Lawrence Block: The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian

“That’s for that thing,” Reeves said. “I want my painting.”

“And you’ll get yours,” I said, gesturing toward the acrylic hanging over the fireplace. “That’s the painting that was on display in your gallery, Mr. Reeves, and that’s the painting you’ll take back with you.”

“We never should have had it in the first place. Mr. Barlow donated a genuine Mondrian-”

“Nope,” I said. “He donated a fake, and he didn’t even cheat you by doing it. Because it never cost you people a penny. He defrauded the Internal Revenue Service, and they’ll probably have words with him on the subject, but he didn’t defraud you beyond making a horse’s ass out of you, and what’s the big deal about that? A bunch of school kids made a horse’s ass out of you just yesterday afternoon. You’ve got no claim on the painting.”

“Then who does?”

“I do,” Mrs. Barlow said. “The police officers took it from my apartment, but that doesn’t mean my husband and I relinquish title to it.”

“You don’t have title,” Reeves said. “You gave title to the museum.”

“Not true,” Wally said. “My client in Calgary should get the painting. It should have passed to Onderdonk, and so it now passes in fact to Onderdonk’s heirs.”

“That’s all nonsense,” Elspeth Petrosian cried. “That thief Barlow never had clear title to it in the first place. The painting belongs to me. It was promised to me by my grandfather, Haig Petrosian, and someone stole it before his wishes could be carried out. I don’t care what Barlow paid for it or who he did or didn’t sell it to. He never dealt with a rightful owner in the first place. That’s my painting.”

“I’d love to include it in the retrospective,” Mordecai Danforth said, “while all of this is being sorted out, but I suppose that’s out of the question.”

Ray Kirschmann went over and put a hand on the painting. “Right now this paintin’s evidence,” he said, “and I’m impoundin’ it. The rest of you got your claims and notions and you can fight it out, but the paintin’ goes downtown while you drag each other through the courts, and once the lawyers get started it could go on for a good long while.” To Reeves he said, “If I was you, I’d take that other one downtown and hang it back where it was. By the time the papers write this up, half the city’s gonna want to look at it, fake or no. You can waste time worryin’ about lookin’ like a horse’s ass, but that’d just make you more of a horse’s ass, because whatever you look like they’re gonna be lined up around the block to look at this thing, and what’s so bad about that?”

“This is a nice place,” Carolyn said, “and they make a hell of a drink, even if they do charge twice as much as they should for it. Big Charlie’s, huh? I like it.”

“I thought you would.”

“I like the girl playing piano, too. I wonder if she’s gay.”

“Oh, God.”

“What’s wrong with wondering?” She took a sip, set down her glass. “You left some things out,” she said. “Explaining everything and making all the bits and pieces fit together, you left a few things out.”

“Well, it was confusing enough as it was. I didn’t want to make it impossible for people to follow.”

“Uh-huh. You’re a considerate guy. You left out the bit about the cat.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Two men had been murdered and a couple of paintings had been stolen. I couldn’t waste people’s time talking about a kidnapped cat. Anyway, he’d been ransomed and returned, so what was the point?”

“Uh-huh. Alison was Haig Petrosian’s other granddaughter, wasn’t she? The other one at the dining room table on Riverside Drive. She’s Elspeth’s cousin, and her father was Elspeth’s Uncle Billy.”

“Well, the resemblance was striking. Remember how you stared at Elspeth in my shop? The funny thing is at first I thought Andrea was the missing cousin, because she and Elspeth both have this habit of cocking their heads to the side, but that was just coincidence. The minute I saw Alison I knew she was the cousin and not Andrea.”

“Andrea Barlow.”

“Right.”

“You left her out, too, didn’t you? You didn’t mention running into her in Onderdonk’s apartment, let alone rolling around on the rug with her.”

“Well, certain things ought to stay private,” I said. “One thing she told me was true enough. She had been having an affair with Onderdonk, and as it happens her husband knew about it, which probably added to the zest with which he killed the man. Then he must have gloated over the man’s death, and Andrea had visions of a police search of the premises uncovering some pictures Onderdonk had taken of the two of them with a time-release Polaroid. She went back for them, found them or didn’t find them, who the hell knows, and then I walked in on her. No wonder she was terrified. She must have already found Onderdonk’s body in the closet, so she knew it wasn’t him, but who could it be? Either the police, in which case she had some fancy explaining to do, or her murderous husband coming to kill her and leave her there with her dead lover. Either way she was in deep trouble.”

“And she was so relieved it was you that she was overcome with passion.”

“Either that or she figured it made sense to screw her way to safety,” I said, “but I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. But why mention all of that to the police?”

“Especially since you’d like to verb her again.”

“Well-”

“And why not? She’s got a nifty pair of nouns. I think I need another one of these, and don’t you just love the little getups the waitresses wear? Let’s order another round, and then you can tell me what really happened with the paintings.”

“Oh, the paintings.”

“Yeah, the paintings. This one’s from here and that one’s from there and this one’s cut out of the frame and that one isn’t and who can keep it all straight? I know some of what you said was true and I know some of it wasn’t, and I want the whole story. But first I want another of these.”

Who could deny her anything? She got what she wanted, first the drink and then the explanation.

“The painting Ray gave back to Orville Widener, the insurance guy, was one that Denise and I painted,” I said. “Naturally Barlow destroyed the canvas he took from the Onderdonk apartment. All he had to do was slash it to ribbons and put it down the incinerator, and I’m sure he did just that. The canvas I gave to Ray, which he in turn gave to Widener, was the portion I cut out of the frame that I left at the Hewlett. And it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t match the piece of frame that was left in the closet with Onderdonk’s corpse, because that frame will get conveniently lost. Ray’ll see to that.”

“What about the painting Reeves took back with him? Was that the one you took from the Hewlett? Did they have an acrylic fake on display all along?”

“Of course not. Turnquist was an artist and he wasn’t in a hurry. He didn’t use acrylics. He used oil paints, same as Mondrian, and the painting in the Hewlett was one of his.”

“But what Reeves took back with him-”

“Was a second fake that Denise and I did, tacked to the stretcher from the Hewlett. Remember, it was the incused mark on the stretcher that convinced him. I’d already unstapled the canvas and taken the frame apart to get the painting out of the museum. When I put it back together, I just tacked the acrylic fake to the Hewlett frame.”

“And Reeves thinks that’s what he had all along.”

“So it would appear, and what’s the difference? A fake is a fake is a fake is a fake.”