Tales of the Witch (17 page)

After two or three deep breaths that were meant to be calming, B.J. tiptoed down the carpeted stairs. Light from a streetlamp filtered through the thin living room curtains to reveal a stodgy figure wearing a stocking mask. He was holding Mrs. Bachrach’s painting up to the faint light as if trying to make out details.

In spite of his panic, B.J. noted that the man was grasping the painting with both hands—not surprisingly, as the ornately framed piece was heavy. Realizing that if the intruder had a gun, it at least wasn’t in his hands, B.J. flipped on the overhead light—and met Joe Alvione. A slightly huffy Joe Alvione, after he got over his fright.

“You coulda’ give me a stroke, you moron, sneakin’ up on me! Christ!” Joe lowered the painting gingerly to the ground. Within seconds, the two men were grappling on the carpet, grunting with exertion, and bumping painfully into furniture legs.

“Stop it! Stop it!” came a piercing shriek.

Both men paused to look up. Joyce hovered over them. Poised high to smash a head—or both heads, B.J. wasn’t sure which—was a steel-shafted number-one wood golf club gripped in white-knuckled hands. The expression on Joyce’s face brought them scrambling to their feet.

Joe lifted shaking hands and began backing away. “Now, missus…”

“Stop right there!” she screamed.

He stopped.

“Now—now, calm down, darling,” begged B.J. in a quavery voice.

“Shut up!”

He blinked and his mouth slowly shut.

A glint entered Joe’s eyes. Without permission he lowered his hands and slowly straightened himself.

Joyce hissed at Joe. “Take off the mask!”

“Aw, now, missus,” whined Joe.

“DO IT!”

He whipped the stocking from his face.

“You looked better with it on,” she sneered.

Joe whistled softly. “A firebreather.” He glanced sympathetically at B.J.

“What’s your name?” asked B.J., trying to appear as if he were in charge.

Joe sighed. “Guess you could ID me, anyway.” He told them his name. “And I got no gun on me, so you can relax, lady. A piece means extra time, an’ I ain’t stupid. Wanta search to make sure, be my guest.” He lifted his arms invitingly away from his portly figure. He wore a red plaid flannel shirt, baggy green work pants, and pristine white sneakers with the words, ‘cross-trainer,’ printed across the tongues. He looked like a grocer. “Give the club a rest, lady. Believe me, I’ll stay put. I don’t want you making no pumpkin pie outta my skull.”

Joyce lowered the club slowly. B.J. relaxed slightly and gave Joe a covert grimace of gratitude.

“So,” began Joe. “Where’d a couple a’ losers like you pick up a hot item like that? Izzit for real?”

Joyce bristled. “Who’s a loser!”

Joe slid his eyes around the room in a pointedly appraising scan of their living quarters, but wisely declined to answer.

B.J. examined their crook doubtfully. “Are you an—an art thief, Joe?”

Joe shot him a sarcastic look. “If I was, I wouldn’t be here, would I? Hey, I know my limitations, but I ain’t lived my life in a brown paper bag. The Mona Lisa ain’t izzackly an obscure hunk a’ art.”

Joyce lifted a haughty eyebrow. “The painting’s ours. We inherited it.”

Joe’s mouth twisted. “Save it, Missus. That item’s so hot it burnt my fingers just holding it.”

Joyce’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Joe, but he stared back, undaunted.

Joyce swiveled her gaze speculatively towards B.J. At that moment he could feel the painting turning ‘hot’ just as if Joyce had grabbed it and run with it out the front door—and she hadn’t moved.

His head began to move involuntarily from side to side. “No, Joyce,” said B.J. “Nuh-uh.”

She interrupted. “Do you—would you happen to know where a painting like this could be sold, Mr. Alvione?”

Joe crossed his arms. “Oh, it’s ‘Mr. Alvione,’ is it?” He shrugged. “Could be. Could be I could think better if that golf club was put away somewheres.”

Joyce flung it across the room where it smashed into a lamp. Joyce ignored the crash. “Would you like some coffee, Mr. Alvione?”

Joe glanced shrewdly at B.J. “Her coffee worth drinking?”

B.J. shook his head, hardly realizing what he was doing.

“B.J.!” snarled his wife.

“You better make it,” commanded Joe. B.J. left the room in a daze.

When he returned, tray in hand with three steaming cups of coffee, Joe had made himself comfortable in B.J.’s favorite chair. Joyce was just finishing sweeping away the pieces of glass from the broken lamp. He handed cups around, feeling like Alice at the Queen’s tea party, his head hunched down between his shoulders in anticipation of the ax.

Without consulting B.J., Joyce and Joe reached an agreement on percentages. Since Joyce was understandably reluctant to allow Joe to take the painting with him to show to a certain big time art fence he said he had in mind, Joyce took some photos of it in different lights and angles. Joe departed with the film, promising to call in a few days.

B.J. went to work the next morning, but felt engulfed in a fog, hardly aware of his own actions—a feeling he began to get used to as day followed day.

Joe returned as promised, a deal was confirmed, and the painting was exchanged for a certain amount of money four days later. To B.J. it seemed a shockingly enormous amount of money, even after Joe’s cut.

To B.J.’s surprise, Joyce immediately handed a large portion of it to B.J. and told him in snarling tones what she wanted done with it. He obeyed. The next day he paid back in full the deficit he owed his brokerage firm, eliminating their immediate need to file for bankruptcy.

The atmosphere at home became kinder when the painting left their living room and the threat of bankruptcy left their lives. Joyce began consulting a cookbook and elevated the quality of their diet, and also began initiating a few activities in bed that B.J. had nearly forgotten existed. B.J. perked up at these benefits, and eventually formed the useful habit of repeating to himself Brian’s comments about the infamous Dr. Sams whenever guilt threatened his growing complacency.

Then Lady Luck, always capricious, turned her attention to the Maxwells.

First, B.J. sold an article to a prestigious financial newspaper. Soon after, to his astonishment, they asked for two more. After he delivered those, his editor proposed a lucrative contract for a weekly column, promising that he could advertise his market advice newsletter in the column. A few months later, B.J.’s column became syndicated across the nation and his newsletter came hotly in demand. In short, B.J. was a success.

Then, to B.J.’s even greater astonishment, Joyce sold her book. B.J. had no clue to the book’s contents, but whatever they were, the publishing company promised big things for this new author, hereby known as Joyce Throughfro Maxwell. Throughfro was Joyce’s maiden name, which she now claimed she’d always regretted forsaking at marriage because it sounded so literary, so her. (B.J. wondered if his mind was tricking him—he recalled only how she’d leaped at the chance to dump it.)

But then, B.J.’s mind was becoming busier and busier these days.

… The problem was, Your Honor…

B.J. began having frequent mental conversations with the judge who would preside over his arraignment. In his mind, he framed excuses that would be so persuasive, so heartrending, that he’d be let off with a warning never to do it again, which B.J. fervently promised—every single time he ran through the imaginary legal proceedings in his head. At least three times a day.

Guilt. Now that things had gotten better, INCREDIBLY better, B.J.’s conscience had returned and kicked into high gear. He arrived at the horrible determination that somehow, by selling the painting, he’d made an implicit deal with the Devil that material prosperity was worth more to him than anything. More than his integrity. His honesty. His self-respect. His…soul.

B.J. began to cut bloody notches into his jaw in the mornings from being unable to look at himself in the mirror while he shaved.

Joyce thought all this integrity stuff hilarious. She chuckled as she informed him that his mental struggles were going to work extremely well in her next book—which was, she added smugly, a comedy.

It didn’t help that she often mused that they owed all their good fortune to that painting…grinding the memory into B.J.’s aching head how Mrs. Bachrach had told him, and Brian had repeated, that B.J. had been her dearest, best friend. A man among cats…and thieves. So what if she’d left all her money to her cats, inadvertently enriching the rotten Dr. Sams? She’d done exactly what she wanted, and what she wanted was to leave everything to that cat hospital. She’d had faith in B.J.’s honesty, and where was that honesty now? Gone. Eaten up by greed. He was as bad as Sams.

One evening, after Joyce had broiled B.J. a particularly tender swordfish steak, B.J. brought up the subject to Joyce about the painting. After she heard him out, she stated that he was insane. She called him a neurotic crackpot and emphasized her belief by letting him spend a chilly night in bed that reminded him of the old days. The good old days when he never cut himself shaving.

A few more days passed, but B.J. found that now every time someone new subscribed to his newsletter, his stomach hurt. Since subscription requests were flowing in, antacids became a steady diet, spoiling his enjoyment of Joyce’s newfound cooking skills.

Time did nothing but reinforce his determination…he had to get the painting back. It wasn’t, had never been, his to sell, or to profit from. Even if his current profit came from his own efforts, it was based on the security bought by that painting. And if he forfeited all his good luck because of this new action, so be it. At least he wouldn’t bleed to death someday from a cut throat.

But to find the painting, first he had to find Joe.

Since B.J.’s forte was research, he used logic. After some thought, he decided that a fellow like Joe, getting on in years, probably hadn’t strayed too far from his home area to conduct his break-ins. So very likely Joe lived close by the Maxwells, in or near Wyndham-by-the-Sea. And if he’d chosen the Maxwells to rob, he must be clinging to the bottom rung of the success ladder. He called the village jail to check whether Joe had gained entrance there since last seen. No Joe.

Next, remembering Joe’s shrewd estimation of Joyce (and her coffee), B.J. decided that Joe obviously possessed a fair knowledge of, and thus probably a strong affection for women. Furthermore, Joe, having made what B.J. considered somewhat relaxed lifestyle choices, probably frequented night spots that featured female entertainment. The kind that didn’t cost much. Places like that thrived a few miles down the highway, safely out of reach of village ordinances. B.J. decided to start his search there.

He picked the biggest place first, the one advertising the most exotic dancers. ‘FLO’S!’ screamed the flashing purple neon.

With his heart in his throat and wire-rimmed glasses tucked into his breast pocket (for a more macho appearance), B.J. stepped into a stripper bar for the first time in his life. The noise! The percussion pounded his chest, the bass hummed in his knees, and all of it deafened him. The energy level was as high as the noise level, and he had to take a seat suddenly to orient himself.

“Hey, cutie! What can I get you to drink?” asked a girl so young he couldn’t believe she should be allowed to work. But he asked for beer, and when she whirled to take his order to the bar, he stared dazedly at the shortest shorts he’d ever seen inadequately covering the roundest cutest behind he’d ever seen.

A beer or so later, B.J. caught his head bobbing in time to the music. He discovered himself feeling more relaxed than he had in years. He was even smiling!

Just when he sternly reminded himself that his mission didn’t include having a good time, the music came to an abrupt halt—interrupted by crashing cymbals.

An electric guitar let out a sinus shattering riff. Then whining, grinding, rock music with a slow throbbing beat filled the room and a line of girls began snaking out from behind a curtain onto a stage. They wore high heels, a few sparkles, and little else. One after another, they came out, and kept coming.

B.J.’s eyes snapped wide open and without conscious decision, he picked up his beer and drifted, mesmerized, towards the last remaining seat at the bar. The bar stretched from one end of the stage like a long wide ribbon, making the shape of an exaggerated horseshoe in the vast room before rejoining the stage again on its opposite end. In minutes, the first girl would pass right in front of B.J.’s beer.

And then they were here. Satin high heels in neon colors shifting and stepping, swiveling and tapping in front of B.J.’s tightly clutched beer mug—a slow march of female feet, slim ankles, and knotty muscled calves… B.J.’s gaze was just daring to lift itself higher when a gnarled hand clamped onto his shoulder. B.J. nearly snapped his backbone, jumping from guilt.

“Man, I knew when I first laid eyes on you that you were a man I could get along with.” The hot breath of Joe Alvione’s hoarse chuckle tickled B.J.’s ear. B.J. wrenched his gaze from the swiveling, dipping knees to face Joe.

With his arm looped over B.J.’s shoulder, Joe wedged his thick body between B.J. and his neighbor, nearly shoving both from their stools. B.J. glared, but Joe exclaimed, “Don’t waste those eyeballs on me, lookie there!” He pointed up and B.J. followed his instructions.

Time lost all meaning for B.J. as the heavenly line backed and twisted, kicked and squatted, dipping perilously close to his glasses (which he’d replaced for clearer vision), pirouetting, then dipping again. The music screamed and whined, and blended with B.J.’s heartbeat somehow. His mouth became dry, and he realized it was hanging open. He gulped down some beer and understood suddenly what ‘wetting your whistle’ was all about.

When the last girl disappeared behind the curtain again, B.J. shrugged his aching neck and, remembering his image, removed his glasses again. “How do they expect you to stare straight up all that time?”

“You managed all right,” Joe said dryly. “You get it, dontcha? Flo? Flo Ziegfield? The guy that used to make all the beautiful girls dance in lines?”