Read The Last Weynfeldt Online
Authors: Martin Suter
At the wheel was a man of around forty with gray-streaked, receding hair. He had wound the window down. In the half-light of the back seat, Weynfeldt could see a woman. She nodded almost imperceptibly. It was Lorena.
“Have you got the money?” the man asked by way of a greeting.
Weynfeldt ignored him. He went to the back door of the car and tried to open it. It was locked.
The man got out, aggressive, and planted himself in Weynfeldt's way. He was smaller, but clearly violent. “I asked if you've got the money!”
Weynfeldt took the notes out of his coat pocket and handed them over. The man counted them with practiced speed. Adrian watched him as he did it. For a moment he thought he recognized him. But he rejected the idea. He didn't know anyone like that.
The man put the money in his pocket and got into the car. Weynfeldt heard the child safety lock click, and immediately afterward Lorena got out. She had barely slammed the door shut before the car raced off, tires screeching.
There they stood, both disheveled by the
föhn
, both waiting till the other said something. Lorena shrugged her shoulders; Adrian copied her.
“No questions?” She was the first to speak.
“None at all.”
“Now I could do with a drink.”
“La Rivière?”
“Aren't we closer to your place?”
This wasn't strictly true. But Weynfeldt nodded, and they headed to his. After a few paces she put her arm through his. As she had after the shoplifting incident.
The
föhn
developed into a true windstorm. The lights above the streetcar cables shook, and not so far away came a splitting crash as the wind blew something off a roof terrace or windowsill.
“How have you been since last time?” Weynfeldt inquired.
“I was on Mallorca.”
“Isn't it ghastly at this time of year?”
“No, it was quite pleasant. Hardly any tourists. Have you ever been?”
“Years ago. Twenty or so.”
“And?”
“We only stayed one night.”
“Why?”
“We were travelling on a ship.”
“A yacht?”
“No, it was a pretty big ship.”
“Yours?”
Weynfeldt laughed. “No, it belonged to friends. Of my parents.”
“Pity. A yacht would be cool.”
“Too many people in too small a space, if you ask me. And you can't escape. No, no, yachts are a bit overrated.”
Now Lorena laughed too.
They had reached the door to Adrian's building. He carried out the complicated entry procedure with his keys and card.
“Doesn't that drive you crazy sometimes?” she asked.
“Sure, sometimes. But it also gives you a feeling of security. Quite nice, when you live alone.”
“Do you get scared?”
The question surprised him. But then he answered. “Yes, a bit.”
In the elevator she asked, “Have you got lots of buildings like this?”
“No.”
“But a few?”
Weynfeldt had indeed inherited another office building, bigger than this one, also in a top location, not far away. But not many people knew that. None of his younger friends. And Lorena was definitely one of them. “No,” he said simply.
As they entered the apartment Lorena asked, “Are you having construction work done?”
“Just renovating one room.”
“Which one?”
“Down there,” he said vaguely.
Since Lorena's last visit Adrian had been keeping a small supply of Louis Roederer Cristal on ice. For just this eventuality. But when he asked if she fancied a few thousand tiny bubbles, she said, “Tonight is a gin fizz night.”
“I don't know how to make gin fizz.”
“I do.” To get to the kitchen, they had to pass his mother's bedroom. The door was missing and a transparent plastic dust sheet hung from the frame.
“Ah. You're redoing your mother's room. What's it going to be?”
“A fitness room.”
She looked at him sideways in astonishment.
He watched her making the drinks, measuring gin, ice, lemon cordial, soda and syrup in the mixer then shaking it like a professional.
“Where did you learn that?”
“It was my job once.”
“Barmaid? Tell me more.”
“You don't want to know. Where are we drinking this?”
“Wherever you want. You know the apartment.”
“In your study.”
The
föhn
had swept the sky clear, and a pale moon shed a sparse light into the room through the tall plate glass windows. “No, no light,” she begged, as he reached his hand to the switches.
They sat and sipped their long drinks in silence. “Did you do it?” she asked finally, pointing to the empty easels.
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“As they are one and the same, it doesn't matter,” Weynfeldt said.
“True.”
They took their time with the drinks. Then she sat on his knee and kissed him. He smelled the gin and a hint of her slightly matronly perfume.
“Maybe we could complete the tour today,” she suggested.
“O
H!
” F
RAU
H
AUSER EXCLAIMED, AND CLOSED THE DOOR
again. Weynfeldt hadn't heard her knock.
The room was in semidarkness, the curtains drawn, night-lights dimmed. The alarm clock was projecting 08:22 onto the ceiling.
They were lying on top of the quilt. He had his head at the foot; Lorena was the other way around. He could imagine the picture they presented to Frau Hauser.
Once, around forty years ago, she had walked into his parents' bathroom without knocking and surprised his fatherâwho told the tale often and with gleeânaked at an untypical time of day. “I'm terribly sorry!” he exclaimed. To which she is said to have replied, “Come now, do you think I've never seen a naked man before?”
This time she had seen a naked man with a naked woman. She had probably been surprised he hadn't appeared for breakfast. Worried even.
Weynfeldt looked at Lorena's feet, next to his head. This time every nail was painted vermilion. Not like the first time, when they had poked through between the balcony and the balustrade, red, yellow, green, indigo, violet.
He looked at her white bodyâdappled with freckles on the neckline and forearms, more skinny than slender, more vulnerable than sensualâand imagined it painted. By Ferdinand Hodler, sketched with a thick, black outline; by Giovanni Giacometti, sculpted with colors, shades and reflections; by Felix Vallotton, realistic yet graphic, expansive yet detailed.
He got up quietly, slipped into his robe and slippers and left the room. Now he could hear the muffled din of the construction work. He'd forgotten the contractors altogether. For a moment he was tempted to retreat to his bedroom, take a shower and get dressed first. But then he reminded himself it was his apartment after all.
He walked to the telephone, called Véronique and told her he would be taking the morning off.
“What do you mean,
taking the morning off
? Blancpain is coming at quarter past ten, and Chester has already called twice; he's expecting you to call back before half nine when he has to check in with Sydney.”
Blancpain was the curator of the Musée d'Orly, and Chester was the secretary of an Australian private collector. They were both top-notch clients, high on Weynfeldt's list. “Stave them off with something convincing,” Adrian said, and ended the conversation.
He sauntered into the breakfast room. The table had been cleared. A little cross, he made his way to the kitchen. He was met by a clattering sound. His first thought was that it came from the contractors. But when he turned the corner of the corridor toward the kitchen he almost collided with a serving trolley. Frau Hauser was pushing a breakfast for two. “Ah,” she said in surprise. “I thought you were having breakfast in bed today.”
She looked at him without the faintest hint of a smile or a wink or any other tacit understanding.
“Good idea,” Weynfeldt said, and took the trolley from her.
Lorena was awake. She was lying under the covers, two cushions stuffed behind her back, leafing through the auction catalogue. When she saw breakfast she stretched and put the catalogue aside. “Between 1.2 and 1.5 million. I thought it was 2 to 3.”
Adrian knew what she was talking about: the price the Vallotton was valued at. It was gracing the cover, although due to its late inclusion it had been given a high lot number, 136. “That's the estimate. The rest is up to the bidders.”
“I'd like to be there, at an auction where people bid millions.”
“Then come along.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
They ate breakfast in bed like a couple just fallen in love. And talked like one too. Lorena asked her disarming questions and Adrian surprised himself by how frankly he answered them.
“How much rent does the bank pay you?”
“Somewhere over a million each year, I think.”
“You think?”
“I'm sure.”
“Wow! And what do you do with all that money?”
“I spend most of it. The rest adds up slowly.”
“Why do you still work then?”
“What else should I do?”
“Travel.”
“I'm not really the traveling type.”
“Do nothing.”
“That was driven out of me as a child.”
“Lot 142. Estimate: forty to sixty thousand.”
Weynfeldt grinned sheepishly.
Lorena pulled on his earlobe. “Is that done? Putting your mother's portrait up for auction?”
“If no one did it there would be no portraits of older women on the art market.”
She fished out another croissant. There had been four in the basket. Normally there were only two. Adrian wondered how Frau Hauser had got hold of the second two so quickly. Perhaps she bought four every day: two for him and two for herself. And this morning she had sacrificed her two.
“Which of the two paintings did you put in the auction?”
“I don't know.”
“Come now.”
“You made them identical.”
“But
you
can still tell them apart.”
“Me and the forger.”
“And you're both keeping mum?”
“I wouldn't be so sure about the forger. They can be very vain.”
“Do you know this one?”
“Yes.” And then he said it: “A professional artist, as in professional circus artist, or professional bullshit artist.”
Lorena laughed. “Don't you have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Adrian reflected. “It just hasn't happened that way.”
“And friends?”
“Sure I have friends.”
“Friends are important.”
“True.”
“I know. I don't have any.”
“None at all?”
“No real ones.”
Weynfeldt considered whether he had any real friends himself.
“Why aren't you asking me anything?”
“What should I ask?”
“Don't you want to know if I'm a hooker?”
“No, I don't want to know that.”
“Why not? If you liked me, you'd want to know.”
“If I liked you, I wouldn't want to know.”
In the distance they heard the howling and roaring of an electric drill.
“Why would I think you might be a hooker?”
“Because of yesterday. Didn't you think that guy was a pimp?”
“I wouldn't know.”
“Don't you want to know if he was a pimp?”
“If you want to tell me, you will.”
“He isn't.”
“There you go.”
“He's a debt collector.”
“Not to be sniffed at either.”
Lorena laughed, and so did Adrian. “Not to be sniffed at,” she repeated, and laughed so much she spilled coffee on the quilt.
When she'd calmed down, she asked. “Don't you want to know why I owe a debt collector money?”
“Used to owe.”
“If only.”
“You still owe him money?”
“A question at last.”
“And?”
“A hundred and twenty.”
“Not to be sniffed at either.”
R
OLF
S
TRASSER GOT TO THE
T
HURSDAY LUNCH CLUB LATE
as usual. He first noticed Weynfeldt wasn't there when he looked for a bottle of wine and found only a small carafe of house white. “Isn't Adrian coming today?” he asked Luc Neri, who sat mute and exhausted next to him.
Neri raised his shoulders, and released them again as if he'd had to hold them up for hours.
The friends pored over the menu for longer than usual, and several kept one eye on the door. When Weynfeldt finally arrived they had already ordered. This week it seemed no one had felt like the
bistecca alla fiorentina
âat forty-nine francs, normally a favorite at the Thursday lunch club.
Weynfeldt was accompanied by a redhead. Much younger than him and not really his style. Although Strasser had never seen Weynfeldt with a woman before, if he tried to imagine him with a girlfriend she would be more the high society type. This one was not that. She was good looking, for sure. But in a common kind of way. Although she was expensively dressed. Designer dress. But if you were Weynfeldt's girlfriend you could afford designer clothes.
Weynfeldt had never had as much attention at the lunch club as he was getting now, with this woman. Everyone was watching how he behaved toward her. Strasser's verdict was: head over heels.
Lorenaâshe had been introduced formally to each of them as Lorenaâsat next to him. At one of the two extra places Adrian had long reserved in vain for unexpected guests. Now it had been worth it. She ordered the
bistecca alla fiorentina
and Weynfeldt joined her. The first time he hadn't opted for his
insalata mista
and
scaloppine al limone
with risotto. Clearly head over heels.