Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception (8 page)

Marissa and I tell the sheriff and the fish lady, “Gramercy!” and “Anon!” and then hurry off in the opposite direction from Heather.

The minute we're safely away, Marissa says, “That was too bizarre! And did you see Heather's face when she got clobbered with that fish?”

“She wouldn't have
had
to get clobbered with a fish if
some
one hadn't made her short-circuit in the first place!” I turn on her and say, “
Why
did you tell her Casey kissed me?”

She cringes. “I'm sorry! But she was being so, you know, snotty. That crack about Guinevere and Lancelot. I … I couldn't help it.”

“This is going to get back to Casey, you know. And you made it sound like he kissed
me
, not my hand!”

“Aw, c'mon, Sammy. She deserved it. But I'm sorry, okay?”

So we walked for a little ways, saying a whole lot of nothing to each other until Marissa points and says, “Hey, check it out! Live chess!”

So we watched a bunch of grown men and two “queens” move around a giant grid of squares for a while, then went on to see a show where you could buy tomatoes and throw them at the players onstage. At first it was really strange, throwing mushy tomatoes at people, but everyone in the crowd was doing it, so we got into it, too. And Marissa—ace pitcher that she is—managed to get one of the players smack-dab in the middle of his
forehead. He stopped and turned toward the audience, tomato goop just running down his face, while the crowd went wild, applauding and cheering.

After that we had fish on a stick and vinegar potatoes for lunch. And you know what we washed it down with?

Dragon piss.

Well, that's what everyone called it, anyway. No one would admit that it was really just lemonade.

Anyway, after lunch we watched some guys with heavy gloves launching falcons to snag pieces of food from the air and then the Mud Bumblers show, which was a funny pirate skit. Then we wound past some merchant booths, and people called, “How now, good ladies, welcome!” to us to try to get us to stop in and see their wares.

And actually, I
was
stopping and looking at a lot of things, because these were mostly arts and crafts booths, and even though I had been to a
real
art gallery, I was remembering what Miss Kuzkowski had said about checking out the art at the Faire and how we were supposed to decide what we thought was and wasn't art.

And I was in the middle of looking over some drawings of knights on horses when the man behind the booth cries, “You!”

I jumped. I mean, his “You!” was directed right at
me
and seemed to shoot straight through my heart. And before I could catch my breath, he reaches across the table, grabs me by the shoulders, and says, “My plucky little tiger?”

This guy's got a patch over one eye, scarves every-where, a large plumed hat on his head, and a beard that's
been charcoaled on. And I don't really recognize him, but from his voice I know who it has to be. So I peel up his patch and look him in both eyes. “Jojo?”

“It
is
you! Sweet Pea, you are simply stunning in a dress! And forgive me, but after last night's wardrobe display I would've thought you didn't
own
one.” He hurries to add, “Not that that's a
bad
thing. My, my, no! Could you imagine tackling that criminal in a dress? He would've gotten away. Clean away!”

Now Marissa's heard every word of this, and she's looking at me like, What? so I tell her, “There was a little, uh,
incident
at the art gallery last night.”

“The art gallery? You found trouble in an
art
gallery?” Then before I can say anything, she asks, “What art gallery?”

“Uh, it's called the Vault. I went there with Grams and Hudson.” I motion to Jojo and say, “This is Jojo Lorenzo. He, uh …” I look at him and ask, “Do you own that place or run it or what?”

“I'm the agent-slash-proprietor-slash-grunt. I do it all!”

I turn back to Marissa. “Well some guy came in and tried to steal a bunch of paintings and … you know.”

Marissa rolls her eyes. “Why you?”

I shrugged. “Well,
some
one had to stop him. He was holding the place up with a squirt gun!”

“A squirt gun? Who fell for that?”

Jojo's eyes get all big. “All of us did! He had it in his pocket and he was so … rugged-looking. None of us suspected!”

“So what's going on with all of that?” I ask him. “Did they catch the guy?”

“Oh my, no! He vanished!
Poof
, into thin air. And since the paintings are all accounted for and Di doesn't seem to have the emotional fortitude to press an investigation …”

“Wait a minute. She doesn't want to find the guy?”

“Oh sure she does, sure she does! She's just very … delicate. Moody, if you must know. And she does put on a good front, but underneath there's darkness. Pain. Conflict.” He smiles. “Which is why she is such a brilliant artist.”

“But … well, do you think that maybe the Splott … I mean that Tess Winters lady … is right? Do you think Diane Reijden set it all up so she would be the one in the
L.A. Times
?”

“My pet, it makes no sense! No sense a'tall. Unless you're her accomplice?”

“No!”

“Well there you go! If you hadn't stopped that ruffian, he would've gotten clean away. Clean away!”

“Well, it did feel kind of … desperate. Do you think maybe Tess set it up? You know, to remove the competition?”

He gives me a really prim look. “Watch me, darling. I'm biting my tongue.” He sticks it out and clamps down on it. But then he leans forward and whispers, “She's haughty and hateful … but she's too mentally
boxed
to orchestrate a heist.” He straightens a little and says, “But you didn't hear that from me!”

“So who do you think he was? A friend of Austin Zuni's?”

“Oh heavens no!” Jojo sucks in air through his nose, holds it, then lets it out all at once, saying, “He was simply someone who knows. Or maybe he
works
for someone who knows.”

“Knows? Knows what?”

“That it's only a matter of time before you won't be able to touch a Reijden for under thirty, thirty-five grand a pop.”

“Seriously?”

He nods. “She just got a stunning review in
Artist World
magazine. It's only a matter of time before she shoots to the stars.”

“So why did the whole thing feel so … staged?”

“More like dramatic, if you ask me.” Then he says, “Ahhhhh,” and you can tell he's having a wonderful thought.

“What?”

“There's a
movie
in here somewhere….” He claps his hands and says, “Oh. Oh-oh-oh!”

So while he's writing, casting, and directing in his mind, I'm looking around at his booth. And finally I ask him, “Is this your art, Jojo? It's not signed or anything.”

He laughs. “Mine? Darling, I draw like a two-year-old.”

Before I can bite
my
tongue, it's wagging away, saying, “Hey, there's big money in that. Frame it, call it something ‘deep,' and charge ten grand!”

“Tsk-tsk-tsk,”
he goes, but he's smiling. “Do I detect a jab at one of my clients?”

I shrug. “I just don't get it, that's all. And Tess sure wouldn't explain it to me.”

“One shouldn't have to explain one's art.” He leans in. “You insulted her.”

“But … I was just trying to learn. I mean, can
you
explain it?”

He shrugs. “To each his own, I say.”

“Well, do you get it? Do you
like
it?”

He shrugs again. “It sells, and that's what matters to me.”

“At nearly ten grand a pop?”

“Hmm. That's yet to be seen. I had an installation of hers in when I first opened which sold very well, but since Di was asking so much for her paintings, Tess felt she would be giving the impression that her work was
worth
less if she didn't price in the same ballpark.”

“But—”

“Ah-ah-ah! Don't be catty. Tess is simply projecting a value onto her work.” He laughs. “And if they do move, you won't hear me complaining! Fifty percent of a few of those babies would keep me from enduring gigs like this.” He rolls his eyes around the booth, then whispers, “I've had it up to here with all these rennies and their phony Faire accents, bragging and brawling and spitting … it's repugnant!”

Now I'm listening to him, all right, but my brain is pretty much stuck on his cut of the sale. “You get fifty percent?
Why?
”

He puts his nose in the air a little and says, “Darling,
rent's not free. And frankly, they'd be lost without me. How else would the buying public get to know their work? They certainly don't want people traipsing through their homes. And artists do not make good business-people. Most of them, anyway.” He scowls. “Austin's the exception.”

“His paintings were cheap compared to the other two.”

Jojo nods. “It's a numbers game to that boy. He moves as much as he can, as fast as he can. And,” he grumbles, “he's not going to let anyone slow him down.”

Now, the way he said it was sort of … bitter. So I ask, “Why do you say that?”

He waves me off. “Never mind, darlin'. It's much,
much
too deep to get into.” Then he spread his hands over the pictures on the table and says, “In the market? Please-please-please?”

I laugh and shake my head, because it's just a little weird hearing a swashbuckler go, Please-please-please. Then I ask him, “But if you hate being here, why are you here?”

“Because,” he says, “I can make more on lithographs of dragons and knights in a weekend than I make some months at the gallery.” He gives me a little scowl and whispers, “I'm trying to run an art gallery in Santa
Martina
, Sweet Pea. I have to make a living somehow!”

I think about this a minute, then ask, “What's a lithograph, anyhow?”

“Mostly production-line art. They take a scan or make a photograph of the artwork and then just crank 'em out. Stamp-stamp-stamp! Thousands upon thousands.” He
reaches under the skirt of the table and pulls up a fat stack of copies of the knight on the horse I'd been looking at. “When I sell one, I've got one waiting down here to replace it.”

“So … do you think it's art?”

He shrugs. “Actually, I think these were done on a computer.”

“You're kidding! They look like pencil sketchings.”

He smiles a sly little smile. “Exactly.”

I take a closer look, but I sure can't tell. What I
can
tell is that Marissa's getting antsy. So I say, “Well, we'd better get going. It was nice talking to you.”

“You too, princess!”

I cringe at him.
“Princess?”
Then I show him a shoe, to set the record straight.

He laughs, then adds, “But a clever disguise, nonetheless.”

As we left his booth and walked around the Faire, I kept hearing Jojo's voice saying, “But a clever disguise, nonetheless.” And I started getting this strange feeling. Like I was in one of those cartoons where one character is spying on another, popping in and out, up and down, hiding behind fences and in trash cans and trees.

I checked around for Heather and her wanna-bes.

No “travelers” in sight.

And it didn't feel like I was being followed, exactly. More like I was being set up.

Tricked.

Everywhere I turned, people were in costumes, pretending. Pretending they were someone they weren't. Someplace they weren't. Some
time
they weren't.

And I started thinking about the Squirt Gun Bandit and what was hidden behind his whole getup.

And the more I thought about him and what had happened at the Vault, the more it seemed like that whole scene had been living theater, too.

An act.

Where some people were actors and some were just there.

Me, I'd been like the washerwoman.

Only I hadn't exactly used a fish.

And the truth is, I didn't like being a part of the act. My mother's into acting, I'm not. What did I care who the Squirt Gun Bandit was or why he'd crashed in on the reception? I felt like I'd been dropped into the middle of a soap opera.

I just wanted to get off the stage.

I didn't run into Casey again at the Faire. Or Heather. And Marissa looked for Danny all afternoon, but she never saw him, either.

What we
did
see a lot of was art. No sloppy splotters or modern stuff like that, but there were a few booths selling Southwest art, sort of like Austin Zuni's. Indians and buffaloes at a Renaissance Faire seemed pretty out of place though. Even more so than the Star Trek booth we saw.

Marissa found a picture of a princess at a wishing well that she really liked, but I didn't see anything that did anything for me. Not like
Whispers
had, anyway.

I tried to talk to some of the artists about their work, but mostly they told me about
how
they painted or sculpted or cut things out of wood. When I asked what masters they'd studied or admired or what they were thinking about when they made a certain piece, they didn't seem to have much to say. It was weird—like they were bored. Miss Kuzkowski had told us to go out and feel art, but how was I supposed to do that when the artists were acting like they didn't really feel it themselves?