The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery)

by Charlotte Elkins

  “Yes, legally. Exactly. That was the aspect of his many reported comments that intrigued me: that legally he might be guilty of violations of the criminal code, but ethically, morally, his actions were actually commendable. It’s a topic I’d have liked to explore with him.”

  It was also a topic that Alix had often explored—that is, argued about—with her father, and over time Geoff had brought her a lot nearer to his point of view. It was his contention—and the facts supported him in this—that the sixteen original owners he defrauded had all come to him to restore their beautiful seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century paintings in preparation for selling them in order to be able to buy late twentieth-century works (monstrosities was Geoff’s word for them) that in the current bizarre market were worth more in money and prestige than the works of the Old Masters themselves. It was Geoff’s position that he had “rescued” these paintings from Philistines who didn’t know the difference between art and junk, and put them into the loving hands of culturally literate people who understood and appreciated their artistic value. And the fact that his switcheroo had also happened to put those millions of dollars in his pocket? Irrelevant. Beside the point.

  Maybe so, but it was what had sent him to jail; that, too, was a mere technicality. In his view he stood unconvicted of any ethical misdeeds. What he had done was illegal, yes, but he had done nothing wrong. It was what he’d maintained at his trial and it was what he maintained today.

  “You see,” Prentice said, “I feel much the same sense of moral outrage when I see a museum like the Brethwaite demean itself by selling off—‘deacessioning,’ if you prefer the gentler euphemism—its most glorious possessions so that it can buy the works of momentarily fashionable artists in their place. It’s pathetic, really. Artistic merit—beauty—doesn’t enter into the decision at all.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alix said. “I thought that the paintings that were being auctioned off were for general museum upkeep, not to buy anything new for the collection.”

  “That’s so, but the reason they are being auctioned off, or banished to the basement, is that they don’t bring in ‘eyeballs.’ They’re not popular, you see, or entertaining. They don’t ‘grab’ the average person, don’t interest the youth. But when did it become the purpose of the museum of art to entertain the ‘average’ person, whoever that might be? When did it—”

  “Prentice, dear, you’re getting a little exercised,” Margery said. “Try the bacon-wrapped shrimp. She cooked them with rosemary this time and it’s made all the difference in the world. They’re wonderful.”

  This was in reference to the varied plates of hot hors d’oeuvres that Lena had brought out on a rolling cart a few minutes earlier. Chris and Margery had eaten a few and made appreciative noises as they did, but Alix and Prentice had been too engaged in conversation to try them.

  In response to Margery, Prentice dialed down his fervor a little, but kept on talking. “In any case, the auction isn’t really what I was referring too, it’s just the latest indication of the museum’s direction, one more straw. It’s the Pollock that I was thinking of.”

  “The Pollock?” Alix’s interest spiked. She remembered him expressing “concern” about the painting when they’d been standing in front of it talking to Jerry and Clark the other morning. “Do you think there’s something wrong with it too?”

  “Wrong with it?” Prentice repeated, frowning. “You mean other than its being a Pollock?”

  Alix smiled. She was thinking that the fact that she didn’t care for abstract art and contemporary art in general—more than once she’d been called a snob about it—was hardly surprising, given that her most influential mentors had been Prentice and Geoff.

  “I wouldn’t know if there was anything ‘wrong’ with it or not,” Prentice went on. “No, I was referring to the deacessioning that we went through in order to purchase it.”

  “I didn’t know you did.”

  “Oh, yes. It cost the museum sixteen million dollars, can you imagine?” He winced at the thought. “The most expensive object we ever purchased. We had to sell—”

  “Deaccession,” Margery said with a twinkle in her eye. “Let us not be commonplace, Prentice.”

  That made Alix think of something she’d heard Geoff say: “Have you ever noticed that the art museum is the only business in which one ‘buys’ things, but never ‘sells’ them? It merely ‘deaccessions’ them. So much more civilized.”

  “—sell,” Prentice continued, “nine of our finest paintings, arguably our very finest, to afford it. Nine paintings that had come from Morgan Brethwaite’s personal collection.” His face grew longer as he remembered. “There was a wonderful, luminous Bierstadt of a clearing storm in the Rockies; a Degas horse race, not his best, but charming all the same; a magnificent storm at sea by Turner, no more than twelve by fourteen inches, but filled with stupendous power; a Vuillard; a somewhat slapdash but affecting Gainsborough family group; a Constable; a—”

  “Dear, I would say you’ve made your point,” Margery said sweetly.

  “Wow,” said Alix. “Mrs. B must have wanted the Pollock an awful lot to give those up.”

  “Well, you know Clark by now.” He shook his head. “He can be immensely persuasive when he wants to be, at least”—and the corners of his mouth turned down—“to those susceptible to his famous charms.”

  As far as she remembered, it was the first time she’d heard him speak disparagingly, let alone sarcastically, of anyone (with the sole exception of the Abstract Expressionists and their anarchic, anything-goes descendants). Obviously, Clark had gotten to him in a way that few others ever had.

  “But you do have to admit, my dear,” Margery said to Prentice, “that his judgment has proven sound in the end. Since the installation of the Pollock, attendance has increased something like thirty percent, has it not?”

  “I do have to admit that attendance numbers have increased, yes, but I don’t admit that Clark’s judgment was sound. We sacrificed quality for quantity. We surrendered enrichment and refinement for entertainment and celebrity. Are we to think of ourselves as being in competition with sports events and rock concerts, then? If so, to what end?”

  At this point Chris got into it. “But isn’t an increase in museum attendance a good thing, Prentice? Don’t you want more people to come in and see the museum, the rest of the art? And to see the Pollock, for that matter, and make their own judgments about it?”

  “I’m not so sure, Chris. From a financial perspective I suppose so, but is high attendance a worthwhile goal in itself? Can you really have a meaningful engagement with a work of art when you’re standing in a gallery filled with garrulous people elbowing their way in front of you to get a better look—a thirty-second look—at whatever it is that you’re trying to see?”

  “Well, then what about this? You know, to a lot of people an art museum is a mysterious, off-putting place they have no interest in going to. Don’t popular works bring them in and help demystify the experience?”

  “You’ve just succinctly expressed the prevalent point of view in today’s museum world, Chris, and as a result of it we have sorry efforts like a Punk Music and Contemporary Art exhibition at the Met—the Met!—and ladies’ underwear at the Paris Decorative Arts Museum, and . . .” He sighed his disgust. “These things are designed to entice whom, exactly? No, I see it very differently. I don’t want the art museum demystified. Our ‘product,’ if you choose to call it that, as Clark indeed does, is the mystery, the wonder of art. That is what the art museum, and the art museum alone, has to offer, our singular distinction. Alix, would you agree with that?”

  “Prentice,” Margery said firmly, “are you planning to stop badgering these poor young women long enough to let them have something to eat?” She turned to them. “He thinks he’s still at the lectern, you see. It’s all very sad. Now, just you try these potato cr
oquettes and see if you can tell me what they’re stuffed with.”

  “That was really nice,” Chris said as they drove back uptown, “but I’m ready for some plain, unfancy, solid American food for dinner.”

  “Me too. How about a pizza?”

  “Perfect, can’t get any more American than that.”

  “I know a good place, and on the way we can drive right through the intersection I was talking about before. In fact, we’re about to now.”

  “The epicenter, the heart of the heart of downtown?”

  “The very place.”

  “Is that it up ahead, where those tour busses are lined up along the curb?”

  “That’s it.”

  A few seconds later Chris burst out laughing. “The heart of Palm Springs?” Chris shouted with more laughter. “I would say they’re a little off in their anatomy.”

  Alix laughed along with her. They were on Tahquitz, approaching Palm Canyon and coming up behind an enormous, billowing skirt that revealed a curvy, four-foot-wide, panties-clad rear end. This was Palm Springs’s number-one tourist draw of the moment, the brilliantly colored “Forever Marilyn” statue, nearly thirty feet tall, in her most iconic pose, from The Seven Year Itch, where she stands caught in the updraft from a New York City subway grate, futilely trying (but not very hard) to hold down her ballooning skirt.

  “It’s only on loan to Palm Springs,” Alix told her. “They’re trying to buy it, though. I heard they offered one point two million, and they’re waiting to hear.”

  “It’s beautiful, in a strange way,” Chris said, looking up at Marilyn’s laughing face as they passed. “She looks so happy. Makes you smile, doesn’t it? Look at all those people, they’re all smiling.” She twisted to look back as they passed it and crossed Palm Canyon. “So it’s for sale,” she said thoughtfully as she straightened. “One point two million, was that what you said?”

  Alix fixed her with a stern glance. “No, you can not have it. As your trusted and respected counselor and guide, I forbid it. I’m letting you get away with the portrait miniatures, but there’s such a thing as going too far.”

  “Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea, and I intend to talk you into it.”

  Alix responded with a phrase she’d learned from the many times she’d heard Tiny mutter it: “Quando voleranno gli asini.” When donkeys fly.

  Two miles north and west of Giuseppe’s Pizza and Pasta, where Chris and Alix were starting on their final slices of linguica and mushroom pizza, Mickey Buckner was sitting behind the wheel of his snazzy new Mazda MX-5 Miata, relieved to be only a block from home. He shouldn’t have been driving at all and he knew it, not after consuming the better part of two sixty-ounce pitchers of beer at the Village Pub. He already had one DUI conviction on his record, and that had been a miserable enough experience. God knew what would happen if he got a second, and he had no interest in finding out. But he hadn’t liked inconveniencing one of his less intemperate friends for a lift, or having to come back and retrieve his car in the morning (and where would he leave it, anyway?), and it all seemed like too much to deal with. So here he was.

  He was being extremely careful, and not only because of that DUI, but because the shiny red automobile was only a few weeks old, and he had every intention of keeping it dingless for years to come. And so the route he’d chosen was mostly along quiet streets. He drove slowly and cautiously, coming to a complete, standing stop at every intersection that had a stop sign, and a rolling stop at the ones that didn’t (first prudently checking behind him).

  Which was why he was now paused at this particular intersection, the signless junction of Santa Rosa Drive and South Patencio Road, peering up and down Patencio to make sure it was safe to cross this last barrier between him and home, only a block away. To his right, nothing to be concerned about. About thirty feet up Patencio, a man that he had seen crossing Santa Rosa as he drove up to the corner was continuing his unhurried stroll northward, away from him, head down and hands in his pockets. As most people did in these quiet old residential neighborhoods, he was walking in the roadway itself; the sidewalks, where they existed at all, were too troublesome to bother with, being broken up every few yards by lawns and walls.

  The other way, to Mickey’s left, fifty feet or so down Patencio, a green compact was very slowly approaching—a 2012 Ford Focus. (Mickey owned a garage. He knew cars.) It was well into twilight, but the Ford didn’t have its lights on, which made Mickey realize that he didn’t either.

  He reached to turn them on, but before his hand got there, he was startled by the sudden gunning of the Ford’s engine. At the same time its brights flicked on and a second later it came screaming across the intersection five feet in front of his hood. The walking man only had time to begin to turn around before the car plowed into him with an appalling whunk! and mowed him down. Or rather, mowed him up. He went flying straight up in the air—ten feet, it seemed to a stunned Mickey—with his arms windmilling, came down on the Ford’s windshield and roof, bounced over the passenger side, and apparently got hooked on something so that he was dragged down the roadway for ten or fifteen yards, arms, legs—and head—flopping. The Ford, still at high speed, jigged sharply left, then right, to throw him free, and he was flung off to slam into the white-painted stone wall that fronted a house at the next corner. There his limp body collapsed forward into a flattened human heap like nothing Mickey had ever seen before.

  The man was bent completely double, as if he’d been trying to touch his toes and had overdone it. His fingers extended well beyond his toes and his face rested against the ground between his knees. Nobody but a contortionist could take a position like that, and Mickey didn’t think he was a contortionist. For a normal person’s body to pancake that way, his back had to be broken, his spine snapped, muscles and ligaments severed. And his head, his head was all . . .

  Mickey barely got his own head out the window before half a gallon of beer came pouring out of him, mixed with what was left of a large order of fish and chips. Then he just sat there, shaking. He had just been witness, probably the only witness, to an assassination; what else could it be? The speeding Ford had never slowed (other than to shake loose its victim), let alone stopped, but had roared off, to swing right at the following corner with tires squealing, and rear end fishtailing.

  But what was he supposed to do? Call 9-1-1, right? He knew in his heart that was the right thing, and he was a good citizen, he really was, but in his current condition he’d be crazy to talk to anyone who could and would report it to the police. Call anonymously and hang up before any questions could be asked? But could they trace the cell phone to him? He didn’t know. A public telephone was out of the question because who knew where they were anymore? Maybe call in the morning? But then they’d want to know why he’d waited. Surely, it was his duty to call them. He could identify the make and even the year of the car. Most important, he could tell them that it had been no accident, no unfortunate split second of driver inattention. Still . . .

  While he dithered, two men came running toward the broken body from around the far corner. He knew them, not by name but by sight, and he sprang into action before they had a chance to see him there. He put the car into reverse and barreled rapidly and expertly backward—he’d had plenty of experience at it at work—turned right at the next corner, and headed back to downtown. He needed to do some quiet thinking, to figure out what he should do. And he needed a drink, just a short one to calm himself down. He headed toward a quiet, dark bar he knew just off South Indian Canyon Drive, where the bartender left you alone unless you wanted to be talked to. He parked on the street and walked in, surprised to find himself more unsteady on his feet than he’d been at the wheel. The only people at the counter were a gay couple at one end, and they were too engaged with each other to notice him. All the same he chose the stool at the other end of the bar.

  “Give me a Coors Light, Charley,
” he said. “No, wait, make that a Scotch on the rocks, double.” Why not? The beer had all come up, hadn’t it? The alcohol had been flushed out of his system. He needed to settle down, to get things straight in his head. A Scotch, slowly sipped, would help him with that. Still, moderation was required. “On second thought, put in a splash of water, Charley.”

  Half an hour later he’d decided what to do, and it hadn’t been all that hard, not once he’d relaxed a little and taken the time to think things through. Really, there wasn’t even anything to argue about with himself. What was there for him to go to the police about? He’d seen enough TV shows to know they’d figure out what had happened from the tire tracks, and the position of the body and other forensic stuff: the fact that the Ford had jumped into high speed from a standing start, had hit the poor bastard mostly from behind, had jigged left and right to shake him loose, and then sped on. And they’d know which way it had headed from more tire marks at the corner of Baristo.

  He’d be able to tell them that it was a green 2012 Ford Focus, of course, which was important, only was it a green 2012 Ford Focus? Was he ready to swear to that? It had been dusk and he’d glimpsed it for no more than three or four confused seconds. Mightn’t it have been something similar, a Fiesta, or a Chevy Cruze, or even a Toyota FT-CH? Could he even say with certainty that it was green and not blue or black? What if he gave them information that turned out to be wrong and some innocent person was arrested?

  He couldn’t give them the license plate number, not a single digit or letter of it, and he had no idea of what the driver looked like, or whether it was a man or woman—it could have been a chimpanzee for all he knew—or how many people were in the car. He’d just plain never noticed. It had been too sudden, too fast, too dark. So, all things considered, what could he tell them that would actually be helpful? Not a damn thing. So what was the point of going to them at all? There wasn’t any.