Madonna of the Apes Read online

  A Leonardo, to accomplish the intimate finish of a painting like Clay’s Madonna, or the Louvre’s Virgin of the Rocks, needed months, even years, of well-protected and well-fed man hours, during many of which he was spending much of his time and mental energy thumbing his nose not only at the competition, but also at those who were protecting and supporting him. And, as the day spent reading up on him in the library had confirmed, Leonardo was forever going off on tangents, inventing this or that machine that wouldn’t work unless someone else invented the internal combustion engine.

  With the brown English watercolor still in his hands, and still looking at its back—an approach to the study of paintings that had never occurred to him until he saw Clay Reed working the room three days ago—Fred ruminated on the size of his ignorance of what went on in the commerce involving works of art. He’d fooled himself up to now, allowing his interest to be limited to the face, the form, the structures, and what he thought he could grasp of an artist’s spirit while he looked into a painting, whether in a museum or a shop. Often, when he found himself with the opportunity to stand entranced, and even lose himself in a painting, he’d been recovering from an exercise that craved to occupy his entire consciousness for the rest of a life that threatened to be brief. That day in the Louvre, as he recalled, when he had allowed himself to be sucked into Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, he’d been a week out of the hospital, and moving around with a good deal of discomfort.

  What had entranced him? A rage that was either his, or the painter’s, or that might be shared, in the same way as a jolt of electric force leaps out of the earth to meet the stroke of lightning. It had nothing to do with commerce, or so he had thought until now, holding this object in his hands, he considered, “Whether the picture’s good or bad, in its day, and even now, it has been and it can be reckoned in terms of hundredweights of turnips, or spare parts for assault helicopters, or raw furs. It has a history, and part of that history is commerce. One day it was wet and being worked on. One day it was dry and the painter’s wife or mistress said, ‘Willie needs shoes.’ In the two hundred fifty years between then and now, where has the watercolor been? Who framed it? How many times has it been framed? What is this London gallery? Was the owner of the shop a friend of the painter’s? What’s his story? Who bought it? Or was it still in the painter’s estate when he died in a ditch, or was hanged for some crime, or poisoned by his lover, or drowned in Dordrecht harbor?”

  The Grand Street Gallery in London must have a history also. Its label signified something. Did its presence not add reassurance to the picture’s initial buyer, like the presence of the Treasurer’s signature on a bank note? Even to today’s buyer—supposing Fred decided that he wanted to own a dismal scene of Dordrecht Harbor to give class to the vestibule of the place in Charlestown, if he asked Franklin Tilley to give him a price on this picture, wouldn’t he himself be reassured to find this old label fixed to a work so firmly that its seals (in a manner of speaking) had not been broken? But if he asked for a price, how much would he not have to know about the commerce in works of art, before he could judge whether the price demanded matched the going rate for such objects in the world at large?

  Clay Reed had made a truly remarkable leap of courage, trusting in his own eye, disregarding all appearances, proceeding past the double-triple fake of Franklin’s subterfuges, and exchanging currency for what might still turn out to be no more than what it seemed to be, a box with an odd top.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  But why, for an object as old as the watercolor he was holding, were there no other markings to give him an idea of its history? No fond mother had written on its back, “Happy Christmas to Benny, Dec. 25, 1837.” No auctioneer had written a lot number on it in yellow chalk. No signal hinted at the picture’s transition from one set of hands to another, by inheritance, by gift, or by exchange for fourteen pounds sterling, or seventy thousand dollars, or for a barrel of salt horse on a Dordrecht dock.

  “God, I’m an ignorant cuss,” Fred said, hanging the picture back where it had been. He gazed around the room to see where his instincts might lead him, and his general sense of ignorance increased. It was like looking at the crowd at dawn in a Calcutta street, in which each human, living or newly dead on the roadside, had a complete or pending invisible story, in addition to the surface appearance that presented itself, and which might or might not be a fair indication of the underlying story.

  Tilley had set up something resembling a gallery or shop, but without providing any of the signals of reassurance that a shop uses to keep its clients docile. Nothing informed you, The good stuff is in this corner. Nothing was priced. There’d been that little flap last Sunday night/Monday morning, in which Clay Reed, beating Franklin at his own game, had pretended interest in the painting of the penitent Magdalene (complete with breasts, her own, and presumably someone else’s skull), while Franklin pretended the painting might be by Mantegna, might have belonged to his great grandfather, and—because that’s what he wanted for it—might be worth three million dollars. Or, according to Suzette Shaughnessy, two million. It was, in its own way, not unlike the Great Game in which, not long ago, Fred had been a player in Southeast Asia and points north, south, east, and west. With the exception that in the present game, Fred’s ignorance was almost encyclopedic.

  You had to believe a profit motive existed in the equation. Thinking, therefore, solely in terms of the object as commodity, what could the Magdalene’s initial value be to Franklin Tilley? One million? Seven hundred dollars? There was nothing to give any guidance at all as to any one of these paintings’ realistic fair market value. If they were houses, they would have to be somewhere, and that somewhere would have a lot to do with their value. The same house, same number and quantity of bathrooms, kitchens, et cetera, would be worth seven times as much in San Francisco as it would in Cheyenne. Pictures, though, were portable. Their values, whatever they were, were inherent, and depended a good deal on the knowledge both of the buyer and of the seller, each of whom, by convention, was apparently expected to set out to lie and to outwit the other.

  Fred found that he’d crossed the room to look at the purported Mantegna again. All these considerations had nothing to do with whether the painting was any good. Nor even whether it was from the hand of Mantegna. A signature might help, if the boys had been signing their pictures in those days. But a signature, in any case, would be easy to fake. Much easier than a painting.

  As far as Fred could feel it, the painting was the product of an honest impulse on the part of its maker. It was the result of weeks, maybe months, of effort, as well as years of training. If the subject was not original, originality was not regarded as a necessity in the time and place where the picture had been made, whoever made it. And the identity of the maker may not have been that big a deal. Or else the maker thought to himself when he was finished, “Only I could have made this. The object itself is proof.”

  It wasn’t from humility that a painter such as Leonardo didn’t stick his name in the corner of the Mona Lisa. “It wouldn’t hurt Franklin to provide a chair,” Fred grumbled. No, Leonardo knew that his name was all over what he had painted. The whole thing, in his day, blazed his identity. How could he imagine the tide of ignorance that would sweep over the world after his death, so great that somebody had to write his name onto the Lady with an Ermine in the Czartoryski Museum, doing his best in Polish, Leonard Dawinci, making the whole thing seem a fake if you wanted to start from the authenticity of the purported signature. But then you looked past the signature at the skin of this painting in which the woman held a weasel who looked so much at home in her arms that you could imagine it licking the drops of water from her eyelids after she showered.

  Fred made a detour to the bedroom to get a pillow he could sit on while he waited. The bedroom was without pictures. Their absence, next to the over-supply in the front room, was disquieting. How could the man pretend he cared about these things if he wouldn’t sleep
with them? Wasn’t everyone supposed to believe they were all his?

  Fred pried a pillow from under the Aztec spread as the sound came of the key in the apartment’s door. A rough male voice, “Over there, wiseass,” followed by a scuffle and the sound of a blow.

  Fred wandered into the front room holding his pillow. The large man who had entered with Franklin paused, his right fist raised, glaring at Fred as Franklin, who’d been knocked off balance, struggled to convey equanimity and poise.

  “Since I was expected,” Fred explained.

  “Misunderstanding,” Franklin blurted at the same moment, in the direction of neither of the two men who had invaded his space. The stranger, interrupted, was lowering an arm that had been dressed for warmer weather, instinctively measuring Fred’s size, weight, and possible style. The T-shirt was light blue, the skin burned dark, and in choosing to wear baggy shorts, he had also elected to stand out in Boston as an interloper or tourist. He conveyed an air of brutal confidence.

  “Shock troops from Atlanta,” Fred guessed aloud, plumping his pillow.

  The man’s attack was sudden, subtle, and supple. But it was based on barroom rules Fred knew too well. The start was the kick to the heel, meant to unbalance him, but Fred, seeing it coming, stepped aside and simultaneously grabbed the striking left arm, twisted it up and behind his opponent, fast, and ran him, not gently, into the wall next to Shipping, Dordrecht. The picture shook at the near impact, making the room’s reflection in its glass wobble.

  “This wilderness needed more monkeys,” Fred said.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  He kept hold of the man’s arm and maintained his position doubled over, head shoved into the wall, a good old-fashioned Boston wall made of lath and plaster. Plasterboard, the man’s head would have kept going unless it lucked out and hit a stud.

  “Friend of yours?” Fred asked Franklin.

  The man in the shorts heaved and twisted. Fred shoved him tighter against the wall.

  “More like an acquaintance,” Franklin said, rubbing his left shoulder and wincing.

  “Carl, meet Fred. Fred’s a client. An important client.”

  The man in Fred’s grasp grumbled something, the tension lapsed, and Fred relaxed his hold, letting the man stand upright, his face red with fury.

  “I was early, you weren’t here, I came in,” Fred told Franklin.

  Carl’s red face worked. His breath reeked of alcohol. He bunched his fists, heaved his broad shoulders in the tight blue T-shirt. Humiliated, he wouldn’t stop being trouble.

  “A lucky break,” Fred said, picking the pillow up again. He’d been obliged to drop it. “Sorry, Carl. I’m nervy. Too fast to pull the trigger sometimes, and I apologize. I should have held off, waited to get acquainted.”

  “Important client,” Carl said to Franklin. “Should I care?”

  “It’s complicated, Carl. This isn’t like tending bar. Like I told Mitchell…”

  “Mitchell,” Fred said. “Another monkey.”

  “Mitchell is next,” Carl said. “Franklin, get this. You say it’s complicated? For you, maybe. I go through life, most everything boils down to the bottom line. Life and death, Buddy. Simplify your mind. Stop caring about the suit, the skoozy apartment, the important Boston contact. You’ve got a package for me.” His attention was all for Franklin. Fred might as well be the maid, standing there with the pillow.

  “Right,” Franklin said. “I’ll get it.”

  “I’ll stay behind you while you do,” Carl said. He glared around the room, disregarding Fred. “Skoozy apartment,” he said. “The rug.”

  Franklin looked automatically down at the rug and saw he was standing on it, wearing his shoes. He blushed and knelt to unlace them, explaining, “House rules.”

  “For chicks I take off my shoes,” Carl said. “If I have time. When I climb into bed with them. If they have time.” Everyone looked at Carl’s brown leather Nike high tops, and at the protruding cuffs of the white athletic socks that hugged his ankles, striped with a blue that matched his T-shirt.

  “Mitchell says, on this carpet, nobody wears shoes,” Franklin insisted.

  “Speaking of Mitchell, where’s Mitchell?” Carl demanded, swinging his head belligerently on a neck whose width was more than sufficient to support it. He jerked the head toward Fred. “The tough guy, your important Boston client, has his shoes on, wiseass.”

  “Medical condition,” Fred said quickly, before Tilley could make a mistake.

  “Like infected feet,” Carl helped. “Ringworm?”

  Fred said, “Which, once it gets into the rug, the carpet, it’s there forever. You gentlemen are busy. I’ll come back.”

  Carl, with reluctance, and operating in the shadow of the invisible Mitchell, had knelt to unlace his Nikes, which he put next to Franklin’s shoes by the door. In his athletic socks, and keeping within arm’s reach of Tilley, he moved across the breadth of the carpet and toward the bedroom.

  “The rest of this, I could give a shit,” Carl told Fred. “The rest of it, the setup, the shoes, the carpet, the rest of it, the suit, I could give a shit. You got that? I get what I came for, I’m out of here.”

  “I’ll wait, then,” Fred said. He pitched his pillow against the wall and sat on it, leaning back, as Franklin and Carl went into the bedroom and closed the door behind them. A minute passed. Two. Three. Whatever the men were up to in there, it was quiet. The sound of another blow. Carl opened the bedroom door and stood there holding a small blue gym bag. He said, over his shoulder, “That’s a message. And you can pass it along to Mitchell. If you see him before I do. Wherever he is. You say you don’t know? So I stick around. I’ll find him.” He crossed the enormous carpet in his white sport socks until he stood in front of Fred, studying the situation and looking for an exit line. “You want a medical condition?” he said, after sufficient study. “Next time we meet, I’ll give you a medical condition.” He strode for the door.

  “Your shoes,” Fred reminded him, making him stop to pick them up.

  “Asshole,” Carl told him. He picked up the shoes and marched out, one hand encumbered by the shoes and the gym bag, the other with the stage business of opening the door. He slammed it after him. He’d have to sit on the top step and put the shoes on. You can’t tie bows in your shoelaces while working to intimidate the man who has already run you into a wall.

  In two minutes more Franklin staggered out of the bedroom. His left eye was swelling already, and blood showed on the cheekbone under it. “You’re still here,” he said, staring with disbelief.

  Fred said, “Put ice on that.” Tilley probably hadn’t been hit since seventh grade. He made free of the bathroom and the kitchen’s refrigerator and put together a cold pack for Franklin to hold to his face. Then he sat again as he had been.

  “Not my business,” Fred said, “but you could use different friends. Unless—maybe Mitchell is a sweetie? Based on what I’ve seen, and not for the first time, and not that I like you in any way—just, as one monkey to another—you might want to watch out for the guys you’re running with.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “Fuck them,” Franklin said. He was still standing in the center of his private gallery, in his socks. Black socks with a gold toe. He held the cold pack to his face and winced. “Thanks, by the way, for playing the guy along. When there’s a misunderstanding, a gap in communication, they don’t have the sense to send someone with a brain.”

  “They,” Fred remarked. “Incidentally, who answered your phone? In Atlanta?”

  Franklin narrowed his available eye and sat against a wall perpendicular to the one Fred had chosen, allowing his head to rest under the painting of the gentleman in the red waistcoat. He said, “These guys have a confidence problem. How you got in I don’t know. I don’t care, since I guess it’s a good thing. Sorry about the interruption. Let’s get on with it. You want the money.”

  Fred allowed what might be a look of encouraging sympathy to seep into his fac
e. “The money,” he prompted.

  “For the chest. According to Suzette…”

  “Ah,” Fred said. “You’ve talked with Suzette. Already?”

  “We’re working together now. Keep it simple. According to her, you can deliver the chest.”

  “No kidding,” Fred said.

  “The problem is,” Franklin said, “in terms of the money, you’ll have to…”

  “Yes?” Fred prompted.

  “Crossed wires. My working capital…It’ll be a couple days more,” Franklin said.

  “You mean Friday.” Franklin said nothing. He winced and adjusted his compress. “The day Agnelli gets into town,” Fred went on. A pause extended between them. “What do we say next?” Fred continued. “Small world?”

  “You happen to know some of my business,” Franklin said. “That doesn’t make it your business. Your business is the money Reed Gingrich sent you for, if you’re with him. If you’re on your own, fine. Don’t bring the chest here. Better I go to it. You’ll have to trust me, now, like I trusted you, for the money…I’m good for it.”

  Fred yawned a lazy yawn. He’d learned how quickly Suzette had passed along the fictitious name Reed Gingrich. But this new bluff was based more on hope than on anything Suzette might have told Franklin. Fred had promised nothing. Why let them imagine they had a prayer of getting Clay’s Leonardo back? When he had put the yawn away again Fred observed, “We spend a lot of time talking philosophy, you and I. Sometimes, before you take that leap of faith, you ought to look where you’re going. Reed Gingrich doesn’t send me, as you put it, anywhere, or to do anything, anytime.”

  “But I offered…” Franklin closed his mouth on the rest of the sentence his frustration was causing him to blurt out.

  “Talk to me,” Fred invited.

  “Suzette’s telling the truth? You’re working together?”

  Fred yawned again. “We’ve talked before about asking questions. You are not learning. Unless you have your correspondent physically overpowered already, as soon as you ask the question you reveal your own vulnerability. You ask my connection to Reed Gingrich. But it gives me no advantage to answer you. I just drop into my wallet the fact that you want to know.”