ght with another swig of vodka.
It was his downtown-born-and-bred wife, Sophie, who had passed on the dealing bug. She’d gotten it from her father, a former artist who had owned a gallery in the famous 420 West Broadway in SoHo in the seventies. He’d been friends with Warhol and had briefly represented works from Warhol’s famous Factory. He was actually now living in Palm Beach and mind-bogglingly rich from all the Warhols he had been given.
They were definitely not yet following in Daddy’s footsteps in the big-bucks department, unfortunately. The bills were piling up. Art was a big-money business, but so were the NYC rents. They were a constant strain, galleries: searching for cheap areas that then increased in value, forcing the galleries to find somewhere else to gentrify. It was hard to figure where the next area would be since even rents in Brooklyn were getting patently ridiculous.
“Stop sulking!” said his wife, suddenly linking arms with him. “Think positive, now, Matthew. Smile. Light this place up like Times Square. That’s it. Turn on the charm. Sell, darling. Sell!”
“Yes, dear,” Matthew said through his wide grin. “Has our final chance left?”
“Not yet. See? He’s over by Crimson Falling.”
Their final chance was a tall, blond, bearded German gentleman who favored vintage jeans and plaid work shirts and who was known in the dealer world as the Berlin lumberjack. Not much was known about him except that he was a whale collector with edgy tastes and seemingly endlessly deep pockets.
“He seems interested,” Matthew said, still grinning to beat the band. “Not just interested. Look at his eyes. He’s mesmerized.”
“Mesmerized?” Sophie said. “He looks bored.”
“I’ve seen that look before. He’s just straining to appear so, the crafty German. If he’s bored, why is he standing there?”
Retrieving his next vodka tonic five minutes later, Matthew was barely able to contain his surprise as he turned to see the Berlin lumberjack at his elbow.
“Okay, fine. I need them,” he said in a deep voice.
“I’m sorry?” Matthew said, coughing Ketel One.
“No. You’re not,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I need them. All of them. How much?”
Before Matthew could open his mouth, the man continued.
“Now be careful, my friend. Do not be stupid. Do not gouge. There may be other people in the world intelligent enough to see the value of this work, but unfortunately for you and fortunately for me, they are not in this gallery space here that is bleeding you thirty thousand a month in rent. Choose wisely. Remember the goose with the golden eggs.”
Matthew did. But he knew he had him. He immediately came up with a ridiculous number.
And multiplied it by three.
Chapter 16
An hour later, they’d shoveled everyone out the door and called an ecstatic Soyi with the news.
“We did it!” Sophie said, kissing Matthew after they hung up. “We actually did it again. A three-pointer at the buzzer. As usual, we dodged another, um…bullet.”
“Never doubted it for a second, babe,” Matthew lied.
Finally with a chance to sit down, they were opening a bottle of champagne in the office when Sophie’s phone made a strange beep.
“What is it? A text?” asked Matthew as he struggled with the foil atop the bottle of Cristal they’d been saving just for this very occasion.
“No, an e-mail,” Sophie said, looking. “News alert.”
Matthew nodded. He knew what news she was monitoring.
The hit they’d done on Rafael Arruda up in Hamilton Heights the week before.
“Well?” he said with studied casualness.
“It’s nothing. A piece in New York mag about the life and times of the dearly departed, brilliant drug-trafficking professor. The cops are, as usual, clueless.”
“Have I told you that you were amazing that night?” Matthew said, leaning over and kissing her neck.