Authors: Chris Knopf
An hour later he wrote back: “All in Greenwich? Interesting. Your list is fine. I can add a few, but the top spot is undisputed—Esme “Nitzy” Bellefonte and Aidan Pico. Pico’s a big money guy—surprise, surprise. Nitzy’s family founded the Bellefonte Gallery in Greenwich, based on a collection of Abstract Expressionism hoovered up by her grandfather back in the fifties, when the rest of the world figured those guys for a bunch of drunks throwing paint around the Hamptons (a fair description, in my opinion). It’s now a public museum, but the endowment barely covers expenses. Nitzy has greater ambitions than that. She’s constantly raising funds to buy contemporary works, believing she’s the rightful heir to her grandfather’s legendary taste. Which, to be fair, she mostly is. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you ask.”
I wrote, “I want to throw a party. You’re invited.”
“Of course,” he wrote back, “I’ll pick out my party dress.”
I went back online and read about the dazzling Nitzy and Aidan, their museum and ongoing fund-raising activities. There was very little to distinguish one event from another, though themed events, such as, “Come As Your Favorite Villain,” “Night at the Opera” or “Meet Me at the Forum” seemed to attract larger crowds and deeper engagement with the cause. I shared these insights with Natsumi.
“Absolutely brilliant, Alex. You’ve totally diagnosed the socio-ritualistic group dynamic of American wealth-class philanthropy.”
“I detect a bit of sarcasm.”
“Though I’ve never thrown a high society fund-raiser, I’ve been witness to some really cool events at the casino. So it’s right up my alley. Even if I think such things are the height of the superficial, the banal, even reactionary and decadent.”
“Okay. Remember, you have to pick a new name. A pseudonym.”
“I’ve always liked the name Eiko, though not as much as Charlene.”
“Charlene?”
“I grew up in New London. Whatcha expect?”
“Charlene it is. Charlene Grenouille.”
“So we’re married,” she said.
“Better to uphold the artifice.”
“I’ll need a ring. And so will you.”
“We can do that,” I said.
“And an engagement ring,” she said. “Can’t have the artifice without it.”
“You’re really running up the tab.”
“You told me already, if you’re going for a con job, you gotta go all in.”
“Would you mind doing the buying?” I asked.
“I’d hate it, but oh well.”
Natsumi’s willingness to take on these onerous tasks just made me appreciate her that much more. Better yet, it allowed me to refocus my attention on a matter even less within my specific area of expertise: contemporary art.
Bias is the enemy of research. People like me are not only trained to have an open mind, we are priest-like in our devotion to impartiality. You can’t do the job any other way. I had never studied a single subject without coming away filled with surprises. This taught me that you just don’t know until you learn. So be open to any and all possibility. There was no better preparation for an exploration of the art world.
Having recently ranked professional assassins and Greenwich philanthropists, I felt well prepared to accomplish the same with living fine artists. A few hours later, I determined the only reliably agreed-upon criterion was gross sales, though financial success seemed as sure a way to attract derision and condescension as praise. After poring over countless images and representations, I could see the problem. While competition between artists and their patrons was undoubtedly fierce, constraints imposed by external authorities—like the nineteenth-century French Academy—were in little evidence. Variety of form and content, style and subject matter was limitless, and to my innocent and untrained eye, spanning the utterly absurd to the heartbreakingly sublime.
Many of these works had found their way to the Bellefonte Gallery, and thus provided me some focus. One artist in particular seemed favored, a North African living in Milan named Joshua Etu who created sculptures from woven strands of electrical wire. I liked these quite a bit. Less so the cartoon versions of historical figures a woman named Shree made from fabric recovered from people who had died in homeless shelters. On the other hand, Englishman Wilson Franklin’s photo-realistic paintings of blank-faced children, in color within black and white scenes—riding the underground, grocery shopping, watching the Royal Family’s motorcade—were strangely compelling.
“I
THINK
you should come with me,” I said to Natsumi.
“Where?”
“To see Nitzy Bellefonte and her husband Aidan.”
“I know nothing about art.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll carry that burden. You can stick to social climbing.”
“I know less about that.”
“I’ll send you some links. You just have to memorize a few names.”
The day before I had a messenger hand-deliver an engraved note to Nitzy at her home requesting an audience at the gallery. The note said my wife and I were new to Greenwich, that we were renting the old Rockefeller place in town while we looked for a place to buy, and were hoping to find an appropriate introduction into the local community. I proposed we hold a significant fund-raising event with the gallery as sole beneficiary. Naturally, I would seed the donations with a sixfigure gift of my own.
The messenger left with a return note that somehow seemed eager and respectfully restrained at the same time. The appointment was for the next day at three in the afternoon.
“What’s going to happen when everyone starts googling us?”
“They won’t find anything.”
“And that’s not suspicious?” she asked.
“Sure it is. It’s also intriguing and suitable to the purpose.”
“Which is?”
“To attract the attention of Austin Ott, the Third.”
“It’s a big risk,” she said.
“Big risk, big reward or big bust. It’s the kind of thing that happens in Greenwich every day.”
T
HE
B
ELLEFONTE
Gallery, identified by a discreet brass plaque, was in a neighborhood of old mansions captured behind hedges and thick brick walls. A few of the places had been subdivided, sprouting more modern, but no less grand examples of the form. The land surrounding the gallery had remained intact, a matter of pride for Nitzy as revealed on the museum’s web site.
Before we stepped out of the Mercedes, Natsumi asked, “What’s my budget?”
“For what?”
“The party.”
“Less than five million dollars,” I said.
“I don’t need that much.”
“How much do you need?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand,” she said.
“Okay. Spread it around. We need the friends.”
The gallery officially closed at three, which explained the meeting hour. The door was open, and we were greeted by Nitzy Bellefonte in a small room with a ticket counter and a hardwood rack filled with art books and histories of the gallery.
Her hair was such a perfect blend of black and grey it seemed impossible to be artificially colored, though I knew from my Google search that she was thirty-nine years old. Her features looked larger than in my memory of her photographs, and her skin had a more olive cast. Her face was youthful and brightly alert, like a terrier on the hunt. She wore a plain sweater dress and flats, though it was hard to miss the cluster of diamond rings when she held out her hand to Natsumi.
“Charlene, you are darling.”
Natsumi, unfazed, gave her a little bow.
“Thank you. That means a lot coming from you.”
“And you’re Auric,” she said, giving my hand a sturdy shake.
“It’s a pleasure, Ms. Bellefonte.”
“Nitzy, please. Would you care for a brief tour before we chat?”
What could have been brief turned into nearly two hours as Nitzy shared with us not only the significance of each work, but the circumstances surrounding its acquisition. Much of this involved cagey negotiations and some dazzling escapades on the part of her grandfather, and then subsequently Aidan and herself. It was hard to call this outsized pride since her delivery was so charming and unburdened by self-awareness. Natsumi and I did little to discourage her, since with every step through the museum she became warmer and more loquacious. By the time we reached the comfortable leather seating in her office, all of us armed with a delicate glass of light white wine, the atmosphere positively glowed with good will.
“So, please, you must tell me what you’re thinking about, event-wise,” she said as she perched on the edge of her seat, giving the hem of her skirt a symbolic adjustment, leaving plenty of shapely, bare thigh for all of us to enjoy.
“Fire and Ice,” said Natsumi, after allowing the suspense to build for a few seconds. “Of course it will be optional, but we’ll ask each couple to dress in either fiery gold, or icy silver. Jewelry will naturally be optional.”
She and Nitzy shared a giggle over the absurd notion that any woman would come unbejeweled, given such a blatant excuse.
“Inside the house,” Natsumi went on, “we’ll have the big room with the walk-in fireplace just ablaze in gold and red décor. Here’s where we’ll have drinks and chitchat before moving to the banquet room for dinner. I think if we run two tables, we can comfortably seat fifty. The red and gold theme continues on—did you know you can burn torches that are absolutely nontoxic? Then, after dinner, we retire to this gigantic glassed-in room. We’ll open all the doors and the ceiling vents and have ice sculptures on a big center table, plenty of aperitifs and gelato—I know a place in the city that delivers direct from Venice. So what do you think?”
She looked at Nitzy like a candidate for the junior high cheerleading squad.
“Oh, Charlene, I just love it to death. You are so clever.”
I breathed a hidden sigh of relief. Whether she meant it or not, the local society’s chief arbiter of taste had to be behind the concept.
“You are such a lucky man,” she added, looking at me. I tried to look modestly prideful.
Nitzy went on to discuss a host of logistical details I wouldn’t have considered in a million years. Natsumi did a brilliant job engaging in the discussion without betraying her own bewilderment. I just hoped she’d remember it all.
We wrapped up with a celebratory glass of wine, and Nitzy escorted us to the door and the darkening evening. She took me by the elbow as we walked, and in a voice drenched with apology, asked me, “What should I tell people you do, Auric?”
“Strategic commodity trading,” I said without hesitation. I stopped and turned to her. “It’s important for Charlene’s sake that we’re welcomed into the community. But I strive for privacy in business matters. There is very little public information. I have people who do a daily scrub.”
Nitzy seemed relieved by the first part of my answer, and captivated by the second.
“Of course. I completely understand.”
As soon as we passed through the open gate and out to the street, Natsumi let out a sound somewhere between a whoop and a laugh.
“We’re in the club, Alex. We’re in the secret club.”
“Not yet. We need to get through the party.”
“No prob. She told me everything I had to know. Gave it to me on a silver platter. Silver and gold. Hey, what was that?” she said. “I think I saw a little smile. I did. Don’t try to deny it. I made you laugh.”
“I’m practicing a repertoire of responses appropriate to the party environment.”
“No, you aren’t. I made you laugh. Ha.”
It felt odd to be infected by Natsumi’s good cheer, her natural lightness of being. But there it was. Despite all my best efforts, she persistently disrupted my standard internal dialog, my relentless drive for focus and calculation.
I didn’t know what constituted the bigger surprise. That she had that effect on me, or that I liked it so much.
Though perhaps the biggest surprise of all—I didn’t care.
C
HAPTER
20
B
efore we got to the big house I called Little Boy.
“Sorry, Mr. G., he don’t want to deal direct. It’s Jenkins or nothing. This doesn’t surprise me. Three Sticks is one private dude.”
“Thanks for trying. You might hear from him anyway in a few weeks. Just a heads-up.”
“You got some kind of scam in mind?”
“I might,” I said.
“You want some help?”
“Maybe. Don’t take this the wrong way, but why would you want to help me?”
“This Three Sticks, he piss me off. I stay out of his way, he stay outta mine. But I put myself out there in the world. There’s risk in that, but it’s the honorable thing to do. So he’s too good to meet with me, to sit down and talk? It’s insulting. You, Mr. G., you watch your own ass, but you have respect. I can see it. Maybe I’m too sensitive, but you try being a Muslim in Bosnia, part of a people almost wiped out like the Jews in the big war. You don’t know how disrespect can turn into death so fast you never see it coming.”
“I know how death can surprise,” I said, despite myself.
“So that’s that. Call me if you need anything. And more of that gold would be a nice thing. It’s got my distribution all hot and wet.”
A
T TEN
in the morning the next day, Nitzy called to ask if we’d stop by her house that evening to meet her husband.
“I’ve told him all about you. He insists.”
“Of course,” I told her. “What could be more delightful?”
We filled up the rest of the day drafting a plan of attack for the party. It was a month away, leaving precious little time for such an ambitious event. Even so, it felt like a dangerous expenditure of time. Natsumi was helpful in assuaging these fears, showing herself a fine party planner, even with no experience, as well as a woman of firm, steady resolve.
Our Colombian caretakers, Jorge and Adelita Costello, pressed into extra service by Natsumi, were of priceless value. Neither of us had ever managed employees, so we played it by ear, applying a strategy of excessive appreciation enhanced by overcompensation. The Costellos responded as one would hope.
This is why they were still there in the big foyer on tall stepladders—working well into the evening stringing a giant woven red and gold boa along the crown molding—when we left to meet Nitzy Bellefonte and Aidan Pico.