John Finn 3: Turner and Eakins

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Des woke me up about 9:30. She was at work and called for no particular reason. I was a little groggy so I guess I wasn’t talking much.

She asked me what I was thinking about?

I lied. I said, “You.” I hadn’t thought about her for at least a couple of minutes—not since the dream I had been having when the phone rang.

She says, “What were you thinking about me?”

I say, “I was thinking about taking a shower–with you.” That was half true. I always take a shower when I get up.

She says, “I could take a break. I’ll make it up by working my lunch hour. I could be there in about twenty minutes.”

Now, I’m in a fix. I told Burley I’d meet him over at his gym at 11:00 and we’d go for some Speed dogs before the game. I’d picked up some balcony tickets for the Bruins afternoon game at one. It wasn’t a hard decision. I called Burley and told him not to expect me until 11:30. Then I brushed my teeth and started to clean my room up a bit.

I’d worked a security gig until ten at a gallery opening the night before and by the time I got home I was full of ideas and started to write. That petered out about three.

Connie calls as I’m stuffing some dirty cloths in a laundry bag. He had some interesting news. The gallery where I worked last night was robbed. After closing. The alarm never went off–disabled from an outside line in the back ally. The most expensive piece, a J. M. W. Turner, was missing. The cops wanted to talk with me. I took down the number for a lieutenant detective Peterson. I called him. Peterson was not available. I left my number. My doorbell rang before I closed the phone up.

Peterson didn’t call back until Burley and I were in our seats at the Garden. It’s early in the season, so the place was not completely full, but it was still too noisy to talk so I went up to the concourse. Peterson was impatient at having to wait. I was thankful he hadn’t called earlier, but I said, “If you’re in such a rush, why didn’t you call before.” He didn’t like that. He wanted me to meet him in half an hour at the gallery. I told him no way. The game would be out by four. I told him four-thirty. The gallery was open until six.

Now he’s pissed. And I’m getting some pleasure out of it. Some cops love to order people around at their own convenience. Their time is more valuable than yours. At least three sets of cops were over at the Newmarket Square sitting in their cars eating their Speed dogs when Burley and I got there. They were still at it when we left.

After the game—only one overtime–Burley tagged along to the gallery. I had filled him in on the situation and he was interested in hearing the rest.

Burley is a man of odd interests. He likes model trains. His grandfather worked as a porter for the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad almost fifty years until Amtrak came along. He likes dogs. He has two of them. He runs the beach in Quincy every morning with the dogs. And he likes Shakespeare. That he got from a teacher in high school. That’s why he got involved with acting.

I did not know how Burley Johnson got his name until his mother told me. I thought it had something to do with muscle. He works out every day. But she said that when he was born his skin was the color of the burley tobacco after it had been cured in the drying barn. She loved that color. The family—all twenty four of them including his grandfather–moved North from Louisville about 1970. For twenty years Burley had driven a truck for UPS every day while working local dinner theatre and that kind of thing at night. Never got a break. Then he quit his day job–despite my example for what a bad idea that was.

Now Burley was just another bit actor. His name got him quite a few roles because it was easy for producers to remember, but never anything at the top of the bill. Whenever they wanted a thug or rapist, they called Burley. Even though the guy is as mild mannered as anyone I ever met–well. Fact is, I met him at a brawl over in a pub on Harvard Street in Allston. We were the last two guys standing. And he smiled first. That was at least twenty years ago. No. More than twenty-five. I hadn’t gotten married yet then.

When we got to Newbury Street, the gallery was closed. I tapped on the window. The owner peeked out from a corner and frowned at me. I called him on the phone. I could see him answer it. I told him what the deal was. He told me I’d have to wait outside until Detective Peterson arrived.

I had met the owner the night before. He’s a small man with busy eyes, and he talks too fast for my ears. Sounds like he’s from New York. His name is Boris. His whole name is in gold leaf on the window. I used his first name several times over the course of the evening even though he introduced himself as Mr. Sartoff, because he seemed incapable of remembering my name and called me ‘Hey,’ several times during the course of the event. I answered “Yes, Boris,” and watched him flinch.

Newbury Street in an early autumn evening can be something to see. Well. Not so much the Street. The people. And the cars. Every car at the curb is worth ten times as much as my old Ford Explorer. Every woman that passes looks like a million bucks.

So, it wasn’t a bad wait. Maybe forty-five minutes. I expected as much after putting Peterson off. But what did he expect? I had paid half price for mine, but Bruins tickets run sixty bucks even for the nosebleeds. Besides, it was good time spent. Burley had a story.

He’d been working a show downtown. The lead got sick. The understudy steps in leaving the understudy’s slot, a secondary role, open. Burley knows the piece cold and asks for the part. The assistant director looks at him and says he’s not right for it. The part calls for a good-looking fellow who might be competition for the lead’s interest in the leading lady. Burley is a good-looking guy. But he’s a little darker that the assistant director had in mind. Burley hints at prejudice. So the director asks him to read the part on the spot with half the cast within earshot. It’s a challenge. If he can’t, it’ll be reason enough to overlook him. Burley delivers the whole five minutes worth of lines without a pause. Now the assistant director is in a fix. He tells Burley to find some clothes and get ready.

At the end of the show, the audience wants Burley to take an extra bow. He does. But afterwards, he gets fired. The star—the star who was sick that night with laryngitis–was in the audience. He doesn’t want the competition.

That’s not the way it works in the movies, is it?

So Burley is out of a job. That turns out to be important.

Lieutenant Peterson shows up and we go into the gallery and chat. He’s an obnoxious moron who obviously knows how to kiss ass or he would not have risen to lieutenant. I figure he is about due any time soon to hurt his back on the job and go out on disability for a year or two and I think I can see that wish for him in the eye of his partner. His partner is a sergeant and doesn’t say a word. I can just read it in his eyes.

Peterson wants to know where I was after the gallery closed. I tell him. He wants to know if I have any corroboration for that. I tell him I don’t. He wants to know if I have ever been involved with anything–anything being a felony, fraud, or capital crime. I tell him I haven’t killed anybody in years. He doesn’t like the joke.

Meanwhile he has his eye on Burley, who is sitting in a chair by the door. He can see that Burley is very interested in what’s going on. When I crack the joke about killing people the lieutenant’s voice gets strained. He wants to know all about it.

I tell him I was in the Army. Gulf War.

He asks me when that was? He actually did. He had no idea. He’s must be about thirty years old. It totally went by him. His partner, a sergeant, spoke up. The sergeant has an index card with some particulars about me he had obviously cribbed from my boss, Connie.

So instead the detective turns on Burley.

“Were you with your friend last night?”

Burley blinks at him like he is trying to figure out the source of this totally stupid question. Burley is a good actor. He says this without a word. I mean, I am standing right there. Burley has heard every word I’ve said. If the detective wanted a contradiction he should have kept Burley in another room and questioned him separately, right? The sergeant rolls his eyes and looks away. He’s got my sympathy.

Then the partner pulls the detective over to the side and whispers in his ear. I look at the pictures on the wall, and take some note of the empty space where the Turner was.

It was a large piece. Maybe four feet wide in the frame. Ships in a harbor. Portsmouth I think. I didn’t look hard at it last night because I’m not a Turner fan. I think he’s over-rated. Big on the soft watercolor skies and short on the important detail. Besides. There were several small Thomas Eakins pieces there and I like Eakins. They had gotten me to thinking about when I was a kid and that was why I was so loaded with words by the time I got home last night.

Just then, I was standing in front of the empty wall wondering if they took the Turner out in the frame or cut it out like the guys did who robbed the Gardner museum.

Finally the detective asks me, “Did you notice anything odd last night.”

I don’t say, ‘Gee, it’s about time you asked.’

I said, “Yes.” I paused then to make sure he was listening and not just going through the numbers. “I noticed a fellow who spent at least fifteen or twenty minutes looking at the Turner, but I don’t think he was looking at the paint job. Black hair. Too black. About my age, but not a touch of gray. A little over weight. Blue suit. No tie. Glasses with steel frames. And he seemed very interested in the frame of the picture.”

“How tall?”

“Your height.”

The detective turned to the gallery owner. Just looked at him.

The owner perked right up. “I didn’t know him. He had one of the invitations. He could have gotten it from another gallery. I don’t know. But I saw him too. He’s right. I noticed him too.”

The detective says, “Why didn’t you mention him before?”

The gallery owner shrugged as if that wasn’t his job. “I’d forgotten about him.”

“Can you give me a description?”

“Like that fellow says. About your height. Black hair. Glasses.”

Then silence. The detective’s partner is writing. I nudge the partner’s shoulder with the back of my hand and pointed at Burley.

“He stood over there by the window for maybe ten minutes after he’d looked at the painting. Just before he left. There was a woman sitting in the chair where Burley is now. Good-looking redhead. Green dress. Another women came over to her and the redhead stood and they talked and it partly blocked the guy from the door. I noticed him reach for the back of the chair and shift it over so he could leave.”

The lieutenant detective says, “So?”

The sergeant looked over at Burley’s chair. It had a nice wide brushed metal frame. Burley got up and stood by the evidence, blocking the gallery owner who was already moving in that direction. The sergeant put his cell phone up to his ear and asked from some assistance.

Half an hour later two more cops show up with their bags and take some prints off the back of the chair. At that point I went home. I was tired. I dropped Burley off. The cheap beer at the Garden makes you tired.

All of the details of the robbery worked their way out over the next week. The gallery owner was arrested. His partner in crime was well known by his prints and cut a deal by laying the plan back on the owner.

In the meantime I got Connie to give Burley a job. I have been full-time with Connie’s team for all of two weeks and I already have him picking up another player. He isn’t happy about it but it’s part of the deal. I told him. If he’s going to keep his business, he needs some more talent. I’m a partner now, even if Connie’s the boss. For Burley, it’s only temporarily, of course. Until he can get another gig in a play.

More John Finn stories to come

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