Black Tide (9 page)

While the French-Canadians sweated and bled in the mills, a number of families became quite rich, and the smart ones spread their wealth around into shipping and timber and banking. The not so smart ones suffered and crashed when the mills closed during the first part of this century, when the competition from Southern mills proved to be just too much. An old story, one that's still being written today in places such as Juarez and Guadalajara. One family which prospered was the Scribner family, and one of their foundations set up the Scribner Museum of Art, located only a few minutes away from the downtown of Manchester. While the downtown has some high-rise buildings --- high for New Hampshire --- it's only a matter of a few blocks in either direction before you come to residential neighborhoods, and it was in one such neighborhood that I located the Scribner Museum of Art this late Wednesday morning.

I parked my Range Rover across the street from the museum and walked over. There was hardly any traffic and the day was hot, with a heavy haze in the air. I wore shiny new brown loafers, a short-sleeved white shirt and pressed chinos, and there was a tan reporter's notebook sticking out of my back pocket. The Scribner Museum was two stories high and made of stone and exposed brickwork. The grounds were landscaped with some trees and shrubbery and crushed-stone paths. There were long Roman-type columns at the front entrance to the museum. On each side of a pair of great wooden doors at the entrance was a stone mosaic showing medieval knights, swords in their hands, the points aiming downward to the soil.

Inside the Scribner Museum was a coffee-table-sized box of glass and wood that had a sign asking for donations, and I slipped a five-dollar bill into an opening at the top. I was about fifteen minutes early for my appointment, so I made a quick walk through the two floors of the building, and even though I felt the museum was probably just an attempt by the Scribner family to resolve its guilt over how they had treated their mill workers, I was fairly impressed at what I saw.

While there wasn't much space to be offered on its two floors, the museum did give a quick read of some major artists and epochs. There was a room of French Impressionists, including two Monets and a Matisse, and there was also a gallery on the second floor devoted to early New England furniture, from Chippendale chairs to some massive hutches and clothes chests. Another room showed early American portraits of stiff-necked men and women who lived in this state at the turn of the nineteenth century. One long display of silver showed some items from Paul Revere and his descendants, and there was even a wing of modern art and sculpture, with two Picassos and a portrait by Georgia O'Keefe and a small mobile by Calder.

I'm sure that anyone with a passing interest in art who's been to Paris or New York or even to Boston would have a fit of giggles about spending some time in the Scribner Museum, but in a state with a single major daily newspaper and only one commercial statewide television station, I thought it did a fairly respectable job of giving a brief overview of what art had to offer. The museum this day held a mixed bag of visitors: a few elderly ladies walking through and spending ten minutes in front of each painting, earnest young art students dressed in clothing and sharp haircuts and a couple of young mothers and their children, perhaps spending a day away from the heat, perhaps even spending a day here to see what was out in the world besides tabloid newspapers and tabloid television.

When I had passed through my fifteen minutes, I went downstairs past the gift shop to a small office that had a sign over the door that said ''Administrative-Private.'' The office was carpeted and there were two desks and a woman who looked to be a few years older than me sitting behind one of them, typing away at an IBM clone. She swiveled in her chair and gave me a big smile as I walked in. Her desk was fairly neat with the usual Rolodex and appointment calendar and a few open files, and near her telephone was a vase with a single rose and a miniature statue of Michelangelo's David. The nameplate on the desk said Cassie Fuller.

I gave her my business card and said, "I have an appointment with Justin Dix."

She looked at the card. "So you do. Hold on for a moment and I'll see if he's free."

Instead of picking up the phone, she smiled again, got up from her desk and walked to another office door, at the other end f the small room. She had a thick mane of hair, tousled back down to her shoulders, and she was wearing a tight black dress that was a few inches above her knees and which was kept together by a couple of metallic zippers. It looked like something from San Francisco, definitely not from Manchester or even Boston. Her legs were enclosed in clear nylons, and she wore red high heels. It looked like the dress was a size too small as she walked away, and somehow, from the smile she gave me, it didn't seem she minded that one bit.

She leaned into the doorway, said something quietly, then turned her head and said, "He'll see you now, Mr. Cole." As I walked across the office she lowered her head and gave me a "I may be working at a stodgy museum but I'm something else out of work" look. I wondered if she practiced her moves and her hooded-eye gaze at home in front of a mirror.

Her perfume tickled at me as I walked into Justin Dix's office, past the open door that said "Security" on a metal plate, and I had to remind myself to get into my role as I reached over to shake his hand. Justin was in his forties, edging closer to being fifty, and he was about twenty pounds or so overweight. He had on a blue blazer, gray slacks and white shirt with a striped tie that probably belonged to some New England prep school, but his handshake was firm and had nothing preppy about it. His ears were a bit too large for his head, a double chin was developing, and there were faint acne scars along both cheekbones. With the -rimmed eyeglasses and the thick brown-and-gray hair combed to one side, he looked like a mortgage officer at a bank, ready to ask you why you were ten days late in making a MasterCard payment nine years ago.

But he seemed gracious enough as he pointed out a chair for me to sit in, before his desk, which was neat and uncluttered. "You know, just before we start, I went to the trouble of verifying who you were, even though I only had a couple of hours since your call this morning."

"Really?" I said, taking out my notebook and placing it in my lap as I sat down. The office looked out over a courtyard behind the museum and there was a small fountain there, endlessly sprinkling water in an arc to a stone basin. It was well lit and had a few plants, and there were framed prints of Van Gogh hanging from each of the four walls. It seemed to be the type of place where you could spend most of the morning sipping a cup of coffee and browsing through the day's
New York Times
before get down to work, all the while listening to classical music from WEVO-FM in Concord.

Justin hitched up his belt some and sat down, and then picked up a copy of this month's
Shoreline
. "Interesting magazine," he said. "I had Cassie pick it up at the news store down the street. Gave it the once-over and I liked your column this month, about the yearly battle between the townspeople and tourists of a resort area. You know, I spent a few summers playing in those sands, going to Tyler Beach when I was a kid. Growing up in Boston, there wasn't much chance for outdoor stuff."

"Get back to the beach much?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Nope. Those times are good kid memories. I don't want to ruin them by going back to Tyler as an adult and seeing what's changed. You shouldn't futz with your memories like that." He flipped through
Shoreline
and said, "Mind telling me again why you're interested in coming here today?  After all, it's been five years."

I crossed my legs and thought, well, here we go again, preparing to perform the Great Lie that is the secret of all journalists, reporters and magazine writers. The Great Lie that you're deeply interested and concerned in what your source is telling you. The Great Lie that everything told in confidence will remain in confidence. And the Great Lie that says the source and he reporter will remain the best of friends, even after the story is finished and the reporter goes on to something else.

Of course, I have my own personal Great Lie: that I was actually doing a real story about the Scribner Museum, and it would appear in a future issue of
Shoreline.

Some work. I don't recommend it.

Putting on my most sincere and interested face, I said, "Like I told you on the phone this morning, I'm trying to convince my editor to do a piece about the number of New England landscape artists that had an interest in the shores and harbors of the region. Besides the main story, I thought what happened here would be a good sidebar."

Justin said "Hmmm," flipped through a few more pages of
Shoreline
, and then looked up at me. He gave me a rueful smile and said, "You know, I mentioned to the museum director that you were coming up here and wanted to do a story, and he was against it. Didn't see any use in dredging up old news, and especially old news that put the museum in an embarrassing and bad light. You understand that?"

I kept the reporter's notebook closed. "I do."

He nodded. "Knew you would. And you know what I told him? I said, look, even though it's been five years, I want to keep it alive. I still want it out in the press, on the off chance that someone will remember something, that someone will recall an incident five years ago. Some clue, some tip. I don't want this to die, not like this. So that's what I told him."

From the outer office I could hear Cassie Fuller humming and typing on her IBM clone. I said, "So the director changed his mind?"

"Nope," Justin said, smiling again. "He's still against it, and I could give a shit. He'd have to convince the board of trustees to fire me, and that's not going to happen. Not for this. Come on, let's go for a little walk."

He got up and I followed him through the outer office. Cassie looked up from her keyboard and smiled at me. I smiled back, feeling a little foolish. Her red fingernails made loud clicking noises on the keyboard as she typed. We went past the gift shop and out to the main lobby, and then to the west gallery, which had the modern art and sculpture. Our footsteps were loud on the polished hardwood floor. Two older women with long skirts, their gray hair in braids, were talking in whispers at the far side of the room, standing before an enormous painting that showed a desert landscape at night, with an animal skull as the rising moon. At one corner of the room Justin stopped and I stood next to him. Before us was a sculpture that looked as if it was made out of crushed copper piping and lava rock. I didn't recognize the name of the artist on the little nameplate that was set on the wall.

Justin folded his arms and started talking, his voice almost dreamy, as if a part of him was woken up that had been asleep for about five years. "Back then we didn't have that much of the modern works, I we could make room here for that summer's exhibit. We were excited, you know. Newspapers were interested and we had film crew from Channel 9 show up. We even had lines of people trying to get in here --- the first time that's ever happened at the Scribner."

Even though it seemed to sadden him, he smiled. "This was one of the largest shows we ever put on, containing highlights of  nineteenth-century American art, and it took a lot of convincing for the other museums to lend us their works. Almost as hard as convincing a woman to go to bed with you, Mr. Cole. It's the same type of seduction. Whispered promises and agreements, and a special understanding. And my God, the scandal that broke later on, and the screaming I had to put up with, over the phone… The three paintings were right here, Mr. Cole. Right here before me, and I can close my eyes and still see them there. Tell me, what do you know about Winslow Homer?"

What I did know I had picked up from a quick visit to the Gilliam Library. I said, "He was born in Boston in the 1830s and became one of the best-known illustrators and painters in the United States. Lived at Prout's Neck in Maine for most of his life, and was highly regarded for his paintings of the ocean and of the men and women who worked from the sea. Also did a lot of etchings and engravings, and many of his works had no people in them --- just nature. Traveled abroad and to the Caribbean, and made a rather comfortable living doing what he did. Died in the early 1900s in Maine, I believe, and never married."

Justin nodded, as if pleased that a student of his had done unexpectedly well. "Yes, that's true, and much, much more. He started out as an exceptional illustrator during the Civil War, and his works appeared in Harper’s Weekly, the most popular illustrated magazine in the country back then. He did his works in oils and watercolors, and though he's known for his New England works, a lot of his better-known paintings were inspired by his trips to the Caribbean and to the Adirondacks. And on this particular day in July, five years ago, we had three of his best, on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Addison Gallery from Phillips Academy in Andover."

He still had his arms folded as he turned to look at me. "We had a clipping service that kept track of the stories after the theft. There were hundreds of them. You wouldn't believe the number of those that said we were a backwoods gallery, with no alarm systems and rent-a-cops as guards. Not that I'm going to tell you any secrets, Lewis, but the night of the theft, we had one of the better security systems in this region. Motion detectors. Break alarms on all the doors and windows. Infrared detectors. Monitoring cameras and videotape recorders."