The Last Weynfeldt

by Martin Suter

  Then she had said suddenly, “Why don’t you just rent a day room at the Belotel?” And explained what that was. He could well imagine how she knew.

  If Weynfeldt actually showed up—and Pedroni had no reason to doubt that he would—he would congratulate himself yet again on his instinct, which had told him he should hook up with her. The girl was a gold mine.

  For a while it had looked like it was going nowhere, but when she showed up to borrow money for Mallorca he knew they’d be doing business again. Although he’d been surprised himself how soon it had worked out.

  The test with the five thousand went smoothly. Weynfeldt handed it over like something he’d been trying to get rid of all his life. He was so into the chick he’d pay any amount to score points with her. Well, maybe not any amount, but a hundred and twenty thousand wouldn’t be a problem. Perhaps he should have gone higher—a hundred and twenty had been her idea—but this was certainly not the last chance.

  He was particularly proud of the promissory note. Not just some vague letter acknowledging a debt of a hundred and twenty francs, but a document with signatures dating back two years, claiming a total debt of a hundred and forty-two thousand, three hundred and forty, and a neat record of repayments in varying sums, each with his signature, using a variety of pens. The last was Weynfeldt’s payment of five thousand, also entered correctly and signed for. The balance was a hundred and twenty thousand, which Weynfeldt would hand him in a few minutes. He was pretty certain of that.

  He had done some research about the man, which had not been at all easy. He lived a very inconspicuous life, the final descendant of an old family of industrialists, once incredibly rich, who had still left him enough that he had more income than he could spend. According to Lorena, he made over a million a year simply from the building he lived in.

  The man worked—this information also came from Lorena—because he enjoyed it. Something Pedroni found very hard to grasp.

  But it was fine by him. That way he used up less of his fortune. Because if everything went as smoothly as he expected with the hundred and twenty, there was no reason not to use him again. He wasn’t sure how, but together with Lorena he’d think of something. Weynfeldt felt responsible for her, she’d told him. They would make sure that was interpreted financially.

  The telephone rang. Reception informed him a Dr. Weynfeldt had arrived. “Send him on up.” He got up, went into the bathroom, washed his hands and ran his wet palms over the short hair he’d been growing again for a while.

  A coincidence. Even if his head had still been shaved, Weynfeldt wouldn’t have recognized him. Before the meeting in front of the ATM Pedroni had said to Lorena, “I’m sure he’s never seen me, not even that day at Spotlight. People like him treat sales staff as if they’re invisible. Bet you anything you like he doesn’t recognize me.”

  A knock. Pedroni took his jacket from the hanger and put it on. Then he opened the door and invited Weynfeldt in.

  The man was wearing a rain-soaked, camel-hair overcoat, holding a wet felt hat in his hand. Pedroni hadn’t noticed it had started raining again.

  While Weynfeldt was unbuttoning his coat, Pedroni took one of the two hangers from the wardrobe and held his hand out toward Weynfeldt’s coat. The man shook his head. “I’ll keep it on. I don’t have much time. Could I ask you to give me the promissory note, please?”

  “Could I ask you to give me the money first, please?” Pedroni responded.

  It was too good to be true. The man made no attempt to argue about the procedure. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat—he was carrying a hundred and twenty big ones in his coat pocket!—and took the money out. He placed it on the coffee table among the leaflets.

  Pedroni sat on the sofa bed. They were fresh notes in the original wrappers. A hundred-pack of thousands and two hundred-packs of hundreds. Pedroni broke open the wrappers and counted the notes unhurriedly. Weynfeldt didn’t sit down. He stood in his overcoat at the window looking out at the gray rainy afternoon. Only when Pedroni said, out loud, “Correct,” did he turn around.

  “Could I have the promissory note now please?”

  If the asshole hadn’t looked at him so arrogantly while he’d said it, he would have gone to his briefcase and taken out the document. But now he said, “You’ll receive it by post in a few days.”

  Weynfeldt went bright red. Didn’t say a word, just stood there in his five-thousand-franc coat and went red.

  Pedroni shook his head, stood up and walked over to his briefcase. “My little joke,” he grinned, and handed him the document.

  The best bit was what came next: Weynfeldt reached into his trouser pocket, took out a small leather case, extracted a magnifying glass from it, went to the window and examined the piece of paper.

  “Do you think it’s a fake?” Pedroni asked incredulously.

  Weynfeldt gave no answer.

  “I’m sure she was able to confirm that she owed me the money.”

  Weynfeldt put the magnifying glass away, nodded, folded the paper and secreted it in the inside pocket—of his jacket this time. “In order,” he said.

  “What do you mean, in order?”

  “It’s the original.”

  “Right. You know about things like that?”

  “Yes.” He walked past him towards the door. Before he opened it, he turned around once more. “From now on you will leave Frau—he hesitated—Steiner in peace, I hope that’s clear.”

  “Or what?”

  “Then you’ll find out what.”

  “Or you’ll go red?”

  Weynfeldt searched for a response. Then he said, quietly, but loud enough for Pedroni to hear, “Or you will.”

  29

  IT WASN’T THE FIRST TIME LORENA HAD BEEN IN THE Grand Imperial Hotel, but she preferred not to think about that time.

  She was ushered in by a doorman in discreet livery, and went straight to the bar. She had arranged to meet Adrian’s friend, the painter Rolf Strasser, on the pretext that as a professional he would be a good person to guide her around the exhibition; Adrian didn’t have time.

  That was not entirely true: she hadn’t asked Adrian, she had just told him she wanted to visit the preview with Rolf, because he was probably very busy, wasn’t he? Adrian had approved of the idea and given her Rolf’s number.

  The real reason she wanted to go to the preview with Strasser was of course the Vallotton. Adrian had given her a heavy hint that he was the one who painted the copy. And therefore the only one aside from Adrian who knew if the painting on show to the public here was the authentic one or not.

  Strasser was not in the bar. She ordered a glass of champagne and waited precisely fifteen minutes—the maximum she ever waited for a man.

  Then she walked to the grand ballroom, following the signs attached to the auction posters, and passing through the lobby.

  It was four in the afternoon, hotel guests and art enthusiasts were sitting in the easy chairs drinking coffee and eating cake; a pianist was playing tea music.

  The auction poster showed the nude kneeling by the stove, now so familiar to her.

  At the entrance to the ballroom, at a table full of catalogues, sat a fat young woman with a blonde bob in a loose black dress. Opposite her stood a scary man in the uniform of a private security firm. At first Lorena thought she would have to pay admission, and reached into her handbag. But the fat girl gave her a friendly nod and wished her a good day.

  Lorena walked into the ballroom. The curtains had been closed. Temporary exhibition panels had been placed in front and between them, and the large dance floor was also partitioned with panels, forming a labyrinth of art.

  A few visitors were walking from lot to lot, talking in an international museum whisper.

  The first picture to grab Lorena’s attention was the portrait of Weynfeldt’s mother. It was ascribed to “Varlin (Willy Guggenheim, 1900-1977).” Beneath this was written, “Luise W., mixed media (oil and charcoal) on canvas, 1974, priva
te collection, Switzerland, CHF 80,000 to 120,000.”

  She paused in front of it, nodded to the old lady as if to an old acquaintance, and, under her watchful eye, set off in search of the Vallotton.

  She soon found it. It was hanging alone on one of the exhibition panels in the center of the ballroom. Two men stood in front of it, both armed with notebooks, writing things down.

  “Félix Vallotton, (1865-1925), Femme nue devant une salamandre, tempera on card, 1900, private collection, CHF 1,200,000 to 1,500,000.”

  The two men were standing close to the painting, and Lorena waited till they had moved away. No sooner had they done so, than a middle-aged couple arrived, the man clearly an art expert. “It was sold by Vallotton’s heirs two years after his death, and it’s remained in that family ever since.”

  “So why are they selling it now?” the woman wondered.

  “Perhaps there are too many beneficiaries. You can split money. You can’t slice up a painting.”

  “I don’t know,” the woman snorted. “In this case it wouldn’t be such a pity!”

  “What do you mean?” the man said aghast.

  Lorena was forced to sit out a long argument involving allegations of faulty perspective and the female torso as a phallic symbol, before she was finally left alone and could examine the signature close up.

  There’d been no need to meet Strasser; it was easy enough to identify the original. Weynfeldt had removed the period she’d added with her lipstick after the surname.

  Weynfeldt, that little mama’s boy, hadn’t had the nerve to put the copy up for auction, and now he’d robbed Lorena of Baier’s fifty thousand. Along with her share of the two other recent jobs, she would have made a total of one hundred and twelve thousand, five hundred francs. For the first time in her life she would have had a degree of independence.

  She turned in fury, and nearly collided with Strasser.

  “Sorry, I was held up.” There was a red wine mark on his lower lip.

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ve seen all I need to see.”

  Strasser glanced past her at the Vallotton, took a few steps toward the painting, looked at it quickly and came back to Lorena. A strange smile on his lips.

  Lorena had to vent her anger. “Someone wanted to hoodwink Adrian with a forgery of the painting, but it didn’t work. It was very clumsy.”

  If there’d been any uncertainty whether Strasser was in fact the author of the copy, his reaction to this banished all doubt. “Oh yes?” he snapped haughtily. “Too clumsy for the expert eyes of Dr. Weynfeldt. Is that so?”

  She could see it was eating him up, and announced, “I’m going to the bar now.”

  “It’s very expensive.”

  “It’s on me.”

  They crossed the lobby, full of tea guests, and entered the bar, all gleaming polished wood, where the first cocktail guests were already sitting. They commandeered a niche upholstered in green leather and ordered: Lorena a glass of champagne; Strasser a Black Label on the rocks.

  “Very clumsy,” he said, when the drinks arrived. “Is that so?” And repeated this a few times, till, after the third whisky, he asked, “Can you keep a secret?” He put his fingers to his lips, or tried—he had to have several goes at it.

  Even if Lorena hadn’t nodded, he would still have told her: “The Vallotton in the exhibition—it’s not by Vallotton.”

  “No?” she said, trying to sound disinterested.

  “The Salamandre in the grand ballroom is a blatant forgery.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m the only person who can know.”

  Lorena pretended not to understand.

  Strasser succeeded first in pointing to his chest with his index finger, then placing it to his lips conspiratorially.

  “You mean … You mean—you? You forged it?”

  He waved dismissively. “Not forged. Let’s say, doubled.”

  Lorena laughed, with a similar gesture. “Doubled!” She drained her glass.

  Strasser placed the catalogue in front of him, took out a mechanical pencil and pointed to an area of the painting on the cover. “See here, in the right hand corner of the salamandre, the cast-iron relief?”

  “It looks like a bud or something.”

  “To me it looks like a little ass.”

  “True, could be a little ass,” Lorena admitted.

  “A little ass seen from the left,” Strasser pointed out. “That’s Vallotton’s Vallotton. Now I’ll show you Strasser’s Vallotton.” He called the barman, Lorena paid and they returned to the exhibition.

  “We close in five minutes,” the fat girl at the entrance said.

  “We only need four,” Strasser replied.

  The hall was empty now, except for an elderly woman holding a catalogue full of yellow sticky notes. She was standing in front of the Hodler with the telegraph posts, and took no notice of them.

  Strasser led Lorena up close to the Vallotton. “Can you see it, the little ass?”

  Lorena could.

  “And do you notice anything?”

  “Something’s different.” She peered intently, but couldn’t say what. Strasser gave her the catalogue to compare.

  “Now I’ve got it: the perspective.”

  Strasser nodded proudly. “They are both little asses, but this one is seen from the right, like the big lady here.”

  No shit: the cast-iron relief on the salamandre looked like twin buttocks here too. But unlike on the catalogue cover, here you could see more of the right buttock than the left. Like the kneeling model.

  “Pretty clumsy, right?” Strasser said, “Of Adrian. Not to notice.”

  “Maybe he did.”

  She looked at the signature again carefully. The period after the Vallotton’s surname was missing, like the original she’d seen in Weynfeldt’s study.

  Then she compared it with the cover photo on the catalogue. The resolution and the print quality were good enough for her to read the signature here too.

  Here too the second period was missing.

  As soon as she got rid of Strasser, she met Pedroni in the Old Scotsman, an old-fashioned pub in the area of the old town once popular among revelers, now out of favor. Various Scottish tartans were stretched across the panels lining the interior. The advantage of this form of decoration was it absorbed noise; the disadvantage, it retained odors. Now early evening, it stank of stale smoke and the legendary goulash which had made it a favorite last port of call for the party crowd.

  Pedroni was the only guest. He was sitting a long way from the bar, at a corner table, and waved her over, somewhat impatiently. Lorena was over half an hour late.

  He was accordingly grumpy toward her, but Lorena wasn’t going to let her good—almost euphoric—mood be spoiled.

  And it was heightened when Pedroni pushed an envelope across the table toward her containing, as she confirmed in the ladies bathroom immediately, sixty thousand francs.

  When Lorena was in a good mood she couldn’t handle people who didn’t feel the same way. She either had to look for new company or cheer up her current company, at any cost.

  In Pedroni’s case, the cost was several hugs and kisses. And the story of the doubled Vallotton.

  When he dropped her off at Weynfeldt’s building, he was almost euphoric too.

  30

  “NOW!” HE HEARD LORENA’S VOICE THROUGH THE closed door to the dining room.

  She had turned up at his place, highly buoyant; they had thrown together a cold supper from the contents of the fridges and eaten it in style, with Lorena’s favorite champagne, by candlelight and firelight—Lorena had insisted on lighting one of the stoves, and had got it going herself. She told him about her visit to the auction preview, and her meeting with Strasser. Suddenly she said, “Go outside for a minute, and don’t come back till I say so.”

  “Is this a game?” he asked, and she nodded.

  He left, smiling, and she called after him: “Only when I say, Now!”
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  He had been standing quite awhile outside the door before he realized he still had the smile on his lips he’d left the room with. The realization made it broaden.

  I think I’m something along the lines of happy, he thought. Not that till now he’d been unhappy. But he had to say, standing outside the door like a naughty schoolboy, that there was a huge difference between not unhappy, and happy.

  “Now!” she called, and Weynfeldt entered.

  The room was darker. The only light-source was one of the spotlights, normally pointing at the art on the walls. Now it was pointing at Lorena. She was kneeling in front of the stove, her hair tied up, naked.

  Adrian didn’t dare move. He hardly dared breathe for fear of destroying the image.

  She was the one who broke the spell, observing, “I’m afraid I can’t compete ass-wise.”

  They made love right there and then. With a passion Weynfeldt had not thought he was capable of.

  “You surprised me,” she said, as he returned with pillows and quilts from the bedroom. “With the Vallotton, and just now.”

  “What about the Vallotton?” he asked, lit one of her cigarettes, took a drag and passed it over, before snuggling up to her.

  “I didn’t think you had it in you, to put the, erm … the newer one in.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You so did. Your friend Strasser showed me the subtle difference.”

  “The second period?”

  “You painted that out, admit it.” She told him about the thing with the little cast-iron ass. Weynfeldt went to his study and fetched the catalogue.

  Lorena looked at it and said knowledgeably: “The original. Ass seen from the left. Take a look at the copy in the Imperial tomorrow. There you see it from the right.”

  Lorena laughed like an excited child.

  Adrian congratulated her silently, and had a sudden desire to kiss her again. But she turned her head away and evaded him. “Only if you admit it,” she laughed.

  In the end Weynfeldt admitted it, and surprised both of them a second time.

  31