Old Scores (Chris Norgren 3)

Old Scores

Aaron Elkins

Copyright © 1993 by Aaron Elkins

Published by E-Reads. All rights reserved.

www.ereads.com

Acknowledgments

New writers are usually amazed at the willingness of experts from various fields to answer the questions of inquisitive novelists. Sometimes even old writers are amazed. It is with pleasure that I acknowledge my debt to the scholars and authorities who so patiently and good-humoredly helped me (and Chris Norgren) get out of one jam after another.

Georgina Adam, Paris correspondent of
ARTnews,
lucidly explained some of the more inscrutable aspects of the current French art scene; Chiyo Ishikawa, Assistant Curator for European Paintings, Seattle Art Museum, enlightened me on an esoteric sticking point concerning Rembrandt's early career; John Henry Merryman, Sweitzer Professor of Law Emeritus, Stanford Law School, did his formidable best to keep me intellectually honest on issues of forgery and authenticity in art; and Professor John R. Price, School of Law, University of Washington, filled me in on laws of succession, particularly in France, and on several other tricky legal subjects as well. Straightening out my French required three people—Albert Jekenta and Louise Lillard, formerly of the Beverly Hills Unified High School District, and Bob Kirk of Seattle. My sincere appreciation to all.

The Barillot Museum in Dijon is wholly fictional, and is not meant to represent the Dijon Fine Arts Museum, which is indeed very fine.

Chapter 1

"My treat," Tony said, reaching over my extended hand to pick up the check. "This is on me."
 

Oh-oh, I thought. Watch out now.

This is not to imply that Tony Whitehead is a devious type, or one in whom every generous action implies some ulterior motive. It's just that Tony usually doesn't do things without a reason. Sometimes it's to your advantage, sometimes it's not. And it's been my experience that when he picks up the tab—it's not.

Tony is my boss, the director of the Seattle Art Museum (or SAM, as we insiders call it). I'm Chris Norgren, the curator of Renaissance and Baroque art. We were lunching a few blocks from the museum in the stylish, dark-wood elegance of a trendy new dining spot called Palomino. Our table was at a railing overlooking the spectacular glass-and-granite atrium of the Pacific First Centre building four stories below. As befitted a restaurant that described itself as "a Euro-Seattle bistro," Palomino was neoeclectic all the way. The furnishings were vaguely Art Deco, the wall hangings and open brick ovens vaguely Country French, the massive round columns and mauve walls vaguely Aegean.

It was all very handsome and inviting, and certainly of the moment, but it wasn't a choice I would have expected from Tony, who prided himself on ferreting out little hole-in-the-wall "finds" under the Alaskan Freeway. He'd surprised me by suggesting it. And made me wonder what was up.

Not that I didn't trust him, you understand. As a matter of fact, I do trust him. And I like him a lot. He works hard and he has high standards for himself and his staff. He's a skilled administrator and a formidable Trecento scholar, and more than once I'd seen him stand up for his people when the chips were down. He'd been particularly kind to me at a critical time in my life.

All the same, there was an occasional whiff of snake oil in his nature, and he had a history of getting me involved in things I should have known better than to get involved in. Always for the greater good of the Seattle Art Museum, of course, or in the interests of art itself. But not always in the interests of my personal comfort and convenience.

"How was the meal?" he said amiably.

"Delicious," I said. Which was true. I'd had a spit-roasted-chicken pizza, thereby taking advantage in one dish of both the Milanese
girarrosto
that roasted the fowl, and the alder-fired Roman pizza oven. The famous apple-wood-fired oven had made its contribution in the form of bruschetta
,
delicately charred chunks of Italian bread coated with olive oil, garlic, and bits of sun-dried tomato. I hadn't figured out a way to try the hardwood grill, too, but whatever I'd had was excellent.

"How about some dessert?"

"No, thanks."

"Why don't we have some salad? You know, a palate-cleanser."

I agreed. We ordered green salads. Did we wish fresh Gorgonzola and walnuts on them, the black-shirted, black-trousered waitress wanted to know. We didn't. Would we care for another glass of wine?

"Go ahead, Chris," Tony said expansively. "No hurry getting back. We've got all the time in the world."

"No, thanks, Tony. Gee, I wonder why I have this feeling I'm going to need a clear head."

"Ha, ha," he said reassuringly, "not really. Although, you know, there is something I wanted to tell you about. Don't look so edgy, Chris. I think you're going to find this interesting."

I didn't doubt it.

He reached for the bruschetta and tore off a piece. "As it happens, there's a collector who wants to give us one of his paintings," he said off-handedly. "It'd fall in your bailiwick if we take it."

"What painting?" I asked warily.

"Oh, it's just a portrait. By, what's his name, you know,
 
Rembrandt."

Well, there in a nutshell was why no one had ever accused Tony of not knowing how to get someone's attention.

"What's-his-name-Rembrandt," I said thickly, once I got my voice going again. "Tony, this is ..." I frowned. "What do you mean,
if
we take it?
 
Are you kidding me?"

"Well, we do have a small problem. The man we're talking about is René Vachey."

"René . . . ?" I stared at him. "And he just . . . just up and offered us this old Rembrandt he happened to have lying around?"

Tony continued his placid chewing. "That's about it. One of his lawyers called me this morning to tell me about it."
 

"Just like that? Out of the blue?"
 

"Just like that."

I sat back against my chair, not sure just what my feelings were. "Mixed" would be as good a way as any to describe them, I guess. A Rembrandt portrait. Any red-blooded curator of Baroque art who says he wouldn't be salivating for it sight unseen would be lying through his teeth. I mean, after all, Rembrandt is—well,
Rembrandt
. The fact that SAM didn't own a single one of his paintings was something I regarded as almost a personal affront, but I'd long ago given up the idea of getting one any time soon. And now, suddenly, there it was, in my mind's eye, gilded seventeenth-century frame and all, hanging in the Late Renaissance and Baroque Gallery on the fourth floor, in pride of place on the west wall. I was dazzled.

At the same time, the mention of the donor's name had made me thoroughly leery. I'd never met the elderly René Vachey, but I knew who he was. A successful French art dealer as well as a collector, he was one of the art world's more eccentric characters (and take my word for it, that is saying something), unpredictable, controversial, notorious. To some, an unscrupulous and self-serving scoundrel; but to many others a welcome gadfly in a field cram-full of self-puffery and faddishness. I could see both points of view.

The most spectacular of his escapades had occurred about ten years earlier, when the morning shift at the Musée Barillot in Dijon had walked in to discover to their horror that six of the museum's most-prized possessions had vanished during the night, frames and all. Among them were paintings by Tintoretto, Murillo, and Goya.

The usual tumult followed. The police were called in and got to work grilling museum employees and other suspicious characters. Photographs and descriptions of the stolen works were given to Interpol. Accusations of lax security were flung at the museum director, who responded by wringing his hands and bemoaning the sad state to which French morality had degenerated. He also fired his security chief.

Then, exactly four weeks later, René Vachey opened a public exhibition of works from his own excellent collection, mounted in his own gallery, three blocks from the museum. This was something he did occasionally, but this time there was a difference. Featured proudly and prominently in their original frames were the six pictures missing from the Barillot.

More tumult. Vachey, one of Dijon's most prominent citizens, permitted himself to be arrested and charged in what was almost a public ceremony. Afterward, he held a news conference well-attended by the Parisian press corps (whom he had taken care to invite). Yes, he said, he had taken the pictures from the museum, or rather caused them to be taken; the responsibility was entirely his. But
stolen
them? No, he had not stolen them. To steal, he pointed out, was to take the property of another, was it not? But whose property
were
these paintings? Did the Musée Barillot
own
them? He thought not, and he thought he could prove he was right.

Now I ought to point out that we are not talking about timeless works of art here, despite the famous names. Artists are like anyone else; they have off-days. Usually they themselves destroy or paint over their less successful efforts, but often enough these works survive. And there are certain small European museums, and some American ones, too, that have capitalized on this, picking them up relatively cheaply and amassing collections rich in great names but lacking in great works. This is not my favorite approach to developing a museum, based as it is on the belief that the average museumgoer is too dumb to know or care what he or she is looking at as long as the label says Picasso or Matisse. Worse, that's precisely the kind of museumgoer it helps to create. ("Ooh, look, a genuine Picasso! Isn't that
beautiful?")

Anyway, the Musée Barillot, I have to say, was just such a museum. In fairness, it could hardly have afforded a first-rate collection of paintings. Containing a modest collection willed to the city by a wealthy physician named (surprise) Barillot at the turn of the century, it had since received little support beyond that required for maintenance. It had, in fact, made almost no acquisitions since the late 1940s. Just how it had managed to acquire the pictures in question was something that was buried in the remote past. They had hung there as long as anybody could remember, that was all.

And it was just this point that had started the clever Vachey thinking. He did some research, tracing them back to their appearance in the country in about 1800 as Napoleonic loot from Italy, Germany, and Spain. With thousands of other plundered artworks they had been destined for the Louvre, but they were among those the experts pronounced unworthy of basking in
la gloire de France
and had found their way into the French art market. Eventually, one or two at a time, the museum in Dijon had picked them up in the early years of the twentieth century. They had done so legally, paying the going price, and they had the papers to prove it (although it had taken them a while to locate them in the dusty vaults of a bank in Beaune).

Vachey shrugged this off. How could paintings or anything else be purchased legally from sellers who had no right to them in the first place? But French law didn't see it that way, and a much-publicized court case ensued, with Vachey cheerfully questioning the French legal system's authority to rule in cases involving non-French property.

Yes, cheerfully. For the whole thing was a sensational stunt. There had never been a question of its being anything else. Certainly these second-rate products of first-rate artists had no financial or aesthetic appeal to Vachey. His own collection was infinitely more valuable than the Musée's. He had simply decided to call attention, somewhat ahead of its time, to the enormous and tangled question of Who Owns Art?—and perhaps to make some waves and ruffle a few feathers in the sober, snooty French art establishment along the way.

This he did brilliantly, for three well-publicized weeks, until the court began to make threatening noises. In the end, the paintings went back to the museum, as Vachey had always claimed—and I believed him—was his intention. He also paid the museum's legal expenses and voluntarily donated from his own collection, as a goodwill gesture, a fine Goya charcoal study that was worth more than all six "stolen" pictures put together.

From beginning to end, he had clearly considered the whole affair an enormous lark. Whether you conclude his basic motives were altruistic or self-serving depends on who you talk to. There was little doubt that he accomplished something useful by focusing attention on an important issue. On the other hand, he also became for a while the world's most celebrated art dealer, which couldn't have been bad for business. But whichever way you felt about that, the fact remained that he did it by burglarizing a museum, and anytime you load pictures in and out of trucks you subject them to frightening risks, especially when you do it through windows—in a hurry and on the sly. I've already said that these weren't among the Western world's great masterpieces, but Tintorettos are Tintorettos, and as far as art people are concerned, you don't mess with them to prove a point.