next day with the idea of the show. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but I did take the paintings down.”
“Why?”
“Well, first, the open studio was still on and I didn’t want anyone else to drool over them the way Haig had. And if I did decide to go ahead with Pete’s idea, we’d want to spring them on people. We needed them to be a surprise.”
“But Haig had already seen them.”
“Pete said that wasn’t a problem. In case they were real, Haig would keep them to himself for now, until he’d browbeaten me into giving them up. And when we unveiled them, we could count on Haig to add to the hype because he’d go around telling everyone he’d seen them first and known right away what they were.”
“Self-aggrandizement R us,” Jack agreed. “Except didn’t Haig think they were fakes? Didn’t he believe in your ‘friend’? ”
“I think for a while he thought my friend might be Chau himself.”
“Those paintings must be damn good. Haig’s a parasite but he has an eye.”
“No,” said Anna. “Or if they’re good, they’re good imitations. But eye or not, we all see what we want to see.”
“Meaning?” asked Bill.
Anna said, “Haig’s in trouble. He needs money. That’s the rumor, anyway.”
“We’ve heard it,” I said.
“I think the idea that the Chaus might be real, it was like a lifeline. If they were and he could get them cheap and sell them all his troubles would be over.”
“Well, too bad for him, then.”
Anna shook her head again. “That’s the problem. It’s dawned on him that it doesn’t matter if they’re real, as long as people think they are.”
“But people wouldn’t,” I said. “As soon as you said you’d made them.”
She didn’t answer that right away. “I don’t have them,” she said after a pause. “I came in yesterday to work, and opened the drawer I’d had them in, and they were gone.”
Bill and I exchanged glances. Jack said, “Someone stole them?”
“Doug Haig called an hour later. He has them.”
“Someone sold them to him already? That was quick work.”
“No,” said Jack slowly. “Not sold them to him. Stole them for him. Am I right, Anna?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Jon-Jon Jie. He has the studio beside you. He climbed over the wall.”
I thought of the quiet building, the ceilingless studios.
“The security commissar,” Anna said bitterly. “We’ve never protected ourselves from each other. Artists? What was someone going to do, steal your brushes? We lend each other everything all the time anyway, who’d steal? The only reason we lock our studio doors is so you don’t have to go round up your stuff every time you come in. But all the real security worries were about the bad guys outside.”
“Jie’s signed with Baxter/Haig,” Jack said. “Francie See told us. Just yesterday. She said she thought he bought his way in.”
“Looks like he did,” I said. “Just not with money.”
“Haig has them,” Anna went on, her voice suddenly urgent, “and he wants to put them on the market. As authentic.”
“But how can he?” I demanded. “You’ll just say you painted them. You’ll show everyone the paper, and the ink, that it’s easily available. And your sketches, don’t you do sketches? How can he pretend they’re real if you do that?”
“He says if I do that, he’ll tell everyone I already sold them to him as authentic, for a lot of money. Because I’m Bernard Yang’s daughter, so I knew he’d believe me. I cheated him and the only reason I’m admitting it now is I’m mad and I want to make him look stupid because Baxter/Haig wouldn’t take me on. He’s got a whole story cooked up, bills of sale and everything.”
“Would people believe that?” I looked to Jack.
“If he’s got paperwork,” Jack said. “And the paintings are good enough. Maybe they would.”
“It would make him look like an idiot,” Bill said. “Buying fakes.”
“A trusting, honest idiot,” said Jack, “bamboozled by a cold-blooded cheap thief trading on her father’s reputation. He’d look stupid but it would pass. But it would end Anna’s career. No gallery would take her on, no one would show her.”
Anna and her mother sat silent, Anna pale, her mother seeming tight-packed, like TNT.
“Still,” I said. “Suppose Anna doesn’t say anything, then. No one will pay Chau’s prices without getting the paintings appraised. Wouldn’t it take more than the supposed word of an expert’s daughter and some old paper to get some other expert to put his reputation on the line, authenticating new work by someone who’s supposed to be dead?”
Jack nodded, as though what I’d said had confirmed something. “Yes.” He looked at Anna, waiting.
“Yes,” Anna also said, and she didn’t look at anyone. “That’s why I called you, Jack. I don’t know what good
