A Paradise for Fools
Page 14
The suit knocked once more and waited.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Back door doesn’t look like he uses it,” Fred said. “So much crap piled in front of it in the yard. Refrigerators. This is the door he’ll use. Unless he’s already blown town. As a matter of curiosity, how much is he into you for?”
The suit recognized that he must stoop to an exchange of words. “I’m looking for Arthur Schrecking,” he said.
“Right. I’m Fred,” Fred said. “Not Arthur. You’ve got the right place, though. Arthur works late. But he’s unpredictable. Not like Kant. You don’t want to set your clock by him.”
“Kant?”
‘Immanuel Kant. I wasn’t clear. Arthur is the one you don’t want to set your clock by. Kant is, except he’s dead. I’m ahead of myself. Kant is, to philosophy, what Philip Glass is to music, or Jules Olitski to painting. Tedious but persistent. Pointless, but redolent of inferred significance. Spend enough time with any one of those boys, they finally wear you down, you find yourself saying, ‘I could have thought of that.’ Then you decide they’re smart. Since they agree with you. Kant was even more regular than Philip Glass. My point was going to be, folks said they could set their clocks by him. Kant. Glad to help. You’re what, looking for the rent check? Arthur’s overdue? Call me Fred.”
“Lexington Orono. Lex,” the suit said, sighing as it sat its man onto one of the folding chairs. The one farthest from Fred.
Orono. Interesting.
“You know Olitski’s work?” Lex Orono said. He could not suppress an undertone of appalled disgust. Hearing the painter referred to in this context, by this apparent derelict, must be for him like listening to Joseph Goebbels discussing the virgin birth.
Fred said, “Don’t you think Olitski could supply interesting motifs for a whole new approach to patterns for the tattoo phenomenon? Or am I thinking of Cy Twombly? Which am I thinking of?”
Interesting because that name, the patronymic, Orono, was among the big movers and shakers in the New York art world. The Pieper and Orono Galleries was a large concern, occupying prime real estate not far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The gallery did not specialize in any particular school, preferring to associate itself with individual works that could command staggering prices. They were as happy to offer a Monet Water Lilies as a Rembrandt or Franz Hals. Or a Jackson Pollock. When their own expertise couldn’t explicate an object’s provenance or credibility, they were happy to fill in for the missing expertise with gall.
“There is no similarity at all between them,” Lex declared. He placed his attaché case on his knees and opened it.
“In terms of the person wearing the tattoo,” Fred persisted. “So many images that the client chooses only make sense when both the client, and the viewer, are vertical. It abets the tyranny of gravity. The client stands on his head, all of a sudden, there goes your eagle. Upended. Flying upside down with that shield on top of him. Even the client must mostly see the pictures upside down, unless he’s passing a mirror.”
“I am supposed to be in Paris.” Lex flicked at his lapels in exasperation before pulling a folder from the case. Its leather was so immaculate it must never in all its existence have gone for a ride in the subway.
The man was too young to make sense unless—this had to be it. There were no longer Piepers with the Pieper and Orono Galleries. Arsène Pieper had sold out his share in the partnership long ago, leaving only his name with the firm. Glendon Orono, the wily old founding pirate who had controlled the firm single-handedly in the years since, must have brought in a son whom he had first smoothed and finished with an Ivy League education and the concomitant Ivy League friends and associates.
Glendon Orono had been so solidly ensconced in the business for so long, his existence was taken for granted in the landscape. His operations reflected the collaboration, often unwilling, of other major firms and contractors. He was willing to spend too much for a prime work of art. It couldn’t hurt him, because he was regarded, even feared. His bullying action set a new “high” for the artist in play; he might be fronting for one of his hidden clients anyway; and if he was not, when he came to sell, the price he had paid, either out of his own pocket, or in collusion with a hidden cartel of fellow pirates, was so well known that the eventual buyer recognized the premium that must be paid to allow Glendon Orono the profit he demanded. The entire edifice must crumble if all did not collude in assisting the principal players to save face. In its own way it was not unlike keeping the big banks alive. The art and the mortgage look much better when viewed through the roseate prism of otherwise blind faith.
Orono’s overhead was huge, his profits astronomical. There were well-discussed hints of cozy dealings between Orono and such other major players as the two big New York auction houses and their runners-up, and flagship galleries in Berlin, Berne, and Paris.
“Arthur does beautiful work,” Fred said. “I read you wrong at first. Read you for a bill collector and thought, Good luck. But you’re here to get ink. Am I right?” Lex Orono opened the folder and began checking its contents. Fred went on, “Or I should say, to get more ink. Like a lot of the bankers and tradesmen now, you live a secret life under the suit. For a guess, it’s not butterflies or fish.
“I’m so easy to spot, people tell me I don’t need any more what they call identifying marks. I never went in for it, I’m so scarred up already. What I hear, these days a lot of the young professional people, God bless them, day jobs, paychecks, keep the economy going—bankers, lawyers, accountants, insurance adjustors, even the women, you roll up their sleeves, the white shirts, the men—as the case might be, the women—get a look at the small of the back there, roll down the back of her, at the top, you get a chance—because a woman in the office, she likes to be free to have her arms bare, her upper chest, calves, and the rest of it I’m not being clear. Hot weather like this. Uncover the skin, these days, everyone’s carrying art. Is my point. You a collector?”
Lex Orono jumped as if he’d been goosed with something lively.
Fred continued, making no acknowledgement of the hit. “Whiling away the time, waiting for Arthur, I don’t size you up as one of the common herd. What you wear, tell me if I am right—under the suit—is simple, bold, stands out from the other end of the beach, like a rune, but a rune that means something. Like the letter Pi, but who cares about Pi? E over MC cubed. Who cares any more? Who ever did? Or understood it? The trouble with symbols in our culture.”
While Fred talked he was gathering together the pages of the Nashua Sentinel. They had become scattered as he glanced through the paper while he ate. He re-assembled them and folded them together as they would first have hit the stand, with Zagoriski face up and fully visible as Fred, in a gesture that seemed lackadaisical, exposed the front page to his companion.
“Hit and run,” Fred said.
Lex Orono had turned pale. “Show me that paper.”
Fred shook his head, “It’s for Arthur. The Nashua Sentinel.”
“I see what it is,” Orono said carefully.
“New Hampshire,” Fred clarified.
Lex Orono stared and drew himself into as small a man as he could manage. He reconsidered and blew himself out again, into as large a man as he could manage. “What are you?”
“Eliminate what I’m not,” Fred said. “I am not a coincidence.” He fanned himself with the folded paper. It was hot up here. A flapping Zagoriski provided relief. “I’m going to make some observations,” Fred continued, moving the paper slowly, keeping his eyes on his companion. “You, Lexington Orono, are familiar with Nashua, New Hampshire. You recognize the features of the dead man, Zagoriski, and you know his name. Except for the fact that the words came unexpectedly out of my mouth, and out of context, you are not uncomfortable with the names of the contemporary painters Jules Olitski and Cy Twombly. I invite comment.”
Fred said, “Another comment, as long as we are chewing the fat. All you can see from this newspaper, from where you sit, is the ugly picture of Zagoriski. You can’t see his name, and yet you know it’s Zagoriski. Next, all the headline tells you from there is Local Man in Hit and Run, which easily could put this character behind the wheel. Not under it. Yet you show no surprise when I let drop the fact that Zagoriski is dead. Again, I invite comment.”
Fred waited, friendly, interested.
“To quote a Nashua character,” Fred said, “No, to be accurate, to adopt his manner of conversation, I take it you already know of the mishap in Nashua.”
Lex Orono stared and fiddled with the attaché case.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“Who are you with?” Orono demanded. “Who are you acting for? I don’t know you. I haven’t seen you. You’re not New York or I’d know you. You’re something in Nashua. Fred. Fred what? Camped out on the stairs like a bum. A trap. Who do you represent? Olitski, Twombly, what do they do, play golf?”
“Medium nice try,” Fred said. “But late in the game.” Lex waited for more, in vain. And finally asked, “You looking to deal?”
“Not necessary,” Fred said, spreading his hands. “It’s been fun chatting with you. I don’t ask questions. Observations are more efficient. You get a lot of information from a lie, but it takes forever. I’m ahead of you, believe me. When Arthur gets back, I go in with him and you stay out here. Afterwards, if he wants to see you, which I doubt, I’ll be there too. With him. If you want to tell me your business with him, fine. Your business. Your offer. Up to you. If you want to…”
“Fuck you,” Lex said. “You’re telling me who you’re with is Arthur?” He opened his attaché case and removed one of those pads of notepaper they leave in the hotel room—the goodwill bribe to keep you coming back. This one from the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square. He scribbled on the top sheet, ripped it free, folded it several times, wrote on the outside flap, stood, bent, and slipped the message under the door.
“I was supposed to be in Paris,” he complained, and took himself down the stairs.
Had the matter at issue been more serious than the satisfaction of his curiosity, Fred could easily deal with Arthur’s locks and go through the place. But there’d be no justification for the move. He wasn’t saving anyone from anything. He couldn’t even find the ominous pricklings of anticipation that, in the movie, might be accompanied by worrying organ music, putting two and two together—one man dead in Nashua, another missing in Cambridge. So what?
Well, two men missing in Cambridge, if you pushed it. Still, so what? Arthur had gotten fed up and told Sammy Flash to move on? Why not? In due course Sammy Flash would get back to his pants drying across the radiator in Fred’s room. Arthur could have decided to take a few days cruising the scenic waterways of Lowell, Massachusetts. Why not? It was a free country. Why shouldn’t he be missing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here was the matter newly of interest, and it added enormous credibility to the painting Fred had only seen represented in fragments and outlines on the body of Kim, who denied that the painting existed—that denial adding its own significance.
Lexington Orono had been diverted from a Paris venture in order to make a play for the painting. Nothing else explained his presence here. New York, or at least Orono’s corner of New York, had gotten wind of the painting, and he wanted to get the gallery’s hands on it before competition became an issue. If Orono could land it cheap, he could worry afterwards whether it was any good.
Lex Orono hadn’t been able to poke hard enough to learn whether Fred knew about the painting; but he did suspect, and must worry, that Fred knew enough of his business to be very much in the way. And Fred had planted in his mind the misapprehension that Arthur and he were acting in tandem. Or, once Orono’s suspicions got the better of him, that Fred had first refusal.
“Another fucking art dealer,” had been Kenzo’s words, while he maneuvered to block and sideline Fred’s inquiry on the Nashua end. So someone, Lex Orono? had been at Kenzo’s asking after the painting whose existence everyone now denied.
“With an art dealer you have a choice,” Fred said. “He tells you nothing or he lies.” He leaned back in the corner he had chosen over the landing and continued his supper.
The last thing this situation had needed was the entrance of the man in the suit. The story as Fred saw it started: once upon a time a bunch of youngsters, clowns, finding themselves mysteriously in possession of a painting that entertained them, played with it, utterly unaware of its significance. Lex Orono, coming into this happy scene of innocence, introduced pheromones of danger, distrust, and greed. He must seem—to any of the characters who had been associated with the painting, whether Stephanie and Kenzo Petersen in their Nashua tattoo parlor, or Zoltan Zagoriski if he’d got that far– had Orono already managed to make contact with Kim, or Arthur, here in Cambridge?—must seem like a predator so alien it would be comparable not to a wolf appearing among sheep, but to an ogre—or worse, a killer whale. Not only a nightmare, but a nightmare beyond comprehension. From the point of view of the sheep a wolf, frightening enough, could be expected to play by a wolf’s rules. Even an ogre made sense in a fairy tale.
But Lexington Orono, the killer whale—his uniform black and white what with the suit, the white shirt, with his styled hair and his briefcase—represented an alien class of power, prestige, and secret cut-throat deals, any one of which could be imagined, by the uninitiated, to have the lottery’s power to make you or destroy you utterly, perhaps both. Happy Valley might be doomed forever.
If these innocents had any experience dealing with devious people in this world, people who wanted something from them they’d regret—and who has not?—as soon as Orono’s shadow crossed the threshold their initial instinct would be to deny everything. People are frightened when they learn unexpectedly that something they own, and have been comfortably disregarding all their lives, is worth a fortune.
Suppose they happen to have it, but don’t own it? A worthless thing gets passed around. Islands in Maine used to be exchanged for poker debts. Nobody cared. After a while, it is hard to remember who owns which island, one that suddenly a realtor from Boston is willing to buy for the price of a good pension. The entire ecology is upset. Friends fall out. Families become strained and siblings cease speaking to one another. Everyone starts to scramble in the crawl space for lost scraps of paper that will justify their claims, and make them someone. Someone with a title. Title to an island property nobody cared about before.
“Arthur, my friend,” Fred said. “You’d make this easier if you’d show me the picture.”
Where the outlines had been colored in, on Kim’s skin, the dyes were sweet and clean, as Fred had noted, sitting across from her in the apartment she was house-sitting. Had Arthur had the sense to compensate for centuries of dust and smoke and grime and discolored varnish? That had been Fred’s instinct—that Arthur said to himself, “Screw this, grass should be green, not brown.”
But there was another possibility. What if Arthur sent the picture to be cleaned? This crowd could not have found, much less paid for, a professional conservator whose skills were worthy of the painting. Even a cheap hack could strip the accumulated surface crap away until he found color. The danger was that the stripping didn’t stop there.
At least, thank God, Hieronymus Bosch had done his work in oil paint. Imagine the damage that could be caused by an inexperienced conservator, or someone who only claimed to be a conservator, should the paint be tempera, and water-soluble.
Any conservator, even a hack, given the nature of the object Fred was imagining, and wondering about its source, if imbued with a larcenous streak, might go the next step and call the attention of a dealer to the work, anticipatin
g a cut of any action that developed. Dealer drops by, takes a look, tells the conservator, “It’s worth X to me if you’ll tell the owner you had a client drop by the other day who saw the piece on your easel where you were working on it, and wants to buy it for her husband. The husband likes weird things.”
He’d keep the offer low. Mention a high price, or a fair price, and the owner stampedes. He figures the intent must be to cheat him. Ideally what the dealer does is to ask the unwitting client, “What will you take?” If the seller suggests the price and the dealer accepts it, no crime has been committed, even though the dealer knows he is buying candy from a baby. The dealer has made no misrepresentation. It is not his responsibility that the seller is ill- nformed. But when the dealer makes an offer, he is at the same time extending his experience as an appraiser. This is true even though he colors the offer by saying, “To me, the piece is worth this much.” In this case, the dealer may be committing fraud.
So, although the dealer wants to own the piece, its fair cost would be high, and there may be no prudent way around acknowledging that price. An alternative, after alerting the owner to the painting’s value, is to receive it on consignment if the seller is willing to wait to cash in.
Supposing the owner is willing to sell.
The trap above all traps the dealer wants to avoid, and it is not easy, is the alternative voracious, proximate lure of the auction house. The auction house has going for it the great advantage that it can appear to be a disinterested party. It seems to act as the balance point between buyer and seller, in a transaction so open, so public, so fully witnessed, so transparent, everyone believes that the value to be established by the winning bid, which has been forced by the next bid down, is determined by “the market” in its purest form. The ignorant owner, surprised and gratified by the news that against all odds he has something valuable, accepts first the assurance of the auctioneer, and then the hope not only of gain, but also of participating in a show. And with a sure thing rather than relying on the alternative route: consigning a work out to become shopworn while it fails to attract its asking price, plus the dealer’s hefty commission.