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Shooting Gallery

in which two ruffians do what they do best

By Max MillerPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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When the art came to life, we shot it in the head. We being me and Ronny Lipschitz at the behest of Steven Graff, because when the man with the largest mansion in Manhattan offers a couple of deadbeats twenty grand a pop, it’s in the deadbeats’ best interest to take the money and shoot some Basquiats.

Me and Ron don’t usually do hits. We consider ourselves purveyors of fine goods. If you need something smuggled, we’re your men. Oh, and we’re not above shaking someone down or being the muscle when someone needs to be shut up for their own good. Ron’s built like he was suckled on steroids as a baby. Even his smiles set people on edge. They’re the smiles of a panther settling on its prey.

Truth be told, I think he enjoys violence. Do what you love, right?

Meanwhile, I’m the good cop of the duo. I’ve got just enough fat around my waist to look like an agreeable pizza chef, and my smiles are disarming from what people tell me. But we aren’t murderers or hit-men. We’re go-fers.

In this case, we reasoned it wasn’t murder. After all, the portraiture may have gained sentience, but it couldn’t be said to be human. That’s what art does: it resembles humanity, but what I’m trying to say is Jack Nicholson isn’t a murderer even if he played one onscreen. So, when we cornered Picasso’s three prostitutes wandering nude around the Museum of Modern Art with their geometrically misshapen skulls and disproportioned limbs, we didn’t hesitate to put three bullets in them and splatter their enamel brains across the Pollock exhibit. We dragged the bodies out in trash bags, wrote down the catalog numbers of the deceased in our little black notebook, loaded up our brown van, and blew fifty bands in cash that night at a Midtown strip club.

From the museum we drove directly to Mr. Graff’s house, where he had us store the bodies in his basement. There was getting to be a big pile of them. We’d taken out three of Basquiat’s sheriffs, another naked chick I didn’t know the name of (painted by some Kenyan pervert), and Rembrandt’s Judas (who I let Ron shoot because he said he wanted to avenge Jesus himself and I generally let Ron do whatever Ron wants to do), and they were all down there in Mr. Graff’s smoking room. All the rare animals Mr. Graff kills on hunting trips get their heads mounted down in that whiskey-scented basement on the wood-paneled walls, and the bears, lions, and zebras were grinning down at the dead artwork like, “Welcome to the club.”

According to Mr. Graff, the private collections roused first. The first painting belonged to Daryl Winkner, a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager with an impressive private gallery on the East Side. His guests had just arrived for a wine and cheese pairing when an untitled Basquiat shambled through the living room soiree. It was still all rough lines and angles and gnashing teeth. It made no sound but ambled through the party looking for an exit, groping along the walls because there were only scribbles where its eyes should have been. Wine was spilled, investors were displeased, and Daryl found himself cowering behind the kitchen island clutching the handgun from his wall safe.

“It wasn’t until the early modernist works began to animate themselves that we realized they didn’t intend to harm us physically,” Mr. Graff said as we headed back upstairs. “Of course, even a zombified painting is uncontestably within its rights to disembowel and decapitate someone pointing a gun at it. We all said that to each other at Daryl’s closed-casket funeral. It seemed the proper thing to say.”

“Don’t matter if it’s a kid, an old person, or your own mother,” Ron said, looking up at Mr. Graff as we climbed a winding, marble staircase, his voice like a stale cigar. “Someone points a tool at you, you damage them.”

As he always did when Ron was being dead serious, Mr. Graff smirked and chuckled as if a dark joke had been made. To me, he said, “You boys can probably take it easy tonight, but keep your phone on you, Ken.”

“No problem, Mr. Graff,” I said.

He continued, “I’ll have the money wired to your accounts by the end of the day.”

“You know we appreciate it, Mr. Graff.”

We saw ourselves out, piled back into the van, and turned the engine over three times before it started all the way. We’d bought new cars with our bounties the previous week, but the van was still what we used on the job. It’s hard to fit body bags in the trunk of a Tesla Roadster.

We decided to book private rooms at the club.

“Clicquot for the table,” I said to the hostess from the passenger seat.

“And some for the bitches,” Ron chimed in.

I put my hand over the phone and turned to him. “Obviously some of it is for the bitches, moron. I don’t have to tell them it’s for the bitches. It’s against the rules for the bitches to drink on the job. Now, obviously, the bitches drink on the job and do a lot else besides. But the club needs to be able to look the other way, so you can’t just go telling them you plan on offering the bitches drinks.”

“I want to make sure they have bottles for the bitches.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “Make sure you have enough bottles for everyone in our party, ma’am. Are you satisfied, Ron?”

Ron mimed a chef’s kiss and rubbed his hands together in lascivious glee.

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The bitches was fantastic.

They even let us get a mite touchy during the private dances, and we were on the verge of convincing a pair of them to come home with us after their shifts when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pushed the girl in my lap off me and fished it from my pants.

“Ron, bud,” I yelled over the pulsing rhythm of generic house music, “it’s Mr. Graff. We gots to go.”

With a smack, the phone went flying across the room. I looked up at the cocked back palm of this stripper. She was glaring at me like I’d insulted her.

“Hey!” I yelled. “I’m a paying customer, lady!”

Now by that point the champagne had taken its hold, and my head rang at a frequency sharp enough to shatter my eardrums as I tried to make sense of what was going on. The room swayed in and out of my vision and I grabbed at the girl’s waist to anchor myself. She leaned down and purred in my ear like a sexy carburetor. The slap had been a kink thing, then, and I started to think Steven Graff could go stick it because no amount of money was going to stop me from getting in that pink.

“Do whatever you want to me, baby,” I growled.

She wrapped her hands around my neck, gently at first, caressing me. Then she started to squeeze. I pulled back instinctually, but she drew herself down and leaned into the hold. Strong hands for a girl of her size.

“What are you doing,” I wheezed.

“I’m killing you, baby,” she whispered.

I grabbed her by the forearms and yanked hard. She stretched like putty. Or, not putty, but paste. The sensation was like something out of an acid nightmare. My hands sank into her skin, and when I let go, I saw that my palms were stained.

Stained with acrylic paint. Nothing had ever felt so real.

Ron leapt from his seat, launching the girl on his own lap five feet back onto the dirty red shag carpeting of the strip club floor. She landed hard on her ass, already screaming for her manager and scrambling for the door before getting back on her feet.

Ron’s handgun deafened me at close range. Paint splattered across my new designer clothes, got into my mouth and nose. The smell and consistency reminded me of Elmer’s glue stuck to my hands in elementary school with an added overtone of acetone I huffed in high school. I pried the girl’s now-still fingers from around my neck and her body slumped to the floor like a bag of old hot dog buns.

Ron tucked the piece back into his waistband and offered a hand to help me up. I took it and we hightailed it out of the club, smearing traces of paint all over the steps on the way out. Even the bouncers didn’t want to go toe-to-toe with Ron. Saw we were leaving anyhow and decided they liked their internal organs intact.

Outside, on the street, we laughed and then hit the corner store for a couple forties.

It was a few weeks later we found out the art had all made its way to a few undeveloped blocks at the top of Manhattan and formed some sort of hippie commune. Of course, it fell to Ron and me to take care of it. It wasn’t a hit. It was retrieval of personal property. Graff and the other bigwig collectors said if they paid for the art, they could have the art shot. We went down there like the invasion of Granada and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody have as much fun as Ron did that day.

As for me, I just enjoyed watching him work. He’s a master of his craft.

art
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