Stolen Glances

The rain hadn't let up for three days, and neither had the ache in my left shoulder, the one that predicted weather better than any forecast. I sat in my office with my feet on the desk and a cold cup of coffee going stale beside me, watching water streak down the window and turn the neon sign across the street into a smear of pink and green.

The sign said *Murray's Pawn & Loan*. It had said that for forty years. Murray was dead. His nephew ran the place now, a kid with a neck tattoo and a nervous blink who sold more stolen watches than he did wedding rings. I'd been meaning to have a talk with him. Not today. Today I was busy doing nothing, which is a skill most people never master and I've honed to an art.

My phone buzzed. I didn't look at it. It buzzed again, and then a third time, and I knew without checking that it was him. Timothé never sent one text when he could send four. He texted like he talked, in bursts, like he was afraid the thought would escape if he didn't pin it down fast.

I picked up the phone.

*You're not answering.*

*I know you're in there.*

*I can see your light on.*

*Also your window faces the street and I'm standing across from Murray's.*

I looked up. Across the street, under the awning of the pawn shop, a figure in a dark coat stood perfectly still, rain sliding off the shoulders of a coat that cost more than my monthly rent. He raised one hand. A small wave. Like a man on a postcard.

I put down my coffee, walked to the door, and unlocked it.

He came in shaking rain from his hair like a dog, and the whole office smelled different immediately. Cedar and something citrus, some cologne I'd never been able to name and had never asked about because asking would have meant admitting I noticed. His coat dripped onto the floor. He looked at the coffee cup, then at me, and his mouth did that thing where it wanted to smile but he held it back.

"You look terrible," he said.

"Thanks. You look like a wet cat."

"I look *expensive*."

"You look like an expensive wet cat."

He took off his coat and hung it on the hook by the door, the one I'd installed for clients' umbrellas and which had never once held an umbrella. He was wearing a suit underneath. Of course he was. Navy blue, tailored so close it looked painted on. The faint scar along his jaw caught the light from my desk lamp, that thin white line he'd never told me the whole story about. I'd stopped asking years ago. We all have our scars. Some of us just hide them better.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" I sat back down and put my feet up again. He stayed standing, which was his way. Timothé never sat if he could stand. Never stood if he could move. The man was a verb, not a noun.

"I need a favor."

"You always need a favor."

"This one's different."

"They're always different."

He walked to the window and looked out at the rain. His reflection floated in the glass, sharp cheekbones, blue eyes gone grey in the dim light. For a second he looked tired. Not the kind of tired you fix with sleep. The other kind.

"There's a painting," he said. "At the Ashford Gallery. Opens tomorrow night. A private collection, one night only. The owner's a man named Delacroix. You've heard of him?"

"Everyone's heard of him. He's a ghost. Buys art, never shows his face, never sells. Half the dealers in the city think he's a myth."

"He's not a myth. He's a bastard. He's got a Modigliani that belonged to a family in Vienna. They lost it in '38. It's been missing ever since. It's going to be at the Ashford tomorrow."

I let my feet drop to the floor. "You want to steal it."

"I want to *return* it. To the family. What's left of them."

"Same thing, legally speaking."

"Legally speaking, yes."

I studied him. He was still looking out the window, which meant he didn't want me to see his face while he said the next part. I knew the choreography. I'd known it for eleven years, since we were twenty-two and stupid and he'd talked me into helping him lift a jade Buddha from a collector who turned out to be a mob accountant. We'd been friends ever since. Friends, and nothing else, which was a decision I'd made a long time ago and revisited more often than I liked to admit.

"You want me to case it," I said.

"I want you to come with me."

"To the gala."

"To the gala."

"Timothé. I own one dress. It's black. It's from a thrift store. It has a stain on the sleeve that looks like a small animal."

"Then we'll buy you a new one."

"I'm not spending your money."

"Then I'll steal you one."

I laughed before I could stop myself. That was the problem with him. He could get a laugh out of me when I was determined to stay serious, could make me forget I was supposed to be cynical. Eleven years of that. Eleven years of him showing up at my door with some scheme and me telling him no and then doing it anyway, because the truth was I'd rather be in trouble with Timothé than safe without him.

And that was the thing I didn't say. The thing I'd never said. Because he was my best friend, and because I knew him well enough to know that he loved his freedom more than he loved anything, and because if I said it out loud and he didn't say it back, I'd lose the only person who'd ever looked at my scarred face and seen something worth sticking around for.

I got up and walked to the window beside him. Our shoulders almost touched. The rain kept coming down.

"What's the play?" I asked.

He turned to look at me, and there it was, that smile, the real one, not the one he used on marks and marks' wives and gallery curators. It was crooked on one side where the scar pulled at it. It made him look younger. It made me feel like I was twenty-two again, standing in a stranger's backyard with a jade Buddha in my bag and my heart doing something I hadn't authorized.

"Delacroix is paranoid," he said. "He'll have private security. Two men on the floor, one on the door, cameras everywhere. But he's also a snob. He wants to be seen. He'll have a receiving line, a speech, a toast. Fifteen minutes where every eye in the room is on him."

"And you'll be somewhere else."

"And we'll be somewhere else."

"You said 'we.'"

"I did."

I looked at the rain. I looked at his reflection in the glass, overlapping mine. Two people who'd spent a decade and change pretending that what they had was simple. It wasn't simple. It had never been simple. But I'd built my whole life around the idea that I could keep it simple anyway, keep him at arm's length, keep the ache in my shoulder and the ache in my chest separate and manageable.

The trouble was, he was standing right there. Close enough that I could smell the cedar. Close enough that if I turned my head, I'd be looking at his mouth.

"Malone," he said, quiet.

"What."

"You're doing the thing."

"What thing."

"The thing where you decide something without telling me."

I turned. He was watching me with those blue eyes, and for once he wasn't smiling, and the rain kept falling, and the neon from Murray's turned his face pink and green and pink again. Somewhere below us, a car honked. Somewhere above us, the ceiling leaked into a bucket I'd forgotten to empty.

"I'll do it," I said. "But you owe me."

"I always owe you."

"Yeah." I stepped back, put the desk between us, sat down, and pulled the coffee toward me even though it was cold. "You do."

He grinned, and the moment folded itself away like a map, and he started talking about floor plans and guest lists and the name of the Modigliani, the *Portrait of a Young Woman*, and I listened and took notes and told myself that this was just another job.

It wasn't. But I wouldn't know that for another thirty-six hours.