Madonna of the Apes Read online

  “No. We start by we shake hands and agree, scout’s honor, we split the commission.”

  “The commission,” Fred drawled.

  “Sure. Anything we sell to Agnelli. Anything else. Since we are working together. We work as a team now. We sell to your man Gingrich, we’re together. The chest—I assume you’re not just bullshitting me. Anything else. The Titian. You can get the chest, am I right? Agnelli swears he doesn’t have it.”

  Fred held out his hand. Hers was small and warm and dry, with a firm grip that did its best to encompass his, and failed by two thirds. “Fair enough,” Fred said.

  “Okay,” Suzette said. She folded her hands in her lap. “Forget what I may have mentioned before.”

  “We’ll file it with what the Nixon White House classified as inoperable.”

  “They did? Anyway, now I’ll level with you. A friend of a friend of mine was in school with Franklin Tilley. My friend was…”

  “What school?” Fred asked.

  “Art school. Savannah. My friend was into restoration. Architectural. What Tilley was into…” She paused. Fred let her arrange whatever it was she was arranging in her head. “Franklin Tilley. He was from down south somewhere. Charleston? One of those. My friend…”

  “Your friend’s name?” Fred asked.

  “Not important,” Suzette assured him. “It’s a gay thing. They all know each other. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Mitchell,” Fred said.

  “And I want to see that chest. Mitchell was a professor there. Dr. Mitchell. Really, my friend you couldn’t care less about. Like most of my friends. Which is why I decided to change my life.

  “My friend heard Franklin had gotten involved in the picture business, which surprised him. Franklin was asking around, Who did our mutual friend know in the art world who was in a position to make fast decisions for big money for pictures, guaranteed not to be stolen, but that were needing a low profile until some time after the transactions were completed, if ever.

  “So our mutual friend, being in New York, knew me, and introduced me to Franklin, and I asked him to keep the thing quiet, and I told Franklin, which is true, that I have the exact client who can commit to buy the whole thing in five minutes. He has the money, don’t worry. But I had to see the collection first, get an idea of the ballpark, the rest of it. You got any coffee?”

  “Maybe,” Fred said.

  “This is five weeks ago. I only got in at the tail end of this. Which I hope is not falling apart. Mitchell had done the expertise, telling Franklin what everything was. That bunch of stuff—well, you saw it? It would take a professor to figure it out. I met him in New York, and I was convincing, since the next thing was—Why Boston, I don’t know. Meanwhile Franklin was on his way north in a U-Haul truck, all that stuff, can you believe it? Wrapped in bubble pack and blankets and strapped to the walls like it was used refrigerators. Franklin had the apartment rented already, and I guess he was handy enough to hang it, since he’d been to art school. It looked all right.

  “I came up right away and my teeth about fell out. I printed some cards…”

  “What?”

  “Well, got them printed.”

  “You’re not in the art business at all,” Fred said.

  “I am now. Before I was doing interior design,” Suzette said. “If there’s a slower way to make money, they haven’t told me about it. So I know pictures all right, besides studying it in college and a year in grad school. More than you want to know. Besides all the people you have to suck up to, the client, the dealer, the other people in the field who all have a partner or spouse who’s a doctor. Suck up to or, you know, worse. We could go out.”

  “We could.”

  “For coffee.”

  “I’ll make some. You printed some cards,” Fred reminded her.

  “And started working to get through to Agnelli,” she said. “Because I could see we were in the big leagues. Franklin didn’t have a clue what he had. I mean, Titian? And in spite of that he wanted big money.”

  “He gave you a figure for the whole thing?”

  “Sure. Fifty million. But cash. So that left out most people. I didn’t know anybody like that. Not close. Except Agnelli, who is notorious. And because he does so much overseas, with governments that don’t necessarily…I have to drink coffee.”

  “See what I can do,” Fred promised. “I could use some myself. Keep talking.”

  He rummaged through the dinky cabinet above Bernie’s sink and found a jar of instant coffee, mugs, and sugar. The contents of the “Creamer” jar had hardened. He lit the fire under the kettle.

  “So, I had a week to study the collection,” Suzette said. “I’ve put my savings into that fucking room at the Ritz, so I’ll look like I know what I’m doing. Which I do. I’ve handled old pictures before. I put a Goya into a private collection in New York. Lived four months on the commission. And I have people I can call. And while Franklin wasn’t looking I snapped some pictures. And listened to Mitchell go on, him and Franklin snuggled up barefoot on that fucking carpet, and Mitchell telling him about painters so dead and gone their own mother wouldn’t care. Mitchell thought he should try to educate Franklin because when the time came, Franklin was going to have to make the sale, or what he was after was only quality time with Franklin. You tell me. At first Franklin insisted the collection had to stay all together, which was not going to happen, and he couldn’t sell it anyway, being so ignorant. Then, as I got their trust, and I had Agnelli primed and with the room reserved at the Ritz, the bastard started selling things one at a time after all. Couldn’t wait. And buying, too. Did you see that Cézanne?

  “The thing is, Franklin is such an idiot,” Suzette said, taking the mug Fred offered her, “and then he and Mitchell fell out, which left him with pretty much me. And he never guesses when I’m winging it.”

  “Franklin’s waiting for something,” Fred said. “You’ve seen it, of course.”

  “You be careful of Franklin,” Suzette warned. “He’s very seductive.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  “Tuna or Italian?” Fred asked her.

  “Tuna, if it has pickles.”

  “Take a look.” Fred handed her the wrapped sandwich and they sat together at the table while she unwrapped it, opened and approved it, and started eating.

  “The collection,” Fred said. “Franklin and Mitchell told you where it comes from.”

  “I pushed pretty hard,” Suzette said. “I wanted to know for myself. That kind of money, Agnelli wanted to know. Who wouldn’t. Also for me it’s harder. It’s not enough, especially if you don’t have your own gallery space, just to tell people it’s legitimate. You drop hints. The one I like is it belongs to a prominent member of society, a Lloyd’s of London ‘name,’ who has to make good on some big loss, but he doesn’t want his friends to know.

  “So even if Agnelli’s interested, we’re not home free. Mitchell, who’s never kept a secret before in his life if you ask me, says his client must be kept in confidence. Franklin won’t say anything except they are from overseas, it’s a willing seller who’s changing his collection to the moderns, he says—de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Francis Bacon—but the client doesn’t want help on the buying side, Franklin says, because I told him I know a de Kooning that could be made available. Not that Franklin would know de Kooning from Balthus.”

  “Why cash? Did he mention?”

  “But enough about me, as they say. What’s the plan?” Suzette swerved.

  “The plan?” Fred said.

  “To move us to the next plateau. I didn’t just come for the tuna. Here’s the program so far. Let’s try to save this. Agnelli arrives tomorrow. We have drinks at the Ritz, he and I, and get acquainted. We’ll find out how acquainted he wants to get. Saturday I am supposed to take him to Franklin Tilley’s. How I get him past Carl I don’t know. Or the guy Carl says is taking over from him. Unless Franklin shows up again, with those people I am back to square one. Or I wouldn’
t be…well, but, next step, the point I was trying to make an hour ago, we call Franklin now, right?” She looked expectantly at Fred, letting the steam from her coffee cup accentuate the squint in her eyes. “The chest, though, we’ll keep that just between the two of us.”

  “My guess is as good as yours where Franklin is,” Fred said.

  “Shit. Then my next point, as long as Franklin is out of the picture, and since I know Agnelli wants the chest, the two of us sell him the chest. Anywhere you want. My room at the Ritz? Even if the whole Franklin deal is a washout, that way we have something left.”

  She’d eaten half her sandwich. She wrapped what was left, pushed it aside, and rose to search in her bag for a pack of cigarettes, from which she pulled and lit a volunteer.

  Fred took the last bite of his sandwich and worked on it, sorting and filing the wealth of new information Suzette had brought, any part of which might or might not be true. The trouble with a good liar is that truth comes from the lips as easily as the lie. “Before we proceed further,” Fred said, “I need to confer with Mitchell.”

  “Who said I could…?” she started.

  “Forget it,” Fred said. “Mitchell is in this game. You’re working with Mitchell since you’re too smart not to. Franklin’s too dumb to put this together. And you’re too smart to be working with Franklin anyway. So. Put Mitchell where I can see him, or all bets are off.”

  “After all this, you have nothing to contribute?” Suzette demanded. She put her lighter and cigarettes back into the bag. “You fooled me. I trusted you. The deal is off.”

  “No commission,” Fred said. “Rats. How much was it going to be?”

  Without another word Suzette turned for the door. She’d reached it before she turned again to see Fred, sitting where she had left him, at the table, his hands around the empty mug.

  “Let’s say, as a hypothetical, I can find Mitchell, even produce him,” she said. “If I can do that, might you recall something about the chest that for the moment may have slipped your mind?”

  “Not impossible,” Fred said.

  “And in the meantime, since we are working together, and you don’t know where Franklin is, maybe you want to prove it by coming with me and asking Carl. Since we are working together.”

  “I could do that.”

  “Let me think,” Suzette said. She came back to the couch, where her heavy sweater was still lying (that would have wrecked her exit! Sweeping back to pick it up or, worse, having to ring the bell to come back for it), and sat down.

  Fred said, “You’ve come a long way on bluff. Congratulations. Problem is, there’s only so much bluff you can sell. Though you are very good at this, you have nothing. You are in the void that exists between stuff that is real, and the people who own it, and/or the people who represent the people who own it, and the people who want it, and/or the people who represent the people who want it. You have to separate all those people from each other because if you don’t, you get left out. No commission. Meanwhile, all you have to your name is a business card, a room at the Ritz, a lot of gall, and a great nightgown. You’ve got Agnelli interested. That’s a plus. But you’ve got nothing to show him. No art, anyway. That looks like a real minus to me. Don’t we need each other?”

  “We add your bluff to mine?” she said. “The chest you may or may not be able to put in front of me?”

  “What else do we have to sell?” Fred asked reasonably.

  “We split fifty-fifty.”

  “That’s agreed already,” Fred said.

  “And we’ll go talk to Carl?”

  “We’ll do it now.”

  “Can I use the phone first?”

  “Cut off,” Fred said. “Since my friend’s traveling.”

  Her face changed as she made her decision and said, “If I find Mitchell, you should know he’s keeping a low profile. He and Franklin had a falling out, I told you. Mitchell won’t speak to him. Go easy with Mitchell on the Franklin subject. Promise?”

  “I hear you,” Fred promised.

  Chapter Forty-three

  A steady rain had developed out of somewhere. Fred poked around the garage area until he laid hands on an umbrella he could offer to Suzette. It was a sad object, more than ready for the knacker’s yard, and certainly no match for Suzette’s outfit—but it would keep her more or less dry.

  “Boston,” Fred told her. “You want to expect rain. Especially during the spring or any other season.”

  “Not unlike New York,” Suzette said. “I left the hotel in a hurry. Someone told me they had something I’m looking for.”

  The rain pattered earnestly onto Fred’s head, and onto the windbreaker. He’d become wet, but he’d been wetter.

  “If that isn’t your place, where does a person find you?” Suzette asked. “Your piano, your goldfish, the rest of it. The things you have to sell. What do you have? You’re not listed with Information. What are you looking for? I know a de Kooning we could pry loose for the right customer. You and I…”

  Rain had darkened the steep brick sidewalks and made them slippery. The trees interfering with pedestrian traffic, or planted in the small yards in front of the brownstone and brick townhouses, were inching their leaves into the weather eagerly, and one could almost hear the pollen popping. Suzette slipped and Fred grabbed an elbow, keeping her upright.

  “Where do you live?” she insisted. “You have an office? Gallery? Work out of your car?”

  “Where you found me today is where you’ll likely find me,” Fred said.

  Fred asked, “What’s the approach with this guy Carl? If he’s still there.” They’d reached Pekham Street and started on the steeper downhill stretch that would lead them to the building Franklin Tilley had abruptly vacated.

  “We get inside, ask him where Franklin is, and go from there. In other words, wing it. I’ll talk on the intercom, since he’s already met me, and disregarded me. You’ll be the surprise.”

  “Gotcha,” Fred said. He stood back while Suzette rang the buzzer and waited for the gruff “Yes?”

  “I was here before?” Suzette said into the grill. “Looking for Franklin? Something came up. It might be important.” The growling buzz clicked the door open to Suzette’s self-congratulatory smile.

  “I’ll go first,” Fred said. “In case he’s ugly.”

  “He’s ugly all right,” Suzette said, falling back behind him as Fred trotted briskly up the stairs. Carl, standing in the doorway in his stocking feet, was taken enough by surprise at Fred’s sudden appearance that Fred could shove past him, letting a heel land squarely on Carl’s toes. Carl spun, swinging. His fist caught the back of Fred’s head and jarred it sideways and he followed up fast, staying close and pounding at Fred’s head, the windbreaker, and kicking with the sides of his feet. An all-in scrapper, making up for lost time.

  Fred answered in kind, but making no effort to do more than protect himself. One canny blow, placed right, would put Carl into a sudden sleep or, worse, crush a windpipe or nose, or neck, and kill him. Not what Clay wanted, most likely, from his new colleague.

  “Carl.” The voice from the bedroom door was male, and sharp, and filled with easy authority. Carl swung his right fist into Fred’s gut. “Let’s ask what the gentleman wants.”

  “He wants to talk,” Carl said, swinging with his left against Fred’s shielding arm. “I’ve seen this fucker before. Talk. It’s all any of them want. Watch this.” He dropped as Fred’s blow connected with his forehead.

  The man in the bedroom doorway came forward, glared at Carl and held out a hand, glancing beyond Fred at the place where Suzette, until quite recently, had been standing. Carl, on the floor, snored. The man’s suit, long hair, and white shirt placed him on the white-collar side of the entertainment.

  “Likely he’s been unconscious so often,” Fred said, disregarding the hand, “he gets to that state efficiently. I’m looking for Franklin Tilley.”

  “The sales representative. Called away,” the man said.
“Your business?”

  Fred’s gesture encompassed the contents of the room. “We’re negotiating. If he’s gone, who takes over? You?”

  The man held out a card. Carl snored. JOWETT EDOUARD PEASLEE, Attorney at Law, with an Atlanta address. “I don’t take over. I hold the fort until the next representative arrives,” Peaslee said.

  “I’ve been wasting my time? Tilley has no executive authority?” Fred demanded.

  “He did. No longer,” Peaslee said.

  “So you can’t make the sale?” Fred demanded. “This is a pain in the ass. Tilley made the appointment. Now what? What can you do, if you can’t sell?”

  “I represent the status quo,” Peaslee said. “I’d offer you a chair, but they don’t seem to do that.” He was in his stocking feet, Fred noted. “Come back later. Tomorrow evening. Call first. Better, give me your name and number.”

  “As long as you’re nobody, Peaslee, I’ll reserve it,” Fred said. “I’ll drop back unless I get bored with the whole thing. What’s the situation? The owner’s getting cold feet?”

  “I’m out of my depth,” Peaslee said. “Your negotiation with Mr. Tilley has to be placed on hold. I can’t comment on it. Was Dr. Mitchell included in the conversation?”

  Fred said, “What this looks like to me, I have to tell you, is a god damned mess.”

  “It’s being straightened out. Call back tomorrow,” Peaslee said. Carl stirred. “How do we reach you?”

  “I’m off,” Fred said. “Give my apologies to Carl.”

  ***

  Suzette was waiting on the sidewalk, several long paces toward Charles Street. “You were right,” she said. “He did turn ugly. What did you find out?”

  “Nothing about Franklin. The other man, an Atlanta lawyer—you know him?”

  Her answering look gave away nothing.

  “He can’t make commitments,” Fred said. “Says a new guy will be there tomorrow. Call first. So the next thing is Mitchell.”

  “If I find him, and if I can get him,” Suzette said. “I have to make him believe I have that chest.”