“Besides, where are you in that plan?”
“Monitoring the proceedings from my office. Wearing a bulletproof vest.”
I sighed. “You mean, it’s up to me as usual? Why is everything my job? Okay, but you’ll have to give me a piece of that.”
Bill held out the Danish. I tore off a fistful. Bill offered the hardly diminished hubcap to Jack, but he declined.
“Okay,” I said. “The problem is, Haig has the paintings. I’m just thinking out loud here. But at least I’m thinking.”
Jack said, “Ouch.” Bill shrugged.
“If he didn’t have them he could yell and threaten to expose people and throw as many hissy fits as he wanted and no one would care.”
“Vladimir Oblomov could go to him, to buy zem,” Bill said.
“If Haig thinks he can get them authenticated, he’ll wait,” said Jack. “He’ll stall any buyers until he knows how high he can go.”
“Besides, we don’t have a couple of million dollars to buy zem vit,” I said. “No, I’m thinking we really might have to steal them. Jack’s idea about my legs was ridiculous, but we could try something like it.”
“How about my legs?” Bill offered.
“You mean, instead of seduction we try terror? No, we need a
A Frisbee flew long and landed on the pond with a plop. A shaggy black dog chased it to the shoreline, stood and barked, whined, and then, with a loud yip, charged in after it. He beelined across the water, clamped his jaws around the thing, and swam like hell for dry land.
“Or,” I said.
“Or?”
“Or?”
“Or, we let Haig keep the paintings and get exactly what he wants.”
“Which is what?”
“To have them authenticated.”
I laid on them the scheme that had come to me. A lot of brow-furrowing and dog- and Frisbee-watching followed, and a great deal of discussion. Bill worked his way through two cigarettes while we did what he and I always do when we’re making a plan: try to poke holes in it, look for solutions to all the problems we were likely to stumble over.
Jack joined in all that but he loved the idea from the start, as I knew he would.
“Because you get to show off,” Bill said.
“Oh, like you didn’t show off already, Lord of the Blings? But I do have an issue to raise.”
I said, “And that would be?”
Jack leaned back on his elbows. “I want to remind you guys that Doug the Slug, Anna, and Dr. Yang aren’t the only people who’re interested in these paintings. For reasons we haven’t even learned yet, the US State Department, the PRC government, and the Chinese mob also care. And Pete Tsang’s human rights group,” he added. “Though them we can probably discount as a threat.”
“And dere’s da Russkie mob, too,” said Bill.
“Please don’t go native on us,” I warned him. “Jack, once all those people know the paintings are fakes, don’t you think they’ll stop being interested?”
“I don’t know. Since we don’t know exactly what they were after in the first place.”
I turned to Bill. He stubbed out his smoke. “He’s right. It’s not clear what we’d be getting in the middle of.”
“But then what are you guys saying? It’s too dangerous, this whole thing, and we should back off? How can we? Leave Anna and Dr. Yang twisting in the wind? That’s just wrong.”
“Back off?” said Jack. “Are you kidding? That’s just wrong. But since it
“Yeah, yeah, okay.”
“—as that guy, what I’m saying is, if we’re going to take Haig on, and whoever else, using this undeniably brilliant strategy you’ve just outlined, then all I’m suggesting is, maybe we should consider playing for higher stakes.”
I cocked my head, regarding him. “You said before, there ought to be some way we could make something off of this.”
“It was one of the things my mentor drilled into me when I was working out my business plan. Risk should be commensurate with reward.”
“You had a business plan? For a PI office?” I turned to Bill. “So much for the whole wild-man thing.”
“He’s crazy,” Bill said. “Not stupid.”
“Thank you,” Jack said gravely.
