Chapter 3

Don drove because Don always drove, but not because we necessarily wanted him to.

His car was a modified plumber’s van, all boxy and windowless in the back with an aggressive antennae array sprouting from the roof. It was painted a matte gray and had “Lawn and Garden” in sweeping green letters across each side. Don said he’d been going for nondescript but the end effect was far too fashionable for that – an eye-catching minimalist chic that aesthetic-obsessed suburbanites would pay a premium to have parked curbside if it would’ve belonged to an actual lawncare service.

The inside was equally notable.

Behind the driver’s seat were four monitors mounted on the wall above a shallow desk covered in an all sorts of keyboards and joysticks and buttons and knobs. The PC itself was built into one of the legs of the desk. A braid of wires appeared briefly from the back of it and plunged into the wall. The other side of the van was just as expensive. A metal rod stretched from just behind the passenger seat all the way to the back door, from which hung several dozen matching gray garment bags. A giant mirror peeked out from behind the dangling clothes. Don’s ostentatious rolling closet.

There were two chairs attached to a U-shaped track that started and ended at the back bumper, looping around a small console in the center of the van that served as a bench and a set of drawers.

I climbed in and sat in the chair next to the clothes rack. Abe took a seat in the other one and pushed off the wall to slide gently around and over to me. His chair backed into mine and he reclined until his face was looking up at my chin.

“Push me,” he said, batting his eyelashes.

I gave him a shove and he sped around the top of the loop and slowed himself by dragging his hands across the thousands of dollars of electronics on the desk. He came to a stop facing Don, who was framed neatly outside the rear of the van – burly arms stretched wide, gripping both of the barn-style rear doors.

Don leaned in until the brim of his hat brushed Abe’s forehead.

“Don’t do that.”

He slammed the doors.

Meredith Vincent’s estate was a little over an hour away and Don played new age hip hop for all of it. Keller studied her tablet intently, turning every once in a while to show me and Abe pictures of the house, faces of certain guests, pieces of art that were expected to be on display, Meredith’s open-mouthed schnauzer mix.

The chairs in the back had locks to stop them from sliding along the track and Abe would periodically twist his off and roll lazily along to the rhythm of the car. That would’ve been fine, except he’d also taken the booster out of his pocket and was flicking the cap open and shut – revealing and then hiding the wire mesh that could overpower a house. If Don was to be believed.

“Dude,” I said.

“I know,” Abe said quickly. “I can’t help it.” He flicked it open again and it made a light click – a teasing inhale, a first date ending with a peck on the cheek. He flicked it closed – a thunderclap I could almost feel, a taste of nirvana. Just a taste, though, and in the following silence I found myself almost urging him to do it again. Just another taste.

“That thing’s crazy dangerous,” I said.

“I know,” Abe said. “I can’t help it.” He flicked it open and closed.

After forty five minutes, what had started as an eight-lane superhighway became a curvy, two-lane trickle up through grassy green swells. The houses that were crammed together near the city became much larger and much further apart while the trees lining the pavement became denser. Don turned off onto a dirt road with no visible signage. Things got bumpier. The garment bags were secured top and bottom by elastic straps that slingshotted them back and forth, off the wall and into my face. Abe’s hands hovered warily over the desk of electronics but it all stayed secure enough.

“This is probably it,” Don said after ten minutes of navigating through the forest. The road had been shrinking since we’d turned onto it and we were now facing a wall of trees with little more than a path to split them. Barely wide enough for an ATV, certainly not wide enough for Doug’s spatially ignorant rolling breadbox.

Keller nodded, unbuckling her seatbelt and squinting to try and force her vision through the foliage. “Only about a quarter mile from here.”

I also squinted but saw nothing to indicate we were anywhere near anything.

Abe and I crawled out the back. The dirt was packed hard and covered in varying depths of dry pine needles that crackled under our loafers. Keller rounded the van slowly and for a few moments we existed in the natural silence, with only the rasp of the breeze and the movement of the branches.

Then Don coughed uncomfortably and said, “Little too quiet here, ain’t it?”

Keller blinked herself back into focus. “Right. Let’s put our faces on.”

She unscrewed the lid of a stubby glass jar and held it out in front of her chest. It was full of a clear-ish goop, sort of like hand sanitizer. I scooped some and rubbed it between my palms to warm it before spreading it on my face. Hairline to jawline. The stuff was almost odorless, with just a whiff of pine, and felt slick to touch. Fully rubbed in it gave the skin a slight glisten. Abe and Keller rubbed the goo on their faces, too, then Keller replaced the lid and handed the jar to Don.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and gripped it, screen out, toward us and wiggled it side to side. “Check your texts boys, I sent you a picture of the painting we’ll be taking.”

“Oh yeah,” one or both of us said. Adrenaline was already spinning my brain in circles, moving too fast to stop and absorb pesky details. But I brought out my phone and put it in front of my face. That was a painting sure enough, falling squarely in the category of pretty, yes, but what’s the big deal? A boy and a dog – subjects captured by anyone with any level of ability, forever a pair through changing mediums, fashions, ages, and breeds. I’d seen a thousand boys with a thousand dogs.

Abe was studying it a little more intently. “I think I’ve seen this before,” he said, but with sincerity instead of cynicism.

Keller had already started moving along the path.“Because you have no respect for art,” she said over her shoulder.

Abe scowled and pocketed his phone. “I respect it,” he grumbled, “I just don’t understand it.”

We followed Keller on the path that seemed to lead nowhere. The ground was dry but Keller’s matte brown mini-heeled boots left a trail of crescents in the dust. I looked down at my own pair of black leather loafers and noticed flares of lighter discoloration already forming around the heels, creeping toward the hem of my pants. They only got dustier once Keller led us off the path, her eyes focused on a map opened on her phone screen. The thick pine trees became interspersed with aspens. And then more and more aspens. They were leafy but only at the top. Narrow, naked trunks rose for several meters before blossoming into yellowgreen fireballs.

I could see the wall now, still a ways off. It was the kind of wall you didn’t often see in Colorado, where the wealthy competed to live on land that seemed the most uninhabited. Privacy was provided by distance, and if they wanted more they’d buy it in acres. 

We made it to the foot of the wall and I looked up at the white brick that extended several feet over my head. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. Smaller, I guess.

“No cameras around here, right?” Don asked. He was on his toes peering at the tops of stone-capped pillars that bookended this section of wall.

Keller shook her head and Don began unfolding the legs of a circular black stool. He placed it against the wall and gave it a firm press into the dirt. We all stared at it. The stool was comically short, and contrasted the chalkwhite of the wall so neatly that the whole scene seemed like a piece of art itself.

“There was so much room in the van,” I said to no one.

Abe went first, taking a two step runup and launching off the center of the stool. His hands found the top of the wall and he hauled himself up with some ratio of momentum and upper body strength. I followed with somewhat less elegance and straddled the wall ready to reach down and lift Keller, but she was already beside me scanning for a landing zone on the other side. In one fluid movement she swung her trailing leg high over the rest of her and pushed off toward a flat patch of grass. Her dress – of a fabric meant for indoor breezes and shy steps –  seemed to swell up in horror as the ground came rushing toward it, rippling outward like a fallen patch of sky. She somehow landed lightly, crescent heels and ankles all intact. Abe appeared next to her.

I lifted my leg over but kept a grip on the top of the wall and gently lowered myself into an adolescent dangle and only released once my feet were as close to the ground as possible. Confident. Athletic.

“Remarkable,” Abe said, not as a compliment.

We stood and observed the aspen grove before us, where the trees sprouted like they were avoiding each other and the lowest branch was still fifteen feet above our heads. We could already see the house.

“It’s fine,” Keller said and moved forward, phone replaced in her clutch and hands gingerly outlining the messy bun on her head.

We quickly found out it wasn’t fine. After a half dozen steps we saw the heads of guests clear through the trees, further away from us than any two groups at the same party could innocently be. Keller produced a pack of cigarettes and picked out three. We were smokers now.

The trees started to diverge even more and the sloped ground revealed more of the other guests. It became clear that things were even less fine. I looked down at my tux, elegant and mostly fitted – selected with the intent to disappear among a hundred others that looked exactly like it. And then I looked at the group closest to us, standing in a loose circle just beyond the trees. Golf polos and shorts. Country club casual. There were bare biceps and exposed calves, a couple ball caps. The ladies were in simple-cut sundresses with cute floral patterns and functional sandals. 

“It’s fine,” Keller said and kept moving.

Abe nervously flicked open and closed the lid of the booster.

And then we were in it. I expected side eyes and smirks, but after a few steps it became clear no one was looking at Abe and I in our black and whites. Taken men became very interested in their drinks or conversations, while the women and single men openly gaped at Keller as she glided around the small social circles in her red carpet ready shimmer.  The unlit cigarette leaned out the corner of her mouth, daring anyone to ask if she needed a light. No one did. No one asked Abe and I, either.

We drifted deeper into the party, putting distance between us and point of first contact. The aspens had given way to an elaborate weave of large, white strips of cloth strung high above the grass. We were in line with the westernmost edge of the mansion. The cloth ceiling flowed down and away from it like a cape, pooling a hundred yards in front of the building, where Keller said most of the art would be. A teenager balancing a porcelain tray of tiny shits asked if we wanted a rib cap meringue. He was wearing short-sleeved, champagne linen buttoned all the way up to the base of his neck and white slacks that ended above the ankle. And boat shoes.

We all grabbed a meringue and he moved on.

“We’re dressed nicer than the staff,” Abe hissed.

“Yes, you look great,” Keller muttered, head flitting about. “Now stay away from me, you’re too conspicuous.”

She handed the cigarette to Abe and popped the meringue in her mouth.

“And stay away from the entrance. And check your phones,” she instructed, then turned abruptly and strode toward the house. On her fourth step she spit the meringue onto the ground.

Abe tucked the cigarette into his breast pocket. “Okay then.”

I looked around. We were in a slow churn area with people coming to catch their breath or have a smoke before absorbing themselves back into the main cluster of attendees in the center of the lawn. Security guards in matching gold sport coats stood watch from the fringes. If any had flagged our entrance they didn’t seem interested in doing anything about it.

Abe placed the meringue on his tongue. He chewed and frowned and nodded. “Ambitious, for sure.”

I ate mine and loosed an audible grunt. It crunched then melted into a salty, meaty wetness that coated the inside of my mouth. Steak shouldn’t feel like that.

“Damn, are you two here to make us all feel underdressed?”

I snapped my head toward the voice and saw a balding man with his palm pushed theatrically against his head. Every one of his fingers had a ring on it. He looked like a Hank.

“Nothing like that,” I said quickly, toothy grin thrown across my face. “Just gives us more credibility when we say the art sucks.”

“Ha! I like that, I’ll use that,” he said, then stuck out a hand. “Name’s Bill, need a light?”

“Luke Bishop,” I said and gripped his hand tightly, like a guy named Luke would. “I’d love one.”

He passed me a weighty, gold lighter that closed with a click less indulgent than that of Don’s booster. I lit up and offered it to Abe, who took it and introduced himself as Eddie.

“Did you guys get dragged to this thing? My wife always drags me to these things. Bores me to death but she’s all about it, the art and shit,” Bill said, words pouring out. “Mainly the shit. Loves telling me how everything here’s overpriced and tasteless, not like the stuff she buys, of course. You know what I mean?”

I laughed perfectly. “Know it? I live it!” I said, and we laughed and smoked together. United by a lie. “Have you seen our overpriced and tasteless host yet?”

Bill choked on his smoke and pointed at me while he coughed through it. “That’s bad. That’s so bad,” he said, pointed finger now shaking itself at me. “I saw her when we first came in, chatting up the big fish, of course. Saw her with Linda Borenstein, can you believe it? My wife says they hate each other, Meredith and Linda. Can’t stand each other. But money talks both ways, you know? Giving and getting.”

“About that,” I said, and waved my free hand at the surrounding wealth. “Do you know where all this is going? My wife reads the invites, I write the checks, you know?”

“Ha! You’re telling me you shelled out five grand and didn’t even ask what for?” He said. “Hey, I get it, I get it. The proceeds go to the Meredith Vincent Scholarship Fund, same as every year.”

“For art students?”

Bill took a drag and shook his head. “For geniuses. Math kids, science kids. Something about turbocharging these kids’ careers so they can make a ton of money and buy art. Just like Meredith. Circle of life shit.”

“As worthy a cause as any, I guess,” I said.

“I guess,” Bill repeated.

He took a huge pull that burned the cigarette down to the filter and exhaled a cloud of smoke that lingered above us then descended onto our heads. He basked in it for a moment then stubbed out the nub on a nearby table regretfully.

“Well, I need to get back to the ol’ plus one,” he said. “Nice talking to you…”

“Luke Bishop,” I finished for him and shook his outstretched hand, firmly.

“Nice talking to you, Luke. Keep writing those checks,” he said with a wink, then turned and headed back toward the art.

I turned to Abe, who never smoked, but who’d been smoking out of solidarity alongside me and was looking a little red for his efforts. The second Bill turned his back to us Abe stubbed out his cigarette and scrunched up his face in disgust.

“I’ll be tasting that for weeks.”

I took a final puff. “I don’t know, I think I could get into this. It tastes like Roosevelt’s in the kitchen.”

The security guards continued to stand watch around the smokers, not giving any sign that the two of us idiots in our tuxedos had set off any sort of alert. The patrons, on the other hand, were now clearly sizing us up – trying to figure out if they were underdressed, or if we were overdressed, or if it was some sort of meta social commentary.

“Well let’s go look at some art, shall we?” Abe asked. “And maybe find another food boy.”

The nearest food boy had a tray of bloody fingertips and asked if we wanted to try a caviar-dipped potato nub. These were also salty, but in an acceptable way. Then there was another food boy with a tray of delicious pastry things offering us each a French onion tartlet.

“I can’t believe that guy just bought that you have a wife and that you guys frequent art shows,” Abe said. “He was, like, forty. If you weren’t so dumb you’d look like you could be up for one of Meredith’s genius scholarships.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s because he has a wife and frequents art shows. He was talking to himself.”

We ate our way to the medieval double doors at the front of the mansion. Lavish and large and thrown wide to frame a tiled foyer and a very large man in a gold sport coat. A sign that read Restrooms sat on a tripod and pointed inside. In the other direction a stone path swung lazily into the crowd clustered around a series of standalone white walls spaced evenly all the way down toward the main gate. I could make out the tops of some picture frames but we were too far to see specifics.

I pulled out my phone and took another look at the picture Keller had sent. A boy and a dog. It really did seem familiar, though. The boy was kneeling and had an arm wrapped tightly around the dog – a young mutt, some mix of lab and pit – who was looking away out of frame. There was a cap clutched in the boy’s other hand and his hair stuck up in clumps and wisps like he’d just removed it. His mouth was drawn open in a massive, toothy smile that rode up high on his face and squeezed his eyes shut. Behind the pair was a red brick wall and behind the wall peeked leafy upper branches, bent toward the boy’s half of the canvas as if a hand was pressing down on them. It was a Realist. Not like the uncanny, wannabe photographs you see today, but proportional and detailed. The shadings maybe just a little too dark, the edges maybe just not quite precise.

“We’ve stolen this before, right?” Abe asked, suddenly leaning over my shoulder to get a closer look.

My head snapped back and I realized I’d been fully focused on the painting. 

“Seems not,” I said.

Abe squinted and leaned in closer. His inspection lasted a couple seconds, then he grunted and pulled away.

By now the man in the gold sport coat was eyeing us, the corners of his mouth turned up at our tuxedos. There was nothing ahead of us but another group of smokers, so we turned to follow the path away from the house. Toward the big white walls.

Individual voices began to untangle themselves from the blended murmur as we neared the crowd. I’d found that the chattiest attendees were either the ones who had no interest in art and would try to small talk you about anything other than what was hanging on the walls, or ones who may or may not be interested in art, but were certainly determined to prove that they were cultured enough to understand and appreciate it at a level that you couldn’t. The rest were mostly quiet and would exchange simple, quiet thoughts and agreeable hmms.

We reached the first wall. There were three paintings spaced at least four feet apart. The frames were identical – about an inch wide and painted a noisy gold. Keller always said that every painting was meant for a specific frame, and that finding and uniting the two was an art in itself. She said that if a frame is perfect you won’t even notice it, but you will if it isn’t. Then Don chimed in to say it’s like the baritone in a barbershop quartet – an analogy I didn’t understand.

“The middle one looks like a foot kicking a butt,” Abe said thoughtfully. And he was right, and none of these were the boy and the dog, and so we moved on.

We ambled our way around and through the mix of white plaster walls and white plaster people. There were several painted dogs and boys, but not the ones that Keller said we cared about. We found ourselves alone in front of a series of paintings and I took a peek behind one of the frames. The painting was nearly flush with the wall but leaned a few centimeters forward at the top. I could make out a thin mount screwed into the plaster that jutted out then curved back toward itself, allowing the rod than ran the length of the frame to slide snugly into it.

“Should be easy enough to just lift it off,” I whispered to Abe. “Once we find it.”

But Abe wasn’t looking at me. “Well, I found Keller.”

She walked calmly along the central pathway, her head was facing forward but I could see her eyes flitting about trying to catalog every piece of art she passed. I could also see a lot of her legs, which was new. The magnificent blue gown that had stretched down far enough to accommodate the crescent heels now terminated an inch or two above the knee. She was still overdressed, but less obviously so.

I caught her eyes and gave a subtle shake of my head. She shoved a French onion tartlet into her mouth and continued past us, toward the walls closest to the main entrance.

“Do you think she cut it?” Abe asked. “That seems dramatic.”

I shrugged and took a step back to assess the painting in front of me. A canvas of thrown together ideas that I would need explained to me before I changed my initial reaction, which was that it was nonsense.

We walked a couple walls further with no luck and headed back toward the house. Our phones buzzed. A simple text from Keller.

Not here

And then a few seconds later.

Meet near the smokers, far side

We reached the gold sport coat standing guard near the bathrooms and took a right toward a loose throng of guests gathered in a cliche haze. I put the cigarette back between my lips. Keller followed maybe a dozen steps behind us. She snapped her fingers at Abe and he rolled his eyes and handed her a cigarette. She started gnawing on the filter, distracted.

“It’s got to be in the house, then,” she said after a moment. “Re-framing, maybe. Or restoration?”

“Maybe she sold it?” Abe offered.

“No,” Keller dismissed. “ I would’ve bought it.”

I looked up at the mansion looming over us. Not exactly an easy place to find something, even without guards and cameras.

Keller started nodding before she started talking. “Peach, you need to go find it. I’ll send you the floorplan. There’s another guard just inside the door, so come in a few seconds after me. Take the first left and get out of sight, yes?

I didn’t know what else to do but nod.

“Are there cameras?’ Abe asked.

Keller flapped a hand at the overrun front lawn. “The cameras protect the art. The art’s outside.”

“So that’s a yes on the cameras?”

“No one’s watching them,” Keller said. She tapped her phone a couple times and I felt a buzz in my hand

“That’s a lot of goddamn rooms,” I said, looking at the blueprints she’d sent.

“It’s an old building, old people love rooms.”

Abe passed me the booster, flicking the cap open and closed one last time. “Not sure if you’ll need this or not.”

I gingerly dropped it in my pocket. “Are you going to be okay without it?” I smirked

“I’ll get by,” Abe said.

Keller was deftly manipulating the blueprints on her phone and shaking her head. “No way to tell where it could be at, you’ll just need to look around. If it’s getting cleaned my guess is that it’s somewhere on the first two floors, somewhere easy for a contractor to get to.”

She dropped her phone into her clutch and took a few seconds to collect herself, still gnawing on the boring end of her cigarette. If you asked her, she’d say these hiccups were a symptom of her own inadequacy. That each job was a puzzle with a perfect solution that she’d been too ignorant to identify. As though theft should be simple.

If you asked me, I’d say she was in denial of inevitability. She was a perfectionist in a line of work with too many imperfect variables, but all the groundwork she would do in pursuit of perfection meant she was exceedingly capable of adapting when things, inevitably, went wrong.

But what did I know, I was really just along for the ride.

Keller quickly scanned the grounds again and nodded sharply. “Let’s do it.”

She handed her cigarette, half-flattened and soggy by this point, to Abe, who pinched it delicately between two fingers and dropped it into a nearby wastebasket.

I slipped my hand into my pocket and flipped the booster cap open and closed as Keller moved toward the main entrance. Abe plucked the cigarette out of my mouth and tossed it on top of Keller’s, then squared up to me and straightened out my tie.

“You look good,” he said, looking at me and then up at the mansion that seemed to reach up for miles. “You’re not gonna find shit.”

I rolled my eyes and went after Keller.