The Cézanne Chase

by Thomas Swan

  Aukrust heard the quietly spoken words. Maurice was obviously capable of opening the vault, his job made easier because someone long ago had set the combination to a series of easily remembered numbers, and anyone proficient with locks could anticipate that the final two numbers might relate to the first three. The first three numbers had been: ten, twenty, thirty. The next two might be forty then fifty. Maurice tried that combination but the lock did not open.

  The number combination might be: ten . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . twenty....ten. If Maurice tried that combination the lock would open.

  Aukrust pulled the glass toward him. He would have to break it to create a weapon, and it might crack into a dozen useless pieces. If only he could reach the glasscutter on top of the table.

  “I think it will come now,” Maurice exclaimed. “The combination was made for someone with a poor memory.”

  Time had run out. Aukrust struck the glass against the side of the box. It broke into three pieces. One was like a miniature stalactite, tapered to a needle-sharp point. When he gripped it the jagged edges cut his hands. He jumped to his feet and lunged at Cat, intent on taking out his most dangerous opponent. Cat reacted by instinct, putting up his hands, setting himself to wrestle Aukrust down or hit him as he had before, like a boxer. He didn’t see the glass until it pierced the palm of his left hand. He pulled away but Aukrust’s weight bore ahead, and the glass knife snapped. Blood spurted from Cat’s hand, and the big man stared at it, curiously, strangely confused.

  Aukrust swung the hand holding what was left of the dagger and a split instant before he landed the blow, he opened his fist and crashed the jagged glass into the right side of Cat ’s face. Cat screamed, a terrible and frightening sound. Aukrust had continued in motion toward the cabinets. LeToque tried to pull him away, but a driving fist caught LeToque on the side of his head and spun him onto his knees. Aukrust opened the cabinet and wrapped a bloody hand around a tall aerosol can.

  There was a terribly loud CRACK. A bullet zapped into the space where the aerosol can had just been.

  “Please put that down, Monsieur.” Maurice was standing by the vault, a 9mm SIG-Sauer in his hand.

  Aukrust was defiant and held up the can threateningly. Maurice fired again, the bullet even closer to Aukrust than the first one. “If I must, I will put the next bullet in your shoulder, I would say about here.” Maurice placed his free hand on the left side of his chest. He had spoken deliberately, stuttering only on the word “bullet.”

  LeToque took the can from Aukrust. “Sit there on the floor,” he said, pointing at a stretch of bare wall.

  Maurice opened the vault. On a shelf was a painting of a bald-headed man with a full beard. Sad eyes looked out from under a black cap with a wide brim. LeToque put the portrait on the framing table. “Voila,” he said with a self-satisfied smile, then helped himself to a length of brown wrapping paper and put it around the painting.

  “Maurice fixed your fucking lock,” he said harshly, then added, “pour rien.”

  He put the painting under his arm and followed Cat and Maurice into the shop and out to their car.

  Aukrust sat on the floor with his back against the wall. He seemed frozen there, staring at the hand that was crisscrossed with cuts, each bleeding, making it appear that he had put his hand into a can of red paint. He got to his feet and went behind a partition where there was a basin and toilet. He ran the water and flushed the blood away. As he bent over, his back muscles stretched painfully where he had been kicked. Shards of glass, large and small were imbedded in the palm of his right hand, and they glinted in the white fluorescent light. Painfully he picked out the larger pieces and tried washing away the others. The same ear that had been cut by Pioli only days earlier was throbbing, and he could do little more than bathe it and put an astringent on the wound until it stopped bleeding. He was less prepared for basic emergencies than for the complications and trauma his collection of exotic drugs and chemicals could cause or cure, but there were bottles of sterilized water and others containing alcohol. His medicine case yielded a pair of tweezers with which he slowly removed the tiniest of the pieces of glass. For the other pains in his ribs and the back of his head, he injected himself with 20 mg of Pantopan. Pain was replaced with euphoria. He had injected a drug that acted essentially in the same manner as opium.

  All the while his thoughts were on the swift moving minutes that had just passed, on LeToque, on the one called Cat, and on the man who looked like a watchmaker and could handle a gun. He put all of them out of his mind and replaced them with a single image: Frédéric Weisbord.

  He pulled down the shade and locked the door. He forced himself to ignore the pain and concentrate on his next steps. The painting was gone because Weisbord had out-maneuvered him. But the painting belonged to Margueritte DeVilleurs, who said that she cared about him and who actually meant something to him. Then a totally new thought struck him: When he got the painting back, he would not deliver it to Alan Pinkster.

  Use of his right hand was restricted, and the deeper cuts were still bleeding. After changing the bandages, he found a white cotton glove. Next, he restocked his medicine bag, locked the shop, and went to his car.

  He edged through the thick commuter traffic and headed north to connect with the super-autoroute to Nice. He knew the section of the city where Weisbord lived and had put the address on a piece of paper that was above the sunshade. He followed a huge truck carrying flowers to the perfumeries, an ironic counterpoint to the violence that surrounded him. He turned off at the first exit into Nice and followed signs to Saint Étienne, stopping once for directions to Weisbord’s street. He drove past and saw the silver Porsche parked behind the house.

  He parked a safe distance away, where he could see the front of the house and the driveway. A woman went to the garage, opened the wide doors, and went inside. There was no car in the garage. The woman reappeared carrying a large trash basket, which she was apparently going to put at the end of the driveway. He moved the car forward and pulled alongside just as she reached the curb.

  “Is Monsieur Weisbord at home?”

  The woman looked curiously at Aukrust. “No,” was her terse reply.

  “Will he be coming home soon?”

  She shook her head blankly and shrugged her shoulders. He wondered whether she was telling him that Weisbord was not coming home soon or that she didn’t know.

  “I’m a business friend, but I’ve come to Nice for a brief vacation and want to pay Monsieur Weisbord a surprise visit. Will he be home this evening?”

  The woman crossed her arms over her chest and when it seemed she was about to turn and walk back to the house, she replied, “I am the housekeeper. Monsieur Weisbord will be away for two days. I will tell him you were here.”

  “I want to surprise him. Where has he gone?”

  She once more seemed to be evaluating whether to answer or not. She shook her head slowly. “To Paris, maybe. Or Geneva.” Then she skittered off into the house.

  Chapter 30

  Christie’s auction rooms were at 8 Place de la Taconnerie, Sotheby’s at 13 Quai du Mont Blanc. Precisely half-way between its rivals, on Rue Rousseau, was Collyers/Geneva. The location wasn’t accidental. At every turn, Collyers’s aggressive new management in London was out-maneuvering and out promoting the double doyens of the rarefied art auction world. Old-timers at Collyers referred to Christie’s and Sotheby’s as “the Cow and the Sow,” lumping them together in frequent attitudes of disdain, in an attempt to make up for decades of being the brunt of bad jokes. Collyers had been looked upon as an upstart, barely more than 150 years old, not yet dry behind the ears. But that simply wasn’t so. Collyers, founded in 1837 by Thomas Collyers and John Constable—who had had the terrible misfortune to die in that same year, was a competitive force, upsetting the old conventions and setting new ones.

  In Geneva, auctions at Christie’s or Sotheby’s had for decades featured jewelry and precious gemstones, with the smaller
houses blindly following their lead. But tradition was about to be broken. Collyers’s brazen announcement that it would auction a first-quality Cézanne was beginning to yield the expected results. Dealers and collectors were showing interest, proof that many would be willing to fly to Geneva for the auction then go on to their holidays in the Alps or escape to the Mediterranean and the sun. The extent to which buyers would be inconvenienced when submitting their bids was to have to dial new country and area codes.

  The resident director was flamboyant, called an auction brilliantly, and was perfectly suited to Collyers’s new image. Roberto Oliveira traced his bloodline to well-connected families in the north of Italy and in Austria and was a handsome man with fair skin and gleaming blue eyes. Oliveira was a man blessed with a splendid education: Eton and Yale; and an internship as an auctioneer at Christie’s in London, where he rose to the position of Director, Impressionist and Modern Paintings. Now at thirty-eight, he was the father of a teenage daughter, divorced, and having affairs in three capital cities. It was the “affair” in London who had tipped him off to the lawyer in Nice who was making inquiries into costs and commission arrangements for the possible sale of a Cézanne self-portrait. Oliveira promised heavy promotion and an elaborate catalogue, but it had been his offer to undercut the sales commission by three percentage points and the decision by management to guarantee a $27.5 million reserve that had clinched the deal with Frédéric Weisbord.

  The unending stream of news stories and the outpouring of speculation on who was destroying the paintings and why meant that if Oliveira were able to bring the DeVilleurs portrait into the December auction, Collyers/Geneva would break the old record set by Sotheby’s when a 101-carat D-Flawless diamond had sold for nearly $13 million, with the entire lot going for $31 million. More important, it would add to Oliveira’s visibility and position him for the executive director’s position that was to be filled in January. The anatomy of success often included such accomplishments.

  Christie’s was outraged that the painting was to be auctioned in Geneva and at Collyers’s no less. Their legal counsel had written an outraged letter implying that Frédéric Weisbord had been physically coerced into the decision if he had not been intimidated, he had been showered with unreasonable and illegal inducements. The letter covered both extremes. “Kill or kiss,” Oliveira had characterized their argument. The fact was, Frédéric Weisbord wanted to sell the painting quickly, conveniently, and on the best terms.

  It was 9:15 in the morning when Oliveira learned that Frédéric Weisbord was in the basement garage and that he would not leave his car until he was escorted to Oliveira’s office by two armed guards. Oliveira removed his jacket and slipped on a shoulder holster that held his 22LR Llama automatic pistol. Weekly practice at the police range kept his proficiency with the small gun at a high level. He phoned for the guard to meet him in the garage.

  Weisbord lowered his window a crack and demanded that Oliveira show identification. “I asked for two guards,” Weisbord said irritably, coughing in obvious discomfort. Oliveira grinned. “But there are two of us,” and he took the pistol from its holster in a swift, fluid motion. “I know how to use it,” he said convincingly and handed his business card to Weisbord.

  “I am Roberto Oliveira, at your service.”

  Weisbord was in the passenger seat, LeToque was behind the wheel, and Gaby, her eyes wide with curiosity, leaned forward from the back seat. The painting was next to Weisbord, wrapped in a blanket. Weisbord got out of the car clutching the painting, giving LeToque instructions to bring his briefcase and the portable oxygen supply. An elevator took them to the second floor, Oliveira then leading them to a room filled with unframed paintings, stacked in open shelves, and frames that were under repair or in the process of being regilded. In the corner was a camera stand flanked with lights in silver reflectors. Next to it was a man wearing a lab coat.

  “The Cézanne?” the man asked.

  Weisbord eyed him warily, holding the painting tightly with his thin, trembling hands.

  “Who else knows I have brought the painting?” Weisbord asked gruffly.

  “I confess it’s not an airtight secret, Monsieur Weisbord,” Oliveira replied. “My staff, the printer who is waiting for the photograph we are about to take, and my associates in London.” In truth, Oliveira had let the word go out for the simple reason that the more who knew, the larger the attendance, the higher the bidding.

  “No one else can know about this,” Weisbord said. “There is always a danger that someone might try to steal it.”

  “Our vault is in a concrete bunker, and our bank has an impregnable safe. You choose which you want.”

  Weisbord shook his head defiantly. “I will take it with me.”

  “First things first,” Oliveira said reassuringly. “The printer must have a photograph before noon if the catalogues are to be printed on Friday.”

  Oliveira took the painting from Weisbord and unwrapped the blanket. He had seen a black-and-white photograph of the self-portrait, but none in color. “From the looks of his beard, I’d say it’s from his middle period, 1875 to 1878. Am I right?”

  “Something like that,” Weisbord said absently. “I have complete records.”

  “I am anxious to see how they compare with the history of the painting we have prepared. What you have brought will add considerable new detail.” He gave the painting to the photographer, who went about his business with dispatch. After ten or so exposures, he disappeared into an adjoining darkroom.

  “Phillipe is very good,” Oliveira said reassuringly. “He will tell us if he needs to take any more exposures, but I suspect that won’t be necessary.” Weisbord looked suspiciously at the door to the darkroom then sat on the edge of a chair. A cigarette magically appeared, and he lit it.

  Several minutes later, Phillipe came out of he darkroom and pronounced that he had two excellent negatives. “As I suspected,” Oliveira said, then motioned to Weisbord. “Please follow me.” Weisbord wrapped the precious painting in the blanket and held on to it even more tightly than before. They filed out to the elevator, which took them to the third floor, and then to Oliveira’s office, a gracious, large room with many paintings and a magnificent display of glazed pottery from Pakistan and Iran. The windows faced Lake Geneva, and several hundred feet away the water rushed from the lake, forming a wide stream that ran swiftly past the view. The stream was the Rhône River, continuing its five-hundred-mile course south to Lyon, to Provence, and to the Mediterranean. Gaby thought it was a wondrous sight and said so in her simple way.

  “Here are the printer’s proofs of our catalogue,” Oliveira said, pointing to untrimmed sheets that were spread across a table by the window. “It will include the new photograph and details about the self-portrait. As I promised, I have also arranged to print a separate brochure that will feature a brief sketch of Cézanne’s life and, of course, your self-portrait. Beautiful, don’t you think?”

  The old lawyer turned the pages and grudgingly said that it might be a “handsome brochure,” then added that it would be expensive as well. He lit another cigarette.

  Oliveira said, “ We will pay all of the catalogue expenses. The photograph that Phillipe took will go here,” he pointed to a sketch of the painting on the front cover and turned the page. “There’s no reason not to discuss the recent wave of terror, and we have included small photographs of the self-portraits that have been destroyed. It will add to the excitement of the auction.”

  Weisbord blew a stream of smoke and nodded.

  “You have some papers for me,” Oliveira said. “Important papers that I must see before the catalogue is mailed and the publicity begins.

  Weisbord opened his briefcase. Inside were a dozen tabbed file folders. “Here is a complete record of each person who has owned the painting, starting with the artist friend Cézanne gave the painting to a year after he painted it.” He handed two typed pages to Oliveira, “I believe it was Pisante.”

 
“Pissarro, perhaps?” Oliveira asked.

  Weisbord glanced up. “Yes, you are quite right.”

  Oliveira said, his smile intact. “The painting has an excellent provenance. That is not a concern.”

  Weisbord took an envelope from the folder. “This contains two canceled checks signed by Gaston DeVilleurs, a signed receipt for the deposit, and a statement for the balance due, marked paid in full. There is also a registration certificate filed in Paris and dated the day following the final payment. You will agree this is evidence of clear, unemcumbered title to the painting.”

  Weisbord put more papers in front of Oliveira. “This is a copy of Gaston DeVilleurs’s will, as entered in court on 29 June, this year. The appropriate section of the will has been marked and specifies that no painting can be removed from the collection unless it is placed in auction under the personal direction of the executor, and, as you know, that is my role.” Weisbord smiled weakly. “It was obvious that Gaston DeVilleurs was looking after Madame DeVilleurs’s interests.”

  “I assume all of the paintings in the DeVilleurs collection were jointly owned,” Oliveira said.

  “They were,” Weisbord replied, and coughed, slightly at first, then with a painful wheeze. LeToque moved the oxygen beside him, but Weisbord waved him off. When the coughing siege finally subsided, he handed Oliveira another sheet of paper.

  “This is a copy of Madame DeVilleurs’s power of attorney. It allows me to act on her behalf.” The single page contained three typed paragraphs, below which was a beautifully written, but indecipherable signature. Beneath the name was typed: Margueritte Louise DeVilleurs.

  Weisbord sputtered. “A precaution only, there must not be any possibility of a misunderstanding.” Again Weisbord went into a fit of coughing then after it had run its course, wiped his face with a handkerchief, gathered up his papers, and slid them back into the folder. He handed copies of the documents to Oliveira.