Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3)

by Lance Charnes

  He gives it the confused-dog look, then opens the envelope and starts sorting through the printouts of the photos I took Tuesday night. His face slowly bleaches. His left hand—the one holding the stack—starts to shake. “Where did you get these?”

  “Due diligence.”

  I’ve never blackmailed—actually, extorted—anybody before. It’s not something I ever thought I’d do. I’d tried to figure out how to do this without actually threatening the man but could never make it work. I finally had to decide this morning which way I’d go: keep one of my few remaining scruples or grab for my freedom. Being sleep-deprived and grouchy from last night made the decision easier, if not better.

  He carefully sets down the photos, then props his elbows on the table, folds his hands, and rests his mouth against them. He breathes so deeply, it makes his shoulders rise and fall. “Why do you have them?”

  “I want to know who I’m doing business with.” I’m letting Hoskins handle this…

  “I can explain.”

  “Then start.” …and Hoskins can be such a prick. I hope he’s not really me.

  Bandineau stares at the table for a while. “What do you want?”

  “Well, you can start with that explanation.”

  He nods. “Ehm… the wares come in batches. Every quarter. It… takes a while to sell them. We’re being careful, as you already know.”

  “Even quarterly deliveries don’t explain the backlog. You’ve got pots there that came in last year.”

  “The high-quality ones sell first.” He still hasn’t made eye contact since he opened the envelope. “Then we go through the… middling ones, if you will. They’re often the ones we pick for donations.”

  “‘We’ is you and who else? Lorena?”

  “No, not her.” He objects fast enough to make me believe him. “She knows I can supply the wares, but she doesn’t know anything more. No, it’s… it’s just me.”

  Watching Bandineau slowly droop makes me feel like a heel. As far as I can tell, he’s not exactly a bad person. But I still hear Talbot saying better get to it and know I can’t start feeling sorry for him. “Do you get only Nam Ton wares, or do you get other types, too?”

  He sits straighter. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable telling you anything more. I’ve said too much already.”

  Figures. Well, if I’m not already destined to burn in hell, I will be after I finish this. “Did you know there’s a DEA investigation going on right now?”

  The small amount of color that had crept into Bandineau’s face runs right out. “DEA? Why?”

  “Why do you think? The people who’re importing those pots are importing drugs, too. Did you know that?”

  If there’s something paler than white, that’s the shade he turns. “I had… I had no idea. I’d…”

  Time to finish crushing him. “They’re looking at you, you know.”

  A little broken sound leaks out of his throat. “Oh, god.” He breathes hard into his steepled hands. “Why…?”

  Good thing I don’t always need a mirror to shave. “Well, you made yourself a public advocate for Nam Ton. Or was it an evangelist? I can’t remember which word you used.” I force myself to keep watching him panic. “Look, I get it. You don’t want to answer any more of my questions. I’m just some guy, right? But… I’m sure the DEA would be interested in those photos. You can explain it all to them.”

  “Please. That’s not necessary.”

  “No, it isn’t, not as long as you keep answering my questions. But it’s gonna be a problem if you try to grow a spine.”

  His hands move randomly, like they’ve decided to ignore his brain. It’s the first time I’ve seen him make gestures that don’t seem programmed. I once accidentally broke one of my sister Diane’s Barbies and I felt then like I do now—like a skunk.

  He gets his breathing under control after a while. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a dissatisfied customer. Here I thought I could grow my collection quickly, but you throw this bullshit ‘donation’ thing at me like it’s something I have to do. You don’t know your customers. That kills so many businesses.”

  Bandineau sits there blinking at me. “I… I don’t understand.”

  I fold my arms on the table and lean forward, giving him my most sincere look. “Jim, I don’t want you to fail. I want you to succeed. But you’re screwing up, and we can’t have that. So you’re going to do what I tell you, and we’re both going to win, and you’ll get the job and the house and the woman. Got it?”

  He looks bewildered, but he seems to be slowly getting it together. “Yes. I think.”

  I have an ask in here. If I come right out with it, he’ll probably push back, and then I have to threaten him some more, and he’ll hyperventilate again. But I can layer it with so much bullshit that he’ll want to do it. I hope.

  I point to his plate. “Eat. Your brain needs food. Now, you’re a nice guy. I’m sure you’re very good at your day job. But you’re not a businessman. We need you to start thinking like a businessman. Okay?”

  Bandineau nods in mid-chew.

  “Good. First thing: know what business you’re in. What business are you in, Jim?”

  “Well… ehm… there’s a philanthropic part, and there’s—”

  “Stop. Charity isn’t a business unless you’re the charity. You’re in the luxury goods business. Nobody needs a five-million-dollar painting. Nobody needs a half-million-dollar car. And nobody needs an antique pot. People buy them because they want them. And preferably, they want it so nobody else can have it, but everybody else can see it. With me so far?”

  He’s stopped eating and is just watching me. “I think so, yes.”

  “Good. Next: know your customer. Who he is, what appeals to him. What appeals? They want to buy something their friends don’t have. And they want the best, nothing ‘middling.’ What doesn’t appeal? Your donation scam. Your customers don’t give a damn about a five-grand tax write-off, so just knock that shit off and leave the IRS out of it.

  “That takes us to three: you can’t covet something you can’t see. Why isn’t there Nam Ton ware in Achara?”

  “Ehm… we don’t want it to look as if there’s a lot of it around. I’m sure you know about the Ban Chiang scandal. We’re trying to learn from that.”

  I’m glad he brought it up. “Good. The people running the Ban Chiang thing were idiots. They flooded the market with product. They brought in so much, there was no way they could come up with credible provenance for it. It was obvious they were looting. I like what you’re saying, but you learned the wrong lesson from that. Don’t make Nam Ton invisible, which—”

  “It’s in museums. That’s why we’re trying to—”

  “Jim. Nobody gives a shit about a small regional museum in Portland, or the number-two Asian museum in San Francisco. Your customers don’t care. They’ll care when Nam Ton shows up in the Met or the Kimbell or your competitor in the Civic Center.” Bandineau raises his hand to object, but I beat him to it. “Yes, I know, that’s why you went to LACMA. You won’t get a Nam Ton placement there until a trustee marches into the director’s office with one under her arm and says, ‘Here, this is for you.’ Trustees need to see it in a place where they can buy it.”

  Bandineau’s recovered enough to manage a little laugh. “I feel like I should take notes.”

  “If you need to, do it. By the way: Lorena’s great. She’s a lovely woman. But she owns one gallery in a not-very-important art market. You need at least two more galleries selling Nam Ton—one in L.A., one in Manhattan. Maybe one in Vancouver—it’s hip-deep in Chinese flight capital. They all need really primo display pieces with really primo prices.”

  “But we don’t want to get the prices ahead of the market, do we?”

  He doesn’t get it—he owns the market now. “The pricing makes the market. Remember, you’re selling luxury goods, not socks. The more expensive they are, the more luxurious
your customers think they are.” Gar pounded all this into my head when I started working at the gallery. I came in with my Econ 101 ideas of how markets work. He taught me that the art market is like quantum physics: all the normal rules don’t apply.

  He stares off into the middle distance while he thinks this over. “This will be quite a change in the way we do things.”

  “That’s the point. You said your shipments are quarterly. How big are they?”

  Bandineau spends some time examining his salad.

  “Don’t stop now. You know what happens when you stop.”

  Sigh. “It varies, but usually eighty to a hundred pieces.”

  “All Nam Ton?”

  “Now, yes. They tried to sell some others to me, but they were all modern reproductions. Souvenir-shop stuff.” There’s that word again: souvenir.

  “Of those eighty to a hundred, how many are good pieces? I mean, like that vase you sold me.”

  “Half or less. The rest are fine, but they’re nothing special.”

  Forty or fifty high-quality pots every quarter. Two hundred a year. “How long before they run out?”

  “No one’s mentioned running out. I have no idea how big the site is. I’m afraid to ask.”

  I sit back and watch him study the table, trying to figure him out. “That takes care of the scarcity angle. There’s got to be a bottom to the supply. You’re still buying all of them, though. You need to stop that—you’re just throwing money away. Tell your source you’re only taking the good stuff, the ones you pick. He can keep the rest.”

  This makes him sit up straight. “The others are still eight hundred years old! I can’t just leave them to… this person. What if he throws them away?”

  “Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he sell them to somebody else?”

  “Then they’ll be competition.”

  “Selling the cheap stuff. It’ll make yours look better. Remember, Jim: luxury goods. You don’t sell the factory seconds. What’s your margin?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “Your profit margin. Two digits?” His face doesn’t change. “Three?”

  He gives me a weak little smile. “It’s healthy.”

  Damn, I’ll say. “Is your source here or in Thailand?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “C’mon, Jim. It’s a basic question. If he’s local, you can pick the pieces in person. If he’s overseas, you have another link in the chain to get them from there to here. Another middleman, more lost profit. Is he local or long-distance?”

  He folds his arms and watches his food get cold for what turns into a long while.

  This looks like resistance, which I can’t afford. “Do I need to remind you what happens when you stop answering questions?”

  His eyes squeeze closed. “Local.”

  “Good.” Now I try for what I wanted in the first place. “I need to talk to him soon.”

  Bandineau’s head snaps up. “Why? He’s my contact. It’s my deal. Why do you need to get involved in it?”

  Dammit, I was afraid he’d say that. I lean forward and aim a loaded finger at him. “Because DEA somehow made the connection between whoever’s moving the drugs, to you, then to me. Maybe it was your lack of security, or maybe it was your source’s. We can fix yours; we can’t fix his. But it sounds like it’s time somebody else took a look at this guy to see how untrustworthy he is.”

  “How are you qualified to do that?”

  “There are a lot of weasels in construction supply. I’ve gotten pretty good at smelling them. I also skated close to the edge with a couple canvases I bought. Art weasels smell like building-supply weasels, just with nicer clothes.” I pause for effect. “I thought you wanted to know who you’re doing business with.”

  He’s been shaking his head a lot today. “I don’t know if he’ll even agree to meet with—”

  “Tell him it’s not optional. If he doesn’t, I drop a bridge on you. While you’re going down, you’ll tell the feds all about him. Then he gets to meet with the DEA. They won’t be friendly, and they have guns. Understand?”

  Swallow. “Yes.”

  I can stop beating on him now. I may be as happy about that as he’ll be. “Good. When’s your next shipment due? I can’t wait to see the new pots.”

  His smile looks tired rather than happy. “Two weeks or so. It left Bangkok on the tenth, and it takes four weeks or so to get across the Pacific if there aren’t any weather or port problems. My source brings me the new inventory about a week after it arrives.”

  “Let’s get things straightened out before that happens.” He nods. “Once we get this enterprise of yours tightened up, with your margins, you’ll be raking it in. Then you can go after your dream house and the woman that goes with it.”

  Bandineau aims a weary look at me. “If I don’t get arrested first.”

  That goes for both of us.

  Chapter 33

  I was too busy to think about it this morning, but the address Savannah texted me sounded familiar. I understand why when we stop on 18th Street half a block west of Guerrero. A two-story, late-Victorian townhouse, pear with cream-and-rust trim, bay windows stacked over a flip-up garage door.

  Bandineau’s duplex.

  Okay.

  Savannah comes out of the right-hand door, the one to the upstairs flat. I hold open the limo’s back passenger-side door. I need her inside before Hoskins starts beating on her.

  A curtain twitches open in the upstairs bay window. A cute young Asian woman and a slightly less-cute young blonde peer down at me. They giggle, point, nudge each other, then start taking pictures with their phones as Savannah gets in range.

  I point to the window. “You have fans.”

  She glances up, rolls her eyes, then gives them the get-outta-here wave. Her fans just giggle and take more pictures.

  I hand her into the back seat. “Friends of yours?”

  “Sometimes.” She’s wearing a vee-necked little black dress, cap sleeves with a standing collar. It slips nicely up her thighs as she settles into the seat. Her hair’s done in a low-hanging French twist. She leans forward to tell the driver, “974 Valencia. It’s between Liberty and 21st.”

  Once we leave the curb and the junior paparazzi, she crosses her legs, folds her hands in her lap, and watches the streetscape roll by. I expect frost to form on her window.

  If I was being me, I’d try to apologize my way back onto her good side. But Savannah knows rich men—grew up with them—and knows how they act. To her I’m Hoskins, and after the night he’d had, she’d know he wouldn’t give a damn about her hurt feelings. He doesn’t, but I do, and I hate what I have to do now.

  She’d told me when she visited the Bel Air house that she wears black or white when she’s working. Hoskins says, “Black dress. So this is work?”

  Her jaw flexes. “What’s her name?”

  “Whose name?”

  Savannah takes in a breath that inflates her whole upper body, then lets it out slow. “You stand me up and you don’t answer your phone.” Every word snaps. “Then you send me a text that doesn’t explain a thing. I know what makes a man act that way. So please tell me her name so when we argue about her, I can call her something other than ‘your bitch’.”

  Shit. I’m in a deeper hole than I thought. I need to fix this. I need her, and I like her. I’ve had time to decide how much of what to tell her—I hope I can give it to her the way Hoskins would instead of trying to be nice.

  I wait the better part of a minute. “Bruce.”

  Her eyebrows make a run for her hairline. She finally stares at me. “Bruce?” I nod. Her jaw slowly sags open. “Uh… okay. I wasn’t expecting that. You seem so… straight.”

  It’s all I can do to keep from laughing. When I first met Carson, she thought I was gay.

  “I can be open-minded. I just…”

  “Special Agent Bruce Carruthers. Drug Enforceme
nt Agency.”

  “DEA?” Now she looks bewildered. “What did you do?”

  “I bought a pot from Achara.” I throw the words at her. “They got it from somebody who’s been smuggling heroin into the Bay Area. My good friend Bruce took my phone, interrogated me, arrested me, and threw me into a holding cell. It took until this morning for my lawyer to get me out. I texted as soon as I got my phone back. I was too tired to figure out how to put all that in a text. Not sorry.”

  Savannah stares at me. There’s lots going on behind her eyes. She finally shakes her head hard. “That’s crazy. That’s just… I’m sorry, are you serious?”

  That would piss me off even if I was being me. Hoskins pins her with a stare until she shifts in her seat and swallows. “Let’s get something straight. You and me? We’re not married. There’s no paperwork between us. I’ve made no promises. So if there was another woman, I wouldn’t bother to lie to you about it.” I hate talking to her this way… “Now, I can guarantee that the last twenty-four hours have been way shittier for me than they have for you. So when I give you an explanation, have the courtesy to believe me.” I tell the driver to pull over. “Or you can get out right here. Pick one.”

  Savannah’s expression is like I flogged her with a bag of wet fish. Her mouth opens and closes a couple times without any sound coming out. She stares out her window. I can tell she’s scoping the neighborhood, figuring whether she can get out of a limo in an expensive dress and survive here long enough to get a ride home. Whether she can do without the commissions she thinks she can get from Hoskins.

  I throw her a bone. “I was having a drink with Trey when they came for me. In your Uber back home? Call him, he’ll tell you.”

  I called McCarran earlier this afternoon. He didn’t pick up—big surprise—so I left a voicemail along the lines of no hard feelings, but if Savannah calls, tell her what happened, okay? He may not have many reasons to tell the truth. Maybe it’ll blow his cover or something. I’m hoping he’ll do the right thing, using my definition of “right” instead of his.