Renard shrugged. He worked with the trowel.
“I’m already in debt, I’ve already gone too far with this thing! If they don’t do it, I’m ruined!”
No reaction at all.
“God damn it, Jack, if they won’t do it you won’t get the paintings!”
Another sigh. Renard sat back again, half turned again, said, “That would be very sad. My customer would be morose. I too would be morose. But life would go on.”
“Not my life.”
A shrug, a lift of the eyebrow—who cares?
“Jack, I’ll give you two more paintings. Your choice.”
Renard shook his head. “I want the six we discussed, and that’s all I want.”
“They’re all valuable, for God’s sake!”
“Leon, I will not hold stolen goods. I have a customer for the six. You give them to me, I give them to him. He pays me, I pay you. The paintings are in my possession for the maximum of thirty minutes. I will not hold stolen paintings.”
“I’m going to.”
Another mocking little expression, and Renard turned away again.
Griffith was at a loss. He stood there looking at Renard’s fat back, covered by the pink shawl, and he wished there was some way to make all of this un-happen, to get back out of it again.
Renard had come to him in the first place because he’d known Griffith was in bad financial shape. Renard had a customer for six paintings currently in a tour of modern art. If Griffith could get his hands on them, Renard would pay sixty-five thousand dollars for the six.
From there, it had very quickly grown out of control. Why be content with stealing the six? Why not take the whole lot of twenty-one, and find customers of his own for the other fifteen? Unlike most stolen goods, which sell at less than the equivalent over-the-counter price, there tended to be a certain romantic cachet to stolen art; a painting certifiably unshowable frequently demanded and received a higher figure than if it were being sold through normal channels by its legitimate owner.
Through other people in the dealer world, Griffith had contacted Mackey, and at first things had seemed to be simple and safe. Mackey would do the job for one hundred thirty thousand, exactly twice what Renard was paying for only six of the paintings. Griffith would give Mackey Renard’s sixty-five thousand when the job was done, and pay him the rest over the next year or so, as money came in.
But then Mackey’s friend Parker had shown up, and the complications had started. Griffith had allowed Parker to drive him up another thirty thousand because there was still plenty of slack left over in the fifteen paintings he’d be keeping for himself. But then it turned out they wanted a guarantee of the existence of the money. Griffith had promised them he had it, because by then the thing was so real and necessary to him that he didn’t want them getting cold feet and quitting on him. Also, Griffith had been very rich for the last several years, until the recession, and he retained the belief that money could always be gotten somehow.
But maybe it couldn’t. He had pawned, he had mortgaged, he had borrowed, and he was still seventy thousand dollars short of the amount. And he knew them now, Mackey and Parker; they wouldn’t do it without a guarantee of the money.
And if it didn’t happen? Griffith’s financial position had been shaky before this; now that he’d borrowed so much, committed himself to this thing so deeply, there was no other way out. He had to get the paintings, he had to get the robbery done, or he was finished.
He had been silent for quite a while, staring at Renard’s back, thinking. Now Renard turned his head again, and something he saw in Griffith’s face seemed to startle him; maybe even frighten him. He straightened up on his knees, and held the trowel more prominently. And his voice was much gentler than usual as he said, “Well, you really are desperate, aren’t you?”
Griffith didn’t know what it was Renard had seen or supposed, but he was quick enough to take advantage of it. “Yes,” he said. “I need the money.”
Renard seemed to consider. Resting a forearm on the brick railing, he mused out at the park. Finally, still looking out that way, he said, “You could borrow it, of course.”
“I’ve borrowed everything I could. There’s nobody left to loan to me.”Renard cocked an eye at him. “Well, that isn’t precisely true,” he said.
Griffith shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I do know some people who would loan to you. But they’re somewhat dangerous to deal with.”
“Who?”
Renard looked out at the park again, frowning slightly. “Well, I don’t quite know what to call them. I suppose they’re connected with the Mafia somehow.”
“They loan money?”
“Yes. All you want.”
Griffith wasn’t following. He knew there was something that hadn’t yet been said, but he didn’t know what it was. He said, “What’s the hook? What’s the problem?”
“Their interest,” Renard said thoughtfully. He gave Griffith a frank look and said, “They charge two percent a month.”
“My God!”
Renard nodded judiciously. “Yes, that is too steep,” he said. “Forget it.”
“No, wait.” Griffith was thinking hard; two percent of seventy thousand dollars was fourteen hundred dollars. One month was all he’d need the money for. Fourteen hundred dollars wasn’t a terrible price to pay. “I could do it,” he said. “I have to do it.”
Renard studied him again. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t have any choice.”
“You want me to call them.”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s up to you, of course.”
Griffith said nothing. Renard considered him for a few seconds more, then sighed and hoisted himself to his feet. “I’ll be a few minutes,” he said. “Enjoy the view.”
Griffith didn’t enjoy anything. He stood there on the terrace, breathing as though he’d run up the twelve floors from the street. He stared out at the park, but didn’t really see it; all he saw was the numbers he owed, the numbers he needed, the numbers he was surrounded by.
When Renard came back, he had a piece of paper with him. He also had his normal style back, without that moment of seeming gentleness and concern. “You go on and see these people,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”
For some reason, it was important to Griffith that he not open the paper and read what it said in Renard’s presence. He took it, stuffed it away in his trouser pocket as though it had no particular importance, and said, “Then I’ll let you know when I have the paintings.”
“Yes, you do that,” Renard said, and glanced toward his plants.
“I’ll let myself out.”
“Mm-hm.”
Griffith felt a sudden moment of rage, so strong that he actually did see red at the corners of his vision. Without another word, he turned away, stumbled slightly on the threshold going into the apartment, and hurried through the soothing rooms and out.
He was down on the street before he took out the paper again and read what was written on it, in Renard’s unnecessarily curlicued hand: “Boro Hall Realty, 299 Atlantic Ave. Bklyn.”
Brooklyn. Griffith was disgusted, and so was the cabdriver he got. “That’s wonderful,” the driver said, and slapped down his meter bar as though he’d like to thump Griffith down through the pavement into the ground.
It was a silent miserable nerve-racking half-hour trip, the cabby trying to make time through heavy traffic, Griffith tense and nervous anyway at the idea of whom he was to be borrowing money from. And at the end of the trip, it was almost anticlimactic to have Boro Hall Realty be a flyblown shabby little storefront outfit on a grubby fourth-rate block. Was this where Griffith would be given seventy thousand dollars, in this hole-in-the-wall with the ads for cheap apartments Scotch-taped to its dusty windows?
Half afraid this whole trip was a cruel joke on Renard’s part, Griffith paid the driver and went inside, where a heavy-set middle-aged woman with a bust you could have set a checkerboard on gave him a pseudo-bright look and said, “May I help you?”