The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (6 page)

“Then you think we can take it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then—”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I turned at the voice, and there was our artist friend, his ten cent lapel badge fastened to his thrift shop jacket, his yellow teeth bared in a fierce grin. We were once again standing in front of
Composition with Color,
and Turnquist’s eyes gleamed as he looked at the painting. “You can’t beat old Piet,” he said. “Sonofabitch could paint. Something, huh?”

“Something,” I agreed.

“Most of this is crap. Detritus, refuse. In a word, you should pardon the expression, shit. My apologies, madam.”

“It’s all right,” Carolyn assured him.

“The museum is the dustbin of the history of Art. Sounds like a quotation, doesn’t it? I made it up myself.”

“It has a ring to it.”

“Dustbin’s English for garbage can. English English, I mean to say. But the rest of this stuff, this is worse than garbage.
Dreck,
as some of my best friends would say.”

“Er.”

“Just a handful of good painters this century. Mondrian, of course. Picasso, maybe five percent of the time, when he wasn’t cocking around. But five percent of Picasso is plenty, huh?”

“Er.”

“Who else? Pollock. Frank Roth. Trossman. Clyfford Still. Darragh Park. Rothko, before he got so far down he forgot to use color. And others, a handful of others. But most of this—”

“Well,” I said.

“I know what you want to say. Who’s this old fart running off at the mouth? His jacket don’t even match his pants and he’s making judgments left and right, telling what’s Art and what’s garbage. That’s what you’re thinking, ain’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t say it, you or this young lady. She’s a lady and you’re a gentleman and you wouldn’t say such a thing. Me, I’m an artist. An artist can say anything. It’s an edge the artist has over the gentleman. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Uh.”

“And you’re right to think it. I’m nobody, that’s who I am. Just a painter nobody ever heard of. All the same, I saw you looking at a real painter’s work, I saw you keep coming back to this painting, and right off I knew you could tell the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit, if you’ll pardon me once again, madam.”

“It’s all right,” Carolyn said.

“But it puts my back up to see people give serious attention to most of this crap. You know how you’ll read in the paper that a man takes a knife or a bottle of acid and attacks some famous painting? And you probably say to yourself what everybody else says. ‘How could anybody do such a thing? He’d have to be a madman.’ The person who does it is always an artist, and in the papers they call him a ‘self-styled’ artist. Meaning
he
says he’s an artist but you know and I know the poor fellow’s got shit for brains. Once again, dear madam—”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ll say this,” he said, “and then I’ll leave you good people alone. It is a mark not of madness but of sanity to destroy bad art when it is placed on display in the nation’s temples. I’ll say more than that. The destruction of bad art is in itself a work of art. Bakunin said the urge to destroy is a creative urge. To slash some of these canvases—” He took a deep breath, expelled it all in a sigh. “But I’m a talker, not a destroyer. I’m an artist, I paint my paintings and I live my life. I saw the interest you were taking in my favorite painting and it provoked this outburst. Am I forgiven?”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Carolyn told him.

“You’re kind people, gracious people. And if I’ve given you something to think about, why, then you haven’t wasted the day and neither have I.”

“T
here’s the answer,” Carolyn said. “We’ll destroy the painting. Then they couldn’t expect us to steal it.”

“And they’ll destroy the cat.”

“Don’t even say that. Can we get out of here?”

“Good idea.”

Outside, a young man in buckskin and a young woman in denim were sprawled on the Hewlett’s steps, passing an herbal cigarette back and forth. A pair of uniformed guards at the top of the stairs ignored them, perhaps because they were over sixteen. Carolyn wrinkled her nose as she passed the two.

“Sick,” she said. “Why can’t they get drunk like civilized human beings?”

“You could try asking them.”

“They’d say, ‘Like, man, wow.’ That’s what they always say. Where are we going?”

“Your place.”

“Okay. Any particular reason?”

“Somebody took a cat out of a locked apartment,” I said, “and I’d like to try to figure out how.”

We walked west, subwayed downtown, and walked from Sheridan Square to Carolyn’s place on Arbor Court, one of those wobbly Village streets that slants off at an angle, bridging the gap between hither and yon. Most people couldn’t find it, but then most people wouldn’t have occasion to look for it in the first place. We walked through a lazy overcast September afternoon that made me want to dash uptown and lace up my running shoes. I told Carolyn it was a great day for running, and she told me there was no such thing.

When we got to her building I examined the lock out in front. It didn’t look too challenging. Anyway, it’s no mean trick to get in the front door of an unattended building. You ring the other tenants’ bells until one of them irresponsibly buzzes you in, or you loiter outside and time your approach so that you reach the doorway just as someone else is going in or out. It’s a rare tenant who’ll challenge you if you have the right air of arrogant nonchalance.

I didn’t have to do all that, however, because Carolyn had her key. She let us in and we went down the hall to her apartment, which is on the ground floor in the back. I knelt and studied keyholes.

“If you see an eye staring back at you,” Carolyn said, “I don’t want to know about it. What are you looking for?”

“A sign that somebody tampered with the locks. I don’t see any fresh scratches. Have you got a match?”

“I don’t smoke. Neither do you, remember?”

“I wanted better light. My penlight’s home. It doesn’t matter.” I got to my feet. “Let me have your keys.”

I unlocked all the locks, and when we were inside I examined them, especially the Fox lock. While I was doing this, Carolyn walked around calling for Ubi. Her voice got increasingly panicky until the cat appeared in response to the whirr of the electric can opener. “Oh, Ubi,” she said, and scooped him up and plopped herself down in a chair with him. “Poor baby, you miss your buddy, don’t you?”

I went over to the little window and opened it. Cylindrical iron bars an inch thick extended the length of the window, anchored in the brick below and the concrete lintel above. All the window needed was a few similar bars running horizontally and a few squares of color and it could be a Mondrian. I took hold of a couple of bars and tugged them to and fro. They didn’t budge.

Carolyn asked me what the hell I was doing. “Someone could have hacksawed the bars,” I said, “and fitted them back into place afterward.” I tugged on a couple more. They made the Rock of Gibraltar seem like a shaky proposition in comparison. “These aren’t going anyplace,” I said. “They’re illegal, you know. If there’s ever a fire inspection they’ll make you take them out.”

“I know.”

“Because if there’s ever a fire, that’s the only window and you’d never get out it.”

“I know. I also know I’m in a ground floor apartment facing out on an airshaft and the burglars would trip over each other if I didn’t have bars on the window. I could get those window gates that you can unlock in case of fire but I know I’d never find the key if I had to, and I’m sure burglars can get through those gates. So I think I’ll just leave well enough alone.”

“I don’t blame you. Nobody got in this way unless he’s awfully goddamn skinny. People can get through narrower spaces than you’d think. When I was a kid I could crawl through a milk chute, and I could probably still crawl through a milk chute, come to think of it, because I’m about the same size I was then. And it looked impossible. It was about ten inches wide by maybe fourteen inches high, but I made it. If you can get your head through an opening, the rest of the body will follow.”

“Really?”

“Ask any obstetrician. Oh, I don’t suppose it works with really fat people.”

“Or with pinheads.”

“Well, yeah, right. But it’s a good general rule. Nobody got in this window, though, because the bars are what? Three, four inches apart?”

“You can leave the window open, Bern. It’s stuffy in here. They didn’t get in through the window and they didn’t pick the locks, so what does that leave? Black magic?”

“I don’t suppose we can rule it out.”

“The flue’s blocked on my fireplace, in case you figured Santa Claus pulled the job. How else could they get in? Up from the basement through the floor? Down through the ceiling?”

“It doesn’t seem likely. Carolyn, what did the place look like when you came in?”

“Same as it always looks.”

“They didn’t go through the drawers or anything?”

“They could have opened drawers and closed them again and I wouldn’t have noticed. They didn’t mess anything up, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t even know I’d had anybody here until I couldn’t find the cat. I
still
didn’t know somebody’d been in here, not until I got the phone call and realized somebody stole the cat. He didn’t just disappear on his own, Bernie. What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe somebody hooked my keys out of my purse. It wouldn’t be that hard to do. Somebody could have come in while I was at the Poodle Factory, got ahold of my key ring, had a locksmith copy everything, then dropped the keys back in my bag.”

“All without your noticing?”

“Why not? Say they swipe the keys while they’re inquiring about getting a dog groomed, and then they come back to make an appointment and return the keys. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“You leave your bag where anybody can get at it?”

“Not as a general rule, but who knows? Anyway, what the hell difference does it make? We’re not just locking the barn after the horse has been stolen. We’re checking the locks and dusting the bolt for fingerprints.” She frowned. “Maybe we should have done that.”

“Dusted for prints? Even if there’d been any, what good would they have done us? We’re not the cops, Carolyn.”

“Couldn’t you get Ray Kirschmann to run a check on a set of fingerprints?”

“Not out of the goodness of his heart, and you can’t really run a check on a single print unless you’ve already got a suspect in hand. You need a whole set of prints, which we wouldn’t have even if whoever it was left prints, which they probably didn’t. And they’d have to have been fingerprinted anyway for a check to reveal them, and—”

“Forget I mentioned it, okay?”

“Forget you mentioned what?”

“Can’t remember. Well, let’s just—
shit,
” she said, and moved to answer the phone. “Hello? Huh? Hold on, I just—shit, they hung up.”

“Who?”

“The Nazi. I’m supposed to look in the mailbox. I looked, remember? All I got was my Con Ed bill and that was enough bad news for one day. And there was nothing in the slot at the Poodle Factory except a catalog of grooming supplies and a flier from one of the animal cruelty organizations. There won’t be another delivery today, will there?”

“Maybe they put something in the box without sending it through the mail, Carolyn. I know it’s a federal offense but I think we’re dealing with people who’ll stop at nothing.”

She gave me a look, then went out to the hall. She came back with a small envelope. It had been folded lengthwise for insertion through the small slot in the mailbox. She unfolded it.

“No name,” she said. “And no stamp.”

“And no return address either, and isn’t that a surprise? Why don’t you open it?”

She held it to the light, squinted at it. “Empty,” she said.

“Open it and make sure.”

“Okay, but what’s the point? For that matter, what’s the point of stuffing an empty envelope into somebody’s mailbox? Is it really a federal offense?”

“Yeah, but they’ll be tough to prosecute. What’s the matter?”

“Look!”

“Hairs,” I said, picking one up. “Now why in—”

“Oh, God, Bernie. Don’t you see what they are?” She gripped my elbows in her hands, stared up at me. “They’re the cat’s whiskers,” she said.

“And you’re the cat’s pajamas. I’m sorry. That just came out. Are they really? Why would anybody do that?”

“To convince us that they mean business.”

“Well, I’m convinced. I was convinced earlier when they managed to get the cat out of a locked room. They’ve got to be crazy, cutting off a cat’s whiskers.”

“That way they can prove they’ve actually got him.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. One set of whiskers looks a lot like another one. I figure you’ve seen one set, you’ve seen ’em all. Jesus Christ.”

“What’s the matter?”

“We can’t get the Mondrian out of the Hewlett.”

“I know that.”

“But I know where there’s a Mondrian that I
could
steal.”

“Where, the Museum of Modern Art? They’ve got a couple. And there are a few in the Guggenheim too, aren’t there?”

“I know one in a private collection.”

“The Hewlett’s was in private hands, too. Now it’s in public hands, and unless it gets to be in our hands soon—”

“Forget that one. The one I’m talking about is still in a private collection, because I saw it last night.”

She looked at me. “I know you went out last night.”

“Right.”

“But you didn’t tell me what you did.”

“Well, you can probably guess. But what I did first, what got me into the building, is I appraised a man’s library. A nice fellow named Onderdonk, he paid me two hundred dollars to tell him what his books were worth.”

“Were they worth much?”

“Not compared to what he had hanging on his wall. He had a Mondrian, among other things.”

“Like the one in the Hewlett?”

“Well, who knows? It was about the same size and shape and I think the colors were the same, but maybe they’d look completely different to an expert. The thing is, if I could get in there and steal his Mondrian—”

“They’ll know it’s not the right one because it’ll still be on the wall at the Hewlett.”

“Yeah, but will they want to argue the point? If we can hand them a genuine Mondrian worth whatever it is, a quarter of a million is the figure they came up with—”

“Is it really worth that much?”

“I have no idea. The art market’s down these days but that’s about as much as I know. If we can give them a Mondrian in exchange for a stolen cat, don’t you think they’d go for it? They’d have to be crazy to turn it down.”

“We already know they’re crazy.”

“Well, they’d also have to be stupid, and they couldn’t be too stupid if they managed to swipe the cat.” I grabbed her phone book, looked up Onderdonk’s number, dialed it. I let it ring a dozen times and nobody answered it. “He’s out,” I said. “Now let’s just hope he stays out for a while.”

“What are you gonna do, Bern?”

“I’m going home,” I said, “and I’m going to change my clothes and put some handy gadgets into my pockets—”

“Burglar’s tools.”

“And then I’m going to the Charlemagne, and I’d better get there before four or someone’ll recognize me, the doorman or the concierge or the elevator operator. But maybe they won’t. I was wearing a suit last night and I’ll dress down this time around, but even so I’d rather get there before four.”

“How are you going to get in, Bern? Isn’t that one of those places that’s tighter than Fort Knox?”

“Well, look,” I said, “I never told you it was going to be easy.”

I hurried uptown and changed into chinos and a short-sleeved shirt that would have been an Alligator except that the embroidered device on the breast was not that reptile but a bird in flight. I guess it was supposed to be a swallow, either winging its way back to Capistrano or not quite making a summer, because the brand name was Swallowtail. It had never quite caught on and I can understand why.

I added a pair of rundown running shoes, filled my pockets with burglar’s tools—an attaché case wouldn’t fit the image I was trying to project. I got out a clipboard and mounted a yellow pad on it, then set it aside.

I dialed Onderdonk’s number again and let it ring. Nobody answered. I looked up another number and no one answered it, either. I tried a third number and a woman answered midway through the fourth ring. I asked if Mr. Hodpepper was in, and she said I had the wrong number, but that’s what she thought.

I stopped at a florist on Seventy-second and picked up an assortment for $4.98. It struck me, as it has often struck me in the past, that flowers haven’t gone up much in price over the years, to the point where they’re one of the few things left that give you your money’s worth.

I asked for a small blank card, wrote
Leona Tremaine
on the envelope, and inscribed the card
Fondly, Donald Brown.
(I thought of signing it Howard Hodpepper but sanity prevailed, as it now and then does.) I paid for the flowers, taped the card to the wrapping paper, and went outside to hail a cab.

It dropped me on Madison Avenue around the corner from the Charlemagne. A florist’s delivery boy does not, after all, arrive by taxi. I walked to the building’s front entrance and moved past the doorman to the concierge.

“Got a delivery,” I said, and read from the card. “Leona Tremaine, it says.”

“I’ll see she gets them,” he said, reaching for the bouquet. I drew it back.

“I’m supposed to deliver ’em in person.”

“Don’t worry, she’ll get ’em.”

“Case there’s a reply,” I said.

“He wants his tip,” the doorman interposed. “That’s all he wants.”