The Homeless Millionaire - Volume 1 Chapter 105 November 22 23rd 1972

It was all over by midday the next day.

I arrived at the office not sure at all if I was doing the right thing: the previous evening, I’d repeatedly considered making a run and vanishing from everyone’s sight. I was sure Harry would let me stay at the cottage. He was the only person that knew the whole truth about Schmidt. He was my friend. He would help me.

The previous day, I’d called his mother’s house almost the moment Moore had left. But of course Harry wasn’t there. His mother informed me that Harry would be staying in the cottage until the weekend. Hadn’t she told me that last time I called?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought maybe – it’s Thanksgiving the day after tomorrow, so -”

“Young man,” she said, “I’ve already informed you twice my son won’t be here before the weekend. Have a good day.”

And she hung up.

I was completely freaked out for the rest of that day. I had a major crisis in the laundromat, triggered by spending money of course. Going on the run with less than forty dollars in my pocket was out of the question.

I was sure that Moore had recognized me from my mugshot on the Missing poster. That wasn’t the end of the world – I was an a.d.u.l.t, if only in the legal sense. I could live and work where I pleased. But Moore was a cop, and cops were like dogs: when they caught an interesting scent, they started digging. Moore wouldn’t have to dig very far to find my appearance matched the description of the mysterious hitchhiker seen with Schmidt just a few hours before Schmidt’s death.

And once that can of worms was opened, anything could happen, including the cops finding my Rembrandt and linking me to the museum robbery. I didn’t get to sleep until after one in the morning, beaten to a pulp by my paranoid pal.

But when I got to the office the next day, everything was resolved within a few minutes.

Robinson was there instead of Klein, yet again. I’d left Moore’s envelope on the desk with a note, and Robinson had already talked to Moore when I came in. When we’d exchanged good mornings, he said:

“My dear boy, you seem to have made a representative of the law very nervous. I wonder if you could tell me what brought all this brouhaha about?”

I did. I told him that I’d dropped out of my studies right at the beginning of the year, and moved to Vancouver, which prompted my parents to list me as a missing person. I explained I’d failed to contact them because of my great excitement, caused by my getting a contract with an art gallery. I assured Robinson I’d been in touch with my parents since, and that everything had been cleared up.

“A contract with an art gallery? Really?” said Robinson. “Well I don’t blame you for losing your head a little, old boy. Perhaps more than a little. It was a pity to waste all that money you’d already paid for your course, naturally. But one never knows. Sometimes, doing the crazy thing is the sensible way to proceed. In fact, I once got a medal for doing just that.”

“Really? What did you do?”

“I commanded a destroyer during the war,” Robinson said, puffing up considerably. “Rotten little tin can, but I was a mere Lieutenant-Commander. Spent a couple of years going back and forth across the Atlantic, escorting convoys. The Jerries really ripped into us on one of those runs. It was a total mess, middle of the night and sh.i.p.s burning everywhere and the survivors getting pummeled by the depth charges. Grisly business. Anyway, one of the Jerry U-boots popped up directly in front of my ship. The blighter must have been damaged by the charges, and forced to surface. We rammed him. Pretty nearly sunk ourselves, along with the U-boot. Luckily we managed to limp to port. Had to spend two months in Liverpool while my ship was undergoing repairs. Rotten place to be during the war, Liverpool. If a big war ever breaks out again, my boy, make sure you’ll spend it somewhere nice.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Mark my words,” Robinson said, wagging a finger. “Find a nice place, and stay there while all the idiots kill each other off. Might be hard to do, what with the bomb and intercontinental rockets and all that. I’d recommend New Zealand, but the women there all resemble sheep. So you’re an artist, eh? Bring some of your pictures one of these days. I’d be interested to see them, and I’m sure Abel would like that, too.”

“I will,” I said. “Thank you very much. Do you think I should call Mr Moore and tell him what I just told you?”

“Don’t worry about it. I told the man he was being a fool. Now, if you would kindly type those letters -”

And so it went. I wasn’t completely convinced the Moore business was over. My paranoid pal was having the time of his life. When I went on the trek to the post office, I purchased a new umbrella – it was raining, of course – and hid myself under it all the way there and back.

I spent most of the evening looking through my stuff and choosing pictures to show to Robinson and Klein. I could find none that were good for that purpose. For example, I didn’t want to show them my latest beer bottle series. They wouldn’t have created the right impression.

I woke up the next day with an idea: I would draw portraits of Robinson and Klein from memory, and present them the next day, Friday. I had a whole day to get them done; it was Thanksgiving.

What I did not have was enough materials. I was down to a handful of charcoal stubs, and had exactly three leaves left in my sketchbook. Buying charcoal sticks and a new sketchbook was out of the question. I decided I’d do the portraits in pencil. It would take much, much longer, but I had the day off anyway.

I drank tons of coffee, repeatedly making use of my piss bottle. The activity downstairs indicated the Noyces were preparing to attend a Thanksgiving dinner somewhere else: there was a loud and tense exchange between Dave and Birgit on the subject of her having to prepare and take along something for dessert. I ate the usual breakfast – bread, corned beef, apples – and smoked a joint by the window. Then I got going on my art.

I chose to do Klein first, exactly as I saw him on my first visit to the office. He was lounging back in his seat with his feet up on John Macdonald’s desk. He held the phone receiver in one hand and a half-smoked cigar in the other. The guy he had on the phone was putty in those capable hands. Klein had got him exactly where he wanted, and was about to deliver the killer line that sealed the deal – it was in his face. A faint wisp of smoke hanging over the tip of his cigar resembled a question mark.

It took a while, with a pencil: just his hair, facial and otherwise, took me well over an hour. It was two in the afternoon by the time I was done. I walked around my room, smoking cigarettes and taking a look now and then at Klein’s portrait. It was good, it had Klein everywhere, even in the way the light fell on his desk. It did wonders for my self-confidence; for the first time in two days, I felt relaxed. After a lot of soul-searching I decided this entitled me to smoke another joint. I needed a bit of extra impetus to get going on Robinson’s portrait, anyway.

I was very tempted to draw him with his back turned and arms spread, waiting for me to help him with his overcoat. But of course I didn’t do that. I drew him the way I saw him at the office party. He was smiling at someone over his raised glass of champagne the way a gambler smiles when putting a winning card on the table. Just like Klein, he was about to make a killer deal with effortless skill. Unlike Klein, he was more amused than triumphant about it.

Halfway through, I began feeling ravenously hungry. It was already getting dark and I could hear the Noyces preparing for departure – there was a familiar argument about the two Charleses accompanying the would-be princesses to the Thanksgiving dinner. It got pretty sharp, culminating in tearful wails from the disappointed princesses. I didn’t want to walk onto that scene and waited and cursed the creator of Ken and Barbie dolls, my stomach growling.

Finally they left, and so did I. It wasn’t raining, and that inspired me to abandon my A&W plan and go into a hole-in-the-wall greasyspoon that advertised Special! Thanksgiving Dinner $2.95. I had a plate with three thick slices of reheated turkey covered with gravy from a cube, accompanied by insant mashed potatoes and green peas that hadn’t been defrosted properly, most likely because that would have turned them into mush. But all in all it wasn’t too bad with plenty of salt and pepper and most importantly, it was a big portion. There was free coffee thrown into the deal too, and I had three cups after I’d finished eating, with a cigarette for each cup.

I went home after that and instead of taking a shower, I smoked another joint and finished Robinson’s portrait. It took a long time because the food had made me lazy. When I was done I put both portraits side by side on my table, and adjusted my kickass draftsman’s lamp until they were lit to their best advantage. There were flaws, I hadn’t gotten the tilt of Robinson’s eyebrows exactly right and Klein’s cigar hand should’ve been clenched in a loose fist, with the cigar protruding like a spike on knuckle dusters. But overall both drawings really weren’t bad, I especially liked the gleam in Klein’s eye as he listened to his victim on the phone.

All this artistic success had the bonus of keeping my paranoid pal at bay. He was yammering somewhere in the background and trying to get my attention but I just ignored him. In a weird mental ricochet, I began thinking about the Jane Moore from unit 31, 4 Myrtle Street. Once again, I wondered what she looked like and what was her line of business. Maybe she was in entertainment like G. Papadopoulos, getting bookings for bands like The Bears or The Beards, or pimping would-be movie stars to producers.

It couldn’t be denied that the chances of her being the Jane I knew had increased slightly. One of Vancouver’s Jane Moores had already been eliminated on age grounds. I estimated present odds at about ten thousand to one. That was significantly better than the chances of winning money in a lottery. Maybe I should give it a shot, after all?

I went to bed with that dilemma left unresolved.

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