“OK so far,” Leo repeated in a monotone. He’d dropped his eyes back to the CD. I was losing him.
“The painting is called the Daisy, and it once belonged to a Nazi. Actually, it might still legally belong to his descendants.”
“Nazi?”
“Do you know what that is?”
“OK.”
“The Daisy has not been seen since before World War II. Both Henny Bennett and Mindy Bennett are willing to pay huge dollars for the Daisy because each wants it for his or her collection.”
“But it’s the Nazi’s.” His brow had wrinkled, but that could have been from squinting at the Brazilian goddess.
“Or his family’s. Still, each of the Bennetts is willing to buy the painting, no matter who legally owns it, no questions asked-”
He sighed and stood up. He walked to the bed and began taking off his white shirt.
I went on, though I was now talking to myself. “Snark Evans, who’s been living under another name all these years, read of the battling Bennetts in a magazine somewhere. That made him remember the painting he’d stolen and given to a co-worker that summer.”
A tiny noise came from the chair where he’d been sitting. I looked at him. He hadn’t heard it. He was putting on another of the shirts I’d brought, this a purple, orange, and yellow combination of trees, fruits, and birds wearing sombreros. He began buttoning the shirt.
“Snark Evans wanted that painting back, because it was so valuable, and so he called that long-ago co-worker…” I stopped to look at the chair. The low hum had come again.
“I’ve confused you?” I asked, standing up. I eased over to the chair and looked down. A cell phone lay on the seat, vibrating with a new message.
“Dr. Feldott says she hears you whispering when you’re alone,” I said.
He put on the orange slacks I’d brought and stepped to the mirror on the wall. His white teeth split his narrow head in two, smiling like he was breathing pure oxygen.
“Ah,” he said to his image.
“Damn it,” I said.
He spun into the ridiculous small dance he always used when he’d put something over on me.
“Samba,” he said.
Fifty-three
He sat down, still grinning a hundred-tooth grin. “Endora,” he said, glancing at the number that had set the phone to vibrating. “We mostly text.”
It was why she hadn’t been angry when I’d told her she had to remain away from Rivertown. She knew Leo was well and coherent.
I started with basics. “How did you get the phone?”
“Are you carrying your usual five bucks, or do you have more?”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, struggling for a preen, “I’ve got three hundred, though my prospects have returned to being grim. The phone?”
The door opened, and the doctor came in with a boom box. “How are we doing?”
Leo smiled at her vacuously. I told her we were getting along just fine.
She set the boom box on the desk and smiled approvingly at Leo. Apparently, she saw his purple shirt and orange pants as progress toward better mental health. I could only question whether professionals like her knew anything at all.
“I asked one of the teenaged girls who helps out around here,” he said, after the doctor left. “I told her I was hiding out from a gang of evil thugs. She’s such a sweet young thing, all innocence. She brought me a Walmart cell phone and says she’ll carry my secret to her grave.”
“What nobility.”
“I had to promise two hundred for the phone and the silence.”
I peeled off ten of my dwindling twenties. “You texted Endora?”
“I knew she and Ma would be worried sick. Don’t worry; I refused to tell her where I am, and I specifically forbade her from returning to Rivertown until you said things are safe.”
“Things aren’t safe. You have to remain here.”
“Who’s paying for this?”
“I’m paying for part; the Bohemian’s covering the rest.”
“Delightful. Then I’ll only have to reimburse Mr. Chernek.”
“Tell me what you can.”
“You found out I was hiding down the block?”
I nodded.
“My memory stops when I went back to my house one night to get food.” He arched his formidable eyebrows. “Do you know what set off my trauma?”
“I found you disoriented. Maybe you hit your head?”
He made a show of feeling the back of his skull. “There’s no bump,” he said, his eyes steady on mine.
“Tell me a story, Leo, before I inflict real trauma on that head.”
He shrugged, letting it go. “Shall I talk real slow, like you just did for me?”
“Begin with Snark Evans at the garage that summer.”
“You got most of it right. Snark was pinching small stuff from somewhere and peddling it out of his locker. I worked some side jobs for Mr. Tebbins at first, and you could see Snark’s eyes widen when we went into a new house. It was no mystery where he was getting some of his inventory. I think he kept his grabs small, so nothing much would get noticed. Still, I worried about getting my future wrecked, so I told Mr. Tebbins that I had studying to do at home and couldn’t work side jobs anymore. Mr. Tebbins knew what I was really saying. He was wise to Snark, because a couple of times, I saw him and Mr. Robinson checking Snark’s locker when he wasn’t around.”
“Why not just quit using Snark on those installations?”
“Mr. Tebbins had a good heart and was trying to straighten Snark out with extra pay, but he’d also been too good a salesman. He’d sold more systems than he could handle. He needed Snark. He needed me, too. He never forgave me for bailing on him.”
“You never heard about Cassone?”
“Today’s the first day I’ve heard the name. I must have been gone a week from the garage when Snark stole the painting.”
“Mononucleosis? Really?”
“It was the truth.” He put on a mock-offended look, adding slyly, “It’s the kissing disease, you know.”
“Please continue.”
“Snark stopped by my house early on what I now suspect was the morning after he stole from Cassone. He said he’d done a painting for his mother. The dumb thing was still wet. He said he was going to a funeral and asked me to hold on to it until he came back. He said to tell nobody about it. I didn’t believe his story, but no way I figured him for hot art, so I said sure. It was an ugly picture, just grays and browns and yellows. I put it out in the garage attic to dry and forgot about it.”
“You really think he planned to come back for it?”
“No, because he didn’t know what it was worth. Snark wouldn’t peruse art catalogs and stolen painting bulletins, and there was no Internet back then, don’t forget.”
“I checked. It was never reported stolen.”
“I checked, too, but now I understand. Snark stole from a hood who didn’t have good title. He wanted to disguise it, thinking it would buy him some more time to get away.”
“And for all these years, you had no idea the painting underneath was valuable?”
“Just for three years, Dek.”
“You learned it was the Daisy so soon?”
“I worked for Sotheby’s right out of college, remember. One Saturday, I was up in the garage attic and came across Snark’s painting. As I said, I’d forgotten all about it. I brought it down. In the sunlight, the back of the canvas looked way too old for something Snark would have. I brought it into work on Monday and examined it with their equipment. It only took the morning to learn Snark had slopped over the last of Brueghel’s Four Flowers. Worse, my research showed who legally owned it.”