The Double Read online

  “When will we see each other again?” said Lucas, watching her from the bed as she fixed a gold bracelet to her wrist.

  “I’ll call you, Spero.”

  Lucas thought, When?

  He returned to his apartment. He should have been satiated, but instead he was lonely and a little bit empty. His mother had phoned him, and he returned the call. She asked him where he had been when she’d called, and he said, “Out,” and when she pressed him he said, “I went to a movie,” and when she asked him which one he thought of a title and said it. They talked some more and he told her he loved her, and when he hung up with her he winced, thinking, On top of everything else, I lied to Mom.

  Lucas checked his laptop. Still no response from Grant Summers.

  He ate some pasta and a salad and decided to watch a DVD. Lucas had intense interests in music, books, and film, and often homed in on a movie director and his work to the point of obsession. He had once watched a different film from the Robert Aldrich library every night for two straight weeks, and had done similar home film festivals for John Sturges, Peckinpah, and Don Siegel. Lately he had been checking out the work of John Flynn, an underrated director who had a spotty filmography that also included a couple of stone classics: Rolling Thunder and The Outfit. After many years out of circulation, The Outfit, based on a Parker novel by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark, had been rereleased. Lucas smoked down half a joint, got a Stella out of the refrigerator, and slid the disc into his player.

  The movie had a plot that was familiar, but the execution was flawless and true to the no-nonsense spirit of the book. Robert Duvall was Macklin, a stand-in name for Parker, teamed up with Joe Don Baker as Cody and Karen Black as Bett, Macklin’s squeeze. In the penultimate scene, Macklin robs a mobbed-up card game in a hotel room, where at the table sits a vulgarian named Menner, played by the infamous character actor Timothy Carey. Menner explains the premise of the film to Macklin as he is being taken off: “You hit a bank. You and your brother and a guy called Cody before your stretch. Midwest National in Wichita. The Outfit owns it. So you know how it is: You hit us, we hit you.” Menner previously used a cigarette to burn a hole in Bett’s skin, in an attempt to get her to talk. Before he leaves, Macklin says to Menner, “You shouldn’t use a girl’s arm for an ashtray,” and puts a close-range round through Menner’s hand.

  Lucas, high and transfixed, stared at the screen. You hit us, we hit you. He and his platoon had executed the same creed in the streets and houses of Fallujah.

  The film ended. Lucas went to his laptop and checked his Hotmail account for messages, and found a response from Grant Summers:

  Rick:

  The car is still available. You want to make generous offer? How generous?

  Grant Summers

  4th Combat Engineer Battalion

  United States Marine Corps

  One Team, One Fight

  The Marine Corps insignia appeared below the text.

  Lucas responded with an offer of five thousand dollars. He also wrote, My father was a marine. I respect you guys and hope we can do business. He waited, got nothing, and took a shower to pass some time. When he returned, Summers had sent him another message: Ten thousand is the price. Lucas immediately countered with an offer of eight thousand dollars. Summers sent another message that simply said, Ten. Lucas replied, I will pay you ten thousand after I inspect the Mini. If I find it to be in top shape, I will give you the full payment. I do want the car. Summers’s response was, Deal. I will contact you tomorrow with payment instructions.

  “Deal,” said Lucas, and smiled grimly.

  THIRTEEN

  A message from Grant Summers appeared on Lucas’s laptop the next morning. In it were steps for setting up an escrow account and instructions for wiring the money. It was the identical system Summers had proposed for Grace Kinkaid, along with the identical guarantees, stating the money would be held in escrow for five days while Lucas drove the car, inspected it, and was fully satisfied with the vehicle.

  Lucas replied: As I told you, I need to inspect the Mini myself before I give you the money. I am not a tire kicker. I want this car. I am only protecting myself. I think you would do the same if you were in my position. Sincerely, Rick Bell.

  He got no response. Lucas changed into his bike shoes, lifted his LeMond onto his shoulder, and walked it downstairs. Out in the front yard, he used Miss Lee’s garden hose to fill his water bottle, and saw his young neighbor Nick Simmons out in the street, detailing his beloved baby blue El-D with the gold spoke Vogue wheels, which he co-owned with his dad. Nick, his hair in full Rasta, his beard untrimmed per the Old Testament he studied assiduously, deuced Lucas up with a two-finger salute.

  Lucas swung onto his saddle and rode his bike north over the Maryland line, pedaling along the shoulder of the flat Sligo Creek Parkway, and into the hilly woods of Wheaton Regional Park. There he turned around and retraced his path. It was a solid twenty-mile ride.

  When he got into his apartment, pleasantly sweaty and loose, he checked his laptop. Grant Summers had replied: I cannot come to you with the car. I am about to deploy to Afghanistan. They do not allow us to leave base.

  Still deploying, thought Lucas, after all these months. Lucas hit him back with a phone number for one of several disposable cells he owned and said, Call me so we can discuss.

  Immediately Summers replied, I cannot use phone, it is against regulations for deploying soldiers.

  You mean, you cannot use the phone, thought Lucas. And you’ve forgotten, you’re not in the army. Marines don’t call themselves soldiers. They’re marines.

  Lucas wrote back: I am willing to pay you seven thousand dollars over your original asking price, cash. If you want to make this deal, I need to see the car first. Respectfully, Rick Bell.

  Lucas waited and got no reply. He did some research on regional American painters on the Internet and found an artist who was neither nationally famous nor unknown, which made her suitable for his purposes. This took about an hour, and in that time he still had not received a response from Summers. It didn’t seem fruitful to wait around the apartment any longer. He wondered if he had been too aggressive. Perhaps he had pushed too hard and scared Summers off. Anyway, he had sent the e-mails. He couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle now.

  Lucas had a shower, dressed in nice clothing, and drove over to the Fort Totten Metro Station, where he took the Red Line around to the Dupont Circle stop. He was hoping to talk to an art appraiser. Specifically, he was looking for Charles Lumley.

  He found Lumley’s small, unmarked storefront on the ground floor of a stone town house on 22nd, west of Connecticut Avenue, between R and S. The neighborhood north of the Circle was clean, pricey, with primarily white residents. In style and layout its streetscape was reminiscent of northern or northwestern Europe.

  Lucas looked through curved plate glass. A man, turning the corner on forty, was inside the shop, seated behind a desk, working or trolling on an open Mac laptop. A couple of paintings, landscapes and portraits, were set up on easels, and a few were mounted on the white walls, but otherwise the store appeared to be low on saleable merchandise. Lucas tried the door and found it locked. He tapped on the window and got the man’s attention. The man inspected Lucas, then put up one finger and buzzed him in. Lucas entered as the man stood.

  “How can I help you?” said the man, now walking around the desk. He was trim and wore a nice chalk-stripe suit with flat-front pants, a jacket of narrow lapels, and a powder-blue shirt open at the neck. His eyeglasses had black frames and light-blue stems. The glasses barely clung to his small, pinched nose. His hair was thinning, cut short, and what there was of it was combed forward.

  “I’m hoping you can,” said Lucas, and he extended his hand. “My name is Bob.”

  “Charles Lumley.”

  They shook hands. Lucas thought, Soft.

  “I have a painting,” said Lucas. “It was willed to me from my grandparents. I think it might be
valuable, but honestly, I don’t know anything about art.”

  “Who is the artist? Do you know?”

  “A woman named Emily Meyers. From what I read, she has quite a reputation up in Maine.”

  “Emily Meyers, yes,” said Lumley, nodding his head. “I know of her. Lived in Deer Isle, painted scenes of local life up there, fishermen, houses, nets and traps, landscapes, and the like. Mostly worked in oil but there were some watercolors, I believe.”

  “This one’s sorta like, you know, a scene of boats dry-docked in the winter. Like a wintry painting…”

  “Do you have a photograph of it?”

  “No, sorry. I guess I wasn’t prepared to come see you today. I mean, I was in the neighborhood, and I remembered your shop was here. A lady I met told me about it, said you had worked with her before.”

  “What lady?”

  “Her name was Grace Kinkaid.”

  Lumley’s mouth twitched up into a smile. “Grace is lovely.”

  “I’m hoping to maybe sell the painting. I like it and all, but I move around a lot. Doesn’t make sense for me to keep it at this point in my life. Trouble is, I have no idea how to go about making the sale.”

  “Well, I could help you,” said Lumley. “What I’d need from you first are good clear photos of the front and back of the painting, size specs, and any interesting facts you can dig up regarding the personal relationship between your grandparents and the artist, if there was any such relationship. Gallery owners call this provenance. Of course, I’d have to see the painting myself, inspect it for authenticity.”

  “Okay…”

  “Then I would appraise it for you, based on my experience and research. If you decided to go forward and attempt to make a sale, we would come to an agreement on a commission, and I’d get to work. I’d determine which geographic area was most relevant to the artist, and then I’d e-mail my network of galleries and collectors in that area with a brief description of the painting, along with photos.”

  “That’d be there in the Northeast, I guess,” said Lucas, giving it his aw-shucks best. “Maine and all.”

  “New York to Maine, yes. Many well-off New Yorkers summer up in the Penobscot Bay area. They like to acquire the local art.”

  “This has been real helpful,” said Lucas. “I’m completely in the dark when it comes to all this.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” said Lumley cheerfully. “Hold on one second. Let me check on something before you go.”

  Lumley sat back down at his desk, pulled his laptop toward him, used his keyboard and mouse to search and scroll. Lucas watched his face go from eagerness to disappointment.

  “I checked on some recent sales of Ms. Meyers’s work. She is a talented artist. Was…She died in 2003—ninety-nine years old. But I have to tell you, in relative terms, her paintings are not very valuable.”

  “How not very?” said Lucas.

  “Recent sales of her landscape oils have gone for between a thousand and fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “That’s real money to me.”

  “But not to me, unfortunately. To be honest with you, it wouldn’t be worth my time to represent you. However, I think I’ve given you enough information today to get you started on your own.”

  “You have. I appreciate it, too.”

  Lucas reached across the desk and once again shook Lumley’s hand.

  “I’ll have to thank Grace for the referral,” said Lumley. “Even though it didn’t work out.”

  “Yeah, Grace seems like cool people.”

  “Where did you say you met her?”

  “Didn’t say. It was at Cashion’s. I was at the bar and we struck up a conversation. She was with a blond-haired guy. I remember him because he seemed a little jealous that she was talking to me. Anyway, I heard her talking about a painting she owned, how she’d just gotten it appraised. I asked her who she’d worked with. That’s how I got your name.”

  Lucas detected the flicker in Lumley’s eyes. “I see.”

  “So long,” said Lucas. “Thanks again.”

  “I didn’t get your last name, Bob,” said Lumley, to Lucas’s back, but Lucas kept going and went out the door.

  He walked down to the corner at R and approached a bicycle messenger who was wearing a knit hat over his dreads. Lucas had caught him in a rare moment of rest. He asked the guy to ride his bike by Lumley’s shop, take a look inside, and tell him what Lumley was doing. He told him there’d be something in it for him when he returned.

  The bike messenger did a quick recon and wheeled back to Lucas.

  “He’s on the phone.”

  “Cell or landline?” said Lucas, checking the messenger for verisimilitude.

  “Landline.”

  “Thanks, brother.” Lucas gave him a ten and the messenger sped off.

  Grace Kinkaid said that she had never discussed her painting with Billy Hunter. This meant that he had gotten the information about its value from someone else. The logical conduit would have been Charles Lumley. Lumley, most likely, had an arrangement with Hunter. Lumley would identify the paintings first, contact Hunter, and Hunter would move in on his prey. If Lumley was in business with Hunter, he would now phone him and tell him that a young guy had just dropped his description in the shop. He’d tell him that the guy had claimed they’d met in Cashion’s, and Hunter would know that they hadn’t met, that it was a bullshit story, and that the young guy was not a bumpkin trying to sell a painting, but some sort of private heat hired by Grace Kinkaid.

  Lucas wanted Hunter, or whatever his name was, to know that someone was looking for him. He wanted to draw him out. Either him or, if he came to ground first, Grant Summers.

  Lucas knew this was reckless, but he felt he had no other way to get to them and complete the job. He had decided to be aggressive. He was tired of fucking around.

  Back in his apartment, he phoned Grace Kinkaid and warned her that he’d probably exposed her in some way. She seemed unconcerned. She’d had the locks changed on her condo and always parked her car in the building’s indoor garage. She felt that Billy Hunter would never reappear in her life. Grace thanked Lucas for the courtesy call and wished him luck in retrieving the painting.

  All she’s been through, thought Lucas, and she’s still got a spine.

  He checked his laptop and saw nothing from Summers. He then called Charlotte, not expecting her to pick up, and left a message telling her that he missed her.

  He tried to get some reading done, but he couldn’t focus. He didn’t want to smoke any weed or drink alcohol, because he wasn’t ready to relax. Lucas got back on the laptop and wrote Summers another message.

  All right, Mr. Summers. As you know, you own the exact Mini I am looking for because of the year, color, features, etc. It’s for my wife, and there can be no substitute. In other words, as much as I hate to admit it, you are dealing from a position of strength. So I am prepared to up my offer, but this will be my final offer. I will pay you $12,000 for the car, cash, provided it is in mint condition as described in your original ad, subject to my inspection before we make the deal. I realize it is difficult for you to leave base, so perhaps you can send someone down to the Washington area with the car as your representative. They or you should bring a clear title and two sets of keys so we can complete the deal on-site. Please give me the courtesy of a reply.

  Sincerely,

  Rick Bell

  Lucas hit Send.

  Lucas had dinner alone at the bar of Cava Mezze, a Greek spot on Capitol Hill. When he returned to his apartment he saw that he’d received a message from Grant Summers.

  You have wore me down, Mr. Bell. I will find a way to deliver the car. Please give me a day so I can figure this out. Once I get off base I will contact you and tell you where we can meet. Please bring cash, as promised. I will have car, along with title and keys. What is your contact number?

  Lucas typed him the phone number to one of his disposables and asked, What’s yours? Summers did not
reply. It was not surprising and also unimportant. Lucas was about to get close to the one called Serge. Which would put Billy Hunter in his field of fire, too.

  “You think it’s wise?” said Billy King.

  “I think it’s money,” said Serge Bacalov.

  They were in the living room of their rented house near Jug Bay. Louis Smalls was on the couch, stoned, earbuds in, listening to something heavy and loud.

  “You’re gonna do what?” said King.

  “We are going to rob him,” said Bacalov.

  “You gonna hit him on the head, too? You know you almost killed that old man.”

  “Almost is horseshoes and hand grenades.”

  “You got lucky.”

  “And I got your goods.”

  “Serge, you nearly always miss my point,” said King. “I don’t like sloppy. If there’s a reason to kill, you do it all the way. That way they can’t talk. I’m not about to go to prison ’cause you almost killed someone. I like my freedom.”

  “Do you like twelve thousand dollars?”

  “Life’s easier with money.”

  “Only if you can trade it. Cash is better than gold coins you cannot spend. Or paintings.”

  “I’m going to see the man tomorrow about the gold.”

  Bacalov smiled thinly. King would meet his middleman at a waterfront location. He’d then spend the night jackhammering some marina whore he’d meet in a bar.

  “I’ll come back with cash,” said King.

  “And with the smell of fish on you, no doubt,” said Bacalov.

  “What’s it to you?” said King. He got up from his chair, tipped his bottle of Heineken to his lips, and finished it. Bacalov looked at King’s drinking arm, the ripple in his massive forearms, thickly covered in blond hair like fur covers an animal. King was a beast. He should have had hooves for feet. It would complete his look.

  “This will be easy,” said Bacalov. “No worries. Louis will drive, you will back me up. I only need to pick the spot.”