A California Closing

by Robert Wintner

  Well, it’s a perfect example of easy come, easy go. No, wait. How about you win some, you lose some.

  Things turn out as they usually do—however they need to. Despite Mulroney’s best effort at defending his personal life from public scrutiny, he has won an admirer—make that a devotee. As a consummate sales professional of stellar caliber, he does not lose sight of value relative to the many components of a complex sale.

  Betty B is a goner, surrendering better judgment to the fall, head over heels, into love. She has lost her wits to that great big lug from whom she would buy any number of used cars, if only he would close each deal himself as only he can do.

  She can plainly see that Mulroney’s rough and tumble relationship to society isn’t vulgar at all but simply masculine—the kind of masculinity the world misses these days. Compared to the men she’s known, he’s cock o’ the walk, and if he walks up to her place for any little thing in the world, it’ll be all right by her because a woman knows when it’s love and not another pantywaist money grubber looking for a handout. Michael Mulroney is a man—all man and what a man, and he doesn’t pussyfoot around. Betty Burnham has all the respect in the world for Allison and hopes they can work things out amicably and isn’t afraid to say as much because this is, after all, California.

  Meanwhile, back at the CSI, Ms. Burnham nearly blushes a blue streak on having to review events in detail, orally, as it were. Yes, she walked right in on Juan Valdez with a Manet rolled up and tucked under his arm, and another Manet in his grasp, the second one framed in 24-karat gilt scrollwork that sold forty years ago for half a million dollars—that was for the frame! “And I can promise you: forty years ago a half mil was some real money.”

  Anyway, she walked in on him. He spooked, dropped the gilt frame and lunged for the exit, knocking her down in passing, but only inadvertently, she thinks; she’s thinks herself a fair judge of character and senses a caring man, deep down inside, once she can feel his presence.

  Later, but only by an hour or two, the perp—make that person of interest—swears he wouldn’t hurt a flea, much less an old lady. This oath occurs down at the station, where the balance of the interview reveals that the rolled Manet canvas was actually painted by Juan Valdez, who happens to be John Waldon, former Avon-Award-winning thespian of critical acclaim but paltry income. John Waldon is also a forgery swashbuckler known in the curator underground as the Artful Pimpernel, an art restoration expert of global renown whose skill and lust for forgery have kept him on the lam. And for what, with poverty an uninvited guest who won’t take a hint.

  Alas, thirty grand or fifty might seem like a big ticket on a single project, but artistic integrity requires six months on a single restoration, and that’s working solo. And what kind of studio backup are you going to find in a one-tractor burg like Watsonville? You call a hundred grand big dough? You ever try to live on a hundred grand a year? Go fish.

  Viewing the daily paper for leads on wealthy people collecting valuable art for purposes of prideful possession and social position, John Waldon came upon billionairess Betty Burnham’s bio and sidebars, telling all, on the life and times of the reluctant mink and dry goods magnate. Recently migrated to the suburban south, Betty Burnham had joined that richest of regional traditions, the downsize flight of fancy, except of course for her art collection. It could only be called fabulous—make that amazingly fabulous, and what could she do? Leave it behind? Sell it? For what, more money? Betty Burnham, herself, responded to that rhetorical affront: “Do you mind?” Such news felt like fertile fields for a billionairess seeking growth. Just add simplicity.

  Prospects improved on the third jump in the story, where the lengthy narrative got bumped to Section E by a last-minute double-truck special from none other than Burnham’s, for every woman’s needs.

  The exhaustive tale of mind-numbing wealth with a syrupy overflow of humility was past the point of nodding off, by the time it got to Section E. Saving the sordid detail of a woman with neck-snapping skills was perhaps an effort to bury the harsh truth, yet that final leg of the long journey got crowded with iota that could hardly be called sundry. That is, rather than bury the lead, the journalist penning the narrative had participated in covering up the difficulties, some of which remained unresolved. To whit: deep in Section E came a brief reference to “youthful indiscretion” and a “blessed event” demurring obscurely on fading tracks to a bastard child.

  We have germination and growth.

  Sleuthing is naturally akin to acting and artistic replication, with overlapping intuition on cryptic data. Though this supposition may seem presumptive, any deductive arts practitioner will know the correlation is real. John Waldon ruminates reflectively, and Detective Sergeant Ryan comprehends with a nod.

  Indeed deductive skills will overlap from one arena to the next. But how did John Waldon discover Betty Burnham’s long, lost daughter, Rose Berry? It wasn’t easy, till it was.

  Step by step, John Waldon narrowed the range on the year of birth to a three-year period, then honed the place of birth to a regional radius and honed it finer on sheer logic and went to work. Birth records were converted to data files long ago in most places, except for those records still decomposing as microfiche—such as those in the basement archives of St. Chris Deaconess Hospital in South San Francisco, where, alas, a girl child was born unto one Elizabeth Smith in 1972—Bingo!

  Maybe. Now what? For starters came the annotation that crumbled in his hands as he viewed it, near the lower edge reading: A@B. It could have meant anything. Adopted at Birth? Well, maybe. Who knew? The reference number following the notation could have been more than eight digits, but only eight remained. Nobody at St. Chris could ascertain the reference of the digits, but one Sarah Livingston, an elderly nurse and third generation St. Chris staffer, in the tradition of her mother and grandmother, called Waldon back. Over dinner with her nonagenarian mother, Sarah Livingston, had shared the story of the fellow looking for his long lost sister. Sarah Livingston’s mother filled in the blanks: “The first three numbers are St. Chris. The second three are the adoption agency. And the third three are the parental file,” old Mom said.

  “Gosh,” the Pimpernel rhapsodizes in the tenuous space between Detective Sergeant Ryan and himself. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have an heir to whom the very essence of your soul might be passed along?” He didn’t wait for Detective Sergeant Ryan’s response but felt confident that he’d successfully planted another seed. Then again, he couldn’t be too confident, and so he spelled it out, “I saw potential for personal gain in re-uniting a very wealthy woman with her daughter. Don’t ask me how. My spécialité is improv. It worked out. Who could have scripted it better? But I … digress …” The Pimpernel seeks comprehension in the detective sergeant’s eyes, but here again, faith is required.

  The adoption agency refused disclosure of identity on adoptive parents unless the claimant could prove kinship. That was easy enough: John Waldon proved sibling status with a birth certificate showing that the Rose Berry in question and he shared the same mother. Documentation is a perfunctory challenge, after all, after replicating the Masters. The adoption agency accepted the proof and gave meaning as well to the final digit, leading to the Berry file, Harry and Betty. “Harry and Betty Berry?” the Pimpernel asked.

  “We’ve seen worse,” replied the adoption officer. “Apparently, rather than change the kid’s name to Smith, like some parents giving babies up at birth want to do, Betty changed her own name from Berry to Smith. While preserving the baby’s last name, it also preserved the path by which biological parentage could be traced. What Betty Berry-Smith did after that, we don’t know.”

  Not to worry; John Waldon knew.

  The rest was cake, except for working the stakeout and pickup on the long lost daughter. That was delicate and demanding. Rose’s entry on the scene and into the truck was not planned or necessary. It was serendipitous and beyond that, a pain in the neck. The kid and his dog were a nuisance,
but they could entertain each other, and what could Waldon do with them otherwise, leave them on the curb? No, he could not, even though the curb would have been the best launching pad to the ins and outs of life on the street, which is what every man and dog need to learn sooner or later. But leaving kids on the street can come back in all manner of criminal violations. So the kid and dog had to tag along.

  The long lost daughter climbing into the truck felt like an omen, a good one. Dramatic conveyance was building, and a true thespian senses denouement in the making. The very best tension leads to a point. Rose’s introduction to the scene felt like pure gravy till about forty miles out when it turned to shit.

  Where did the kid and dog come from? Never mind, they squirmed and whined as a kid and dog will do—and barked. But they also turned, deftly as a plot point, from nuisance to linchpin players.

  That is, John Waldon’s sister, a three-time rehab dropout, needed help. Any kid is trouble. At least this kid—her kid—could keep his mouth shut at regular intervals, and he had a dog to keep him company. Besides, a man in a leading role chiefly characterized as swarthy and macho needs a dog or a kid. A dog craps outside, and that’s tough to beat. But the kid was available, then he was a good match for the capricious daughter, who seemed receptive to a stint as a surrogate mother figure. It could round out her experiential resume if nothing else. So the extended family went down to Mexico North, California style. Unloading at Uncle John’s new place—make that Uncle Juan’s new place—felt crazy with the paintings and toasters and blenders and junk furniture. And the kid. Call him, uh … what was it? Panchito?

  Fine, some kids and dogs can work into a scene, if they’re smart, playing in the trees and dirt and ditches—like kids and dogs used to do in the used-to-be world, which appeared to be the mise-en-scène. The setup was good, except for getting her to shut up. She droned like an oscillating fan on love and life and money and money and life and love and loss, loss, loss, oh, my darling. Her script needed editing. Meanwhile, the paintings moved through the process steady as widgets on an assembly line, or maybe more like so-called art in your less sophisticated galleries, where the curators/experts got their degrees online.

  But the real beauty of art replication is not so much selling fakes but in selling fakes as originals at a fraction of real value—how many hillbilly art galleries are willing to buy hot art? None is your short answer; and why sell them originals anyway when they’ll buy fakes represented as legally acquired and the real McCoy? The discount is commonly called HUUUGE, so it’s another win-win all the way around.

  Your hot original market is a fraction thereof, comprised of very few galleries in the world—that would be gallery operators who know what they’re getting and what the market will bear—and for that matter, who the market might be. Never mind which galleries are responsive to the live market; let’s just say ninety percent of them are more than three thousand miles away from the source—any source. But hillbillies abound; movie stars, swimming pools.

  The real payout is in originals taken from residential use and easily replaced by replicas. Maybe the change-out does not come easily, but the task fits into a dynamic cost-benefit paradigm, once labor and risk are factored against return. A seasoned marketeer then has original art to sell far closer to value with no theft report and more dough on one sale than a dozen fakes. At least that’s the theory. Scoping takes time.

  “Wait a minute.” Detective Sergeant Ryan hates to interrupt, especially when a person of extreme interest is flowing forth. But it doesn’t add up, so he has to ask, “You know this art game. So why would you take on a potential kidnapping and sexual assault rap on top of grand theft? Who needs the baggage, if you get my drift?”

  “Please, Detective. Be careful. My lawyer is sitting right here, as you can see. If you want to charge me with kidnapping and sexual assault, that’s your decision, but you must charge me first if you want to suggest such a thing. She got in the car. She came on to me. I knew her background. The end. Except for living happily ever after, on which we will soon raise the curtain. Surely you’ve heard. We’re engaged to be married. Meanwhile, I also plan to be out of here in a few minutes, willing to forgive your confusion. I paid my future mother-in-law a surprise visit. Once again I’ll remind you: the end. Do you think Betty will say otherwise and jeopardize her daughter’s matrimonial prospects? Hasn’t she caused enough damage already? Isn’t it time for some support and understanding?

  “Besides, the art rap would carry twenty to fifty. The other would carry life, but sometimes you need to take on a little risk to gain some insurance. Capiche? Reuniting mother and daughter was my plan and not for the money. I would have done it for love.”

  Detective Sergeant Ryan’s face screws to the center at this juncture. He will not play into such a lame premise, so John Waldon explains that anyone who doesn’t believe in purity and its motivational power might call him a gigolo, or a fortune hunter, or an opportunist, which behaviors, as far as he knows, are not addressed by the revised statutes of any legal code.

  Then John Waldon sits back, hardly smug; he’s merely finished, move to you.

  Detective Sergeant Ryan suspects that John Waldon planned to ransom the artwork back to the old lady, but he can’t quite form the question without incriminating the witness, which would preclude an answer. So he merely asks, “How did you plan to get the money from the old lady, so the grand reunion could begin?”

  John Waldon asks back with a smirk, “How do you link irreplaceable value with mere money? Do you think a million dollars could replace a daughter given up for adoption? Maybe it could, but then a billion is a thousand million, and a loving daughter is once in a lifetime, so maybe two million would be a better exchange rate. Don’t you think? Two million sounds better. It feels better. But that’s between you and me. I’m sure Mrs. Burnham is already feeling very happy to have found her daughter, and now there’s a wedding to plan.”

  Detective Sergeant Ryan looks down at his file, a tell that only the seasoned person of interest can read, indicating that the detective thinks the suspect is good, very, very good. You can’t blame a detective for not wanting to compliment the slippery skills of the suspect before him, or not wanting to show admiration in any way. So he only murmurs, “Don’t leave town. We’ll be in touch.”

  So begins that most awkward social transition, in which one suspect/lawyer pair trades places with the next suspect/lawyer pair, and so face off, in transit between the waiting room and the interrogation room in the middle of a lazy afternoon. Again, with timing and panache the seasoned thespian among them lifts the scene from humdrum dregs to dramatic heights, where human emotion is succinctly tapped. John Waldon takes Rose Berry by the shoulders and murmurs at the perfect range of audience comprehension, I love you. From the first minute I saw you, I knew …

  She chokes back sobs that may be tears of joy; in any event, John Waldon offers parting grist for the investigative mill, turning, profile left, with a parting line. “You know, Detective, a hundred dollars buys a couple bags of groceries and is nothing to sneeze at for poor people who work the earth. Your Big M is the real culprit here, trying to cheat a woman out of the hundred dollars he owes her for a massage.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Waldon. We’ll look into that.”

  Rose sputters that it’s true, wailing that he—the old guy on the bicycle—beat her and stole her money. She means beat her in business, but she said beat her. John Waldon rolls his eyes. She takes the gesture for support on the woman-beating issue as she hugs her multi-faceted fiancé around the torso, inhaling his essence deeply, just like when what’s-her-name hugged Sal Mineo in Exodus when the bad guys wanted to separate them forever, no matter how deep their love.

  Wait. That was Paul Newman.

  Fuck it—John Waldon explains that a man who beats a woman in business is no different than a man who beats a woman up. Rose Berry takes it on cue, underscoring the debilitating nature of her suffering, babbling that “hee-ee mm-
mm-mmaadde mm-mme jj-jjj- jjjjjack him off and th-th-thennn he wou-wou-wouldn’t pp-p-ppay me. A hundred bucks.”

  The balance of Rose Berry’s interview is blessedly brief, and though she’s been apprised of her maternal linkage to millions that she’s somehow always known were hers by rights, she is having a hard time making the leap—to billions. But a girl from the hardscrabble streets is no less compelled to collect her hundred bucks. She’s been there—without the C-note. She won’t pursue this to the bitter end, unless she does.

  All of which gives the detective sergeant a splitter, nearly driving him to ask for a brief rub on the temples; it hurts so bad. He won’t ask. He’ll stew over grand larceny, kidnapping, and sexual assault, also briefly, and he’ll wonder what’s left, which appears to be very little, except perhaps for the load o’ love honey in Betty Burnham’s airway that she claims was not Michael Mulroney’s but could have been, which compounds the headache and raises further questions.

  Michael Mulroney concedes that he’s only human, and yes, he did squirt pecker juice down Betty Burnham’s gullet, because a guy at his age still riding long miles and also suffering fan fatigue and showbiz burnout knows he’ll be found out sooner or later, especially with news dogs on the prowl and the odd couple ever willing to spew gossip. “They peeped through the window of a private residence, I might add.”

  But it wasn’t yesterday that she blew him, and they both consented as adults when it did occur, and it wasn’t a crime, and he hasn’t done anything wrong, and in fact, he’s being considered for candidacy to the United States Senate. As they speak.

  Detective Sergeant Ryan is so stuck at this juncture that he stares off, envisioning four-wheel drive, compound low, some mongo fuckin knobbies all punching through on ten cylinders of turbo-diesel power. Now let’s see who takes any shit from a motherfucking mud bog in a State motherfucking park—“What? Oh, no. Just thinking.”