Chasing Cezanne (18 page)

“Do you often do this, Cyrus?”

“Always. I'm amazed more people don't. The only things I ever accept on a plane are brandy and champagne. They can't do much to that. I see the bottle is coming our way. Shall we?”

The 707 went through its preliminary flexing and rumbling as it pawed the ground before takeoff. The two men nursed their champagne and looked through the window at a knot of figures waving goodbye from the airport's terrace. It was a change—a very pleasant change—for Andre to have a traveling companion, and it was a reminder that much of his life recently had been spent alone. His own fault, he had to admit. There was Lucy, sweet unattached Lucy, and what had he done about her? Called her from airports and left her to the mercies of men in red suspenders. He was resolving to try harder with Lucy—in fact, to start trying as soon as he got back—
when Cyrus turned to him as if he had been reading his thoughts.

“Ever been married, Andre?”

“Nearly.” He was surprised to find that her face was only a blur in his memory. “About five years ago. Then I started getting work that involved going away, and I guess she got bored waiting for me to come back. She married a dentist and moved to Scarsdale. I suppose it was inevitable. Too much traveling, the story of my life.”

Cyrus sighed. “I didn't do enough. They say there's nothing like distance to make a marriage last. I've had two stabs at it; both of them ended in tears.” With a philosophical twitch of his eyebrows, he took a mouthful of champagne.

“Still like women?”

“Absolutely. The trouble is, I've never been able to spot the fakes.”

It was the first time Andre had seen Cyrus with anything less than a good-humored expression, and he decided to leave a discussion about the perils of matrimony for another time. “Tell me about this forger. You said you know who he is. Have you met him?”

“Good Lord, no. He keeps his head well down, which is quite understandable in his line of work. You're not likely to bump into him at gallery cocktail parties, handing out business cards. I don't even know which country he lives in.” Cyrus frowned as the in-flight video came on at full blast, the cheerful voice suggesting useful tips in the event of a crash and imminent death. He leaned closer to Andre to make himself heard. “His name is Franzen, Nico
Franzen, originally from Amsterdam. The Dutch are pretty good at this sort of thing. Have you ever heard of the Vermeer man?”

Andre shook his head.

“Another Dutchman. His name was van Meegeren, and he specialized in faking Vermeers—used ancient canvases, hand-ground paints, all the tricks—and made a bundle at it, so they say. Fooled them all, for a while. You have to take your hat off to top forgers, in a way. They may be rogues, but immensely talented. Anyway, our man Franzen sticks to Impressionists, and as we've seen, he does them brilliantly. In fact, I've heard rumors that some of his work is hanging in museums and private collections, assumed by one and all to be genuine. He must get quite a kick out of it.”

“How can that happen? Aren't paintings examined by experts?”

“Of course they are. But famous paintings come with a pedigree, a history, a string of learned opinions and endorsements, rather like precedent in law. When a painting has been accepted as genuine for a number of years, that's a very powerful recommendation. Experts are only human; they believe experts. If they're not expecting to see a fake—and if the fake's good enough—there's a better than even chance they won't spot it. Under normal circumstances, I'd have said Denoyer's Cézanne was genuine, because it's so beautifully done. But thanks to you, dear boy, I had my eye skinned for a fake.” Cyrus paused. “And a fake is what I saw.”

Andre shook his head. “The whole thing sounds like the emperor's new clothes.”

Cyrus smiled, and waved his empty glass at the flight attendant. “Something like that. People see what they're conditioned to expect. What makes our little investigation unusual is that the owner is in on the scam. Denoyer wants the original to disappear, for whatever reasons, but he can't do that by himself. Apart from our friend Franzen, and the old boy who looks after Cap Ferrat, there must be others involved. Not just family. Outside people.”

Cyrus stopped to charm the flight attendant as she poured more champagne, and his earlier comments about coincidence came to Andre's mind. “I never thought to tell you,” he said, “but when I got back from that trip to the Bahamas, my apartment had been ransacked, and all the photographic stuff was taken—cameras, film, files of my old transparencies. But nothing else.”

The Pine eyebrows registered surprise. “Well, well. And then your editor stopped taking your calls.”

“Camilla?” Andre laughed. “Somehow I can't see her sliding down the fire escape with a sack of cameras.”

“I'm not suggesting she did.” Cyrus stirred his champagne thoughtfully with a plastic swizzle stick. “It's just the timing.”

They parted company after sharing a cab from JFK. Cyrus was to put feelers out among the inhabitants of the
art world, to see if he could get some idea of the forger's whereabouts. Andre had agreed to make another attempt at getting back on speaking terms with Camilla, and as the cab took him into the city he considered the alternatives. It was pointless to go on calling her at work and impossible to call her at home, since she kept her home number a national secret. The ambush in the lobby of the building had been useless. It looked as though the only answer was to surprise her with an early morning frontal assault on her office, cap in hand and claiming to be desperate for work.

The trip with Cyrus had done him good; his hunch had been proved right, and despite the time change he felt alert, ready to move on and find out more. He let himself into his apartment, dropping his bags inside the door as he went over to check the messages on his machine.

“Sweetie, where
are
you? I've been frantic with worry.” It was Camilla, using her best seduction voice, low, throaty, and dripping with insincerity, the voice she always used when she wanted something. “I've called that little girl at your office, who seems to know absolutely nothing. I'm desperate to see you. It's been far, far too long, and I've got some rather exciting news for you. Come out of your burrow and call me.
Ciao
.”

And then:

“Welcome home, traveling man. Guess what? The war's over. Camilla's called twice, and she was almost polite. It must have killed her. Anyway, she says she has a big project for you. Oh, by the way—I didn't tell her where you were. Give me a call, OK?”

Andre looked at his watch, knocked off six hours, and saw that it was just after five. He called the office.

With the first brief exchange out of the way, Andre took a deep breath. “Lulu, I've been thinking, and I've decided that I've been a distant admirer for too long and it's going to stop. No, wait, that's not exactly what I meant to say. What I mean is the distant part is going to stop. I hope. I'd like it to. Well, that is if you … oh, shit. Listen, I can't really explain over the phone. Can I pick you up at six, and we'll have dinner?”

He could hear Lucy's breath, and another phone ringing in the background. “Andre, I have a date.”

“Cancel it.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.” Andre nodded decisively to himself. “Just like that.”

There was a pause that seemed endless.

“Andre?”

“Yes?”

“Don't be late, and don't tell me you're going to the airport.”

Half an hour later, showered and shaved, Andre was walking up West Broadway, whistling and holding a single long-stemmed white rose. One of the regular West Broadway bums, his radar attuned to passersby in such obvious good humor, shuffled up to him and was startled to receive a broad smile and a ten-dollar bill.

It was a few minutes before six when Andre pressed the buzzer, put the stem of the rose between his teeth, and poked his head around the edge of the office door.

Lucy's partner, Stephen, looked up from his desk. “Why, Andre! This is so sudden. I never knew you cared.”

Andre felt himself blushing as he removed the rose from his mouth before coming in. “Where's Lucy?”

Stephen grinned. “Putting on her false eyelashes. She won't be long. How are things?”

Andre heard the door open behind him and turned to see Lucy, in blue jeans and an oversized white turtleneck that set off the chocolate cream of her skin. She looked at the rose in Andre's hand.

“Here,” he said, offering it to her. “Something to go with your sweater.”

Stephen's head swiveled from one serious, intent face to the other. “Too bad, Lucy,” he said. “You missed the entrance.” He turned to Andre. “Is that what they do in France? Chew roses?”

Andre picked up Lucy's coat from the couch and helped her on with it. His fingers brushed the back of her neck as he freed the hair that had become caught under the collar. He swallowed hard. “Remind me to send your charming partner a large bouquet of poison ivy.”

Stephen watched them leave with a smile on his face, pleased to see that what had been obvious to him months ago was finally getting somewhere. He picked up the phone to call his girlfriend. He decided to take her somewhere nice for dinner, maybe bring her some flowers. Romance was contagious.

Cyrus Pine had started working through his list of contacts within minutes of getting home. But although he had a more or less respectable story, the respectable art dealers of his acquaintance were all giving him the same line. We handle only genuine work, they told him, and he could almost see their noses in the air. He knew perfectly well that most of them had been fooled at least once, but reminding them of it would get him nowhere. He gave up on them and started looking through his Rolodex for someone who lived closer to reality. He had almost given up when he reached the letter V and saw the name Villiers. He remembered the rumors and the subsequent public disgrace. If anyone could help him, Villiers could.

Villiers had been the darling of the eighties, when money was sluicing through the New York art world in a seemingly endless torrent. Thin, pinstriped, English, and distantly related to the aristocracy (a connection that became miraculously closer with every year he spent in America), he had been blessed with an infallible eye. The auction houses consulted him. Museums deferred to him. Collectors invited him, somewhat apprehensively, to visit their homes. He was, so everyone told him, destined for eminence, for seats on the boards of foundations and museums, and, eventually, for the rewards that come to important cogs in the establishment wheel.

Eventually wasn't good enough. Eventually couldn't compete with immediate cash, and Villiers began to do favors for owners of paintings whose provenance was open to some doubt. His approval was like money in the
bank to the owners, who showed their gratitude in a time-honored and practical way. Villiers prospered and then became greedy, certainly no sin in the art world. But worse, he became overconfident and careless. And, perhaps worse still, ostentatious. His duplex, his vintage Bentley, his place in the Hamptons, his stable of blondes, and his parties featured in the gossip columns. Art's golden boy, they called him, and he lapped it up.

His fall was swift and noisy, being reported in the media with the special relish that journalists display when they catch a man more fortunate than themselves with his pants down. It started when a seventeenth-century painting that Villiers had declared genuine was sold for several million dollars. The new owner, at the request of his insurance broker, had the painting tested. There were doubts, then more tests. These suggested that the nails securing the canvas to its stretcher were eighteenth century and that the canvas itself was even more recent. The painting was deemed to be a dud. Word got out, and other owners who had acquired Villiers-approved paintings joined the rush to the laboratories for scientific tests. More counterfeits came to light. In a matter of weeks, the golden boy turned into a suspected swindler.