Cheyney Fox (41 page)

She was famished, her mouth watered for the hot rolls and fresh butter, the taste of rye and caraway seed, the bowl of hot black coffee that was being rushed to the long oak table, white from years of scrubbing and ingrained flour, where she sat. The other chairs at the table remained empty. They all knew the drill expected when Kurt Walbrook’s wife or their son visited the kitchen. A greeting, the old black coffeepot on the table, then back to the baking. Except for the dash to the table with samples just out of the ovens, until one of them cried out enough. They especially liked having her there, the way she sat quietly and took in the theater of the baker’s kitchen, hungrily ate all their creations set before her, but let them get on with their work.

Cheyney ate two rolls, dripping with butter, and drank half a bowl of coffee before she reached for the telephone Klaus had placed on the table near her, all part of the drill. She always asked if she could use it to call the Schloss for someone to pick her up. She dialed, the telephone rang several times.

“Hello.”

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Hello, you,” he said.

His voice warmed her, and for a second she thought that she might love him more than she realized or wanted to. “This is not the way I meant to wake you, I had something more exotic in mind, something more intimate,” she said provocatively.

“Promises, promises. Are you all right?”

“Never better. Yesterday was marvelous. Last night with
you, sublime, more than sublime. And, I have started today with the dawn on the mountain. Come and have breakfast with me.”

“Then you’re at the bakery in the village.”

“Right.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can. Bye.”

Her reaction was quick. “No, Takashi, don’t hang up. Are you there?” she asked somewhat anxiously.

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence while Cheyney recovered from her surprise. Her reluctance to let him go; the relief she felt when she heard his voice still there on the other end of the telephone. She could hardly credit the impulse that now made her say, “Takashi,” with lowered voice and back turned to the busy kitchen. Looking out the window and up toward the mountain, she whispered, “I love you.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“In such a powerful and special way, that I never think to tell you.” Again there was silence between them.

“Takashi.”

“I’m still here.”

“We’ve been blessed by the gods.”

“They show taste. I’m on my way.” The telephone clicked and the dial tone whined in Cheyney’s ear. She replaced the receiver. Smiling and feeling outrageously happy, she turned back to her super-calorie breakfast.

She refilled her blue-and-white glazed pottery coffee bowl and, holding it in both hands, lifted it to her lips and sipped. She liked the heat warming her palms, the steam teasing the tip of her nose. Gunther carried over to her a huge wooden paddle with a long handle that he used to feed the bread in and out of the old-fashioned deep oven. He gently shook a delectable-looking twisted roll of sweetened dough filled with a delicious poppy seed paste. She set about trying to detach a piece of it. But it was so hot it burned her fingertips. She fanned it with her hand impatiently and thought about Takashi.

Several samplings later, she heard the Harley Davidson motorcycle echoing hollowly through the still-deserted village streets and smiled to herself. Then it roared into the cul-de-sac. She turned to face the rear entrance of the bakery and
watched him walk through the door. How handsome and sexy her lover looked in his brindle-brown tweed trousers, his white, crew-neck cotton T-shirt showing through his open, black leather Armani jacket. The unbearably sensuous Oriental face.

Their eyes met at once. She watched him reluctantly divert his gaze to greet Gunther and hand him a box of Havana cigars, toss a rolled-up parcel of motor magazines to Heinrich, and kiss a giggling Gerta’s flour-covered hand. Pink with delighted embarrassment, the baker’s wife handed him a coffee bowl and he walked toward the old oak table, and the woman he loved.

Takashi sat in the chair adjacent to Cheyney. She poured him a cup of coffee and watched him slice into a small round whole meal roll and spread it thick with butter, cut it in half, and place her share on the plate in front of her, while he bit into his, with strong, perfect white teeth.

“Even your teeth look young,” she said, teasingly. He laughed.

“Never mind my being young in the tooth. Those were pretty nice things you said to me on the telephone. Would you care to expand on that theme? Or shall I just say thank you for last night and my life with you?”

“We’re getting too sentimental.”

“Possibly.”

“Well, I am. I have done nothing since I called you but think back, remembering the day we met. It was ten years ago, just about this time of year.”

“No, Cheyney, not just about this time of year, exactly ten years ago today. I have your anniversary present in the inside pocket of my jacket, but discretion forbids me to give it to you here. Outside, later.”

Cheyney reached under the table and found his hand and squeezed it. “You’re so good, you never forget the extra special days or things in my life.” She deliberately switched back to memory, wanting to fudge what was fast becoming an emotional moment for them both. “You were so very young, practically a boy. Handsome, and so full of surprises. In that you have not changed one bit. It was at Christie’s auction house in London. I was with Kurt, you were alone, seated next to me.”

Gunther arrived with his paddle and eased four
schnekken
- a tricorn bit of buttery pastry, spread with cinnamon, sultanas,
and walnuts, rolled over itself several times and turned in on the corners in the fashion of a croissant — onto the oak table to cool. Its pungent scent smothered reminiscence. What sweet perfume. Cheyney and Takashi remained silent while Cheyney broke off chunks of onion bread and buttered them. They ate and drank their strong black coffee with gusto, each thinking about that day and how their relationship had come to be as strong and uncomplicated as it seemed on this anniversary.

They had both been bidding on the same picture, a Jim Dine. Not for the first time that day had they been competing against each other for a work of art. After they had outbid several other dealers, they had fought it out between themselves for a 1962 Andy Warhol,
Soup Cans
, oil on canvas. Takashi got that after Cheyney had reluctantly dropped out. She ran him aground and paid a record price for a Hans Hoffman and a Motherwell. But she lost a 1960 Jasper Johns to him and a Roy Lichtenstein she had sorely wanted. He was buying up the American icons of the sixties, just what she was after. She was tense and angry, losing them to him. She bid again, determined that the Jim Dine painting would be hers. Then Kurt bent forward and across her and tapped the young man on the sleeve, for his attention, and addressed them both.

“Don’t you think you are both being just a little shortsighted? Would it not be to your mutual advantage to become partners now and sort the details out later?”

It was then that Cheyney Fox and Takashi Ishiguro looked at each other for the first time. She was angry with Kurt for interfering and being so right. And clever. And even more angry with her opponent when he turned out to be not a shrewd dealer, but a slip of a lad with an inscrutable, passive, Oriental beauty, a boy no more than eighteen years old, clever and determined beyond his years.

The auctioneer was pushing on, working the crowd and the telephone bidders to enter into the action, looking for another record price for an American Pop Art painting. The tension in the room was augmented by the temporary silence of the two top bidders. But it was more than the pressure of having to make a decision quickly, before the gavel fell and the painting was knocked down, or having the entire room of world-famous dealers, collectors, museum directors watching the two relatively
unknown private collectors battling it out that made Cheyney raise her hand, ready to shake Takashi’s in a silent agreement. It had been something quite inexplicable, an inner sense of rightness. And when he respectfully bowed his head to her, she had no doubts that she had met a most extraordinary young man who would be an admirable partner.

“Shall you complete our first transaction? I will take on the next one, if there is to be a next one this afternoon” were his first words to her.

That evening the three of them celebrated their unorthodox purchase of nine paintings and their partnership by dining in Claridge’s, where both the Walbrooks and Takashi Ishiguro were staying. They agreed to remain partners rather than divide their purchases and for each to take possession of half. Every year to exchange them. They would leave the partnership details to their respective lawyers.

Other than that they learned little about each other that evening: Kurt told Cheyney that Takashi Ishiguro was indeed eighteen years old. The son of one of Japan’s more wealthy industrialists, who was also a renowned collector of art and artifacts. That the Ishiguros were direct descendants of the Shoguns that had ruled Japan in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. That Takashi was a Harvard University student of art history, with a passion for contemporary paintings, which his father unquestioningly financed, fast motorbikes, which his father did not, and an infatuation with Paris and New York, parts of which his father owned.

Takashi, for his part, learned that the couple he met at the auction were the usually reclusive private collectors Kurt Walbrook and his wife, Cheyney Fox. Only that, and the miracle of falling in love.

“A slow love lasts longer. That’s what I kept telling myself, as I walked away from you and Kurt after we had dinner together that night,” said Takashi, standing up and exchanging the empty coffeepot for another from the stove behind Cheyney.

He poured some of the steaming liquid into Cheyney’s bowl, and, seeing everyone in the kitchen preoccupied, he placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it for a brief moment before he walked behind her and took his seat. “During the following two years, when I stayed away from you, and the five years
subsequent to that, when I decided that it was better to love both you and Kurt than not to be near you at all, that thought became a philosophy. And not a bad one. It served me well. Those five years were some of the happiest of my life. The three of us traveling together, building our collection together, being part of Taggart’s growing up. It was all happy, heady stuff. It enhanced my life, and allowed me the freedom and security to build my career as an art historian, and my art galleries, and indulge myself in playing at art investment with you in those galleries you backed in New York and London.

“Of course, I never stopped wanting you in the erotic way I knew Kurt had you. But knowing that was impossible, I had made up my mind never to suffer for it. That decision only honed my desire for you to even a finer edge. Kurt was aware of how much I loved you both. I always suspected that he knew as well how much I wanted you in the way we are together now. But I was certain of it when, as the years passed and the three of us became almost inseparable, you learned to love me and want me. There were times when it showed in your eyes.”

“Don’t. Stop. No more.”

“Why? It’s been a long love and a good love, and we have every reason to be pleased with ourselves for it. We were never unfaithful to Kurt. In spite of all we knew about him, we still allowed ourselves to remain a part of his life. He was such an extraordinary man he charmed us into cherishing him more than our love for each other. That Viennese charm was his lethal weapon, it always got him what he wanted. It’s probably true that loving him was not a bad thing, it was character-building.

“Listen, Cheyney, it wouldn’t be an anniversary unless we included him in some way. Now we have. Yesterday was his big day, with the dedication of the museum to him. Today we’ve recognized Kurt and what he meant in our lives, and that’s enough. This is our day. Come on, let’s go, I want to give you your gift and make love to you once more before we shift into world games, art games, role games. You,
numero uno
, first lady of the art world, the maker, breaker, of the American art market, the beautiful aggressive art wizard, famous for her inspiration, ‘paint Campbell’s soup cans, paint money, Andy Warhol,’ her gallery takeovers, her museums.
And me, the Japanese international playboy, art historian, collector/dealer, sometime partner and associate of the infamous Cheyney Fox, the sought-after bachelor, and your all-the-time lover.”

He stood up and she followed, laughing. She whispered, “No wonder we love each other, we know how much our roles mean to us, and, more important, bless each other for them.”

Twenty thousand feet up over the Atlantic Ocean and going west, destination New York City, the silver private jet pushed through an empty band of space, a still blue sky above and clouds pink with sunset below. Cheyney Fox, not quite lost in the sky’s natural beauty, listened to the ringing of the telephone she held to her ear. A click.

“May I speak to David Rosewarne, please. Cheyney Fox calling.”

Chapter 36

C
heyney and Takashi arrived from the triumphant opening of the Museum Schloss Garmisch-Konigsberg with high hopes for her success in becoming America’s first secretary of the arts. The last two years had taught her well how to live with the sudden invasions of fame into her life — fame in the world of art, that is. But she certainly was not prepared for the unimaginable euphoria generated by the support she was getting for her nominations.

Cables arrived from all over the world, dozens of them every day. Her gallery’s telephone was besieged. The exhibition of Four New Painters on the first floor of the multi-floored gallery was packed with people. Every work of art sold on the first
day, the day following her nomination breaking in the newspapers.

Gallery Two, on the second floor, had a showing of Abstract Expressionist paintings. It included Mark Rothkos, Robert Motherwells, Franz Klines, several by Acton Pace never seen before, Clyfford Stills. The queues pressed all day at the door. It was the same in the Cheyney Fox Gallery Three, to see the sculptures of Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, and Pablo Picasso.

Cheyney herself was surrounded by the sycophants of the art world, hundreds of instant friends, associates, colleagues. She was watched closely by David Rosewarne, whom she had gone to see immediately on her return from Austria and to whom she supplied a detailed resume of her life and work, anything she thought relevant to his job of protecting her. Mud was going to be slung if she was standing for public office. It had not been an easy few hours. But as David Rosewarne pointed out, “Your life, from the day you accepted the nomination, has become an open book. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, right now.”

Taggart’s face suddenly loomed up in front of her: Eton, and their picnic only a few days before. They had taken a family vote, and she wouldn’t dream of letting her son or herself down. “Go for it, Mom,” rang in her ears. She had smiled at David and said, “I’ve got all my pots bubbling on the burners. Some may boil over and mess the stove, and it may be hotter than I may like. But I’m not about to run away from it.”

From a short distance, Senator Harvey also kept a close watch on Cheyney’s progress, lobbying whenever and wherever he could discreetly influence. And Judd Whyatt, whose determination that she should win was prompted solely by a belief that she was right for the job, with his influence and quick, clever mind, played guardian more closely than anyone. He was their key troubleshooter. He knew not only the law, and the real power brokers in Washington and Europe, but also how best to work the media to his clients’ advantage.

While Washington was making discreet inquiries as to her worthiness, the media, during that first week, fell in love with Cheyney Fox, her wealth, glamour, beauty, success. They revived, of course, the old Warhol connection and made the most
of that. They loved her because she was portrayed as a winner, one who had made it from backfield. Women wanted to look like her, men wanted to capture her. Suddenly everyone wanted her style, to know whose clothes she wore, who did her hair, how she managed her life, her loves. How she combined an erotic charisma with being an enormously successful woman in business. That lasted a week. But a week is a long time in the history of hero-worship. The media got a new angle on Cheyney when the prying into her life, both past and present, was exposed to the world.

Suddenly everyone felt cheated. Her critics multiplied. When Takashi got her a bodyguard, she thought he was overreacting. Her objections faded after a rather messy encounter with an unsuccessful painter and a can of luminous yellow paint. The art gossips said that Acton Pace’s widow was preparing a legal action against her that would scream fraud, cheat, thief. She was blabbing to anyone who would listen. Cheyney had been his greatest patron for the last fifteen years and held the largest collection of his works.

The winds began to blow against Cheyney. The press was suddenly filled with the story of the widow’s claim that Cheyney Fox had manipulated him and the prices of his paintings. That she had stolen them from the man when he was mentally unbalanced. That was bad, but there was worse to come. The widow Pace announced to the press that she would sue for the paintings Cheyney owned, which grew in value daily. She even went on television to insinuate in an interview that Cheyney Fox was instrumental in driving Acton Pace to the final solution. His grisly suicide was raked back into brief media life.

Cheyney managed to remain calm. David Rosewarne and Judd Whyatt were fielding the nastier accusations. When Washington blew cold, Judd Whyatt got on the telephone and spoke with them. He did not tell Cheyney what was said, but Washington ignored the press and stuck by her. They simply pursued their own investigation into her affairs.

Andrew Schwartzkopf — influential New York critic — came out against her. He claimed there were others better qualified in the arts to hold such a position. Then there was a less important, but more commercial critic, the sort who gets to the nonintellectuals, a ladies’ glossy-magazine journalist called
Anya Hour. She managed to mix being very dumb with being very powerful. She got lots of coverage, by innuendo about how Cheyney Fox had got to where she was through her smart looks and masculine backers.

The top art critic in the United States, Richard Windus, wrote an article for
Time
entitled:

David Rosewarne’s visit to Richard Windus was over. He stood up to take his leave. The critic showed him out of his apartment with great cordiality. David was there because the article had provoked a rash of insinuations in the press that they had colluded with each other. Some said it cost her a million dollars, others she would soon appear as his mistress. Yet others that the writer had been promised at least a directorship in her galleries.

David had prepared a series of letters requiring retractions. If no retraction, then they’d sue, and he was there as a courtesy to discuss the problem with Richard Windus. He would offer the critic his services on Cheyney’s behalf if Windus wanted to join with them in setting the record straight. Windus thanked them for the courtesy. He would think it over.

During the several weeks that passed, the controversy raged and Cheyney stayed quiet and held on tight. But she thought the worst was yet to come. When the media would latch on to the death of her husband Kurt, and the terms of his will, by which she and her son were enriched at a terrible price. The ill-gotten gains of her husband’s life had become hers: treasures, among which she could not distinguish those that were marked by blood and violence from those honestly acquired.
Any one of them she contemplated might have behind it a long tangle of deals that originated somewhere back in the past with theft and murder.

The passage of time might seem to have conferred respectability on her husband and his collection. Here she was, his heir, about to be honored. Yet her very prominence in the world of art might be based on that great rape and murder of all the values of civilization by the Third Reich. Her husband had dealt with the supporters, heroes, and profiteers of the crumbling Reich, men who were still unrepentant Nazis amid the comforts of a civilization rescued from Nazism, and now the world might get to know that.

What a field day her enemies and the press would have with that. How could she unravel it all? Yet if she did not unravel it, there were others who would do so. Cheyney felt she was spiraling toward some kind of disaster.

How many times during those weeks had she thought of Kurt? He seemed to be at her side all through the controversy. He and Taggart. It was their spirit, combining with her own, that made her strong and tall and able never once to flinch. Their love had made her a woman rich in more things than wealth.

During her darkest days in the sixties, she had often wondered what she would do if she ever came face-to-face with Tony Caletti, the bookkeeper who had actually ruined her. When he appeared at the gallery, she didn’t even recognize him.

Takashi was at her side when Katie said there was a scruffy man who insisted on seeing Cheyney and gave his name. Cheyney felt nothing. She just urgently wanted him off her premises. He insisted on coming into her office.

“I always said you’d make it big one day. I guess you’re surprised to see me. Aren’t you even gonna ask me to sit down?”

“No. What do you want?”

“Maybe I don’t want anything.”

“Good, then leave.” She buzzed and asked for Bob and Ray to come in. The two bodyguards were in the room before she even put down the receiver.

“Mr. Caletti is leaving. Would you be kind enough to see him out of the building?”

“Hey, wait a minute. I wanna have a chat with you. Maybe you oughta have a talk with me,” he said menacingly.

“We’ve done this scene before, I don’t intend to do it again. And if you are even thinking of blackmail or selling your true confessions, you would do well to remember this time I have enough money to prosecute you. You could find yourself behind bars for a fair slice of the remainder of your life. Now, out.” Takashi moved menacingly toward Tony Caletti, who fled, Bob and Ray behind him.

Cheyney sat down and laughed until tears appeared brimming in her eyes. Eyes that were not laughing but very sad. She wondered, what other skeleton is going to come rattling out of the closet?

The skeleton was a six-footer. It turned out to be Christopher Corbyn. Although they had not seen each other for years, they had parted on friendly terms. When he appeared at the gallery to ask if they could have lunch together, she should have guessed something was amiss. She could not remember his ever taking her to lunch when they were in love. He was ill-at-ease from the moment they met in one of his upper-Fifth Avenue dowager-duchess’s apartments. So she was prompted to ask, almost immediately, “Christopher, out with it. What’s wrong? Why are you so nervous with me?”

He confessed at once, “I’ve made the most terrible blunder. I feel I have to warn you about it.”

Cheyney felt a sickness right in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean, Christopher?”

“I told the Heads we would have had a grown-up son by now, if you hadn’t chosen to have an abortion. I’m sorry, Cheyney. He especially kept asking about you. What you were like when we were together. It just slipped out.”

“Just slipped out! You shit. Things like that don’t just slip out. How many paintings did he buy, Christopher? Four? Five?”

“Three, actually.”

“You pig. For once you weren’t piggish enough. He’d have bought seven for the news you just gave him. Congress will just love ratifying the nomination of a woman who had
an abortion. It’s ironic that you talk about it now. Why didn’t you have the guts to talk to me about it when it mattered?” Without another word she walked out. She went straight to warn David Rosewarne what was about to surface against her.

But, whatever was thrown at her, Cheyney would not talk to the press, and she kept her low profile. There was just one person she would have to warn about what might be said: Taggart. She would not do that until she could sit him down and tell him her whole Christopher love story. She wanted him to have the truth about the abortion.

Judd arrived at the gallery just after it closed. He always felt a surge of excitement when he entered Cheyney’s gallery on East Fifty-seventh Street, between Madison and Park Avenue. The three floors, each a huge area, had a museum-like quality to them, an excitement that he found in no other gallery in the city. Cheyney exhibited works of art in a way that was unique to her.

The semi-darkness gave the gallery an eerie and sensual feeling. He called out her name as he walked through Gallery One to her office. There he found her still working with Takashi and Katie Spreckles, third in line in the gallery’s hierarchy. All three looked up in surprise.

“Judd, I didn’t expect you. Come in.”

“I know. I took a chance that you would be here. Is it awkward?”

“No, of course not.”

He and Takashi shook hands. Katie received a friendly peck on the cheek, then began to gather up papers.

“No, Katie, do stay, I want to get your view on this along with Cheyney’s and Takashi’s.”

The three sat down in Barcelona chairs of tobacco-colored leather and steel around Cheyney’s glass desk. At times Judd could not help looking on Cheyney less as a client and friend than as an erotically desirable woman. This was one of those times. There are certain women who are provocatively sexual without even trying. Cheyney Fox was one. It was manifested in her every little gesture. She was just as sensual, exciting, and provocative as she had been when they first met way back in the sixties.

“Archibald Head has just had an interview with a reporter from the
Times
. The reporter is a good friend. He says we’d better be prepared for a full frontal attack from Head. He suggests anyone who’s been bankrupt obviously can’t run a business, is obviously unfit for big-scale responsibilities with the country’s art and artifacts. Not to mention the huge sums of money that will be passing through the offices of the Secretary of Arts. I thought I should put you in the picture, so to speak. Ultimately it doesn’t mean much. Just another guy hankering after the job and shooting his big mouth off.

“But what really does mean something, is how Washington evaluates the discretion and calm you are showing with all the muck that’s in the fan. And most especially the way you have managed to stay out of the media and not let yourself be dragged into sensational interviews.

“Gore Kern — he’s lobbying for you in Washington — asked me if we had any strategy for when the heat is really on. Which it will be, because your personal position is not improved by your being at the center of a political issue. There’s a massive controversy building in the media about the very creation of a Secretariat of Art. To say nothing of a federal subsidy for it.