The Night Cafe

by Taylor Smith

  He had little doubt that the theft was a professional operation carried out for strategic purposes that had little to do with art and everything to do with an illegal transaction that required collateral of the magnitude of a stolen van Gogh. There were only so many people involved in deals of this sort, and an even smaller number of subcontractors to whom they could turn to nail down the collateral. Teagarden, in fact, deemed only two or three people capable of the Arlen Hunter job.

  Of those, one could be eliminated at once, since he was currently residing in Buckinghamshire, a guest of Her Majesty’s Woodhill Prison, thanks to Teagarden’s own efforts. Another was reported to be in Thailand, but when Teagarden tracked him down there, he learned he’d been knifed in a brothel two weeks before the heist in Los Angeles. Teagarden had visited the man in Phuket, where he was still recuperating. One look at his haggard appearance and the colostomy bag hanging from his belt convinced Teagarden that this fellow’s thieving days were probably over.

  It was on his way back to Bangkok airport that Teagarden had decided on a side trip to Prague to look in on another old nemesis.

  Teagarden and Shawn Britten eyed each other over a round, zinc-topped café table as they waited for the espressos they’d ordered to be delivered. Britten’s black hair was buzzed short as it had been in his time in the Royal Marines, but the look blended well among the close-cropped heads in the sidewalk cafés of Prague’s Old Town. His three-day stubble was likewise par for the course in a coffee bar frequented by young Western tourists and the edgy shop and gallery crowd.

  Britten was in his mid-thirties. He’d seen action in the first Gulf War, and that was where he’d developed his taste for art. Beautiful artifacts often fell into one’s lap in the confusion of war and a smart man learned quickly what was valuable and what was dreck. There was little profit in fencing the latter, but for Britten, the arts became more than a means to earn some ready cash over and above his military stipend. It was, by now, something of a passion.

  In addition to his on-the-job training in Middle Eastern artifacts, he soon became a self-taught expert on the Impressionist and Art Nouveau periods. After being demobbed from the Royal Marines, he’d gone independent, working his way up the food chain from estate silver robberies to consignment thefts of high-end art and jewelry. One day, Teagarden suspected, when Britten had built his personal fortune, he might become a collector in his own right—if he lived that long. The kinds of clients who employed contractors with his skills tended to be a difficult lot.

  In the meantime, he was one of a very small group of operatives to whom they could turn when rare and valuable objects needed liberating. Jobs like this took finesse. Hire a Philistine and your objet d’art could end up irreparably damaged or destroyed. Then where would you be? Neither history nor the gods smiled on those who despoiled priceless works of art. For that, at least, Teagarden appreciated the man’s professionalism.

  The two had crossed paths numerous times, but Britten was both clever and conservative in his style of operation, outwardly maintaining the fiction of working as a freelance appraiser and restorer of minor works. Although suspected of several heists, he had been able to dodge prosecution so far. That said, it was a couple of years since he’d dared set foot back in the United Kingdom. With Teagarden, at least, he no longer bothered with much pretense about the real craft that financed his relatively comfortable lifestyle.

  A waiter deposited two demitasses on the table. “Can I get you something else, gentlemen?”

  His English was accented but impeccable, Teagarden noted. Like most young Czechs, he would have no memory of his country’s dreary days of membership in the old Soviet bloc. English was the language of commerce in the republic now, and the place was already flooded with young backpackers from western Europe, Australia and America. Group excursions were beginning to show up, too, more timid travelers who preferred to follow backward-walking guides holding neon flags aloft.

  “I’d take one of those croissants I spotted in the case, mate, thanks much,” Britten said, adding to Teagarden, “long as you’re picking up the tab.”

  “Nothing for me,” Teagarden told the waiter.

  “So,” Britten said, leaning back in his chair, “still working freelance, are you, Detective Superintendent?”

  Teagarden nodded. He took a tentative sip of the steaming coffee, winced and set the demitasse down to cool.

  “What can I do for you?” Britten asked.

  “I’m looking for a missing van Gogh,” Teagarden told him. “Naturally, I thought of you.”

  “I’m flattered, mate, but I prefer not to mess with the Yanks.”

  “So you know which van Gogh I’m talking about?”

  “Oh, it sounds like your kind of case, Superintendent. Don’t know what those sods were thinking, mind. They’ve got The Terminator for guv’nor over there in California. Old Arnold’ll stick a needle in your arm soon as look at you.”

  “So you know about the murders at the Arlen Hunter, too.”

  “I heard something about it, yeah.” Britten glanced up at the waiter, who’d returned with his croissant. “Cheers.”

  “What did you hear?” Teagarden pressed.

  Britten watched the waiter walk away, then shrugged as he bit into the pastry. “Heard about a security equipment fiasco—some of the equipment not installed, video feeds compromised. Bloody cock-up.”

  “That information about the video, that wasn’t reported in the press. So how do you know about it?”

  Britten shrugged. “Just because it’s not my work doesn’t mean I don’t take a professional interest. Really makes you think, you know?”

  “How so?”

  “Well, it’s harder to nick a shirt worth ten quid from Marks & Spencer than a painting worth millions. I mean, even Marks & Sparks have got their merchandise sensors, their plainclothes floorwalkers, their CCTV cameras. When it comes to shoplifting, they mean business—pardon the pun. But your average museum? Pitiful. Minimum wage rent-a-dicks, elderly docents. Scarcely a bit of high-tech equipment to be found.”

  Teagarden nodded. “That’s true. But it’s the high-profile exhibits that generate ticket sales, so that’s where most of the money goes.” Even world-class establishments like the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Louvre were more vulnerable than they liked to admit.

  “That’s what I’m saying. Security’s always the poor cousin to your revenue-generating bling.” Britten shook his head ruefully, like he wasn’t one of those very thieves who took advantage of those security weaknesses. “Mind you, doing the job on New Year’s Day, that wasn’t too daft. Always a good chance half the staff will have come down with cheap champagne flu. And them that are left—well, they’re tired, aren’t they? It’s closing time and the last day of the exhibit, too, so everybody’s guard is down. Prime time to act. You put a team together, get in and out fast, and Bob’s yer uncle.”

  Teagarden raised a brow. “But you say it wasn’t you.”

  “Give me some credit, mate. Just because Her Majesty trained me in the deadly arts doesn’t mean I’m going to use them against civilians.”

  “So who do you reckon it was? One professional to another,” Teagarden added.

  “Oh, well, I don’t like to rat out a colleague, even if he is the competition.”

  “Hardly a colleague, I would think. As you say, it was a very messily executed job—literally, given the body count. Not very flattering professional company to be keeping.”

  “That’s very true. Gives everyone a bad name.”

  “On the other hand, who knows? Maybe that’s what passes for professionalism these days.”

  “’Scuse me?”

  “More efficient, I suppose. Eliminate all the witnesses.”

  “Nothing efficient about pulling down that much heat,” Britten sniffed. “Only a rank amateur or a psycho uses that much brute force when he doesn’t have to. And he didn’t have to, did he, given that the museum practically sent out engraved i
nvitations asking to be taken down, the way they mucked up security.”

  “Yeah, but this ringleader, whoever he was, showed some restraint, didn’t he? After all, he only took the one painting.”

  “Self-restraint!” Britten snorted. “That wasn’t his idea. That was a direct order from the client—take The Night Café and nothing more. You don’t argue with orders like that, not when they come from that client.”

  “So you do know who did the job—and who gave the orders. Did the client come to you?”

  Britten shrugged. “Might have.”

  “And? You couldn’t handle it?”

  “Couldn’t handle it? Not bloody likely. A trained monkey could have done that job.”

  “Yet you turned it down.”

  Britten drummed his fingers on the table.

  “Why?” Teagarden pressed.

  “Look, mate, you and I have had our differences in the past, yeah? But we’ve got two things in common.” Britten held up the first two fingers of his left hand, then pulled them down one after the other. “A, we both love beautiful paintings, and B, we’ve both done honorable service for Her Majesty’s Government. Here’s the deal—nicking that painting had precisely nothing to do with the client’s love of art. And I spent the Gulf War dodging bullets from guns this bloke sold to Saddam Hussein. So, thanks all the same, no, I did not care to take the man up on his offer.”

  “So who was the client? And who told him ‘yes’ after you said ‘no’?”

  Britten exhaled sharply. Then, signaling to the waiter for another espresso, he settled in resignedly for a long chat.

  Teagarden, to be sociable, did the same. It would appear, he thought, that there was honor amongst thieves after all.

  Two

  Orange County, California

  “Gabe, no more snacking. You’ll spoil your dinner.”

  Hannah snatched the last of the nachos away from the poised hand of her son and carried them from the patio into the house. The western sun, low over the ocean, was making rainbows on the walls of Nora’s kitchen. For the past couple of hours, the boys—one compact, the other tall and rangy—had climbed out of the water every twenty minutes or so, water streaming off their bodies. Splattering over to the patio table, they’d practically inhaled the fruits and crackers, cheeses and nachos that Nora had set out for them to snack on while Sunday’s beef dinner roasted in the oven.

  By now everyone was ravenous. The table was set, the salad made, the oven turned off and the veggies ready for steaming, but Rebecca Powell, Nora’s college roommate, was late.

  Hannah scraped the nachos into the garbage disposal, then rinsed the platter and slotted it into the dishwasher. Nora was at the long trestle table in the kitchen, folding starched linen napkins into swan shapes. Their mother, just down from napping upstairs, was putzing around the room, looking for something to clean or polish. Hannah watched her mother’s slightly frenzied hunt. It was pathological. The woman would probably end up ironing the sheets on her own deathbed.

  “Ma, come and sit down.”

  Instead, Nana picked up a dish towel and polished the taps and faucet at the sink until they gleamed.

  Hannah sighed and turned back to her sister. “Could Rebecca have forgotten the invitation?”

  Nora shook her head. “I was just talking to her last night. She won’t have forgotten. She’s probably stuck in traffic.”

  “She still living in Malibu?”

  “No. The gallery’s still there, but she moved into an apartment in Westwood.”

  “I thought she was getting the house in the divorce.”

  “Bill reneged. He got himself some shark of a lawyer and the lines suddenly shifted. I’m not sure exactly how he managed it, but poor Becs is fighting for her life here.”

  “You think the shark dug up something on her? Like, maybe she had an affair, too?”

  Nora’s shoulders lifted in a sad shrug. “I really don’t know. Becs hasn’t volunteered and I don’t like to ask. She’s pretty wrung out these days.”

  “It’s a blessing she and her husband didn’t have children,” Hannah’s mother said. She’d moved on to wiping the brown speckled counter, even though it was already sparkling. If Rebecca didn’t show up soon, she was going to wear a groove in the granite. Hannah could sympathize. She’d inherited her mother’s restlessness, although in her case, it rarely manifested itself in an urge to clean.

  “I suppose,” Nora said.

  Nana’s head gave a sad shake. “Divorce is so hard on children.”

  Hannah’s gaze dropped to her hands and she tried to ignore the stab in her solar plexus. Her mother wasn’t trying to make her feel crummy about her own messy divorce and lost custody struggle, she knew, but the comment stung just the same.

  “Anyway,” Nora added, “I know she hasn’t forgotten about today because she asked last night if you were going to be here.”

  Hannah glanced at their mother, then back at Nora. “Who, me? Why?”

  “Something about a job.”

  “What would she need a security contractor for? Guarding overpriced seascapes?”

  Hannah had gone with Nora one time to Rebecca Powell’s Malibu art gallery. The place specialized in the kind of idealized, light-dappled images of coastal California, conveniently sofa-sized, that tourists seemed to favor.

  “I don’t know why she needs your services, but here she comes.” Sure enough, through the big, multipaned window next to her sister, Hannah saw a bright red BMW convertible roaring up the driveway. Nora set aside the last in her flock of linen swans and got to her feet. “You can ask her yourself.”

  It was courier work, it seemed.

  Rebecca didn’t broach the subject until well after dinner. Neal and the boys were in the den, watching a football game, and Nora and Nana were loading the dishwasher. When they brushed off all offers of help, Hannah and Rebecca escaped the warm kitchen and took their coffee out onto the softly lit, tented gazebo on the patio.

  “It’s for a client,” Rebecca said, after explaining what she needed from Hannah.

  She smoothed her cream linen slacks and crossed her dainty, espadrille-clad feet at the ankles before lifting her china cup to her lips. Rebecca was one of those L.A. women whose voluptuous breasts didn’t seem to belong to her stick-thin body, like she’d ordered them from some mammary mail-order house—Boobs ’R Us. At least she’d avoided the clichéd long blond tresses, opting instead for short, ketchup-red spikes that made her look more arty than bimbo-esque.

  “My client ordered a painting and he wants it delivered to his vacation home in Mexico.”

  “He never heard of FedEx or UPS?”

  “It’s a fairly expensive piece so he wants it hand-carried. A painting by August Koon.”

  Hannah shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

  Rebecca leaned forward to settle her coffee cup in its saucer on the patio table. As she did, her dangly silver earrings tinkled and a silver charm necklace swayed in the cleft of her ample breasts. Hannah’s personal inclinations left her lusting after manly biceps, not bosoms, but it was hard not to be distracted by that much cleavage. At dinner, she’d caught Nolan’s and even ten-year-old Gabe’s eyes wandering repeatedly to the deep V of Rebecca’s turquoise cashmere sweater although, she’d been happy to note, Neal had had eyes for no one but his wife. Bless his plodding, loyal heart.

  “Koon’s work is what they call po-mo. Postmodern,” Rebecca said. “Not what I normally carry in my little gallery, but he’s local and fairly trendy at the moment. His work gets pretty good reviews, although to be perfectly honest, I think he’s overrated.”

  “And this client? He’s a regular of yours?’

  Rebecca hesitated. She might have been frowning, except her skin from the eyebrows up seemed frozen smooth. Damn Botox. It made reading faces really tough. Take now, for example. Instead of looking puzzled at the question, or cagey, or maybe just discreet, Rebecca only succeeded in looking dim. It was all but impossible to know w
hat she was thinking.

  “He hasn’t bought from me before this, but he has a home in Malibu—one of several, I gather, scattered all over the world. Anyway, he called a couple of weeks ago and said he’d been in my gallery a couple of times. I don’t know that I can really place him, but when he asked me about purchasing this Koon on his behalf, I jumped at it.”

  “I didn’t realize you did that. I guess I just assumed you sell what you’re showing.”

  “I haven’t really done much of this before. I mean, once or twice, I’ve acted as agent for a buyer who wanted something different from an artist I was showing, but never an artist in August Koon’s price range. I’d love to do more of this, though. Much better than running a gallery.” Rebecca shook her ketchup-red spikes. “All that financial overhead. Long hours. Trying to guess which way the market’s going.”