Murder at the National Gallery

by Margaret Truman

After an abbreviated lunch with Lynn Marshall at which Mason announced that he intended to recommend her for the promotion—amazing, he thought, how pleasant things become when you’re giving someone what they want—he met his mother’s plane and took her to the Watergate. “You settle in, Mother. I’ll pick you up for dinner at six.”

  He returned to the National Gallery and looked in on the Caravaggio gallery, where final touches were being put on the exhibition for its opening at noon the following day. He then checked his office for messages before heading home for a quick shower and change of clothes. The phone rang as he was about to leave. He debated; he was running late and didn’t want to keep his mother waiting. But his hand automatically went to it. “Hello.”

  “Signor Mason?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “I am calling on behalf of Mr. Franco del Brasco.” The heavy Italian accent caused Mason’s heart to thud against his chest.

  “Mr. del Brasco wants to know whether everything is in order.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? Everything is—who are you? What’s your name?”

  “Mr. del Brasco wishes you to know that he expects your business with him to be carried out as agreed upon.”

  “Of course. As agreed.”

  “I will tell Mr. del Brasco. He wishes you to telephone him at your earliest convenience.”

  Luther wanted to say that he was not about to discuss anything with someone who refused to give his name but wasn’t sure that was prudent. “Tell Mr. del Brasco,” he said, “that everything is going as planned. And I would appreciate it, sir, if neither you nor Mr. del Brasco telephoned me here. He has my home number.”

  “Of course. Congratulations on your exhibition. I look forward to seeing Grottesca.”

  “You? You have a ticket?”

  “I understand it is very beautiful.”

  “The breakfast? Will you be at the breakfast?”

  “Have a pleasant evening, Signor Mason. Arrivederci.”

  He tried to put the call out of his mind during dinner at J. D. Cook’s, choosing to take his mother and Julian there because it represented the quintessential Washington power restaurant, at least for the moment; there would be a D.C. celebrity or two to point out.

  The maitre d’ raised an eyebrow (Julian wore his favorite black turtleneck sweater; at least he hadn’t worn pants with expensive holes) but said nothing. Sadly, there were no familiar faces in the restaurant that night, just dark-suited lobbyists, back room powerbrokers whose effectiveness depended in part upon a lack of public recognition.

  Mason felt very much the spectator during dinner, as he often had when his mother and Juliana forged their close relationship. Now, he welcomed it. Julian demonstrated a surprising spark while talking with his grandmother, and her spirits seemed buoyed by being with her only grandchild, her eyes glistening a few times when Julian recounted stories from his teen years with her.

  “Your father says you want to move to Paris,” Catherine Mason said as dessert was served.

  “Yes. To live with Mother. And to study.”

  “Your father says he likes the idea.”

  The son looked at his father and managed a smile.

  “I think it’s a good idea, too,” she said.

  “I’ll be helping him get settled there,” said Mason. “Paris is expensive.”

  “You should,” his mother said.

  “I’ll be sending Julian money.”

  “Sending?” Julian said.

  “Yes. I mean, not all at once. Not right away.”

  “I can help you, Julian,” his grandmother said.

  “Would you?”

  “There’s no need,” Mason said. “I will have—I may write another book about Caravaggio. The advance will be enough.”

  “But I need some now,” Julian said directly to his grandmother. “I can’t stand it here in Washington anymore. I’d leave tomorrow.”

  Mason felt a flush spread over his cheeks. “We can talk about this at another time.” He knew his mother had some savings, enough when combined with her pension and insurance proceeds to live comfortably in Indiana. That Julian would use this dinner to seek money from her was inappropriate, he thought. Sad, but not surprising.

  “I’m sorry, Grandma, but I have to leave,” Julian said after finishing dessert. “I’m meeting someone.”

  “So soon?”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow at the opening.” Julian stood and kissed her forehead. Then, as an afterthought, he bent over and awkwardly embraced her. “Good night, Dad,” he said.

  “Such a handsome boy,” Catherine said when he was gone. “He looks like Juliana.”

  “Yes, he does, doesn’t he? About moving to Paris—there’s no need for you to give him money. I’ll be able to support him until he’s settled and has a job.”

  His mother smiled sweetly. “That’s good,” she said. “He’s your only son. You should help him any way you can.”

  “Well,” Mason said, placing his hands on the table and sitting upright, as if injecting energy into his posture, “What would you like to do for the rest of the evening?”

  “I’m very tired,” she said. “The flight made me tired.”

  Luther was not unhappy to hear that because he was exhausted. “Then I think the best thing to do is take you back to your lovely suite in the Watergate and let you have a good night’s sleep. It’s a fine hotel. Glad the break-in and all the notoriety didn’t spoil it.”

  “It spoiled Mr. Nixon,” she said. “He wasn’t a bad man.”

  Mason called for the check.

  Once she was safely ensconced in her room, Mason said he would send a car for her at eight the following morning. “I’ll be tied up with the press breakfast,” he explained. “The exhibition formally opens at noon. I would come and pick you up myself except that I—”

  “A car? You mean a limousine?”

  “Something like that. Not quite as fancy. The driver will call your room when he arrives. When you get to the Gallery, just tell the guard to contact me.”

  “All right, Luther. Where are you going now?”

  “Straight home.” He kissed her cheek, smiled, and added, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  While the three Masons dined, Annabel Reed-Smith was having dinner at I Ricchi with an old friend, Carolyn Stoltz, a psychologist in private practice in Washington. Her clients, many of them Washington movers and shakers, went to her for her professional insight as well as for her reputation for discretion. Her approach to psychotherapy was short-term, as opposed to the Freudian analytic model, which she sometimes referred to as “wasteful archaeological digging.”

  Dr. Stoltz was also one of the city’s leading forensic psychologists. When not seeing high-powered clients in her office, she could be found at the city jail, interviewing and evaluating accused criminals for either the defense or the prosecution. She’d spent that morning with Joseph Cedras, having been appointed by the court to evaluate his mental state. Because her involvement with Cedras had been court-ordered, the traditional doctor-patient relationship did not apply and she was free to discuss the case with Annabel.

  “… and he’s clearly schizophrenic,” Carolyn said. “His delusional, obsessive personality certainly doesn’t come as any surprise.”

  “Funny,” Annabel said, “but I can better understand a sick man murdering another person than I can smashing an inanimate object like my Tlatilco.”

  Stoltz, who wore a tailored black suit, a white silk blouse with a large bow at the throat, and oversized round glasses, said, “It has to do with a lot of factors, Annabel. I won’t bore you with the Freudian theories of prephallic phases of psychosexual development, as opposed to the phallic-oedipal phase, but—”

  “Thank you,” Annabel said, laughing.

  “It could get worse,” Stoltz said, joining her. “I could launch into the whole fixation of libido at the anal-sadistic stage—but I won’t do that either. In simpler terms, it has to do with what’s called the
Myth-Belief Constellation.”

  “Oh?”

  “A fascinating thesis. We all have a series of myths laid on us while growing up. This is fine as long as we recognize that they are just that, myths, and don’t turn them into our adult beliefs. Cedras believes two things. First, that the sole cause of all his problems—his business folding following his divorce—was his wife, Maria. That’s a myth, of course, but it became his belief. But people like this can also fixate—become obsessional—on inanimate objects like your pre-Columbian statue. In a sense, you gave it ‘life’ by using it as a metaphor for cooperation. I believe he thought that by smashing the statue, he would be rid of the things that were causing so much torment in his life.”

  “If that had been the case,” Annabel offered, “his wife would be alive today.”

  “Yes. But people with an obsessional neurosis are in great and constant pain, always looking for an external reason for it. If they can identify and get rid of it, they believe their pain will go away. Of course, it never does because it comes from within.”

  “I assume you’re telling the court that he’s insane, at least to the extent of not being responsible for his actions.”

  “Sure. That’s the only professional conclusion I can reach. We all have our obsessions, our compulsions. The difference is that most of us don’t cross that line into an irrational playing out of them, at least not in an antisocial sense.”

  “Mac said the other day that it isn’t so much crossing the line but how long we stay on the wrong side—and how many people we annoy.”

  Stoltz laughed. “Well put. Does Mac have obsessions?”

  “Oh, yes,” Annabel replied. “Little ones that make our life better. He can’t go to bed unless he’s mixed a certain blend of coffees and gotten the coffeemaker ready the night before. Big ones like responding like a firehouse dog to any criminal case that comes along. And being obsessed with my personal safety, keeping me out of harm’s way.”

  “Harmless enough,” Stoltz said. “You can understand his concern for you. It’s when people act upon their obsessions in a way that hurts someone else that we have problems. Like Cedras. Like men or women who become fixated upon another person and end up stalking them, sometimes with dire results. I treated a man not too long ago, an otherwise upstanding member of the community, good job with the government, wife, two-and-a-half kids, not a blemish on his record. He became obsessed with a friend’s collection of autographs of famous people. So much so that he stole it.”

  “My goodness,” said Annabel. “Was he arrested?”

  The doctor shook her head. “He confided this to me during one of our sessions. It took a few weeks, but I convinced him to return the collection to his friend and to admit he’d taken it.”

  “Did he? Return it?”

  “Yes. His friend was understandably upset, but my client’s honest confession went a long way toward restoring their relationship. The point is, admiring that autograph collection, even wanting it badly, was okay until he acted. Maybe I shouldn’t have painted him as quite as normal as I did. Down deep he suffered a lot of pain having to do with his childhood. Not a very happy one. As far as he was concerned, he had everything he could possibly want, but the pain wouldn’t go away. He believed that if he could only have that collection, everything would be fine.”

  “Does Mr. Cedras admit having smashed my Tlatilco?”

  “Yes. And he justifies it, exactly as having murdered his wife is justified in his twisted thinking.”

  As they parted on the sidewalk, Annabel said, “I must admit I do have one obsession, Carolyn. There’s a piece of pre-Columbian I sometimes think I would give my right arm to have.”

  “Don’t do it,” Stoltz said. “But if you decide to, call me, day or night. Two arms are better than one.”

  The women went in opposite directions. As Annabel neared her car she remembered she hadn’t checked the answering machine installed in the Atlas Building by Steve Jordan and his art squad. There was a phone booth on the corner. She removed a slip of paper from her purse, on which she’d written the number, and dialed it. As her outgoing message played, she punched in the two preprogrammed numbers that would play back what messages had been received. Until that moment, the only thing she’d ever heard was an electronic male voice saying, “You have no messages.”

  This night, that same grating voice said, “You have one message.”

  Annabel held her breath as she heard the tape rewind. Then, a man’s voice, distinctly human, said: “I have objects that I understand you might be interested in purchasing. I will call you tomorrow night at this same number at eleven. If you are interested, be at your phone to receive my call.”

  Annabel quickly dialed another number. It was answered by Ruth Jordan, Steve Jordan’s wife. “Mrs. Jordan, this is Annabel Reed-Smith. Sorry to bother you at home, but something important has come up I thought Steve would want to know about.”

  “Of course. I’ll get him.”

  Jordan came on the line.

  “Steve, it’s Annabel. I just called the answering machine in the Atlas Building. There’s a message on it.” She told him what the caller had said.

  “Okay,” Jordan said. “Looks like this little adventure might pay off. Can we get together tomorrow at your gallery, say noon?”

  “Afraid not. The Caravaggio exhibition opens tomorrow, and I’ll be tied up from early morning until sometime in the afternoon. Could we make it later? Three?”

  “Sure. Three o’clock, your place. See you then.”

  FRIDAY

  The cameraman focused tightly on the painting, then pulled back to include Pims in the shot. Pims wore a red double-breasted blazer, a pink-and-white striped shirt, and a large floppy bow tie in a Picasso print. “I am M. Scott Pims, your benevolent host of this week’s Art Insider, brought to you through the extreme generosity of viewers like you who support this public station. Behind me is a work of art called Grottesca, painted toward the end of the sixteenth century by a most talented and disturbed artist, Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio. It appears at our esteemed National Gallery of Art for the next thirty days as the shining focal piece of a six-month Caravaggio exhibition. How it ended up here, after it had gone missing for hundreds of years, is a story as fascinating as the artist himself. Courtney Whitney III, director of the National Gallery, is with me to explain.”

  The cameraman stopped taping as Whitney stepped into the frame, shook Pims’s hand, and faced the camera.

  “Roll,” Pims said.

  “Speed,” the soundman said.

  “Well, Court, you’ve mounted quite a spectacle,” Pims said.

  “All I can say is that this remarkable work behind us not only represents the ability of an artist to create great art, it testifies to the dedication of the men and women of the National Gallery to bring it to the American people.”

  “Luther Mason topping the list, of course,” Pims said.

  “Luther, our senior curator, and every other employee of this gallery.”

  “Not bad, either, for the National Gallery’s bottom line,” Pims said, accompanied by his patented chuckle.

  “But not in the way you mean it,” Whitney said, his smile less spontaneous. “This institution is run with federal money appropriated by the House Appropriations Subcommittee of Congress. The increased donations we’re enjoying mean a greater private fund from which to purchase even more great art. And,” he added politically, “to reduce the need for money from government. Nice to see you again.”

  “One last question,” Pims said. “What about recent reports that this building is in such disrepair, many of the masterpieces are in physical jeopardy?”

  “As Mark Twain might have said, the reports of our deterioration are vastly exaggerated. Now you must excuse me. Enjoy the exhibition.”

  Luther Mason stood with his mother and Lynn Marshall while Pims looked at Whitney’s retreating figure. He’d asked Lynn to escort his mother during the breakfast to free him
up for media interviews he’d agreed to give.

  “Luther,” Pims said. “Come. Time for your fifteen minutes of fame.”

  Mason excused himself and joined Pims. “Ready?” Pims asked the cameraman. He got the nod, smiled into the camera, and said, “With me now is National Gallery senior curator Luther Mason, one of the world’s acknowledged Caravaggio experts and the person who found Grottesca in that small, run-down church in Italy. Quite a coup you’ve pulled off, bringing it here first to Washington’s National Gallery.”

  Mason managed a lank smile as he said, “It was just a matter of time before someone found the Grottesca. I happened to be in the right place, at the right time.”

  “A shining example of modesty in speech, but excelling in action. Grottesca will be with us for one month only. Then back to Italy. I understand you will accompany it on its journey home.”

  “Along with others.” Mason’s eyes danced over the hundred faces watching the interview. He saw Annabel Reed-Smith standing with Don Fechter and George Kublinski. Court Whitney’s attention was on what a trustee was saying, something funny, because Whitney was laughing, or not funny but getting a laugh anyhow, the other man being not only a trustee but a major donor. The Italian ambassador to the United States was flanked by a half-dozen members of his staff, including the two men who’d so intently observed Luther and Carlo Giliberti talking the night of the first black-tie dinner. Had one of them been his caller the previous night? A macabre thought came and went: They won’t kill me on television.

  “Congratulations, Luther,” said Pims. “The art world shall be forever in your debt.”

  Luther walked away as the Italian ambassador, accompanied by a public information aide, joined Pims on his makeshift set.

  “Sorry I can’t spend more time with you this morning, Mother,” Luther said. “Have you had enough to eat?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Luther.” Lynn Marshall motioned him away from Catherine Mason. “She wants to leave. Wants to go back to Indiana this afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “I think she feels out of place.”