The Last Weynfeldt

by Martin Suter

  This haircut gave Adrian Weynfeldt a slightly 1940s look, which he knew full well, and liked to emphasize through the cut of his suits.

  He straightened his necktie and the handkerchief in his breast pocket, smoothed his hair away from his forehead and let Frau Almeida show him into the living room.

  Klaus Baier sat in the midst of his dimly lit salon in his high-backed, upright armchair. He waved Weynfeldt toward him. Adrian walked over and shook Baier’s hard, bony hand, which somehow didn’t fit the old man’s rotund body and bloated face. It was at least a year since he’d last seen Baier, and now for the first time he really looked like an old man.

  “Excuse me if I don’t get up,” Baier said, and pointed to a chair next to him. “Sit down.”

  Adrian perched on the edge of the golden-yellow 1960s plush armchair, sitting up straight and holding on to the arm so his eye-level wasn’t too much lower than Baier’s.

  “Port or a proper drink?”

  “Port is fine.”

  “Pity, I was hoping you would give me an excuse for a proper drink.”

  “I brought a good port.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got a very acceptable Bas-Armagnac hors d’age open. You have something to celebrate. And I need a little consolation.”

  Frau Almeida, who had been waiting at the door till the drinking requirements were clear, now walked over to the bookcase and folded down the flap, opening up the little bar. A light went on, illuminating its mirrored interior, full of bottles and glasses. The two men waited till she had poured their drinks.

  Weynfeldt was about to raise his glass, but before he had the chance Baier put his to his lips and took a big gulp, held it in his mouth awhile, then pointed to the painting above the bureau. “There it is. Why don’t you bring it over and put it on the easel here.”

  Adrian did as Baier said. Took the painting down from its two hooks, held it in front of him with outstretched arms till this was too much—it measured three feet by four feet after all, with a heavy, ornate, golden frame—and placed it on the easel. He stood to one side, so he wasn’t blocking Baier’s view, and took a good look at the work.

  “And?” Baier asked after a while.

  “You know what I think about this painting. It’s amazing.”

  “In francs please.”

  “Between seven-hundred thousand and a million.”

  “You said that last time. And since then En promenade went for 2.3 million. A tiny picture, not half as big as this.”

  “Auction dynamics. Two collectors were spurring each other on.”

  “That kind of thing can be engineered; you’ve said so yourself. You know the Vallotton collectors. Contact a few of them and pit them against each other.”

  Baier was right. Weynfeldt knew a few collectors who normally bid over the telephone. And he was the one in charge of the phone lines. It was true that he could influence proceedings. He could advise telephone bidders not to go any higher, but he could also do the opposite. He thought for a second. Valuations were tricky. Too high and the house risked being stuck with the lot; too low and the discrepancy between estimate and hammer price could be so great it would damage Weynfeldt’s reputation as an expert.

  “I’m not going under a million,” Baier announced. “Between 1 and 1.5? How about that?”

  Weynfeldt hesitated. “Between 1 and 1.3.”

  “Take it,” Baier spluttered. “Now, at once.”

  This would not have been the first time Weynfeldt had temporarily stored a painting at home. A quick call to the insurance department in London was enough. They were flexible there, and Weynfeldt’s apartment was easily as secure as Murphy’s storerooms, given that he shared the building with a bank.

  “Sure,” he said, and walked toward the easel.

  “No, stop! Leave it with me till tomorrow. One last night, to take my leave.”

  Next morning Weynfeldt was driven to Baier’s villa in one of Murphy’s delivery vans, where he packed the painting carefully in Bubble Wrap and corrugated cardboard, signed the receipt and took it away.

  On the way to his office a vague instinct told him not to take the painting to Murphy’s but first to his apartment. He was surprised at himself, as he never normally followed his instincts.

  5

  THE PLEATED, MOTHER-OF-PEARL SILK TOP WAS HELD together with a gathered ribbon of the same fabric. It was attached with a slender strap above the right breast, then wound its way over to the left shoulder where it formed a rosette. The top reached down just above the navel, exposing a swathe of stomach, then descended asymmetrically, tapering away above the left thigh. The turquoise silk wraparound skirt was attached using one single, white button at the hip, pleated in front of the left thigh. It opened and closed like an inverted fan as you walked. The whole outfit looked like it could be shed in an instant.

  “Everything okay, madam?” The sales assistant called into the cubicle.

  Lorena opened the door, came out and took few feline steps—one foot in front of the other—toward the huge floor-to-ceiling mirror. She knew how to walk in designer clothes; she had, after all, worked as a model. Not at the big fashion shows in Paris, Rome, London or New York—at five foot four inches she was too short—but she had modeled regularly for shows in boutiques and once had a permanent job as in-house model for a Swiss label for a while. For three seasons she’d done catalogues for a mail-order company too. She tried to forget those days spent in alternately sweltering or freezing studios in some provincial town. The commercial photographer acted like a star, and her colleagues fought for a few meager privileges by sharing sagging beds and shabby hotel rooms with him or his assistant or the company’ advertising manager. Lorena had kept out of all this, with the result that after three catalogues she was no longer part of the team.

  The three editions were also enough to do lasting damage to her modeling career, however. The agencies that recognized her face from the frumpy catalogues stopped giving her work. It made no difference that she had one of the most professional comp cards on the scene. It was designed by an award-winning art director she had been together with for a while—not least for that reason.

  It was a few years since her modeling career had ended, but she still knew how to pose in an Issey Miyake number in front of a full-length mirror in one of the city’s most exclusive boutiques so that the sales staff would take her for a highly promising customer. The saleswoman serving her said, “You’re the first person we’ve had in here who can wear that.” And the shaven-headed salesman with the Comme des Garçons look standing on the spiral staircase leading up to the men’s department gave her a smile of respect.

  Lorena sauntered over to the racks inset between the matte black shelves and began sifting through the clothes nonchalantly. Now and again she took a hanger from the rack, inspected the item and either returned it or placed it over the back of a nearby leather armchair on her short list.

  She came to a Prada dress in iridescent violet and black silk and held it in her hand a little longer. She draped it against herself, drew it in around her waist and stood in front of a mirror. She hesitated, then shook her head, appearing to have reached a decision, and hung it back. She continued shifting the hangers from right to left.

  She paused again at another Prada dress, black silk, simple and close fitting. She took it out and pressed to her body. It had a round neckline, fastened with a button, and an open slit extending down between the breasts to the middle of the body. The sleeves ended above the elbows, the hem below the knee. She hesitated, looked back through the hangers till she found the violet dress, retrieved it, held both dresses up next to each other, hung them both back, picked up the short list pile from the chair, had second thoughts, took the violet Prada dress back out, placed it on top of her pile and took the lot into the cubicle.

  She drew the curtain and hung the violet Prada number on a hook. The black one lay beneath it. She had swiped it from the rack under the cover of the violet one. Now she folded
it and rolled it up into a compact silk parcel which she stowed at the bottom of her handbag. Then she lowered the empty hanger into the wastepaper basket, hung the other dresses on the hooks, slipped into the violet Prada, did the zipper up as far as she could and opened the curtain. The saleswoman was standing just a few feet from the cubicle.

  “Could you assist me with the zipper?” Lorena asked, without leaving the cubicle, instead waiting for the saleswoman to come to her. She turned round so she could do up the dress.

  It had a stand-up collar, long sleeves gathered at the forearms and a generous wedge-shaped kick-pleat beginning at its broad leather belt and ending below the knee.

  Lorena scrutinized her appearance in the mirror at length, giving the sales assistant lots of time to look inside the cubicle. “A little formless, somehow,” she decided in the end.

  Over the next quarter of an hour Lorena appeared in a slightly hippy Christian Lacroix number made of various large-scale-flower-print silks, in a steel-blue ankle-length Issey Miyake outfit, a linen blouse with a high collar and an outsized frill by Emanuel Ungaro, in a black-and-white horizontal-striped deux pièce with a huge black bow by Sonia Rykiel and a short, high-necked dress by Karl Lagerfeld with broad, angular shoulders and a zipper running from the collar to the hemline.

  She sashayed toward the floor-to-ceiling mirror each time and observed herself over her shoulder from behind as if on a catwalk, getting a little attention from the handful of other customers and the bored staff.

  Before removing the Lagerfeld piece, she called the saleswoman over into the cubicle. “Would you be an angel,” she said, a shade condescending, “and put this, this and, this to one side.” She handed her the three outfits. “I’d like to show them to my boyfriend tomorrow. That’ll be fine, won’t it?”

  The saleswoman nodded.

  “You can take the other things away, thank you.”

  Lorena removed the Lagerfeld and put her own things back on: a raspberry-colored DKNY getup with a short skirt, coupled with opaque black pantyhose. She had stolen it last year from a boutique in Basel when she’d been working as a trade-fair hostess.

  She took her handbag, left the cubicle, smiled at the saleswoman and tripped toward the door.

  There she was met by a slender woman with a bob. Probably in her late fifties, impeccably made-up, she wore an outfit that looked very Jil Sander. She smiled at Lorena. “My name is Melanie Gabel. I’m the proprietor.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Lorena smiled back.

  “Would you mind terribly opening your handbag?”

  6

  LATE MORNING ONE END-OF-THE-MONTH THURSDAY, hardly the busiest time in the men’s department of a boutique like Spotlight: Pedroni was bored, and grateful for the show the little redhead was putting on downstairs. He stood on the spiral staircase and watched as she emerged from the cubicle time and time again like a star on the stage at Caesar’s Palace. She was good. His guess was that she had neither a credit card nor enough cash even to pay for a handkerchief from Spotlight, but that moron Manon was attending to her, and obviously thought she’d gotten a big fish on the end of her line.

  Theo L. Pedroni was no newcomer to the business. He would soon turn thirty-nine, his last birthday with a three on the left, and had spent over half these years in the fashion industry, first as a sales intern in a big department store, then in various boutiques, two of them his own. Not concurrently, and only briefly, but still his. Both times he had filed for bankruptcy, in one case fraudulently, according to the court, which had made his return to employment difficult and forced him to relocate.

  Pedroni had always viewed working in sales as a temporary situation, and always had some big project on the side intended to solve his money problems once and for all. Most of these diversification experiments had taken place in his home territory, fashion. He had entered the accessories business several times. He’d begun with small production runs, producing belts, watch straps, cigarette lighter pouches and—with particular zeal—cell phone pouches. He had taken care of the production, sales and marketing side each time. For the creative side he had collaborated with students from the school of art and design and with a young copywriter. He had ceased collaboration with the latter in 1989 after he suggested printing T-shirts with the slogan “Save the Wall!”

  Later he began free-form diversification, as he put it. He was more interested in the money than the product anyway. As Charlie Sheen’s character in Wall Street said, “I buy and sell money.” During the period when illegal clubs were sprouting up all over the city like mushrooms, he was one of the cofounders of Schmelzpunkt, which was a huge success at first, and survived three raids unscathed. During the fourth the cops found several grams of coke, which Pedroni was convinced had been planted by one of the men behind Nachtzug, a competitor. He had been seen at Schmelzpunkt the same evening.

  In any case, Pedroni’s involvement with the club scene brought him into contact with people who knew where to get coke. That was the start of the most lucrative phase of his career. His day job then, at one of the most fashionable boutiques of the time, fit perfectly with this new side gig. The customers at New Label were mainly from the fashion and banking worlds and the majority were also private customers of his. In no time Pedroni was able to move to a better apartment and buy an almost new Porsche Carrera with a reliable history.

  This phase of his career was accompanied by social, not just financial, ascent. He was suddenly treated as more than just a salesman by these people; he was one of them. He had something they needed urgently; they could get it from him conveniently and discreetly, and they shared a secret with him.

  By the time Pedroni was busted, his turnover had exceeded two million francs—the courts found evidence for at least half this sum—and he had made more than four hundred thousand francs profit. He only received four years jail time, however, first because he admitted to the offenses, second because he was highly cooperative and compromised a few illustrious figures in the banking and finance world. Including his time spent in custody, he served around two years of the sentence, and soon found another job in a boutique. There were various people in the fashion business keen to secure his discretion.

  His income was modest, however, and his days were typically spent hanging around the men’s department wearing a shiny gold Comme des Garçons suit with baggy trousers and a jacket with three buttons—the proprietor declaring the top one must be done up—and, if he was lucky, getting to watch a redhead pretending to be a big spender.

  Suddenly he realized what she was up to. She was going to steal something. She was trying to behave so conspicuously no one would dream she intended to steal something. Her plan was to distract her audience like a magician, then make something disappear: hocus-pocus!

  Perhaps she had already done it, and no one had noticed.

  Now she was looking through the Prada rack, occasionally taking a dress out, hanging it back up, or throwing it carelessly over the back of a nearby chair, which normally provided waiting menfolk the chance to sit down.

  She took the iridescent violet and black one out and held it up in front of herself.

  Too sack-like, girl, a waste of your narrow hips. And too violet for your hair color.

  She seemed to agree, and hung it back.

  She took the simple black one out. Yes, that’s the one. That’s your style, girl.

  She went back to the violet one, took it out again and compared it to the black one.

  The black one, the black one. No question: the black one.

  But then she put them both back.

  Then she changed her mind again. She took the violet one back off the rack, put it with the others over the back of the chair and took the whole pile into the cubicle.

  Had she taken only the violet one? Hadn’t he seen a flash of something black behind it, just for a second?

  He laughed to himself. Hocus-pocus. That was her magic trick. The black Prada has vanished into thin air. And no one
noticed. Almost no one. Respect!

  Pedroni walked up the rest of the stairs to the men’s department and positioned himself in a spot where he could still see the changing rooms.

  Manon slid up to the changing room. Did she have an inkling?

  Now the curtain was thrown open and the redhead waved Manon into the cubicle itself, had her assisting with the zipper. Did his eyes deceive him, or was this chick really so cold-blooded, she was giving Manon the opportunity to look inside?

  It was approaching twelve now. The first lunchtime customers were coming in. Pedroni had to serve one of them. He had fewer chances to glance downstairs. The redhead was still modeling one outfit after the other.

  As he accompanied a customer to the exit—obviously he hadn’t bought anything—Manon emerged from the cubicle with an armful of clothes. She placed three items to one side on the counter, and hung the others back on the rails.

  Clever. The redhead had reserved three items and returned the rest. In a few minutes she would leave the changing room she had let the sales assistant empty personally.

  And here she came. In a DKNY outfit from last season, with a Prada handbag too small to fit a dress in. Unless there was barely anything else in it.

  She passed the counter in an over-the-top mannequin walk, gave Manon a rather patronizing smile and headed for the exit.

  Now he saw that Frau Gabel was standing at the exit.

  It would have to be a very special kind of customer for the boss to consider coming to the door to say goodbye in person. The redhead certainly didn’t belong to this category.

  He wouldn’t be surprised if Frau Gabel asked her to open her handbag.

  7

  “WHEN THEY BAN SMOKING IN RESTAURANTS I’LL CLOSE down,” Nunzio Agustoni always claimed. This was said in an exaggerated Italian accent that was an essential part of the Trattoria Agustoni’s style, along with the squat Chianti bottles used as candleholders, and the white paper tablecloths from a roll, changed after each sitting. When it seemed the issue was refusing to go away, Agustoni installed a non-smoking table—between the coat stand and the entrance to the toilets—and made fun of any guests who actually sat there, with gestures and grimaces to the regulars.