Cold Hit

by Linda Fairstein

  “Yes, of course. Our office handled the case.”

  “The professor knew that I wanted to work in restoration, that I hoped to develop a career, go back to the West Coast, and set up shop at the Getty or one of the other museums. To apprentice to Marco Varelli, well, there’s simply nothing better to prepare to learn this business, and no finer credential on a résumé.”

  “When did you start to work for him?” I asked.

  Cannon hesitated. “Nobody worked for Varelli. I mean, technical people did-laborers who picked up and delivered the paintings or arranged the studio. But he was quite a loner. Once he had established himself as the virtuoso, more than forty years ago, he was insistent on working alone. If you were fortunate enough to get his attention, and he agreed to work on your project, then he wanted the result to be only his handiwork.”

  “What do you mean, ‘he agreed’? Didn’t people just pay him?” Chapman wanted to know.

  The serious Mr. Cannon smiled wryly. “No, no, no. Mr. Varelli had more than enough to live on. He was paid handsomely for his craft. So, at a certain point in his life, it was easy for him to turn down whomever he pleased. If the painting or the artist was not one he deemed worthy of his effort, no matter what the price offered, he wouldn’t touch it.”

  “How about if the ownership was cloudy?”

  “Well then, Miss Cooper, there was simply no way to engage him. I can recall an instance when a collector showed up in the atelier with a Léger. The particular painting had been classified in the Pompidou Center as an R 2 P, which means that it had been seized by the Nazis during the war and later returned to France. To date, no one had been able to connect it to the original owner or his descendants. Signor Varelli refused to become involved until an effort was made to trace the lineage and try to find the owners. The more money that was offered to retain him, the more offended he became. I’m sure it’s a lot like that in the legal profession, don’t you think? I mean, with all the ethical dilemmas defense attorneys have?”

  He looked over at me for an answer, which came instead from Chapman. “You’re watching too much Geraldo. I never met a defense attorney with an ethical dilemma-if the check clears, his client’s not guilty.”

  “You said that no one worked for Varelli. Didn’t you?”

  “I had the privilege of being apprenticed to him, Detective. An expensive privilege.”

  “You had to pay to help him?”

  “I had a grant, actually, from a private family foundation. That’s what made the experience possible for me. I certainly wouldn’t have had the means to do it otherwise. Consider it like going to the best school in the world. For close to three years I was tutored by a genius. The skills he has given me are qualities I could never have learned anywhere else.” Cannon bowed his head. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. And worst of all, murdered.” He looked up at us. “He was such a quiet, benign man. There’s not a reason I can think of for someone to hurt him.”

  “Let me run some names by you. Tell us if you know any of these people, okay?”

  Cannon cleared his throat and said it would be fine.

  “Start with Lowell Caxton. Ever meet him?”

  “Many, many times. I’d guess Marco had known him for as long as I’ve been alive. I think he was one of the few collectors whose taste Mr. Varelli admired. I’ve never been to any of Caxton’s homes, but I understand there were several generations of a great genetic eye for art. Mr. Caxton used to come by for an opinion every now and then. Do you know about the Titian-the one he gave to Marco?”

  “Yes. We spent a few minutes with Mrs. Varelli at the funeral home. We expect to see her in the apartment later this week.”

  “Marco adored that gift, a real jewel of a little drawing. I think his acceptance of Lowell Caxton had a lot to do with that gesture. It would be hard to dislike someone who had done such a generous thing.”

  “Any conflict between them, ever?”

  Cannon shrugged his shoulders. “Not that I ever witnessed. Keep in mind, I wasn’t there all the time. Mostly I was with Marco when he was actually doing the work on his projects, not when he was talking with his clients or when they dropped in for a glass of grappa and some advice about what to bid on a particular piece.

  “He was very good at dismissing me. ‘Thank you so much, Mr. Cannon. And now, per piacere, I think we are finished for the moment.’ He’d kind of flutter his hand in my direction, and I’d know it was time to take off.”

  “To…?”

  “The grant covered the expenses of my study, but not an apartment in Manhattan. My girlfriend and I sublet a room in a loft in SoHo. She’s here in graduate school at NYU. When I was free to leave I’d head for the library, an art show, or a movie. But I’d get out of his hair, that much was clear.”

  Chapman checked off Caxton’s name on the list he had started and went down to the next line. “Bryan Daughtry. Ever run into him?”

  “Yes, he was another visitor. Not so much anymore, with the contemporary work he was trying to sell. But Marco had done ventures with him before I arrived here, which was before Daughtry went to jail. On that tax fraud, not that other thing.” Cannon looked at me to see whether I registered any reaction to his reference to the girl in the leather mask.

  “What do you know about his background?”

  “I don’t mean to make light of the story about Bryan Daughtry’s involvement in that old case, but it kind of fascinated Mr. Varelli. He never saw the cruel side of Bryan. Met him as a young man who had a rather good eye for art, albeit untrained. I was a bit shocked to meet him myself when Bryan first came to the studio. Marco told me all about him that first day.”

  Cannon moved in his chair, put the fingertips of his right hand together, and shook them easily in front of his face, imitating the old man’s accent. “ ‘But can you tell me why, Mr. Cannon, why a young man wants to tie up a beautiful young girl and cause her pain? This I don’t understand at all. From a body like this you should get only pleasure, only sweetness, only- come si dice in inglese? -rapture. But maybe I am too old to understand.’

  “Quite frankly, I used to think when Daughtry was here to visit and Mr. Varelli kicked me out, it was to ask him questions about his sexual proclivities. Marco was much more curious about that than he was about contemporary art.”

  Cannon talked for a while about Bryan Daughtry’s more recent business focus, but again could think of no incident that unnerved him in regard to Varelli.

  “How about Marina Sette?”

  Cannon seemed to draw a blank.

  “Marilyn Seven?” I asked, adding a physical description as well as telling him where she lived.

  “It’s quite possible she had been to see Marco, of course. It’s just not a name I recognize.”

  “Frank Wrenley?”

  Again, not familiar. Neither was Preston Mattox. Cannon knew the names of some of the workmen, but Omar Sheffield and Anton Bailey were not among them.

  Chapman put down his pen and clasped his hands on the desktop.

  “Talk to me about Denise Caxton. Everything you know. When you met her, what she was like, what Marco thought about her. Things that don’t seem important to you may be exactly what we’re looking for, so give it all to me, okay?”

  “This one’s a bit complicated, Detective. There was Denise Caxton the woman, and there was Denise Caxton the collector. Marco Varelli’s eye was unerring. He admired great beauty, on a canvas or in human form. Nothing inappropriate, nothing unusual. But he would look at a handsome woman’s face as though it had been sculpted by Michelangelo. Didn’t matter if she were a waitress in a diner or a client with millions. Mrs. Caxton had a real head start with Marco, from the old days. He had met her when she was a kid, just married to Lowell.

  “If I’m not mistaken-you might have to check her apartment for this-I think Mr. Varelli once painted her portrait, a full-length nude. He was very proud of it. Told me it was hung in her room at home. I believe she had a collection of
self-portraits, right?” He chuckled at the vanity of that idea, it seemed to me.

  Cannon continued, “She was a real flirt-Mrs. Caxton, I mean. Knew exactly how to play the old guy, with words. When I first met her, almost three years ago, she could light him up like a flare when he knew she was coming. She would always bring his favorite chocolates, if she had been to Paris, or a chilled bottle of wine to sip with him in the afternoon. She loved to listen to his stories, wanted to know every painting he’d ever worked on-who owned them, what he did to them, what became of them. Marco used to complain that his wife didn’t want to hear the old tales over again. Denise Caxton hung on his every word, or at least she let him think that she did.”

  “Did you ever work on any of the paintings she brought into the gallery?”

  “Yes. She had a knack for picking up sleepers, bidding on some incredibly lifeless old canvas that she’d either had a good tip on or had followed with her gut instincts. ‘Who is it, Marco? Tell me who’s hiding underneath there, mi amore.’ She’d tease him into playing with almost anything she brought in. And what was funny about it was that most of the time, he wanted me there to watch this game she played with him. As if he wanted me to see that a magnificent young woman doted on him, that it wasn’t just happening in his imagination.”

  “When did his feelings for Deni change?”

  Cannon paused. “Is that what Mrs. Varelli said?”

  “Yeah. Said she didn’t make him quite so happy anymore.”

  “I can’t recall exactly when the change occurred, but she’s right. Mrs. Caxton’s visits were fewer and farther apart. She rarely came alone anymore, and the games were over.”

  “Who’d she bring with her, if she wasn’t alone?”

  “Friends, clients-I don’t know. Varelli would shoo me out of the studio. There was no longer any verbal foreplay, so he didn’t need me around.”

  Chapman was annoyed. “You must know who some of them were, don’t you? Start somewhere-women? men? young or old?”

  “Occasionally she came with people I knew, like Bryan Daughtry. Once or twice she might have been with a woman- maybe even that lady you described earlier, with the French braid. Seven or Sette, whatever you called her. But most of the time it was men, two or three different ones in the past few months, since she split up with her husband.”

  “Can you describe any of them for us? Would you recognize them if you saw them today?”

  Again Cannon shrugged, not attaching any importance to these visitors. “There wasn’t anything remarkable about any of them. Sure, maybe I’d know them if I ran into them again, maybe not. You have to understand, Detective, that if Marco Varelli wasn’t working on a canvas, I was just as happy to be out of there. It was as much an education for me to spend a free afternoon at a museum as to be a fly on the wall when he was chatting up rich collectors. I didn’t need the small talk.”

  Chapman stood now, walking behind Cannon’s back. “In the last three years, is there anybody else who spent as much time with Marco Varelli as you did?”

  Cannon thought and then told us, “No. Except for his wife.”

  “Anybody who knew what he thought about everything and everybody?”

  “No, probably not.”

  “They have any kids?”

  “No.”

  “I bet you were sort of like a son to him, weren’t you?”

  “Not exactly. But he was very good to me.”

  “What was the most important thing in the world to him, Don? Leave his wife out of it for the moment. Tell us.”

  “You know the answer. He lived for great art-for looking at it, touching it, smelling it, dreaming about it.”

  ”And he trusted you with his legacy.”

  “Well, I’m not the only one who ever apprenticed with him. There are dozens of experts in museums around the world who-”

  “But now, Mr. Cannon. You’ve spent these last three years joined to him at the hip. I find it really kinda hard to believe that he had many secrets from you.” Mike’s fist pounded down on the top of the lieutenant’s desk. “I’d like you to tell me why he and Denise Caxton had a falling-out.”

  Cannon started at Chapman’s change in mood. “I wasn’t his confidant, Mr. Chapman. I was merely his student.”

  “And you’re too damn smart, too good a student, not to have been aware of what was happening in that little garret every day, that’s what I think. If you’ve got a special talent, Mr. Cannon, it’s your powers of observation, isn’t it? Tell me what you saw up there, what you heard.”

  Mike’s voice bellowed in the small room as Cannon looked at me to call off the angry detective. “She’s on my side in this, buddy. If I let Cooper cross-examine you for fifteen minutes, you’ll forget you ever walked into this room with a set of balls.” Chapman was shouting now, and red in the face. “Three people are dead and my partner’s lying in a hospital bed with a hole in his chest. Stop wasting my time!”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Cannon spoke quietly and again directed the question to me.

  I began to answer but was interrupted by Chapman. “If you’re gonna tell me you killed someone, we’ll call you a lawyer. Somehow, I doubt that’s the problem. Just tell me what’s on your mind and worry about that later.”

  “Well, what if I have information about a crime?”

  Mike’s open palm slammed the desktop another time. “Whaddaya think I’ve been asking you to tell me about for the last hour?”

  25

  Cannon had stalled for about as long as Mike was going to let him, and he knew that. “I suppose there are two things that changed the relationship between Mrs. Caxton and Marco. The first problem began about a year ago.”

  “When, exactly? ‘About’ doesn’t help me all that much.”

  “I can’t give you a specific date. I’m pretty sure it was before she and her husband began to have problems in their marriage. I remember that because I thought it was strange she had come to see Marco about a matter so important but that it was something she wanted to be sure he wouldn’t tell Lowell.”

  “That’s a start. Coop, make a list for me. First thing, try to put a date on that visit, okay? What happened that day?”

  “Denise was exuberant. It must have been spring or summer, ’cause she wasn’t wearing a coat. She was dressed to the nines when she came in, and she looked spectacular. They began the usual flirtation, and Marco made sure that I took it all in. She handed me a bottle of wine-a very special one, she made sure to tell me-and asked me to open it. I did, and Marco invited me to pour for all three of us.”

  “Had you known she was coming?”

  “Yes, she’d called the day before and told Marco she’d found a surprise. A painting, that is. Asked if he would look at it for her. Of course he agreed.”

  Cannon took a breath before going on. He rubbed his hands together and talked slowly, as though uncertain he should talk at all. “After half an hour of cajoling Marco, she got up from the chaise and picked up the bag she’d come in with- one of those large canvas sail bags. She removed something from it, and all I could see was a small mound of plastic bubble wrapping. She unwound several layers of it and lifted out a painting. Then she walked to one of the easels and rested it on the stand. ‘Come, Marcolino-come play with me.’ Mrs. Caxton took him by the hand and stood him before the canvas.”

  “Did you know what it was?”

  “I certainly didn’t. It was dark, really covered with dirt, and hard to make out.”

  “Did Varelli say anything?”

  “Then? No. It would have been unusual for him to speak until after he’d gotten to work and made up his mind that he knew what he was looking at.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “What he did best, Detective. He put the glass of wine down next to him, strapped his headset on-sort of like small binoculars-and steadied himself in place to look at every inch of the canvas with the aid of the light from the glasses. You want to know the details?”

  �
��All of them.”

  “It was obvious that not only was there soot on this one, and varnish, but something had been painted over the original work. That happens frequently with oils, you know, sometimes just because the artist changed his mind about what he wanted to portray. But in this case it looked like it had been put on top to disguise an earlier version of whatever was depicted.

  “So Marco got out his acetone, soaked a cotton swab in it, and went about dabbing at a corner of the canvas, sort of the top right quadrant.”

  “And you, what were you doing?”

  “I stood behind him to watch, to be there to assist him should he have needed me to.”

  “And Deni?”

  “Practically breathing down his neck. Not that he minded that, from her.”

  “How long does this take, what he was doing?”

  “Depends. On what’s there, how many layers, how easily- or not-it picks up. I would say Marco worked for close to an hour before he said very much. He stopped to tell us that he thought he had gotten through the primary layer. He stood up to stretch, and to have me take a look, which I did.”

  “What did you see?”

  Cannon smiled for the first time in ten minutes. “You sound just as anxious as Denise. ‘What do you see, Marco? What can you tell me?’ He poured himself another glass and asked me a few questions, ignoring Deni completely.

  “ ‘What century, boy, do you see now? What school, what artist?’ He did that with me all the time, delighting in those rare occasions when I could pinpoint a good answer as rapidly as he was able to do.”

  “Did you recognize anything?”

  “Only that Marco had gone back several centuries, between removing the new paint and the grime that had so discolored the original canvas. Wherever this piece had come from, it had been terribly, terribly neglected.”

  “What then?”

  “He went back to work, this time adding some ammonia to the acetone and patiently dabbing away. It’s a very slow business. After a while, Marco’s touch exposed some bright blue paint trimmed with a very pearly sort of highlight. He almost gasped when he saw the contrast of the two colors next to each other.”