The Capitalist

by Peter Steiner

  “Have you been in service before?” he demanded. Now that they had agreed on terms, other things he should have asked occurred to him.

  “No, I have never been in service. I am a nurse’s aide.” She might as well have said, “I am the president of a major company,” the way she pronounced the words.

  “Of course you will wear a sari when you are on duty,” he said.

  “A sari is neither appropriate or practical for this work. I have a uniform that consists of slacks and a tunic. And a headscarf,” she said as an afterthought, and touched her head. “I assure you, sir, my appearance will always be correct.”

  The next Monday Abinaash moved into the Kapoor house, a large colonial structure surrounded by a walled garden filled with bougainvillea, hibiscus, date palms, and fig trees and with fountains at each end of the house. She was given a narrow bed in the cook’s room on the fourth floor where the servants lived.

  The cook had had the room all to herself until now, so of course she resented Abinaash’s presence. Abinaash arranged her meager belongings in the bottom drawer of the small dresser. She put her books on the room’s only bookshelf.

  “Don’t hog all the space,” said the cook. “Half of that shelf is mine, you know.”

  “Do you have books too?” said Abinaash.

  “I might,” said the cook, who could not read. “It doesn’t matter: The space is mine.”

  Abinaash left half the shelf empty. She did not mind. She had never lived in such luxury.

  XLII

  HAMILTON JONES HAD URGED that Louis send photos of his fake paintings to Christie’s and Sotheby’s and to several prominent galleries. “Gagosian and Zwirner, for certain. We need to get some buzz going. Gavin Brown, maybe. Pace, Metro Pictures.”

  “Buzz?” said Louis.

  “We need people talking about this extraordinary and mysterious cache of masterpieces. Remember, Louis, nothing moves a collector like envy. Collectors will want your Picassos not because they appear to be great paintings. They will want them so no one else can have them. For the rich, being a collector almost always comes down to the joy of claiming something unique and precious as their own. By the way, that goes for museums too. The Met, MOMA, Chicago Art Institute, the Getty, the Louvre, they’ll all be trying to find you.”

  “Should we send them the photos too?”

  “I think the auctions and galleries will do the trick. The story will get told to The New York Times and then everybody will know.”

  Finally Hamilton Jones sent photos to St. John Larrimer’s Cap d’Antibes address. They would be forwarded to Larrimer wherever he was, and St. John’s sense that he was well hidden from the world would not be compromised.

  Hamilton wrote a letter to introduce the paintings.

  Dear Mr. Larrimer,

  Your situation may dictate that you not add to your art collection at this time. But the masterworks in the enclosed photos have just come to light. You will recognize that they are of extraordinary quality. I thought you should at least know of their existence and availability.

  An elderly and secretive French collector has just decided to liquidate his collection, including these exceptional late Picassos and the eccentric but wonderful Cézanne. The provenance of all these works seems impeccable. Some were apparently acquired by this gentleman from Picasso himself. The fact that they have never been seen before makes their appearance at this late date a unique event in the entire history of modern art. I haven’t yet seen them in person, but judging from the photos, I believe the Picassos would easily bring six or eight million dollars each—probably more—in a strong auction, and the Cézanne at least twenty.

  As it happens, this collector prefers to sell as he bought—privately and not at auction—which means the paintings will sell for something less than their full value. This gentleman approached me thanks to a friend of his who is a longtime client of mine. I have spoken with the gentleman on two occasions and have made plans to go to France as soon as I can to see the paintings.

  I must inform you that I have two other clients to whom I am also sending these photos. My usual arrangement for finding paintings of this value—a three-percent-of-purchase-price fee—applies. Please let me know whether I can be of service.

  Sincerely yours,

  Hamilton Jones

  At first St. John was amused by Jones’s letter and by the enclosed photos. He looked at them and smiled and shook his head at each one. St. John was not an idiot. He knew that various forces would stop at nothing to get their hands on him. They would not be above using his passion for collecting to ensnare him. He put the photos aside and went to bed. But at four in the morning, he was suddenly wide awake and suffering under the constraints he had brought down upon himself. The agony was almost physical. He felt like Gulliver, held immobile by a thousand silken threads. He was lying on silk sheets, living as luxuriously as he ever had, and yet he was a prisoner. He tore himself from his bed, as though he were breaking free from the Lilliputians’ tiny ropes. He strode to the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of milk and drank it so greedily that drops ran down his cheeks and onto his pajama top.

  The photos lay on the table where he had left them. He spread them out in front of him and was overcome by their beauty and, simultaneously, by the sense that acquiring them, especially in his circumstances, would be a coup of unparalleled proportions. And what was the risk, after all? He could see them in France without fear of arrest and make certain they were what they appeared to be. Jones would have to be there too. Maybe St. John would invite his friend, the French president, to come along. Maybe he would offer them as a permanent loan to the Louvre or the Pompidou Center in exchange for a seat on their board or governing council or whatever they called it in France.

  The acquisition of these paintings would represent the return of normalcy to his life. It struck him suddenly how terribly he missed this normalcy, the serenity and calm. And the power! He would renew his sense of power and show the world that it was undiminished, that he was as big as he had ever been. No one should own these paintings but him.

  He arranged the photos on the table as though he were planning how they might be arranged on his walls (in case the Louvre thing didn’t work out). He stood over them and gazed down at them, while the desire and avarice Hamilton Jones had so skillfully summoned surged through his being. The sight of these paintings made him ache.

  St. John sat down with a deep sigh. No. No! There was no way he could buy these paintings. To see them meant leaving his seclusion and, despite the French president’s protection, that meant putting his liberty at risk. Besides that, he would have to move large sums of money. He would have to reveal his whereabouts, raise his profile. No, no. It was impossible. He simply could not afford to take the chance.

  St. John slid the letter and photos back into the envelope. He looked out onto the Caribbean Sea. The day was dawning. Little whitecaps danced on the gray water. An albatross passed slowly in the distance. A cormorant sat on a rock with spread wings while another dived for a fish. What was life without risks? Everything St. John had ever accomplished had been done despite the risk, even because of it. Risk was his motivator and the piquant spice of his life.

  Without thinking what time it was, St. John picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Jones? Hamilton Jones?… Larrimer here.”

  XLIII

  A SOTHEBY’S ASSISTANT OPENED the packet Louis had sent. The assistant did not quite realize what she was looking at until she read the letter. She took the packet to her boss, who gave the pictures one look and ran up three flights of stairs to the Impressionist and Modern Art Department. It was the first time he had run anywhere in years. He passed the photos to a modern painting specialist as he fought to catch his breath.

  “Just came … in the … mail,” he panted.

  The specialist let out a cry. Other specialists crowded around. They too let out cries of amazement and adoration. They passed around the accompanying letter
, but it was not informative. There was no return address. The postmark was Paris.

  To Whom It May Concern:

  I have enclosed photos of the best paintings in my collection. I think you will recognize that these are works of the highest quality. They have never been exhibited or seen publicly.

  It is my impression that they should command excellent prices even in a depressed market such as we are experiencing now.

  I expect to be in the United States in the near future. I hope we can meet then to discuss exactly how I might best proceed to liquidate my collection.

  The letter closed with an illegible signature.

  “How do you know it’s not a hoax?” said a voice from the back of the scrum. Everyone turned to glare at Melanie Witkowski. She was an intern of course.

  “Collectors of this caliber are secretive by nature,” explained one of the specialists as patiently as he could manage. “Besides: look at the paintings, dear girl.”

  The reactions at Christie’s and at the galleries Hamilton Jones had chosen were similar. And just as he had predicted, an article appeared in The New York Times a few days later. It began on the front page and jumped to the Arts pages, where there was a half page of photos showing the Cézanne, the Derain, and two of the Picassos. The story told how a trove of never-before-seen modern masterpieces had been discovered in France. An investigation by The New York Times had revealed that the paintings belonged to a reclusive and secretive French collector, believed to be either an arms manufacturer or a steel magnate whose wife had recently died and left him despondent. He lived in Paris and Morocco and kept his collection at a secret location in a specially designed climate-controlled vault. The story included quotes from various experts on the quality and value and the apparently extraordinary condition of the paintings.

  The New York Times could not exactly be blamed for getting nearly everything wrong. It was a concocted story to begin with, and when the writer sought to check his facts with other sources, they confirmed them as true to the best of their knowledge. But in fact they had no actual knowledge either.

  The Times had found itself on the horns of an all too common journalistic dilemma. “How do we know this is true?” said Clementine Horn, the editor in chief. “How do we know these are real?” She gathered the photos and passed them back to the arts editor and the features editor, who sat across the table facing her. “Do we have unimpeachable sources?”

  “We’ve got Sotheby’s and Christie’s assessments,” said the features editor, “which are admittedly tentative and based on unprofessional photos. But they seem pretty convinced.” He glanced at the arts editor, who nodded agreement.

  Clementine Horn was suspicious of art. All art. It wasn’t earth-changing, the way politics and catastrophes were. And they had run stories on forgeries and fakes before where the experts had been bamboozled. She imagined it would be easy enough to fake paintings. Still, she had joined The Times the week the Pentagon Papers were published and had watched in astonishment as that story had divided the Supreme Court and the country and elevated The New York Times into the journalistic stratosphere. The paper was roundly praised for its courage, good judgment, and perspicacity. Other papers, most notably The Washington Post, followed suit, but The Times had been first with the story. There had been nothing like it since. In fact, various missteps during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had tarnished the paper’s reputation. This was not the Pentagon Papers, but it was still a big story, and if The Times missed it …

  “We need another source,” said Clementine. “Someone completely reliable.”

  “Colin Smallwood at the Met, Whitehead Drucker at the Whitney, and Simon Sadaway at MOMA are all looking at the photos as we speak.”

  “When will we hear back?”

  “They promised within the hour.”

  Dicky Restin looked up from his iPhone. “They’ve got the story at The Washington Post.”

  Clementine Horn took it upstairs to the Sulzbergers. They had to choose between missing one of the biggest arts stories in a very long time or possibly getting some facts wrong. What choice did they really have?

  Within hours of the Times article, the entire art world was agog. The Internet was awash with theories of every sort. Speculation about the collector and his collection was rampant—who he might be, where he might live, where the paintings might be, where the specially designed climate-controlled vault might be found. In a matter of days, museum curators and directors were swarming across France in search of the paintings and their reclusive owner. Known modern art collectors were interviewed to determine whether they were the mysterious collector or, if not, whether they knew who he was.

  Hamilton Jones made certain that St. John Larrimer got a clipping of the New York Times article and a link to the juiciest Internet sites. Larrimer called him. “Goddamn it, Jones, when can I see those paintings?”

  “I’m working on it,” said Hamilton Jones. “The owner won’t let me near him. But nobody else knows where he is either. Give me some time.”

  “Is he a nutcase or something? Goddamn it, Jones, push him. Mention my name if you have to.”

  “I did.”

  * * *

  St. John hadn’t figured on how lonely it would be out of the limelight. Six months after the discovery of his theft, the newspapers had forgotten him. The boards he had served on had stricken his name from their letterheads and found replacements. His friendships had evaporated almost entirely.

  “Almost. But not entirely,” said Richard J. Smythe and clinked St. John’s crystal tumbler with his own.

  “Thank you, Richard. You don’t know how much I appreciate your friendship right now.”

  “Be happy to be forgotten, St. John.”

  “You’re right,” said St. John. Then in the next breath: “Why is Madoff still in the news?” Bernard Madoff had just pleaded guilty to various felony charges. His wife’s money had been confiscated. The feds were trying to figure out how to compensate Madoff’s victims, while the victims were squabbling over which of them was the most aggrieved. Some had never withdrawn any of their earnings and were left with nothing. But others who had withdrawn some or even all they had put in, believed nonetheless that they were entitled to the full sum Madoff was supposed to have earned for them. No one seemed daunted by the fact that only a small fraction of Madoff’s loot remained to be divided up. They all insisted on their fair share, and hired lawyers and filed suits against one another.

  “If you want attention, get yourself arrested,” said Richard.

  St. John was not to be diverted from his misery. “It’s as we’ve always said, Richard, human beings are hardly different from the baser species. Yes, we reason and they don’t, but that becomes important only because we define intelligence and reason to our advantage, in order to place ourselves at the top of the heap. An animal that uses a twig to dig for termites: Shouldn’t one say he has reasoned, since all the components of reason and intelligence are at play in the way he figures out how to dig for termites?”

  Richard was skeptical. “Wait a minute. Doesn’t the fact that he’s still digging for termites while we’re sipping cocktails beside your pool suggest who’s smart and who’s not? He’s still digging for termites after hundreds of generations because he hasn’t figured out how to get beyond digging for termites. And we have.”

  St. John was inconsolable. “Look at these.” The photos of Louis’s Picassos were now mounted on heavy black stock and in plastic sleeves in a black vinyl binder.

  “Oh, are these the paintings you told me about?” He gave the photos a glance. Richard had recently acquired manuscripts of all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, with a signature supposedly in the playwright’s own hand. They had been part of the British royal collection for four hundred years, but had only recently been deacquisitioned because doubts had arisen as to their authenticity. Richard had planted a story causing the authenticity questions to linger. By the time the doubts were finally and definitively laid t
o rest, it was too late. The royals had gone ahead with the sale, and Richard had bought the precious pages at a fraction of their real value. “A triumph,” he said, taking a sip and gazing at the vast green ocean. “No termites here.”

  “I intend to get those paintings,” said St. John.

  “Oh?” said Richard. “How?”

  “I’ll need to move some money.”

  “It’s risky, St. John. When you move large sums by wire, it doesn’t go unnoticed.”

  “Does it matter, really? When I buy those paintings, everybody will know anyway.”

  “True. And by then the wire transfers will have been completed and the transfer records will have been purged. No one will know where the money came from or where it went. Still, there is risk during those brief periods while the money is moving.”

  “I’m counting on you, Richard.”

  “I’m not trying to alarm you. I just think you should know. You’re talking about moving a large sum of money—how much?”

  “I figure a hundred million.”

  “That much? Movements of sums like that show up on the system. They register and can be read from anywhere. So, as I say, there’s serious risk involved.”

  “Goddamn it, Richard, I want those paintings. Nobody else should have them.”

  “You know, St. John, maybe it’s not reason after all that makes us human.” Richard smiled.

  Richard would have preferred that St. John use other money, that he move money from somewhere else besides his Charter Island account. He had a billion in that account, but he also had at least a billion with UBS. Why not move some of that?