Mexican Booty: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 2)

by J. J. Henderson

  Quentin looked exasperated. "Get serious, Madeleine. Do you think I would dare to screw up a call as important as this? No way. Simon, I'm sure you know your stuff, but you have no idea how good these forgers have gotten in the last couple of years. As the market for these pieces has grown, and the prices have climbed, a higher quality of hustler has jumped in. These dudes are experts. Believe me, if I hadn't seen it before, I wouldn't have known what to look for. Madeleine, you're wasting your time pretending otherwise."

  "I'm not so sure. I want to talk to—I want Herman Forte to have a look."

  "Forte?" said Quentin. "You're going to call Herman Forte? There's nothing he's going to tell you that I haven't already."

  "There's too much at stake here. I simply must speak to someone with more authority," she said, and went back to her office. She closed the door and picked up the phone.

  "Who's Herman Forte?" Lucy asked.

  "Doctor Herman Forte," said Beth. "He used to be our boss. A real classic New York academic shithead. But he's a Ph.D., and he loves ladies like Madeleine Rooney."

  "Christ, I can't believe she's calling him," said Quentin. "Thanks for raising those doubts, Simon," he said. "Perhaps you'd like to come back to the museum with me and tell me how to do my job there as well?" He stopped abruptly, and turned his attention back to the objects, peering closely at the vase. "This one would have to be subjected to thermo-luminescence to date it, but like I said before, I've never heard of anyone trying to pass off forgeries and real artifacts at the same time. I'd be willing to bet this is bogus too."

  "I'm sorry, Quentin," Simon said. "I was just trying to help."

  "Don't make excuses. You fucked up, Si," said Lucy. "And where's lunch, anyway, you galoot?"

  "There's a deli around the corner. What do you guys want?" he said sheepishly.

  Rooney emerged from her office. "Herman's on his way over. Meanwhile, I'd like you to continue shooting, Lucy. I want these pieces in the catalogue."

  "Really?" Lucy said, her spirits instantly lifted. Fake or no, what did she care, if the lady still wanted pictures?

  "Yes. Let's get on with it." Rooney picked up one of the shell carvings and placed it on the pedestal. "I'll just have to find someone else to write them up if you two aren't interested."

  Quentin and Beth just looked at her. Quentin shook his head.

  "I was just going to get some sandwiches," Simon said to Rooney. "Do you want anything?"

  "I never eat lunch," she said. "But fetch me a bottle of Evian, Simon, Thanks."

  "I'll have a Greek salad type thing," said Lucy. "You know, feta, olives, yoghurt and cucumbers."

  "Don't bother with us," said Quentin. "We've got to get back to work, right Beth?" He glanced at his watch, an expression of contempt on his face.

  "Right, Quentin."

  "See ya, Luce," Quentin said. "Sorry," he added under his breath. "But this is total bullshit—and the last person I want to see right now is Herman Forte."

  "That's cool, Quent—but she still wants her pics," she said.

  "Go for it, Luce," he said. "A picture of a fake is just as pretty as a picture of an artifact."

  "Let us know what Forte says, Lucy," Beth said. "Talk to you tonight. Ciao, Ms. Rooney," she added from the doorway, and waved as she sailed out.

  Twenty minutes later, Herman Forte showed up just as Lucy and Simon were finishing up their lunch. Forte was crew-cut and a boyish fifty, dressed snappily in a lightweight suit over a blue striped shirt and a bow tie. "Madeleine, how are you?" he gushed as they rushed to meet mid-room. They hugged and continental-kissed and did their dance, then cut to the chase: the artifacts.

  Madeleine Rooney took him by the arm and led him over to the counter, babbling all the while: "So Quentin Washington claims these are fakes but I don't know, this nice boy Simon says he doesn't think so, and I have papers, and I don't know, Herman, I can't believe Darren would let Maggie Clements send up a bunch of forgeries, do you?"

  "Certainly seems unlikely to me," he said, picking up the obsidian head and looking it over. "Hmmmm. What did Quentin actually say, Madeleine?"

  "Oh, something about the iconography along the bottom—who cares about the bottom, for God's sake?—belonging on ceramics and not on shell or stone pieces. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could know with such certainty that the Mayans didn't use the same patterns on different media," she said.

  Forte looked at the iconography more carefully, then put it down and picked up one of the shell pieces and checked it out before setting it down. "Um, I don't know, Madeleine. I just don't know. Quentin may be right, I can't be sure. On the other hand," he added quickly, seeing her dismay, "He may be wrong. I'm not convinced either way, to tell the truth." He simply couldn't stand the idea of displeasing the lady.

  "Herman," Madeleine whined, "Herman, what do you really think?"

  "I think you should definitely go ahead with the photography and the catalogue. I'll have to think about it. Maybe I can get Louis Schultz to have a look."

  "So they aren't fake? Washington was wrong?" she cried out.

  "Now, now," he said, pleased to have pleased her, "I didn't say that. I said simply that there was some doubt. I'm not sure. I could go either way with this one. I think we need another opinion. I’ll have to see what—"

  "Fine. Lucy, we'll definitely finish up the shoot. Herman, do you have time to write these up for the catalogue?"

  "I might be able to manage. It would have to be a rush, of course, with attendant fees. And I'd like to see the Letters of Authentication, if I could, Madeleine. I need to know who's seen the pieces."

  "In my office. Come on back and have a look. Call your friend. Do whatever you have to." Madeleine could hardly contain her re-kindled excitement. And who could blame her, Lucy thought.

  But on the other hand, how was this sycophantic snivelworm going to pull this off? Lucy wondered. If he was legit and the pieces weren't, he was putting his reputation on the line by authenticating them. Could Quentin have been wrong? No way. He was one of the smartest people she knew, and this was his work. He would never fuck up a call this important.

  Well, for now, it was not her problem. "Well, Simoon, I guess we oughta get to it, eh?" she said.

  "Yeah. Hey Luce," he added. "I'm sorry about what happened before, but—hey, maybe your friend was wrong, huh?"

  "Not likely, Si, not likely. Let's just get the job done, eh? I don't want to hang around here any longer than necessary."

  CHAPTER TWO

  A FROLIC IN THE HIGH DESERT

  Lucy sweated the take-off, the only part of flight that occasionally rattled her nerves, and then settled down as the jet lifted smoothly through the East Coast cloud cover and swooped west, Albuquerque-bound. Before getting into the TIMES for her daily dose of domestic and international disaster, to re-affirm her phenomenal stroke of luck she opened the assignment letter for another look.

  The letterhead read NY/SEE STYLE, done up in a hot red Deconstructivist typeface. Heidi Landesmann, Editor. Phone and fax numbers and a website and a Lafayette Street address. Heidi was an old friend from Lucy's club-crawling days who'd stumbled into a low-paying East Village edit job five years back, inadvertently hitching a ride on the fastest rising star in the New York City magazine firmament. Now the star was on the verge of imploding, though Heidi reported that the publishers hoped to squeak through the current hard times and flourish again, possibly by closing the magazine’s ill-fated online edition. Lucy had her doubts. But NY/SEE STYLE still had an editorial budget, and in the latest shake-up of the masthead Heidi had been anointed Editor-in-Chief, opening the door for Lucy at last.

  "Dear Lucy Ripken: This is to confirm an assignment on Pre-Colombian art forgery and its relationship to and effect on the NY art market. The article will specifically focus on works from the Mayan culture of Pre-Colombian Mexico. As agreed, NY/SEE STYLE will pay $1500.00 on delivery of a 3000 to 5000 word manuscript on the subject. NY/SS will pay an additional $500.00 for
photography, and $150.00 for each image utilized in the article. NY/SS agrees to pay expenses, including roundtrip airfare to Albuquerque, New Mexico, car rental and research expenses, but excluding hotel and food bills. Good luck. Heidi Landesmann."

  There was a yellow stick-on note attached. "Luce—like I said off the record: you get the right picture, you got the cover and another $1000. Love to Rosa. Stay cool. H." Lucy put the letter away and looked out the window. The clouds had parted to reveal green rippling hills seven miles below. She wondered about her own dumb luck. One minute she's doing a basic one day photo shoot to make rent, the next she's on her way to Santa Fe with a hot investigative assignment and a shot at a cover story. This could be a major career break, no doubt about it. So what if she had to crash with Rosa and Darren, and eat on the cheap? There might even be a book in this story—one that she would write with a little help from her friends Beth and Quentin Washington.

  After all, she'd hatched the idea over dinner at their house right after the photo shoot. They were dying to get the details on what Forte had said about the fake goods, and so Lucy had dropped Simon and her photo gear off downtown and headed right back uptown on the train, this time all the way to 199th and Broadway, where Quentin, Beth, and Hannah lived in the shadow of the Cloisters.

  Over brown rice, black beans, Caesar salad, and Mexican beer Lucy'd gained a little more insight into the current Pre-Colombian art scene as well as some background on Dr. Herman Forte—an "obsequious swine," Beth had called him. By the end of dinner Lucy had come up with a plan for an investigative article on the Pre-Colombian art market, and the production and distribution of fakes, particularly those purporting to be Mayan relics from the Yucatan Peninsula, into that market. As was true of much that was written on art these days, the story would really be about money. Beth and Quentin had agreed to "consult."

  She started making calls at ten the next morning. The Smithsonian and Connossieur wanted elaborate written queries, while Art in America, Traveler, and Art & Antiques turned her down flat. Then she thought of Heidi L., and just like that landed the gig.

  A piece of good timing, as NY/SEE STYLE was in the midst of another facelift—the third in two years—and its editorial policies were in flux. This meant that Heidi could give Lucy a real assignment on a subject the rag wouldn't have touched a few years back. In the loud and lavish recent past, NY/SS had been all fashion, so trendy it practically deconstructed in your hands when you tried to get past the self-consciously grainy black and white neo-brutalist fashion pics and read the text. The articles and columns consisted of innuendo and in-the-know chat about who showed up at the latest club, what they wore, and what drugs they took while there. Fittingly, since the magazine had begun as an amateur nightlife gazette run by a bunch of aging club kids who thought what they did every evening from midnight to dawn merited press coverage. Lucy had hated NY/SS even though she'd devoured the nightlife gossip for the first year of its existence, to see if anyone she knew got boldfaced. They never did. She never did.

  "A controversy about pre-Colombian art forgery?" Heidi had said. "Ridiculously pricey fake Mayan pots and statues? Sounds cool. Tell me more." Lucy did, and Heidi said, "Well, nobody around here knows what the magazine is about any more, you could use the work, and I’ve got a few pages to fill, so why not?"

  They ironed out the details. The article would open with the scene in the Desert Gallery. Good thing she'd closed the shoot with a color portrait of Rooney surrounded by the new pieces, their elongated and distorted shadows crawling up her arms and body. The first section would end with the arrival of Herman Forte to make his ambiguous endorsement. The tone in this part would be decidedly catty, as rich, dessicated Upper East Side art groupies like Madeleine Rooney, and academic suck-ups like Herman Forte, invariably played well as objects of ridicule. From there the piece would track back through Margaret Clements in Santa Fe—trendy Santa Fe would make great background, and was a major center for dealing Native American art both contemporary and antique—and lead where it would. Lucy had three weeks to figure it out, shoot what she needed, and write the story.

  She only wished she'd seen the Letters of Authentication, and the appraisal, that Madeleine Rooney insisted she'd gotten from New Mexico. These documents supported her claim that the stuff was authentic. Herman Forte had seen the documents, but Rooney had refused to let Lucy see them. She said it was none of her business. Lucy had returned the favor by not informing Rooney of her plans for an article on the controversy.

  She read the TIMES from end to end, almost completed the puzzle, and then began skimming the book which Quentin had lent her. It was called "THE MAYA," by George A. Coe. Quentin had called it the definitive volume.

  It knocked her out. As she woke, the flight attendant was murmuring them back to upright in their seats as the plane soared down into the desert. Light poured through the scratchy windows, and Lucy had a look out. The spring air was luminously clear over Albuquerque, and they landed smoothly ten minutes ahead of schedule.

  When the plane stopped moving she quickly hauled her camera bag and her purse down from the overhead. She positioned one bag in front and one behind, readying herself for the daily backache, and with the straps crossing over her shoulders, she edged her way along with the men and women in suits down the aisle and out into the terminal.

  Fifteen minutes later she left the airport in a cheap subcompact rental car, pleasantly surprised, once again, at how easily things like luggage, cars, and airport exits got done outside New York. She headed northeast on Interstate 25, up the Rio Grande towards Santa Fe. High on her right, morning shadows stretched down the western face of Sandia Peak.

  Doing seventy-five miles an hour with four windows down and the radio blasting rock n' roll, she recalled a more pleasurable scenario from a dozen years back, driving cross-country from Portland to the Big Apple. She and Billie Larson, the first guy she'd ever slept with, had a dozen dexedrine, half an ounce of reefer, and four days to get a drive-away car—a late model Lincoln—to a place called Hempstead on Long Island. Even with a side-swoop into the desert they'd made it in seventy-six and a half high and hallucinatory hours. From Hempstead they'd taken the train back into Manhattan, where she'd fallen in love not with Billie, who became a junkie then went home to Oregon and got religion, but with the city itself, all speed, clamor, and glorious decay.

  No decay out here. Desert and distant mountains glowed, pristine in the perfect light, the thin, rarefied air. Spring wildflowers splashed the muted beige tones of the earth with bright accents. The Sangre de Cristos showed off their gleaming faces and deep, shadowy arroyos. At the side of the road, three pink-headed vultures flapped up on heavy black wings as she blasted past, disturbed from a road-kill feast.

  The fast food gas station trash architecture that marks the outskirts of every US town in the early 21st century had infested picturesque Santa Fe, too, once you got off the interstate. She exited and headed towards the Plaza, measuring the neon and plastic sprawl of shopping malls and gas stations against the looming mountains.

  Closer to the plaza, tasteful took over: with a five story height limit and other zoning controls inside the city limits, the streets were lined with low rise adobe or faux adobe buildings, reducing everything—fancy hotel, department store, government office—to the same unpretentious if somewhat monochromatic level. Around the plaza itself, where the Palace of the Governors and the other authentic 17th, 18th, and 19th century pueblo buildings were located, the town was lovelier and more substantial. But some things had changed in three or four hundred years, and Lucy couldn't find a place to park anywhere near the Anasazi Mountain Lodge, where she was supposed to meet Rosa at one o'clock for lunch. She ended up in a lot three blocks away, and counted three jewelry stores, five arts and crafts emporiums, six art galleries displaying O'Keeffe and her clones and descendants, two Western wear shops, and four nouvelle Tex-Mex restaurants in the three block walk. Lucy strolled through a few of the shops and galleries,
and discovered that ridiculously high prices had migrated west from Madison Avenue. Tastefully hip, gracefully aging, exquisitely accessorized men and women—the sort that looked as if they probably spent a lot of time in mud baths and channeling seminars—ran the elegant little stores. Outside, the streets teemed with whites in fancy casual Western duds, buying, and Native Americans selling silver and turquoise jewelry off blankets on the plaza sidewalks. Flowers bloomed everywhere in terra cotta pots. From certain angles the way the sunlight streaked the perfect adobe buildings made it look as if Ralph Lauren had designed the entire town.

  She spotted the Lodge, familiar from photographs, from half a block away. She'd done a design story on the Anasazi a year or so back for SPACES Magazine, and remembered the timbered entry arch and the heavy wooden doors from the photos she'd worked with when writing the piece.

  She and Rosa had decided to meet here because it was the only place in town Lucy knew of, and Rosa had been looking for an excuse to come in for lunch. Darren, it seemed, simply refused to patronize places that charged more than five bucks for a taco, even if the tortilla was made from organic blue corn, the chicken had ranged free, and the beans were genetically pure and politically correct.

  She entered the lodge's restaurant, and had a quick look around. The room was half-full, mostly groups of prosperous young white women doing lunch, but Rosa, the quintessential prosperous young white woman, was not among them. Lucy had traveled 1800 miles, Rosa had to travel three, and it was Rosa who would be late for lunch. Lucy checked her watch, which she'd set on landing in Albuquerque. She was four minutes late. It was not a good time to utilize her usual approach to late lunch dates, which was to give them ten minutes then leave. Where could she go? Shopping?

  The hostess, an elegant Hispanic woman with Olga stitched over the pocket of her tailored cowboy shirt, gave Lucy a practiced smile as she approached the maitre'd stand. "Good afternoon. Will you be dining alone?"