“And why’s that?” Good question, Rocky!
“I bought it from this woman, she didn’t know what it was worth. I offered to have it appraised for her and she turned me down. I told her what I thought it was, and she said she didn’t care, she just wanted to get rid of everything. I don’t want her to be pissed off after I sell it if she finds out, and I don’t want her to come back to me and complain.” Laurie tightened her hand again on Nick’s elbow. He even lies to his co-conspirators! This fuckin’ guy!
“Why am I not buying this?”
“How many questions do you want to ask?”
A little pause, maybe while Rocky considered how deep to get in. “What makes you think it’s real?” Rocky asked. “What do you have as far as provenance?” Provenance, Laurie had not known before but knew now, was the known history of a thing. It was the proof that the thing was what you said it was, and not, for instance, a souvenir bought in an airport.
He doesn’t have anything, Laurie thought. He doesn’t have any proof at all, and he’s going to skate through this anyway. But the next thing she heard was papers shuffling. And then Matt’s voice: “Here you go.” She squeezed Nick’s elbow even harder.
It was so quiet, she could hear that Rocky was holding at least two pages. What the hell? she thought. And then he said, “Huh. Okay.”
“Good enough, right?” Matt was very impressed with whatever documentation he had just provided. It took everything for Laurie not to throw the door open and grab it.
“Let’s say it is. If I find the buyer, what’s my fee?”
“Ten percent?”
“Come on, man. More like twenty-five. You don’t know shit about this market and you’re trying to keep a secret. It’s going to take me at least a few days of work to find your buyer. You don’t want me to ask questions, and you don’t want anybody else to ask them either. I’m taking all the risk.”
“Don’t be a hard-ass. I found it,” Matt groused, in precisely the put-upon tone of an outright con artist who thinks he’s being overcharged. It was his sincerity that was disquieting. It was his conviction that his biggest problem was that nobody would cut him a break.
“If you knew what the hell you’re doing, you wouldn’t need me,” Rocky said. “If you knew anything about anything, you could do this yourself. But you don’t, because you don’t have any experience, and because like I’ve told you a million times, it’s pretty obvious you don’t actually care. You try to deal with this, you’ll wind up with nothing. You might even get sued or arrested or haunted by some old lady’s ghost. Seventy-five percent is better than nothing. Give me the twenty-five and I’ll take care of it.”
“How about fifteen percent? I can give you fifteen percent.”
“You can give me twenty-five and a half.”
“You’re a shit.”
“Take it or leave it.” Rocky might have been a dirtbag, but Laurie got a tiny thrill from the fact that he was a better dirtbag than Matt. He was winning.
“Fine. I’ll give you twenty.” Never say die, asshole!
“It’s twenty-five, Matt. It’s twenty-five percent, you give me the thing, I’ll bring you back the money. We can both do well here. Don’t be stupid.”
There was a pause, and Laurie kind of enjoyed imagining Matt’s miserable, defeated, helpless expression. He’d gone to all this trouble to steal from her, and because he was such an ignorant lunkhead, he had to give 25 percent to somebody else just to make any money. She hoped he looked like a disappointed little troll. Specifically, like a disappointed little troll right after somebody punches it in the face.
“All right,” he said. “Fine. We’ll do twenty-five percent. But keep me out of it.” There was the sound of a key in a lock, and then of a drawer in the file cabinet sliding open. Of course that was where he was keeping it. In her mind’s eye, Laurie could see him picking up the duck—her duck!—out of the drawer, putting his grubby hands all over it, handing it over, a creep-to-creep transfer.
“Nice piece,” Rocky said. “Could use a cleaning.”
“I’ve got some stuff in that closet, just give me a second.” This last word—“second”—came from so close to the door that Laurie imagined Matt speaking it directly into the vent. She clutched Nick’s arm. Her heart started to pound, and she ordered it to settle down, because it seemed like the rush of blood might be audible through a door, through a room, on the other side of a hockey arena. She heard Matt’s hand on the knob.