The Great California Game l-14

by Jonathan Gash

  He thought that one through. “But any AI member who made that protest would…”

  “Be driven into the ground by the biggies? Course it would. But it’ll happen, sure as God sends Sunday. Unless you don’t want it to.”

  “You wouldn’t link Mangold’s with an outrageous —”

  “Never. We’ve got somebody else, who’ll do it for a fee. It’s all fixed.”

  He subsided, said slowly, “That will inflict irrevocable damage on them. Immediate.”

  Not so outrageous after all. We both thought over the history of recent doubts. They centred on what the trade now calls “Bond borrowing”, and please note the capital.

  It came to light when Van Gogh’s painting Irises went up at a Sotheby’s auction. (Incidentally, why is it always poor old Vincent who catches the bad glad? It’s high time some other poor sod had a go.) A mere $53.9 million won the hammer, as we say, for brave Aussie Mr Bond. Everybody was thrilled, especially auctioneers everywhere. And why? Because prices were through the roof, and so was their commission. The trouble was, half the gelt was borrowed. Guess who from? Why, the auctioneers themselves!

  The world outcry was followed by instant explanations, that the world’s top auction houses hadn’t deliberately intended to drive up the prices of art works by a secret loan, that Sotheby’s policies would change, et yawnsome cetera. Worst of all, the art market went gaga.

  “Art dealers began to ask if the Museum of Modern Art would have paid so high for the next Van Gogh, if Picasso’s self-portrait would have touched forty-eight million dollars, all that jazz.”

  “Names?”

  I passed him a list of the international dealers who’d complained to the press.

  “You’ll combine your diatribe with all sorts of veiled accusations of complicity, naturally. You’ll ask why Thyssen paid over fourteen million sterling, at Sotheby’s, for a painting he already half owned. You’ll scream outrage when the AI hullabaloo is raised tomorrow about big auctioneers allowing the new relay bid—you know the old trick, Joe nods to Betty who winks at Fred who scratches his nose so Jean waves to the auctioneer. You’ll holler Is this fair? and all that. You know how to yell, I’m sure.”

  “Mangold’s has been the subject of abuse from —”

  “Sure, sure.” My tone was cold. Asking for sympathy, and him an auctioneer. “False high estimates: ‘anticipatory valuation’ to the trade. That too will be complained abour. New legislation will be demanded from the Europeans, and Parliament. Quote Turner’s Seascape Folkestone—the whole trade knows about that. And cite the different values given to different museums for the same painting.” I pretended to think a while, though I’d already decided. “That Cuyp painting simply couldn’t be officially worth only three million sterling in Wales, and twice that in Edinburgh, right? Here’s a list of suggestions for your press handout, with details and dates. Some you’ll already find in your clippings file. Others are my own… imaginings.” I smiled. Even he cracked his face a little. “I’m hoping you’ll dish the obvious dirt, Mr Mangold, like telling the world that all those awful hundred-thousand dollar Utrillos are fakes.”

  “Three full pages, Mr Dulane?” He read rapidly, looking for his own name, relaxed when it wasn’t there.

  “I was pushed for time.

  He did smile then. “Who’ll be making the protest to the Antique Internationalers?”

  I sighed at the memory of what it would be costing me when young Masterson, Eton and Oxford, suaved to his feet and delivered the speech in Brussels. I’d be paying for the rest of my life, if I lived that long.

  “An interested party, Mr Mangold,” I said mournfully. “Here’s your bill: just get me secretly to Los Angeles, at maximum speed. Add pocket money, and we’re quits.”

  He folded the lists away. “When your man has raised Cain in Brussels, Parliament, the European Commission —”

  “Now, or I cancel.” I stood, the better to run.

  He moved even faster, clambering his desk to wring my hands. “It’s a deal,” he said.

  “Plus the phone call.” He unwrung, as if hearing me demand that secret four per cent discount on commission which they allow antique dealers, as a bribe. I explained. “The call I’ll make very soon, from LA, asking you to agree that you’ll donate to me one hundredth of the joint Sotheby-Christie Impressionist sale prices.”

  He gaped. “That’ll be a fortune! Mangold’s could never afford —”

  “Mangold’s will,” I promised. “Because the Rail Pensions Fund can’t risk scandal. Play your cards, and they’ll switch the sale to you. Surely you can afford one per cent of their gelt?”

  Tears filled his eyes. “If that comes to pass, Mr Dulane,” he said huskily, “I’ll give you two per cent”

  His mind was orgasming at the thought of failures and suicides among his rivals. I was pleased. I’d hate to see auctioneers mellow. Keep progress at bay, I always say. You know where you are with sin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  « ^ »

  MANGOLD did an efficient job. No ostentation, just sent his secretary to conduct me along miles of tortuous corridors. We came out through a shopping mall where a hired saloon waited. A private plane from a small airport beyond Little Ferry, and I had time to think and hope and be relieved the fliers weren’t Joker and Smith.

  The loveliness whizzing below brought tears to my eyes, seeing it all being wasted because I was zooming to fabulous California and probable demise. I was heartbroken with pity for Lovejoy Antiques Inc’s stupidity. So I wallowed and planned, and finally decided I’d better be ready for anything, or else.

  Which brings me to a little place called Los Angeles.

  ONE thing you have to admit about East Anglia is that its villages have centres. Each town has a middle. Every city has an area that definitely is bullseye. Like an idiot, I’d assumed Los Angeles would be similar. I’d actually told Magda and Zole to meet at the railway station, six o’clock every night until I showed up. I’d stay at some hotel “near the town centre”. I remembered using the phrase.

  Lovejoy, he dumb. Brains of a Yeti.

  For Los Angeles is a tangle of cities, towns, areas, coasts, harbours, suburbs, all by the veritable dozen. I stared down disbelievingly as the massive spread grew beneath us. Strings of motorways wound through cities strewn about the globe’s surface, motor cars streaming along umpteen-lane highways that melded, parted, and emptied themselves into the misty distance where still more cities sprawled. I’d seen rivers of traffic before, never floods.

  Just as I thought I’d identified L.A.’s town centre, it was supplanted by another. And another.

  Shakily I asked the air lass what this place was. She looked brightly out of the window.

  “That’s old L.A.,” she said fondly. “Great, huh? We’ll be landing at one of the airports shortly.”

  Get it? One of the airports? I shrank, didn’t want to disembark. I was already lost. I’d thought Los Angeles was a seaside resort. Instead it was a universe.

  We landed at a smaller airport near ?Glendale. It was as big as most countries, and took six minutes to slot me into a motor car. I laid low, occasionally peering out. The world was rushing, whizzing to God knows where. The driver was a Turk, who talked of baseball for the twenty or so miles.

  “YOU look like I feel, Lovejoy.”

  I’d never been so glad to see anyone as Magda and Zole. He’d acquired a skateboard, blew gum between cryptic aphorisms, still swivelled like a periscope poking up from Nautilus. Magda looked what my old Gran called Sunday shod, meaning respectable on the surface but don’t take too much on trust. Her clothes were bright, her face rested into a youth.

  “This place scares me, love.”

  We were in a self-service near the station. She had found it, said it was safe.

  “I’ve already seen two people mugged. In broad daylight.” I waited for this to take effect. Magda shrugged, Zole blew a bubble. “And some of the… girls seem as young as, well, Zole h
ere. One solicited me on a tricycle.”

  “I’ll take you round Hollywood and Vine. Some of them blocks beyond Sunset Boulevard you wouldn’t believe, Lovejoy. Two of your friends get themselves happy there.”

  “They did?” I asked uneasily.

  “Al and Shelt. That Kelly Palumba and her sheet.”

  “She dumb. Her man pays dumb dollar.”

  “Epsilon,” Magda translated. “Buys for her. She’s stoned.”

  “Magda.” It was hard to start, even after a few goes. “Look, love. I’m really grateful…”

  I hate saying things like this, especially to a bird, because they’re inclined to feel they have a right to you more than they have a right. If you follow. But when Magda and Zole had come into the station I’d almost fainted with relief. And when she told me she’d done as I’d asked I almost filled up.

  “I found Revere Mount, Lovejoy. It’s Malibu.”

  The self-service place was enormous. Two women in studs and black leather were jeering by the till, men round them whooping and cheering at sallies. A weathered, frayed old man was slumped at a table, head on his hands. Outside it was almost dark, traffic glaring and snorting for headway. Nobody seemed to be watching us.

  “For the Game?”

  “Uh huh. They staying every which way, Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Monica.”

  But Al and Shelt were Tye Dee’s two special goons. And Magda’d mentioned them practically with her hello. Which raised the small question of how she’d done so well.

  “Where are the Aquilinas?”

  “Beverly Hills. They got a house, a battalion of friends.” She told me an address in impossible numbers.

  “You’ve done marvellously, love.”

  Zole happened to be listening, picked up a vibe of doubt. He’d been strolling among tables, picking leftovers from plates. Habit of a lifetime, I supposed. There’s an old Polish millionaire I know in London does the same. Collects priceless porcelain, but once was a POW.

  “Cost us plenny in calls, Lovejoy,” he put in. “And she done favours for free with a agency man, Boyle Heights.”

  “Zole,” Magda said in her special tone. He shrugged, resumed his scavenge. “It’s known, Lovejoy. Society gossip on TV, convention talk.”

  “They know to arrange what’s said, love. They own everything I’ve ever heard of. Can you give me names?”

  “It was easy at first. That Palumba broad’d been on the movies once, turkeyed out. She was in the papers. Finding the hotel, getting to know waiters, the lounge hustlers, pretending I was looking for a sister.” She half smiled, grimaced slightly to warn there was no way to postpone bad news. “It’s tomorrow, Lovejoy. Big place. Movie people use it, studios, syndicates, you name it. Night, ten o’clock.”

  “Where are you staying?” I’m pathetic sometimes. Had I never been in a strange city before? I sounded like a kid trying to join her team, let me play or I’ll tell.

  She hesitated. “I got to pay this guy, Lovejoy. Another time?”

  “Fine,” I said, my best smile on. “Look after Zole, eh?”

  She shrugged. “It’s what I do, Lovejoy.”

  We agreed to part without thinking further, the station to be our meeting place, day after next. After that would be straw guessing. I tried to find something warm and grateful to say. She seemed to wait in expectation, finally collected Zole. We parted. She didn’t wish me luck. And with Zole on hand she’d not need any.

  I remember her squaring up to walk to the taxi rank. Loveliness is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes it’s just better than beauty, and that’s that.

  I REGISTERED at a downtown hotel which had an armed night guard on the door. I gave complicated instructions about being roused the instant my missing luggage arrived from some mythical but erratic airline, and slept fitfully dreaming of gamblers with knives for fingers.

  The sun dawned me on streets gaunt without people. The area seemed oddly vacant, a studio oddly empty. Windows seemed shuttered from perversity rather than need. The few shops which had opened were scored with graffiti, abusive and delirious. L.A. clocked early didn’t look a going concern. It looked raddled, sickening for something yet feverishly determined to conquer. The walls of buildings were pockmarked, as if firing squads had lately been about their business. Vacant ground wore skeletalized cars lying lopsided with one cheek into the ground. I walked enough to be pervaded by the sense of Los Angeles, which is action deflected beyond control, omnipotence revealing its secret neuroses. Then I went and earned the reproaches of the desk clerk for having actually walked instead of travelling by gunship, and booked out, ostensibly for the airport.

  Working out my gelt, I had enough left to put me in some sort of social order, and to get me to Revere Mount Mansions. Time was already spinning L.A. faster than I wanted. Revere Mount was a play on words—wasn’t he the patriot who’d ridden to warn of an invasion? More importantly, he was a fabulous silversmith whose work I’ve always admired. It seemed an omen. Then.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  « ^ »

  REVERE Mount Mansions deserved the plural. I was glad of two things: that I didn’t have to storm it, and that I’d decided to suss it out before night fell.

  It stood back from a cliff edge which overlooked a multi-lane highway flooded with headlights. A road nosed the Malibu hillside as if trying to find contour lines among the bushes. Why was the land so dry? Coloured lights arched over the gateway proclaiming that Revere Mount Mansions was Heaven’s Gift to California. Close to, it looked as if the paint wasn’t yet dry.

  Not that I got close to straight away. Nor did I lurk in the undergrowth. I stayed away seeking middle-class mediocrity until the day began to wane, then prepared for action. I’d spent hours being toured around Movie City. I ogled studio sets, saw where the great directors had shot this movie and fought that mogul. On a normal day I’d have been thrilled. Now, I just kept asking the time and judging how long it would take to reach Malibu. People kept giving me brochures, or begging. I’ve never seen so many people asking to have their clipboard signed in support of some cause or other.

  We passed it on a coach trip. In mid-afternoon sunshine it was brilliant, a Samarkand of a place, El Dorado, with golden towers Camelot would have been proud of. Peacocks fanned their tails among the laid gardens. Small pagodas and summerhouses dotted the walks among lakes and waterfalls. The coach guide was in raptures.

  “The gardens alone took a quarter of a million tons of stone, fifteen thousand plants and bushes…”

  People photographed, darted from one side of the coach to the other, called for the driver to pause because the sunshine was catching somebody’s lens wrong. The guide even said that it was currently a focus of a huge All American convention of charity associations, and L.A. was especially honoured yet once more folks to be the site of might…

  I honoured Revere Mount by seeing how far it stood from the road—half a mile. The cliff seemed pretty sheer. When finally the hillside ran out of patience and recovered its slope, the drop was sudden until barricades landscaped some sort of surety for the traffic on the teeming highway below. If I’d been the roadbuilder I’d have gone round, only the opposite side ended in close wooded screes. Distantly, glints of water showed. The hills astonished me by their height and dusty brown dryness.

  Men stood by the gateway. They wore livery, but garments do not hinder truth. Smart, vigilant in constant communication. There were seven, taking turns to leap forward to direct drivers along one of the three roads through the ornamental gardens. The main building had more verandahs than a castle, more windows than any Vatican. Outlying smaller places were presumably the kind of separate motel buildings America has perfected. Then the driver called he was behind schedule and we drove on across bridges beneath which no rivers ran, to lose the view among dense cloying trees.

  I’D HAD the shakes ever since reaching America. I couldn’t remember a single hour when I’d been quiet, at peace. I’d always had to be ru
nning out of the firing line, working out where I was, what the hell I ought to be doing to survive. Maybe that’s what folk meant by the American Way? It certainly was Magda’s view of her world, and Zole’s opinion of his. Things here weren’t immutable. What today forbids, tomorrow might make compulsory. Today might hang you, and tomorrow sanctify. But even with dusk rushing the hills into night I couldn’t find it in my heart to scold America. Why? Because love is the same, after all. The lady sloshes you with her handbag one day, and the next day pulls you, moaning.

  Eight o’clock, I went over my words, trying to spot unexpecteds.

  Nine, I phoned the reception at Revere Mount. I tried to sound as if I was delayed by impossible inefficiency somewhere, bullied over the girl’s routines, said to get urgent word to the gate supervisor, make sure I wasn’t delayed because I’d barely make it before the Game. Then I rang off, sweating. It could have been the sticky heat that drenched my palms, but wasn’t.

  Sometimes—in love, war, gambling, any sort of risk—time is paramount, no pun intended.

  Half past nine I was out on the pavement watching taxis. The third driver looked as if he knew the area and could get a move on. I flopped into the cab and told him Revere Mount Mansions fast.

  He drove like a maniac. I would have been frightened to death, but was there already.

  I’D WORKED out my phraseology, tersely gave it the gatemen. “Point me to the Game. I’m late, a’ready.” Two barred the way. A third approached, stooped to examine all occupants. I noticed ihe lights were clever. However a car was positioned, light entered from every direction.

  “Evening, sir. I think we have full complement.”

  “You think wrong.”

  A list was consulted. “Have you a number, sir?”

  “Alhambra one-four-zero, for Christ’s sake. Lovejoy the name. Nicko called it yet? Sheet, I oughta seen Gina and Tye Dee before now —”

  “It’s here.” The man glanced at the others, flicked open a thick wallet of photographs, checked one against me, nodded, spoke to the cabbie. “Up the main drag, left, big square annex on your right. Don’t deviate.”