Brush With Death

by Lind, Hailey

  “I like trucks,” said Michael. “Bolsters my image as a manly man.”

  “How did you know where to find me, anyway?”

  “I dropped by your studio today. Mary said the columbarium was not to be missed.”

  “There’s a public tour the first Saturday of each month.”

  “She thought you might give me a private tour.”

  “She thought wrong.” I leaned against the fender and crossed my arms over my chest. “I find it hard to believe Mary was such a chatterbox.”

  Michael chuckled. “I suspect she entertains romantic notions about the two of us.”

  “Yeah, well, Mary’s dating a Samoan wrestler named Dante who’s never even read The Divine Comedy.”

  “I suppose you’ve read it in the original?”

  “I would if my name were Dante.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” he said with a slow smile and a quizzical look. “I don’t see the connection between a Samoan wrestler and The Divine Comedy.”

  “I’m just saying Mary’s view of romance is different from mine.”

  “I imagine most definitions of romance are different from yours, sweetheart,” Michael said, grinning now. “Speaking of romance, I dropped by your studio after meeting with your boyfriend.”

  “Josh? What business do you have with Josh?”

  “Who’s Josh?”

  “You said you had a meeting with my boyfriend, Josh.”

  “I met with Frank DeBenton, of DeBenton Secure Transport. Remember him? I have to say I’m surprised at you, two-timing good ol’ Frank.”

  “Frank’s my landlord, not my boyfriend.”

  “Oh? You two seemed rather, shall we say, cozy the last time I saw you. So, tell me about this Josh person. Wait a minute—don’t tell me he’s Mr. Muscles?”

  Last fall I had made the mistake of mentioning Josh, stud muffin extraordinaire, to Michael. It seemed he had remembered.

  “Josh is a kind, decent person.”

  “Bored already, huh? Well, these things happen.”

  “You know what? Just go away,” I said, irked at Michael’s unerring instinct for pushing my buttons. Josh was out of town for a few weeks, and without his sweet smile and beautiful body clouding my mental processes I was rethinking our relationship. He was a great guy, but I was starting to wonder if I represented Josh’s Walk on the Wild Side. Worse yet, I feared he might be my Walk on the Mild Side.

  However, I wasn’t about to admit that to a no-good thieving scoundrel. “You are the least qualified person in the world to give romantic advice.”

  “Cold, but true.” Michael handed me a business card, kissed me lightly on the lips, and opened the truck door. “À bientôt, chérie. Don’t forget to unleash the pooches of perdition before you leave.”

  I watched the taillights disappear into the darkness and glanced at the card in my paint-stained hand.

  MICHAEL X. JOHNSON, ESQ.

  FINE ART SECURITY ANALYSIS

  & DISCREET RETRIEVAL SERVICES

  “WE SKULK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO”

  WWW.ARTRETRIEVAL.COM

  No way, I thought. No. Freaking. Way.

  Chapter 3

  Raffaelo was a very amorous person, delighting much in women, and ever ready to serve them.

  —Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), Italian art historian

  Raffaelo was a very popular man.

  —Georges LeFleur

  My mind was still reeling at the thought of Michael X. Johnson, International Art Thief, working on the side of the angels when I pulled into the gravel parking lot behind my apartment near downtown Oakland. My art studio and the majority of my clients were in San Francisco, which meant that most mornings I faced the Commute From Hell across the Oakland Bay Bridge. For the past two weeks I had been reveling in the novelty of a breezy commute to the columbarium, a mere five-minute drive from where I lived near Lake Merritt.

  Home was the former maid’s quarters of a nineteenth-century Victorian that had been divided into apartments: one on the first floor, two on the second, and mine on the third, tucked under the eaves. Small but spacious, my four rooms were flooded with cheerful sunlight during the day, thanks to the dormer windows that dotted each wall, while at night the slanting roofline created a warm and cozy ambience, especially when I lit the candles on the mantel and hearth of my nonfunctioning fireplace. I loved my airy little retreat, high above the street and surrounded by mulberry trees. Best of all, the rent couldn’t be beat. The old Victorian was owned by a pair of aging hippies who lived in a dome house in the Santa Cruz Mountains and with whom I had struck a tacit bargain: I didn’t ask for repairs, they didn’t raise the rent.

  In deference to my slumbering neighbors, also single professional women, I crept up the squeaky stairs, let myself into my apartment, then slipped down the hall to the bathroom and ran a hot shower. As I stood under the steaming water I tried to figure out what the hell Michael was up to this time. Twenty minutes later the hot water ran out, and I was still clueless.

  I pulled on an old T-shirt, climbed into bed, and flipped through the two and a half channels I received with the rabbit ears antenna on the television I had rescued from the curb on Big Waste Pickup Day. It was well after three in the morning and I was hoping for a rerun of Casablanca or even Three’s Company, but all I could find was an infomercial for a hair thickener. A thirty-something woman wearing a distressing amount of baby-blue eye shadow tearfully recounted the horrors of having to wear a turban to hide her thinning hair.

  The turban reminded me of La Fornarina. After my close encounter with Michael at the columbarium I’d lacked the courage to prowl about for the copy Cindy Tanaka thought was genuine, especially since I suspected it was a fool’s errand. Raphael’s signature masterpiece was worth a fortune, but more importantly it was a fundamental part of Italy’s cultural heritage. The legendary love that had inspired the painting was one of the most romantic stories in the history of art, which was saying a lot. There was no way it could have ended up at the Chapel of the Chimes without someone in the art world knowing about it.

  And why was I entertaining the notion that Cindy knew what she was talking about? She was writing a dissertation on public mourning rituals, I reminded myself, not art history. Still, Cindy had done some homework on the oddities of the art world. Clearly she felt there was reason to wonder, and the graduate student did not strike me as a person given to wild speculation. Who was this “someone” who asked her to check out La Fornarina? I blamed sleep-deprivation for not following up on that little tidbit.

  What really gave me pause was Michael’s sudden appearance. Could it have anything to do with the rumor of a genuine Raphael hanging, virtually unprotected, at the columbarium?

  Tomorrow I would swing by the columbarium and take a look at the painting so that I could assure Cindy—and myself—that it was indeed the copy it claimed to be.

  I flipped the channel to yet another infomercial, this one for hay baling equipment. A clean-cut man with a deep tan and squinty eyes explained, oh so sincerely, that big round balers and small round balers were necessary for the success of today’s modern rancher. I wondered if there were any ranches left in the crowded Bay Area. The last time I’d seen a round bale of hay was in the French countryside, when my grandfather took me on a tour of the magical Loire Valley.

  The telephone shrilled and I snatched up the receiver, my heart in my throat. “Hello?”

  “Chérie! Comment ça va, toi?”

  I must have telepathic powers. Born and raised in Brooklyn, master art forger Georges François LeFleur had long ago given his heart to la belle France. He now spoke his mother tongue with an accent as heavy as a traditional French cream sauce, a fact of which he claimed to be unaware.

  “Everything’s fine, Grandfather. How are you? Where are you?”

  “Alors, zees I must not say, chérie. One never knows when ze Interpol may be listening, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Why would Interpol be li
stening, Grandpère?”

  “Zey air such clowns. Zey sink zey can catch your grandpapa. ”

  “What do you mean? Who is after you, Grandfather? I mean, other than the usual suspects?”

  Last year, ignoring my heartfelt pleas, Grandfather had published a memoir of his long career in the art underworld. Reflections of a World-Class Art Forger had become a runaway international best seller, and Georges had been on the lam ever since. All a prosecutor would have to do to secure a conviction for art forgery against the old reprobate would be to quote from his damned book. Indeed, were Grandfather ever brought to trial, I suspected he would insist upon reading it to the jury himself, so proud was he of what he considered—not without cause—to be a life of extraordinary artistic accomplishment.

  “Ah, zees man. I ’ate ’im.”

  “Who do you hate, Grandfather?”

  “Doughnut Somezing. Doughnut Spumoni.”

  “ ‘Doughnut Spumoni’? Are you sure that’s his name? Sounds like a dessert.”

  “Bof! ’Ow should I know? Quel connard!”

  “Grandfather!”

  “Pardon.”

  “So, who is this guy?”

  “A leetle Italian bureaucrat.”

  “Why is a little Italian bureaucrat after you?”

  “Pairhips because he envies me.”

  “Perhaps. Any other reason? ’Fess up, old man.”

  “Zere was zat leetle incident in Firenze.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. “Did this incident have anything to do with La Fornarina?”

  “La Fornarina was years ago. ’E could not prove a zing.”

  “So you know nothing about a fake Raphael floating around?”

  “Mais non!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Ah, ma petite, ’as your old grandpapa ever lied to you?”

  I bit back a rude retort. Georges had lied to me plenty, and had taught me to be an artful forger and an artful fibber as well. His modus operandi, though, was to bluster in French, change the subject, or pretend a solar flare had zapped his phone. I tried to take comfort from the fact that this time his denial was in English and he was still on the line. “What’s going on, Grandfather?”

  “Zis man ’as published a list of my plusieurs réussites.”

  “Your many accomplishments? You mean your forgeries?”

  “Exactement!”

  “That’s not good.”

  “It ees worse! ’E ’as included two by Jazz Hart!”

  “That is worse.”

  Jazz Hart was a thirty-something British forger who churned out fakes that relied more on the gullibility and greed of art dealers and collectors than on technical skill. He’d forged The White Horse—which Gauguin had painted in 1898—with polymer paints, which were not invented until the 1950s. Georges’ generation of art criminals dismissed Hart as a third-rate hack.

  “As eef I would ’ave anyzing to do wiz such vile reproductions! I speet on ’im. I will not be associated wiz zat contemptible poseur! Jamais!”

  “Georges, think about this, please,” I said, my stomach clenching. “If you deny you painted the ones by Hart, you’re as good as admitting you forged the others.”

  “But ’ow can I keep silent? ’E is challenging my genius!”

  “Just let it roll off you.”

  “Roll off me?”

  “Sure, you know—like water off a duck’s back.”

  “You are suggesting I be a duck? A duck? Quel canard!”

  “I’m suggesting you stay out of prison, old man.” For several seconds I heard nothing but faint static. “Georges? Are you there?”

  “This Spumoni authenticator is as good as you are, chérie.” Grandfather’s voice was low, his accent slipped, and I realized we’d gotten to the purpose of his call. “He appears to know me.”

  That gave me pause. Few realized what a challenge it was for even expert authenticators to tell a genuine painting from a top-notch forgery. As long as a skilled forger used an aged canvas and paints chemically indistinguishable from those of the original painting, science was of limited assistance. Often the final judgment came down to intuition, the almost magical ability to appreciate an artist’s unique style. I had been born with a rare gift for what Georges called “aesthetic profiling” and Interpol called “fake busting,” and my ability had been honed by a lifetime of study. If Doughnut Spumoni had a similar talent, my grandfather could be in serious trouble.

  One of the ironies of the art forgery business was that, by definition, the best forgers were anonymous. Anyone with a paintbrush could paint a lousy fake; only an elite few had the talent and training to paint a convincing one. The professional fake buster’s secret weapon was the skilled forger’s understandable desire to have his or her artistry recognized and admired. A peculiar relationship thus tended to spring up between forger and fake buster: the latter was among the few to truly “get” the forger’s skill, yet was dedicated to exposing it. Doughnut Spumoni—or whatever his name really was—might be my grandfather’s biggest fan, but he would stop at nothing to out Georges. For an artist like my grandfather, being unable to paint was tantamount to being unable to breathe.

  “Listen, Grandfather,” I said. “Why don’t you let me look into this? In the meantime, promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut and stay underground for a week or two.”

  I heard some halfhearted sputtering. Georges was in his seventies but saw himself as a much younger man. He did not easily ask for, nor accept, my help.

  “S’il te plaît, Grandpère. Laisses-moi t’aider.”

  “Bon. I thought you might have contacts in the legitimate art world. It is good you live such an artless life, non?”

  Fat lot he knew.

  The next morning I stood before the columbarium’s La Fornarina and realized that Cindy Tanaka was right. The painting was not what it seemed.

  It wasn’t, as I had feared after last night’s phone call, one of my grandfather’s forgeries. Nor was it a genuine Raphael. But it also wasn’t what the brass tag affixed to the frame claimed: A COPY OF RAFFAELO’S LA FORNARINA, 1871, BY CRISPIN ENGELS. The “painting” before me was instead a computer-generated copy, available over the Internet for $179.99 plus shipping. I hated these cheap digital reproductions with the kind of visceral passion I reserved for imminent threats to my livelihood.

  But why would Cindy imagine it to be genuine? For that matter, why would a computer-generated knockoff be labeled a nineteenth-century reproduction?

  Intrigued, I retraced my steps from the dead-end Alcove of the Allegories through apse after apse to the Hall of the Cherubim, passed through the Corridor of Saints, and headed toward the main office, where I found the columbarium’s director, Roy Cogswell, signing some papers at the reception desk.

  “Annie.” He greeted me politely and glanced at his watch. “What are you doing here so early?”

  Blue-eyed and sandy-haired, with the gangly physique of an aging basketball player, Roy Cogswell was not the type one expected to find running a funerary business. Still, his somber, almost somnambulant way of speaking, his habit of folding his hands in front of him, and his measured response to any comment suggested the impact of three decades spent in the service of the bereaved. Apparently, one learned not to make any sudden moves around the grief-stricken.

  “I stopped by to take a look at something. Do you have a minute?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. “I have a meeting. Boring financial matters. Speaking of which, how goes the assessment of our miniatures collection?”

  “So far it’s not too encouraging, but I’m still working on it,” I hedged. My friend Samantha’s former assistant, Rachel, worked in appraisals at Mayfield’s Auction House, and I’d shown her the miniatures collection last week. According to Rachel, the collection was historically interesting but not very valuable, in part because of the portraits’ diminutive size and primitive style but mostly because in art, as in so much of life, market value was relative
to desire. There just wasn’t a demand for miniatures these days.

  These appealing “likenesses in little”—some by artists whom I recognized, such as John Singleton Copley and Charles Wilson Peale—had been popular in the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Before the invention of photography by Louis Daguerre, a former painter, miniature portraits were the cheapest and easiest way to capture a loved one’s image. The tradition had been brought to the American colonies from England and Italy, where Rosalba Carriera had pioneered the technique of crosshatching or stippling watercolors or gouache on ivory, rather than on less durable vellum. At that time, miniature painting was one of the few arenas in which women artists competed successfully with men.

  Just a few inches tall, the ovals were small enough to slip in a pocket, and were sometimes set into lockets to be kept near the wearer’s heart, or framed in cases of fine leather, worked gold, or etched silver. Locks of the subject’s hair, braided or arranged in a “plaid” pattern, were often fixed beneath a thin layer of glass on the back of the portrait. To me the most intriguing aspect of the miniatures was their personal significance. The portraits were treasured remembrances of cherished husbands gone off to war, perhaps never to return; of dewy brides destined to die young in childbirth; of beloved children who fell victim to any of a thousand terrors, including what we today airily dismiss as “childhood diseases”; of revered mothers and fathers—in short, they were reminders of loved ones whose visages would otherwise live on only in the fading memories of those who survived, or glimpsed in the faces of their descendants.

  Rachel had estimated the columbarium’s collection would sell for perhaps five hundred to a few thousand dollars apiece. Not exactly the windfall the columbarium needed to pay for its long-overdue earthquake retrofit.