Free Crooked by Brian M. Wiprud Page A

sleek form approach and take BB’s hand. He tried to catch her eye but she kept her gaze on BB. Girlfriends, the nonplatonic kind. Interesting.
    “Should I ever come upon stolen art,” BB sniffed, “I would report it to the police, not to a natty character like you. You’ll not bite my hand.” With that, she and Karen glided from the room.
    Ozzy fluttered up to Nicholas. “You have been naughty, haven’t you? What on earth did you do to poor Bea?”
    “I said I thought that she was overleveraged, that she was desperate, that she was making a lot of rash buys.” She had the painting, all right. And he meant to find a way to make her surrender it to him.
    “Congrats.” Ozzy gripped Nicholas’s shoulder and smiled wickedly. “You just made the permanent guest list.”
    “Ozzy?” Nicholas’s eyes narrowed, his face gone foxy. “We need to talk.”
    “Really?”
    “You wouldn’t happen to have a von Clarke, would you?” He could simply ask BB to give him the Moolman, but that was a low-percentage play. Odds were in favor of blackmail as the tool of choice to make her cough it up.
    “Do I ever!” Ozzy snapped his fingers over his head in triumph. “And wouldn’t Bea like to get her mittens on it. Ha!”
    Nicholas’s face shifted from fox to wolf. “What if she stole it from you?”
    Ozzy froze, his monocle swinging from its beaded chain on his chest.
    “Bea? Steal?”
    “You know, like that brat, Bill.”
    Sucking in his cheeks, Ozzy squinted his own foxy look. “Just what are you suggesting, naughty man? Billy lived here. He could waltz off with anything. And did.”
    “You live here, right?” Nicholas tapped his lips in thought.
    “Why…” Ozzy’s eyebrows knit in bewilderment, his mouth curled with curiosity. “Why would I steal my own von Clarke?”
    “What if you did, and said someone else did, and she ended up with it? What then?” Nicholas waited for him to figure it out.
    “Oh!” Ozzy looked like he was going to faint, and put a hand on the wall. “Why would I do that to poor Bea?”
    “Would she do it to you if she thought it would ruin you? Take out the competition?”
    Now Ozzy gripped his chest as though expecting an asthma attack. He opened his mouth a few times to say something but obviously thought better of it.
    “Well? Would she?”
    Ozzy’s melodramatics faded as he composed his deportment and put a thoughtful finger behind his ear. “Well, of course she would. It’s a jungle. But I cannot afford to let the von Clarke go without moolah.”
    “You’ll get what it’s worth. Probably more. What if I told you I could get Bea to broker it for you and then hand you all the money? Fee free.”
    “Ha! Don’t tease. So what’s in it for you, m’boy? Hmm?”
    “Well, it’s like this.” Nicholas drew Ozzy close, put a conspiratorial hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes you need a fish to catch a fish. We both get the fish and she’s left holding the rod.”
                      
    Nicholas changed bars almost as often as he changed phone numbers: often. Friends and acquaintances were kept abreast of his latest hangout and knew where to find him, but now and again there’d been those who’d sought to do him harm. Some thought him slippery, he simply considered himself cautious.
    As far as bars went, he liked anonymous dives where nobody knew, cared, or would be able to remember him. He used them as neutral yet familiar meeting places that wouldn’t spook a crook. Most of these dives teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, eviction, health violations, or all three. Dirty Bud’s, Terminal Bar, and Tiny Tini Hut were among his past haunts.
    Nicholas’s current place of business was known simply by its address, “113” 15th Street. The main barroom was as dark as any Spanish grotto, each dingy booth lit only by a votive candle in a highball glass. In fact, the only electric light, other than in the bathroom, was a single 25-watt globe over the bar’s deco