Stealing Picasso (17 page)

Bam flicks his fingernail into Marcel's sternum, jolting him into the here and now. Marcel, though he imagines he has been talking loud, making a brave defence of Michael, hasn't spoken a word. He rubs at his chest now with both hands. ‘Ow.'

‘You stoned? Or do I bore you?' Bam asks.

‘No. He's stoned. Popped an SP,' Larry Skunk explains. He turns to Marcel. ‘Zoned out, didn't you, little bloke?' He turns back to Bam. ‘Prob'ly thought he was talking a conversation or watching a movie. That's usual with SPs. Only, he's a bit flighty with the homo starbangers if he don't pop an SP, so, you know, a spoonful of sugar …'

‘Some crook. Comes to fence stolen goods and goes to sleep standing up like a pony.' Bam laughs, placated, knowing the little weirdo is just tripping and not bored by him. ‘Okay. The painting.'

To do the deal on the painting they go over to the bar, just Bam and Larry Skunk and Marcel. Bam has the front page of
The Age
with a photo of the
Weeping Woman
lying on the bar. He takes Marcel's painting from under his arm and lays it next to the newspaper and passes a disapproving glare from one to the other.

‘If you're going to go to the trouble to paint some sheila, why wouldn't you paint a stunner? I mean, look at this pig. Paint Claudia Schiffer. Paint Cher, for chrissakes.'

‘You see the nun? The speedboat?' Larry Skunk wants to know. Bam turns around to him, smiles and pats him on the arm, ‘It's not as easy for everyone as it is for you, Larry Skunk. You got a gift.' He turns to Marcel. ‘You stole it? You and Turton Pym?'

‘Yes.'

‘You always plan to sell it to us?'

‘No. We had a proper art buyer from the art world. In Europe. But that guy got scared when Interpol got involved. Interpol don't worry you, do they? Turton said they wouldn't.'

‘No. But that European art-world dude, he's a different dude to me. This painting might've been worth half a mill to him. He obviously believed in it. Like a person might believe in the Bible. But him and me move in circles that value art differently. What you're attempting now, since he pissed off and I stepped in, is, like, you're attempting to sell a Bible to a non-believer. For a non-believer a Bible might be useful to press wildflowers, or to chock up a table leg. But it isn't as valuable as it is to a dude who believes the stuff written in it. It's not very valuable at all. In fact, in this case, let me be an illiterate non-believer. Because I can't even read that thing.' He stabs his finger into the middle of the painting.

‘I don't get the nun and I don't get the speedboat. Let alone see whatever the European art-world dude saw. And you know what … I don't have any acquaintance on this planet can read it or believe in it either, apart from Larry Skunk here, who is a natural appreciator of the arts, but is, sadly, flat-out broke with an amphetamine habit. So you can't sell it to me as a believer, see? Because I can't sell it to a believer, see? I don't know any. I can sell it as a press for wildflowers, or as a chock for a table leg. But that's a different whole price range to the Bible price range.' He shakes his head, looking concerned for Marcel.

‘Are you prepared to negotiate in the wildflower-press price range? Now that your European art-world dude has chickened out? It being taken for granted that I'm prepared to engage in a knife fight to the death with Interpol's most feared warrior? Let me know. Because you came in here thinking Bibles. I want to know if you're fluid enough to adapt with the market.'

‘How much?'

‘Is that a negotiation, that question? An admission we're negotiating over a flower-press, not a Bible?'

‘This … it's worth millions.'

‘To a European art-world scaredy-cat who ran off with his millions. Me, I'm brave as a lion. I'm here to deal. But my mum always said I hung around with bad company that would lead me down the primrose path to hell, and she was right. Today I find myself among uneducated pot-heads who only want to fuck and fight. The aesthetic life is foreign to us. Culture is a rumour. Sometimes I surprise myself that I have the gall to upbraid niggers for their ignorance, when mine is so … noteworthy.' He stares off into a distance as if regretful at the state life finds him in.

‘Who am I going to sell this painting to?' he asks. ‘Maybe Voodoo Jones is in the market? Maybe him and Low Billy Low will form an art-buying cartel and purchase it.' Bam points at Voodoo Jones and Low Billy Low. They are the two guys who have been smearing the unconscious guy's privates with chop fat. They have finished that job and released the pitbull, which has set about feverishly licking the unconscious guy's fat-smeared private places, while Stinking Pariahs gather around laughing, taking Polaroids, waving them back and forth, guffawing at the images forming, and speculating on what sort of sweet dreams Hawk Dorkins might be having right now – dreams of centrefolds and starlets inspired by these pitbull ministrations. They begin speculating in what fashion Hawk Dorkins might go off his cruet when, in a day or two from now, they shatter those centrefold dreams by showing him those photos. Will he smash the camera with a ballbat? Or will he smash the dog with a ballbat? Or will he maybe smash himself with a ballbat?

Looking upon this scene, Bam Hecker leans on the bar, sits his chin in his hand and says, ‘What was I saying?' as if this kind of behaviour illustrates his predicament perfectly. Marcel knows then that he isn't going to get paid too much for the painting.

Bam sees Marcel's disappointment and puts his arm around him as one would around a child, squeezing him. ‘You come to an outlaw biker club to sell a Picasso,' he whispers. ‘How'd you think it'd go? An auction?' He jostles Marcel and tousles his hair to cheer him up. Then he leans down behind the bar, picks up a cardboard box and sits it before him. ‘That's a beer box half full of deal money. My experience of beer boxes half full of deal money tells me it'll be about thirty grand. That's a rock-bottom price for a Picasso, but it's about what I'll get
for it. Which illustrates what rock-bottom company I keep.' Bam shakes his head and makes a sad little pout. ‘I had good beginnings.'

Somehow Marcel feels sorry for him. ‘Don't worry,' he says. ‘It's fine. This money's fine. I don't want you to rip yourself off just because of what it's worth in some quarters. It's worth this to you.' He taps the beer box.

Bam looks on him with gratitude and lays a hand on his shoulder, and a tear comes into his eye as he looks around at the other Stinking Pariahs and says, ‘Thank you, Marcel. They aren't European art dudes … but they're family.'

Bam Hecker has told Marcel Leech a lie. His friends aren't all uneducated pot-heads who only want to fuck and fight. He has a highly educated and broadly cultured friend, Leni Richthofen, who despises fighting. Leni's great-great-uncle was a World War I air ace. Leni herself is the barrister of choice for the Melbourne underworld, and acts on behalf of every outlaw biker club in the state. No self-respecting thug fronts a judge in Victoria without Leni Richthofen by his side exuding pain at the martyrdom of her client. To turn up to court with a lesser defender smacks of carelessness and amateurism, and puts you in a class of crook that precludes you from being invited to participate in big operations around town. Even if your case is lost and you serve time, the fact Leni has represented you will be remembered and give you a certain standing in the ranks of the base and lawless.

Leni Richthofen has become wealthy keeping the underworld periodically outside jail, but along the way she has had to learn to deal in its currency. A broke speed-chemist might have to pay his fee with amphetamines. An insider trader might pay with information about a stock. A pimp down on his uppers might offer Leni a Swede as blond as a polar bear. A counterfeiter might pay in homemade bills. A safe-cracker might hand over bullion. A burglar might deliver a sack of artifacts. An art thief will almost always try to pay with a painting.

All the most beautiful things in the land have been stolen at one time or another and passed through the dirtiest hands. Being the receiver of swags of stolen valuables has turned Leni into a connoisseur and a fence.

Which is why a posse of Stinking Pariahs is riding a country road at night through rain towards her house to settle their debt with a painting. She has represented Bam Hecker and the Stinking Pariahs in many cases over the years and is currently defending them in eight separate prosecutions on matters ranging from assault occasioning actual bodily harm to the manufacture and distribution of a prohibited substance. At present the Stinking Pariahs owe Leni Richthofen $270,000 in legal fees. Bam Hecker, astride his soft-tail Fat Boy, bares his teeth in the cold rain at the thought of this paltry sum. He has a Picasso strapped in a canister across his back. He guns to the front of the group of bikes and swings off the bitumen onto a dirt road that winds up a mountain through a forest.

Leni lives in a stand of mountain ash in a whitewashed stone mansion on the eastern side of Mount Macedon. Her windows hang above the volcanic plain and look back towards a distant Melbourne. The window from which she is watching the Stinking Pariahs dismount in the gravel turning-circle below her house is the same window from which she blows a kiss to her
eight-year-old twins at boarding school in Melbourne every night. It is near enough to nine o'clock, so she blows the twins a kiss each across the dark plain towards the lights of the city.

Bam has told her he has something for her. Something that is going to knock her out and pay all fees owing. He sounded very pleased with himself and Leni hopes it isn't a partnership in some hare-brained scheme of drug importation or blackmail, such as they have offered her in the past.

Five Stinking Pariahs climb the wide stone steps to her front door, and it occurs to her that the easiest way for them to pay their legal fees would be to kill her. That's why most murders are committed in the underworld. Someone owes someone and it is easier to kill that someone than to pay them. She is usually careful not to let violent criminals owe her too much.

She opens the massive wooden door. ‘Hello, Bam.'

‘Richto.'

‘Hello, Larry Skunk. Wal. Victor, your mum well? Gumpy, out from inside – good for you.'

She ushers them in. They drop their sodden jackets in the tiled hall and shake their wet manes. Bam, glancing around, doesn't know one style of furniture from another, nor one school of art from its antithesis. He just knows the house is full of some fascinating old shit in dark colours with a lot of detail, and a load of childish treasure in bright colours with no detail. The antique and the modern. Modern artists have got it easy, it appears to him. In pride of place over the mantel is a scrap of faded canvas cut from Leni's great-great-uncle's red Fokker triplane.

She gets them a bottle of beer each, herself a Bombay Sapphire. Bam Hecker is elated in Leni's presence; at her pale Teutonic skin and green eyes. He has seen her blink a magistrate into a boy and bend His Justice with a lopsided smile. He has seen her put a ring through the nose of the county court
and lead it around like a prize bull. She is a queen in town, and tonight he is Sir Francis Drake bringing her treasure from a distant shore. He is embarrassed to find he is quivering in expectation of her approval. He wouldn't want it known he craves her admiration.

What will she do? Will she cover her eyes and peek sheepishly through her fingers, in case the treasure he has laid before her is a mirage? Will she try and stay cool and unimpressed, in order that the price is not set too high? He is sure she will look at him in a different way after he has unrolled the Picasso. He is sure she will be overcome. A Picasso. He half expects to make love to Leni before this night is over. But it would be enough if she would look at him the way she used to look at Barney Williamson, her last lover.

Barney was a hitman, standover man, armed robber and general hard man of the underworld. She was defending him on a murder charge when he fell in love with her. His advances were laughable and, at first, she laughed at them. Such infatuations were frequent in her line of work. It was a known syndrome at the bar: accused persons often fall for their barristers. They call it ‘defendant's hard-on'. You'll get over it as soon as you're pronounced innocent, she told Barney. The psychological imperative to mate with your protector will pass.

But only days after he was exonerated, after all the cheering and hoopla, he visited her and told her, ‘It hasn't passed, Leni. I guess it isn't defendant's hard-on.'

It was a great surprise to Leni and her friends when, having brought Barney back to life, as it were, by saving him from the death sentence, she took full responsibility for his future by falling in love with him. Her smarter acquaintances cut her dead. She began moving in Barney's circles, where she was a
great prize for Barney to show off. Educated, famous, beautiful … all this was nothing. But she could mesmerise the twelve good men and true, and this was powerful magic in Barney's world, and his friends stole glances at her and wondered if she might levitate or burst into flames.

The month Leni and Barney began living together she sent her children away to boarding school, because not only was Barney a character you didn't want your kids mixing with, it was pretty likely he was going to die in a way that might endanger bystanders.

When he was found rolled up in a rug in a roadside drain in Eaglemont, her old private-school friends thought Leni would come back to them. But, having known Barney's presence was precarious, the couple had had some of his sperm frozen, in case Leni wanted to have his children when he was no longer around. When she took Barney's seed to the in vitro fertilisation clinic at Monash University, her old friends were scandalised anew. They took it as a sign of her continuing infatuation not only with Barney but also with the underworld. Had she not gone far enough, cohabiting with a killer and thief? Now she was practically fornicating with the dead. She was a scandal, lost to them, mesmerised by the dark side.

The underworld itself made no judgement on her attempts to have dead Barney's child, other than to open a book on the likelihood of conception and offer odds, she being forty-six, of five-to-one.

The Stinking Pariahs stand with their backs to the great window. Leni is in front of the open fire, the flames making her dress translucent.

‘Great view up here,' Gumpy says. Everyone in the room knows he is talking about her legs. A few smile.

‘Go and wait with the bikes,' Bam tells him.

‘It's raining, man.'

‘You should've considered the meteorological status quo before you double-entendred your attorney, fuckstick.'

Leni clamps down on a smile. She enjoys Bam showing off his vocabulary for her – a kid doing bombs off the high board.

Gumpy leaves the house.

‘Didn't fully embrace rehabilitation,' Bam tells Leni. The other Stinking Pariahs smirk down on him sitting outside in the dark in the rain. Larry Skunk waves to him.

‘About my fees, Bam. I'm not pressing you for the money. You pay me when you can.'

‘I know you're not pressing, Richto. You never do press. Pisses me off, too. If you pressed I could tell you to go to hell. But you never do press.'

‘Well, I'm not now.' Leni is not afraid of these men. They are not the worst she knows. And they are aware her death would bring killers out in revenge.

‘A man's gotta pay his way. Likewise a gang. And you're worth it.'

‘Thank you.' She inclines her head, wondering what he is so pleased about. Why the big grin and him drumming his fingers on his chest, looking at her as if she were beholden to him? What has come into his hands that he thinks will knock her out?

‘You like Picasso?' he asks.

Worry crosses her face. She nods. ‘Why?'

‘Me too. He was the best. A cubist dude like that … man. He come up with so many ways to see shit.' He is enjoying her puzzlement. He looks around the room at the art on her
walls. ‘How many people in Australia would you reckon have a Picasso in their house?'

She drinks her gin. ‘Not many.' She's staring right at him now, her lips and eyes thinned.

‘You don't? I mean, I don't recognise a Picasso here.' He waves a finger.

‘Bam …' She opens her hand at him, telling him to get on with it.

He smiles his widest and unslings the canister from his back and pops an end open. ‘Richto, you know the one that's missing?
Weeping Woman
? Big news, whole of the cops out looking?' Bam is swelled with excitement, running his fingertips through his long hair unconsciously. The other Stinking Pariahs are similarly puffed and leering with importance.

She nods slowly. Takes a drink. An ice cube cracks between her teeth.

‘What would it be worth to an appreciator of Picasso paintings like yourself? That painting?' He slides the canvas from the canister and takes it over to a large carved turpentine table. ‘Because old Bam boy, by keeping his ear to the ground and his eye out for a deal, has come into possession of said article. And, bein' the bloke he is, is prepared to trade it for services already rendered. Meaning, whatever we owe you.'

He unrolls the painting and places the fingertips of his left hand to his lips. He kisses them and flares them at the canvas. ‘
Weeping Woman
– Leni Richthofen. Leni Richthofen –
Weeping Woman
.' He swings his open hand from woman to painting and back, introducing them. Then he stands straight-backed, smiling, to observe the emotion wash over Leni at this jewel he has brought her. Her mouth will fall open, he thinks. Her eyes will widen, glitter, perhaps moisten, overcome by the gift.

She stands a moment, not moving, then she slowly walks
over to the table and looks down at the canvas and begins to laugh. Trying not to, covering her mouth, she begins to laugh. Bam, who had been standing there waiting for the pay-off of her disbelief and the beauty of her reverence, is angry. ‘What?' he asks. ‘What?'

She shuts her eyes tight and undulates with silent laughter, groping for his arm to steady herself.

‘Well? What?'

She tries to compose herself. Suppresses her laughter and apologises to him. ‘Sorry, Bam. Sorry. I …' But she looks down at the canvas and loses it again, shakes apart with giggles.

Maybe this is a form of hysterical reverence, Bam thinks. Could be the woman's undergone a psychological head-fry at the unexpected bigness of my gift. Blown sideways.

She is spasming now, arms wrapped around herself, her attempts to quell the hilarity seeming to exacerbate it.

‘What … the fuck … are you laughing at?' he asks.

She pulls herself together, recomposes her fringe with a forefinger and inhales a sudden sobriety. ‘Oh, Bam. I'm sorry. I wasn't laughing at you. It was relief. Like how you laugh after a fright. You scared the shit out of me, saying you had the
Weeping Woman
. I thought, “My God, Bam's gone mad. What is this? What's he doing? He's come to rob me or blackmail me.” But then, I saw that thing,' she points at his canvas, ‘and I realised you actually thought you did have the
Weeping Woman
… You thought that thing was the
Weeping Woman
and you were offering to pay me with it. I was just so relieved.'

‘You saying it's not it?'

‘Not nearly.'

‘It's at least nearly. I checked it out in
The Age
.'

‘Stick to your knitting, Bam. Drugs, standover work, protection rackets … perfect. No one better. But stolen art?'