Feint of Art: (3 page)

My heart pounding in my chest, I stashed my truck on a side street and hurried back to the museum on foot. Half the neighborhood had poured out of their elegant houses, attracted by the noise and excitement, and were milling about in their nightclothes, chattering and craning their necks for a better look. A handful of uniformed police were setting up a barricade and politely asking the well-heeled crowd to “Step back. Just please step back.” I automatically avoided the officers and tried to look innocent. Lessons learned in childhood run deep.

The museum’s rear door banged open and the crowd fell silent. A stretcher rolled out. On the stretcher was a body bag. In the body bag appeared to be a body. The paramedics loaded it into the ambulance and drove away, lights on but sirens off. No need to hurry.

I swallowed hard. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe some total stranger had had a heart attack. Or a stroke. Or choked to death on a peanut chewy. I once had a close call with a peanut chewy.

I spotted the tall, broad form of Carlos Jimenez, a security guard whom I’d met my first week at the Brock, when he had intervened to protect a malfunctioning soda machine from my wrath. We had commiserated about the slave wages we both received, and Carlos showed me how to get a free soda by jimmying the change slot. Our friendship was cemented by an exchange of confidences concerning our mutual disdain for the museum’s moneyed matriarch, the insectlike Agnes Brock.

“Carlos!” I called out. “
Qué pasa
?”

“Annie! What are you doing here?” Carlos came over to the barricade.

“I was . . . just having a drink nearby and heard the commotion. What’s going on?”

Carlos’ wide, dark face looked bleak. He glanced around to see if anyone was eavesdropping, but the throng’s attention was riveted on the museum’s rear door, as if awaiting the start of Act II.

“There’s been a murder,” he whispered.

“
What?
Who?”

“Well, geez, Annie, I hate to be the one to tell you this . . .” Carlos hesitated.

“
Who?
” I demanded.

“Stan,” Carlos whispered.

“Stan?” Who the heck was Stan?

“Stan, you know Stan, Annie,” Carlos said gently. “The janitor.”

“You mean Dupont? His first name is Stan?”

He nodded.

I was both relieved and appalled. Relieved that Ernst was alive but appalled that Dupont was not, especially when I recalled my flippancy to him earlier this evening. What had my parting remark been? “Nice chatting with you”? Had that been his last nonlethal human interaction? Remorse washed over me. This was why it was important not to be a smart-aleck. I had always known Miss Manners had her reasons.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Dunno. I was on a break. By the time I got back the cops were already here.”

“What about Ernst Pettigrew?”

“What about him?”

“Is he—isn’t he here?”

Carlos looked at me oddly. “Why would Ernst be here? It’s the middle of the night.”

A uniformed cop with a pronounced paunch called out to Carlos, saving me from having to answer. I decided it was time to vamoose.

Then I hesitated. Although the very thought of talking to the police made me want to hyperventilate, I realized I should tell them what I knew about the evening’s events. It was my civic duty. A man was dead. True, I had never liked Dupont—Stan—whatever—but that didn’t mean it was okay for somebody to kill him.

I took a step forward and stopped. I didn’t really know anything relevant. Dupont had been fine when I left him. Plus, I wasn’t supposed to have been in the museum in the first place. How would I explain why I had been at the Brock at midnight without bringing up Ernst, the forged Caravaggio, and my own dubious past?

Still . . . Dupont was dead. And it seemed a little too coincidental that his murder had occurred on the heels of my having confirmed to Ernst Pettigrew that a massive art fraud had been committed. Had Dupont discovered the fraud and been killed to ensure his silence? That seemed far-fetched, not to mention illogical. Dupont didn’t know about art. Dupont knew about cleaning. And . . . keys. Dupont knew about keys.

I considered the facts as I knew them. Fact One: Ernst Pettigrew was about to lose everything he’d worked for because
The Magi
was a fake. Fact Two: Stan Dupont was dead. Fact Three: Ernst was missing. So: what did Facts One, Two, and Three add up to? Had Dupont orchestrated some scheme to steal the original Caravaggio and replace it with the fake? Had Ernst stumbled across the scheme and struck out, enraged, killing Dupont?
Get a grip, Annie,
I scolded myself. Ernst was a lousy boyfriend, but he wasn’t a murderer.

Clearly I wasn’t ready to talk to the police. But I felt the need to do something constructive. Like what? Like . . . talking to the man who had forged
The Magi.

I had recognized the artistic signature immediately: it was my grandfather’s old friend and rival Anton Woznikowicz. Spelled just like it sounded. We had worked together years ago, Anton and Georges and I, just one big, happy, art-forging family. But in the past few years I had tried to cut off contact with Anton—and the rest of my grandfather’s circle—in an effort to keep True/Faux Studios entirely legitimate. I knew from bitter experience that this world had a way of sneaking up and biting me on the butt when I least expected it.

Anton was a gifted artist, though not of Georges’ caliber. But like Georges, he was likely to vanish the minute the police started poking around. And on top of everything else, I was worried about the old guy. If someone had been murdered in connection with his forged Caravaggio, Anton himself could be in danger. I hurried back to my truck, fired up the engine, and headed across the City to Noë Valley.

Unless I was gravely mistaken, I was about to be bitten on the butt.

—Georges LeFleur, “Real or Fake:
Who Decides?” unfinished manuscript,
Reflections of a World-Class Art Forger

 

I had embraced the Californian habit, sometimes called Zen navigation, of starting to drive before I’d fully decided where I was going. Tonight was no exception. I was in gear, with the truck in motion, before it occurred to me that I was heading out in search of an art forger who might be connected to this evening’s homicide, at two in the morning, in a city of nearly three-quarters of a million people.

What was wrong with this picture?

I was not famous for my common sense, but this seemed like a bad idea even to me. I had burned up all my stored caffeine at the scene of the murder, and a sudden wave of fatigue washed over me. I had also spent a long, hard day at the studio. Time to pack it in. I turned the truck around and headed east for the Bay Bridge, Oakland, and home.

Twenty minutes later I was trudging up three flights of stairs to my apartment, stepping lightly to avoid the squeaky spots so as not to awaken my neighbors. I sighed with relief as I entered my own little slice of heaven.

My home was the top floor, formerly the maid’s quarters, of a once-stately Victorian built in 1869 for a wealthy merchant. The plumbing and electrical systems were suspect, but rent was cheap, moldings were ornate, and if you stood on the toilet you could glimpse San Francisco Bay from the bathroom window. The place was a lot like me: a bit quirky, occasionally contrary, but with lots of character. Also like me, it had a good foundation but needed some aesthetic work.

I locked the dead bolt, slung my bag on the hat tree, shuffled down the short hallway to my bedroom, changed into an oversized T-shirt, and crawled into bed. The events of the night were sinking in, and I needed to think. I knew I had to talk to the police, and soon. But old loyalties ran deep, and I wanted to keep Anton Woznikowicz out of the picture if at all possible. I also hoped to make sure he was safe from whoever had killed Dupont—that is, if the killing was even connected to the forgery. And Anton might be able to give me the most important information of all: who had commissioned a forgery of
The Magi,
and why.

I had to admit that Ernst’s sudden disappearance left me feeling more than a little unsettled. We had once savored good wine, laughed until we snorted over the asking price for the splattered art of Jackson Pollock, and talked late into the night about everything from Austrian architecture to zinc white oil color. I could not imagine Ernst being involved with anything criminal. Then again, I never would have thought him capable of punching his fist through a wall.

As I was finally dropping off to sleep, I realized that two thirty in the morning was the perfect time to call Europe, which was eight hours ahead of California. Switching on the bedside lamp, I put a call through to Amsterdam, the last known whereabouts of my rogue of a grandfather, Georges LeFleur.

Anton had been my grandfather’s protégé and closest friend until their affection was tested by a dispute over a beautiful woman named Gina, a Persian cat named Mina, and a fake Bernini statue. Now avowed enemies, Georges and Anton kept careful tabs on one another, in what I presumed was an enduring professional and personal rivalry. It seemed likely that Georges would know something about
The Magi
and the situation at the Brock, or would at least know where to find the Polish forger. I knew Anton had a studio in San Francisco, but after finishing a big commission like
The Magi
he might well have taken an extended vacation to a country without extradition treaties.

No one answered my first call to Amsterdam, but I left a message with the pleasant but guarded woman who answered when I phoned Milan. I tried a few other possibilities, first in Barcelona and, finally, in Paris, the city that had long ago captured my grandfather’s heart. None of the numerous gallery owners, artists, or self-described FOGs—Friends of Georges or, as I preferred, Forgery’s Old Guard—would admit to knowing his whereabouts. But that was typical; it was understood that they would pass the word along. My grandfather would call me when he was good and ready, and not one moment sooner. I switched off the light, slipped back under the covers, and fell fast asleep.

I awoke the next morning in a funk. Under the best of circumstances I wasn’t a morning person, but today my grumpiness was worsened by a short night of fitful slumber. On top of everything else, I stumbled into the kitchen only to discover that I was out of coffee.

I recognized that compared to war, famine, or being murdered at the Brock, running out of coffee probably didn’t qualify as a catastrophe. But those were not my choices. I was confronted with a morning sans coffee, and I didn’t have time to stop at a café. An interior designer was coming by the studio to pick up a project this afternoon and I had a stack of paperwork waiting for me. I also hoped to track down Ernst, assure myself that he was safe, and demand a logical explanation for last night’s events. Then I needed to either find Anton—or speak to the police. I might need some time for wrestling with my conscience over the latter.

I skipped the shower, pulled on a navy blue T-shirt and a pair of paint-splattered overalls, slipped into some socks and my trusty Birkenstocks, and hit the road. As I queued up to cross the Oakland Bay Bridge, I fiddled with the radio, hoping to glean information about last night’s murder. Dupont’s death rated only a fleeting mention, but the radio did say that the Brock had reported nothing missing.

That seemed odd. If I were going to sneak into an art museum to murder someone, I would take another moment or two to steal something valuable. Then again, I was a reformed art forger, not a thief or a murderer, so what did I know?

Preoccupied with these thoughts, I pulled into the parking lot at my studio building and inadvertently nudged the rear bumper of a large, expensive-looking car that was parked in my usual space.

I didn’t mean to hit it. I didn’t hit it hard. But I did hit it.

As far as I was concerned, bumpers were designed to bump things, thereby avoiding damage to the rest of the vehicle. Besides, dings on a bumper were par for the course in a big city. Unfortunately, the gentleman who stepped out of what I belatedly realized was a late-model Jaguar sedan did not agree with me on this point, a fact he soon made clear.

“It appears you have scratched my bumper,” he said, straightening after a close inspection of the offended car part. He was tall—a tad over six feet—and broad-shouldered, and he filled out his fine gray Armani suit just about perfectly. It was hard not to notice.