Page 40 of A Long Con

“How did you know where to find Berkeley? Sterling, whatever da fuck you want to call him.” I scowled.

The lovey-dovey couple was nauseating. Berkeley fucking acted like they were just picking up where they left off when he had been forced to flee New York. They ordered fucking huevos con chorizo at the restaurant where we’d holed up, laughing like goons because the only difference in their orders was that Berkeley eschewed sour cream.

Yeah. They were a match made in heaven.

They didn’t seem to notice that I ordered nothing. Like any normal individual, I was too tweaked to eat. I mean, I’d just buried at least one man, the lock picker. Maybe two. That Barbie guy was shooting back at me as I tried to get into the passenger seat of the truck. This meant he was potentially shooting through the cab and hitting the driver or even Berkeley, if Berkeley would get his weenie whining face off the seat. So, even though I’d hit Barbie in the neck and shoulder, I got in, just in time for our savior to floor it.

I knew Oyster wasn’t the top echelon of their organization, and someone above him had ordered and paid for the painting. Heads would roll now they had neither painting nor bearer bond, unless Barbie had been bright enough to continue searching around for our rides while spurting blood from a bullet in his jugular vein.

My question didn’t put a dent in these festivities. Split Waterman wiped the bottom of his bushy silver moustache with a paper napkin and crinkled his eyes at me.

“His partner Ash back in Queens told me what was up. I guess he was a little pissed at Sterling for leaving him in the lurch, so he told me. Told me you sold Nude for two million and I knew I could get way more than that.”

I wasn’t falling for his cowboy charm. Split was like one of those old western actors women still find hot. Dashing, I guess you’d call them. “You drove all the way here to save Berkeley's ass?”

He leaned on one elbow and nodded confidentially. He looked like the Most Interesting Man in the World. I wanted to brain him. “Basically. I wanted to prevent him from selling it, but I knew I was too late for that.” He looked at Berkeley’s face which was shining with—well, all I can say is “love.” Berkeley looked like he wanted to hold his mentor’s hand and the only thing stopping him was Mexicans didn’t approve of homosexuality. “So I came down here to save him from himself. Now who are you again?”

I exhaled loudly, slapping the tabletop with my palm. I wanted to shout I’m his fucking lover, you fucking numbnuts, but Berkeley quickly said,

“He’s my art advisor.” And he reached an arm across the table as though he wanted to hold my hand, too. “Royal has stuck with me through some harrowing shit because he believed in my talent. He’s got a traumatic brain injury, too.”

“Well, well,” said Split. “What percentage of the take do you withhold as your fee?”

Fee? We’d never discussed any fucking fee. I sort of stuttered. “We, ah, never got that far in our negotiations.”

“I took forty percent.” I couldn’t believe how casually Split said that. Forty fucking percent? When the artist had done the entirety of the work? “You see, Mr. Royal, I met my boy Berkeley when he was in art school. One of my wealthy clients misidentified a work of his as a Picasso and I just went along with it. We tried to get my son shows on his own merit, but his Postimpressionist style was regarded as lame and old-fashioned compared to the trendy abstract expressionist style.”

Berkeley shrugged helplessly. “So I just kept making Picassos. Some Pollocks, some Diebenkorns.”

The couple chuckled warmly at each other again. Split said, “Remember? At first you claimed to be some Brazilian aristocrat displaced in the postwar diaspora.”

“No one ever asked me which war.”

Split chummily slapped Berkeley on the forearm. He kept his hand there. “You should’ve seen him. He claimed all these were newly discovered works by these artists, found in his parent’s mansion in Manaus. Some art experts believe some of his forgeries still hang in museums around the world.”

The touchy-feely aspect of things pissed me off, so I said point-blank, “I like to call him Faux Gogh. Aren’t you wanted by the feds, too?” I couldn’t forget what Ira Hogshead said when he found out Berkeley’s Nude was a forgery.

Split Waterman. That’s the name. You could probably cut a deal with them by turning him in. Go get that fucking Nude before my boss comes to get me.

I didn’t know who Ira’s boss was, but I’d much rather him have the Nude than this skanky wannabe Daddy.

Apparently Split finally got his hackles up by my question, or my arrogant attitude. Instead of answering, he said woodenly, “Let me show you something in my truck.”

Split led the way to where we’d parked, giving me time for a short squeeze of Berkeley’s curvaceous ass. Just that one brief touch had my cock lengthening and plumping, and I dared to stiffen my middle finger and swipe it up his ass crack.

“Who is this moke? He ever suck your dick?”

Berkeley grabbed my arm and tossed it aside. “You’re not glad he just fucking saved our lives?”

I was about ready to lose my religion. I folded my arms so angrily in front of my chest I squashed my own lungs and could barely breathe. “You not glad that I saved your fucking life by putting down that Oyster bandido?” Actually, I had squarely hit the lock picker in the forehead, making a disgusting spray of pulpy, bloody matter out the back of his skull. I had nailed him. Split Waterman had probably buried Oyster. I didn’t want Berkeley to put two and two together.

“Well yeah, of course, Royal! Fuck knows I didn’t help. Just fucking cowered there with my fingers in my ears.”

My heart warmed. “It’s not your fault. How often does a sensitive artist from Queens get involved in a gun battle?” This made me feel and look more macho, too.

“Exactly! You don’t think I should learn to shoot, do you? Hey Split! Remember that time we were in Hell’s Kitchen leaving an art show and that mass shooter was blazing away in the next block?”

Berkeley broke away from me, practically skipping like a fucking kid to reach Split, who was unlocking the camper shell on the back of his truck. It was not my fucking imagination that jizzmonger reached down to fondle Berkeley’s ass. I saw fucking red. I’d never been so steamed in my entire life. That cockbite was easily twice Berkeley’s age. It wasn’t even that—it was that he was manhandling my lover who was too damned spineless or yellow to tell him to get his hands off. While Berkeley leaned into the darkness of the truck, Waterman slithered his fingers through the glossy hair at the nape of Berkeley’s neck. He fondly caressed the cervical vertebrae, rotating his thumb while looking down on “his son” with such lust I’d be surprised if he didn’t cream his jeans.