Kill Me If You Can

freaking good. If I had any freaking money, I’d buy all of them.”

I had some great friends, and drunk, sober, or anywhere in between, they were fun to hang with. Except Leonard Karns.

Leonard was sitting alone on the sofa, nursing the cheap red wine he’d brought, because “beer is for frat boys and rednecks.” He looked amused, like an anthropologist studying a primitive tribe of beer-swilling natives. Everyone ignored him, except Hopper, who jumped up on the sofa to check him out. Karns reached out to pet him, and the cat responded with a nasty hiss and took off.

“Poor Leonard,” Katherine whispered. “He seems to be unpopular across all species. Why did you even invite him? He doesn’t like you or your paintings.”

I smiled. “I know. Having him around keeps me humble.”

At ten o’clock the doorbell rang and I checked the closed-circuit monitor. I didn’t recognize the guy. He was short and fat — about three hundred pounds — with slicked-back black hair, a small goatee, and no mustache. If I’d ever met this guy before, I’d have remembered him. I didn’t.

I’m not usually paranoid about strangers, but I had these diamonds that didn’t belong to me, and somebody might be looking for them.

My Louisville Slugger was still standing in the corner next to the front door. With fifty friends and a baseball bat nearby, I figured if he was looking for trouble, I had the edge.

I buzzed him in.

Chapter 19

I HELD THE apartment door open and waited. The fat man was slow and ponderous. He clomped up the stairs, stopping at each landing to catch his breath.

Katherine joined me. “Who’s coming?”

“Party crasher. Nobody I know.”

“A heavyset guy?”

“Fat.”

She poked me in the ribs. “Shh, he’ll hear you.”

“I think he knows he’s fat.”

She punched me in the shoulder. “Stop.”

The fat/heavyset man got to the fourth-floor landing and looked up at us. “Hello, Katherine,” he said.

“Hello, Newton,” she said. “Take your time.”

“Like I have a choice,” he said, grabbing the handrail and trudging up the last flight.

“I gather you know him,” I said.

“He’s my surprise.”

The man was red in the face and sweating hard when he got to the top. “Matt, this is Newton,” Katherine said. “Newton, this is Matthew Bannon, the brilliant young artist I was telling you about.”

“Why does every brilliant young artist I meet have to live at the top of a five-story walk-up?” he said, extending a sweaty sausage-fingered hand.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Newton.”

“Not Mister. Just Newton. One name. Like Madonna.”

“You look exhausted, Newton,” I said as we entered the apartment. “Can I get you something?”

“An oxygen tank would be nice,” he said.

“We have beer.”

“Even better,” he said. “Two cans.”

By the time I brought back the beers, Newton had taken off his size 54 jacket. The blue shirt underneath had sweat rings the size of saddlebags under each arm.

“Newton is here to look at your work,” Katherine said.

“Great,” I said. “I’ll give you a tour.”

“I work alone,” he said. “You stay here with Katherine while I look around.”

He popped the top on the first beer and, with a can in each hand, casually began moving his way around the apartment.

“You think he’ll like my stuff?” I asked Katherine.

“It doesn’t matter if he likes it,” she said. “He buys art for someone else. A hedge-fund guy. He’s got tons of money and no time to shop. Newton shops for him.”

“If this guy has so much money, why wouldn’t he want a Pablo Picasso or a Willem de Kooning? Why would he want an original Matt Bannon?”

“He has those guys already. He’s passionate about discovering young talent.”

It took Newton ten minutes to look at my entire life’s work. He handed me two empty beer cans and I brought him two more.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Thirty.”

“And you served in the military?”

“Marines.”

“He was deployed to the Middle East three times,” Katherine added.

“I sensed that from the work,” he said.

“What do you think?”

“Bluntly,” Newton said, “I think Mr. Bannon has a ways to go, but the raw talent is there.” He turned to me. “I think my client will like your work, and I have no doubt he’d be happy to invest in you.”

“Invest?” I said.

“I’d like to buy three paintings,” he said. “If you’re as good as I think you are, not only will my client experience the joy of having them in one of his homes, but years from now an early Matthew Bannon will be worth a lot of money. Win-win.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Which three early Matthew Bannons would you like to buy?” I said.

“The four people in the subway station, the old man in the bodega, and the woman at the window,” he said, pointing at each one as he talked. “How much?”

I had no idea. I looked at Katherine.

“Give us a minute,” she said to Newton and pulled me to a corner. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. The canvases cost around fifteen bucks each, and the frames were about thirty. Plus the paint. So my investment on each one is about fifty bucks. I’m a total unknown, so if you could get three, four hundred apiece, that would be huge.”

She winked at me and led me over to Newton.

“You’re right,” she said. “Matthew is raw, he will get better, and at this stage he’s an excellent investment. You’re smart to get in on the ground floor.”

“The fifth floor,” Newton said, polishing off his next beer and opening another. “I was so winded climbing those stairs that I wanted to buy the apartment on the third floor and move in. Now stop greasing the skids, Katherine, and tell me how much.”

“Two thousand apiece.”

“That’s a tad steep.”

“Five thousand for the three paintings,” Katherine said. “That’s a thousand for every floor you climbed. And I’d hate to see you go home empty-handed after all that work.”

Newton guzzled the last beer. “Deal,” he said. “I’ll send my crew to pick them up tomorrow.”

He shook my hand and left.

I wrapped my arms around Katherine. I could see Karns sitting on the sofa, glaring at the two of us. Bannon’s hugging the teacher. What’s up with that?