Maestra

by L. S. Hilton

  “You speak excellent English.”

  “Thank you. Now I’m going to show you a picture. That’s him, right, Cameron?”

  I had to squint in the traffic glow from the crossroads; he held my lighter to the screen. It was. Caught on Renaud’s phone, coming down the Spanish Steps, his face dipped away from the Roman sun. I had managed not to think of his face for so long.

  “You know it’s him.”

  “Yes, but what you don’t know is that his name wasn’t Cameron Fitzpatrick. It was Tommaso Bianchetti.”

  All that Oirish charm.

  “He was pretty good, then,” was all I said.

  “Yes, he was. Very good. Irish mother, maid in a Roman hotel. Anyway, this is what I need to explain to you. Bianchetti washed money for . . . associates in Italy. He’d been doing it for years.”

  “The Mafia?”

  Renaud gave me a pitying look. “’Ndrangheta, Camorra . . . Only amateurs say ‘Mafia.’”

  My feeling about Moncada had been right then too. “Excuse me.” Weirdly, I was starting to feel better.

  “Your old colleague, Rupert, he didn’t call Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick called Rupert. Nice little scheme, one he’s pulled hundreds of times. Real stuff, mostly, not bothered with the effort of fakes. But times were getting a little tough in Italy, and the markup on a fake piece was so much better. Rinse the picture and the money. That’s how I got involved.”

  “I thought you were working for him. For Rupert.”

  “I wonder who could have told you that? We’ll leave that for a minute, shall we? I was hired by an extremely angry American. Banker, Goldman Sachs. Found out that the Rothko he’d been showing off at his pad in the Hamptons was a fake. Wanted his money back. Which led me to Alonso Moncada.”

  “Moncada deals fakes, then?”

  “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”

  “Why you?”

  “What did you think I was, some old-school shamus? I chase money for people who want to get it back quietly.”

  I couldn’t help glancing at his terrible shirt, the awful shoes. “You don’t look like someone who chases money.”

  “Yes. And you do.”

  I took that one on the chin.

  “Bianchetti was one of several guys who worked for Moncada. Moncada acquires the piece for cash, provided from a small Roman bank controlled by . . . associates. Covered as a business loan. They shift it to a private client for a profit; the client can keep it as an asset or auction it legitimately. Moncada provided the funds, Bianchetti the provenance. Everyone makes money. Very neat.”

  “So?”

  “So I went to the gallery where my man picked up his Rothko, talked them into giving me the name of the previous owner, and persuaded him—no, actually it was a her, nice woman, three children—to give me Moncada. She had no idea she’d been duped either. It took a long while to track him down, and in the meantime I began to pick up Bianchetti’s name, under the Fitzpatrick alias. I went to London to trace him—Bianchetti, that is—followed him to Rome, and then you pulled your little stunt—don’t interrupt—and I followed you to Moncada. It was the first time I’d been able to set eyes on him. Obviously I was quite intrigued by you too. But I didn’t know what it was you’d made off with, however you did it.”

  “I didn’t . . .”

  “Shut up.” He scrolled through a file on his phone, showed me another picture, myself and Moncada, apparently enjoying a pizza. I was surprised by how calm I looked in the photo.

  “So then, finally, the Stubbs comes up last winter, and it has Fitzpatrick—now tragically deceased—among the provenances. So then I knew what you had sold to Moncada.”

  “But Rupert?”

  “Well, by then I was considerably more than intrigued by you. So I had a look at the police report, found your name. I guessed you’d have something to do with art, I knew you were English. So I started at the top. Two calls.”

  Only two auction houses in London worth bothering about . . .

  “The nice girls on reception hadn’t heard of you, so I spoke to the heads of department in turn. And came up with your old employer.”

  “Go on.”

  “So I went along for a little talk.” He gave a half smile. I hadn’t noticed that I had started shaking again, but he had. He pulled the jacket more tightly around me, solicitous.

  “It gave Rupert a bit of a shock when I mentioned Fitzpatrick. I told him that I had seen his department’s name alongside Fitzpatrick’s with the provenance of the picture. And then I asked about you. When he heard you’d been in Italy, he practically exploded. He was very eager to employ me, on the side, comme on dit, to find you. So he showed me your picture. I needed to check you were the same girl I’d seen, naturally. And there you were. The beautiful girl from Rome. You do have an unforgettable face.”

  “Thanks. How romantic. And the town house? What were you doing at Julien’s?”

  “Blind luck. A lot of people know Julien, a lot of powerful people. I like to check up on him while I’m here, and one must amuse oneself now and again, no? We are in Paris, after all, cherie. I’d been trying to find you in London, nothing. Your mother didn’t know anymore.”

  “My mother?”

  “Not hard to find. Social Services.”

  I swallowed in shock. “Was she—was she okay?”

  “You mean was she drunk? No. Just fine. I didn’t say anything to worry her. But then I drew a blank. You see, your flatmates just said you’d sent a check for the rent, gone abroad. Soo and Pai. Nice quiet girls, the medical students. They suggested that you enjoyed going to parties. Not their sort of thing. Very much mine, though. I was over here—just catching up with some friends for the weekend—and there you were again.”

  “As you said, what a coincidence.”

  “You perhaps need to be a bit more discreet. In your . . . amusements.”

  “What about Leanne?”

  “Ah. Leanne. Well, your face is very memorable, as I said. I’d seen your photo in London, seen someone who looked very much like you in Paris, but the lighting at Julien’s parties is always so . . . considerate.”

  He switched to French.

  “Encore, I needed to be certain that it was the same girl. Julien didn’t have a name for you, except Lauren, but he gave me the details of several professional girls who share your, er, proclivities. Girls with international reputations, to use the old-fashioned phrase. Again, it took me a while; I had to track down each of the girls individually and eventually one recognized you. I found your friend Ashley at your other former place of employment.”

  “The Gstaad Club.”

  “Precisement. And then Rupert seems to have found your friend Leanne about the same time, in the very same place. It suited him to use her—he didn’t want your connection with British Pictures coming up any more than it had to. I came here with Leanne, she gave me a photo from the club to show Julien, to check. It was hardly a betrayal—we were both looking for you. She just didn’t know the reason.”

  I didn’t dare say another word. Fucking moronic selfies: the two of us snapped on her phone on a quiet night, mugging for the camera.

  “You don’t need to worry about them, Judith. Forget about Rupert. He’s got too much to lose; he made a dumb call on something that was bigger than he knew. Leanne was just some junkie semi-hooker, right?”

  “Was?”

  “Judith, please. It wasn’t very polite of you to leave a dead body in a hotel room I was paying for. Nice touch, though, leaving the dealer’s number. The police were pretty happy to have him.”

  “The police? I thought you said—”

  “I said I wasn’t a cop. That doesn’t mean I don’t have friends at the prefecture. I need them in my line. How do you think I got your address?”

  “I thought you followed me.”

&nbs
p; “Form. Crossing the t’s, that’s all. Isn’t that what you say?” He looked pleased with the idiom. “They had plenty of questions for your Stephane. I told my friend that Leanne was just some girl I’d picked up, didn’t know her, didn’t know she was using. They’ll find her through the consulate eventually, ship her back. Don’t sweat.” Another English phrase, I could hear his accent come through.

  “Anyway, Rupert. I think he just wanted to keep an eye on you, make sure you weren’t talking. You might even find a few doors open to you now, if you wanted to go back to London.”

  I shook my head numbly. All that time. Over and over, I had thought myself so clever, and Cleret had only been waiting for me to stumble into his sights. I forced myself to speak.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want Moncada. I want my client’s money and I want my fee. That’s all.”

  “You know who he is, where he is. Why not just find him?”

  “I want him here, in Paris. He’s too dangerous in Rome.”

  “So what can I do?”

  “Sell him a painting, of course.”

  “And then?”

  “You deliver Moncada, you’re in the clear. We can even split the profit on your deal with him.”

  I thought about that for a while.

  “But if I do, then won’t Moncada and his ‘associates’ come after me? They won’t want to pay up for the Rothko, the one that belonged to your banker. And you say he’s dangerous.”

  I hated the way I was feeling: childish, desperate, out of control.

  “Who would you rather have looking for you—them or the police? Anyway, I can arrange the details for you. I know a guy in Amsterdam, he’s good with passports. You’ll have to disappear for a while, leave Paris. But I don’t think you have a lot of choice, do you?”

  I thought about that for a while. I could protest, deny what I hadn’t even admitted; I could run. As I said, I don’t like games, unless they’re ones I can win. He didn’t seem to care about Cameron or Leanne, at least not if I did what he wanted.

  “So you want Moncada here? That’s all? And I walk?”

  “I need to find a way of speaking to him in private. They’re wary, these people. You’re getting the hang of this, Judith.”

  He whisked the jacket off my shoulders as he stood. He looked different to me now, contained, powerful, even.

  “We’ll go to your place.”

  “My place?”

  “Do you think I’m going to let you out of my sight? I can even run round the Luxembourg if I have to. As long as it takes.”

  Renaud had his things in a tourist hotel in the Latin Quarter. We tried to flag down a couple cabs as we walked, but in true Parisian form none of them wanted to earn any money. My feet felt like bleeding stumps by the time we arrived in the kebab-stinking alleyway. He made me go up the four flights of dingily carpeted stairs with him while he collected his bags. I looked out of the window at a picturesque fire escape and a shamble of satellite dishes as he rummaged in the tiny bathroom.

  “The rooftops of Paris,” I said, for something to say. He ignored me, but as my shoulders began to heave I felt his hand on my back. I turned and pressed my face to that damned shirt front, and he patted at me with that clumsy necessary tenderness that men show to weeping women. I cried for a long time, cried properly with my throat full of tears and snot, until I heard a strange noise. It seemed to come from outside, a keening, a baby, maybe, or mating cats. Then I realized it was me, howling. I cried out all the tears I hadn’t allowed to fall since that day in London when Rupert had sent me to see Colonel Morris, and I was curious, even as I sobbed and gasped and writhed, at the alien sensation which had, finally, allowed me to let go. It was relief. Just for once, at last, someone else was in charge. For a few moments I even thought that it could end there, like that, with me molten and grateful in his arms, and occasionally, later, I would wish that it had. But, of course, it didn’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I HAD HARDLY EVER woken up with a man. Few heads had ever lain beneath my faithless arm till morning. At five a.m., opening my eyes in my flat, I experienced a moment of bewildered panic about the hump under the duvet next to me. Steve? Jean-Christophe? Jan? Not Matteo. Renaud. I could smell last night’s drinks seeping from my skin, but for once I didn’t haul myself straight out of bed, I turned on my back and lay there, listening to his thick breathing. I was sore and sticky and there was a tinny pain below my right ear where he’d slapped me as we fucked. Because of course we’d fucked. Not before he’d relieved me of my passport and credit cards to make sure I really wasn’t going anywhere, but then against the closed door, tripping over his bags, me wriggling awkwardly out of my tight jeans, him on his knees, his face drenched from my already sodden and gaping cunt, his hand inside me, then on the floor, his teeth buried in the hollow of my throat, then somehow we’d crawled to the bed, both of us naked now, and he’d smeared that beautiful cock and my exposed arse with some of my priceless body oil and battered into me, one hand gripping tight on my neck, the other stroking my clit in rhythm with his cock until my mouth found the soft hollow of his palm and I tasted the iron of his blood while he split and salved me. Nice, although the sheets were going to be a writeoff.

  He turned on his side, his belly shifting against my hip. Odd, given my preference for handsome guys, but there was something about the heft of it, its unexpected firmness, that I found erotic. Me and fat men. I lay on my back and listened. Where was Rage? Where was that little voice, teasing me, telling me to do it, do it now? Nothing. It was peaceful. My eyes slid sideways and met his, creased with sleep and smiles.

  “Open your legs.”

  His breath was sour in my ear, but somehow I didn’t mind that either.

  “I’m a mess.”

  “Open. Good. Wider.”

  I stretched my thighs until I felt the tendons strain. He opened me, maneuvered himself heavily on top, his face on my shoulder, guided himself slowly inside. My cunt gave a wet slurp, greedy, but he didn’t rush, just worked the length of his cock deeper, a centimeter at a time. His finger stabbed sharply into my arse. I gasped, but felt my muscles relaxing, already familiar. I was glued to his body by his weight, a leaf preserved in blotting paper, the muscles of my limbs twitching in fluttering arpeggios. I worked my hand between us, squeezed the head of his cock where it entered me, my clit and the lips of my cunt swollen against my palm, their heat spreading in waves, penetrating my guts.

  “Harder.”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “No.”

  He raised his head as I caught him with my muscles, stalling.

  “Relax, I’m going to make you cum.”

  Prettier in French. Je vais te faire jouir.

  “Lick my face.”

  I let my tongue loll softly from my mouth, licked his jaw, his cheeks, wetting him with my saliva.

  “Yes, like that. Like that, my bitch.”

  I was so wet, I could feel my own juice streaming over my aching thighs. It began, like a ripple of wind across water, my body stroked by a shimmering wave, swirling around the red need between my legs. I was nothing, I was only flesh where it was touched by his cock, my eyelids juddered shut, open, shut, I could see his own orgasm begin to shake his pale torso, his hand wrapped in a tight skein of my hair, he growled, deep from his lungs, threw his body back, the veins in his arms pulsing blue neon, and I let myself fall deeper, deeper into my own ecstasy, drowning in the gouts of his sperm.

  He collapsed on top of me, shuddering, panting. I held him for a moment, feeling the sweat cooling under the hair on his back.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  I let my head bounce on the pillows. “Because—because . . . like, wow!”

  “Wow? Like?”

  “Okay. You’re an exceptionally talented man. Surprisingly so
.”

  “Slut. What time is it? Fuck, that’s indecent.”

  “I wake up early.” But he was gathering himself to sleep again. It was a clever test. Without saying a word, he was giving me a chance to get away, but where was I going to run? He would find me, and we both knew it. If I skipped out now, he could simply turn me in. So I hopped up, showered him off me, pulled on jeans and a sweater, grabbed my purse, and ran down the stairs into rain-washed Paris. The boulangerie up the street was just opening. I bought croissants au beurre and a pot of salt-caramel jam, milk, orange juice. The concierge was grumbling into life in the lodge; she looked up as I smiled a good morning. I made coffee, balanced spoons and knives on plates, then carried it through and curled up on the bed, watching him. There was something so soothing in the rise and fall of his chest that I must have slept again too; at least when we woke the sun was in the courtyard and the coffee was cold.

  That was the last time we were separated for three weeks. Renaud meant it when he said he wasn’t going to let me out of his sight—he even made me leave my phone behind when I was in the bathroom, and took it with him when he used it. He put the flat keys under his pillow every night, though they often got dislodged. Sometimes I’d tuck them back before he woke so he wouldn’t feel bad. I thought of asking him why he didn’t trust me, but that was obviously a stupid question. The first few mornings, I had work to do. After he’d staggered round the Luxo with me, in an ancient Nike T-shirt and my largest pair of track pants, he’d read the papers while I checked lots and prices online. I considered Urs Fischer and Alan Gussow, but Renaud thought I ought to go for something more blue-chip. I couldn’t afford Bacon, but Twombly and Calder had pieces within the range of a million, which Renaud specified. Finally I found a Gerhard Richter—more of a Richterette, really, a small 1988 canvas in crimson and charcoal—in the autumn contemporary show at what I’d used to call the other place. Aside from my Fontana, it would be Gentileschi’s first major acquisition. But I hesitated. Maybe Moncada would be more likely to go for something strictly classic.

  I explained to Renaud that I wanted some advice, told him about Dave and his passion for the eighteenth century. “Can I get him to send me some catalogs over? Recent sales?”