The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery)

by Charlotte Elkins

  “Doesn’t matter a whole lot,” Jerry said. “The only place anybody ever heard of him is Italy. Worth twenty thousand, tops, probably a lot less.”

  “That’s not the point, Jerry. It’s important to the woman, you know?”

  “I know something about Cibo,” Alix volunteered. “Sixteenth century, Genoese, worked a lot in brown ink and watercolors. Rocky landscapes, that kind of thing?”

  Alfie turned to her with hope in his eyes. “Yes, exactly, that’s him. Could you maybe help me out then? Talk to her with me?”

  “I really don’t know that much, but if you think I could help, sure, maybe I could.”

  “Bless you, child! Tomorrow at two? No?” he added, seeing a change in her expression. “Bad time?”

  “It’s only that I hoped to get away tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be ready to take a real break and get out by then, and I was planning on taking the tram up to Mt. Jacinto. But if you really—”

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll ask her to leave it with us until the next day.”

  “That’d be great.”

  Alix had joined them a little reluctantly, thinking they’d be buzzing about Clark’s murder, but she was happy to see that that subject had apparently been exhausted. Word of her having been attacked, however, reported in yesterday’s paper, had gotten around. Still, they were considerate of her feelings and privacy; no intrusive questions (even from Madge), just friendly expressions of concern and sympathy, and a few general expressions of worried wonderment at the series of drastic events besetting their small, obscure, arty coterie. After fifteen minutes Alix went back to her workplace, where she finally consumed those two oatmeal cookies while sitting back and studying the Eakins.

  All in all, it was a long, peaceful day of solitary, productive, and deeply satisfying work. Just before she left for the Villa Louisa, Richard, Mrs. B’s secretary, sent her a typically formal e-mail informing her that she was invited to a seven o’clock reception the next evening at “Palm Springs’s finest restaurant,” Le Vallauris, to celebrate Prentice’s appointment as senior curator, and she was welcome to bring a companion. The only other thing that took her away from the paintings, besides a couple of quick meals, was a brief trip to Mammoth Auto Rentals to trade her compact for a Subaru hatchback. (She realized she’d be hauling things back and forth to the museum; thus the hatchback.)

  And tomorrow she was hoping for an even nicer day. A little more close work, demanding but satisfying, in the morning, followed by a bracing dose of mountain snow in the afternoon.

  And just like that, he had a plan.

  He would have to make sure he wasn’t seen, of course, but who was going to see him at three o’clock in the morning in an unlit parking lot? If anybody was around, he’d just wait them out. The whole thing would take maybe five minutes, during most of which he’d be out of sight under the car anyway.

  The plan wasn’t foolproof; far from it. It was, in fact, a pretty iffy proposition, but it was worth a shot. He thought of it as something like a first offer: great if it worked, but if it didn’t he had plenty of time to come up with something else. He had come to feel a lot more secure and confident in himself over the last few days. Clark had been killed last Friday. Here it was Monday, and as far as he could tell, the police had gotten nowhere. From what the papers said, they were still treating it as an accidental hit-and-run. And why would they not?

  The big advantages of his plan were that he’d be miles away when it happened, so that he would be spared the nastiness of it, and that there was no conceivable way that it could possibly be tied to him. The big problem was that nobody was going to mistake this one for an accident. It couldn’t be anything but an attempt at murder, but even that didn’t worry him. The police were bound to proceed on the supremely logical assumption that whoever had attacked her in her room just a few days earlier was responsible.

  And that would turn out to be as dead as any dead end could be.

  In the bustling heart of seventeenth-century Antwerp stood the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, one of the few painters of that time (or any other time) who didn’t find it necessary to die in order to become famous. So famous, in fact, and so successful that the portrait commissions pouring in were more than any one man, even the prolific Rubens, could handle. His solution was to enlist his dozens of apprentices in the task. The newer ones would do the prep work—the sizing, the priming; the more experienced ones would rough in the “easy” parts of the picture—the background, the furniture, the simpler parts of the clothing; and Maestro Rubens would step in to do the hands, the face . . . and, of course, the signature. Even in his own time, his studio was sometimes referred to as a “factory.”

  Today, four hundred years later, a smaller but remarkably similar operation was taking place in Seattle, in a handsome loft on the top floor of a not-so-handsome warehouse in the gritty industrial district south of downtown. The warehouse’s lower floors housed the Venezia Trading Company, the primary business of Geoffrey London, Alix’s father, and on those two floors Geoff, Tiny, and two other employees filled orders from hotel chains for cheap, cheaply framed prints of sunsets, card-playing dogs, and eighteenth-century naval battles, “Louis XVI” lamps with metal loops welded to the bases so they could be bolted to night tables, and, naturally, that perennial favorite, the Aztec-style synthetic onyx soap dish.

  The third-floor loft was something else altogether. In addition to providing Geoff’s modernized, sleekly furnished living quarters, it included a studio in which Rubens’s methods still lived. Apprentices (aka Geoff’s employees) laid out the basic elements of paintings that were assigned to them, and the maestro (aka Geoff) applied the finishing touches. This was no school, however; this was the locus of a new business venture that he had begun as a sideline, but which was now showing signs of seriously taking off. Geoff had hit on a remarkable way to capitalize both on his renown as an eminent restorer and his greater fame as a notorious forger, in both of which he took equal pride. And to do it legally.

  “Genuine Fakes by Geoffrey London,” was the slogan of his website, MasterArtForger.com, which promised that:

  whether you would like to own your own scrupulously reproduced, favorite painting by Renoir or Picasso, or a ‘new’ one specially painted for you, Genuine Fakes will be happy to provide it. Or how about a portrait of your spouse ‘done by’ van Gogh or Modigliani?

  All paintings are signed by Mr. London and are framed in a manner appropriate to the artist and the time. If you prefer your older paintings aged and crackled, this can be done for a small additional fee.

  Even with prices that ran from five to fifteen thousand dollars, Geoff, like Rubens, had all the business he could handle.

  As it happened, the painting on which he was at work this morning was to be a “Rubens” in the making, the nearly finished portrait of the next wife (number four) of one Kazimierz Czechowics, an elderly Polish shoe manufacturer who was also something of an art connoisseur. Czechowics had requested that the portrait be done in the manner and even in the scandalously scoop-necked attire of Ruben’s bosomy Portrait of Susanna Fourment, with particular attention to Kazimierz’s fiancée’s cleavage (of which he had proudly provided a loving photograph).

  Czechowics had bought the $15,000 full-service package, which meant that, as far as possible, the techniques and materials were to be those that Rubens himself would have employed. And so one of Geoff’s newer workers had cut and assembled the oak planks that would be the backing, had applied a chalk and animal-skin-glue ground, and then covered it with dark brown primer. (Whereas almost all of the Old Masters used white primer, which would then be allowed to show through where the artist wanted lighter shades, Rubens often did it the other way around, using light pigments for the highlights and allowing the primer to show through where he wanted darker colors.)

  Tiny had then taken over, using paint thinned with turpentine (another Rub
ens innovation) and then painting the blue-gray background and the less detailed areas of the fabrics.

  The rest was Geoff’s responsibility. He was now applying highlights to the woman’s forehead, using a slender sable brush to lay down thin, parallel, side-by-side strokes with a mix of white and Naples yellow. Emulating Rubens’s even, masterful flesh-tone brush strokes was the most demanding part of the entire job, and Geoff was uncomfortably aware that his hand wasn’t as steady as it once was. He could feel the sweat pooling under his arms. It was a relief to know that once he got through this, all that was left was the application of a few red and blue accents around the eyes. After that it was back to his “apprentices” for the resin-oil varnish, and—

  The phone in the living area rang; his private number, known only to a few. He made an irritated noise and jerked his head, but took care not to jiggle the brush. He kept his focus on the work. This close to finishing, there was no way—

  The answering machine came on. “Geoff, this is Sophie over at SAM. I’ve got some interesting material on Pollock to show you—”

  He threw down the brush and ran for the phone.

  “—that I think you’ll find—”

  He grabbed the phone. “I’ll be right over.”

  “Meet me in the library upstairs.”

  Twenty-five minutes later Geoff hurried through the Second Avenue doors to SAM, as the locals familiarly referred to the Seattle Art Museum. He chose this entry instead of the main one on First Avenue to spare himself the stomach upset of having to look at the grim Hammering Man, the fifty-foot-high sculpture of dead-black metal that “adorned” the front of the museum but would have been more at home on display in the Gulag. Once, during the night, some pranksters had attached a huge ball and chain to the ankle of the somber figure, but they were quickly removed. In Geoff’s opinion, it would have been a good idea to leave them there, because then at least the thing would have had the virtue of being funny. But the powers that be didn’t agree with him, and the big guy continued to hammer slowly, clumsily, maddeningly away, unencumbered by ball or chain, every fifteen seconds of every livelong day (except Labor Day, when they gave him his once-a-year holiday). Since Geoff couldn’t do anything about it, he had decided his best course was to avoid looking at the thing. It was a decision that had served him well.

  He took the elevator to the fifth floor, where he found Sophie Chiu awaiting him in the art research library. Sophie, the associate curator for Modern and Contemporary Art, was a constitutionally anxious person, but the buoyant level of enthusiasm that went along with it made her a delight to speak to and a source of inspiration. Birdlike and darting, with painful-looking, chewed-down fingernails, she was quick to offer help and quick to supply it, and the fastest-talking person he knew. She was sitting at a table near a south-facing window, with photographs, stapled printed material, and opened periodicals spread out in front of her. Among them were a couple of the pictures Geoff had given her of the Brethwaite’s Pollock, which he had taken when he was wandering around with Tiny, out of Alix’s sight.

  “Geoffrey, come!” she whisper-shouted at him as soon as he walked in. Sophie’s favorite tense was the imperative, and she used it well; a commanding person despite her size.

  He hadn’t quite sat down before she was waving a sheet of paper in his face. “Look!”

  He saw five or six scrawled, apparently enlarged signatures covering the page. “Pollock signatures, are they?” he said.

  “Yes, and don’t you dare give me that famous dubious look of yours, or use that tone either. These are the answer to your problem.” She whapped the sheet with the flat of her hand, bringing a sternly disapproving look from the bearded man at the next table. Sophie brought her “whisper” down a notch. “I looked at about ten million ‘scholarly’ monographs on how to recognize a genuine Pollock—factural dimensionality, linear elegance, compositional centricity, blah, blah, blah. Opinions all, subjective and unconfirmable. But this”—another whap, another frown from the next table, this time unnoticed by Sophie—“this analysis of his signature—”

  Sophie wasn’t easy to break in on, but Geoff finally managed it. “Sophie, tell me that you’re not really talking about handwriting analysis. Graphology? Please.”

  “No, I’m talking about handwriting identification, and that’s a whole ’nother ball of fish.”

  Geoff smiled. Among the pleasures of conversation with Sophie were her occasional malapropisms. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Please continue.”

  “Trust me, Geoffrey, this is science. And so for that matter is graphology when it’s the real thing. There are quack doctors too, you know, but that doesn’t prove medicine in general is a scam. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone can be so judgmental about things he doesn’t know anything about.”

  “Perhaps, but permit me to—”

  “Just listen for five minutes for once in your life, will you? No, better yet, read for five minutes.” She handed him a photocopied article, and put a finger on the middle of the second page. “Don’t bother with the beginning. You can start here.”

  “No, I will read the entire article,” Geoff declared, “even if it should take me ten minutes. You should consider it a personal tribute to my confidence in your judgment.” He settled himself to read. With frequent breaks to glance at the page of signatures and compare it with the signature on his own photograph of the Brethwaite Pollock, it took him exactly eleven-and-a-half minutes, at the end of which he raised his head, looking pensive and impressed. “I am a changed man, Sophie. You’re right; this is meaty stuff.”

  In the article, a forensic handwriting expert named Patricia Siegel described how she’d evaluated an earlier questionable Pollock by comparing its signature with those on a wide range of undisputed Pollocks. Using photos of these undisputed signatures, she cogently showed how the great variability, the erratic “irritability” of his stroke, while seeming at first to confuse the issue, was itself an important identifying element. Pollock’s stroke was reliably uneven, with jerky, spontaneous movements, flooded letters, stops and starts, and blurred lines. The signature on the suspect painting, by contrast, while superficially resembling Pollock’s, was carefully “drawn,” the stroke pressure evenly applied throughout (indicating painstaking forethought and execution—the antithesis of a natural, spontaneous signature).

  There was more, much more: In the authentic signatures, the k in “Jackson” was always just a little smaller than the k in “Pollock”; the height of the J in “Jackson” was relatively short compared to the k in the same word; and on and on, little unconscious tics that even a careful forger was unlikely to note. Pollock himself could hardly have been aware of them.

  The whole thing was brief, direct, and extremely convincing. Geoff took a final look at his own photograph, held it next to the ones that illustrated the article, and raised his head. “Hmp,” he said thoughtfully.

  “So what do you think?” Sophie asked.

  “What do I think? I thank my lucky stars this kind of analysis wasn’t available in the bad old days. I wouldn’t have had a very long career as a forger.”

  “You didn’t have a very long career as a forger.”

  “True,” he said with a smile, “and a good thing too, I should say.”

  “But I meant, what do you think about the painting, your painting, Alix’s painting?”

  “I think this lady’s on to something, Sophie. It’s a fake. The signature’s false.”

  “That’s what I thought too.” She sat back with a look of satisfaction. “So tell me what happens next.”

  “Next I copy this article and e-mail it to Alix. Can I take it with me?”

  “Not necessary. Give it to me. I’ll have it scanned into a PDF and sent to your phone. And you can pop it over to her while you’re right here.”

  “Oh, I don’t think there’s that much of a hurry. I can just—” />
  But she had already snatched it from his hand and was on her way to the door, waving the article over her head. “A rolling stone gathers no moths.”

  Deet-deet-da-dah-dah.

  Alix had just gotten to the museum when her ring tone sounded, and once again, it made her jump. The thing was, her cell phone was rarely working because she almost never remembered to turn it on. Or more honestly, because she almost always remembered not to turn it on. Since the majority of her calls involved technical things, she knew it made sense to be able to check on whatever the subject was before attempting to wax wise on it. So she preferred to let the device save them up for her and then to return the calls in a bunch once a day. Or so.

  But yesterday she’d neglected to turn it off after calling Chris to make sure she was up and ready to go to the airport, and so it had remained on.

  Deet-deet-da-dah-dah. The high-priority signal. She was opening the phone when Geoff’s voice came on. “Alix, I’ve e-mailed you—”

  “Hi, Geoff, I’m here.”

  “Ah, good. I e-mailed you some material a few minutes ago—”

  “Oh, I haven’t checked my e-mail yet this morning.”

  “I’m shocked. This is one you will want to check, however. It pertains to the authenticity—or the lack thereof—of the Pollock.”

  “I thought I asked you not to—”

  “Well, and so you did, but I didn’t see what harm it could do for me to exercise my initiative a little, and I think you’ll be pleased that I did.”

  Indeed she was. Once Geoff explained what he’d learned from Sophie Chiu, Alix knew at once they were on to something, and once she read the article and looked at the photos, she was convinced. The handwriting deductions didn’t quite make it to the level of proof; outside of chemical or physical forensic evidence, art authentication at base was always a question of human judgment—and therefore always arguable. (In the world of art evaluation, it was a given that what can be argued, will be argued.) And even physical or chemical evidence didn’t speak for itself. It had to be interpreted. Human judgment again.