Page 12 of Mimosa (Murphy's Pub #2)

Chapter Twelve

The Lion’s Den, Chapter…whatever it would be.

Mims always thought that if someone wanted to write a book about his life, he’d want to name the chapter heads.

The Lion’s Den would not only be amazing for a chapter title, but it was exactly how he felt. Like he was some Roman guy, at the gates of the colosseum, ready to head in and face the hungry lions.

Yes, that was how he felt, but he was with his own gladiator, and Sonny was bigger and stronger in his eyes than all the lions in the world.

They parked in front of a house near Westminster in a residential neighborhood that was built in the sixties. All the homes were brick, a mix of blonde and red brick, and they all looked similar but the owners had added to them so they were no longer carbon copies.

There were several cars and SUVs in the driveway and in front of the house, so Sonny parked across the street and told Mims, “No details about your job more than bartending. Remember that they don’t know that you know about them, about what they are as a collective.”

“Got it.”

“I will be by your side every second that I can. And Mims?”

He turned and stared into those dark eyes. “Yeah?”

“You, right now, already, whatever I should say, you mean the fucking world to me. I promise you, I will take a bullet before I let you be hurt in any way.”

Tears welled in his eyes as he whispered, “You mean that.”

“Yeah. I do.”

He believed him.

“Don’t cry,” he said with a chuckle and he stopped one of his tears with his thumb. “Let’s do this.”

“Okay.”

Mims got out of the truck and met Sonny in the quiet street. They walked together to the front door and before they got twenty feet from it, they heard music and loud talking.

“Good. They’re drunk. This will be much easier.”

“Easier? A lot of people get violent when they’re drinking.”

“You’re with me, Mims. Okay?”

Mims nodded but those words didn’t work like Sonny had thought. He was shaking a little, but he forced himself to steady. Sonny knocked loudly to be heard over the din, and a man opened the door almost immediately.

It was Sandy. “Sonny! Hey, buddy!”

He was already quite drunk, and he hugged Sonny like he hadn’t seen him in years. “My good, good friend,” he said sloppily.

When he noticed Mims, he let go of Sonny and closed the distance quickly to Mims, grabbing him in hug as well. “You’re that little bartender!”

As he was hugging Mims, however, he said, in a steady, sober voice, “If Sonny gets pulled away for any length of time, find me.”

As he pulled back, Mims got a wink from him and Mims smiled, suddenly much steadier, knowing two people were on his side.

They were brought into the house with people all over the place holding bottles of beer or glasses with liquor in them. The smell of the place reminded Mims of the pub on a busy night with people knocking into one another, liquor slopping over the rims of their bottles.

This wasn’t quite as crowded and people weren’t sloppy yet, but he saw a lot of glassy eyes staring his way once he and Sonny moved inside the house.

A big man in his fifties came to them, shaking Sonny’s hand first. He had a terribly squared jaw and two big pock marks sat in the middle of his left cheek.

Not handsome at all, but there was something cold about him that gave Mims the chills.

“Who is this, Aguilar?”

“This is my date, Franklyn. Mims, this is Franklyn Monroe. Franklyn, this is Mims.”

Mims’s eyes widened for a moment, and he hoped it was overlooked. He couldn’t help it. Franklyn…Franklyn Monroe was the leader of the BBC. The head of the cartel that was the sworn enemy of good people.

Hatred radiated from him as he shook the man’s hand, and he tamped it down as hard as he could to plaster on a fake smile. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Monroe.”

“Sgt. Monroe,” he corrected, and his own fake smile was fucking frightening. “But please, call me Franklyn.”

“Mims? That’s a strange name.”

“It’s a nickname and the name I go by mostly, Franklyn.”

“Well, Mims, Sonny, get yourself a drink and come outside. We were just about to start the barbeque. There is beer outside, and my wife set up tables for us.”

Sonny set his hand on Mims’s lower back and led him gently to the sliding glass doors that brought them to the back yard.

Nice enough, it was, a lawn, two mastiff dogs playing in a corner, two flower beds with roses and lilies cutting off the stone patio floor from the lawn. Four tables were set up and at least twenty chairs, music playing, and everyone that hadn’t been in the house waved and greeted Sonny.

Mims was used to crowds, sure, but this was different. He was on display in a completely different way than at the pub. There, people came because they liked to be together, and they liked that the bartenders were enjoying the night with them.

This…this was a bunch of terrible people looking to make sure that Sonny was just as terrible as they were. That his new fella couldn’t stop him from that course.

Dizzy from all the introductions, Mims knew he’d never remember all the names, but he tried. Taran and Sonny had already put together a list, but they were also sure Sonny didn’t know them all.

Franklyn and the woman, Marion, gave him a million questions, but they did manage to make it seem like they were just interested in him as a person instead of making it obvious they were grilling him.

He drank a beer as they sat on the lawn together, eating their hamburgers. Sonny leaned in to ask, “You okay?”

“As good as I can be.”

“You’re doing great. I can tell they’ve stopped worrying about you.”

“Really? Why?”

“They asked the questions. You answered well. Sure, you are a thief on the side, but they think you don’t know about them. You also didn’t come in here with gold around your neck, bragging about money.”

“That would be stupid.”

“They count on people being uninformed, Mims. We, as cops, count on people not knowing their rights, on them thinking we can throw them in jail without reason. Stupid is a harsh word for it.”

“Sorry, but, who would do that?”

“You have no idea.”

“Wow. Okay.”

A couple came to sit near them as the last of the light left the sky. While he was introduced to them, he barely heard their names, as he knew the time was coming that his family would be risking themselves to get a very expensive painting.

*****

Abs laughed at him, but Haze didn’t care. “I accidentally bleached my other shirt,” he said as he looked down at himself.

The long sleeved back turtleneck had been great for going on jobs, but the huge bleach stains had taken care of that. So, he’d gone last minute to the thrift store down the street and all he could find was an itchy wool sweater. As he absently scratched at his neck, Abs laughed again and said, “Come on. I have something.”

“I would never fit in your clothes, Abs.”

“Not mine. I bought it for my ex the day before I caught him with that ugly bank teller.”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, that might fit!”

He followed Abs to his room, catching Goldie on the way. “Where did you get that sweater?”

“From hell,” he said as he scratched more.

“I had one when I was a kid that looked like that. Hated that fucking thing.”

“Yeah, I’m burning this thing after.”

Abs’s color in the pub was green, and he loved the color. As their rooms reflected their colors, Abs’s was no different. Besides the black walls he’d painted a couple years back, he had a black duvet over his bed with a soft grass green blanket folded across the bottom with matching green throw pillows across the top.

A giant green vase in the corner held yellow grass and cattails and there were plants here and there, along with other subtle green accents. He really was great at bringing the looks of rooms and people together.

Abs got into his closet, and at the very end, pulled a nice black shirt from the hanger.

It was a V-neck, soft cotton, long sleeved, and thankfully not a turtleneck. His neck was on fire from the sweater.

“I have some cream for that,” Abs said as he stripped off the shirt and let it fall to the ground. “Looks nasty.”

“I feel like I’ve been dipped in bees.”

Abs rubbed cream on his neck and shoulders while they both stressed together silently, thoughts of Mims in the snake pit were heavily on all their minds.

Abs was tinier than Mims, and looked much more fragile, but in reality, Mims was their pet. The entire place looked after him, and worried over him. They’d always worried over his choices in men, the obvious reasons he went for old men, but the new guy was different and made them all more anxious.

Abs finally brought it up in words rather than their furrowed brows. “Do you think…?”

“He’s okay. As much as I don’t particularly like Sonny, I’ve seen the way he looks at Mims. He’d have to be a great liar to pretend to care about someone like that.”

“He’s an undercover cop, Haze. They’re better than the best Shakespearean actors because their lives depend on their lies.”

“Yeah. I’ve thought of that too. What if he’s…what if he’s really one of them? If he’s putting on this show to…find out about us?”

“That’s a lot to do to find out about a group of thieves that only thieve once in a great while. Before Cosmo got here and we did the…you know, the car, we hadn’t done another for a very long time,” Abs reasoned.

“Make up your mind,” he said, laughing.

“I can’t! That’s why I’m worried. It could easily be either way.”

Haze got up and pulled Abs into his arms. “I know. I do know.”

Goldie stuck his head in the door. “Stop fucking around and let’s go.”

“Hold your horses,” Abs said to his best friend. “Haze is broken out in a rash.”

“Shit, that sucks, but we gotta go.”

“I’m getting my shirt on. I’ll be right down. Abs, go on ahead, I’m right behind you.”

Haze was worried, but he couldn’t let his worry for Mims get in his head while they had to keep their minds on the prize.

Maxfield Parrish was a great artist. One of Haze’s favorite, though Haze had about five hundred favorite artists. He’d loved art since he could remember.

For him, though, not many did fantasy as well as Parrish. His painting evoked feelings of whimsy, light, air, freedom and love. Haze’s favorite painting of Parrish’s was Air Castles.

In that painting was a young man sitting atop a cliff, a random tree branch extending over the cliff and into the air.

Bubbles around the young man in various sizes add to the lighter than air feeling the painting invokes. A mysterious castle shrouded in the clouds in the background gives way to the fantasy element that Parrish was famous for.

The palette of muted blues and various shades of grays and whites fulfills both the fantasy and breezy feeling of the painting. The more Haze looked at it, the more in love with it he became, but that wasn’t the painting he’d faked for the job.

That was Daybreak and it was nearly as exquisite in Haze’s mind. As he’d painted the two thick white columns and draped and wrapped clothing on the figure lying on the ground, he felt drawn to everything Grecian.

In fact, the entire time he’d painted the fake, he’d had a terrible craving for feta and olives. Testament to the vitality of Parrish’s work, he figured.

The cylindrical container with the strap in the van that Cosmo had boosted earlier that week, sat across his lap the moment he settled in the back on one of the wheel hubs. It was precious to him, but he would let it go, and his secret dream was that the man that had the original would never know.

A testament to his own skills.

When he recreated a painting, he was inside of the mind of the painter like no onlooker could ever be. The brushstrokes, every single one of them done with a purpose and love, and he could feel what the original painter felt the moment he set his brush to the canvas.

In his hands was art, whether copied or not. Sure, it was wrong to do what he’d done, but when he thought about the person who had the original, when he was imagining how the person bragged, not about the painting, but the price he’d paid…

People like that, who didn’t appreciate the intricacies of it, rather than the price, well, they didn’t deserve it. At least in his mind.

The men were quiet on the drive, off in their own thoughts of their roles in the heist. Abs was absently drumming his fingers on his knees, and Cosmo drove with his brows drawn, jaw clenching.

The walkie came on with a little whine as Murphy drove the other car in a completely different route. “How are you all?”

Goldie, who was in the passenger seat, got on the radio and said, “We’re good. We’re ready.”

“I’ll meet you as planned. Good luck and God speed.”

Haze wasn’t nervous, per se. He was ready. They’d done these jobs enough that any apprehension they had left him ages ago.

They were a good team. Connor Murphy was excellent at getting the right people together to do jobs like they did.

Goldie turned his head to tell them all, “Okay, remember, we’re heading into the side door, the one for the staff. He has a live-in maid that goes to bed at nine, and a driver, who is currently driving the guy around. We have to be quiet, work fast and get out. I haven’t noticed her getting up a lot. There’s a light on for half an hour, but it’s faint, like a tablet.”

“She probably reads before bed, on an e-reader,” Abs said.

“That’s what I figured. And, twice, he’s come into the house and she never got up, so I think she either sleeps soundly, or she may just be used to him coming in late. She won’t think it’s a robbery if she doesn’t hear glass breaking or other noises like that.”

Haze agreed. “My tools are all hand tools, so there is no motor noise to take the painting out of the frame.”

As many times as he’d practiced, on every kind of frame, well, if he didn’t get it, he was going to hate himself. If they couldn’t get it out of the frame, the job was done.

Cosmo dropped them off near the house, in the trees behind it. There was a fence and a long back yard to pass through that had several motion lights.

Goldie, when staking out the place, used a drone to fly around the yard to find all the motion lights, and he and Haze together, charted the course through the yard. They took the lead as they got over the fence and made their way through the course they’d set, not setting off one motion detector light.

As the side of the big home, Goldie and Haze stopped to let Abs go first to the side door. “I’m on,” he whispered, taking out his little tool kit, his minicomputer and he started his work.

Haze realized years ago that he was not the only artist among them. Hippy could play music that made them all melt with happiness and soft smiles. The things Mims could do on the computer, well, they were pure art.

Goldie could read people and places like he’d known them all his life, and Cosmo worked cars like he’d built them from the ground up.

Abs, well, Abs and his skills with security systems was epic. If he’d never worked on a particular system, he watched a video or messed with a practice system just once and he had it mastered. He could break into safes, into homes, and get around any keycode like he could sense the numbers to punch.

It took him all of three minutes before the lock disengaged on the side door and he was smiling over at them. “In,” he whispered.

“My boy,” Goldie said and he kissed Abs’s head as they passed.

Haze moved past Abs then the three of them were in the house together, and, from the blueprints of the home, they knew where each room lay and which of those rooms to avoid.

The painting was in the main living area, a huge space with tons of gaudy artwork and sculpture. Haze glanced around, the distaste for the place evident. Whispering, Abs asked, “Is any of this stuff good too?”

“It’s all good. That’s a fucking three hundred grand Ming vase over there holding roses. Jesus, some people do not deserve the beautiful things they own.”

He could tell Abs was itching to take more, but he stopped him. “We aren’t getting caught because we have a replacement.”

“How good are you at making vases?”

“Not.”

“Damn.”

“Will you two get over here? Abs, there are wires back here,” Goldie said as he lay his cheek to the wall to get a look behind the painting with his tiny flashlight.

“Oooh, cool,” Abs said, and he went into work mode immediately. Haze watched him in awe, but then his eyes moved to the painting, and he was captured.

Always, imposter syndrome hit deeply when he saw the real paintings he made the copies for. Stepping to it, holding the beam of the flashlight to slowly move from the rocky mountains in the background to the column and the two people, how serene their faces were.

Haze wondered what Parrish was feeling as he painted those two figures. Was he feeling that same way? Serenity washing through him so fully that he felt the need to share it with the world?

Or was he anxious and worried? Haze thought, well, that would actually make better sense. Feelings of stress overwhelming Haze was always when he wanted to paint a world in which those worries didn’t exist.

A lone daisy, growing through a cracked piece of concrete. A piece of paper, escaping the confinement of staples or tape and flying freely in a strong breeze.

To take a brush across a piece of canvas, that soft hum of the bristles scraping the fibers, the sudden appearance of the color in it’s wake…

“Haze, you still with us?” Goldie asked.

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“Good,” Abs said. “Because this was a fake. There’s not one thing this wire is attached to.”

Goldie helped Abs take the painting off the wall, and Haze stiffed with tension, fearing that Abs had been wrong.

There was no alarm, so Haze took out his small tool kit and began to take the painting from the frame while Abs and Goldie looked out for the maid or anyone else that might be in the house they didn’t account for.

Haze felt the canvas in his fingers once it was free of the oak frame. He felt the age of it, just over a hundred years old, and it felt alive in his gloved hands. After he rolled it, he handed it to Goldie while he took out the fake, worried, as always, that it would be discovered immediately, that the headlines would scream about the stupid hack that had painted it.

That had never happened. To his knowledge, none of the fakes he’d painted and traded for the real artworks had been discovered. But there was always that fear.

After he got the painting into the frame, and Goldie rehung it, Abs nitpicked, “It’s not straight.”

“Abs…”

“Well, it’s not. Wouldn’t it suck to be found out by some OCD dude that would notice something like that?”

“Like you, you mean?” Goldie whispered with an almost silent chuckle.

“Exactly.”

Goldie fixed it while Abs supervised and once it was perfect, they gathered their things, and Haze got the real painting into the cylinder.

They made it outside without a problem, and Abs fixed the security system. Following the same strict path back to the fence, Haze held the cylinder a little too tightly. Inside of it was a work of art, real art, the kind that inspired and made people see the world differently. Maybe that was the point of it. Art made people see the beauty of the world when they couldn’t find any in life.

Murphy picked them up at the end of the block and they were gone into the night, the cylinder on Haze’s lap, and his phone in his hand as he texted Mims.

We’re out.