Hollywood Hills (14 page)

Raleigh lived contentedly for nearly a month, and then one evening he got a call from Nigel Wickland. Nigel asked if Raleigh could meet him in Beverly Hills at Nic's on North Canon Drive for some "filet mignon with blueberries."

When Raleigh responded, "Puh-leeeze, Nigel, are you serious?" the art dealer said, "All right, never mind the trendy food. We'll just have a martini or two and a plate of their crispy onions. Meet me there at five thirty."

The guy was a mystery, Raleigh thought, and just about impossible to predict. Nigel had gotten him this great gig with the Bruegers, yet he hadn't wanted any thanks or favors in return. Now there was clearly a sense of urgency in the art dealer's latest invitation. Before he left for the meeting, Raleigh walked out of the main house to the cottage and made sure that Marty Brueger was contentedly watching his big-screen TV.

"I'm going grocery shopping," he said to the old man. "I'll make you a nice supper when I get back."

"Before you go, take the video out and put in the one on the shelf," Marty Brueger croaked. "I think I like Keeping Up With the Kardashians even more than The Girls Next Door, don't you? An
d s
top at the liquor store and pick up a bottle of Jameson's Irish whiskey. Get me the rare stuff that costs two hundred bucks a bottle. Just tell them to bill it to Leona."

"Certainly, Mr. Brueger," Raleigh said. "I won't be long."

Raleigh made sure that every door in the main house was locked and then set the alarm and video cameras. He had permission to drive the Mercedes SL550, which Leona Brueger called her "runaround town" car, so he decided to take it instead of his old Toyota. He liked the way the car hugged the road as he drove down from the Hollywood Hills on his way to Nic's on North Canon Drive.

Raleigh found Nigel Wickland waiting in the Martini Lounge and he looked agitated. There was a busy late-afternoon crowd, and Nigel was sitting at a table sipping a vodka martini instead of his usual daiquiri. The art dealer's bonhomie wasn't on display this time when he motioned Raleigh to sit.

"Did you get caught in traffic?" Nigel asked, as though annoyed. "No, but I had to lock up and see that Mr. Brueger was okay," Raleigh said. "I'm only twenty minutes late."

"Perfectly all right, "Nigel said quickly.

For once, he wasn't sartorially turned out like the Savile Row snobs that Raleigh had despised during his London days. Nigel was wearing a gray seersucker jacket that needed cleaning and a slightly wrinkled white dress shirt open at the throat.

After Raleigh's drink arrived Nigel said, "How old are you, Raleigh?"

Raleigh sipped and said, "What's this all about?"

"I'm older than I look," Nigel Wickland said. "I'm sixty-four years old."

No, you look it, Raleigh thought. The art dealer had a faint scar running behind his ear that Raleigh hadn't noticed before. He's had work done, but he still looks his age, Raleigh thought. Then he said to Nigel, "I'm fifty-eight."

"It's hell when you know you're growing old and can't afford it," Nigel said. "It's frightening, isn't it?"

"What do you mean, 'can't afford it'?"

Nigel said, "You're making a good wage with the Bruegers, but, Raleigh, it's going to end in a few months. They're not taking you with them when they move to their vineyard in Napa. You'll be out of work again."

"No, I didn't see myself as a grape picker in Napa," Raleigh said, a bit insulted. "I expect I'll get by in life without sitting at a stoplight with a sign saying, 'Will Butler for Food.' I'll find another position. I'll get by."

"Aren't you tired of just getting by?" Nigel Wickland was so intense that Raleigh hesitated.

Then Raleigh said, "Maybe I'll find me a Leona Brueger and marry her like that weasel Rudy Ressler is doing. Or maybe I'll win a big lottery."

Nigel Wickland showed Raleigh a patronizing smile, ran his fingers nervously through his mane of white hair, and said, "Be realistic, Raleigh."

Raleigh drained his glass and said, "You be realistic, Nigel. Or more to the point, be straightforward. What're you getting at?"

Nigel Wickland picked up his cocktail napkin and dabbed at his mouth, at the bead of sweat that had popped out above his upper lip. In fact, Raleigh saw, there was sweat forming on his brow as well. Then he said, "I'm in financial trouble, Raleigh. This fucking recession is killing my business. I may have to let Ruth go and I don't know how long I can keep the bloody doors open."

"Sorry to hear that," Raleigh said as Nigel signaled for a round of fresh drinks.

"You and I," Nigel said, "we could help each other. We could form a ... partnership and help each other."

"What kind of partnership?"

"You could make more money than you've ever imagined," Nigel Wickland said.

"I tried that," Raleigh said. "And did eight months at Lompoc in a room with lots of guys you wouldn't care for at all."

Then, with a burst of words spoken so fast that it took Raleigh a moment to comprehend, Nigel Wickland said, "I just want you to let me into the house some afternoon for an hour or two. I'll need you to turn off the video cameras and let me in unseen. And you can help me for a few minutes and then go tend to Marty Brueger in his cottage until I'm ready to go."

After digesting the import of the art dealer's words, Raleigh said, "For this I'm going to make more money than I've ever dreamed of? And what do I tell the police when you steal her jewelry or whatever it is that you have in mind, Nigel? Do I tell them that a home invader came in with guns blazing, or what?"

Nigel Wickland said, "I just want to photograph two of her paintings."

"Photograph her paintings?"

"Yes, I've had some experience with photography and I think I can do it. All I'll have to do is return one more time two weeks later for about another hour, and that's it."

"I think you've been drinking too many of those martinis, Nigel," Raleigh said. "You're not making sense."

"It's about a painting switch," Nigel said. "I know of a custom lab owned by a sweet young man with whom I once had an understanding. He has mild Asperger's syndrome and can hardly manage to shake hands whenever we meet, but he's a marvel at what he does in a photo laboratory. I can shoot two of the Brueger paintings with a digital camera and get the proportions exactly correct. Then I can take the disc to him, and I guarantee you that he will produce an enlargement on poster board to the precise measurement of the paintings in Leona Brueger's house. It will cost me three thousand dollars but he's already promised that if he gets hi
s m
oney up front, he can get the work done in a fortnight, no questions asked." Then Nigel added, "That's two weeks."

"I know what a fortnight is, Nigel," Raleigh said. "I had the misfortune of working one summer in London at a bistro near the King's Cross tube station, and it was a misery. But I still don't know what you're talking about."

"We must have a chin-wag about dear old London town sometime," Nigel said. "Anyway, I shall have to return to the Brueger house another time after that."

"I don't like that next part," Raleigh said. "The part I now see coming."

"I'll need access again to replace the paintings with my photocopies on poster board, fitting them into the existing frames. And then I'll be on my way with the originals. No harm, no foul, as your basketball fans love to say."

"You're talking like a wack job," Raleigh said. "Whadda you mean, no harm?" Realizing that his diction was slipping, Raleigh lowered his voice and said, "You're talking about entering her house and stealing her paintings!"

"She's an ignorant arriviste, like most of my clients," Nigel retorted. "She cares nothing about Sammy Brueger's art or any art. She told me that she wouldn't mind if the house burned to the ground with all the paintings in it. Everything is insured to the hilt.

"And what the hell happens to me when she figures it all out and calls the police?"

"She won't figure it out, Raleigh," Nigel Wickland said. "She's culturally ignorant. She barely looks at any of her art, and I can promise you that only a close inspection by an expert could detect the switch. That may happen a few years from now when she bothers to take the paintings from the storage facility where they're going. She's told me they'll all be stored when she moves away from the house, and I guarantee you that's where they'll stay for a ver
y l
ong time because she doesn't care about any of them. In fact, she's commissioning me to box each piece and personally supervise the trucking transfer to her preferred storage facility."

"Hell000!" Raleigh said. "So what happens when she does get around to collecting them and maybe putting them up for auction with some art dealer like you? Somebody'll spot the switch for sure!"

"That's the beauty of my idea," Nigel Wickland said. "After they're crated and ready to leave Casa Brueger, I'm going to make sure that the crate containing the switched paintings is a different manufacture from all the other crates, and that the crate shows subtle signs of having been tampered with. The people who transfer these things are just ordinary truckers who will notice nothing. When the switch is finally discovered years from now, the theft will be blamed on someone who works at, or has access to, the storage facility. Leona will collect from the insurance policy and nobody will be harmed except for the insurer, and when has anyone felt sorry for insurance carriers? It's foolproof, Raleigh."

Raleigh was silent for a moment and then said, "How much money could the paintings bring? Realistically."

"They could be sold easily in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Bern, or even Berlin. I've personally contacted a discreet European auctioneer who believes he can get at least six hundred thousand U
. S
. dollars for The Woman by the Water. The other piece of Impressionist art that I have my eye on is called Flowers on the Hillside, and he assured me that it should bring an equal amount. Raleigh, you and I will be dividing at least a million dollars after expenses. Tax-free! No more tending to dotty old men for you. And enough money for me that I can perhaps keep my gallery open until this goddamn recession ends. Plus there's a special bonus for me in that these two wonderful pieces of art will end up with someone who truly appreciates them and not with some vulgarians in the Hollywood Hills."

"Half a million," Raleigh said, and the sound of it brought
a c
atch in his throat. When he spoke again he said, "When did you find out about me, Nigel?"

"Find out what?"

"That I'm an ex-convict. Someone who might seriously listen to your 'foolproof plan'?"

"The first night we met," Nigel Wickland admitted. "When you were gone to the gents, Julius Hampton talked about you. He said that you'd had a bit of difficulty with the law and had been in prison. You see, Raleigh, he had a background investigation done by a private investigator when he hired you. Perhaps you didn't know that."

Raleigh was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, "Nobody accepts an ex-con at face value. They all have to dig, and distrust you, and pay you less than they'd pay somebody who's ten times worse but never got caught. Someone who's done lots worse things than not paying enough of the taxes that the government gouges you with."

"I know how ex-convicts get shat on," Nigel Wickland said, putting his manicured fingers on the back of Raleigh's hand and patting sympathetically. "So yes, I confess that I did think you might be more amenable to my idea than the average person would be. But I could also see immediately that you were a man with imagination and ambition."

"Now you're going too far, Nigel," Raleigh said. "Quit while you're ahead."

"You look a bit peaky," Nigel Wickland said, eyes widening. "Are you in, then?"

"If this goes sideways and I get busted, I'm ratting you out to the police and making the best deal I can for myself," Raleigh Dibble warned. "You better understand that up front."

"Fair enough," said Nigel Wickland. "I'm not worried, Raleigh. Not at all."

"You will be if you end up inside with lots of other guys wh
o h
ad foolproof plans," Raleigh said. "And state prison, where we'll go, is a lot worse than Club Fed, where I did my time. In a state lockup you'll learn to sleep on your back with one eye open." Looking at Nigel Wickland, he added, "But maybe you're not so scared of that part."

"That was unnecessary, Raleigh," Nigel Wickland said. "Homophobic humor is beneath you."

Chapter
Ten.

UP, UP. get the fuck up!" Jonas Claymore said to Megan Burke, who had been awake most of the night, vomiting.

It was 10:30 A
. M
. and she was exhausted, and still suffering from withdrawal aches even though Jonas had taken the last $100 from his checking account and bought them half an ox. They divided and smoked it late in the evening after dining on a Fat-burger that neither of them really wanted.

"I don't feel well," Megan said, lying on the double bed they shared, her makeup from last night smeared all over her face.

She looked like a blow-up doll that somebody had let the air out of, he thought. She looked like the corpse in one of those slasher movies, where the guy with the knife likes to paint their dead faces. Jesus! How did he get himself into this relationship?