The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - By Lawrence Block Page 0,65

stall. “Fire!” I shouted at him. “Run! Run for your life!”

“My word,” he said, and away he went.

A few minutes later, so did I. I left the men’s room and hastened down a flight of stairs and out the main entrance. Fire trucks had drawn up and police were everywhere and Jared and his troops brandished their signs, dodging cops and throwing themselves in front of portable TV cameras. Throughout it all, the Hewlett’s security staff kept a tight rein on things, making sure no one walked off with a masterpiece.

I perspired beneath my hat, blinked behind my glasses, and walked right past all of it.

I caught the six o’clock news in a dark and dingy tavern on Third Avenue, and there was young Jared Raphaelson, angrily asserting Youth’s right of access to great public art collections, then quickly disclaiming all responsibility for the terrorist assault on the Hewlett and the mysterious disappearance of Piet Mondrian’s masterpiece, Composition with Color.

“We don’t think the kids are directly involved,” a police spokesman told the camera. “It’s a little early to tell yet, but it looks as though some quick-witted thief took the opportunity to cut the painting from its frame. We found the frame itself, all broken and with shreds of canvas adhering to it, in the second-floor washroom. Now it looks as though the kids must be responsible for the fire, although they deny it. What happened was somebody tossed an explosive device called a cherry bomb of the type used to celebrate Independence Day, and it happened to go off in a wastebasket in which some tourist had evidently discarded a few rolls of film, and what would have been a big bang turned into a full-scale trash fire. The fire itself didn’t cause any real damage. It put out a lot of smoke and shook people up some, but it didn’t amount to anything except to provide cover to the thief.”

Ah, well, I thought. Accidents will happen. And I kept a close eye on the screen, looking for a sign of the quick-witted opportunistic thief. But I didn’t see him. Not on that channel, at any rate.

A museum official expressed chagrin at the loss of the painting. He talked about its artistic importance and with some reluctance estimated its value at a quarter of a million dollars. The announcer mentioned the recent robbery-cum-murder at the Charlemagne, in which another Mondrian was taken, and wondered whether press coverage of that theft might have led the present thief to pick Mondrian rather than some other masterpiece.

The museum official thought that was highly possible. “He might have taken a van Gogh or a Turner, even a Rembrandt,” he said. “We have paintings worth ten or more times what the Mondrian might bring. That’s why this strikes me as an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment act. He knew the Mondrian was valuable, he’d heard what the Onderdonk Mondrian was valued at, and when the opportunity presented itself he acted swiftly and decisively.”

They cut for a commercial. In Carney’s Bar and Grill, an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment guy in horn-rims and a fedora picked up his glass of beer and swiftly and decisively drank it down.

Chapter Twenty-One

“What you got in there?” the child de-manded. “Fission poles?”

Fission poles?

“Andrew, don’t bother the man,” said its mother, and flashed me a brave smile. “He’s at that age,” she said. “He’s learned how to talk, and he hasn’t learned how to shut up.”

“Man goin’ fishin’,” said Andrew.

Oh. Fishin’ poles.

Andrew and Andrew’s mother and I, along with perhaps four other people, were sheltering ourselves behind a transparent barrier designed to protect bus passengers from the elements, even as its construction had enriched several public officials a few scandals ago. I had one arm around a cylindrical cardboard tube which stood five feet tall and ran about four inches in diameter. I forebore advising Andrew that it did not contain fishing poles. It contained—what? Bait?

Something like that.

Two buses came. They’re like cops in bad neighborhoods; they travel in pairs. Andrew and his mother got on one of them, along with our other companions in the shelter. I remained behind, but there was nothing remarkable in this. A variety of buses travel south on Fifth Avenue, bound for a variety of destinations, so I merely seemed to be waiting for another bus.

I don’t know what I was waiting for. Divine intervention, perhaps.

Across the street and a little to my left loomed the massive bulk of the Charlemagne, as fiercely impregnable as ever. I’d breached its portals