Welcome to Tunis, Evan. It was so pleasant to finally hear from you. I only hope you are as eager to begin as I. I suggest you start by becoming familiar with the painting and the layout of the gallery. It is on the same street as the hotel you are in. Proceed toward the sea, the Tunisian National Gallery is the first building before the promenade. Please familiarize yourself with the route from the gallery to the dock. The boat, The Panta Mine is moored in slip number fifteen. Its captain is a Welshman named Flynn Coogan. He is waiting for you and has most of the supplies you will need, anything else can easily be found in the open-air bazaar down the street from the gallery. Everything else is in your hands. I eagerly await your return.
Good luck,
Samas
the old woman said nothing when I walked past her on my way out. The clock above her graying head showed three o’ clock. I stepped onto the sidewalk, placed the cane under me, and started toward the sea.
The Tunisian National Gallery was set back from the street to make room for the two life-size carved-stone elephants that guarded the entrance. I walked past, feigning disinterest while taking in every detail of the building’s facade: the flowering colors of the low planters between the granite pillars, the clock set high in the wall under the peaked roof, the ubiquitous white stains of the loitering pigeons.
The surrounding city was abuzz with the kinds of activities that surface after the heat of day and before the fall of night. Men and women, old and young, burdened with all manner of goods, walked in and out of the breach in the storefronts that served as the entrance to the indoor bazaar. I noticed several other foreigners as I entered.
The inside was organized chaos. Each merchant ruled over a ten-foot square of concrete floor under the high, sheet-metal-roofed iron superstructure, and their wares were as varied as their weathered faces. Brass pots lay stacked next to caged monkeys, next to six-foot-tall mounds of onions and gourds. Old women constantly fanned sides of beef and racks of lamb with long palm branches to beat off the swarming flies, their steady rhythm wafting the scent of spoilage into the stagnant air.
I stopped on the square of a T-shirt vendor just beyond a young couple arguing amongst their piled guitars. I picked a shirt hastily emblazoned with a mural of racing camels. The young boy watching the stand took the twenty-dollar bill from my hand and crammed a wadded handful of Tunisian bills in its place. He giggled when I pulled the shirt on over my sweat-soaked white button down. I couldn’t be sure if he laughed at my choice or my gullibility in not contesting or even counting my change.
I took two steps back to the neighboring square. “How much for a guitar?” I shouted into their heated squabble.
“Thirty dinars,” they both said in bright smiles.
“Does the case come with it?”
“Yes!” “No!” they answered at the same time before immediately jumping back into their argument.
I flipped through the wrinkled wad of bills before fishing another twenty out of my pocket. “Enough?” I asked, holding it out.
“No,” he said, just as she snatched the bill out of my hand in a motion almost too quick to see. They rejoined the fray as I closed the case on top of a guitar and walked off. Sufficiently disguised, I made my way back out to the street, fighting the inflow of merchants at the entrance, each one carrying a bundle on his back like so many foraging ants.
I slipped between the elephants and pushed open the glass door at the front of the gallery. My heart rate quickened as I walked past the guard station in the middle of the foyer. The uniformed Arab at the desk kept his head in a book as I passed.
The main room of the gallery was even smaller than I thought it would be. I started at the left wall so that I would take in everything before reaching the Vermeer. I eyed each piece in a thoughtful pose, thinking only of the red dot on the blueprint I’d seen on Samas’s kitchen table. I ambled around the room from station to station, stopping to inspect the bathroom and take measure of the trash can. Two large rats scurried from underneath it when I lifted the lid to inspect the inside. The nearby patrons, mostly Europeans, were not as happy to see them as I was.
I felt like the people gathered around the Vermeer somehow violated my privacy as I stepped before it. I had imagined that I would be alone when I first saw it. Standing before the painting, I marveled at the detail in the reclining figure; the white, angelic skin, the wide seventeenth-century hips, the now-familiar black tattoo. The artist had captured everything in the opulent room; the red velvet curtains, gilded statutes, even the other paintings on the walls of Samas’s Amsterdam home. I stood in front of The Rendezvous until the familiar feelings of cold, businesslike loneliness, those feelings that had served me in this situation so many times before, returned to me. It came over me slowly as I swayed in front of the image of my contractor. And though unseen, what I felt next was unmistakable. Want drifted into the portrait like a phantom, supplanting cold reason and eclipsing fear. I pictured myself in the same opulent surroundings as those in the painting and knew then that I stood there no longer out of obligation, but out of anticipation. I narrowed my focus to Samas, the form might have been different, but that sly, knowing smile was no doubt the same. Imagining him in this voluptuous form made me smile. I moved closer and listened carefully to his barely audible whispers to me of promise and pride.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” asked a large Englishwoman behind me.
“Yes,” I said, turning around to survey the lay of the exits. I looked down at the inert watch Kress had given me and smiled. The four green arms remained motionless. “What time is it?” I asked her.
“A quarter till six. My word, they’ll be closing shortly. Jules, dear, it’s almost time to go,” she shouted after her missing husband.
Until tomorrow, I thought, as I moved away from the Vermeer.
One guard stood at the front desk, his back to me, the other milled around the front door looking out at the bustling street. I slipped unobserved past the open archway of the foyer where they stood and walked back down to the twin bathroom doors. Looking around for eyes looking at me, I ignored the silent protests of the skirted silhouette on the door and entered the women’s bathroom.
The simple stalls had brown curtains in place of western doors. The harsh fluorescent tubes flickered with a low hum. Small one-inch square blue, red, and yellow tiles formed a random collage of color on the floor. I had just put my hand on the water faucet when I heard the creak of the men’s room door. My heart in my throat, I picked up the case and the cane and eased the women’s door off its jamb enough to see out.
“Where have you been, Jules?” the squat Brit asked of her husband.
“In there,” he said, pointing over his shoulder to the men’s room. “Good Lord, can’t I get a moment’s peace from you? We’re on holiday, for heaven’s sake.” He stormed off toward the foyer.
I left the bathroom and followed on her heels as she chattered after him. I averted my eyes from the guards as they locked the door behind me.
A crowd of people beyond the elephants enveloped me immediately. I turned at the end of the block and wandered down the alley behind the gallery, again taking note of where the doors were. My eyes were watering uncontrollably from the rotting stench of garbage by the time I emerged at the next cross street.
I had no more lifted my cane into the air before a small blue-and-white taxi screeched to a stop in front of me.
“Where you go? I know best hotel in town, pretty girls, pretty boys, good restaurants—you tell me,” spewed the young driver.
“I’m going to the docks.”
“Good, good, good, get in, we go now.”
“Take the shortest route,” I said, slamming the door closed.
The short ride down the narrow cobblestone streets allowed me just enough time to ready another twenty-dollar bill. I held the bill in front of him when he stopped at the water’s edge, then tore it in two. “Wai
t here for me,” I said, handing him half. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” he yelled behind me as I walked toward the docks. “But hurry, there is much business now.”
I waved my half in the air and kept walking. A dried crust of yellow-white salt coated the edges of the gray wooden dock planks. A small white motor yacht bobbed in the water of slip fifteen. The man sleeping in the deck chair next to her stirred out of his sleep as I tapped the planks with my cane. The Panta Mine was stenciled in bloodred letters across the boat’s stern.
“You Michaels?” he asked from under his frayed straw hat. His thick Welsh accent only hinted of English.
“Yeah, you Coogan?” I asked, mimicking his tone.
“Been expectin’ ya.” He stood up and readjusted his hat to expose the brown spotted skin stretched tight over his strong gaunt facial features. He stuck a bony hand in mine and smiled wide. “Trust you got the letter I delivered.”
“I’m here.”
“So you are,” he nodded. “So you are. I have somethin’ for ya.” He stepped on board the boat and rummaged in the confined cabin. “Ah, here ’tis.” The small, blue-nylon bag in his hand bulged at the zipper. “The boss said you’d know what ta do with it.”
“The boss?” I asked.
He pointed a gnarled finger at my tattoo as he handed me the overnight bag. “Yeah, you know.”
I set the guitar down and unzipped the blue bag.
“How long ya played?”
“Excuse me?”
“The strum box,” he said, nudging the case with a sandaled foot, “how long have ya played it?”
“I just picked it up, actually,” I said through a stifled grin.
“Hmm,” he mumbled.
I opened the nylon case to see a hammer, a small flashlight, a utility razor, a lead-weighted wire noose, and a snub-nosed pistol. “What’s this?” I asked, holding the gun up.
“That’s a revolver. Don’t get caught with it in the city. That’s big trouble here.”
“No, I mean what’s it doing with these other supplies?”
“Don’t know. I’m just here to deliver it, and deliver it I have. He said you’d know what to do with it. Oh, yeah, and I’m supposed to take you to his house whenever you’re ready.”
I shoved the gun back in the bag and zipped it tight. “I’ll be back late tomorrow night. Be ready to go. We might need to leave in a hurry.”
He settled back into his folding chair. “I ain’t going nowhere.”
The cab driver revved his engine impatiently as I walked back onto dry land. I handed the other half of the bill to him as I got in.
“Where you go now?” he asked as he compared the two halves.
“Take me to one of those nice restaurants you mentioned, the best one. I have some celebrating to do.”
23
Heavy throbbing in my head recounted each glass of wine from the night before. I changed into my cleanest clothes, grabbed the guitar, and slackened the strings until they could easily be pulled back from the round acoustic opening. The instrument begrudged a low, sour note as I ran my fingers across it. I thought the guards might recognize the ornate cane, so I left it hanging on the back of the chair in the hotel room. Grabbing the guitar and blue-nylon case, I closed the door behind me. The old woman gave a look of contempt when I set the guitar case down on the counter.
I put on a smile for her benefit. “I’d like to stay another night.”
“It has already been paid for. You’re paid for as long as you want to stay.”
the day passed slowly as the anticipation built toward my late afternoon rendezvous. I went through the plan over and over in my head while visualizing every detail inside the gallery down to the height of the painting on the wall, the depth of the trash can, and the sound the guards’ shoes made against the polished granite floors.
I stopped in the market and paid twenty dollars for a small red canvas backpack just large enough to hold the contents of the blue bag Coogan had given me. Lunch was at an open-air café across the street from the two elephants. A new set of vacationers passed between them every twenty minutes or so, by the clock high above the gallery’s front doors.
At five thirty I crossed the street and walked around back into the alley. Taking a deep breath, I braved the barrage of buzzing flies and wedged the guitar case into a three-foot-high pile of refuse next to the back door of the gallery. I pulled up pieces of garbage around it so that only the inconspicuous handle showed. The alley was empty as I placed the last camouflaging sheets of newspaper over it. I shoved my arm through a strap on the red pack and walked back around the corner.
I pushed open the glass door and walked in painful strides through the foyer, past the guard desk, and into the gallery. Both guards watched a small television sitting next to the blank security monitor. Neither of them noticed me as I passed, then lingered in the open hallway behind them. Their gray uniforms and pistols instilled an automatic fear in me that curiously waned the longer I secretly stared at them. The confidence that had so often been my ally slowly flowed back into me with the simple realization that the two men before me did not know.
I stood as a stalking wolf in their presence, the very air around me thick with larceny, and still, they did not know. They deserved the contempt I silently heaped on them. Standing there, I couldn’t help but feel that my swelling bravado mocked them and the order they represented. I smiled and chuckled to myself, having almost forgotten the inherent advantages all assailants enjoy.
I turned away and hovered around the sculptures, standing in the center of the room so that I could keep one eye on the guards and the other on the prize. I watched the vacationers as they milled in front of the Vermeer, their idle conversations barely reaching my ears. They would be the last ones to see it before it returned to the blank spot on Samas’s wall. The two elderly women, arm in arm, the young couple with their sleeping baby, all three sunburned, would tell stories in their nights to come about how they were the last to see The Rendezvous by Jan Vermeer, that they were there the day it was stolen. And I, unknown I, standing in their midst, would be the cause of it. I was the anonymous individual they would admire for what I was about to give them. Take a good look, I thought.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the fat guard struggle out of his chair and stand vigil by the door, starting the process of my crime into motion. I walked in backward steps, never losing track of the guards. Once against the rear wall, with the whole room in view, I edged over toward the bathrooms. I slipped off the backpack and slid it silently through the sprung metal lid into the trash can. Unobserved, I snuck another peek inside to be certain I would fit.
The few remaining patrons ambled toward the entrance as I slipped undetected into the women’s bathroom where my ears immediately caught the sound of whistling where there should have been none. I crouched down and peered under the brown fabric curtains to find a pair of legs spanned by elastic hose in the second stall. I bolted upright, tiptoed to the last stall, and pulled the curtain closed. The toilet flushed minutes later, and I leaned forward to catch a glimpse of her through the gap in the curtain. The heavyset blond woman touched up her lipstick and pulled at the pantyhose under her ample black skirt before washing her hands and disappearing back into the gallery. I stepped out seconds later and walked back to the bathroom door.
The voices near the gallery entrance were barely audible when I put my ear next to the jamb. Their parting musings slowly declined to reveal the unmistakable sound of leather shoe soles landing on polished granite. It was the guard, it had to be, probably the fat one. Each of his footfalls sounded closer than the last, and I knew that the entire plan now hung on the simplest of assumptions, that he would instinctively walk into the men’s room first. I clenched my fists tight as he approached and wished that I had kept the gun with me instead of putting it in the guitar case outside in t
he trash pile. The guard’s strides wavered for a split second before he pushed open the men’s room door.
I stepped out into the gallery just as the men’s room door came to a rest in its frame. The dimmed lighting in the empty gallery seemed to subdue everything but my nerves. Instinct took over, and within several seconds I was inside and looking out on the room from the narrow slit in the lid of the garbage can. The door opened, and the guard passed in front of me as an eclipsing shadow on his way to the women’s room. That door opened seconds later. His dark figure shrank away as he walked back toward the lit foyer and out of sight around the corner. Faint tidbits of a television program echoed back to me. I parted my lips next to the crack and breathed from the fresher air outside, stopping to peer out every few seconds in nervous anticipation of his return.
My shoulders filled the cramped circumference of the can, and the ache of immobility crept into my joints after the guard’s sixth or seventh circuit. In the long sabbaticals between each pass, my mind drifted to thoughts of my impending fortune; a Black Sea home, a flat in Istanbul, liberation from this confinement that had been my limited life so far.
The initial rustling scratches at the steel below my feet came just as night fell beyond the two small skylights visible through my fissure. The first big rats came in quick sorties, running along the walls one by one. But within the next three guard passes that measured an hour, the floors were being crisscrossed by them, the constant flashes of the red dots on the motion detectors betraying their nightly invasion to the uncaring defenders.
I could see it was dark enough to start the job and I resolved to go after the guard’s next pass, but before he could come, I was startled by another visitor in the can with me. A young rat had slipped through a small hole in the bottom and scrambled about, unaware, or uncaring, of the giant above him. I felt him scurrying around from morsel to morsel and I concentrated on the gnashing of his tiny teeth in an attempt to ignore the stiffening ache in my knees and back. My little friend not only ate but jealously guarded the small entrance as well, biting at any strange nose poking in. The drama playing itself out at my feet made me laugh. There we were, both of us rats, earning our living in the trash. “If only you had the chance to better your condition,” I whispered down to my friend. I wondered if he could possibly know that he would eventually become too fat to leave and would be trapped inside the can. Probably not.
The Reincarnationist Papers Page 36
