Page 21 of A Long Con

Cloud chuckled and said, “Sterling McCarthy can paint anything. Have you seen the walls of his bedroom?”

I could’ve just wiped my face with my hand, the innocent and idiotic way Cloud said it. Sterling McCarthy can paint anything. Yes, that was true. I could. Even after I changed my name to Berkeley Moynihan and moved back to Rough and Ready with a forged birth certificate. Good thing I hadn’t run into any former schoolmates, aside from an epic douchemonkey named John “Cloud” Jacobs.

“No,” Ira blared. “But I’m sure there are replications of Picasso and Monet in there.”

“Oh yeah,” Cloud chirped without anyone asking his opinion, “he’s real good at duplicating those guys. Most people don’t know he does that, though. How’d you find out?”

“Oh, I’m an avid reader of the New York Times. No one will forget the piece on the Artsy Dodger, aka Sterling McCarthy, wanted by the feds for selling a fake Woman VII allegedly by Willem de Kooning for ten million dollars.”

Cloud chortled. “Seriously? Ten million dollars? I should hang around you more often.”

Royal finally came out of his coma. “I couldn’t agree more,” he boomed. “Ever since his traumatic brain injury, he’s become an artistic savant, capable of imitating any of the greats down to the tiniest brushstroke.”

Was that going to be our MO? That Royal knew the Nude was a fake the whole time, but was promoting it nonetheless? Was Royal going to put me down with a curb stomp and a drop kick the second we were alone?

Worse, he took the fucking collar I’d put around his neck from his pocket and crushed it almost lovingly in his palms, like a nervous habit.

Ira told Royal, “If you can’t get Nude back, my client has been into Basquiat lately. If you could duplicate something like Dusthead, we’d have a deal, too. But he wanted Nude for a specific reason.”

“What is that?” asked Royal.

Ira chuckled. “I can’t reveal that, because he wants to be the first to display the results. Let’s just say . . . “ And he held up his fist for us to see, knuckles white. Tattooed on the back of his hand was a rectangle composed of a few wide stripes. Even I didn’t get it.

“Give us a hint?” asked Royal.

Once again, my best friend Cloud butted in. “Looks like a Navajo rug.”

Ira fist-bumped Cloud. “You got it.” He turned to me. “By the way, the FBI is also looking for your old mentor.”

I choked. “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.”

To my horror, Royal was buckling the fur-lined collar on his neck. “We’re on it. Sterling, you come with me. Cloud, you stay here in case Pothole returns.”

As we strode manfully from the house to our bikes, Royal muttered to me, “Sterling McCarthy. Wanted by the feds. What else don’t I know about you?”

I spoke before I thought. “That I like handcuffing men and forcing them to blow me?”