Maestra

by L. S. Hilton

  We were left alone. The rice crunched under Renaud’s feet as he flipped the sign on the door to Closed.

  “There was no need to speak to him like that. And what’s with the badge?” I muttered in English.

  “Spare me. This is important. And the badge—”

  “Yeah, I know. Your famous friend at the prefecture.”

  “Just wait by the phone.”

  Renaud lit a fag.

  “It’s forbidden to smoke in here!” the cashier called defiantly from behind the plastic shower curtain that served as a divider.

  “Want one?” he asked me, ignoring him.

  “No, thanks. Stop behaving like a dickhead, why don’t you? You’re acting like you are a fucking cop.”

  “Sorry. I’m just nervous. There’s a lot of money in this for me. I’ll apologize to him, I really will.”

  “Whatever. Could you just sit down or something? Read a magazine, let me concentrate.”

  Renaud made a halfhearted attempt to scoop the rice into the sack, set the sunglasses to rights, and took the cashier’s chair behind the counter, turned off the TV. We waited in silence for twenty minutes or so, until I was already planning where I’d hang the Richter, when it rang.

  “Signor Moncada? Judith Rashleigh.”

  “I can hear you.”

  He wasn’t giving me anything more. I launched into my little speech in Italian—God knows I’d had time to rehearse it. I mentioned that I had something I thought he might like to buy, gave details of the sale so he could check it, suggested we meet in Paris if he thought it would be suitable. The real thing. No mention of money, no mention of Fitzpatrick.

  “Give me your number. I’ll call you back.”

  It took another hour before he returned the call. We didn’t really have to hang around in the shop anymore, but by that time I’d sent Renaud out to McDonald’s, MacDo, as the French call it, and he and the cashier had set aside their differences and were chatting like pals, sluicing down mega Diet Cokes and watching a football match. The little phone buzzed in my hand. So tense with sweat that I almost dropped it, I waved the cashier frantically back behind the curtain, cupping my hand behind my ear to signal to Renaud that he could listen in.

  “No need. My Italian’s not that good,” he whispered in English.

  “Have you a price for me, Signorina Rashleigh?”

  “As you will have seen, I acquired the piece for one-point-one sterling. That’s approximately one-point-five euro. The price I require is one-point-eight euro.”

  If he bought that, my half share of the 300K-euro difference would amount to about 100K sterling. A fair price for the piece.

  Silence on the line.

  “My estimate is that the piece will be worth over two million euro in six months, more in a year.”

  I wondered how much Moncada really knew about the legitimate art market. If he was knowledgeable, he would know that this was a genuinely good deal, based on the way Richter held value and the general, steadily climbing prices for postwar art.

  “Very good.”

  I was rather impressed with him.

  “As before, then?”

  “As before.”

  I ran through my suggestion as to how we should meet, but he didn’t speak again. When I’d finished I let the silence hang for a breath, then said good-bye, using the polite, formal lei. I remembered my fear of Moncada back in Como, but it seemed irrational now. Moncada would soon be Renaud’s problem. I’d be up on the money for the Richter if it worked, and besides, at the meeting Renaud would be there to protect me. Or if his affection wasn’t equal to that, he would certainly want to protect his fee for getting the Rothko back.

  All I had to do was wait for the picture to arrive from London, hand it over, do the business with the bank codes, and it would be finished. Renaud would disappear and I’d be free. I wasn’t about to let myself get sentimental about the thought of him being gone, but there was a part of me, perhaps, that hoped the delivery wouldn’t be too quick. There was nothing wrong in wanting just a few more days.

  • • •

  AS IT WAS, I found myself quite busy while we waited for the Richter to arrive, dismantling my life in Paris like a film running backward. I found a specialist art-moving company to take my paintings and the antiques; they would be held in temperature-controlled storage in Gentileschi’s name in a depository just outside Brussels. Reluctantly, I gave notice on my flat and called a second set of movers who would come to pick up the rest of my stuff when I was ready and transport it to a rented warehouse space near the Porte de Vincennes. When the guy turned up with the packing cases and bubble wrap, the concierge asked where I was going. I felt that I’d rather sunk in her estimation since taking up living in sin with such a scruffy character as Renaud, who definitely lowered the bon chic bon genre tone of the building, but she couldn’t bear not to be up on the gossip. I told her I was going to Japan for my work. It sounded as good a place as any.

  “And monsieur?”

  I shrugged. “You know. Men.”

  “You’ll miss Paris, mademoiselle?”

  “Yes, I’ll miss it very much.”

  Perhaps because she asked that, I persuaded Renaud to become a tourist for a few days. Like anyone who lives in a city, I’d never seen it through a stranger’s eyes. So we went up the Eiffel Tower and out to Père Lachaise to push our way through the crowds of emo-ghosts at Jim Morrison’s grave, to the Conciergerie to see Marie Antoinette’s cell, to the Chagall murals at the Opera Garnier, to a Vivaldi concert at the Sainte-Chapelle. We went to the Louvre to say au revoir to La Gioconda and walked in the gardens at the Musée Rodin. When I’d been a student I’d sneered patronizingly at the Japanese tourists who saw nothing of the artworks beyond the perimeters of their Nikons: now they held up iPads to film the city’s treasures, so all they saw with their own eyes was the blank gray of an Apple tablet. Shuffling zombies don’t deserve to see beautiful things. We bought disgusting kebabs at St. Michel, smearing them down our throats as we sat on the fountain, mugged for pictures in the Metro photo booth. We even took a bateau mouche, eating a surprisingly nice dinner of onion soup and tournedos Rossini as we chugged beneath the illuminated bridges while a slim Algerian girl in a sequined red cocktail frock crooned Édith Piaf. Renaud held my hand and nuzzled my neck and though I could see we must appear as odd a couple as any of the horrors I had seen during my stay on the Mandarin, I didn’t mind. I did ask him about the affected monogram, which still adhered stubbornly to all his limp shirts.

  “I do them myself, actually. I’m very good at sewing.”

  “How so? Did you do time, on the mailbags?”

  “Funny. My dad was—is—a tailor. He’s still working, even though he’s in his eighties.”

  “Where?”

  “Where what?”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  We were eating a plateau de fruits de mer at the Bar à Huitres on the Rue de Rennes. Renaud fanned at the dry ice billowing from the plate and swallowed a green-tinged Oléron with shallot vinegar before he answered.

  “Tiny little town, you wouldn’t have heard of it. What we call a hole in the arse of nowhere. La France profonde.”

  I peeled a langoustine. “So how did you come to do what you do? It’s not the kind of job you can exactly train for. And you know piss about pictures, anyway.”

  “I don’t just do pictures. I told you—I find money that has gone missing. Corporate stuff, mostly, managers who’ve had their hands in the till. I studied business at university, spent a couple years at an accountancy firm in London.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Exactly. I suppose I fell into this because I wanted to be something else. Like you, Judith.”

  “What makes you think we’re so alike?” I said it teasingly, fishing for a compliment, I suppose, but he reached through the
oyster graveyard and took my hand.

  “Judith. What makes you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “The sex stuff. Julien’s place, the clubs. That.”

  “What, do you need me to be traumatized? Do you want some sob story about filthy work-callused hands on my dainty prepubescent thighs? Oh, God. I like fucking, okay? I like fucking. End of. Now take me home to bed.”

  He tried to smile, but he couldn’t quite manage it. But when we got back to the flat and I put on my white cotton schoolgirl knickers and we played a game, he liked that. He liked that a whole lot. Later, he worked a finger up my arse and then held it to his nose.

  “You smell of oysters. Try?”

  I breathed the scent on his hand and it was true.

  “I didn’t know that happened.”

  For real, I didn’t. I licked his finger to taste the clean scent of the sea inside myself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  AND THEN IT was Richter day. Renaud was withdrawn and tetchy, mooching round the flat, fiddling aimlessly. He was making me anxious, so I suggested a walk. We trailed around the smart shops in St. Germain—I said that he would be able to afford some decent gear soon, but he didn’t smile.

  When I asked him what was the matter, he said that he was just nervous about the meeting.

  “You’re not the one who’s going to be sleeping with the fishes,” I pointed out.

  “Judith, shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What do you mean? I’m doing what you want, aren’t I? You’re the one who says there’s no risk. For you at least.”

  “You always think you have to know everything. That you can get by just by knowing stuff, like they taught at your snobby university.”

  “Sorry,” I answered humbly. I might have added that it takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently, but there wasn’t the time for a philosophical discussion. His face softened, he put an arm round my shoulder.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” he reassured me. I could have pointed out that we wouldn’t have got this far if consequences had been an issue for me, but it didn’t seem like the time to mention that either. I sensed that trying to calm me down was making him feel better, so I asked if Moncada really wouldn’t care about Cameron’s fate.

  “Look. Cosa Nostra distributes information on a need-to-know basis. It’s safer if an operative carries out orders by communicating only with those directly above or below him in the chain of command.”

  “So Moncada will just get on with the job?”

  “Exactly. And his job is to acquire pictures with dirty money and sell them on so that money is clean.”

  “I guess death is just an occupational hazard?”

  He kissed me softly on the mouth. “Yes, you might say that, cherie.”

  • • •

  I HAD ARRANGED to see Moncada outside the Flore at seven. I got there a little early in case I had to wait for one of the always-crowded tables outside. I was astonished, looking back, at how incredibly naïve—amateur, in Renaud’s words—I had been when I had gone to him with the Stubbs. For all the suspicions aroused by my research in the hotel in Rome, I’d still been possessed of the confidence of ignorance. Now I knew for sure what Moncada was, I knew that he would be watching me, alert to the potential of a trap. Before, it hadn’t occurred to me to fear him, now, despite the calmness I had affected to Renaud, I was terrified. I told myself that business was business, that even if Moncada knew I had been involved in Cameron’s erasure, my product was still good. But if he thought I was dicking him about? Severed limbs and stabbing was for the boys—they probably had something especially Byzantine for women.

  I had dressed casually: flats, a black sweater, Chloé peacoat, jeans, a silk scarf, a new Miu Miu tote bag containing my computer, my freshly printed Gentileschi business cards, and the paperwork for the Richter. I set my phone on the table where he would be able to see that I wasn’t touching it, ordered a kir royale, and flicked through a copy of Elle. Moncada was late, and I couldn’t stop glancing at my watch as I tried to concentrate on yet another piece advising me on how to shift those last stubborn five kilos. The only time I’d ever wanted to lose weight, I’d simply stopped eating for a week. That seemed to work fine. Seven-thirty. Where was he? Why didn’t Elle have an article on why women spend half their lives waiting for men? Even with the heaters, I was getting cold. I was lighting yet another cigarette when I saw him crossing St. Germain in front of Brasserie Lipp. I only recognized him by the huge sunglasses, absurd for evening. He pulled out the chair opposite me, set down a black leather briefcase, and leaned forward, brushing awkwardly at my cheek, close enough for me to smell his Vetiver cologne.

  “Buona sera.”

  “Buona sera.”

  The waiter appeared, I ordered another kir, and Moncada accepted a gin and tonic. I talked doggedly about the weather until the glasses were set down. Sometimes it’s an advantage to be English.

  “So, you have it?”

  I looked down at the creamy quilted leather of my bag. “Not here, obviously. At my hotel, very close by. Everything as we discussed?”

  “Certo.”

  He left a few notes on the waiter’s saucer and we set off for the Place de l’Odéon. Renaud had booked a room, cash in advance, in a pretty pink hotel on the square, the doorway surrounded by fairy lights. It looked enchanting in the dusk. I’d somehow forgotten it was nearly Christmas. The lift was uncomfortably small, and it didn’t help that much of it was occupied by the unacknowledged bulk of Cameron Fitzpatrick’s ghost. Moncada clearly wasn’t a chatty sort, but I felt obliged to keep up a flow of remarks, bright exclamations about the architecture show at Trocadero and the refurbishment of the Palais de Tokyo.

  “Here we are!” I chirped when we arrived at the fourth floor. Moncada let me pass through the door first, but immediately ducked behind me to look in the bathroom, then another glance both ways along the narrow hallway before he was satisfied. I had the Richter laid out on the bed, in the same style of cheap art-student case Cameron had used for the Stubbs. I placed the paperwork next to it and took a seat in the room’s only chair, a white Eames-y number.

  “Would you like a drink? Some water?”

  “No, grazie.”

  He worked his way methodically through the certification before turning his attention to the picture, making a show of studying the provenances thoroughly. I wondered if he liked Richter, if anyone did, really?

  “All in order?”

  “Yes. You seem to be a good businesswoman, signorina.”

  “As are you, Signor Moncada. I see that the Stubbs fetched an impressive price in Beijing.”

  “The Stubbs, yes. So unfortunate, what happened to your poor colleague.”

  “Dreadful. A dreadful shock.”

  For a moment I was reminded of the scene in my hotel room at the lake with da Silva. I mustn’t overdo the concern.

  “Still, perhaps we might do business again?”

  “Sì. Vediamo.”

  While he collected the papers and rezipped the case I reached into my bag, and while I took out my laptop and set it up on the desk I pressed “send” on the text I had prepared.

  “So.” I handed over a plain sheet of paper with the pass codes written in Biro. “As we agreed, one-point-eight euro?”

  “As we agreed.”

  We went through the same routine we had followed in the nasty pizzeria, except this time I didn’t have to make the switch. Quite the little businesswoman I had become. My phone rang, right on time.

  “I’m sorry, I have to take this. I’ll just step outside . . .”

  I didn’t even see his arm move before it clamped on my wrist. He shook his head. I nodded, fluttered my fingers acquiescently.

  “Allo?” I hoped he couldn’t detect the tremor in m
y voice.

  “Leave now.”

  Moncada was still holding my arm. I took a step backward; we might have been jiving.

  “Yes, of course. Could I call you back? In a couple minutes?” I hung up.

  “Sorry.” He relaxed his grip but held my eyes a few seconds longer.

  “Niente.”

  He turned back to the bed to gather the picture, and in the few seconds his back was turned, Renaud was in the room, shoving me roughly to one side, his hands arcing over Moncada’s bent head with the flourish of a magician dashing off his cloak. Moncada was the taller man, but Renaud brought his knee up between his legs and Moncada dropped forward, his right hand scrabbling under his jacket while his left pulled at his neck. I didn’t understand what I was seeing until Moncada twisted, throwing his weight against Renaud. As they gyrated clumsily, I noticed something I’d half registered when we were in bed, but never thought about. Renaud might have been flabby, but he was incredibly strong. Abstractedly, I observed the thick muscle across his suddenly powerful shoulders bulking out under the loose jacket, a sense of the definition of the triceps beneath, as he strained to hold Moncada in front of him. The room was full of both men’s stertorous breathing, but far above it I heard an ambulance siren, a dreamy counterpoint, as I glimpsed the white cord around Moncada’s throat, some sort of short metal vice that Renaud was twisting beneath his ear, Renaud’s face purpling so that for a moment I thought it was Moncada who was hurting him and nearly threw myself at them, but then, looking up, saw Moncada slowly folding against Renaud’s knees. Renaud’s elbows raised in a Cossack dance, Moncada’s eyeballs reddened, his gaping lips swelled and then, as I understood, time began again, and I watched until it was over. The third time I’d watched someone die.

  For a while, the only sound in the room was Renaud’s panting. I couldn’t speak. He bent over, clutching his knees like a sprinter after a race, exhaled slowly a couple times. Then he knelt over the body and began to go through his pockets, removing a Vuitton wallet, a passport. I gasped when I saw the gun holstered at Moncada’s waist.