by Noah Charney
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to visualize it. But…it must have been. I mean, I just knew that this was the wrong…I just…I mean, the one at auction looked authentic, but it was not the same one that was pictured in the catalogue. But it did look authentic, a different painting from the same series, also by Malevich. And then…I guess it might have been switched between the time it was purchased at the auction and when it was delivered here. But that would imply impropriety on the part of Christie’s, and I can’t imagine…I’m just…”
“All right. Let’s sit down and have a cup of tea and sort this through. Barney, call us when you’re ready.” Elizabeth led Delacloche out of the room.
Wickenden was still confused, unsure as to whether or not he was angry. He seemed in a perpetual state of indigestion. “Are you trying to tell me that this is not even a Malevich, much less the original?”
“Looks more like a Benjamin Moore.”
“Is he an artist?”
“No, that’s a house paint company.”
“That’s not funny!” He stormed out of the room. Barney shrugged. Glad it’s not my six million, he thought, as he went to work.
In Elizabeth Van Der Mier’s top-floor office, tea was just brewing. Delacloche and Wickenden sat on the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs in the corner of the office. Elizabeth poured the tea, without inquiring how much milk, and passed it around.
“Is there…” she began,”…is there anything we could have done differently…Inspector?”
Wickenden was silent for a moment. “No. They had us by the bollocks, and that’s that.”
“I wouldn’t blame yourself. It was a very difficult situation…”
”…But it’s my job to work it out, for Christ’s sake…” he trailed off. “I mean, they were good. They did everything perfectly. We never saw them, never had actual, direct contact with them. Never even near them, as far as we know.”
“They had us by the bollocks and dragged us around as much as they liked. I just can’t help thinking,” continued Elizabeth, “that there might have been a way to better ensure that we’d gotten the right painting back.”
“Or that you started out with the right painting.” Delacloche spoke. “Something was going on during that auction…”
“I wouldn’t have minded the whole damned thing so much if we’d gotten the painting back.” Elizabeth sipped her tea. “I’d applaud having been bested by skillful criminals. One has to marvel at exceptional ability, in any field. But this…this removes any of the fun…”
“What’s fun about it?” Wickenden moped.
“I know what she means,” said Delacloche, her voice drifting. Wickenden saw that she and Van Der Mier made eye contact. “But to be denied surrender even after you’ve admitted the superiority of the opponent…. It is cruel and greedy. I can understand the profession of theft. If it is a means to earn a living, however distasteful, I can understand that. But to keep the stolen painting even after the ransom is paid—it’s like shooting someone after he’s voluntarily handed you his wallet and pleaded for mercy.”
“Aren’t you both being a little heavy-handed about this? It’s not as though someone’s life were lost.” Wickenden sat up now, as he spoke. “I’m displeased because I was tricked, but it’s just a piece of canvas with some white paint on it. I mean, it’s just white!”
“And you’re just a man with a droopy mustache,” Delacloche snapped.
“What does that have to do with…”
“It’s the same thing. Your comment is just as useless. Don’t denounce what you don’t understand, simply because you don’t understand it.”
“A moment.” Elizabeth stood. “The more I think on it, the more I believe that we’re dealing with criminals from outside the art world.”
“But they kept the painting,” Wickenden gesticulated. “What do you think they’re going to do, stuff it up their attic in a pile of mothballs?”
“Something like that.” Elizabeth began to wander the room. “Remember the Bible quotation. I think all of this may be more of a statement, rather than a financial opportunity. Maybe both, but just think about it. We buy the painting for £6.3 million. There’s much fanfare and publicity. We don’t even get to put it up, before it’s stolen. The ransomers ask for the same price we paid at auction, then they return a fake that, to them, is just the same as the original. They have no sense of the value of the original, and are trying to tell us that we should not either. They want us to conclude that money should be better spent than on a piece of canvas painted white, as Inspector Wickenden so bluntly put it.”
“I think you may be right,” muttered Delacloche, still staring off. “Or, they want to mock Malevich’s iconoclasm, and are saying that we should go back to the graven image, in this godless time. That, of course, implies that they know the history of art, and is contradicted by their choice of ransom price. They may be religious zealot terrorists. I hate violent ignorance, particularly when it’s evangelical. Why do people feel the need to inflict their opinion on others?”
“This is just…” Wickenden gazed into his teacup.”…it’s just…I’m sorry. I can’t say anything more right now, I’m just…”
“It’s all right.” Elizabeth put her hand on his shoulder. He shivered away from the contact. “No one could have predicted this.”
“It’s just that I…” It’s just that I can’t stand being fooled, and it’s never happened before, Wickenden wanted to say but did not.
“Well, I really appreciate your coming down to advise, Ms. Delacloche. I wish that we had met on happier terms. Give my regards to our mutual friend, and tell him how much I appreciate the recommendation. Now, I haven’t a goddamn clue what I’m going to say to Lord Harkness. Sometimes I hate this job.” Elizabeth sat down at her desk once more. Then the phone rang. She picked it up.
“Hello? Oh, hello, Barney. We’ll be right down.”
CHAPTER 28
Bizot and Lesgourges and two officers sat in a gray van down the street from the Galerie Sallenave, on rue de Jérusalem. They could see the entrance to the gallery in their rearview mirror. They heard a van door slide shut somewhere in the street behind them. Three figures entered the frame of the mirror, then disappeared down the alley alongside the gallery. Bizot looked both ways along the length of rue de Jérusalem, then whispered, “On y va.” The four men exited the van and crossed the empty street.
Galerie Sallenave was a four-story neoclassical building, thoroughly renovated with modern features. In addition to the alternating peaked and rounded pediments above the windows, and the volutes rolling out of the eaves beneath the canopy of slate rooftop, a new front door, made of a solid block of maple ringed in steel, and surveillance cameras revealed the present day.
Bizot led his officers along the alley to the left of the gallery, and around to the service entrance. Lesgourges followed, dressed enthusiastically in a khaki trench coat purchased expressly for this occasion, collar turned up and Vuarnet sunglasses on, despite the overcast sky.
The service alley was dull gray paved, and flanked with neatly aligned rubbish bins. Lesgourges nudged Bizot. “Jean, where is the advance party?”
Bizot responded with a violent shhh of finger to lip. “Tu vas voir.”
One officer watched the entrance to the alley, while the other pushed through the service entrance door. Inside, the advance group was just closing their briefcases. There was an elevator to the left, and a door to the gallery on the right.
Bizot whispered to Lesgourges. “They’ve picked the lock, turned off the alarm, and they’ll loop the surveillance so it never sees us.”
“That was fast. How do they do that?”
“I don’t…don’t ask stupid questions.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t touch anything.”
“Did I touch anything?”
“No, but just don’t.”
“Do I look like I’m going to touch anything?”
“Just�
��shhh.” Bizot turned on his flashlight and walked past Lesgourges, who was still marveling. The other officers spread out through the ground floor.
The gallery was stark and white. Ornamental features, dentillation and marble fireplaces, were allowed to shine as the only decorative elements of the otherwise empty rooms. Each room was small and intimate, the whitewashed wood panels broken only by periodic prints, on display in simple, understated black frames, a switched-off spotlight aimed at each. Light from flashlights in hand flickered around the dim rooms. A thin film of cloudy sunlight filtered in through slats in the closed window shutters and the particles in the air.
Lesgourges could not see his reflection in the glass protecting each print. Nonreflective, ultraviolet-protected glass, he noted. Like he used to frame his prints, and to protect his Picasso, in Armagnac.
Each print had a small piece of wall copy beside it, merely a label, without explanations. Lesgourges recognized some of the names, but his art-historical knowledge stemmed from only periodic bouts of autodidacticism. Goltzius, Marcolini, Rembrandt, Dürer, Wierix, Piranesi, van Veen…He had heard of Rembrandt, Dürer, and Piranesi. Not that he could identify any of them by sight, necessarily. The others reflected some sort of mental echo, but its decrescendo was too distant to bear meaning.
The prices listed did trigger something in Lesgourges. It was admiration. Admiration for a knowledge of the material foreign to his own, for having the ancien régime taste and money stained with blue blood, for the Sallenave name. It was Lesgourges’ father who had earned his way, and bought their château and vineyard. Sure, Lesgourges had more money than many Old World aristocrats, but they had what he could not buy.
And so he had taught himself, as best as he could, as much as he could. But he was still having to try, while they all seemed to do, effortlessly. Lesgourges caught up with Bizot in the third display room.
“Jean,” said Lesgourges, “have you seen anything that looks promising?”
“Pas encore.”
“Me neither. There are prints of Jesus, but none of Joseph, so far. I don’t see any carpenter shops, or sarcophagi, or outhouses, either.”
“Courage, mon ami,” Bizot said, his eyes ever cast along the walls. “When we see it, we will know. Whatever it is.”
The ground floor circumnavigated, Bizot and Lesgourges moved upstairs. The first floor was one large, open space, with a glass desk in the corner, and the walls covered by substantial tapestries, also for sale.
Bizot approached the desk. It was immaculate, its contents perpendicular to one another, everything in blacks and grays. Bizot nodded in approval. With a gloved hand, he flipped through the address book, black leather bound, on the table. Alpers, Bonavita, Chetcuti, Danks, Esterházy, Frei, Grayson, Hancock, Inzaghi, Janot, Kuznezov, Lalani, Marlais, Nikolova, Oyeyemi, Peretti…He closed the book.
“This doesn’t look promising,” said Lesgourges, who was standing in the center of the room, hands on hips, while officers examined around him.
“I want to see the apartment up…” Bizot was interrupted by a shout.
“Ici, j’ai trouvé quelque chose!” Bizot crossed the room. An officer was kneeling before one of the tapestries.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?” Bizot stood beside.
“There’s a false wall behind this tapestry.”
From what Lesgourges could see, Bizot’s outline standing behind the tapestry looked like a misshapen plump lump of clay caught under the smooth-flowing fabric. Bizot was a buttress beneath the enormous tapestry that covered a wall of the first floor of the Galerie Sallenave. Beneath that tapestry, whitewashed wood paneling ran the length of the wall, but there was a discernible rectangular outline. Bizot scanned his flashlight along the thin shadow that revealed, tracing the false piece of wall.
“Let’s get this open,” he said.
Two officers approached with tools. One prepared to insert a screwdriver into the gap and pry, but his elbow glanced the wood, and the panel sprung open.
Behind it was a safe.
“Putain de, merde, salaud, mon Dieu…,” Bizot muttered with pleasure.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?” Lesgourges fumbled his way behind the tapestry.
“A safe.”
“Hmm.”
“What do you mean, hmm?”
Two of the officers made eye contact.
“I just mean,” Lesgourges replied to Bizot, “that it’s interesting.”
“What’s interesting? What could be more interesting than this!?”
“Well, did you notice the content of the tapestry that you are under?”
“No.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t hmm me! What is it?”
Lesgourges crossed his arms. “It’s a copy of the tapestries designed by Bronzino for Cosimo de’ Medici.”
“And?”
“They show scenes from the life of Joseph.”
“You mean…”
“Not that Joseph. The Old Testament Joseph. With the brothers and the coat and the dreams and Pharaoh, and that stuff. But it’s still a Joseph.” Lesgourges was pleased with himself.
“Hmm,” Bizot replied.
The safe occupied all of the niche in which it sat, about one meter square, and quite deep. Lesgourges leaned into the niche.
“I know the safe brand,” said Lesgourges, who always relished the moments when fortune made practical his trivial knowledge. “It’s a Cobb-Hauptmann.”
Bizot nodded, impressed, then turned to look from Lesgourges to the safe. It had the words Cobb-Hauptmann written across it, in small silver script.
“You’ve been marvelously helpful, as usual, Lesgourges. You have truly mighty powers of perception.”
“Always glad to lend a hand.”
“Does the brand name of the safe mean anything to you?”
“It’s the same safe that I use at the château. An alarm goes off if you enter the incorrect combination twice. It has a seven-number code. Right, right, left, left, right, left, left. It’s the best model available. And no one’s stolen anything from mine, yet.”
“Isn’t that because no one has ever tried to rob you?”
“Perhaps. But maybe no one has tried to rob me, because I use a Cobb-Hauptmann safe.”
“Sir, should we…,” an officer interrupted.
“Yes, we should,” said Bizot, relieved. “Anything, yes. We’ve got safe experts, Jean. Go amuse yourself.”
Lesgourges stood for a moment, then slunk away.
Bizot examined the safe, as officers took photographs. Apart from the monogram, the safe front contained a brushed-steel handle, and one centrally located combination-lock dial, bearing numbers zero through fifty.
Bizot pulled out his notebook.
Lesgourges had wandered back downstairs. He followed the murmur of voices through three rooms and back to the point of entry. Several of the other officers had unlocked the elevator to the left of the entrance. They gathered their tools and entered. Lesgourges increased his pace and joined them in the elevator, just before the doors slid closed.
The elevator was barely large enough for two, and Lesgourges’ presence as the fourth occupant did not endear him to the other riders. It was not the first time that Bizot’s strange and cumbersome friend had accompanied. Talk among the officers questioned the usefulness and practicality of what Bizot described as a “specialist assistant.” The doors opened on the second floor, and the elevator occupants were released.
A palatial apartment spread out before them. A wealth of architectural features, stylishly selected, adorned every aspect of the modernized interior. Subtle track lighting contrasted with the white neoclassical interior. Granite flecked with quartz reflected off the tabletops, and the floor had been replaced with white maple. The walls were hung with prints, much like those in the gallery downstairs, but without labels and prices, and some in dramatic frames. Directly across from the elevator was an intricate giltwood frame, Baroque and winding and elaborate, like
a decorative tangle of thorns, or a gust of waves reaching out from the sea. It contained no picture. Just the empty wall through the middle of the frame.
What a brilliant idea, thought Lesgourges. I must get one of those for home.
The officers spread out to photograph, and Lesgourges roamed without aim. He was struck, seized by a fit of interior design envy. His feet moved him into the kitchen, which bore a sparkle and polish of factory newness.
Damn, he’s got a Viking professional line stove, thought Lesgourges, adding to his mental shopping list. And his refrigerator is the size of my bathroom. Merde.
“There’s something else in here, sir.”
An officer called to Bizot, who spun and quickly returned his attention to the safe behind the tapestry.
“What is it?”
The officer leaned in to the niche and cast his flashlight on the wall immediately beside the safe. Something was written in chalk. Bizot could not make it out at first. He squinted, and the characters took shape.
He sighed. “Well, I’ll be…”
Lesgourges turned down a corridor lined with identically sized prints, three on each side. Each print was framed in the same way, and had a swan-neck light curling out of the wall above it. Rhythmic hanging, thought Lesgourges. Then he noticed the content of the prints.
Each print showed the exact same scene: the descent from the cross. Jesus, slumped and lifeless in the arms of Nicodemus, is lowered from the cross. Viewed from a distance, the figures are a sketchy silhouette of fired-off lines, a web of ink up close, a block of ink from afar, masterfully done. But each print bore a slight tonal variation from the others, ranging from a light gray wash, like mist descended, to an oppressive, cavernous darkness. Different states of the same etching, thought Lesgourges. Even more valuable. Then he noticed the signature in the bottom right corners, which read: Rembrandt.
Still no carpenters, Lesgourges noted. Beyond Jesus, of course. Wood and nails of the cross? Ironic that the tools of a carpenter should be used in the carpenter’s execution.