Ambush

4

Back at the platoon equipment room, Bill Bradford changed into his civvies and hurried across the quarterdeck and out to the parking lot. His four-year-old Honda Civic started on the first try, and he buzzed into Coronado and across the bridge into San Diego. Down on India Street, he parked in the alley, and walked into a storefront that had a sign over the door that said: “San Diego’s Artist Colony.”

The front held a five-wall design with paintings hung on every available space. Each wall had a person’s name on it. Bradford went to the side and looked at his display. His paintings. All marines: some fishing boats at the embarcadero, some with breakers smashing into the rocks down at Sunset Cliffs. There were eight oils there, all marked with prices from $65 to $245. All were framed and ready to hang.

“Hey, man, you made it,” a man said. He wore faded jeans and a paint-smudged white T-shirt. He held a pallet and two brushes.

“Yeah, Rollo. Late workday. Anybody else here?”

“Yeah, Xenia rolled in a half hour ago. She’s in a funk of some kind. Went into her room upstairs and banged the door. Don’t see why she’s got her tit in a wringer. She’s selling more than anybody.”

Bradford chuckled. “She’s the sensitive type.”

A woman walked in wearing a see-through blouse, no bra, and a short skirt. She was barefoot, and her dark hair had been piled on top of her head, probably to get it out of the way of the fresh paint. “Who is the sensitive type? Rollo here? That’s painful to think about.”

“I meant you, Xenia; is there something bugging you?” Bradford asked.

“Yeah, life, death, art, salesmen, the percentage they take, every fucking thing is bothering me.”

Bradford grinned. “Hey, same old Xenia. Everything about the same. How is that portrait coming along?”

“It sucks, but I can probably sell it. Isn’t this wine-and-cheese night? Where’s the damn food and drink?”

“Jeffrey’s turn to bring it tonight,” Rollo said. “I told him two bottles would be enough. We never have more than half a dozen people stop by.”

“Mostly our friends for the free wine,” Xenia said. She shrugged. “Hell, they told me this wouldn’t be easy when I started. It still ain’t.” She motioned to Bradford. “You started yet, or can you take a look at my non-progress?”

“Happy to.”

“You can’t look, Rollo. You’re too fucking critical.”

“Yeah, my life story.” He took his brushes and went around to the wall on the far side, where his easel and a high stool were set up, and went to work on a still life.

Xenia lifted her brows and shook her head. She was a tiny woman, five feet tall if she went on tiptoe. Her long black hair framed her face when it was down, and fell halfway down her back. She had brown eyes that snapped and daggered, and a thin nose over strangely full lips and a delicate chin. She looked like a caricature of a little china doll, but with the temper of a coiled rattler.

They went up steps to the loft where generous street and side windows let in painter’s light. She turned on more fluorescent bulbs and pointed to an oil she was working on, a twelve-by-fourteen, on a piece of canvas that looked like it came over on the Mayflower.

“Why the ratty old canvas?” asked Bradford. “I thought this was going to be one of your good ones.”

“Look at it, weirdo.”

“It is one of your good ones. Reminds me of some of those other small portraits you did. This one of your relatives or just a good face?”

“What do you think?”

“Not a relative, for damn sure. I like it. Why are you bitching?”

“I’m always bitching.” She pushed up against him and rested her breasts on his chest, then reached up and pulled his head down and kissed him. Then he kissed her back, picked her up, and carried her to the sofa where she slept. He sat down easily and she stayed on his lap.

“You don’t feel a bit bitchy to me,” he said. “Now what’s the trouble?”

“Oh, nothing I can tell you. I thought I had four paintings like this one sold, a kind of set, different faces, same background, same general look, only different people. At the last minute the guy changed his mind and said he could sell only two of them. There go two sales. That’s enough to make me into a wild, clawing hellcat.”

“Ouch, X, I know how that hurts. Hey, I only sold three of my cheapies last month. Didn’t make enough to pay my share of the rent. Hey, I know hurt.”

She stared hard at him, her brown eyes going soft. She pecked a kiss on his cheek. “Hell, you’re only here half the time. We should cut your share of the rent on this place.”

“No way. I’m in, I can make the fee.” He lifted her off his lap, pushed her to her feet, and stood. “Hey, I need to get some work done. I saw some wild ocean lately and this small boat on it almost in trouble, just one man in it fighting for his life.”

“Go,” she said. Xenia sat back down on the cot and looked at her painting. Then she sighed, got up, and went to work on it.

“I’ll be next door when you want coffee,” Bradford said. He went across the hall and into another room with the same front view, and turned on the soft fluorescent lights. There were three partly finished oils. One on an easel, two leaning against the wall. He went to work on the oil of a fishing boat tied at the dock down near Seaport Village.

A half hour later, Xenia knocked on his door and came in. She had on the same clothes, see-through blouse and all.

“Some people came in downstairs. Rollo must be out on the sidewalk dragging them inside. Let’s take a look.”

There were six people in the small showroom. Three men soon surrounded Xenia at her paintings, looking mostly at Xenia’s breasts, and only now and then at the six paintings on display.

Bradford found a thin man with a scar on his right cheek and flaming red hair who stared pointedly at one of the moonlight-on-waves oils on display that Bradford had done over a year ago.

“I like it,” the redhead said. “Gives you the idea that there’s a lot more there we can’t see, just what the moonlight shows us in the streamer of light across the whole painting.”

He moved to the side six feet and stared at it again. “I like the waves. You have them down perfectly. Have I seen your work before?”

“This is the only place I show,” Bradford said.

“A shame. I like this one. How big is it?”

“Thirteen by twenty, a rather strange size, but I liked it.”

“Yes, the proportions are exactly right. I’ll take it. How much is it?”

“One ninety-five, but if—”

The man held up his hand and stopped him. “Young man, never cut your prices. Never. Your work is worth more than that, but I’ll pay what you ask. I may be back to look for another. I’m putting in a new restaurant bar with a marine theme. I’m trying to patronize only San Diego artists, but I can’t find everything I want. Do you have any more marines in the back room?”

“Yes, two, but they aren’t framed. One is of—”

“Bring them out. Let me take a look. Framing is no problem.”

Bradford hurried up the stairs, and took two oils he had done six months ago and never had framed. One was of a fishing boat just casting off from Seaforth sport fishing pier with twenty eager fishermen on board getting their gear ready. The other was of a wave crashing into the rocks out on the Mission Beach jetty. He took them down and held them.

The redhead nodded. “Yes, the jetty. Good. I’ll take that one too. How much do I owe you?”

Bradford was stunned. “This jetty is a hundred and fifty, so that makes three hundred and forty-five.”

The redheaded man nodded. “You shouldn’t take checks, since you have no way to clear them. I have enough cash.” He took a roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off three one hundreds, then dug a fifty out of the inside of the roll. “Here, that’s close enough. Can you wrap them up? I don’t want to get them gouged before I hang them.”

Ten minutes later the customer was gone. Only two lookers were still in the showroom, and half the wine and all of the cheese and crackers were gone. One man was talking with Xenia. He looked at her paintings and then at her breasts. She moved her shoulders so her breasts rolled, and the man laughed.

“You do a self-portrait in that blouse and I’ll buy it,” he said.

She slapped him gently. “You are bad, bad. But I kind of like it. How ’bout this nude on velvet? She’s got bigger tits than I do.”

They both laughed, and the man shook his head and walked away.

“Zippo. I struck out again,” she said. “Maybe I should cover up the boobs. They seem to draw all the attention. Maybe that blouse, the green one that shows about an inch of cleavage.”

“That might be better, but just for the shows.”

“You’re bad too. Did I see you score?”

Bradford held out the four bills for her to see.

“You lie, Brad, you lie in your teeth.”

“No lie. Two of my marines. He’s opening a new bar somewhere with a marine theme. Hope he comes back.”

Another artist, Hoya, came around from his display. He was darkly Mexican, and his paintings were almost primitive with wild blacks and oranges. “Not tonight,” he said, smiling. “Maybe next week. I’m out of here.”

At ten they shut off the lights. Rollo went home. Xenia was the only one of the six artists who lived upstairs.

“Come on up,” she said to Bradford. “Want a beer?”

They popped the tops and sat and looked at the paintings. Bradford kept looking at her work in progress. “I like it,” he said. “It has that Rembrandt feeling without being so stodgy. The colors are muted and faded almost. Yes, I like it. How much do you charge for a near-master like that?”

“Twenty thousand,” she said, her eyes sparkling.

“Sure, and I just sold two for fifty grand each. Sorry, I had no right to ask.”

“Hey, big-selling painter. What’s the chances of my getting laid tonight?”

“I’d say pretty fucking good.”

Twice that week the SEALs had a four-thirty end of the day, and both times Bradford took Xenia out to dinner. Once at Marie Callender’s Restaurant, the other time at Denny’s. They talked painting. Bradford almost wished he was out of the SEALs and painting full time. He had a knack for it, and with more experience he should be able to make a living at it. But he knew he didn’t have the deft touch that Xenia had.

“How do you get such shadings in your work?” he asked.

“Practice, amigo. I’ve been painting for fifteen years, every day, all day. For the first five years I almost starved. I shared an apartment with another painter. I slept with him and he fed me. It was a good arrangement. When I sold enough paintings to go on my own, I moved out.”

“You’re good. You should be able to get more for your work than two or three hundred.”

“Hey, I pay the bills, meet the rent on time, and eat more or less regularly.”

That night they had another wine-and-cheese showing. They had distributed handbills: “Six starving artists showing their work tonight from six to ten.” They draped a hundred of them on cars parked along India and in one big parking lot. Xenia wore a modest blouse and sold a painting. Bradford came up empty, but one woman nearly bought one until her husband pulled her away. Bradford almost slugged him.

Upstairs, after the lights went off on the displays, Xenia pulled off her blouse and threw it against the wall. “Hate clothes. Why do we have to wear them?” She grabbed her brushes, which she had left in water so they wouldn’t go dry, and wiped them off, then went to work on the second of the two portraits of older men. Bradford watched her.

“You often paint in the nude?” he asked. She said she did, and slipped out of her skirt and underpants.

“Yes, that’s more like it,” Bradford said. He let her paint for another half hour, and then grabbed her and carried her to her cot.

“All right, but a quickie. I’ve got to have that painting ready to ship in two weeks, and it takes more than a week to dry. Stay with me and we’ll both work until midnight.”

They did.

The next night Bradford moved his easel into her room and painted and watched her. She was good. He was curious about the portrait. It vaguely reminded him of something. Bradford concentrated on the painting, and the only thing he could think of was a Rembrandt-type work. Not Rembrandt but of that era, back when paintings were commissioned by wealthy patrons who always wanted portraits of them and their families.

Xenia went downstairs to the bathroom, and he looked at her desk. Her checkbook lay there. He flipped it open to the last check written. The balance slammed up at him and he was astonished. Xenia had over fifteen thousand dollars in her checking account.

He put it back and went to his painting. He made three mistakes in a row, and took his pallet knife, scraped off the oil, and did it again. Nice thing about oil. Make a mistake, take it off and do it again. Her bank balance worried him. The old-master-style paintings worried him. She never exhibited any of them downstairs. He wondered why not. Slowly he began to get an idea, and he didn’t like it.

She had said she sold her portrait paintings for twenty thousand dollars. Maybe she wasn’t kidding. She came back, and he made an excuse about a hard day the next day. She frowned.

“Something I said?”

“No. I just have to leave. See you in a couple of days. We have a night problem tomorrow.” She knew he was a SEAL, she would buy that.

The next night, as soon as he was off work, he drove to the main library on Eighth Street downtown. He went to the reference room and found three huge books on Rembrandt and his fellow painters in the 1600’s in Holland. There were hundreds of pictures, and at last he found what he was looking for. A school of painters who did works that looked much like the portraits that Xenia did. He studied them for an hour, and when he was almost ready to give up, he found a series of four portraits that looked almost identical to the type that she was doing.

He read the name. Roycen Van Dyke. He’d died in 1673. The article about him said that he was a perfectionist, that he did few paintings, and that he sold even fewer. The archives recorded only twelve of his works, but experts figured there were probably a hundred or more that had been lost or destroyed, or maybe were sitting on dusty shelves in some studio storage rooms in Europe or the United States.

What a perfect cover. More of the Van Dykes could be “found” and sold at a good price. Not for millions, but for maybe a hundred thousand. He had to confront her about it. No way around it.

The next night he worked hard on his oil, and was pleased with the two hours of effort. Then Xenia came in and he knew he had to talk to her about his suspicions, to find out for sure. She invited him for a beer, and they went into her room. At once he went to her painting and stared at it. Then he was sure. The shadings, the tones, the size of the bust in the picture. He turned to Xenia, who came with two bottles of beer.

“Roycen Van Dyke,” he said.

Xenia closed her eyes and wilted. She put the beer on a table and sank onto the cot.

“Why did you have to find out? Why? Things were going so well. I sell two of them a year and then I can paint what I want to.”

“Where?”

“A man in Santa Barbara specializes in ‘recovered’ old masters and not-quite old masters.”

“And you do get twenty thousand each for them?”

“Yes. I don’t know how much he sells them for. I picked Van Dyke because he’s almost unknown in this country. But he has enough of a name that some private collector will look him up and buy. For fifty or sixty thousand that collector has what looks exactly like an old master and he can show it off to his friends.”

“It’s called forgery and fraud.”

Her voice was small. “I know. Damnit, I know. I’m better than this. I should be getting five thousand for a painting, maybe ten or fifteen thousand for my own work. But I’m stuck here showing off my tits and hoping for a three-hundred-dollar sale of a nude.”

“You could stop doing Van Dyke.”

“Sure, and really starve. I tried that. Who do you suppose pays for the rent when the other four can’t get up their share? Who pays for all of the lights and heat? Yeah, you’re being kept by the goodness of Van Dyke, whether you know it or not.”

“You’ve got to walk away from it, Xenia. If they nail you, it could mean ten years in prison. Then how would you paint?”

“I can’t leave it yet. Right now I don’t have the studio contacts to show my work where I can get enough money. Maybe in a year. I have one who shows me. I need three or four more. They are hard to find, and they take forty percent. I’m jacking my prices up to three thousand for my big works, instead of three hundred. So far I’ve sold one up in Laguna Beach of all places. I need more time. Maybe these two Van Dykes and two more and I’ll be set.”

“Do you sign them?”

“Oh, God, no. That would be a sure giveaway. These are supposed to be old ones he wasn’t too proud of and they got lost somewhere. So he didn’t sign them.”

“If this dealer in Santa Barbara gets arrested, would he give you up?”

“Charlie? Sure, if it would save him a couple of years off his sentence. He’d give up his mother and his brother. Who also are both in the forgery business.”

They sat there looking at each other.

“X, I don’t know how to help you.”

“Nobody can help me. I do it on my own. I always have. Always will. Now get the hell out of here and let me have a long cry. Maybe I’ll speak to you again, and maybe the fuck I won’t.”