The bidding on most of the art, and in particular on the
pieces that Alex had accidentally won, had started around one or two hundred
dollars. The auctioneer had started, of
course, at a significantly higher price, generally around one thousand dollars. When no one would bite, he’d lower the price
bit by bit until somebody in the crowd made the first bid.
Then the bidding would become fast and furious up until the
final few bids which, due to his love of a thrill, Alex couldn’t resist pushing
a little higher. He’d been betting the
other bidders would be willing to go higher, and had been completely wrong.
On this painting, the bidding started the second the
auctioneer gave the starting price of five thousand dollars. There was a smattering of applause, as well
as several shocked laughs. However, the
bids continued, and quickly.
Alex noticed that Victor stayed close by, watching the
auction with an expression of polite disinterest. Alex wondered, very briefly, what Victor was
up to, and how it was that Alex hadn’t noticed him sooner.
Alex admitted to himself then that he had not, actually,
been paying attention or looking for Victor.
That probably had something to do with it.
Anyways, the auction was continuing, and showing no signs of
slowing. They passed fifteen thousand
dollars in the blink of an eye. Any time
the bidding slowed slightly, a new group of bidders jumped into the fray.
Alex found the entire thing incredibly exciting. He felt his pulse quickening, and his face
was getting hot. He realized he was
probably perspiring quite a bit as well.
Twenty five thousand dollars came and went. Then thirty thousand.
The auctioneer kept his patter going, never missing a
syllable despite the constant new bids.
Alex noticed Victor stifling a yawn, but still watching the
action. For his part, Alex wondered if
people actually appreciated the painting, or if it was just valuable because it
was valuable and that’s why they were bidding.
Personally, he wouldn’t want the thing hanging in his house.
At fifty thousand dollars, the bidding began to slow down,
and but it continued with a new bid here and there as someone reached a point
where they just had to bid.
When it reached sixty three thousand dollars, it seemed to
Alex like it might be coming to a close.
The auctioneer was doing his best to coax a few more bids out of the
crowd. Alex decided it was time to bid.
He put up his bidding card, and got a whole new charge of
adrenaline as the auctioneer pointed at him and exclaimed, “Sixty four thousand
dollars! Do I have sixty five thousand?”
Things slowed down again, and people were craning their
necks around to see who the new bidder was.
The auctioneer was slowing down, and Alex was beginning to get very
excited about winning the painting he was actually there to buy. The auctioneer tried heckling a couple of the
other bidders into bidding again, and had reached “going twice!” when Alex
noticed Victor’s hand shoot up.
“Sixty five thousand dollars!” the auctioneer shouted, and
continued his patter. There was a gasp
from the crowd, and people looked around again to see who was bidding now.
Alex immediately put his card up, followed promptly by
Victor. The price continued climbing
quickly. Seventy thousand, seventy five
thousand, eighty.
At one hundred thousand, to Alex’s astonishment and
annoyance, another bidder joined in. The
bidding war continued between the three of them, Alex unwilling to give up on
what he was there to buy, and Victor Steel apparently simply unwilling to let
Alex win no matter the cost.
At one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the third bidder
bowed out.
Alex made a bid for one hundred ninety seven thousand
dollars, and thought he was going to win again.
Perhaps he had outlasted Victor.
Once more, he thrilled at the possibility, enjoying the sensation of the
adrenaline coursing through his body. He
wished the auctioneer would just hurry up and yell “Sold!” already.
He heard, “going twice” again, and held his breath.
Victor bid.
“Son of a bitch!” Alex thought he’d muttered. The crowd around him tittered with slightly
uncomfortable laughter. They were, after
all, there buying illegal art, and even criminals with a taste for fine art sometimes
have a tendency towards violence.
Victor looked over at Alex and winked.
The bastard is just
toying with me, Alex thought. He knew that Mr. Darcy had provided him with
deep pockets, but he wasn’t certain exactly where his limit was. He had no idea what Victor’s limit might be either.
The bidding continued anew, with the rest of the crowd
openly watching Alex and Victor as they bid against each other. Two hundred twenty thousand dollars, two
hundred thirty, two hundred fifty.
Alex bid for every price the auctioneer called, and Victor
did the same.
The thrill had already passed, and now bidding had become a
matter of flat out not letting Victor win.
Alex surprised himself by shouting “Three Hundred Fifty
Thousand Dollars!”
Conversation erupted around him, and Alex began getting a
lot of smiles from the people in his immediate area. Victor scowled.
“Three hundred seventy five thousand dollars!” Victor called
out.
Alex immediately called “Four hundred!” and hoped like hell
that he actually had that kind of money in escrow. He wasn’t sure what happened when you couldn’t
pay for stolen art you’d bought at an underground auction, but he was fairly
confident that it wouldn’t be good.
He saw Victor take a breath, ready to call out another bid
and Alex was fighting down a strong urge to simply punch him, when there was
suddenly a commotion in the back of the room, and someone shouted, “Police, run!”
Pandemonium erupted, as the crowd attempted to flee the room
through the doors they’d come in through.
Alex was momentarily bewildered before he regained his composure. He noticed Victor was no longer standing
anywhere near him.
Alex figured that he’d bought the paintings he’d won fair
and square, and that he’d also won the painting he was there to get by default,
since the bidding was interrupted and he’d been the last person to bid. As such, he rushed to the front of the room,
opposite the direction everyone else was running, to collect the paintings he’d
bought.
He was mildly astonished that no one was around trying to
protect the art. He quickly grabbed the
other paintings he’d bought, after some quick shuffling to get them out from
behind the other art that had been auctioned off that night.
Alex noticed Victor then.
He was grabbing the painting that was, by all rights, Alex’s painting, from the easel it was
on. He saw Alex looking, and hurried
off, struggling somewhat with the bulky, ornate frame.
Alex hoped he wasn’t ruining anything priceless and stacked
the paintings he’d bought, then hugged them to himself and chased after Victor.
It was one of the clumsier and slower high speed chases to
ever take place.
Victor spun to push a side door no one was using open with
his butt, and scooted through backwards, trying not to bang the frame on the way
through. Alex got to the same door as
it was closing, and kicked it open again, since his hands were full of art.
He hurried through the door, and emerged in an unfamiliar
hallway. Alex saw Victor halfway down
the hall already, half walking, half jogging, still grappling with the painting
and occasionally bouncing a shoulder off the wall as he missed his footing.
Alex hustled, as well as he could, after him. The paintings were starting to get heavy
already, and the frames had surprisingly sharp edges that were digging into his
arms. He was, for a moment, glad he wasn’t
also carrying the painting that Victor was doing his best to make off with at
the moment.
He chased after Victor, kind of half-galloping as he
struggled with the paintings he was carrying.
It seemed he was, at least, gaining on Victor, who had reached the end
of the hall and turned right. Alex redoubled
his efforts, got a better grip on the art he was carrying, and was able to
manage an actual jog down the hall.
Someone came out of an adjoining doorway, and Alex shouted “Art
coming through!”
The person who had stepped into his path stumbled back out
of it just in time, avoiding an uncomfortable and probably expensive collision.
Alex reached the corner and turned right to continue chasing
after Victor. He got there just in time
to see another door at the end of the hallway shutting.
“Shit,” Alex hissed, and hurried down the hall to catch up.
He had to contort himself and struggle a bit against the
heavy door in order to get through it, and Alex found himself in a stairwell. Victor wasn’t in sight, but Alex could hear
him hurrying either up or down the stairs.
Alex looked up between the railings, and didn’t see anything. He looked down then, and was beginning to
worry that Victor was going to be out of the stairwell before he knew which way
to go when he saw a bit of gaudy, gilt frame poke over the railing below him.
Alex started to hurry down the stairs after him. As he was doing so, he realized that he
really wasn’t sure how far down this staircase might go. He knew he’d gone up some stairs to get in to
the building, but he didn’t have to go up any others on the way into the room
where the auction had been. So he had to
be fairly close to the ground already.
He also knew that a lot of these old warehouses had two,
even three sub-basements.
Alex had no idea what he was going to do if he found he’d
trapped Victor in a sub-basement. He
also had no idea if Victor was armed, but he did know that he himself was not.
He heard a door bang open beneath him, and Victor muttering
curses.
Alex jumped the last few stairs to the next landing, and
immediately regretted that decision as the paintings he was carrying tried to
escape his grip.
He wondered if maybe he should just set them down and come
back for them, but then worried about what might happen to them while he was
gone.
He reached the bottom of the stairwell, and breathed a sigh
of relief that there weren’t multiple sub-basements to chase Victor
through. He struggled with the door as
well, and got through just in time to see Victor ducking through a door on the
far side of the building.
Alex was getting winded, and his feet were screaming at him
for trying to run in patent leather ballet flats. His arms were on fire from grappling with the
art as he ran.
He got through the doorway, and discovered he was in a
stairwell again. He heard Victor stomping up the stairs ahead of him.
“You know what? Fuck you, Victor,” Alex said.
Luckily for Alex, Victor was getting worn out as well. Alex came around the corner for the last
flight of stairs, no more than twelve feet behind Victor, and saw him struggled
with the door and just barely get through it as Alex reached the top of the
stairs.
Alex caught the closing door with his foot and shoved it
open again, twisting through the doorway, and then began gaining on Victor in
the hallway they were in.
Victor reached the end of the hallway first. There was a door to one side with a lighted “Exit”
sign over it, and he pushed through it, back-first again.
What happened next occurred so quickly that Alex wouldn’t
have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself.
And he wouldn’t have seen if he hadn’t been intensely focused on Victor.
Victor backed his way through the door, which appeared to
open into an alleyway, and had just turned and taken the first step to run
when, as quick as lighting, a fist, followed by an arm wrapped in a black chauffeur's jacket, appeared from somewhere just ahead of him. The fist connected abruptly with Victor’s
face, knocking him back against the door again. He slumped down to the ground, dazed.
Alex reached the doorway, and was amazed and relieved to see
that the fist he’d just seen was connected to none other than Mr. Expedient.
The driver reached down and plucked the painting from Victor’s
hands easily.
“I assume that you were here for this?” the driver said to
Alex.
“Um, yes. Um. Wow.
How did you…” Alex started to say, when the driver interrupted him.
“I did tell you I would be here when you were ready, I
believe,“ the driver said.
It took Alex a second to come up with a response, but he
finally said, “Well, yeah, you did, but how did you know I’d be ready? And coming through this door?”
The driver half-smiled, and said, “Who do you think shouted Police into a room full of wealthy petty
criminals? And there are only so many
ways out of this building, it wasn’t hard to figure out where you’d be
exiting. It did take you a little longer
than I expected, though. I got a little
worried I’d picked the wrong door. Why
didn’t you put down the art you’re carrying?”
!!! omg!
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