1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1

by Frederick Ramsay

  Chapter Two

  “Can we come to order?”

  It was not a command, barely a request. Just a bit after nine o’clock and Charles Dillon’s head pounded from the effects of the bottle of expensive scotch he had consumed the night before.

  “Order please,” he said again, only louder. Charles Dillon was affectionately known, by the few who held any affection for him at all, as Charlie Two. His son, the bright young archeologist and the apple of his grandfather’s eye, answered to Charlie Three.

  “I have before me the report from the Foundation and I will read it. After that we will discuss its contents and then I will call for the Board to vote on an issue of some importance to us all.” He cleared his throat and began to read.

  Four men and two women sat at the conference table—the Board of Trustees of the DCS, the Dillon Collection South, a euphemism which described the half billion dollars’ worth of paintings, statuary, and rare prints stored in an air-conditioned building constructed to house them on the Callend College campus. The building was a product of the 1950s, when people believed they could avoid a nuclear holocaust by going underground for a few months. Bomb shelters were as popular as hoola-hoops. Charles C. Dillon, inventor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, eclectic art collector, and confidant to then President Eisenhower, Charlie One were he still alive, did his part to forward the administration’s civil defense policy by building what had to be the country’s biggest bomb shelter, not to house people, but to safeguard evidence of Western culture, something people would need when civilization was rebuilt, after the smoke cleared—his art collection.

  He selected Callend College for Women as the site for this marvel because it was far removed from any target Russia might consider worthwhile. Thus, one half of the Dillon collection sat safe in an underground vault, the bunker it came to be called, surrounded with enough reinforced concrete to build an impressive highway. Every six months or so, tractor trailers arrived, and as guards watched, a ton or so of art works was unloaded and stored, and an equal amount removed to be carried back to Cleveland for display.

  The college benefited in a number of ways. The collection generated additional annual revenues of one million dollars and subsidized the salaries of the college’s larger than normal security force, a sum in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The collection enabled the college to have an excellent History of Art Department that attracted a number of distinguished scholars to the campus. They, in turn, helped attract students and thereby maintain the college’s competitive position in the enrollment sweepstakes.

  It also enabled the college to solicit other gifts from the Dillon Family Foundation: the Dillon library, the Martha Denby (née Dillon) professorship in Modern Dance, the Charles C. Dillon Audio-Visual Laboratory, not to mention a number of unnamed, but useful additions to its physical plant, including a substantial grant to overhaul the school’s communications and information processing capacity. A gift, the senior Dillon had declared, to honor the inauguration of Ruth Sydney Harris as the school’s thirty-fifth president. Computers, information management systems, arrived in boxes and crates. “Modern times call for new leadership and the equipment to support it,” Dillon wrote at the time.

  Ruth Harris had been named president of Callend College eighteen months previously. She arrived with hopes high and the confidence needed to tackle the problems endemic to small colleges across the country. An annual deficit of a million dollars did not dismay her. The threats of faculty unionization left her unmoved, and the task of maintaining a single-sex school in an era of declining interest in that remnant of early Americana was, to her, just another challenge

  What she had not counted on was the crushing boredom of administration, the inertia that permeates bureaucracies, even in the smallest and most informal organizations, and the pettiness of college politics. It was not that she was unfamiliar with all these things. She had been professor and chairman of the history department at the University of Chicago and was the only child of the distinguished Barton M. Harris, former dean of the Yale School of Law. Yet it was one thing to be a child-observer and, later, a player on the other side, and quite another to be the establishment. And that is what, she ruefully admitted, she had become. The student radical gone to seed, espousing the procedures, behaviors, and values she had once so vehemently opposed.

  She was six in the summer of 1968. Her father served on the Northwestern School of Law faculty the year Chicago exploded in a swirling, screaming mass of student radicals, tear gas, and police. Barton Harris spent weeks defending himself and the battered young people the police dragged into lockups all over the city. Ruth heard and absorbed her parents’ outrage. Later she marched with them in Washington as the Viet Nam War wound down. By the time she entered Wellesley, she, like many of her generation, had adopted the behaviors and attitudes of older brothers and sisters but not their causes. The war ended. Nixon crushed George McGovern in a landslide. The country was about to embark on its experiment with conservatism.

  Without a quintessential cause like the war, students became radical generalists. They deplored toxic waste, hugged trees, and marched for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. They were suspicious of the government and most of its institutions. They believed in conspiracies and despised, in no particular order, the Office of the President, capitalism, the FBI, the CIA, the OMB, and the whole alphabet soup of bureaucracies. Bereft of a focus for their disdain, many, including Ruth, drifted into Marxism, the radical chic of the day. The campuses of America offered the one place where to be a Marxist was not viewed as a negative. Quite the contrary, it was often seen as a positive, the mark of an independent thinker. That so many adopted this stance reduced somewhat, the appellation independent. However, it served Ruth well and she advanced through the ranks to become a department chair, a dean, and, now, the president of Callend. When the Berlin Wall collapsed, so did her devotion to Karl Marx. Instead, she became addicted to chocolate, thereby joining millions of her sisters in the single solidarity that cut across ethnic, economic, racial, and sociological lines.

  ***

  She gazed at the others around the table. Charlie Two droned on. Ruth listened for the words she knew were coming, words she was helpless to prevent—words which would tip Callend’s precarious economic scales into the red, and spell its eventual doom.

  To Dillon’s right was Sergei Bialzac, chairman of the history of art department. To his left was the wife of the president of Picketsville Bank, Marge Tice. Her membership on the board was a mystery to some. But those who knew her, knew she had the brains and the blunt honesty to run her husband’s bank and the good sense to pretend she did not. Ruth sat across from these three, flanked by Ben Stewart, owner of Stewart Galleries, New York and Philadelphia, and Dan Clough, president emeritus of the college.

  Ruth tried one more time to grapple with the problem she had so far been unable to solve: how to stop the board from voting to terminate the lease and remove the collection. She had just begun to erase the chronic deficits thought by her predecessor as permanent. Another year, two at the most, and the college would be in the black and the annual raids on the endowment at an end. She had done it. Almost.

  Dan Clough would be pleased to see her fail. His retirement and the consequent appointment of Ruth to the presidency were occasioned because of the economic problems the college had developed. His position had been, and remained, that there was no solution to the deficits. The money would have to come from elsewhere, a merger with one of the men’s colleges in the area. His insistence on that point brought him into conflict with the alumnae and the Board of Trustees. He was asked to step down and, as a final blow to his already damaged ego, a thirty-five-year-old woman was named to replace him.

  Stewart’s recent opposition to “burying the world’s treasures” puzzled Ruth. Always in the past, Ben acted as a rubber stamp for the coll
ege, but no longer. She and Sergei would vote against, and that left Marge the swing vote. A vote for would end it; a vote against would create a tie that would defeat. And then there was Senator Rutledge’s proxy. The senator was a member of the Board but as yet had not attended any meetings. However, he did send lengthy and detailed comments, doubtless prepared by his staff, to be read into the record on each agenda item before the meeting and a beautiful letter of apology afterward. Never before had he sent a proxy vote, nor had there ever been a need to.

  Dillon’s sonorous voice took on the tone speakers have when they are nearing completion. The timbre improved and the volume increased, his words resonated against the rosewood paneling and buried themselves in the two fifteenth-century tapestries on the walls. Eyes once glazed returned to alertness.

  “In conclusion,” he read, “the Foundation’s position is as follows: Whereas the lease expires in three weeks and, Whereas there is no realistic reason to renew it, the Dillon Collection South shall be removed from storage to be displayed in a new gallery in New York which the foundation has just leased with the able assistance of our friend, Ben Stewart.”

  A bombshell! She expected the termination, but not in three weeks. Three weeks…and Ben—the quisling.

  “The corporate bylaws require a majority vote of the members of this board; therefore, I move the following: the lease not be renewed at its termination date three weeks hence, arrangements be made to remove all the contents from the Art Storage Compound and the practice of storing the collection at Callend be ended forthwith.”

  So there it was. Stewart seconded the motion.

  “President Harris, I am sorry to have to put this to you this way, especially on such short notice, but you see, times change. And, of course, the vault itself remains the property of the college. No way we can take that back, is there?” Dillon chuckled.

  Maybe it was the heat or maybe just hearing the words. Whatever the reason, Ruth lost the cool detachment on which she had built her reputation at the college.

  “Mr. Dillon, under the circumstances, I can’t bring myself to see the humor in that. The fact is if the collection goes, you might as well take the building with you. The hole you would leave behind would be far more useful. We could bury our hopes, our future, and one hundred and fifty years of educational traditions in it. A four-story underground, air-conditioned bomb shelter is of no use to us whatever.” Ruth’s eyes glittered, partly from anger, partly from disappointment.

  “The question, Mister Chairman.”

  “Not so fast, Ben. You’ll get your super gallery soon enough,” Ruth snapped.

  “The motion has been made and seconded. Is there any debate?”

  Ruth waited for what seemed to be an eternity. Stewart whistled through his teeth; Clough drummed his fingers, eyes fixed in space, dreaming of his triumphal return, the Douglas MacArthur of Callend—back to an embattled academic Corregidor. He would turn the school over to the democracy of merger, or sub-merger, with…whom? There were no more all-male colleges left in the area.

  Ruth championed all-women institutions. It was not that she was old fashioned. Her friends could not believe she would bury herself and her career in what they considered an academic dinosaur. But she believed that women performed better without the distraction of men. In a single-sex environment, women could assume leadership positions and build confidence. She saw in her teaching years that when the testosterone titer in the immediate area rose, women sometimes became deferential and even silly, and would let any moronic position formulated by a man override their own, no matter how much better it might be. In an all-female environment, women excelled. Their natural sensitivity and intuitive understanding of human relations came to the fore. There was time enough in the real world that awaited her graduates to go head to head with men. Now they needed to grow in both knowledge and confidence.

  “Dr. Bialzac?” Ruth needed some help, some time. “You were about to say?”

  The little professor blinked, paused, and then unleashed a virtual torrent of words. They poured out of him in spurts, gushers, and streams, rolling together, and cresting into a tidal wave of protest. His eyes glittered behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. His Van Dyke pointed, punctuated, and launched paragraphs of polemic. He discoursed on the tragedy about to be visited on the college, the department which he had the rare privilege—no, honor—to head, the academic community, even the State of Virginia. He pleaded. He threatened. The entire gamut of human emotions crossed his moon-like face as he contemplated certain destruction. It was an incredible performance, even for Bialzac.

  “This will not be forgotten, sir,” he spat at Stewart. “No, sir, Judas was paid his thirty pieces of silver and got a cemetery and himself as the first customer. This is betrayal, this is blasphemy, and you are the Philistines who have delivered up Callend to be crucified.”

  Bialzac stopped his tirade in mid mixed metaphor as abruptly as he had started and slumped back into his chair. He looked rumpled, exhausted, and distraught.

  “Thank you, Dr. Bialzac,” Ruth inserted. “Are there any more comments for the record?”

  Dillon was on the thin edge of losing his temper. The others were too nonplussed or amazed to speak. Ruth turned to Dillon and with all the patience she could manage, tried one last time to salvage the collection. She spoke to him as the mover, but her words were for…whom? Marge Tice? Stewart?

  “Mr. Chairman, Mr. Dillon, I can understand the foundation’s position, and your concern for and generosity to the college attest to your long commitment to it. I ask only that you consider the impact this decision will have on us, not just in the long run, but particularly, in the short run. I suppose we all knew that sooner or later this could happen, would happen…but three weeks.

  “Mr. Dillon, we have only one month left of the spring term. A new class of first-year students is to be registered in the fall and our faculty is under contract. Many of the students on campus, and those coming in the fall, chose Callend on the promise that the collection will be part of the college’s educational resources. We are known throughout the country for our departments of art history and fine arts studies. This precipitous decision will require us to inform our current and incoming students as well. It is much too late for us to recruit new students to replace those who will now elect to transfer or enroll elsewhere. Think of the faculty scheduled to teach courses in a curriculum contingent on the collection, Mr. Dillon. Three weeks. Sir, please give us some time. We might make a transition in a year or two. The collection has been here for fifty years; twenty-four months more will not make that much difference.”

  “President Harris, I appreciate your position, indeed we all do, but it is quite out of the question. My instructions are to remove the collection with all due haste and that is what I must do. I am sorry,” Dillon replied, his aquiline face arranged in a sympathetic expression.

  Ruth wracked her brains for a wedge. She had anticipated the decision. The idea of storing art works in an underground bunker in this day and age was, she conceded, ridiculous. But she could not understand the rapidity of the move. There must be something she could do, something to make it all come out right. If only she could buy some time, just a little time.

  “Mr. Dillon, I wonder if I might ask one favor?”

  “Certainly, if it’s within reason. We don’t want to be rigid about this and ah—”

  “Fine. Could we split the motion? Could we first vote on terminating the lease and agreements, yes or no, and then, second, move and debate the time of termination? I don’t want to prolong this if the answer is no, but at the same time, there may be a way we can salvage something here.”

  “Well, I suppose that will be all right, if the Seconder agrees. Mr. Stewart, you will agree, will you not?” Stewart agreed.

  It took Senator Rutledge’s proxy to pass the first part of the motion. Dillon then move
d the time be three weeks. Stewart again seconded and both looked at Ruth.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Dillon. I have, I think, an amendment, but if you will indulge me for a moment. Sergei?” She turned to Bialzac who still ashen-faced, looked like he had been handed a death sentence.

  “Sergei?”

  Bialzac’s eyes came back into focus.

  “President Harris? Sorry, you were saying?”

  “Sergei, we must try to make the best of a bad situation. I need to know something and you are the only one who can tell me. How long would it take to photograph the collection—what is in the vault and, with Mr. Dillon’s permission, the items in Cleveland, all of it?” She glanced in Dillon’s direction. He would not dare refuse, not if Bialzac gave the right answer.

  Bialzac thought a moment, ticking off the number of paintings and other items he would have to photograph, the equipment, lights, film, time.

  “We’d need two, at least two, pictures of each painting…the sculpture and artifacts, perhaps three or four…then we have to be sure of the exposures, develop them, mount them. Eight to ten weeks would be fair. If we began with the items here and all goes well, we might be finished with that portion in say six weeks. The other items because they are wall mounted or free standing in the museum in Cleveland, in another four. Yes, ten weeks should do it.”

  “Thank you, Sergei.” Thank you, indeed. Time—it would buy some time—not too much, but enough. Dillon should go along. It was too reasonable a request to refuse. Now, to sweeten the pot just a little.