Geary, turned right onto Hyde, passed the gleaming dome of City Hall, crossed Market to Eighth, and took the Bryant Street on-ramp towards Oakland. Traffic congealed to a stop at the mouth of the Bay Bridge and, after flirting with indulging in a temper tantrum, I took a few deep yoga-inspired breaths and reflected upon what I had just learned: The Brock Museum was missing some artwork, and Carlos Jimenez was up to his keister in art theft.
Most puzzling was his reaction when I asked if he'd sold the purloined art. I would have understood had he flat-out lied about his role in the theftâgiven my upbringing that would have been the normal responseâbut to admit the crime yet deny the profits? That was just nuts.
Traffic inched forward and screeched to a halt again. I flipped through the radio stations but nothing appealed to me, so I switched it off. Okay, let's say Carlos had been pilfering from the Brock Museum's storage rooms for years. Why would he risk taking a painting from one of the public galleries, where the odds of getting caught skyrocketed? Had it not been for the coincidence of the Stendhal faintings, Carlos would have been arrested and jailed. He had been lucky.
Unbelievably lucky.
Nobody was
that
lucky.
A long time ago my grandfather told me there were three kinds of luck in this world: bad luck, worse luck, and the luck that you made yourself. I was willing to bet Carlos' luck fell into the last category. What were the odds that Carlos
just happened
to change his modus operandi and steal a Chagall at the very moment Bryan and his friends
just happened
to faint in the Modern Masters gallery?
I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and groaned. Michael. Michael was behind this; he had to be. Why else would a world-class art thief be leading a museum tour?
A horn blared and I lifted my head to find that traffic was moving again, threw the truck in gear, popped the clutch, and peeled out. This was the advantage to driving a real working woman's vehicle, I thought as I nosed in front of a shiny red BMW convertible, whose outraged owner gave way as soon as he saw the truck's extensive collection of dings and dents.
The sunlight dimmed when I entered the tunnel at Yerba Buena Island, and it occurred to me that one thing Michael's involvement did not explain was why Carlos had targeted the Chagall. Did it, as Frank had suggested, have personal significance for him? Possibly. But what about the other missing items Naomi had told me about? Why would Carlos take them if he did not intend to sell them?
Of course, Carlos could be lying. Everybody else in my life had been lying to me lately.
Even my mother.
And speaking of whom, where the hell
was
that woman? It was a little after five now, and she had promised to call me after Seamus McGraw's funeral, which should have concluded hours ago. Maybe Mom ran into some old friends and spent the afternoon reminiscing in a Berkeley coffeehouse. I pulled off the freeway at Grand Avenue and tried her cell phone, but her voice mail picked up. We'd agreed to meet at Le Cheval in downtown Oakland at six o'clock, which gave me just enough time to get home, shower, and change.
Unless, of course, my mother needed to be rescued. But how would I know if she did?
I sped home and had just reached the second-floor landing when I heard the phone ringing in my apartment. I bounded up the remaining stairs two at a time, unlocked the door, and flung myself at the phone.
“Annie! Baby doll!”
“Bryan, is everything all right?” I imagined Bryan calling from the bowels of the city jail, clad in an ugly orange jumpsuit, a stern-faced Irish cop twirling a baton as he held the receiver of an old-fashioned, heavy black phone to Bryan's ear. What I lacked in actual knowledge of San Francisco's penal system I made up for with a fevered imagination.
“I'm just fine, honey. But you sound all out of breath. I didn't interrupt anything, um,
enjoyable
, did I?”
“Very funny,” I said, collapsing onto the futon couch that my mother had expertly refolded. “I told you, I've embraced celibacy as a form of ritual purification.”
“If you've embraced celibacy, honey, it's because you're
still
not gettin' any.” He sighed. “What am I gonna do with you?”
“Throw me to the lions?”
“Lions like juicy meat, baby doll. Not vinegary old maids.”
“Bryan! I am not aâ” I heard him laughing. “Smart aleck.”
“Anyway, the reason I'm calling, sweet cheeks, is because I have some
primo
info about that Pascal fellow.” Bryan was plugged into San Francisco's gossip network in a way I could never hope to be. “That assistant he told you about? The one who
supposedly
killed himself? He wasn't gay
at all
. He had a
girlfriend
.”
“Just because he had a girlfriend doesn't mean he wasn't gay. It was a long time ago, after all. Maybe he was afraid to come out of the closet.”
“I don't think so, honey. There were a
lot
of rumors at the time that the âsuicide' had been helped along, if you know what I mean. What better way to throw the police off the scent than by playing the gay card? Make it seem more likely that he would kill himself?”
“I don't know . . .”
“Look, baby doll, all I'm saying is, ask around. I had a very informative talk with the girlfriend. She's a doll. Her married name's Francine Maggio and she lives out in the Avenues. She said to tell you to call and set up a date for tea.”
I jotted down Francine's number and stuck it in my wallet, though I doubted I would call. I'd already decided not to bother Pascal anymore, and so far as I could tell, his former assistant had nothing to do with me or my mother.
Stepping out of my grungy overalls, I played my phone messages. My grandfather had called to assure me there was no need to worry, everything was “just superb!” and to express his best wishes for a lovely, interesting evening at the Hillsborough cocktail party with “ze dashing Monsieur Bruuuks.” He said nothing about Mom and did not leave a call-back number. Thanks for nothing, Gramps.
There was a call from Evangeline, who said she needed to talk to me about something important, apologized for setting off my alarm, and asked me to call back as soon as possible. She did not leave a number, either. Did no one go to secretarial school anymore?
Next was a call from Frank, asking in clipped tones if there was a problem with my studio's burglar alarm. Apparently the gratitude felt this morning had dissipated like a San Francisco fog. Relieved that the Picasso was off my hands and out of my studio, I erased that message, too.
There was nothing from my mother. I dialed her cell phone again. Voice mail. I tried Pascal's studio on the off chance Evangeline would answer. Nothing.