A Deceptive Clarity (11 page)

"Anne," I said as I sat down, "did Peter ever say anything to you about there being a fake?"

"In the show? No." The violet eyes widened. "Is there one?"

"I think so, yes."

"But—which one?" She leaned forward excitedly. "It's that Corot, isn't it? I
knew
it!"

I shook my head, smiling. I knew what she meant.
Quai at Honfleur
was the usually estimable Corot at his gauzy worst; a soft-focus panorama of muzzy fishing boats and gray-green trees done in the "poetical" Salon manner that had made him one of the most popular artists of the late nineteenth century.

"You know what they say about Corot?" I said. "That he has the most prolific posthumous production of any artist in history. That he painted one thousand pictures, of which twenty-five hundred are in Europe, five thousand in America, and the rest unaccounted for. No, Peter wouldn't have been so pleased with himself over just another fake Corot. I think it's another one."

"You
think?
You don't know which one it is?"

I sat back and told her about the conversation at Kranzler's.

"A forgery .. ." She turned it over in her mind, then looked sharply up at me, her eyes snapping. "Chris! You don't suppose it has anything to do with his death! Of course it does! It must!"

I looked blankly at her.

"The forgery!" she cried. "Peter discovered a forgery, and they killed him to keep him quiet!"

I looked blankly at her some more. Where was everyone getting these ideas? "Who's 'they'?"

"I don't know who they is—are." She made an impatient httle noise. "But it's a
clue.
What else is there to go on? I
told
Colonel Robey Peter couldn't have been killed that way."

I put my wineglass down. "Are you saying," I said very slowly, "that you don't accept the police version of how Peter was killed?"

"I don't know what the police think, but I certainly don't believe Peter van Cortlandt was crawling around Frankfurt's red-light district last Wednesday night or any other night—" She stopped. "Well, do
you
?"

I did, but I wasn't going to say so. She obviously wanted very much to believe—did believe—that Peter was above anything so sordid, and I had no great desire to disenchant her. Or to differ with her, for that matter. Actually, I was grateful to her for wanting to think the best of Peter. I wanted to think the best of him, too, but the difference between us was that she was an innocent, happily unaware of the essential baseness of men, while I, more seasoned and more tolerant, knew that all men were pretty much alike when it got down to essential baseness.

So I thought, in the full radiance of my ignorance and condescension. Anne was a naive young female, Harry was a typically paranoid cop, and I alone was worldly-wise enough to accept things for what they were.

"I'm not sure what I believe," I temporized cleverly. "What did Mark say when you talked to him?"

"You know Colonel Robey," she said wryly. "You're never sure what wave length he's on. He listened, nodded very gravely, said 'Hmm, yes, well, I can see where you're coming from,' but his mind was somewhere else. I could tell he thought the same thing you do: that Peter was out—playing around—and got mixed up with a rough crowd, and ... that's what happened."

"Anne, I didn't say I believed that."

"But you do." She shook her head, a jerk of frustration. "You do, don't you?"

"Well, I don't rule it out."

"But how can you think that? Peter was so decent, so
clean.
You knew him better than any of us; do you really believe he could ... a prostitute with a tattoo on her behind ... a horrible, filthy hotel room?" She shivered.
 

"Anne, listen. I really liked Peter, and I respected him.
 
But deep down I didn't know him any better than you did. Look, just because a man seems to be decent—
is
decent— doesn't mean that there aren't some pretty dark things going on below the surface. It's not something a man can help, you know—"

Understandably, she laughed at this vapid pedantry. "That's what Colonel Robey said, and that's just the way he said it. Chris, do you really think I'm that wet behind the ears?" She laughed again, this time with exasperation. "I've been in the U.S. Air Force for six years, you know."

As a matter of fact, it was exactly what I thought, but I warmed to her on account of it; because she liked Peter, because she thought more of him than I did. Nevertheless, it seemed like a good time to change the subject.

"Well, maybe you're right," I said. "Anyway, will you let Mark know I'll get a plane to Florence as early as I can tomorrow?"

"Sure. And thanks again." She glanced at the Dortmunder Bier wall clock above us. "Seven o'clock. No wonder my stomach's growling."

Invite her to dinner, dope, I told myself. She practically asked you to. Instead I said, "I've stuffed myself with hors d'oeuvres from the bar, so I think I'll pass up dinner tonight. I'm still catching up on my sleep."

"Oh."

"Maybe we can have dinner one night when I get back."

"Mm-hm," she said noncommittally. Which was all the answer I deserved. She pushed her chair back from the table. "Good luck with Bolzano. And thank you for the wine."

I watched her go with conflicting feelings. One part of me wanted to chase after her and tell her I really wasn't the jerk I seemed to be, that jet lag, concussion, and codeine had combined to throw me off form, and would she like to go to Kranzler's, or the Cafe Wintergarten, or maybe go for a schnitzel at nearest Wienerwald after all?

The other part of me won. I sat awhile in morbid solitude, finished my wine, and got up to leave. I really wasn't hungry, and I really was tired. And thinking again about Peter's wretched ending had gotten me down; no question about that. On my way out I passed directly beneath the television set.

"But what can it awr mean, mahstah?" a sloe-eyed young man was asking earnestly. So it was English. Of a sort, anyway; the mushily orientalized version dear to the dubbers of Oriental films. I paused to hear the response.

"It means, my impetuous young flen," a sagacious robed figure replied, "that you may be heading for gleat . . . difficurty."

I took the elevator up and went to bed.

Chapter 8

I called Florence from my room the next morning and spoke with Lorenzo Bolzano, the collector's son. The elder Bolzano, Claudio, was in the hospital for a twenty-four-hour checkup, so I arranged with Lorenzo to come the following day. Thus, with a free day I flew to Frankfurt to talk to the Kunstmuseum's director for administration, to see if I could resolve the insurance question that had come up on the El Greco. That was the matter that had taken Peter to Frankfurt in the first place, but of course he hadn't lived to make his appointment.

Emanuel Traben was a quiet, worried-looking man of fifty with a sparse little gray goatee, a round red spot on each sallow cheek so unnaturally bright it might have been rouged, and digestive difficulties that kept his fingertips hovering discreetly near his mouth during most of the time we talked.

"You understand," he said apologetically, "that we're most anxious to cooperate, but signor Bolzano has entrusted the care of his magnificent painting to us and"—there was a pause while he winced and belched gently behind his hand—"excuse me—we feel we cannot release it to another party, even at signor Bolzano's request, unless we are fully protected against liability."

I nodded. The Kunstmuseum was insisting that we reimburse them for taking out an extraordinary policy on the painting, one that would cover them in case of any conceivable (or inconceivable) damage to it—natural disaster, act of God, act of war, anything. Such policies come very high, and this one would cost thirty cents per hundred dollars' valued worth per month. On the two-million-dollar El Greco, that would be six thousand dollars a month for the four remaining months of the exhibition, a substantial chunk of the insurance budget.

Peter had resisted. The standard museum policy insures against theft, fire, and the like, at a cost of about three cents per hundred dollars, and he'd felt that ought to be sufficient. Herr Traben, however, was terrified by the possibility of the Kunstmuseum's having to come up with the two million dollars to repay Bolzano if something happened to the painting while it was sub-lent to us. There was a simple way out, of course, and that was to call Bolzano and ask him to formally approve a standard policy—which he would certainly do, because it was the same coverage we had on the rest of The Plundered Past, which had come directly from his personal collection in Florence.

Nobody, however, had wanted to bring it up with the touchy, sick Bolzano, so Peter and Traben had been negotiating for months. But I had new instructions from the open-handed Robey.

"I understand," I said, "and I agree. We'll reimburse you."

He was so astonished he forgot to cover his mouth, and a soft burp bellied his cheeks and emerged unrestrained. "You—excuse me—you're empowered to authorize this?"

I assured him I was, to his obvious relief, but that was only the beginning. Herr Traben was a very conscientious man, and there were other delicate questions. At what point would the museum formally relinquish responsibility for the painting to the U.S. Defense Department? When it was picked up at the museum? When it reached Rhein-Main Air Base, the American compound outside of Frankfurt from which it would be flown to Berlin? Who would be responsible for it during transit through Frankfurt? What exact mode of transportation to the air base would be used? Who would provide it? How would ... ?

I told him we would be happy to agree to anything reasonable, as long as we had the painting in time for the Berlin opening. Much soothed, he promised to call me in Florence the next day as soon as he had thoroughly discussed matters with the museum's counsel. He was sure things could be worked out.

And that was as resolved as things were going to get. I left the museum with almost three hours before my Lufthansa flight to Florence, and took a bus to the central railroad station, from which I could catch one of the gleaming subway trains that ran out to the airport. I alighted at the train station at noon and immediately realized I was hungry.

In Germany it is hard to be hungry for long without realizing it. The Germans are surely the munchingest people in the world. It is rare to pass three pedestrians in a row without noticing that at least one of them is chewing on something that looks, sounds, and smells delicious. If they have to walk more than 150 feet without sight of a bakery or a
Schnell lmbiss
—a hot-snack stand—they become perceptibly anxious, even panicky. As a result, railroad stations, airports, and other public places are lined with tiny stand-up bars selling sausages, beer, cakes, and other restoratives, generally of high quality.

The Frankfurt
Hauptbahnhof
was no exception, and the first thing I did when I got there was to order a chunk of warm
Leberkase
and a roll, served with a dab of sweet German mustard on a paper plate, along with a half-liter of beer. I stood with two other men at a table made from a big barrel and downed the meal happily, wondering, not for the first time, how this pulpy, slippery, delicious sausage is made. (I've never dared to ask. There are some things ...)

The Frankfurt
Hauptbahnhof
was typical of big-city Germany in other ways too, being cavernous, bustling, clean, and pleasantly located, fronting a lively square from which a mall led a few blocks into the heart of the city.

But in Frankfurt's case something has gone wrong. When you head down the pedestrian shopping mall, the Kaiserstrasse, you quickly see that although the pavement is clean, the architecture generally handsome, and the lamp standards charming, a sleazy urban rot has taken hold. It is as if the office-supply stores and flower shops are there on sufferance, and their clients and personnel had better be gone before dark if they know what's good for them.

Obviously, Peter hadn't known. It was here, within a few blocks of the
Hauptbahnhof,
that he had died in the gutter. I hadn't come to Frankfurt with that on my mind, except in a general sense, but now that I was there with two hours before I was due at the airport, it seemed a natural thing to want to see the place where he'd been killed. Whether a sort of veneration was operating, or simply an unwholesome curiosity, I didn't ask myself. I left my shoulder bag in a locker and walked east from the station, buttoning my coat collar against the dreary gray snow flurries.

It was about as much fun as starting from Market and Turk in San Francisco and strolling into the Tenderloin. The scenery was different, but the cast of characters was the same.
 
Men with faces as leathery and corrugated as old valises, many with crusty sores on cheeks or foreheads, stood hunched in shivering, unsteady groups of three or four, or leaned shakily against the walls of buildings, staring with bleary hostility at well-dressed passersby who kept their own eyes straight ahead, their expressions judiciously non-observant. Younger men, earringed and leather-jacketed, stared more openly and aggressively.

Every other storefront was whitewashed or curtained, with a sign that said Sex-Shop or Sex-Kino—or, in one enterprising case,
Sex-Supermarkt
—and near their doorways, and other doorways as well, there were miniskirted, fat-thighed hookers, red-splotched from the cold, with grubby hands and mean, pinched faces. A respectable-looking man in shirtsleeves and tie came out of a photographic-equipment store to shoo one of them away from his entrance. He did it with a vigorous slap on the rear. The woman moved on with a silent grimace and a disgusted flap of her hand at him; he went back into his store flushed and laughing, hooting something to a customer.

There were no big, blond Utelindes. The wigs were all jet black or copper-wire red.
 
It took me a while to locate the Hotel Paradies, because I didn't know where it was and it wasn't listed in the telephone book. I found it finally in a forlorn alley between Kaiserstrasse and Taunusstrasse. It looked the way I had expected it to. Had it been in America, there would have been sad, torn window shades and a red neon sign. Here, those windows that weren't covered by drab metal blinds had grimy, ancient gauze curtains in them, and
Hotel Paradies
was painted directly on the gray stucco wall in rusty, faded brown.