The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,321

the Good Ship Lollipop.

“This is Shirley T,” he said to me, rumpling the corkscrew curls. “Shirley Temple. We all call him that—why? Can you guess?”—laughing as the kid, unable to help it, smiled in embarrassment, displaying deep dimples.

“Do not be deceived by looks,” said Gyuri to me quietly. “Shirley looks like baby but he has as much onions as any of us here.”

Politely, Shirley nodded at me—did he speak English? it didn’t seem so—and opened the back door of the Range Rover for us and the three of us climbed in—Boris, Gyuri, and me—while Victor Cherry sat up front and talked to us from the passenger seat.

“This should be easy,” he said to me formally as we pulled out of the garage and back out onto the Overtoom. “Straightforward pawn.” Up close his face was broad and knowing, with a small prim mouth and a wry alertness that made me feel somewhat less agitated about the logic of the evening, or the lack of it: the car changes, the lack of direction and information, the nightmare foreignness. “We are doing Sascha a favor and because of that? He is going to behave nice to us.”

Long low buildings. Disjointed lights. There was a sense that it wasn’t happening, that it was happening to someone who wasn’t me.

“Because can Sascha walk in bank and get a loan on the painting?” Victor was saying, pedantically. “No. Can Sascha walk in a pawn shop and get a loan on the painting? No. Can Sascha due to circumstance of theft go to any of his usual connections from Horst and get a loan on the painting? No. Therefore Sascha is extremely glad of the appearance of mystery American—you—who I have hooked him up with.”

“Sascha shoots heroin the way that you and I breathe,” said Gyuri to me quietly. “One stitch of money and he is out buying big load of drugs like clockwork.”

Victor Cherry adjusted his glasses. “Exactly. He is not art lover and he is not particular. He is utilizing picture like high interest credit card or so he thinks. Investment for you—cash for him. You front him the money—you hold the painting as security—he buys schmeck, keeps half, steps on the rest and sells it, and returns with double your money in one month to pick up the painting. And if? In one month he does not return with double your money? The painting is yours. Like I said. Simple pawn.”

“Except not so simple—” Boris stretched, and yawned—“because when you vanish? and bank draft is bad? What can he do? If he runs to Horst and calls for help on this one he will have his neck broken for him.”

“I am glad they have changed the meeting place so many times. It is a little bit ridiculous. But it helps because today is Friday,” said Victor, taking off his aviators and polishing them on his shirt. “I made them think you were backing out. Because they kept cancelling and changing the plan—you did not even arrive until today, but they do not know that—because they kept changing the plan I told them you were tired and nervous of sitting around Amsterdam with suitcase of green waiting to hear from them, you’d re-banked your moneys and were flying back to U.S. They did not like to hear that. So—” he nodded at the bag—“here it is the weekend, and banks are closed, and you are bringing what cash you have, and—well, they have been talking to me plenty, lots of time on the phone and I have met with them once already down in a bar in the Red Light, but they have agreed to bring the painting and make the exchange tonight without prior meeting of you, because I have told them your plane leaves tomorrow, and because they have fucked around on their end it is bank draft for the balance or nothing. Which—well, they did not like, but they accepted as proper explanation for bank draft. Makes things easier.”

“Much easier,” said Boris. “I was not sure how bank draft was going to go over. Better if they think the bank draft is their own fault for dicking around.”

“What’s the place?”

“Lunchcafe.” He pronounced it as one word. “De Paarse Koe.”

“That means ‘the Purple Cow’ in Dutch,” said Boris helpfully. “Hippie place. Close to the Red Light.”

Long lonely street—shut-up hardware stores, stacks of brick by the side of the road, all of it important and hyper-significant somehow even though it was speeding by