The Collection Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Lance Charnes

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Wombat Group Media

  Post Office Box 4908

  Orange, CA 92863

  https://www.wombatgroup.com/

  First Printing September 2016

  Second Printing November 2017

  Third Printing October 2019

  ISBN 978-0-9886903-6-3

  Cover design by Damonza.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No animals were harmed in the writing of this novel.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Betty

  Who keeps putting up with this

  Other Books by Lance Charnes

  The DeWitt Agency Files:

  The Collection (#1)

  Stealing Ghosts (#2)

  Chasing Clay (#3)

  Doha 12

  South

  For bonus chapters from The Collection, reading group questions, an interview with the author and an art gallery, check out https://www.wombatgroup.com/collection/collection-bonus-material/

  THE

  COLLECTION

  The DeWitt Agency Files #1

  Chapter 1

  FOUR YEARS AGO

  “Next is Lot 17, a landscape, Ferme près Ville D’Avray, by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot…”

  Showtime.

  This isn’t my first auction, just my first solo. I’ve been wingman/apprentice for Gar—my boss at Heibrück Pacific, the gallery I work at back home—at almost a dozen. But now the bidding’s started, I can’t shake the feeling I don’t belong here, that I’m an imposter, that I’ll screw this up and everyone will know and I’ll end up like Cary Grant in that auction scene in North by Northwest. I can talk the talk now. Can I pull this off?

  I check the other eighty-some people in the salesroom. I don’t see anybody drooling over the canvas, but this isn’t that kind of crowd. The Swiss are that way; the Brits are like volcanoes compared to them.

  “Monsieur?” Lisanne’s voice in my ear. She’s in the phone bank about thirty feet from me, but as far as she’s concerned, I’m some anonymous guy on another continent. “Lot 17 is here, the Corot. You’re interested in this, non?” Lee-zahne. Mmmm. Her English is very good, but she has the cutest accent and I keep thinking of Leslie Caron in An American in Paris instead of the tidy blonde in a blue blazer in the booth along the room’s right-hand wall.

  “That’s right. Thanks for the warning.” I have a noise-canceling headset and mike attached to my phone. If I do this right, the only sound she’ll hear from my end is my voice.

  The bid caller—fifties, charcoal suit, careful hair, an English accent layered over a German one—says, “Bidding begins at forty thousand francs. Do I have forty?”

  Bidders run up the price to sixty pretty fast without my help. That’s about $67,000; the Swiss franc’s trading at .895 against the dollar today. Gar set the reserve, or acceptable minimum, at $90,000, or a bit over eighty thousand francs. My job’s to make sure the bidding goes as far above the reserve as possible. It’s called “shilling.” Which isn’t strictly legal, though “legal” can be a flexible concept in Switzerland.

  After all, shilling’s small change when the Corot probably isn’t really a Corot.

  “Seventy-five.” Lisanne’s still murmuring in my ear. “Sixty-one thousand euros.”

  “Got it.” I’d asked her to quote in euros. She might guess I’m American, but I don’t need to confirm it.

  The bidding’s turned into a three-way: Paddle 43 (older guy, balding, tweed jacket) and Paddle 59 (mid-thirties like me, slicked-back hair, black Hugo suit) in the room, and a phone bidder relayed by Gilbert, two call-takers down from Lisanne. I’ll let them have fun until they get tired.

  The Georg Heinemann Kunst salesroom—just down the road from Christie’s in downtown Geneva—is roughly fifty by eighty. The fifteen-foot white ceiling bounces the indirect lighting. Instead of going for the fake-English-clubroom look, the designers went modern, with flat ipé paneling and brushed-aluminum hardware. The room’s set with ten rows of ten seats each, split by a central aisle. I’m in the next-to-last row so I can watch everyone else.

  “Ninety. Seventy-three thousand euros.”

  “Thanks, Lisanne. That’s a pretty name, by the way.”

  “Merci, monsieur.” I can almost hear the blush.

  We’re clear of the reserve. Gar’s got his money. Now the higher I can push the price, the more he’ll give me, and the smaller those debts I’m bleeding cash into will get. Also, I need to show Gar I can do this. This is where the money is.

  Paddle 43 drops out. Time to go to work. “Lisanne? Ninety-five, please.”

  “Of course.”

  The bid caller’s been saying, “The bid is ninety. Do I have ninety-five?” He sees Lisanne’s hand shoot up. “Ninety-five, a new bidder, on the phone. Do I have a hundred?”

  The room pauses. There’s always a little pause when the number of digits changes. A couple other bidders near me look more interested now. I can hear mental calculators clicking, angles being measured, profit margins refigured.

  The bid-caller’s podium is on the dais up front. Gar’s canvas is on an easel next to him. I glance at the image on the projection screen above the dais. The canvas is a pretty little thing—twenty by fifteen, a stone farmhouse, green-gray trees, a couple fat, white cows. Corot was a leading light in mid-nineteenth century landscape painting and a direct influence on the early Impressionists. This could be one of his, or maybe one of his better students did it. All I know is, those block letters C-O-R-O-T weren’t on the lower-left corner of the piece when it came through our gallery’s back door, and now they are, and the price difference between “circle of Corot” and “Corot” can be a couple extra decimal places.

  A row up and across the aisle, I notice a woman noticing me. She’s a bit older than me—maybe forty—olive skin, dark eyes, plum jacket, standing collar. Perfect makeup. Our eyes catch for a moment. She slowly looks away and tilts up her chin, giving me a great profile and a good shot at her glossy black hair pulled into a tight bun. Very tasty.

  “One hundred, in the room,” the bid caller says. Mr. 59 stows his paddle. “Do I have one hundred ten?”

  We step up to one-twenty with the help of a new bidder, one of the maybe twenty women here besides Lisanne. Mr. 59 knocks her out with a jump bid—he raises by twice the new increment of ten thousand francs—to one-forty. He must like cows. Try that with me, dude. I wait for Lisanne to tell me what I already know, then I say, “One fifty, please.”

  Mr. 59 hesitates, then bids one-sixty. His counter-bids are getting slower each time, which means we’re getting closer to his limit. Now I have to think harder. I’m here to push up the price, not buy this damn thing, which is the last thing I want to do.

  “Monsieur? The bid is now one hundred sixty.”

  “Thanks, Lisanne. Give me a moment.”

  We’re seventy over the reserve, or a bit more than $78,000. I get fifteen percent of the excess, or $11,700 so far. I’ve got two
more lots to shill after this, but they won’t get anything like this kind of money. My oldest student loan—the one coming due in three months—still has fourteen grand on it. Janine (my wife) just got another prescription she’ll try to ignore; it’s not a generic and it costs a fortune. I still have high-four figures to pay off on a credit card I didn’t know Janine had until the nasty letters started coming from the bank. I need Mr. 59 to go in for as much as I can get out of him.

  “Monsieur?” Lisanne sounds concerned.

  I ask Lisanne for another minute to run some numbers. I can probably chip Mr. 59 up to one-seventy; not the whole boat, but I have some savings. With my commission from this and whatever I get from the other two lots, I can pay off at least the student loan and get by unless something stupid happens, like my car breaks or Janine has to go back into care.

  Drop now, my smarter side tells me. Don’t risk it.

  I’ve got to make him think I’m ready to drop out. Waiting this long to bid is a big clue for him. Deep breath. “One sixty-five, please,” I tell her. A half-bid; another good distress signal.

  The bid caller nods at Lisanne, then points to Mr. 59. “One hundred seventy-five to you, sir.”

  Mr. 59 sits there, chewing his lip.

  Come on, you bastard. Jump it. Show us how big your balls are. Do it.

  “The bid is one hundred sixty-five thousand francs. Do I have one hundred seventy-five?”

  I feel the first trickles of sweat roll down my flanks. I just bid $184,000 for a painting I don’t want and sure as hell can’t afford. Bid, goddamnit! Bid!

  The bid caller has his little wooden mallet in his left hand. No no no give him time… “Fair warning. One hundred sixty-five thousand.”

  I call myself idiot about a hundred times. It doesn’t help. I’ve given up on breathing.

  The bid caller points one last time at Mr. 59. “Sir? Will you bid?”

  Mr. 59’s shoulders inch up, like he’s taking the same big breath I took a couple minutes ago. His paddle slides up.

  “One seventy-five in the room. Thank you, sir.”

  Yes!

  That first hit of air feels like pure oxygen. I work at keeping my face and body completely still so the other people in the room don’t wonder why I’m having an orgasm.

  “Monsieur?”

  “Yes, Lisanne? Where are we?”

  “The bid is one hundred seventy-five. What do you want to do?”

  I want to kiss you, is the first thing I think of. She probably won’t go for that. In my best disappointed voice, I say, “I’m sorry, that’s over my limit. I’ll have to pass.”

  “Of course, monsieur. Perhaps next time.” She shakes her head at the bid caller.

  The bid caller beams, raises his mallet. “Fair warning. One seventy-five, in the room. Do I have one eighty-five?”

  Nobody moves.

  Twok! He hammers down. “Lot 17 is sold for one hundred seventy-five thousand Swiss francs to Number 59. Thank you, sir.”

  Mr. 59 just handed me $15,750. His contribution to my tax on silly rich people.

  I feel eyes on me. The tasty brunette in the eighth row has hiked her thin, dramatic eyebrows. Her perfect white smile isn’t saying “hey, handsome”; it’s more like, “I know what you just did.” But I’m so stoked, I don’t stop to think about it.

  When the crowd starts to applaud, it feels like it’s for me.

  Chapter 2

  TODAY

  I didn’t know it then, but that day in Geneva four years ago? The auction, and Allyson (the gorgeous brunette in the eighth row)? The things I did in those twenty-four hours?

  That was the high point of my life.

  It all turned to shit after Geneva. The auction—and Allyson—had nothing to do with it, though. No, Gar and I took ourselves down by being stupid and greedy and sloppy. It was our own damn fault. We deserved every bit of it.

  It’s almost midnight, and I’m sitting on the floor with what’s left of my life in fourteen moving boxes stacked up around me.

  Everything else is gone. Gave up the apartment two-plus years ago. Sold the car to start paying for a lawyer after the guy from the public defender’s office showed up five minutes before my arraignment and couldn’t get my name right. My suits, the TV, the furniture: all sold. Janine… well, she took off the day after I got arrested. Didn’t even leave a note.

  Fourteen boxes. Ten of them are books—art books, architecture books, history books. I don’t really need them anymore; the feds say I can’t work in a gallery again, and there still aren’t any architecture jobs, especially not for convicted felons. I could probably get a few bucks for some of them online. But getting rid of them feels like giving up, like throwing away the first half of my life. I’m not there yet… soon, maybe.

  It’s been a year since I graduated from the Federal Prison Camp Pensacola (PEN, a pretty ironic nickname). Fourteen months and seventeen days inside, three months and thirteen days knocked off for good behavior and time served. I’m trying real hard to not go back. They may call it Club Fed, but there’s nothing country-club about it when you’re locked up there.

  So I’m sitting on a dusty rug in the non-bedroom room of the ex-pool house I share with Chloe (don’t get any ideas—she likes girls) in a 405-adjacent wedge of Los Angeles called Palms. I’ve got a book open in my lap, but it hurts too much to look at it. It’s the big Abbeville Press survey of John Singer Sargent. All those beautiful works by my favorite artist, images I know by heart. Each one’s like a stab in the gut.

  “Why’re you still up?”

  Chloe’s leaning against the doorjamb between this room and her bedroom, wearing a pink miniskirt-length tee shirt with “BEACH” in faded black block letters across what there is of her chest. The floor lamp behind me makes her pale skin glow in the semi-dark. Her white-blond hair looks like dogs have been fighting in it. Some women look incredible when they roll out of bed. Chloe’s a total sweetheart and I love her to death, but she’s not one of those women.

  I thump the Sargent book into its box. “Going through my boxes, like you asked.”

  She scratches her head, which actually helps her hair. “I didn’t mean, like, at midnight.”

  “Can’t sleep.” I pull the next box against my knees. “Did I wake you?”

  “Uh-uh.” She yawns and leans her head against the doorframe. “You okay? You been awful quiet the past three-four days, even for you.”

  “Sorry.” Truth is, getting out of that ratty sofabed in the morning has become a major life decision. It doesn’t help that I have to be out of here by four so I can help open the store at five. The why-bother factor’s been pretty high lately.

  “Don’t be sorry.” Chloe shuffles to where I’m sitting and flops down next to me, her arm pressing against mine. “Wanna talk about it?”

  She’s warm, and this is the most physical contact I have with women these days unless I hand one her grande decaf skinny macchiato and our fingers touch. Yeah, I would like to talk about it. But having to think about things enough to put them into words would make it worse, not better.

  She nudges me with her shoulder. “Hey, still there?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. It’ll just sound like whining. I don’t want to lay that on you.”

  “I’m your friend. That’s what I’m for, to listen to you whine.” She pulls open one of the box flaps. “What’s this stuff?”

  “It’s the junk that used to be in my desk before I sold the desk.” I pull out a handful of papers and try to let the subject drop.

  She starts rooting through the box. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it? That’s what’s got you down. Thursday?” She plays Pac-Man with a staple remover.

  “Friday.”

  “Right. Hey, let me take you out to dinner. It’ll be my present, someplace nice.”

  “Someplace with tablecloths?”

  She purses her lips. “Um, maybe not that nice.” She drops the staple remover
on the pile I’m building up and rattles through my office supplies some more. “Birthdays are hard, huh? Last year, when I turned twenty-seven? I was thinking, like, a third of my life? I’m getting so old. All I wanted to do was get wasted and sleep through it.”

  She doesn’t notice me roll my eyes. For the record, I’m nine years older than her. I found my first few gray hairs last month. Thanks, Dad, for the premature gray.

  Chloe holds up a red plastic box. “What’s this?”

  “That’s where I kept business cards.”

  “Business cards? That’s pretty old-school.” She pulls out a wad and starts riffling through it. “What’s this on the back? ‘Barbizon’?”

  “A pre-Impressionist school of French—”

  “I know that.”

  “I kept notes on what clients liked.” I had a database on the gallery’s computer, too, but I liked having the paper backup. “What do you do with your clients’ cards?”

  “Give ‘em to Shel.” Her boss at her gallery, one I didn’t blow up while mine was sinking. I get a little peace until Chloe sticks a card in front of me. “Who’s this?”

  Black serif text against a rich cream cardstock heavy enough to make armor plate: Allyson DeWitt.

  Geneva. I’ve replayed that one incredible night about a million times in my head. Every time I do, I get that king-of-the-world feeling for a minute. Then I feel like a total shit.

  “Well?” Chloe pokes me with her elbow.

  She won’t give up, and after all the secrets she’s shared with me, she’ll get pissed if I blow her off. “Remember the woman in Geneva I told you about? The—”

  “The hookup?” Chloe’s eyes light up. “This is her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The one who took you to that fancy restaurant?” It had a Michelin star, so yeah, I guess it rates as “fancy.” “The one with the suite? ‘The best sex of my life?’ And you still have her email?” She slugs my shoulder. “You dork! Why didn’t you get back with her?”