Charlie Lawson, the client in The Van Gogh Job, is an 88 year-old African-American WWII vet who found the lost Van Gogh while serving as a supply truck driver in France late in the war. After Owen, an obsessed former I.Y.S. Insurance investigator tracks the painting to him, Charlie is threatened by retrieval specialists looking for the painting. The Leverage team agrees to protect Charlie and look for the painting but he will only talk to Parker. He tells her the story of his lost love Dorothy and how he wanted to run away with her. He went to war to prove to her father that he was good enough for her and found the painting on the body of a German sniper he shot. He decides to use the painting to fund a trip to Paris for him and Dorothy so they can get away from her father and be together, but Dorothy backs out at the last moment. Charlie asks her to keep the painting safe for him and she does by hiding it in the organ at the roller rink. Nate finds the painting, thwarts Owen's attempts to steal it at gunpoint and gives it to Charlie who chooses to donate it to the Boston Museum. Before they leave, he gives Parker some advice because she reminds him of Dorothy, particularly given her relationship with Hardison. He urges her to not waste time; to seize the chance that he and Dorothy never got.
Charlie's mother was a domestic for over 20 years before the war for a Mr. Harold Dole, a friend of Dorothy's father. Mr. Dole was presumably a fairly wealthy man as well, by virtue of being a friend of Mr. Ross, and also by the small house in a decent neighborhood that Charlie's mother's apparently good income was able to help buy. We see this in the present day part of the episode we see the pleasant neighborhood and its nice houses as Eliot goes "to the house where Charlie grew up" to look for clues.
Accomplishments:
- Is fluent in French, which Dorothy taught him; he has an ear for languages.
- Worked and lived in France, Botswana, and Australia after leaving Willamette City in 1945 after failing to run away with Dorothy, and did not return to the U.S. until the time the episode takes place, presumably 2011.
- Is a voracious reader, spending many hours in libraries.