by Janice Law
I clattered down, frightening a pair of skinny cats, and recognized where I was. Three buildings to the left, I pounded urgently on a blue-painted door.
“Prego,” someone called. The door opened, and I nipped inside a dimly lit space with the smell of kef, perfume, and sweat. The brothel keeper was an Italian of Falstaffian proportions, swathed in a crimson velvet smoking robe like an Edwardian gentleman. His impressive head with its aquiline nose, fine black mustache, and blue shadowed cheeks was topped with an amazing, if ill-advised, blond wig. His establishment was considered reputable for its type, and his stable of boys was both large and eclectic.
I scrambled in my wallet for some bills. “A treat for a friend, who will be along momentarily,” I said, pressing the money into his damp white hand.
“Grazie,” he said, and he inclined his head in a courtly manner.
“Now I need to leave by the rear door. Immediately.”
The vagaries of his profession had given the proprietor a sangfroid that was not easily disturbed. “Of course, signor. This way.”
He escorted me through a carved fretwork door into a candle-lit salon full of lounging boys with kohl-rimmed eyes and painted children old beyond their years. They were draped in blankets against the chill, and before they could reveal their naked glory, we were in the corridor to the private rooms and the kitchen. A wave to the tall black cook at the stove, a hasty thanks to the proprietor, and I was out the door. I hoped that my pursuer would take advantage of my generosity. But even if he proved immune to the charms of the establishment, there would be momentary confusion and, at the very least, no access to the rear exit.
I ran until my asthma played up, then, soaking wet and shivering, I found a cab and made my way to one of the better hotels. The food was only fair, but the electricity was on, the sight lines in the restaurant were excellent, and there was a quite private phone off the bar.
“The painting is nearly done,” I told the commissioner. “Final details tomorrow and probably varnishing the next day if this filthy weather clears.”
“Excellent.”
“That’s the good news,” I said. “But I was followed through the medina. And Goldfarber is nervous.”
I detailed the dealer’s evasive route to the studio and described the man who’d followed me as well as I could.
“Where are you to meet Goldfarber tomorrow?” the commissioner asked. He seemed untroubled by my narrow escape.
“At the studio,” I said, “but I’d rather not go. As soon as the paint is dry, he may figure he can do the finishing himself. Besides, you can arrest him at any time.”
“We want his customer,” the commissioner said. “And have you been paid? No? He will be suspicious if you don’t show up.”
“Meanwhile, I risk having my throat cut like that poor Spaniard.”
“We are not sure Goldfarber is the killer,” the commissioner said smoothly. “We’ve had him under surveillance, and his alibi is good. Do not worry about him, Monsieur Francis.” And he hung up before I could ask who I should worry about. It’s a sad fact of the artist’s life that one is often considered expendable.
I gave the bartender some more coins and called David.
“Where have you been?” His voice was querulous.
“Hither and yon,” I said. “Come to the Palace. We’ll have dinner. And bring me a sweater. I got soaked in the rain.”
“Serves you right,” he said. “You put me in a cab and disappeared when I was too sick to walk straight.”
“I bailed you out, too, if you remember. That produced complications that I’ve been dealing with. Bring me a sweater,” I repeated and hung up. I was wet, cold, and angry, and though I adored David, he was an ungrateful bastard. I ordered a coffee with cognac and sat at a table toward the back, shivering in the damp, nursing resentment, and trying to decide if I would return to Goldfarber’s studio. I was under no obligation, none at all. He could finish the final details and varnish the painting himself.
After all, forgery! Of all the things I detest, painting in someone else’s style for profit is high on the list. And the worst of it was the picture wasn’t half-bad. Let it dry, put in the last touches, have it gather dust for a while. Add a few nicks in the surface, some dirt on the stretcher, and the effort of one afternoon would pass muster in half the galleries of Europe. It struck me that Tangier was capable of fashioning a temptation to fit every soul.
The lights flickered overhead, and the barman prudently lit several candelabras, adding the smell of melting wax to the spices of the restaurant and the omnipresent breath of the drains. I thought it might be good for me to leave the city for a time. And take David. A trip to the Spanish Zone, maybe, or to Marrakech, though David’s chance of crossing any of the borders would be nil at the moment.
But I could go, and I was thinking that I might, that even a little run out into the desert might be interesting, when the electricity blinked out. The candelabra on the bar became the sole bright spot, darkness hanging in sheets behind it like the striated backgrounds of my pope paintings. Life imitates art, and one’s imaginings are realized in surprising ways, at unexpected times.
In a moment, the waiters were hustling around with candles for the tables. The restaurant, banal in modern lighting, took on an air of fantasy with dozens of little flickering lights that picked out the diners in golden light and umber shadows.
I was enjoying the effect when an unfamiliar British voice said my name from the darkness behind me. I turned. There was a man seated at the next table. I hadn’t heard him come in with the bustle and complaints of the blackout.
“You are?”
“No need for introductions,” he said. “Just remember we’re watching you. You’d do well to be careful. Tangier isn’t what it was.”
“You’re from the legation,” I guessed. All the European powers, plus the Americans, had legations in Tangier. Their officials were fixtures in the restaurants and at all the best parties. I tried to see if this one was tall, thin, and blond like my pursuer this afternoon, but he had extinguished his candle, and he was just a slightly darker shape, flickering in the neighboring lights.
“That’s of no matter. Just watch yourself, Mr. Bacon. Her Majesty’s Government can only offer so much protection.”
“You followed me today,” I said, but with a rustle and the scrape of his chair, he was gone. I stood up, eager to confront him, but now a waiter approached, and I saw David, burdened with an umbrella and bearing a sweater and my leather jacket.
“You look marvelous by candlelight,” he joked. He began to sing “Moonlight Becomes You,” so that the restaurant patrons—who had been grousing as they were wont to do whenever the power went—began to laugh and clap, acknowledging the beauty of the moment. That was David’s gift. The other side of drunken rages and needless cruelty was a knack for lending intensity to a moment, for bringing it out of the boring and ordinary and making it memorable.
He sat down in an expansive mood. “We’ll have lamb, right? And couscous and one of the salads. And I’ll have a double whiskey,” he told the waiter. “Things will be marvelous again, won’t they?” he asked me so I understood that he was trying hard, that he’d been all at sea or in the air or wherever it was he went, and now he was back on dry land and things would be all right.
With me, too. And then I felt annoyed. What the hell did Her Majesty’s Government mean by spying on me? Sneaking up to whisper warnings and chasing me down the alleys of the medina. They could go to hell. At that moment, with David smiling across the table and looking, with the help of whiskey and candles, as he had that night long ago in the Gargoyle, I thought I’d send the commissioner and his schemes to the same address.
Chapter Four
Candles lend enchantment, but morning light is a different matter. Even a perfect blue-and-gold Mediterranean dawn has a way of casting the pall
of reason over one’s affairs. Even though David seemed cheerful again, our troubles were not over, because I was short of money. Short enough that I’d composed yet another heartfelt, if not exactly truthful, missive to my gallery. I hinted at marvelous things accomplished—or to be accomplished soon—and assurances of hard work and of good relations with the Muse.
Of all this, only the reference to hard work bore any relation to reality, for that very morning I had taken a knife to a disappointing Pope and consigned another Owl canvas to my Moroccan friend. Although I calculated to the penny how much my dealer would send me—and how soon the transfer might arrive—even the most optimistic math left me short. Two hundred pounds from Goldfarber was no trifle. After making a hash of my latest canvas, I was inclined to take the commissioner’s assessment of the dealer at face value and return to finish that dodgy “Picasso.”
But first, a visit to Richard was in order. He’d gotten me into the mess, and since he was connected to everyone of consequence, I figured that he’d know if the legation was involved. I cleaned my brushes and took a cab up the Mountain. The brilliant sea was dotted with little ships and gulls swooped overhead. At a certain elevation on sunny days, Tangier is a travel agent’s dream.
Richard was in his garden, fussing with lemon trees and roses, lavenders and quinces. “Francis! What a lovely surprise! You’ve escaped the clutches of the law.”
“Where you put me, Richard.” I was not in the mood for his camp antics. Given the situation, he might at least let me have the amusing lines.
“Public duty, old man, public duty.”
“Indeed,” I said, “which I’ve discharged.”
“Come in and tell me all.” He shouted for his servant to bring us coffee and led me to the courtyard with a fountain burbling away and his parrot squawking from the fig tree.
“It was really too bad of the commissioner to send me home ignorant the other day. As though he didn’t trust my discretion.” He gave me a look of feigned indignation.
The commissioner was right about that. Gossip was Richard’s stock-in-trade and a source of his power, but I just shrugged. “He spared you a boring interview. He wanted to talk about paintings.”
“I didn’t think the commissioner a connoisseur.” In his own way, Richard was shrewd.
“Fakes, though, catch his interest.”
“A shocking business. Really shocking. I was quite taken in.”
I wondered about that. In retrospect, Richard had seemed less regretful of his purchase than eager to involve the police. Like almost everyone else in Tangier, he had complex agendas. “You hadn’t dealt with this Goldfarber before?”
“I dealt with his predecessor, Peter Simon, a lovely man, lovely. He got a visa to the states and moved—a year or so ago. Relatives in Miami, I believe. Goldfarber took over the gallery then. He seemed respectable enough.”
“Any idea where his stock came from?”
“The commissioner wanted to know that, too. But I have no idea. He had the usual dealer patter: family collection, broken up with hard times, plus purchases from his fellow refugees. Rather more of the latter than the former in his case.”
I sensed that was correct. The next step was delicate, but I decided I had to take it. “You know, I stopped by the gallery the other day. Just out of curiosity.”
“Oh, dear, I don’t think anyone wants to patronize him now,” Richard sniffed. Goldfarber had been banished, and cursed were all who trafficked with him. In the maintenance of polite society, Richard was as ruthless as Genghis Khan.
“I couldn’t agree more; forgery is beyond the pale. But listen, Richard, here’s the thing: I had a peek at Goldfarber’s stock, and I’m certain that the drawings, at least, are authentic.”
“Really!” Richard’s eyes lit up with the prospect of acquisition. Then his face fell. “Still, it’s impossible, old man. Quite impossible.”
Naturally, I agreed, though I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Richard’s Mercedes parked outside the gallery one day soon. “Anyway, when I was walking back through the medina, I was followed.”
Richard winked. “I should think that a fairly common occurrence. Some of us are still young and beautiful.”
“It was pouring with rain. Simply bucketing down.”
“Passion, my dear,” he said in a reminiscent tone. “I remember it well.”
“He was tall, thin—and blond.”
Richard raised his eyebrows. “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the pouring rain, too, apparently,” he said, but he didn’t sound quite so amused.
“Right. My thought was British legation. And knowing that you know everyone in Tangier in every legation—”
“Tall, blond, and thin? Not an awful lot to go on, is there?” he asked rather sharply. It was surprising how quickly Richard dropped the camp act when his interest was engaged. And now I remembered something else about him: despite his fussy mannerisms and desperate respectability, he’d “had a good war,” as they said. I’d not stopped to consider the implications of that. Everyone attributed his presence in Tangier to his sexual tastes and his family’s eminence. I wondered now if that was just the half of it, and if he had other, more interesting reasons for residing in the Zone.
If he did, Richard was too cunning to reveal them to a security risk like me; painters haven’t been judged reliable since the days of Rubens and Velasquez. But Richard’s pose of ignorance, the absence of the usual legation gossip, and his easy dismissal of my interesting story were revealing. Possibly the legation had found me suspicious or, belatedly, Her Majesty’s Government had taken an interest in my safety.
Either one suggested that there must be more to Goldfarber’s business than defrauding gullible art lovers. Though people have died for art, I didn’t think his particular forgeries were valuable enough to have led to murder. And there was another thing: Could I assume the commissioner was correct that the murdered Spanish boy had been “restoring” canvases for Goldfarber?
I had accepted his word rather naively, when all I’d seen was a black-and-white photo. Did I even know the corpse was Spanish and a painter? I decided I did not. I didn’t entirely trust Richard, whom I knew and liked. I decided I should give even less credence to the commissioner, whom I didn’t like and couldn’t fathom.
On my way back to town, I considered the manifold possibilities for crime in Tangier. Smuggling and currency manipulation were the runaway favorites, employing folks rich and poor, but as far as I could see, Goldfarber wasn’t trying to smuggle pictures. He was selling them openly and had probably done all right until he sold that bone period Picasso. Richard had either developed doubts about it or—and this was more serious from my point of view—had spotted the fake right away and decided to use it to curry favor with the new commissioner.
Both scenarios were possible, but could Richard have another agenda? I thought that I’d like to learn more about the murder of the Spanish boy, which had been kept oddly quiet. Murders in the International Zone were rare, murders of the foreign population almost unheard of. Yet had there been anything in the press?
My dear Nan would have been able to tell me, being a great fan of crime news, which she’d followed avidly via the dailies. I’d pretty much given weird killings and sensational passions a miss since her death, but newspapers keep archives, and I could check the French dailies, Le Petite Moroccan and Le Journal de Tangier, as well as the weekly English-language Tangier Gazette and Moroccan Mail.
Securing the newspaper files would doubtless require a good many drinks with local pressmen, and to fund these inquiries, I needed money. I decided to keep my appointment with Goldfarber, but at two p.m., when I climbed the stairs to the studio, I found the door locked. It seemed I was early, although he’d been very insistent on my getting the picture done as soon as possible. I decided to wait in the cafe below.
I was seated and sipping the
mint concoction of the city, when I noticed how quiet the cafe was. Not silent, you understand, for the radio was blaring the usual high North African voices, swooping and howling over flutes, strings, and drums. I’m not a fan of music in general and of the local ditties in particular. There was the noise from the street—cars and carts and vendors shouting outside, too. Although the cafe was almost full, the rooms, or rather the patrons, were quiet.
They’d been talking and noisy when I passed on my way to the stairs. Now conversation had dropped, if not stopped altogether, and I was aware of being studied. The crowd was young, the proper age for the new revolutionaries and fanatics, political and religious, and there was not another European in the room. For the first time in Tangier, I felt uncomfortable.
Although there was nothing to distinguish this cafe from dozens of others, I was definitely unwelcome, even though one expected a mixed Arab and European clientele in the newer town. Richard might be right after all: change was in the air, and it was sweeping from the medina toward the European town and the Mountain. I finished the tea, paid the waiter, and left as the sound of excited voices rose behind me.
The cafe was a strange one, and it was particularly odd that Goldfarber, supposedly a Jew, had picked that building for his studio. Surely he would have been alert to the unfriendly clientele. Then I reminded myself that Goldfarber was not Jewish at all and that he might have reasons for renting above that very cafe. What those reasons might be, I hadn’t the faintest idea.
I walked idly for a bit, admired some rugs, and contemplated the purchase of a burnoose made of coarse white wool, a practical garment now that the weather was getting colder. The vendor and I haggled over the price, and after the requisite quarter of an hour, I walked away with the cloak over my arm. When a chilly wind blew up off the water, I slipped the burnoose over my head and caught a glimpse of my reflection in one of the shop windows. What a change in silhouette! Though my sun-bleached hair gave me away, at a quick glance I looked quite different, and before I passed back in front of the cafe, I pulled the hood up over my head and hustled up the stairs.