“You know who I am?” the boss asked, his question tinged with a strong Germanic accent, clearly surprised by Emz's initial exasperated reaction, which was not what he had been expecting.
“Yes. You’re the real Matthias Drexler.”
“Real?” Drexler asked, even more surprised by the reply of his captive. He glanced questioningly at his henchman, who shrugged in return.
“Fuuuuck,” Emz groaned, looking up at the ceiling of the limo, then dropped his gaze back to the real Drexler. “He had the balls to question whether he could trust me!” Emz bitterly laughed at the memory. “Fucking arsehole!”
“What are you talking about? Who are you talking about?” Drexler asked impatiently, clearly this conversation was not going as he had expected.
Emz screwed up his face, as a thought struck him. “And he was wearing those big heels.” Emz opened his eyes and looked at the confused real Drexler. “I thought it was you being all, umm, stylish, but he was wearing lifts!”
“Who are you talking about?” Drexler demanded.
“The other you, the one I met in your gallery?” Emz explained, as though it was obvious. “And the picture with the guinea pig on the mountain – it was clearly fake,” Emz added, shaking his head at the realisation that he had been completely conned.
“Guinea pig? Mountain?” Drexler questioned, then realised what Emz meant. “That photo is real. I was holding a golden Murmeltier in the Austrian Alps, near where I was born.”
“Sure, but he faked a version of that photo with him in it to trick me,” Emz explained.
“Who is this other me?” Drexler demanded again.
Emz took in a long breath. “Okay, I’m assuming you had a painting stolen?”
“Ja, yes,” the real Drexler pointed directly at Emz. “By you.”
“I assume you have a video recording or something?”
“Ja, yes,” the real Drexler nodded. “It shows you at my gallery, and leaving with my painting.”
Emz looked confused. “It shows me on my own inside your gallery?”
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The real Drexler paused for a moment. “Not inside, you disabled those cameras.” He resettled his thick platinum glasses on his nose. “Are you saying there was someone else inside?”
“Yeah. I got a job to deliver that painting from someone who looked like you,” Emz answered, his voice filled with earnestness. “He said he was the artist… And thinking back now, there was a lot of fake shit about him, but he genuinely seemed reluctant to part with it, so I was properly tricked.” The words ‘he was the artist’ seemed to strike a chord with Drexler, as his eyes glazed over and he fiddled with his thick glasses in thought.
After a moment, he refocused on Emz. “Describe him, this other me.”
“Well, seeing you in person, he was slimmer across the chest and shoulders, his nose was smaller and pointier, as was his chin.” Emz looked down at Drexler’s shoes, which had flat soles. “As I said, he was wearing extended heels, so if he wore them to match your height, then he was probably 4 to 5 cm shorter than you. And he had really long, thin fingers – much daintier than your hands.”
Drexler slowly nodded. Emz guessed that he knew the man being described.
“Look, I just did a job,” Emz explained. “Anyway, how did you know it was me?”
“My technical consultant,” Drexler waved a loose hand upwards, roughly towards where Sanna’s apartment was. “He found talk about the illegal sale to Bogdan Petrovi?, and that you were involved, and that you were also looking for a new technical person yourself. So we arranged this meeting, and Morgan and Madison were waiting for you. They’ve seen the recording from my gallery’s external camera, so they brought you down to me.”
Emz nodded at the explained series of events. “So what now?”
Drexler fidgeted with his glasses as he thought, then finally reached a conclusion. “We were not aware of someone else acting as me. I was going to deliver you to Petrovi? as a thief and swap you for the painting, but instead, I will give you a chance to retrieve the painting and reverse the deal.”
Emz sat and grimaced. “I really don’t think Petrovi? is going to accept a return of the painting.”
“That is your problem,” Drexler sneered. “Get my painting back in, say, one week, or I’ll send Morgan and Madison to kill you. If you try to leave the city, I will have no choice but to tell Petrovi? that you scammed him, and I expect he will be able to find you anywhere, which will be much worse. Now get out.”
On cue, the henchmen swiftly reached forward, opened the door, and practically pushed Emz out of the limo, where the twins Morgan and Madison were waiting on the snow-covered kerbside.
Emz stumbled out, just about avoiding falling onto the cold, hard ground.
Morgan, or maybe Madison – their names didn’t help clear up who was who or their genders – pointed to a tote bag resting against the apartment block doorway. “Your things are in there.” They then walked around him on either side, as an effort to intimidate, and climbed into the limo themselves, which then drove away.
Emz picked up the tote bag, which had ‘Drexler-Kunstgalerie’ written on the side and contained all his personal items. He took them out one at a time and put them back about his person, then stood on the street, unsure of what to do or where to go. Instead, he just looked up into the night sky. “Seriously, fuck my life.”
