Chasing Cezanne

by Peter Mayle

  “Denoyer wouldn’t be too pleased if he knew there was another one floating around while Holtz was trying to sell the original.” Cyrus clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Most confusing—although it’s quite possible that Holtz is planning to sell them both as originals.” He noticed the puzzled looks around the table. “He’d need a couple of gloaters—two very discreet clients who didn’t want any publicity—but there are plenty of those to be found. I know a few myself.”

  “And you’re saying that each one would think he’d bought the original?” Andre shook his head. “Come on, Cyrus. It couldn’t happen.”

  “Don’t bet on it, dear boy. Some people—most people, probably—like to show off what they’ve got; but for others, it’s enough just to possess great paintings, even if they’re always hidden in a vault. In fact, I’m told that can actually add to the thrill.” Cyrus sipped his wine, looking thoughtfully at Franzen. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the original is, Nico?”

  Franzen looked at Anouk. If he was hoping for guidance, none was forthcoming. Her face was expressionless, and Cyrus had his answer before the Dutchman spoke: “I have it,” he said. “I have them both.” He nodded, reaching for his glass. Anouk allowed herself the slightest hint of a smile.

  Cyrus sat back, saying nothing as salad, a great plateau de fromage, and more wine were brought to the table. He watched the Dutchman, who was now taking Lucy through the mysteries of French cheeses: the goat, the cow, the sheep, and the pungent crock of cachat, laced with brandy and garlic. Was it wishful thinking, or did Franzen seem to be relieved, like a man who had come to a decision? Cyrus gathered his thoughts and leaned forward.

  “As I see it,” he said, “there are two possibilities. We can join forces, go to Cap Ferrat, and sit down with Denoyer—tell him about the second fake, return the original, and hope that we can arrange something with him that would be profitable to all of us. From what Andre has told me, he appears to be a decent man. He’s committed to a sale, which is something that I can handle. The commission will be substantial, and we can share it.” Cyrus grinned. “That’s if everything goes according to plan, of course. But I don’t see why it shouldn’t.”

  Franzen wiped his mouth and took some wine. “And the second possibility?”

  “Ah, that,” said Cyrus. “Not as much fun, I’m afraid. We can thank you for a splendid dinner, go back to New York, and leave you and Mr. Holtz to live happily ever after.”

  There was a thoughtful silence, during which a very sharp ear might have picked up the sound of a telephone coming from the darkness of the garden beyond the terrace.

  Paradou retreated hastily from his vantage point behind the cypress tree until He was far enough away to speak. “They’re in a restaurant outside Aix. They’re with the Dutchman.”

  Holtz muttered something that sounded vicious in a language Paradou didn’t understand. Then, collecting himself, Holtz said, “I’m coming down. Where’s the nearest airport?”

  “Marseille. I may have some good news by the time you get there. I’ve done some work on their car.”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to the Dutchman. I’ll call you from Marseille.” The phone went dead. With a final wistful look at the lights of the restaurant—he felt as though he hadn’t eaten a good meal for days—Paradou walked down the track to wait in his car.

  The mood at the table had moved from discussion to celebration. Franzen, with some encouraging nods and nudges from Anouk, had taken the decision to throw in his lot with Cyrus. Tomorrow morning, they would meet at Anouk’s house and go together to Cap Ferrat, where Denoyer, impressed by their honesty, grateful for their help, won over by their charm, and appalled by Holtz’s underhanded behavior, would appoint Cyrus to handle the sale. Their good humor and optimism were not entirely due to clear thought and reasoned analysis. With coffee, Franzen had insisted on ordering glasses—or small tumblers, this being a generous restaurant—of the chef’s private stock of marc. As an aid to digestion, the fierce distillation of pressed grape skins possessed certain benefits that even learned members of the French medical profession had been known to acknowledge. But coming on top of a long evening’s wine, it was enough to soften the hardest of heads.

  They parted company in the parking lot—Anouk and Franzen headed to their village, a mile up the road, the others in what they hoped was the general direction of Aix.

  Andre kept his speed down, driving with the exaggerated care of a man still just sober enough to know that his reflexes have been thoroughly pickled. Lucy and Cyrus, after sporadic attempts at conversation, dozed. Opening the window and leaning over to take as much air in his face as possible, Andre drove on, paying no attention to the dimmed headlights well behind him as he peered into the night.

  On unfamiliar, unmarked roads in the dark, filled with sudden forks and turnings, Andre felt the growing conviction through the muzziness in his head that he had lost his way. And then he was saved by a blessed blue and white sign for the A7. Once he was on the autoroute, it was only a few minutes to Aix.

  He came down the access road, closing the window as he accelerated to keep up with the sparse traffic—mostly trucks on the night run to Paris with their cargoes of produce from the warm earth of the south. Anxious to be back in the hotel, and fighting off the heaviness in his eyelids, he blinked hard half a dozen times to help him focus, then pulled out to pass a double-length Spanish frigorífico.

  It was late, and the driver of the truck was careless; he should have checked his mirror before beginning to change lanes. With the awful clarity that comes immediately before an accident, Andre saw the name on the back of the truck, the cluster of lights, the dusty mud flaps, the Viva Real Madrid sticker, the pattern on the tires—saw it all, saw it in the split second it took him to hit the brakes. And saw it all in extreme close-up when there was suddenly no resistance from the pedal as the brake cable gave way.

  He wrenched the wheel to the left, taking the car over the grass strip and through the hedge of oleanders dividing the highway, across three lanes, through the barrier on the far side, and down the slope beyond, plowing through bushes and branches and rocks until, with a final screech of tortured metal and a crackle of breaking glass, the car came to rest against a pine tree. By some fluke, the engine was still running. Andre reached forward and turned it off with a hand that shook against the steering column.

  It looked good, Paradou thought. It looked very good. It would have been perfect if they had hit an oncoming truck on their way across the road, but this would do. Now he would go and count the broken necks. He looked for the next exit so that he could make the turn back to the wrecked car.

  There is nothing quite like a close brush with death to clear the head of alcohol, and three very shaken, suddenly sober figures clambered up the slope and onto the hard shoulder. “Can you make it across to the other side?” said Andre. “We’ll hitch a lift into Aix.” A gap in the traffic, a rush of adrenaline, a sprint across what felt like half a mile of highway, and they were on the opposite side, the nausea and shivering of reaction beginning to set in. Andre stood at the edge of the emergency lane, an unsteady but hopeful thumb extended toward an approaching truck. It passed without slowing down. So did the next one, and the half dozen after that.

  “This isn’t going to work,” said Lucy. “You two get down there, out of sight. Come up when I whistle.” With the two men waiting in the darkness at the foot of the slope, she undid the top buttons of her blouse, rolled up an already short skirt, and faced the oncoming headlights with a smile and an upraised hand. Almost at once, French gallantry came to the rescue with a great hissing of hydraulic brakes.

  The driver of the truck opened the passenger door and looked down at Lucy with pursed lips and an appreciative gleam in his eye. She winked at him, adjusting the strap of her bra. “Aix?”

  “Paris, si vous voulez, chérie.”

  “Great.” Her whistle, and the instant appearance of Cyrus and Andre, happened too quic
kly for him to close the door. Some hundred-franc notes pressed into his hand helped him overcome his disappointment, and Andre’s account of brake failure and the subsequent crash even produced a grudging sympathy—enough, at any rate, to make him leave the autoroute and drop them off near the center of town. They were back in their hotel while Paradou, gun in hand, was still beating the bushes around the wreckage of their car.

  Holtz and Camilla sat together in hostile silence. The argument had started in the Ritz and continued in the car, and was now simmering in the back of the plane as the day’s last flight headed south toward Marseille. She was livid with him for dragging her away from Paris simply—as she knew very well and he didn’t bother to deny—to act as potential chauffeur and general dogsbody. It was too bad, and it was undoubtedly going to get worse, with the night spent in some ghastly little airport hotel with no facilities, Rudi in a foul mood, and absolutely nothing to wear tomorrow because they had left in such a rush.

  The hotel was every bit as dreary as she had anticipated, and it wasn’t improved by the sly, knowing expression on the desk clerk’s face when they checked in with no luggage. He leered. He actually leered—as if any couple in their right minds would choose Marseille airport for a romantic assignation. The whole thing was too sordid for words.

  Holtz made straight for the phone in their room and was having a long, obviously unsatisfactory conversation. At the sight of his scowling face, Camilla shut herself in the bathroom and ran the water for a bath—a long bath—hoping he would be asleep by the time she finished.

  The mood of the following morning was still far from festive. They had made an early start, taking a taxi into Aix to meet Paradou, and the three of them were now in his car on the Cours Mirabeau, diagonally opposite the entrance of the Hotel Nègre-Coste.

  “You’re sure they’re still there?”

  Paradou turned a bleary eye on Holtz, who was sitting in the back seat with Camilla. “I checked at the desk last night. They came back, God knows how. I’ve been here ever since.”

  Silence returned to the car. The beauty of the shaded green street in the morning sun, the dappled light on café awnings, the delightful sights and sounds of a beautiful town coming to life—none of these did anything to improve Camilla’s ragged temper, the nervous anxiety of Holtz, or the grinding frustration that Paradou was beginning to feel. How he longed for a few minutes of honest, conclusive violence and an end to the job. He fingered the crosshatching on the butt of the gun under his arm. Third time lucky, and this time he would do it at short range, so he could see them go down. He yawned and lit a cigarette.

  Fifty yards away, an unusually subdued trio sat over coffee in the hotel. Shock and alcohol had given them a sound, almost drugged night’s sleep, but the effects had worn off and they were coming to terms with the possibility that the crash might not have been an accident. Once again, Cyrus had suggested that he continue alone, and once again Andre and Lucy had brushed the suggestion aside. All they had to do, after all, was get to Cap Ferrat—but not in another rented car. They decided to take a taxi to the house in Les Crottins and go on together with Franzen.

  And so, with the sun now well up, they left Aix behind them, their spirits beginning to lift in the serene and unthreatening normality of the back road that runs parallel with Sainte-Victoire. The mountain glowed with light from the east, no longer mysterious or sinister. Vans and tractors buzzed up dirt tracks between the fields of vines, magpies hopped and squabbled on the verge, a few high clouds tumbled across the great blue sweep of the morning sky: another ordinary, beautiful day.

  The taxi came to a fork in the road and began the short, steep climb to Les Crottins, the driver cursing as two village dogs on their morning vigil darted out to snap at his tires.

  “It’s the house with blue shutters,” said Andre. “There, at the end, with the Citroen outside.”

  There was another growl from the driver when he saw that Franzen’s car gave him no room to turn and he would have to back down the street. These villages were built for donkeys. Somewhat pacified by his tip, he deigned to nod goodbye as his passengers got out, and put the taxi into reverse.

  Franzen opened the door before they had a chance to knock. “Salut, mes amis. Come in, come in.” Handshakes for the men, a whiskery kiss on each cheek for Lucy, and then he led them into a low-ceilinged room the width of the house, explaining that Anouk, a late riser, had wished them bon voyage and hoped to see them again soon. “But before we go,” he said, “I thought it might amuse you to see these.” He waved a casual hand toward the stone fireplace. “The light is unhelpful, I admit, but it would take a good eye to tell the difference, even side by side. Eh, Cyrus?”

  On the stone mantel above the fireplace, Cézanne’s Woman with Melons and her twin sister gazed out at them, placid, beautiful, and apparently identical. Cyrus went closer, shaking his head. “I do congratulate you, Nico. Quite, quite extraordinary. Tell me a trade secret: How long does it take you to—”

  “Cyrus!” Andre, glancing through the window at the sound of an engine, saw a thickset, crew-cut man with dark glasses get out of a white Renault, his hand reaching inside his jacket as he came across the street to the house. “Someone’s coming.” And a moment later: “Jesus. He’s got a gun.”

  They stood like four statues until a steady, insistent knocking jerked them back to life. “Through the kitchen,” said Franzen. “There’s a back door.” Taking the paintings from the mantelpiece, he led the way out of the house and into a tiny, high-walled garden with a barred gate giving onto an alley. “My car’s just around the corner.”

  “Yes,” said Cyrus. “So is our friend with the gun.”

  “Just a minute.” Andre pointed at the canvases under Franzen’s arm. “That’s what he’s after. It has to be. Nico, give me one of those; the other one to Cyrus. Have your car keys ready. Lulu, you get behind me. Nico, behind Cyrus. Stay close, and we’ll be fine. Nobody wants a Cézanne with bullet holes in it.”

  Paradou had stepped away from the door to look through the window, and it wasn’t until he heard Holtz shout from the back of the car that he turned, to see two paintings walking around the corner of the house, each painting with four legs. Comedians: The world was full of them. He shook his head and raised his gun.

  There was an anguished screech from Holtz, who by now had pushed his head and shoulders through the back window of the car. “No! No! For Christ’s sake don’t shoot! Franzen—Nico—we can do a deal. Listen to me. It was all a misunderstanding. I can explain.…”

  Franzen, still shielded by Cyrus and the painting, opened the door of the Citroen and started the engine. Lucy and Andre slid into the back seat. Cyrus joined Franzen in the front, and the Citroen took off down the street, passing so close to Holtz that Andre could see the spittle on his lips and, behind him, the pale blur of Camilla’s face.

  “He has to back out,” said Franzen. “We’ve got a couple of minutes’ head start.”

  Andre looked through the rear window and saw Paradou getting into the Renault. “Go for the autoroute,” he said. “There’ll be more traffic. Where can we get on?”

  “Not until Saint-Maximin.” The big car lurched around a bend. “Do you think they’ll follow us?”

  Cyrus looked down at the painting on his lap. “Thirty million dollars?” he said. “They’ll follow us.”

  They were silent as Franzen reached the N7 and started pushing the car to the limit along a straight, flat stretch of road—so straight and so flat and so devoid of turnings and hiding places that he could do nothing but drive on the horn and hope for the best while Lucy and Andre kept a lookout through the rear window. Half an hour passed, as uneventful as any half hour can be at high speed on one of the most deadly roads in France, and the level of tension inside the Citroen dropped as they came off the N7 to join the access road to the autoroute.

  Franzen pulled to a stop behind a line of cars waiting to go through the tollbooth, and all the air seemed to leave
his body in one vast whoosh of relief. He turned to Cyrus with a grin. “I think I’ll stick to forgery from now on. I wouldn’t want to do that again. Is everyone all right? No heart attacks?”

  “What I’d like to know,” said Andre, “is who that guy was with—”

  “Andre?” Lucy’s voice was small and tight. “He’s there.”

  Their eyes followed Lucy’s nod. In the line next to theirs, easing forward to the tollbooth, was the white Renault. Paradou was staring back at them. He was smiling.

  “Rudi, this is ridiculous.” Camilla was feeling shattered, absolutely shattered, even though she had spent the last half hour with her eyes tightly closed. “It’s just not on—I mean, guns and—”

  “Shut up, woman. Paradou, what do you think?”

  “The autoroute is not good for us, but they can’t stay on the autoroute forever. We keep with them and wait.”

  Camilla tried again. “Suppose they go to the police?”

  “They have a stolen painting and a forgery in the car,” said Holtz. “I am trying to reclaim my property. I don’t mind if they go to the police, but they won’t. You’re right, Paradou. Stay with them.”

  And stay with them he did, past Brignoles and Fréjus, past Cannes and Antibes, never more than two or three car lengths behind. Camilla huddled in the corner, wishing she were back in the tranquil safety of New York. Holtz reflected on the possibilities: If he were them, he’d head for Italy, cut up to Switzerland, and take the painting to the man in Zurich. Pine would know where to go. But that was a long way. They would have to stop for gasoline. Night would eventually fall. Paradou would get his chance. In a long and crooked career, Holtz had learned the value of patience. Sooner or later, everyone made a mistake.

  There is a limit to the amount of nervous anxiety the human system can take before it adjusts, stops panicking, and reverts to some kind of logical thought. Over the course of two hours, the occupants of Franzen’s Citroen had made that adjustment, but as Cap Ferrat grew closer, the white Renault was still with them, sometimes in one lane, sometimes in another, but always there in the rearview mirror.