We went out the door to the street. I almost had to jog to keep up with him. We stopped at an orange GMC box truck. It was nondescript except for a few large rust spots. One of the side-view mirrors was missing.

“Here’s $20 for gas. And this is a parking pass to be put in the window. Use it.” It was a special permit issued by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

I got in the truck and turned the key. The engine sputtered and then turned over. I rolled down the window.

“One more thing.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What painter could make solitude bearable?”

He was stooped over me again and his big creased face hung there framed by the truck window. His eyes were red. At first I thought this must be a joke, but I could see this was s serious question, serious to him in this very moment.

“Ah, hmm, maybe Vermeer,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said and walked off.

I pulled out and headed to the first pickup. It was In Soho on Greene Street. Driving cross town I thought about what I was doing. It was insane. Tim did not even know my name. He had not asked for a copy of my driver’s license or any identification. I also wondered would collectors and museums really allow someone to move their artwork in such a truck. It all seemed too bizarre.

I found a parking space in front of the building. I hit the buzzer.

“Yes,” a voice said.

“I work with Tim DeLong,” I said, “I’m here to pick up the paintings.” I looked down at my clipboard. It said 3 paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Catalogue numbers 2742, 2747, 2751.

“5th floor,” the voice said. I was buzzed in and went to the elevator. I rode it up. The door opened into what looked like a giant nursery of tropical plants. Exotic birds flew about, green parrots, gray cockatiels, blue gold macaws. “Hello,” I called. A little white poodle came running up to me. I walked further. “Hello.” I walked through an opening of palm fronds. I saw easels scattered with half finished paintings. The place was huge, the entire floor.

A fat, shirtless man appeared. He had black curly hair, and wore big framed eyeglasses and red high-top sneakers. He held a paintbrush in his hand. “We’ll be with you in a second,” he said. “There is some mineral water and fruit on the table if you like. Make yourself at home.” He gestured to his left.

I went to the table and grabbed an apple and ate it quickly, then a banana. I looked around and then put a tangerine in my pocket. A red bird flew low over my head and landed on a perch in front of me. I drank a glass of mineral water, and decided to pocket a second banana.

On the wall to my right hung a very large painting by Basquiat. I had never seen his work up close and now I was standing next to the angry colors of comic genius. The painting was like graffiti from a Haitian graveyard combined with a portrait of Frankenstein done by a homicidal 3-year-old who loved Sesame Street.

The distorted head and torso were black, the teeth a lopsided caricature of a skeleton smile in yellow and white. Red machine paint outlined the eyes.

It was like an African wood carving smashed into a canvas, then run over with tar and outlined by a lunatic with his mother’s lipstick. It was Brooklyn, dead bodies, garbage, ghosts, laughter, blood, Voodoo, Ethiopia. It was a queer joke inside a grenade.

This is the real deal, I thought. You did not want to look at it for too long for fear it could bestow a curse or drive you insane.

A fully dressed and younger man appeared. He wore paint-splattered khakis and a white t-shirt. “The paintings are ready; I’ll help you with them,” he said. We took three paintings wrapped in a thick plastic down to the truck and placed them carefully in the slots allotted for them. I passed him the clipboard to sign and he passed me a piece of paper to sign.

“I hope we see you again,” he said. “I bet you are an artist.”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Modest, aren’t we,” he said. “Bye, bye.

I was to drop off these paintings on Central Park South. I decided to take the Westside Highway north so that I could drive along the river for a ways. I swung the truck down to Canal Street and then west to the highway. I looked at the clipboard again; after the drop on Central Park I was to pick up paintings by Mark Rothko, Kandinsky and Paul Klee at Deutsche Bank on the East Side. Was I dreaming this stuff? How was this possible?

What was each painting worth? Surely several hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe much, much more. I had heard that after Basquiat’s death some of his paintings were selling for millions of dollars. How many years of rent could each painting pay for? I made some calculations. I would need to live longer or get a more expensive apartment.

I gave Tim a call on the walkie-talkie. “First pickup taken care of,” I said.

“Did you have any difficulty?” he asked

“No. It’s all good,” I said. “They were very nice, but they kept me waiting for a bit.” I had just passed the exit for 34th street. The traffic was light.

“No, you made them wait. Everything is canceled for the rest of the day. We are too behind schedule.”

“Ok,” I said.

“Come back to 7th Street and put the paintings you have in the racks and then lock the place up. There is money for you in an envelope on the desk. The key on the blue ring gets you in the door.”

“Ok,” I said. “So you won’t be there?”

“No, I won’t be,” he said. “Be back here tomorrow at 9 o’clock.”

He sounded like he was crying.

“Is everything all right?”

“No, things are not all right.” The walkie-talkie scratched off.

I was passing 42nd Street. The truck seemed to cut through the thin traffic all by itself.

Suddenly the Basquiat I’d seen on the wall came to mind in a mayhem of broken teeth and a flood of scarred and bleeding yellow. I started to laugh. I was sweating.

There were at least a half a million dollars worth of Basquiats in the back of this truck. For all I knew they were worth several million dollars. No one knew my name. Sure they could find it out quickly, but by then I could be long out of New York. The George Washington Bridge was only minutes away.

I felt compelled to steal them, not just for the money, but because it seemed like something that should be done NOW.

I saw the headlines: THIEF MAKES OFF WITH THREE BASQUIATS. I liked the sound of it. I could be that guy.

Traffic opened and I passed the exit for 72nd Street. It flew by, and then 96th Street, and 125th. Before I knew it I was nearing the approach for the George Washington Bridge.

Was I really about to steal the paintings? How would I fence them? What would my family think? Would I have to live abroad and send them coded letters? It was like one of those crazy fantasies you have after you buy the lottery ticket: who you will tell, who you will share the winnings with and who you will not . . . I was giddy, afraid of myself, high, my heart beating erratically, I had an erection. At what point was I actually stealing?  Was there a fine line between theft and a wrong turn off an exit ramp?

I floored it just to see how fast the clunker could go. I heard the paintings slide in their racks and thought, “Fuck, what if I crash?”  Was there some Haitian curse on these paintings? Had Basquiat sold his soul?

I slowed and then swung up the exit ramp. The bridge to Jersey and beyond veers to the left.

I hit a hard right. And I kept turning right until I was facing south again. The buildings up there all had blown out windows. I stopped at a red light and a woman crossing the street spit on the windshield of the truck. I turned on the wiper. The sweat on my neck turned cold.

I pulled over at the corner, in front of a pay phone. I got out and called Karim. He picked up the phone.

“How are you,” I said.

“Sleeping,” he said.

“Did you do any of your drawings today?”

“Yes, four. And I am very tired now.”

“Good,” I said. “Very  good. Good, good.”

I hung up the phone.

`

Read more stories from First Person Shooter

This article was written by John Rexer on Saturday, August 7th, 2010

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