Stealing Picasso (19 page)

‘He's coming back,' Bam says. ‘Contrary to your advice.' He taps Turton on the top of the head with the phone.

‘I can get you the real one, Bam. If you let him go, I'll get you the real one,' Turton pleads.

‘Don't shit me, Turton. You can't get me the real one, 'cause you haven't got it. I know who has it. I seen it.'

‘No. We've still got the real one. We sold a forgery. You must have seen the forgery.'

Bam taps the phone receiver on Turton's temple. ‘Turts – enough. So far you're not involved. Don't get involved,' he warns. ‘As it stands, for us it's just a smallish financial setback and a kick in the arse of my pride. And when Arse Sell gets here, and pays us back, I'll be able to stand up at our AGM and announce that a smallish financial setback suffered in the art
market has been reversed. After he pays us back I'll kill him. You wouldn't believe what a salve that is to your pride, to kill the man who kicked its arse. So there's that problem solved. And you and me? You and me are good, and you're back artworking fancy creatures onto our hogs like you always did.'

‘I told you, I stole the real one so I could sell a fake. And I sold the fake. And I've still got the real one. I'll swap you the real
Weeping Woman
for Marcel.' Turton is on his knees now, hands pressed together, praying to Bam.

‘You sold a fake one.' Bam looks down on him awhile. Looks at Larry Skunk and Wal and raises his eyebrows to ask what they think. ‘We got three now. Three paintings. This is murky waters,' Wal warns him.

‘No,' says Bam. ‘It's pretty clear.' He takes hold of one of Turton's sideboards between his thumb and forefinger. ‘If we cut this deal, I get the
Weeping Woman
or you and Arse Sell are wrapped in chook-wire and overboarded in the rip. That's pretty clear to you, isn't it?'

‘It's clear.'

Bam lets go of Turton's sideboard and lays a hand on his head and smiles. ‘So you've still got it?'

‘I have.'

Bam shakes his head and laughs. ‘So the one she's got's a fake, too. She's laughing at mine like I'm the ignorant guy in town. And hers is a hundred per cent as forgeried as mine. By the same guy did mine. Little Turton. Pumping 'em out like a battery hen.' He unbuttons his vest, lets his belly fall. ‘Man, that is beautiful.' His face is bright, pleasure pulsing in his eyes as he imagines Leni Richtofen's bewilderment when he unrolls the real
Weeping Woman
in front of her, points out the deficiencies in hers and tells her he hopes she didn't pay too much for it.

‘People think they know culture,' he says. ‘“This is good.” “This is bad.” “This one here's a masterpiece and this one here stinks.”' He shakes his head. ‘They don't know, man.'

‘They don't know,' Turton agrees.

‘They don't,' says Wal.

‘Nuns,' Larry Skunk nods. ‘Or speedboats. Who's to say?'

In Melbourne on a good spring day a sun sits on every car along every street. People waiting for trams smile and squint and shade their eyes from these ranked galaxies, and laugh out loud for no reason and admire themselves in sunglasses in shop windows. The light has been missing since March and now it's back it promises holidays, the beach, Christmas, your childhood to live again. There is never domestic violence in Melbourne in bright spring. There are no murders. People buy last year's ice cream and smack their lips at how good it tastes.

Harry and Mireille have been out shopping in Chapel Street. She has bought a Barbara Pilecka print skirt and a pair of Charles Jourdan boots and Wayfarers. He has bought Levi 501s and a Blaupunkt stereo and Aviators with a black frame. But none of these have worked. None of these have lifted their
hearts and defeated their cares as they should have. The ice creams they lick taste like yesteryear's permafrost. Vaguely pistachio, vaguely steppe.

Returning from shopping they climb Mireille's stairs burdened by bags and flop onto her sofa. The beach across the road has people lying on it for the first time since Harry has known Mireille. Children paddling, waving bright plastic toys; dogs running in circles, as if a general happiness has been declared for all creatures great and small who haven't committed major larceny.

‘We give it back,' she declares.

‘He kills us,' Harry answers.

‘Then we do not give it back.'

‘The police catch us. We go to jail.'

‘Then … shit,' she concludes.

It is a conversation they have repeated for days, sporadically, and she has come to the same conclusion she always does.

‘What about we give Laszlo his money and then return the painting to the gallery?' Harry asks. ‘Everyone's back to where they were. No one's out anything. No need for revenge or law enforcement.'

‘But he's sold the forgery for, let us say, two million. Even if we give him back his million he has to give back two when the real
Weeping Woman
surfaces. He is out a million profit and in deep waters with whoever he sold the fake to. He still kills us.' She sneers at her ice-cream cone. ‘This is not pistachio. Is like wood. Pinocchio is a flavour in this country?' She takes it to the kitchen bin and dumps it. When the phone rings she answers it sullenly. ‘Yes, hello.'

‘Hello – it's me. Turton.'

‘Turton? You sound …' Turton sounds like a man choking on the opening of a eulogy.

‘I'm in trouble. The Stinking Pariahs have me. They want the painting.'

‘The motorbike gang of hoodlums? How do they know about the painting? You did not tell a motorbike gang of hoodlums about us, Turton?'

‘They found out.'

Harry is off the sofa, by her side, leaning in to hear.

‘Well, and they want to buy it too now?' She smiles, hopefully.

‘They already bought it. Now they – want it. Or they're going to – they're going to kill me.'

‘Oh …' she draws a breath. ‘Then, we will … bring it.'

‘No. Don't come here. They don't know you're involved – let's leave it like that. Put the painting in a locker at Spencer Street, like Weston Guest suggested. Then ring me in Pakenham and tell me the number of the locker. Don't worry about the locker key. These guys don't need a key.'

When the phone call ends Mireille puts her hands on her hips and looks out of the window to the kids playing on the beach. She's bemused. The gods have conspired against her, but still boys and girls shout and splash each other as if this world was suitable for play.

‘Now the outlaw motorbike gang of hoodlums have Turton. They kill him if we do not give them the painting.'

‘Jesus.' Harry throws his ice cream to the floor. ‘Who stole the fucking painting? They've got no right …'

They are silent a long while. Then the conversation again.

‘We give the painting back,' Harry ventures.

‘They kill Turton,' she answers. ‘Laszlo kills us.'

‘We give it to them.'

‘The police find us. Or Laszlo does. He will soon know there is another. The black market is small like a grocery store.
Whoever he sold his painting to will soon know it is a forgery. Then Laszlo will come.'

Harry lowers his face into his hands and groans. ‘It'd have been better if he was never born.'

‘Turton?'

‘Picasso.'

The underground locker room at Spencer Street railway station is a facility little used by the public for storage but greatly loved as a urinal. Its air is dense with a fug of piss and Pine-O-Cleen. Down a concrete ramp there are four aisles of green metal lockers large enough to hold luggage. In the first aisle two long-haired students, one in a sports coat and the other a t-shirt, both with pen drawings on their jeans, are sitting astride a bench rolling a joint. They stop when they see Harry and Mireille. Making no attempt to cover it, they stare insolently. What they are doing may be illegal, but these guys abide by morals, not laws. Mireille smiles and Harry nods apology as they move into the next aisle.

This aisle is empty. Halfway down they stop and Mireille hands the cardboard tube to Harry. The lockers are stacked three high. He opens the door of a mid-height locker, puts the cardboard tube inside, closes the door again, inserts twenty cents in the slot, turns the key, pulls it out as the coin drops and reads the number on the key. Two two seven. ‘Two twenty-seven,' he whispers to her. He lays his forehead and forearms against the cold tin of the locker and tries to hold back a sob.

‘I don't think they'll give him back, Mireille. If he's tried to rip these guys off, there's no way he gets away with that.'

She puts her arms around him from behind and kisses the back of his neck and whispers, ‘It will be okay. Most people, the dreadful things they say they will do, they will never do them.'

He rolls his eyes. ‘You get to be a Stinking Pariah by doing the dreadful things you say you'll do. It's how you get in the gang.'

Harry rings Turton's Pakenham number. Bam Hecker picks up the receiver and listens. ‘Who's there?' Harry asks.

‘A disillusioned cubist,' Bam tells him. ‘Give me a number.'

‘Let me speak to Turton. I want to know he's okay.'

‘Say something, Turton.'

‘Say what?'

‘You hear that – “Say what?”' Bam asks. ‘That was him saying, “Say what?”'

‘Locker number two twenty-seven at Spencer Street station. The painting's already in there. You can let Turton go now.'

‘Well, now. No. I need an art connoisseur to verify the veracity of the masterpiece, so I'll be taking Turton with me. If the painting's there and he verifies its veracity, then Turton has the key to the city. If it isn't there, or it isn't as advertised, he better grow some gills real quick.'

As the three bikies motor in from outer suburbia towards the CBD, other Stinking Pariahs swing in off side streets and out of car parks until a school of them are riding together, muscling motorists aside – a war party. In their midst, on the back of Bam Hecker's Roadster, with his arms around Bam's waist, helmetless, with his cheek laid on the Stinking Pariahs' coat-of-arms on Bam's jacket and his eyes clenched tight shut, is Turton Pym, an artist, not widely known.

When they pull up outside Spencer Street station they remain seated astride their bikes, spread across the footpath surrounding the concrete ramp that leads down into the locker room. They light cigarettes and deadeye civilians. Bam, Turton, Larry Skunk and Wal Wolverine Symonds dismount.

‘No one goes down there,' Bam tells the war party. They move down the ramp, jostling Turton between them, pushing him and poking him, slapping his back, a buddy they are sharing a joke with.

The two university students on the bench, nearing the end of their second smoke, ogle the three Stinking Pariahs as if they are Orcs stepped from a tale of Middle Earth. ‘Well met,' one of them says, which makes the other giggle. Bam kicks the guy who spoke in the chest and he slams to the floor. Lying there with a fractured sternum, he coughs scarlet bubbles into his cupped hands and studies them, amazed. Larry Skunk takes hold of the guy who laughed and slaps his face. He is loading to hit him again when Wal steps between them, frees the guy from Larry Skunk's grasp, leans down into his face and whispers, ‘You are this close to bein' a boa-constrictor in Larry Skunk's head.' He holds up a thumb and forefinger to show him how close. ‘And you don't wanna be one. Piss off. Quick. Hurry.'

The two students scarper up the ramp, the one helping the other, who is hunched, brightest blood still bubbling at his lips.

‘This way. Here's eighty, eighty-three, eighty-nine. They go up from here.'

Bam follows the rising locker numbers around the corner into the next aisle until they are standing in front of 227. He pats Turton in the small of the back. ‘Big moment for you. She's either in there … or she isn't. You trust your mates?'

Turton nods, uncertainly. Holds up his left hand showing crossed fingers.

From the front bar of the Hub of Rails across the road from the train station Harry watches the war party arrive. He lays back his head, swallows his beer, crosses the room to the payphone in the corner, takes a scrap of paper from his pocket with a series of numbers on it and dials the City West watch-house.

‘City West police station, Constable Godfrey speaking.'

‘You guys want a big, big scoop?'

‘I sit here all week waiting for them, sir. What type is it?'

‘I mean a big break?'

‘Can I help you with something?'

‘No. I'm going to help you solve the crime of the century. A big feather in your cap, a promotion. All of that. The stolen Picasso,
Weeping Woman
– want to know where it is? Where it will be for the next ten minutes?'

‘Tell me.'

‘Locker two hundred and twenty-seven at Spencer Street station.'

‘Two twenty-seven.'

‘For another ten minutes.'

‘Who's calling?'

He hangs up and rings Russell Street headquarters.

‘Russell Street police.'

‘You guys want a ginormous tip-off?'

‘A what?'

After Russell Street he calls St Kilda Road.

‘St Kilda Road police station, Constable Widnerpool.'

‘Constable Widnerpool. Listen. I'm about to give you the biggest leg-up of your career. How does “Chief of Police Widnerpool” sound?'

When he hangs up he smiles in spite of his fears. He has a vision of cops charging down the front steps of various police stations, holding onto their caps and their batons, making time. He sits in the front window of the Hub of Rails to wait for them, the cavalry that will save Turton Pym.