Breaking Point - Chapter 21 - X Marks the Spot
Violent weirdness
My meeting with Agent Schneider left me in immediate need of an excuse to contact Mother. A way to weasel a place on her jet-setting, money laundering Miami art adventure.
I called the woman who regretted giving me birth and told her I was broke. The IRS was after me. I was drowning in debt. I was moments away from losing my apartment and my job.
“Talk to that Italian whore carrying your child,” Mother said, declining my request with less grace and more haste than a beleaguered big city bank manager.
“Luke says XYZ is staying with you,” I said, switching to plan B.
“I’m late for a hair appointment. What’s your point?”
“I thought he might like to hear about the Benefit Street bombing. He could use it in one of his paintings. The media would eat it up.”
Mother went silent, considering the PR and profit possibilities of modern art based on her policeman son’s headline-grabbing trauma.
“This afternoon at three,” she said and hung up.
I dressed in my best khakis, polo shirt and fleece and drove to Mother’s Congdon Street apartment.
“You must be joking son,” Mother said, looking down as she opened the door. “Where did you get those shoes?”
I ignored her greeting and walked in, impressed as always with the unobstructed view of the State House from her balcony.
The artist known as XYZ rose to greet me from an Eames chair facing the city. He was dressed in an electric blue blazer, a yellow shirt with a bright red tie and black pants. I glanced at his Gucci loafers and shook his soft hand.
“Monsieur Canali, c'est bon de te revoir!”
“Good to see you again X,” I said, shaking his soft hand. “I hear you’re looking for inspiration.”
“Toujours. It is terrible what happened with your bomb. So very bizarre. You must be, how do you say, émotionnellement perturbé.”
“John was born emotionally disturbed,” Mother called out from the kitchen.
“Your mother she is so drôle.”
“She always was great with a punchline,” X said, looking towards her for support.
“Everyone in the world is calling me,” Mother demurred. “I’ll be in my office.”
“Assieds-toi,” X urged, gesturing at the couch. “Tell me tout! I am all so many ears!”
I spent the next hour sharing an amusing little Chardonnay with a man with an endless appetite for horrifying and gruesome details.
Thanks to Dr. Kilroy, I could describe the Benefit Street bombing from something of an emotional distance. At times it seemed like the whole thing happened to someone else.
As we got to the end of my story, I excused myself to secouer le serpent. I descended the spiral staircase and made my way to the guest bathroom.
As I washed my hands, I looked in the mirror. After making sure my eyes were still blue, I noticed that the shower curtain was pulled all the way across the tub. Mother always left it half drawn.
I pulled back the curtain. A stack of paintings in the tub leaned against the wall, facing away.
I carefully pulled them backwards, peering at each one in turn. They were all high quality works, but I didn’t recognize the artists. Until I reached the last canvas: Pissarro’s Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-Midi, Effet de Pluie.
It was a mind-blowing holy shit moment.
The painting hanging in the Newport Art Museum was a forgery. The real painting – one of the world’s most important impressionist works – was in my mother’s bathtub in Providence, Rhode Island.
No wonder Mother hustled Lisa and me out of the museum.
I had to hand it to Mother. She’d get a huge tax break for the fake Pissarro and make millions selling the real thing on the black market. If the other paintings in her bathtub were originals of dupes duping charities, Mother’s scheme would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Gulfstream money.
I heard a scream. Now what?
I raced up the staircase. The multi-colored artist known as XYZ was cowering in the corner. And there was Senator Shelby wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt, jeans and Top Siders, standing next to Mother, pointing a polymer pistol at her head.
For the second time in less than a week I was facing someone I knew holding a gun on someone I knew. Five words rose to the surface: not another head shot. What happened to the good old days of center mass?
For a brief moment I was back on Benefit Street, watching Mrs. Wilkes pouring tea. Senator Shelby looked just as oblivious as the dead demolition dowager. I shook off the memory.
“Do me a favor Senator,” I said as calmly as I could, trying and failing to remember his first name.
“What’s that?” Shelby asked, genuinely curious.
“Give me the gun.”
“Yes. Of course. Right after I do this.”
My right hand raced for my concealed carry. Like Vitali before me, I knew there was no way I could bring my Wilson to bear on the Senator before he pulled the trigger on my mother.
As my gun left the holster, Shelby removed his pistol from Mother’s head, pointed it at his own head and pulled the trigger. Surprising us all, the Senator’s pistol went click! instead of bang!
I lunged forwards and grabbed his gun. Mother sprinted to the window and pressed her back against the cold surface, horrified.
Shelby suddenly “woke up” – I don’t know how else to describe it. His eyes gained focus. He looked around, startled.
“Where am I? Why are you pointing your gun at me?”
“It’s OK, Senator. Everything’s fine.”
I backed-up a couple of paces, re-holstered my Wilson then popped the mag on the Senator’s SIG. It was filled with hollow point cartridges. If Senator Shelby had racked the slide before pulling he trigger, loading the gun, Servpro would have had a busy night.
I put the magazine in one pocket, Shelby’s gun in the other. I walked up to the semi-comatose Senator, patted him down, grabbed him under his arm and led him to the door.
“I don’t understand,” he said, looking back at Mother. “Elizabeth?”
I sat Shelby down on the front step.
“It’s cold,” he said, shivering.
I put my fleece around the Senator’s shoulders and called Rufus.
“That’s nuts,” Rufus said after I told him what had happened, leaving out the ten million dollar painting in Mother’s bathroom.
“Everyone OK?”
“Wonderful. Just come and take him home.”
“How did he get there?”
“No clue,” I said, looking up and down the empty street.
As I waited for Rufus, I tried to unpack what had just happened: a failed zombie suicide. Why in front of Mother? More to the point, why in front of me?
Senator Sheldon had blackmailed Mother to blackmail me to endorse him – which he no doubt regretted given recent events at Mother’s local Whole Foods. Was there a connection?
“I think I have an explanation for this,” Rufus said, bundling the Senator into the back of his Jeep.
“Can’t wait to hear it. Make sure the good Senator’s bodyguards put him on suicide watch. On the DL.”
“I want answers,” the Senator said with stentorian force. “Young man, I demand that you give me your phone.”
I shut the car door on Senator Shelby’s request, hoping I’d get back my fleece.
It took a good ten minutes to coax Mother off the window. She disappeared into her bedroom. Returning with a handful of pills, she poured herself a glass of Grey Goose, swallowed the pills with a generous slug of vodka and began adjusting and repositioning objets d’arts.
For his part, the artist known as XYZ hit Mother’s bourbon hard.
As he say shaking on the sofa, I informed the Frenchman that his patron and the Providence Police prefer he forget the crazed gunman who’d interrupted our tête-à-tête. X nodded enthusiastically for a full minute, so we were good there.
When her drugs finally kicked in, Mother flopped down on the couch next to X.
“I am too much inspired now!” X sighed. “I am going to bed.”
I helped the artist down the staircase to the guest bedroom. After tucking him in, I found Mother all but completely passed out on the sofa.
“John?” she said, jangling car keys alerting her to my imminent departure.
“Yes?”
“Slank jew,” she slurred.
“Mother, I’m sick and tired of living hand-to-mouth. I want in.”
Mother was convinced everyone was corrupt or corruptible. Her son’s inability to go along to get along offended her twisted sensibilities. “Admitting" that I was ready to abandon my morals for money came as welcome news.
The question was how welcome? I hoped the drugs, the vodka and the gun pressed against her temple had dulled her B.S. detector.
The next day I called Mother and used what Porsche salesman Mark Mingle called an assumptive close: I pretended she’d invited me to Miami to learn the ins and out of “you know."
“I told you about the jet? And the art?”
“Obviously,” I said, enjoying the ruse, happy to hear she’d bought my faux fall from grace.
“Wear something appropriate,” Mother said dismissively. “No sneakers.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I lied.
Breaking Point is the sequel to Reservation Point. Click here to buy it on Amazon. Breaking Point is published in installments. Click here to read previous chapters. Click here to follow The Truth About Everything on X.
It ^did^ get better!