Rigby was almost back to Ventura when he got the text. Steering with his left hand he held the phone in his right.
CALL ME THIS AFTERNOON
He pressed the phone against the soft center of the steering wheel and typed.
WHOS THIS
A minute later:
NINA
Then:
DON’T TELL MR HASKILL CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS BET U AND ME
Huh. He thumbed in:
will do
Just then a CHP cruiser pulled up next to him and he let the phone drop to the floor. Fucking Chippies, always showing up at the exact wrong moment. The cops didn’t look over at him, though, and the cruiser sped up and pulled back into the right-hand lane a couple of car lengths ahead of him.
He didn’t know whether or not he hoped this was a come-on. There was a peculiar coldness to Nina’s affect that intimated something not too far from psychosis, a chilly lack of affect that was arousing and off-putting at the same time; he wondered if she had dominant tendencies. You never knew with the quiet, mousy type, sometimes they were freaks in the sack. That might be fun sometime, having a lady treat him like dirt, smack him around a little bit, maybe. Was that what had old Glenn eating out of her hand like that? He’d never seen him defer to anyone the way he did to Nina.
If she wanted to hook up, he was good with that, though he suspected it might get even more complicated than he liked things to get. Best to assume it was business.
At his feet the phone buzzed again. He knew it was better to wait until he could pull over, but he had a good idea of where it sat in relation to his foot. Gently he eased off of the gas and raised his left foot, and with his right hand he reached between his legs, eyes still on the road, to fish around on the floor. He felt nothing but the carpet and in frustration he shot his gaze downward, and the instant he spotted the phone he raised his eyes to the road in time to see the front end of the Escalade about to collide with the rear end of the CHP cruiser.
He swerved off onto the shoulder with a terrified “Fuck!” After rolling a few crunchy feet on the gravel, he stopped and turned the engine off, and as the cruiser put on its lights and pulled over ahead of him, then went into reverse, he ran through his meager options. Then, despite the considerable risk to his person that this action entailed, he opened the door of the car and jumped out, waving his arms frantically at the open door, as though trying to shoo something from the Escalade’s interior.
“Put your fucking hands on top of your head!” There were two officers standing outside the cruiser, one of them pointing his service revolver at Rigby, the other next to the passenger door on the radio.
He put both hands on his head. “Sorry,” he yelled. “There was a bee in the car, it landed on my hand and I panicked.”
“Keep your hands on your head.”
Both officers approached gingerly, and the second officer put on a pair of latex gloves. “Is there anything in your pocket that’s going to stick me or otherwise cause me harm?”
“No, Officer. Wallet’s in my right-hand front pocket.”
The officer removed the wallet and examined his license. “Mr. Rigby, do you know why I approached you with my weapon drawn?”
“Yes sir, Officer, sorry, I know I shouldn’t have gotten out. But I’m allergic to bees.”
“You could have easily been shot to death.”
“I understand, I’m sorry. But a bee sting could have been fatal, too.”
The officer with his gun drawn replaced it in its holster, his face puffy and tired. “You sure you weren’t texting?”
“Never, Officer. I have a son of driving age, and I try real hard to be a good example to him. As a driver.”
“You can put your hands down,” the second cop said. He was younger than his partner, and had a deep, nasty scar cutting across his nose that Rigby wished he could ask about. He handed the wallet back. “You carry an EpiPen in your glove box? That’d be a real good idea.”
“I do in my own car, today I’m driving my wife’s. Probably I ought to get one for it, too.”
“Do that, Mr. Rigby. And please remember, next time you exit your vehicle during a traffic stop you might not survive the experience.”
“Thanks, officers. I appreciate your understanding.”
He got back into the car, exhilarated by his skills as a liar. He felt as if his soul were glowing from within his chest. He picked up the phone. The text wasn’t from Nina, but an unidentified 805 number. It read, GIVE ME MY MONEY OR U BEST WATCH OUT U MIGHT GET WACKD + MY DOCTR BILLS 2
He tossed the phone onto the seat next to him and pulled back onto the 101, favoring the Chippies with a curt wave as he passed the parked cruiser and wondering how Billy Knox managed to get his real cell number.
At six-thirty, he was waiting for Nina at the bar of the Sportsman downtown. He suggested it as a meeting place because it was dark and evocative of secret assignations and because if it did turn out she was interested in something down-low and dirty, the crowd there didn’t know his wife. On the mirror behind the bar were etched two gleeful cowgirls brandishing six-shooters, wearing skimpy vests but otherwise topless. Judging by their hairstyles, Rigby guessed that they’d been etched in the glass sometime in the 1940s; how the hell had they gotten away with such a thing back then?
Nina arrived, took a cursory look at her surroundings and shook her head. “We need to get a booth.”
He signaled the hostess and she directed them to a red Naugahyde booth, above which hung an obscenely large, spidery king crab, mounted and framed. “So am I to understand you have some sort of legal problem you’d like help with?”
“Nothing like that. It’s not a problem, even. More of an opportunity.”
“I like opportunities.”
“So the painting you were talking about giving away to Mr. Haskill’s school.”
“The Russian one.”
“The Kushik. He thinks it’s worth ten grand, I don’t know where you guys came up with a figure like that. You didn’t get a proper appraisal.”
It was a statement of fact, not a question. The look of disdain was the first discernible expression that had crossed her face since she sat down, and knowing her dislike for Haskill’s art collection he tried appealing to her snobbery. “It’s not the fucking Norton Simon in there, Nina.”
She bent her swizzle stick. “So? Where’d you come up with ten grand on the Kushik?”
“I don’t know, I think I looked up an old auction record at the library. You want recent auction records online, you have to pay.”
She leaned forward and flicked a few drops of her whiskey sour at his face. He couldn’t tell if the gesture was flirtatious, contemptuous or accidental. “I’m just telling you this because I don’t want the estate to lose a whole lot of money. That painting’s worth seven figures, easy.”
He felt his heartbeat quicken, even though he was sure this was bogus. “That would be a major increase,” he said with as little inflection as he could manage.
“He was Russian. The last fifteen, twenty years, these rich Russians have been buying up all the exiles’ works. Kushik was one of the best.”
“Huh.” He didn’t care for the picture much more than the rest of Glenn’s paintings, but then he didn’t like a lot of things that society had decided were worth something.
“Trust me on this. My thesis advisor was a Russian specialist, and I know more about this stuff than I want to. That picture’s worth more than the house is.”
“So it’d be a mistake to hand the school the picture, is what you’re suggesting?”
“If he’s doing it for spite, yeah.”
“It’s a lot to chew on.”
“There’s something else. I’m assuming it’s never been authenticated, right? Appraised by anyone who knew the work?”
“Oh, it’s real, all right. Evvie was great pals with Kushik’s widow, the picture was a birthday present.”
“I know it’s real just looking. Listen, though. What if the school was given a fake? It probably wouldn’t find out for years, until they did an appraisal of their collection. Even if they did it right away, after Mr. Haskill’s death, it’d just look like he got cheated by some dealer.”
“Uh-huh.” He had a feeling he knew what she was going to propose, but he wanted her to be the first to say it.
“Meanwhile, there’d be an authentic Kushik for the Russian market.”
Goddamn it, she was crookeder than he was. “I like the way you think. Now let me ask you, where would one procure, if one were so inclined, a fake Kushik?”
“That’s the big question, isn’t it?”
That night at ten, he parked around the corner from Billy Knox’s miserable little crib and climbed the stairs to the third floor. He had a baseball cap pulled low in front in case any of the neighbors were watching, but this was the sort of building where no one saw much of anything no matter what happened. He rapped on Billy’s door.
In his jacket pocket he carried a filleting knife. It would have made a shitty murder weapon, but he guessed it was enough to frighten the likes of Billy, and anyway he didn’t intend to actually harm the little fucker. In his shirt pocket was a hundred-dollar bill, intended as a consolation prize. Worst-case scenario, he’d re-break Billy’s jaw, or maybe his arms.
He knocked again, waited two minutes, then tried the handle. It was unlocked, and inside the mess and the stench were considerably worse than before, a mixture of days-old garbage and shit. A pair of cats slipped out between his feet as he stood there with the door open, howling as they descended the staircase. He turned on the light switch next to the door and saw that the furniture was all gone, except for a stripped-bare, piss-stained mattress on the dingy carpet. The cats’ litter box was overflowing with turds, the food and water bowls empty. Fucking Billy, what kind of sicko would abandon his cats and take everything else? The same kind of dumb fuck who’d give away a big batch of coke, he guessed.
At the bottom of the stairs he found the cats, sniffing at the jamb. He opened the door and they shot out into the night. Probably they were better off in the wild than they’d been with Billy Knox. He hoped so, anyway.