Chasing Cezanne (23 page)

Lucy grinned at the three faces turned toward her. “You know what?” she said. “I think I'll have the duck.”

By the time the waiter came to take their order, Franzen had assumed the responsibility of orchestrating everyone's meal, a task that he performed with huge enthusiasm and a great deal of knowledge. As he, the waiter, and the sommelier matched recipes with vintages, theirs became by far the liveliest table in the restaurant, a fact that Andre pointed out to Franzen when the ordering was finally done.

“It's very simple,” the Dutchman said. “Most people
come to restaurants like this for the wrong reason. They come to impress, to show that they can afford to spend a few thousand francs on dinner. And because money is holy to them, they behave as though they're in church.” He joined his hands together and looked up to the ceiling, an ancient cherub. “No laughter, not too much wine, no
gusto
. Now, for the waiters, for the sommelier, this is not amusing. You know? Where is the satisfaction of serving food and wine to people who are more interested in price than taste?
Pah!
” He drained his glass and winked at the waiter for more.

“But us, we are different. We are here to eat, to drink, to enjoy. We are enthusiasts. We believe in
joie de manger
, we are an audience for the chef. This is appreciated by everyone who works here. Already, they find us sympathetic. By the end of dinner, they'll be buying us drinks.”

Franzen's attitude was irresistibly contagious, and helped along by an uninterrupted flow of Burgundy and Bordeaux to accompany some of the most exquisite cooking in Paris, the four of them quickly fell into a comfortable camaraderie. Cyrus bided his time, watching the wine and the company doing their work on Franzen, waiting for an appropriate moment to get down to the purpose of their meeting.

It came as they were resting after the main course, and it was Franzen himself who brought it up.

“The duck has made me wish I could eat here every night,” he said, dabbing his mustache carefully with his napkin. When he continued, it was as though he were talking
to himself, musing out loud. “A standing reservation, the same table each night, the wine already in the bucket, my little preferences known, from time to time a visit from the chef. How agreeable that would be.” He tucked his napkin carefully back into the collar of his shirt, patted it smooth, and, with the air of a man who had reached a decision, leaned toward Cyrus. “With an ambition like that, I shall need to work. What is it you want? Our mutual friend in New York didn't give me any details when I spoke to him. Tell me.”

Cyrus, conditioned by many years' experience of the tender sensibilities and rampant egos of the art world, started to feel his way cautiously, anxious to reassure the Dutchman that his status as an artist was respected. Franzen shook his head, smiling, and held up one hand.

“My friend,” he said. “You're not talking to Picasso. I'm a businessman with a brush.”

“Delighted to hear it,” said Cyrus. “In that case, I'll get right to it. I need a Cézanne.”

Franzen's eyebrows shot up. “How extraordinary. I hadn't done him since '92. Now, this year, I've just finished my second, and here you are wanting another one. The old boy must be in vogue. It sometimes happens like that.”

Before Cyrus had a chance to respond, the waiter arrived to attend to the matter of dessert, and Franzen was immediately distracted. “Go to the back of the menu,” he said. “There's something you must try.” As the others followed his instructions, Franzen went on: “Traditionally, you have cheese with red wine, but take a look at this—
Camembert with Calvados, Epoisses with Marc de Bourgogne, Vieux Brebis with Manzanilla. The combinations are magnificent. Such imagination! Such research!” Shaking his head, Franzen continued to gaze at the list of nearly thirty different cheeses, each with a specially chosen liquid accompaniment. It was some time before he surrendered the menu and returned to the subject of Cézanne.

“I have a great admiration for him,” he said, “and not just for his work. Can I trouble you to pass the bottle, and I'll tell you my favorite Cézanne story.” He poured out the last of the Bordeaux, held his glass to the light, sighed, and drank. “Like many artists, he was often unappreciated during his lifetime and frequently criticized by people who weren't fit to clean his brushes. This was down in Aix, as I'm sure you know, not exactly the capital of the world as far as painting was concerned. Anyway, there was an exhibition of his work—well attended, as usual, by the local critics—and Cézanne found himself standing behind one of them. The man was droning on about one of the paintings, getting more offensive by the minute, and then, after one particularly ignorant comment, Cézanne could restrain himself no longer. He tapped the critic on the shoulder. The man turned around. ‘Monsieur,' said Cézanne, ‘I shit on you.' No answer to that, is there? How I wish I'd seen the critic's face. Ah, here comes the cheese.”

Once they had finished eating, Cyrus, exercising tact combined with a large cognac, managed to steer the increasingly convivial Dutchman back to business. It was agreed that they would all meet with clear heads in the
morning at Franzen's studio to settle the details. After that, said Franzen, it was possible that they might wish to celebrate their new relationship with a little light lunch; he knew just the place. In the meantime, he scribbled down his address in the Rue des Saints-Pères, adding the entry code that would open the main door of the building. In return, Cyrus gave him the number at the Montalembert.

They were the last to leave the restaurant, with an honor guard of three waiters, the sommelier, and the maître d'hôtel to wish them good night. It had been a formidable dinner, and as they helped the Dutchman into a taxi, Cyrus felt that it had achieved as much as he'd hoped. Tonight had made them friends. Tomorrow, with any luck, would make them accomplices.

They drove back to the hotel, warm with wine and drowsy with jet lag. Lucy saw the lights of Saint-Germain as a blur through half-closed eyes and felt her head nodding forward. “Andre? You know that walk we were going to take tonight, over the bridge? Could we do that tomorrow?” There was no reply. “Andre?” Nothing. “Cyrus?”

She caught the cabdriver's eye in the rearview mirror. “
Dodo,
” he said. “All sleeping. Very nice.”

Franzen let himself into his apartment, the familiar smell of oil paint and turpentine cutting through the fumes of alcohol in his head. He walked through the main room, which he used as a studio, to the little galley kitchen and
started to brew coffee. A very charming man, Cyrus Pine, he thought, so unlike Rudolph Holtz. He stared at the percolator, feeling all the old resentments return: Holtz was greedy; he was a bully; he was mean; he was untrustworthy; but, sadly, he was the source of most of Franzen's income, and they both knew it. How pleasant it would be if this new job, for a new and civilized client, led to others. Perhaps tomorrow he would show Pine the two canvases before they were packed up and sent off. Side by side, so the dealer could appreciate the workmanship.

With a cup of coffee and positively the last cognac of the day, Franzen settled into a battered leather armchair and was fishing in his pocket for a cigar, when the phone rang. And didn't stop ringing. Telling himself that one day, maybe even tomorrow, he would buy an answering machine, he lurched across the room and picked up.

“Franzen? This is Holtz. I trust you had an enjoyable dinner with Mr. Pine.”

Franzen yawned. It was always like this with Holtz. He was on your back from the first contact until the time the paint dried—checking, nagging, making sure he was going to get his cut. “Yes, I did. He's a very sympathetic man.”

“What does he want?”

“A Cézanne.”

“I know he wants a Cézanne, for God's sake. Villiers told me that before I called you. Which one is it?”

“I don't know yet.”

Holtz grunted. The painting dictated the price of the fake. How could they have spent the whole evening together
without discussing the job? He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. “When are you going to find out?”

“Tomorrow. They're coming to the studio at ten, and then we'll—”

“They? Who are they? I thought it was just Pine.”

“Oh, no. He brought a couple of others—a young fellow and a girl.”

Holtz felt a tremor of alarm, a goose walking over his grave. “Names—what were their names?”

“Kelly was the man. Andre Kelly. The girl was called Lucy. Don't remember her last name.”

Holtz was silent, only his labored breathing audible.

“Holtz? Are you there?”

“You've got to get out, take the paintings and get out. Tonight. Now.”

“Why? I don't understand.”

Holtz took a breath. When he spoke, it was with the barely restrained impatience of someone trying to reason with a stubborn child. “Take the paintings. Go and check into a hotel. When you've checked in, call and tell me where you are. I'll stay by the phone. Is that clear?”

Franzen looked at his watch. “Do you know what time it is here?”

“For Christ's sake, this is serious. Just do as I say. Now.”

Franzen looked at the dead phone in his hand and shrugged. He had half a mind to ignore the call and go to bed, but professional caution got the better of him. Whatever else Holtz might be, he wasn't a man who panicked.
And he had said it was serious. Franzen put down the phone and went to fetch the two canvases from their hiding place.

Holtz sat in his study, his tiny feet in their black suede evening pumps tapping an agitated tattoo on the Aubusson. That goddamned photographer. What the hell was he doing in Paris? He should have been in Hong Kong.

“Sweetie?” Camilla stood in the doorway, dripping with silver bugle beads, dramatic in her most serious makeup
de soir
, ready to give her all in support of the charity of the evening. “Sweetie? We're going to be late.”

“Come in and shut the door. We're not going anywhere.”

AN exasperated and suddenly sober Franzen walked quickly down the quiet midnight street toward the alley where he rented a lock-up garage. He carried an overnight bag in one hand, a large aluminum art case in the other. Sharing the case, swaddled in layers of foam rubber and bubble wrap, were two canvases—
Woman with Melons
, by Paul Cézanne, and
Woman with Melons
, by Nico Franzen. Combined value: sixty million dollars and change.

Normally, the idea of wandering alone through the backstreets of Paris by night with such valuable baggage would have caused the Dutchman considerable apprehension. But as he turned into the gloom of the alley, any nervousness he might otherwise have felt was pushed aside by a growing irritation, some of it directed at himself. He had never liked Holtz, never trusted him. The saying in the business was that if you shook hands with Rudolph Holtz you should count your fingers afterward. And yet here he was doing exactly as Holtz told him—walking away from a warm bed and the prospect of a profitable job, a puppet being jerked around by a little man with galloping paranoia.
What could be so serious? Pine had been checked out; he was a genuine dealer, well known in the art world. Suspected of being honest, too. Villiers had made a point of saying so. Would a man like that shop someone to the police? Of course not.

Franzen stopped in front of the garage door and fumbled with the padlock, watched by a cat with ragged ears and wide, inquisitive eyes. He hissed at it, remembering the time his neighbor's cat had got into his studio and sharpened its claws on a perfectly acceptable Seurat while the paint was still drying. He hated cats. No respect for art.

He pulled open the doors and switched on the light, aiming a kick at the cat as it crouched to jump on the dustsmeared hood of a Citroën DS. Stacked against the garage walls were dozens of old canvases and stretchers arranged more or less by age, the spoils of a hundred visits to flea markets and house clearance sales, the diligent forger's raw material. The big man squeezed his bulk along the side of the car, loaded the two cases into it, started up, and pulled out of the garage. The clatter of the idling diesel engine echoed against the wall of the alley as he went back to turn out the light and lock up. The cat gave him a reproachful look from a safe distance. Franzen set off in search of a bed.