Stealing Ghosts by Lance Charnes

Author:Lance Charnes [Charnes, Lance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: art forgery, art theft, Crime, ex-convict, fraud, holocaust, looting, museum, painting, portsmouth, salzburg, Vienna
ISBN: 9780988690394
Publisher: Wombat Group Media via Indie Author Project
Published: 2017-11-15T08:00:00+00:00

We enter the Mainwaring at around ten-thirty right before a bus unloads a slug of Chinese tourists. If we can time it just right, they can cover us as I mark Dorotea.

Yeah. “Mark” Dorotea. I already feel like world’s biggest asshole, and I’m not even in the gallery yet.

The elevator lets us out in the same entry lobby as before. We skip the audio guide this time. We’re not even us this time. Carson’s wearing her Polish flower girl disguise and a ratty mustard-colored sweater long enough to cover the seat of her jeans. She’s managed to lose a couple cup sizes, too. I’ve borrowed one of her hoodies (which could stand a wash) and I’m wearing some faded second-hand jeans I bought from a thrift shop a couple days ago.

When we step into the exhibit, my heart starts pounding like it did when I was running with Carson this morning.

We try to keep ahead of the Chinese tourists chattering a few steps behind us. Luckily, their tour guide’s keeping them in a herd. But we also have to establish a “pattern of behavior,” as Carson put it, without getting too far ahead or behind or tangling with the docents.

“Can’t treat Bowen’s picture any different,” Carson said in the car on our way here. “Gotta stop, spend a minute in front of a few pictures. Then it’ll look normal. Got it?”

Yeah, sure.

Each theme has a signature piece. Gainsborough’s Ann Ford is the one for “Class” (she’s on the exhibit’s poster, after all); a pretty, later Cassatt for “Motherhood”; “Leisure” features Fragonard’s The Musical Contest; and “Work” has Paxton’s The Housemaid. Even though we spend a minute or two with each, I can’t remember a thing about them other than the names. I’m too busy trying not to watch the other visitors shuffle past, trying not to plot every inch of the Chinese group’s progress, and trying not to freak every time I see a docent… which seems like every thirty seconds.

A docent veers toward us as we pretend to study the Cassatt. I didn’t think my heart could go any faster or get any louder, but it does. Every step closer he gets, the more sweat seeps down my back. The slingshot in the hoodie’s pouch turns broiling hot against my stomach. Did the Eye in the Sky flag us?

I lean toward Carson’s ear and whisper, “See him?”

The docent’s about two paces away, unlimbering his tablet, when Carson starts murmuring to me. In Russian. If Russian twentysomething girls talk like American twentysomething girls, this is what they sound like—lots of lifts at the ends of sentences and a couple words (something like krutoy and vyezzhaesh) coming up over and over. Most of her hand gestures involve the Cassatt. Is she trying to explain it to me? Hope not.

Am I supposed to answer? Hope not.

The docent’s close enough for me to read his name tag: Loren. I wonder for a second what happens if he speaks Russian. Nothing good. Getting caught with the stuff in my pockets means a one-way trip to the local lockup.

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