the bad news. The little Frenchman with the mustache had been the screwer, not the screwee. George had paid ten thousand dollars for a fake. He felt so abashed he couldn’t even tell his wife. ‘Oh, we can’t sell our Courbet,’ he told Barbara. ‘It would be like auctioning off a member of the family. And it just keeps going up in value. We’d be crazy to sell.’ What he said to me, one afternoon at the club when some single-malt scotch had loosened his tongue, was that the most infuriating thing was what he’d paid over the years for insurance. ‘The premium kept going up,’ he said, ‘to reflect the steady increases in value. Turns out I’ve just been throwing good money after bad. I’ll never see a dime of it back.’ The other day I took him aside and reminded him of our conversation. What you said about never seeing any of the money back,’ I said. ‘You know, George, that’s not necessarily so.’ ”
“The insurance company won’t know it’s a fake.”
“Of course not. The man from Christie’s wouldn’t have run off and told them. But if they did know, they’d refuse to honor the claim.”
“Obviously.”
“But suppose George had told them the truth as soon as he’d learned it. Unwittingly, he’d been insuring a worthless painting for twenty years. That being the case, the company had been taking his premiums without assuming any actual risk. So, now that the actual circumstances had become known, would they agree to refund the premiums he had paid?”
“Obviously not.”
“That’s why I see nothing wrong with defrauding the sons of bitches,” he said with feeling. “They’ve taken larceny and institutionalized it.” He clucked his tongue at the faux Courbet and carried it over to the fireplace.
“Wait,” I said.
“George never wants to see the thing again,” he said, “and I don’t suppose you could find a customer for it, do you?”
“I wouldn’t know how to sell it even if it were real.”
“I shouldn’t think so, not without provenance. George gave me ten thousand dollars on signature, as it were, as an advance against half the settlement from the insurance company. The painting’s currently insured for $320,000, but they’ll very likely stall, and they may even try to chisel.” He shook his head. “The swine. If they live up to their part of the deal, you and I walk away with eighty thousand apiece.”
“That would be great,” I said.
“So I guess we can afford to consign this canvas to the flames.”
“We can afford to,” I said, “but do we have to? The guy from Christie’s could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. And even if it is a fake Courbet, so what? It’s a real something, even if it’s only a real fake. I’ll tell you this, it’d look great in my apartment.”
“And I imagine it would make a good souvenir.”
“That too,” I said.
It was a full week, what with the appointments Marty arranged and the follow-up visits I had to make to various gentlemen who would buy choice material even if one couldn’t show clear title to it. Coins, jewelry, postage stamps, a Matisse litho, all passed through my hands. The weekend was busy, too, and when I opened up the following Monday I spent most of the morning on the telephone. I had a whole series of conversations with Wally Hemphill, and after the last of these I called time out and looked around for the cat. When I couldn’t find him I started crumpling a sheet of paper, and the sound drew him. He knew it was time for another training session.
I had the floor nicely littered with paper balls when Carolyn showed up. “Look at that!” I cried. “Did you see what he just did?”
“What he always does,” she said. “He killed a piece of crumpled-up paper. Bern, I went to the Russian deli. I got an Alexander Zinoviev for you and a Lavrenti Beria for myself, but I can’t remember which is which. What do you say we each have half of each?”
“That’ll be fine,” I said. “Look! I swear the training’s making a difference. His reflexes are getting sharper every day.”
“If you say so, Bern.”
“The son of a gun could play shortstop,” I said. “Did you see the way he went to his left on that one? Rabbit Maranville, eat your heart out.”
“Whatever you say, Bern.” She pulled up a chair. “Bern, we have to talk.”
“Eat first,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“Bern, I’m serious. Ray stopped by