Dead Anyway

by Chris Knopf

  “It’s a faaabulous property,” she told me. “You’ll just love it, love it, love it!”

  We stopped at Gerry’s shop on the way to Greenwich to pick up a sample of each item in the inventory. Though remarkably valuable on a pound-for-pound basis, the boxes were also remarkably heavy.

  “Next time we deal in exotic down comforters,” said Natsumi.

  I rented a room in the best hotel I could find in Greenwich, just to get a start on proper appearances. It wasn’t that burdensome a decision.

  “The Presidential is available,” said the desk clerk, “though we’ve been having some issues with the Jacuzzi.”

  Natsumi expressed disappointment, but we acquiesced after the clerk dropped the price-per-night to slightly below extortionate.

  The suite was twice the size of our apartment in West Hartford and far better equipped.

  “Did you know you could perform aromatherapy and pick your teeth at the same time?” Natsumi asked, bent over a woven basket of specialty comforts.

  We ordered in food from a local restaurant, and suffered the rest of the night in a bed that managed to be firm and fluffy at the same time. Over breakfast we planned the upcoming day, focusing on seeing the house and building out our wardrobes, two prospects Natsumi was honest enough to say were less than daunting.

  “And we need a nicer car,” I said.

  A FEW hours later, we drove down the long driveway to the big house in a new Mercedes E-class station wagon. A sedan version of the same car was waiting for us. A short, somewhat overweight woman in a luxuriant hairdo and white suede, floor-length, fur-lined coat got out of the car and greeted us.

  “Like I said, faaabulous,” she said, grabbing my hand and then lurching into Natsumi to apply a bear hug. Natsumi spun her nature in an opposite direction and gave her twice the hug back, nearly squeezing the wind out of the idiot woman.

  “Well, nice meeting you, too. Shall we go in?”

  The interior of the house was both grand and intimate. It was spotlessly clean, with not a whiff of mothballs or disinfectant. Stained oak paneling covered the walls, also festooned with traditional, representative art. Orientals on the oak and tile floors, rooms filled with sturdy, comfortable furniture smelling of embedded lemon oil. Lamps sprouting from oversized Chinese vases on the side tables. A massive three-foot frond encased in a glass frame above the fireplace. A library lined with bookcases stuffed to the gills and reaching to the sky. I didn’t bother to see the rest.

  “We’ll do six months in advance,” I told the agent. “Is tomorrow too early to sign the contract?”

  As we floated down the million-mile, tree-lined driveway, Natsumi said, “I know this all has a strategic purpose, but it’s fun, you gotta admit.”

  “I admit.”

  As if the day weren’t extravagantly materialistic enough, we slipped into New York and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening harvesting clothes and accessories from midtown department stores.

  After a leisurely, overpriced dinner in Soho, we made it back to the hotel a little before midnight.

  “Okay, that was another first,” said Natsumi, sprawled on her back on the sitting room sofa.

  “All this does have a strategic purpose,” I said.

  “I assumed so.”

  “I don’t want to be a wet blanket.”

  She picked up her head.

  “Then don’t. I know the score. Just let me wallow in the fantasy a little. You don’t know how much of a fantasy this is.”

  Recovering from a momentary lapse in compassion and understanding, I walked over and brushed her silky black hair out of her face.

  I SPENT most of the next day trying to crack into Florencia’s numbered account at the bank in the Cayman Islands. The problem was devilishly simple. I had the bank’s routing code and account number, but not the user ID and password. Without these, nothing short of an armed invasion would provide access to the account.

  I could have guessed at a few combinations based on my knowledge of Florencia, but the odds were long, and after five failed tries, the bank’s security system would lock out my computer forever. I could get another computer, but the outcome would likely be the same.

  The elegantly cunning Grand Cayman banking system anticipated these occasionally orphaned accounts, some bursting with illicit funds. They’d let plenty of time elapse, then swallow up the money. Should injured depositors or their heirs eventually turn up, things got worked out, usually yielding to the supplicants a generous percentage on the dollar. Another fine example of honor among thieves.

  It wasn’t until I remembered Florencia’s home computer stuffed in the Subaru with a bunch of other computer gear I’d been hauling around, that it came to me.

  I retrieved the computer from my car and set it on the desk, turned it on and slipped the MattBD boot disk into the CD slot. In a few minutes, I had control of the machine.

  Florencia wasn’t much of a tech head, but I didn’t think she’d leave access to a secret numbered account in Grand Cayman simply lying around her hard drive. I could start searching for alphanumeric combinations, but that was another slog.

  I went to my own computer and pulled a list of routing numbers for all the banks on Grand Cayman Island. I copied the list onto a flash drive and copied it into Florencia’s computer. Then I put all the numbers into a query box that searched the entire hard drive.

  Twenty minutes later it showed up in a folder called “Recipes,” in which there was a Word document named “Receta para estofado de cordero a la ostra.”

  I opened the document. The bank number, which correlated with the First Australia Bank (Cayman) Limited in George Town, was at the top. Then the account number, then the words, “Eagle House.”

  I stood up from the desk and walked to the end of the room where I could look out over the side yard. Eagle House was the dreary apartment block just off the University of Pennsylvania campus where she lived while attending Wharton. My circumstances were little better, living with three roommates in a squalid walk-up in South Philly, which I barely took note of, so absorbed was I by my graduate work in advanced statistical analysis.

  Here again, I was confronted by an impenetrable puzzle. With a brain that had lost the language of solutions.

  Or maybe not.

  The account code had to be of some length. There were ten characters in Eagle House. If A was one, and Z was twenty-six, the code could be 51712581521195. But that seemed too long, and too easy, even for Florencia.

  Ten digits. The length of a phone number.

  The phone number at her apartment in the Eagle House. Damn, I thought, what the hell was it?

  I went back to my computer and started writing emails, continuing well into the night.

  THE LAST email I wrote was to Evelyn telling her substantial funds would be flowing out of the shared account, just as I’d warned.

  I didn’t tell her why, or much of anything else, aside from reporting that I was feeling better than ever physically, and that I was making progress. She didn’t deserve so much ambiguity, and I was ashamed of that, but if I started to tell the full tale, I wouldn’t know where to stop. And there was always the matter of making her an accessory before, during and after the fact.

  I was sorely tempted to tell her about Florencia’s skimming operation. But then again, I didn’t know for sure—the matter still wasn’t totally settled. I decided to hold back the shock and disappointment until I was sure I had the whole truth.

  So I stuck with empty assurances and fell into bed feeling dishonest, but well-meaning.

  PROVING THE maxim that people have a tendency to expand the amount of junk in their possession to fill the amount of available space, it took us almost a week to move ourselves and what we thought were our meager belongings into the giant house.

  All the clothing delivered on our doorstep was part of the problem, though the larger issue was the disposition of my computer gear and related electronics, once spread across Gerry�
�s shop, the little house next to the gravel pit in Wilton and the apartment in West Hartford. I had twelve rooms to choose from to effect the consolidation, though surprisingly, this abundance made the selecting that much more difficult. I finally settled on the poolroom above the three-car garage, mostly because of the absence of a pool table, opening up space for a row of folding tables and a rolling office chair to flit from workstation to workstation.

  I put all the precious metal up there as well, in a small stack of cardboard boxes shoved into the corner. There was too much for a safe; and anyway, a safe was the best way to tell the world you had something to hide.

  Natsumi set about domestic arrangements, in an unapologetic reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Confronted with a kitchen twice the size of her prior living space, she stocked the cupboards, filled in the china cabinet and decorated the counter space with all manner of modern gadgetry.

  She interviewed cleaning and landscaping services—the latter at that time of year confined to plowing the driveway and hauling broken limbs from the yard—eventually settling on a husband/wife team from Colombia to manage the entire place.

  We installed a tanning booth in one of the spare rooms, where I spent some relaxing time obviating the need for daily makeup. The wig was a necessary annoyance, made less so by Natsumi’s deft handling.

  It was a decidedly agreeable interlude, and I succumbed to its pleasures in defiance of my abiding weariness and angst.

  ONE OF the delights of research is it often takes you into stunningly unfamiliar terrains. To say that my knowledge of Greenwich, Connecticut high society was rudimentary was to grossly overstate the situation. As with any anthropological study of a human subpopulation, one first had to gain some knowledge of their habitats, exclusive parlance and patterns of association.

  So I went to a good primary source—gossip columns—steeling myself against the natural revulsion this form of commentary spawned in me. I cross-referenced New York and Connecticut sources, developing a list of keywords that helped narrow the search, and after several hours of concentrated study came up with a short list of names.

  Then I wrote Henry Eichenbach and attached my list: “We know your proficiency with organized crime, how’re you on philanthropists? I know, they’re often one and the same. (Sparing you from having to make the joke yourself.) How would you rank this list, and who would you add or subtract?”

  An hour later he wrote back: “All in Greenwich? Interesting. Your list is fine. I can add a few, but the top spot is undisputed—Esme “Nitzy” Bellefonte and Aidan Pico. Pico’s a big money guy—surprise, surprise. Nitzy’s family founded the Bellefonte Gallery in Greenwich, based on a collection of Abstract Expressionism hoovered up by her grandfather back in the fifties, when the rest of the world figured those guys for a bunch of drunks throwing paint around the Hamptons (a fair description, in my opinion). It’s now a public museum, but the endowment barely covers expenses. Nitzy has greater ambitions than that. She’s constantly raising funds to buy contemporary works, believing she’s the rightful heir to her grandfather’s legendary taste. Which, to be fair, she mostly is. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you ask.”

  I wrote, “I want to throw a party. You’re invited.”

  “Of course,” he wrote back, “I’ll pick out my party dress.”

  I went back online and read about the dazzling Nitzy and Aidan, their museum and ongoing fund-raising activities. There was very little to distinguish one event from another, though themed events, such as, “Come As Your Favorite Villain,” “Night at the Opera” or “Meet Me at the Forum” seemed to attract larger crowds and deeper engagement with the cause. I shared these insights with Natsumi.

  “Absolutely brilliant, Alex. You’ve totally diagnosed the socio-ritualistic group dynamic of American wealth-class philanthropy.”

  “I detect a bit of sarcasm.”

  “Though I’ve never thrown a high society fund-raiser, I’ve been witness to some really cool events at the casino. So it’s right up my alley. Even if I think such things are the height of the superficial, the banal, even reactionary and decadent.”

  “Okay. Remember, you have to pick a new name. A pseudonym.”

  “I’ve always liked the name Eiko, though not as much as Charlene.”

  “Charlene?”

  “I grew up in New London. Whatcha expect?”

  “Charlene it is. Charlene Grenouille.”

  “So we’re married,” she said.

  “Better to uphold the artifice.”

  “I’ll need a ring. And so will you.”

  “We can do that,” I said.

  “And an engagement ring,” she said. “Can’t have the artifice without it.”

  “You’re really running up the tab.”

  “You told me already, if you’re going for a con job, you gotta go all in.”

  “Would you mind doing the buying?” I asked.

  “I’d hate it, but oh well.”

  Natsumi’s willingness to take on these onerous tasks just made me appreciate her that much more. Better yet, it allowed me to refocus my attention on a matter even less within my specific area of expertise: contemporary art.

  Bias is the enemy of research. People like me are not only trained to have an open mind, we are priest-like in our devotion to impartiality. You can’t do the job any other way. I had never studied a single subject without coming away filled with surprises. This taught me that you just don’t know until you learn. So be open to any and all possibility. There was no better preparation for an exploration of the art world.

  Having recently ranked professional assassins and Greenwich philanthropists, I felt well prepared to accomplish the same with living fine artists. A few hours later, I determined the only reliably agreed-upon criterion was gross sales, though financial success seemed as sure a way to attract derision and condescension as praise. After poring over countless images and representations, I could see the problem. While competition between artists and their patrons was undoubtedly fierce, constraints imposed by external authorities—like the nineteenth-century French Academy—were in little evidence. Variety of form and content, style and subject matter was limitless, and to my innocent and untrained eye, spanning the utterly absurd to the heartbreakingly sublime.

  Many of these works had found their way to the Bellefonte Gallery, and thus provided me some focus. One artist in particular seemed favored, a North African living in Milan named Joshua Etu who created sculptures from woven strands of electrical wire. I liked these quite a bit. Less so the cartoon versions of historical figures a woman named Shree made from fabric recovered from people who had died in homeless shelters. On the other hand, Englishman Wilson Franklin’s photo-realistic paintings of blank-faced children, in color within black and white scenes—riding the underground, grocery shopping, watching the Royal Family’s motorcade—were strangely compelling.

  “I THINK you should come with me,” I said to Natsumi.

  “Where?”

  “To see Nitzy Bellefonte and her husband Aidan.”

  “I know nothing about art.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll carry that burden. You can stick to social climbing.”

  “I know less about that.”

  “I’ll send you some links. You just have to memorize a few names.”

  The day before I had a messenger hand-deliver an engraved note to Nitzy at her home requesting an audience at the gallery. The note said my wife and I were new to Greenwich, that we were renting the old Rockefeller place in town while we looked for a place to buy, and were hoping to find an appropriate introduction into the local community. I proposed we hold a significant fund-raising event with the gallery as sole beneficiary. Naturally, I would seed the donations with a sixfigure gift of my own.

  The messenger left with a return note that somehow seemed eager and respectfully restrained at the same time. The appointment was for the next day at three in the afternoon.

  “What’s g
oing to happen when everyone starts googling us?”

  “They won’t find anything.”

  “And that’s not suspicious?” she asked.

  “Sure it is. It’s also intriguing and suitable to the purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  “To attract the attention of Austin Ott, the Third.”

  “It’s a big risk,” she said.

  “Big risk, big reward or big bust. It’s the kind of thing that happens in Greenwich every day.”

  THE BELLEFONTE Gallery, identified by a discreet brass plaque, was in a neighborhood of old mansions captured behind hedges and thick brick walls. A few of the places had been subdivided, sprouting more modern, but no less grand examples of the form. The land surrounding the gallery had remained intact, a matter of pride for Nitzy as revealed on the museum’s web site.

  Before we stepped out of the Mercedes, Natsumi asked, “What’s my budget?”

  “For what?”

  “The party.”

  “Less than five million dollars,” I said.

  “I don’t need that much.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand,” she said.

  “Okay. Spread it around. We need the friends.”

  The gallery officially closed at three, which explained the meeting hour. The door was open, and we were greeted by Nitzy Bellefonte in a small room with a ticket counter and a hardwood rack filled with art books and histories of the gallery.

  Her hair was such a perfect blend of black and grey it seemed impossible to be artificially colored, though I knew from my Google search that she was thirty-nine years old. Her features looked larger than in my memory of her photographs, and her skin had a more olive cast. Her face was youthful and brightly alert, like a terrier on the hunt. She wore a plain sweater dress and flats, though it was hard to miss the cluster of diamond rings when she held out her hand to Natsumi.

  “Charlene, you are darling.”

  Natsumi, unfazed, gave her a little bow.

  “Thank you. That means a lot coming from you.”