Shooting Gallery (39 page)

I tried to climb out the driver's door, but it was jammed against the delivery van and wouldn't budge.

“Is everyone okay? Evangeline, try to get out your side,” I said. She wrenched her door open and practically flung Consuelo to the sidewalk, then tumbled out. Mary bounced across the bench seat and climbed out, and I followed more slowly. As I emerged, the Kreamy Do-Nuts that had fallen onto the truck's roof shifted, and I felt the cool goopiness of vanilla custard land with a splat on my head.

My companions looked at me and started laughing, even Consuelo. I joined in, and then none of us could stop.

Failing to see the humor in the situation, the cops surrounded us, weapons drawn. Mary and Evangeline tried to explain, adding to the confusion. I sat on the truck's bumper, giggling in my custard-encrusted hooker clothes.

An officer was inspecting the statue, which lay in pieces on the pavement. He nudged it with his foot and plastic baggies of white powder spilled out.

Oh boy.

While the police were distracted by this new development, I looked up to see Consuelo disappearing into the crowd. For a stranger in a strange land, her timing was impeccable.

—Artist Annie Kincaid, asked about her grandfather
Georges LeFleur's bestselling new book,
San Francisco Chronicle

 

The headline screamed DARING DAMSELS, DESIGNER DRUGS, AND DAFFY DOUGHNUTS ON TURKEY EVE DISASTER!!! On what must have been a slow news day, the story was featured above the fold on the front page of the
Chronicle
and was illustrated by a color photograph of Mary, Evangeline, and me squatting amid the doughnut carrion cackling like a trio of madwomen. On my long list of public humiliations, this one ranked right at the top.

The press coverage alerted my mother to my predicament, and within hours of spying the article over her Thanksgiving-morning coffee Beverly LeFleur Kincaid had driven down from Asco, enlisted the aid of a former boyfriend who was now an influential attorney, and finagled a bail hearing from a judge with a soft spot for well-spoken, prettily tearful mothers of felons.

Mom's reluctant and generally pissed-off ally in this legal wrangling was Inspector Crawford. Irritable from a sleepless night spent helping to interrogate first me, then the Ape Man—Jose and Barrel Chest had escaped in the confusion—she assured the assistant district attorney that I was too clueless to be a drug trafficker, and that my wild story about Robert Pascal and Gloria Cabrera might even be true. The harassed ADA was anxious to get home to a turkey dinner with his fiancée and future in-laws and reduced the charges against me from drug trafficking, assault with a deadly weapon, and littering, to misdemeanor reckless driving. He dropped the charges against Mary and Evangeline altogether.

We were released from the City jail at four thirty in the afternoon, “just in time for pumpkin pie,” the cheerful desk clerk pointed out. Annette caught up with us in the vestibule and informed me in a clipped voice and no uncertain terms that henceforth I was to call her Inspector Crawford—or better yet, not to call her at all.

“Geez, she sure seems pissed,” said Evangeline.

“What's
her
problem?” demanded Mary.

I shrugged, depressed at the end of my friendship with Annette. My mother herded us toward her Honda sedan, which was parked directly across the street from the gray stone Bryant Street police station. Mom had serious parking karma.

“Where to first, girls?” she chirped.

“I live on Valencia, and Evangeline's gonna stay with me for a few days,” Mary said, no worse for the wear after a night in the slammer. She and Evangeline had been cell-mates and caught some sleep, whereas I had been isolated and interrogated by narcotics inspectors throughout the night.

“Yeah,” Evangeline chimed. “On account of I don't have no job no more, and I can't stay at Pascal's, not for a while leastways. S'gonna be great. Whaddaya think, Annie?”

“Sounds like a plan.” I nodded, so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open.

I awoke twenty minutes later as Mary and Evangeline disembarked at a Valencia street taco stand and bid us farewell. Mom pointed the car north, away from the approach to the Bay Bridge.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I have an errand to run.”

“On Thanksgiving?” I whined. “Mom, thanks for everything, really, but all I want to do is take a shower and crawl into bed for a week.”

“First things first,” she sang, though I thought I saw a nervous twitch over her left eye and her voice rang false.

“What kind of errand are we talking about, Mom?”

“I need to retrieve something from Anthony Brazil's gallery. Something personal. Don't worry about it.”

“What could you have left at Anthony's new gallery? You've never even been there, have you?” She didn't reply. “Anyway, the gallery's not open on Thanksgiving.”

She turned up the Vivaldi and sped across the City, the streets deserted on this national holiday. I dozed again, awakening when we pulled into the small parking lot attached to Anthony Brazil's swanky gallery. The place looked deserted as did the Brock Museum next door.

“You see, there's no one—” I began.

“Beverly, I wish you would take my advice and reconsider,” a thin-lipped Michael said as he materialized at the driver's window. “Surely whatever it is can wait a day or two until the gallery owner . . .”

My mother ignored him, opening the car door so fast he had to jump out of the way.

“Thank you for unlocking the gallery, Michael,” Mom said with a gracious smile. “You needn't have waited. Run along now and enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner.” She started marching toward the door of the gallery as if she owned the place.

I got out and glared at Michael across the roof of the car.

“It's not my fault,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I'm here against my better judgment.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Your grandfather called in a marker.” Michael did a double take as I walked around the car and he caught the full effect of my crusty clothes, snarled hair, and sleep-deprived face. “
Jesus
, Annie. You look worse every time I see you.”

“Thanks. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

“Are the alarms off?” Mom called from the entrance.

“I took care of it hours ago,” Michael replied, and she disappeared into the gallery. “I'll just be running along now.”

“Fat chance, buster,” I said, grabbing his arm. “You're coming with us. You have to turn the alarms back on and lock up as if we were never here. Mom?”

She screamed.

Michael and I sprinted toward the door. He ran through first, was bashed on the head, and collapsed on the hard slate of the entryway. I tripped over him and rolled to a stop at the feet of none other than Jose, who was holding a gun to my mother's elegant head.

“You see what happens when you do not listen to your mother?” Jose scowled. “You have involved her in this unpleasantness, when she should be protected from such things.”

My eyes darted around the gallery, noting four men in addition to Jose and Barrel Chest.

“Listen, she doesn't know anything,” I beseeched Jose. “It's me you want, because I'm the one who can testify about the drugs. Let her go and—”

“It's too late for that,” he snapped. “Get up,
now
.”

A man with a jagged scar on one cheek yanked me to my feet. “What are you doing at Brazil's gallery?” I asked Jose, hoping to buy time for Michael to wake up and rescue us, or for a clown to stroll in with the French prime minister and a frog on a leash, proving that this was all just a very bad dream.

“We caught up with that
cabrón
Pascal at the airport this morning. The
hijo de puta
thought he could escape to the Bahamas. With a little encouragement he told us he had hidden the missing product in one of McGraw's sculptures before they were picked up for the show.” Jose nodded at McGraw's statue of a prim librarian armed with a bronze cattle prod. “I do not understand modern art. It is so . . . so
vulgar
.”

“True,” I said, thinking to distract him with a discussion of art. It worked with my friends. “But don't you think McGraw's portrayal of social isolation—”

“Enough!” Jose released my mother, who put an arm around my shoulders. He barked an order in Spanish, and Gloria Cabrera emerged from Anthony's office. Her face was swollen and bruised, and as she knelt to tie up Michael, she glanced at me and mouthed, “I'm sorry.”

“I—what is
that
?” I asked, my attention drawn to the window overlooking the walled sculpture garden. There, amidst the torn crime scene tape, a man hung from the old oak tree. Still alive, he was perched precariously on the back of a chair, his toes struggling for purchase.

“Pascal,” Jose said. He shrugged at my mother's horrified expression. “The boys thought it was funny. It's the tequila, you see. Terrible drink.” He gazed adoringly at Mom. “
I
don't drink.”

“That would mean a lot more to me if you would also refrain from using guns,” my mother murmured. “Please put the weapon down, Jose, and we can talk. I give you my word that we will not try to escape.”

He looked at me. I sure as hell wasn't giving
my
word.

“Jose—” my mother began.

“Take that
unfortunate
man down from the tree
this instant
!” an imperious voice commanded. Agnes Brock, all five feet of her, quivered in outrage in the doorway. She did not seem to notice the guns pointed at her.

“Will
someone
please lock the damned door?” Jose snapped at his minions. “Pardon my language, my dear Beverly. But, really, this place is busier than Union Square. Who unlocked it in the first place? We came in the back.”

“Don't be absurd, young man,” Agnes said in the contemptuous tone I had heard her employ with a hapless art restoration intern who had used phthalo paint—a twentieth-century invention—on a landscape from 1898. Stepping regally over Michael's unconscious body, she flung out an arm and pointed her scrawny finger at Jose. “
You
, sir, ought to be ashamed of yourself. This is an
outrage
.”

“Madam, I have no idea who you are, but—”

“I am Mrs. Agnes Brock, director of the world-renowned Brock Museum. I have an excellent view of the sculpture garden from my office next door, and I know the proprietor of this establishment very well indeed. I witnessed those thugs of yours hanging that poor man and have summoned the police.”

“You lie, old woman,” Jose said. “Only a fool would act so rashly.”

“Why, you little
pipsqueak
,” Agnes continued. “Have you any idea with whom you are dealing? I have had to fight for my rightful place in the art world for
fifty years
! Do not think I will be cowed by the likes of you!”

And with that she strode through the gallery to the sculpture garden, slapped Barrel Chest's hands away from a thick rope anchored to a low branch of the oak tree, and set about un-hanging Pascal. At a loss for how to respond to such a force of nature as Agnes Brock, Barrel Chest looked helplessly at Jose. Jose moved over to the garden doors, dragging my mother and me with him.

“Shoot him,” he ordered as Pascal tumbled down to the ground, moaning.

“What about her?” Barrel Chest asked.

“Shoot her, too.”

“No!” my mother and I cried.

“She's a little old lady,” Barrel Chest protested. “I can't shoot a little old lady.”

Jose let out an exasperated sigh. “You'll sing a different tune when she's testifying at your trial. Bring her in here and tie her up, then. Let's get what we came for before the cops . . .”

Two men walked out of Anthony's office.

“Nathan?” I said, surprised. “Kevin?”

“Anna?” Nathan said, shocked. Kevin the Nazi shook his head and looked disgusted.

“How do you know this annoying girl?” Jose asked. “She works for the FBI.”

“No, I'm—” A gun was shoved in my face.

“She's with the SFPD, but we have a mutual acquaintance.” Nathan toed Michael's inert form. “What is he doing here? Is he dead, I hope? The man was after my collection. Happily my security system was too sophisticated for him.”

Jose gestured toward me. “This girl works with Frank DeBenton, who is working with the FBI. She did something to the Picasso, the one you offered as collateral.” He eyed Nathan suspiciously. “You wouldn't be double-crossing me, would you, my old friend? Perhaps working with the FBI yourself?”

“FBI?” Gloria gaped at me. “You work with the
FBI
?”

“I don't work with the FBI, and neither does Frank.” I turned to Jose. “How do you know Frank?”

“Everyone shut up about the FBI!” Nathan yelled. “You”—he gestured to Barrel Chest—“get rid of those women and let's get what we came for already!”

“I'll shoot that one,” Barrel Chest said, pointing at me. “But I can't shoot this one. She reminds me of my
abuela
.”

Agnes smiled at Barrel Chest and rested a bony hand on his arm.

“Ay,
que la chingada
,” Jose muttered, closing his eyes.

“Jose, we don't have time for this,” Nathan said. “Let's find the rest of the product and get out of here.”

“Do you really think you can—” I began.