You think I asked for this job? You think my momma raised me to track down the frauds and crooks who skitter across the dirty underbelly of the international art world, tryin’ to take the conceptual art what ain’t theirs? No, she did not. But a guy’s gotta make a buck, and these days the buck ain’t easy to come by. So I do my job, I take my cash, and I go home and try to catch a King of Queens rerun before hittin’ the hay.

Take yesterday, for instance. I walk in to my office, and there’s a broad with legs that won’t quit, a pair of hooters that defy gravity, and lips that quiver and pout so pretty that you wanna give ’em their own midnight feature at the Uptown. What was she doin’ coming to a schmo like me? She’d been had, see. This no-good lowlife scum dealer took her grandmother’s wedding ring in exchange for what he said was an original Rauschenberg: an early draft of Erased De Kooning Drawing. When this broad’s grad student friend from NYU took a look at it, his peepers popped—until he looked closer and told her something looked fishy. Well, I hardly even had to glace at that shabby piece of paper to confirm it: this shady dealer, I told the dame, had been erasing drawings like they was going outta style—and though it was hard to know for sure, I told her, that probably wasn’t even a real De Kooning he’d erased, either. Them’s the breaks.

I hated to part company with that lovely lass, but me and my crowbar had a lunchtime appointment at a warehouse down by the docks—I’d got a tip that a buncha crooks was forging Fluxus. Sure enough, when I kicked that door open I caught ’em red-handed: poised over a vintage typewriter, tapping out phrases like IMAGINE THE TREES CRYING. They squealed like pigs when I turned my revolver on ’em. “I don’t need to snip your clothes off to know you ain’t no Ono,” I snarled as the boys in blue rushed in behind me and cuffed the bastards.

I had a very late, very liquid lunch in the park across from the museum—in my experience, stakeouts go best when I’m well-lubricated with Cabin Still Whiskey. I even took a nap on a bench; I knew my guy wouldn’t show until after dark. Around 10 PM, I started looking sharp—and sure enough, not five minutes later a shabby-looking homeless lady walked over to the edge of the park and stood stock still. I sidled over and grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm behind her back and whipping off her shawl. Sure enough, it was no lady—it was Lex LeWitt, the international art thief. “The gig is up, Lex,” I spat. “I’ve got you in receipt of stolen property.”

“What?!” he cried. “You’ve got no proof!”

“You wish,” I said. “We know your whole scheme: the guard you bribed in the inside just beamed Robert Barry’s Telepathic Piece to you. That’s a priceless piece of conceptual art, and the only question in my mind right now is whether your case will go to jury or whether the cops down at the precinct will open your skull to go looking for it.”

Once the paddy wagon came for that nefarious nimrod, I slapped on some aftershave and headed down to Louie’s Lounge. A certain female had just got her family heirloom back from that pathetic pawnbroker, and she’d just texted me a pic of herself wearing it—and nothing else.

This ain’t the most glamorous job in the art world, but it does have its perks.

– Jay Gabler, Ph.D., P.I.