Free Feint of Art: by Hailey Lind

Harlan—you don’t know me, but I know you did some bad things that will send you to San Quentin for a stretch, so I’ll tell you what. You give us the drawings you stole and we won’t rat you out. Oh, and by the way, nobody knows we’re here.”
    Sure, that should work.
    I was about to sound the retreat when a door at the end of the corridor slowly swung open and a tall, elegant woman stepped into the hallway.
    “You have a package for Harlan Coombs?” She spoke coolly, her startling catlike eyes no doubt taking in the fact that we had no package.
    “Well, I—”
    The woman said something over her shoulder and stepped back into the apartment. I relaxed a bit. Maybe Harlan really was home and willing to talk with us.
    Mary and I took a cautious step down the hall but stopped in our tracks when a very large man with no visible neck appeared in the doorway. He did not look happy to see us. Nor did he look much like the grainy newspaper photo I had seen of Harlan Coombs. The identification became irrelevant when the man started lumbering toward us, slowly at first, then gaining speed.
    Moving as one, Mary and I sprinted the length of the hallway and back down the stairs, narrowly missing a large Chinese family from the second floor that crowded into the stairwell just in time to slow No Neck’s progress. Flying down the last set of stairs, we threw ourselves across the minuscule foyer and out the front door. I looked around frantically, grabbed Mary’s arm, and yanked her into the crowded souvenir shop next door, where we crouched behind a display of windup cable cars, on sale for ninety-nine cents.
    After several minutes of heavy breathing I ventured a peek around the snow-globe-packed shelves. Plenty of tourists, but no man missing a neck. Still, there was no way to tell if he was lurking outside, waiting for us to emerge. Together we half crouched, half crawled to the rear of the shop, slipped through a beaded curtain decorated with a painting of the Buddha, and entered a storage room, where two women unpacking boxes of embroidered pink silk slippers started yelling at us in Vietnamese.
    “Out?” I asked, breathless.
    The women pointed in the direction of the front door. “Out! Out!” they cried in unison.
    Ignoring them, we went the other way, only to find the rear exit partially blocked by packing boxes. We shoved and dragged the boxes aside, then Mary burst through the door, with me on her heels.
    We turned right, then made a quick left into a small alley full of smelly trash and caged poultry, came out onto Jackson, where we skirted Union Square, then doubled back onto O’Farrell and jogged to the parking garage on Ellis, double-timing it so as to catch an open elevator. We rode to the fourth level and dragged ourselves toward the truck.
    We climbed into the cab, where all was silent but for the sound of heavy breathing. I was drenched in sweat, my nose was running, my hands were shaking, and I had one hell of a stitch in my side. I was trying to decide whether or not to throw up.
    Several long minutes passed.
    “I’m thinking faux finishing might be more your speed, Annie,” Mary said dryly.
    I glared at her, unwilling to spare the oxygen for a snide reply. Besides, she had a point. Maybe it was time to return to Plan A: don’t quit the day job. Teaching faux-finishing courses for do-it-yourselfers was looking better all the time.
    I fired up the engine, paid a small ransom to the parking attendant, and swung by Mason’s gallery to pick up Mary’s bike, which she had left chained to a lamppost in flagrant violation of the posted signs.
    We drove across Market and past the grimy blocks south of Mission, weaving through the ubiquitous traffic snarls caused by confused tourists, double-parked delivery vans, construction sites, and left-turning vehicles. Mary was quiet until we passed under the freeway and headed toward the warehouses of China Basin. Then she started to giggle.
    “It’s not funny,” I