Madonna of the Apes

by Nicholas Kilmer

  Suzette heaved a long sigh and her face softened unmistakably. “Fred, have you noticed,” she reached a trembling hand out to touch his arm, “could maybe we put Mitchell out of sight? How, when you are almost killed, the only thing you can think about next is to make love with someone?”

  “Sure,” Fred told her. “I have to tell you, mostly, in my experience, there isn’t a sensible way to act on those feelings. Mitchell didn’t walk you over at gunpoint.”

  Suzette started to tremble. She did it well. “I’m still afraid,” she said.

  Fred shifted Mitchell to one side and put a straight chair where he could sit and see her.

  “Right,” he said. “Last night, about midnight, you were afraid of Carl. Any new word on Carl?”

  “We do this together,” Suzette said. “It’s downstairs. Show me. We share, fifty-fifty.”

  “We’re talking about Carl.”

  “It would be awful if something had happened to Mitchell,” Suzette suggested. “Like in self-defense.”

  “Too late,” Fred said. “The gun stays where it is. Nothing happens to Mitchell. Forensics would wonder about the marks on his hands and feet, where he was tied. We’re talking about Carl.”

  “Mitchell killed him. It was awful,” she said. “Fifty-fifty.”

  “That marble top, we took that off,” Fred said. “To be totally honest with you, that’s already on its way out of the country. Client who wants—you know how some people collect everything they can find with pigs? Calendars, dish towels, letter openers, soup tureens, cookie jars? This guy likes monkeys, and he’s got a weird streak. Saudi Arabian. Money to roll in? He doesn’t care. So I can’t sell the chest is the problem. It’s not all there.”

  “Who gives a shit?” Suzette said. “You sold the top? We don’t need it. Forget it. As long as you have the rest. You have the box, I have the top. Well, Mitchell has it, but I know…The owner gets in today. Who in my opinion should have been here the whole time and we’d never have gotten into this trouble with Franklin and Mitchell and the rest of it. So. But Franklin’s out of it now.”

  “Dead,” Fred said.

  “Yikes! And Mitchell’s out obviously, since he killed Carl. I don’t care if he says it was self-defense. How did he have the gun, then? Like you say, his prints are on the gun. And I can provide Agnelli. I meet him tonight at the Ritz bar. We both do, I mean. Fifty-fifty. So we’re still Okay.”

  “Right,” Fred said. “On the subject of Carl, between twelve o’clock last night and now, what are we, eight in the morning? Where were you? You and Mitchell?”

  Mitchell groaned.

  “Mitchell, you have something to say?” Fred suggested.

  Suzette, not breaking stride, continued, “Mitchell’s still my partner, just in this one project. Don’t worry, Mitchell. I’m going to take care of you, make sure you get your share. Even for self defense, those lawyers are going to want thousands.”

  “I want a lawyer,” Mitchell said, his voice deflated almost to non-existence.

  “Right,” Suzette agreed. “Don’t say anything to anyone about anything. Stand mute, it’s called. Until you get a lawyer. He’ll say the same thing.”

  Fred said, “Carl went out into the rain last night, no shoes. An observation I’m making.”

  “The chest’s downstairs, Mitchell,” Suzette said. “Like I said. Fred, I haven’t exactly leveled with you up to now. Let’s have coffee.”

  “No. A: You called me. D: Carl was killed. L: Mitchell turned up this morning, here, with a gun in your back. Fill me in. The missing letters. Unless Mitchell wants to.” He glanced in the direction of Mitchell, whose jaws remained clamped shut defiantly.

  “He’s going to deny everything,” Suzette started. “His lawyer will make him. Since he can’t lie like everyone else in the art business. Anyway. You’re sure there’s no coffee? For your partner? Okay. The fast version. I decide to try Carl again. Put something together. I go over. The other guy, the lawyer, is already gone. You saw him. Big shot. Useless. Back to Atlanta. Carl invites me up, I go up. He’s alone. I take off my shoes, one thing leads to another.

  “The funny thing,” Suzette said, “Carl’s big. And he scares the wee wee out of you, talking tough. And all. But Franklin Tilley had something I never saw, because he had Carl buffaloed. Walked around in the apartment in his socks. Plus, and two, he was done in three minutes. Guys that work out and act tough, I’ve noticed, it frequently goes like that. The whole thing, whereas the wimps and weaklings, like the academics, oftentimes it’s…what it comes down to, all that muscle doesn’t have anything to do with it at all. Exercise all you want, there isn’t a muscle in there. Then he pulled that gun…

  “Listen, if I can’t get Agnelli in there tonight, it’s the last time I even get close to him. I didn’t level with you before, now I will. It’s worth as much as an aircraft carrier.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “I was running away,” Suzette said, panting, her eyes bright. “With him coming after, Carl, getting out of that place. How is he going to have time to put those sneakers on? Ten million at least. My commission’s ten percent. A million dollars.”

  Mitchell glared.

  “Which I divide fifty-fifty with Mitchell. But, here’s where you come in. We put the box back with the top, we sell it for more. Ask what you want, I get half.”

  “Everyone lies,” Mitchell intoned from the floor. “Make him show you the chest. Don’t be a fool, Suzette.”

  Fred looked over the situation: Mitchell laid out on the floor, well bound; Suzette unable to keep her eyes from flickering toward the gun. “I need a hand with it on these stairs,” he said. “Suzette?”

  “Don’t play games,” Suzette said. “There’s no time. We have to suck up to the owner. That could take most of the day. If we don’t land Agnelli tonight, he’s gone. I promise we don’t have time to fool around. You’re in the big leagues now, Fred. We are talking Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “Make him show it to us,” Mitchell demanded.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  “You were together all night,” Fred said to Suzette, behind her on the stairs. “You and Mitchell.”

  “Scared to death,” Suzette explained. “After what happened to Carl? I called you, but you didn’t come in time, so I called Mitchell.”

  “Ah,” Fred said.

  He pulled the tarp back from Bernie’s Lagonda and exposed the chest where he had stashed it, still in its green plastic trash bags, its bottom resting on newspapers to protect it from the possibility of oil.

  “He’s got it,” Suzette called up the stairs. “It’s here, Mitchell.” She dropped her voice. “No offense. We couldn’t figure out how to get past the alarm. It’s all we were going to do, wait for you inside, Fred. Out of the rain. You didn’t damage it, did you? Getting that crazy top off. Fred, I don’t understand you. You don’t care that you own a chest painted by Leonardo?”

  “Doesn’t balance favorably against a couple of dead men,” Fred said. “Neither one of them worth much. Let’s get it upstairs. Take the front.”

  “For God’s sake don’t harm it,” Mitchell called.

  Suzette whispered, stooping to grab one handle, “I spent the night with him. Had to, since we’re working together. He’s holed up in a stinking rat’s nest belongs to a friend of his, near the museum, with the paintings. I’ll level with you now. It is an Annunciation by da Vinci. Gorgeous. Pristine. Never been seen. Perfect. Like I say, Mitchell has it, but it’s not his. He got in a snit with Franklin and ran off with it. Lover’s quarrel.

  “What we do, we leave Mitchell where he is, pick up the painting, carry it back to Pekham Street, deliver it to the owner—I have the guy’s name now, finally, from Carl—and promise to come back tonight with Agnelli. And with the chest. Or we carry it with us.”

  “Upstairs,” Fred directed. The phone was ringing.

  Mitchell’s eyes bugged when the chest was placed on the rug beside him. “I thought I woul
d never see it again,” he said.

  Fred picked up the phone.

  “Say nothing more than you must on the telephone.” Clay’s voice. “Pitchers have ears.”

  “Visitors?” Fred asked.

  “I have heard nothing. I should have come to look at it with you. What do you…?”

  “Not a good time,” Fred said. “He’s out of the country, as a matter of fact. I’m keeping an eye on the place.”

  “Ah,” Clay understood. “Visitors. Understood. Excellent. Excellent, Fred. I shall await…I leave it in your good hands,” Clay said. He hung up, saying, probably to himself, “My instincts are never wrong.”

  Mitchell had managed to sit up and he was doing what he could to examine the topless chest’s surfaces, inside and out. “It’s no worse than it was,” he announced, his eyes following the scrolling designs, doing an inventory of the angels’ wing feathers.

  “Fifty-fifty,” Suzette whispered.

  “It’s intact,” Mitchell said. “God have mercy.”

  Fred said, “Maybe you have the patience to wait.”

  Rain stroked the windows of Bernie’s living space.

  Mitchell said, “I don’t care what happens to me.”

  “That’s wise,” Fred counseled. “Except for the top, it’s as you first saw it. In England. In the Brierstone…”

  “It was sitting there in the hall,” Mitchell snarled. “English people! Aristocrats! They kept boots in it. A wedding chest. Perfect subject for the occasion. The Annunciation on it that you’d think would break their backs with its beauty. English gentry. They lived with it all this time and couldn’t see it under their noses, because they knew it only for how they used it, a box for their boots. It was a masterpiece. I knew it immediately. Leonardo’s Annunciation that hangs in the Uffizi, in Florence. You know the painting. Everyone knows it. It is on a thousand Christmas cards.

  “My heart stopped and stood still, and then flooded with suspicion and delight. Then with alarm.”

  “Go easy, Mitchell,” Suzette cautioned.

  “My client required the shipment to move without attracting attention. The customs officers on both sides of the Atlantic would recognize the superb quality of the chest, I told myself, even though the Brierstone family clearly did not. Suppose one of them said to another, ‘Don’t I know this painting?’ Suspicions would be aroused. Was the chest stolen? The whole shipment would be subject to scrutiny, despite the reputation of the diplomat in question, into whose container the shipment was to be placed.

  “It had to be hidden somehow, and as you know, the chest was of considerable size.”

  Mitchell paused and attempted to make himself comfortable. It was difficult, delivering a lecture in art history with his hands tied behind him. “Now, at this stage in my presentation, I beg for your understanding. I must confess an indiscretion, though I am an honest man. We won’t argue about what might be due to customs officers. Some things take precedence.

  “I confess it. I did both imagine and execute a ruse.”

  “Okay,” Suzette said. She’d been perched nervously on the edge of the couch, listening to Mitchell’s account.

  “Fortunately, my researches have included more than a little practical experience in the methods used by the craftsmen I have studied, that group of Sienese masters of whom I told you, it seems now, so long ago. I removed the top from the chest, the Annunciation. Without it the chest might attract no notice, I thought. The top I determined to carry myself, with my luggage. How I disguised it I will not tell you. It was a risk. I took it. If it was questioned I would respond as I was guided. It was not questioned. I am as poor as I look.

  “Even without its top, the chest was handsome. I worried that being incomplete, it would stand out. In the garret where much of the collection was stored, I had noticed a wooden panel large enough to be substituted for the top I had removed. It was almost old enough to pass muster to a dull eye—early sixteenth century. Painted on it was a scene so blasphemous I could hardly bring myself to handle it. The mother of God and her child, in converse with an obscenity of monkeys. It was grotesque and embarrassing. Perfect. Only because the cause was good, I steeled myself, cut it to fit, and attached it to the chest, using the methods suitable to its age.

  “And now I did the only thing I am ashamed of.” Mitchell stopped, trembled, and blushed like a fat boy of fourteen.

  The phone rang.

  “Item.” Clay’s voice.

  “No,” Fred said. “This is Fred. Bernie’s traveling. Is there a message?”

  Clay paused for effect. “I should not say this on the telephone. Amongst the inventory, listed with the candlesticks, glass and silver, number 437, item: a mother and child with monkeys. Continental school. Wood. Dirty. £2.”

  “I can leave a note for him,” Fred said. “Continental, eh? Don’t know when he’ll be back. On the other matter, don’t hold your breath.”

  Clay was almost chortling with pleasure. “The provenance is confirmed. Alas, it was slightly larger.”

  “I’ll leave him a note,” Fred promised.

  “Now,” Mitchell repeated, taking up his story again, “I did the only thing I am ashamed of.”

  Fred held his peace. Mitchell, blinded by its apparent blasphemy, hadn’t seen the Madonna at all! He couldn’t see the Leonardo for the apes!

  “What I did next, I admit, was fraud,” Mitchell stammered on. “However harmless. The intent was to mislead. I was carried away, swept up in the stream of events. Examining my conscience now, I must confess to arrogance. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.

  “Because the cuts I had made exposed new wood that had not darkened as the other edges had, I was obliged to act dishonestly. Not only did I sand down and smooth and give a fraudulent patina to those edges: I darkened them!”

  “So what?” Suzette demanded.

  “That makes me a forger. I will regret it until my dying day.”

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  “So,” Suzette said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  The phone rang.

  “Just—Fred? Before I head for the airport.” Mandy’s voice.

  “Hey,” Fred said. “Can I call you back?”

  “No. Let me talk. I’ll be fast. I woke up, I was dreaming of a new course called Parliamentary Math,” she said. “My dreams are useless. You dream?”

  “I’ll call back,” Fred said.

  “No, wait.” Were those tears? “The thing is, Fred, I should tell you, when this semester’s over, I’m going to Portland. That’s two weeks.”

  “Maine? That’s not so…”

  “Oregon. My big break. I’m going to teach math in a community college there, and while I get settled I have a job doing summer school classes for kids who flunked high school courses.”

  “Oregon,” Fred said.

  “I like the West Coast. I like the way people think.”

  Fred couldn’t compete with the way people thought on the West Coast. He looked across the room at Suzette. At Mitchell, who stared at the chest. At the gun in its nest of used bed sheets.

  “Come on, Fred. We had such a nice time,” Mandy said.

  “I guess…I don’t much care where I live,” Fred began.

  “No. For me it has to be a fresh start all the way. I wanted to tell you last night, Fred, but I couldn’t. And now there’s this wedding…Fred?”

  “What do you look forward to in Oregon?” Fred asked, making his voice as friendly as he could.

  Mandy had a paragraph of things she looked forward to but before she was well into it Fred had to tell her, “Good luck with the new job and the new place.”

  “So,” Suzette said. “How do we play this? Here’s what I suggest. Mitchell we keep out of sight. We go pick up the Annunciation, get the package together again. We can convince the owner to do it since you have the chest here, and he’ll be so happy to have his Leonardo again.”

  “Not Leonardo,” Mitchell said.

 
; Suzette lunged toward the gun. Fred scooped her out of the air and dropped her onto the couch again. “Let the man talk,” he demanded.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Suzette said. “He’s crazy.”

  Mitchell droned on, as if there had been no interruption, “I had in my care, I was convinced, not a Leonardo at all, but what must be the greatest work ever created by that master, the subject of my long study, Icilio Federico Joni. It is a spectacular Joni,” Mitchell announced. “The best, perhaps, that has appeared. Of museum quality. That he is the painter I now have no doubt. I have had ample time, here in Boston, to study the top. I know Joni’s hand. Even concealed in the best of his imitations, I know it. The chest…”

  “Bastard,” Suzette shrieked.

  “The chest, aside from the painting, which is Joni’s, I suspect to be the work of a collaborator, most likely Igino Gottardi. He was not careful with his glue, which tests modern. The wood is old, from furniture of the period. No question. But the joints? No, they will not pass muster, as I told my client. Of course my conclusion will require corroboration from a colleague in Milan.”

  “So it’s a fake,” Fred said, moving toward the phone. “The whole thing. The top. The Annunciation.”

  “Not fake. You lie! An imitation. An hommage. An original Joni,” Mitchell shrieked, then whispered his conclusion, “made, I would say, between 1900 and 1910, at the high point of his career.”

  “An original forgery. Who cares?” Fred said, “since it’s a forgery?”

  “I will ask you not to use that word again,” Mitchell said. “Not in my hearing. The work is not forgery.”

  “I’ve gotta call that girl back,” Fred said. “Give me a minute.”

  “Yes?” Clay’s voice.

  “That thing,” Fred said. “Not what we wanted. Sorry.”

  Clay’s silence stretched while Fred noticed the rain trickling down the windows, and Suzette’s eyes fixed on the chest now, with money struggling to surface in them.