Ghostwritten (29 page)

Jerome returns, unveiling the picture, tutting at my cigarette.

Eve and the Serpent
, not by Lemuel Delacroix, but by Jerome … I don’t know his family name. Smith or Churchill, probably. I’ve never much liked Jerome, but I have to admire his craftsmanship. “I can’t see how anyone could tell them apart. Even the way the gilt on the frame is worn away on the bottom.”

“I can’t quite get the cracks in the glaze right, not quite. And there are secrets in the blue pigment that got lost in the nineteenth
century, and not even Gregorski’s money can procure them. No, it’s not perfect. But it will do. Nobody is going to be looking for a difference until it’s too late.”

“You’ve spent twice as long on this one, compared to the last.”

“Well, my dear, that’s Russian Constructivism for you! Kandinsky’s an absolute cinch, from a copyist’s point of view. Just measure the proportions of the stripes, get the tone right, slap on the paint, and bingo! No, Delacroix deserves more than that.… You could call it a labor of love, this one. I would have liked a fortnight more, just to tamper, but Gregorski’s chomping at the bit for another sting this month. I could
die
to get my hands on the original, though, even if it’s only to look after it overnight. Moreover, the Delacroix is worth enough to let me raise the
Titanic
and buy up Bermuda.”

“A quarter of Bermuda,” I reminded him. “Split four ways.”

“Did you know that Delacroix was a friend of Nicholas I? He was employed by the tsar several summers running to help decorate the Cathedral of Our Savior. A westerner in service to the Russian state. Maybe that helps to explain the empathy I feel with the man.” When Jerome rattles on like this, I feel I’m no longer in the room with him.

A coded knock at the door. I wait for the sequence to finish, rolling my eyeballs at this pantomime. The code is correct, but Jerome waves me through into the kitchen anyway, his finger on his lips. I suppose old habits die hard. “Open up!” says Rudi, just like he always does. “It’s drafty out here.” Jerome relaxes. The word “drafty” indicates that Rudi is alone and hasn’t got a gun pointed in the small of his back. “Cold” means “get away.” Exactly how you would get out of a sixth-floor apartment with one entrance and no fire escape is another matter. But boys will be boys.

“Babe,” Rudi greets me, breezing in and handing Jerome a pizza he picked up from one of his restaurants. His new suede jacket is the color of black currant juice. He likes to call me “babe,” even though he is younger than me by eight or nine years. He’s smiling. A good sign. He takes off his wraparound sunglasses, and whoops at the picture. “Jerome, even better than your normal high standard!”

Jerome mock-bows. “How good of you to drop by!” Rudi never sees Jerome’s irony, leaving it to me to feel offended for him. “Yes, thank you. I am rather pleased with my production. How did the meeting with our public guardian friend at the City Hall go?”

“Gregorski’s cool. He’ll send someone over to pick up the Delacroix here the morning after.”

Right then, it felt wrong. “Why aren’t you meeting the buyers directly this time?”

Rudi lifted his hand like the Pope. “Helsinki’s a long way to go, babe.… Why not let them come here? It’s a sign we’re moving up. It also means I don’t have to risk my neck at the border.… Oh, kitten, I missed you last night.…” There was a silliness to Rudi’s grin. A landslipped cocaine silliness. A bad sign. He tried to grab my breasts, but I didn’t let myself be grabbed, and Rudi fell onto the sofa laughing. “Tell her, Jerome!”

“Tell her what?” Jerome came through with plates and a knife for the pizza.

“Gregorski’s on the level.”

Jerome frowned. “If he’s not, and chooses to sell us up the river, we will be royally butt-fucked from here to Windsor.”

Rudi’s smile shriveled up like a burning page. “Jesus Christ, what’s the matter with you two today? The sun’s shining, in two weeks—and forty-eight hours—we’re going to be two hundred thousand dollars richer, and here you two are looking like you’ve had to sell your mother to a body-donor peddler! The point is for Mr. High-and-fucking-Mighty Gregorski, if we’re not on the level,
he
is the butt-fucked. He’s not dealing with tadpoles anymore. I have muscle in this city. I have muscle outside this city. I have muscle.”

“Oh, St. Ciaran above, nobody’s disputing that—” began Jerome, making the mistake of sounding martyred.

Rudi’s eyes began to shine. “Dead, damned, fucking right nobody is disputing that!
Kirsch
is not disputing that!
Shirliker
and his associates are not disputing that! Arturo fucking
Kopeck
is not disputing that! You know who Arturo Kopeck is? Only the
biggest—fucking
—crack dealer east of Berlin and west of the Urals! So why
are my own
partners
disputing the notion that
I
have more
muscle
than Boris fucking
Frankenstein?”

Jerome’s owl gaze. “Nobody’s disputing that. Are we, Margarita?”

My poor, dear baby. Bad cocaine. “No, Rudi. Nobody’s doing any disputing.”

Rudi seemed to suddenly forget what we’d been talking about. “Any tabasco sauce, Jerome? That dumb Georgian bitch forgot to put any on. Big tits, gives a good blow job, but dippy as horseshit. Remind me to sack her before she gets too far behind on her rent.”

“I’ll get the tabasco,” I said, smiling at Rudi’s little joke. “And shall I make you some nice strong coffee?”

He didn’t bawl “no” so that meant “yes.”

We ate in silence until half the pizza was gone.

“There’s one last little touch,” said Rudi, “that I’ve decided to introduce for the next pickup.”

“Do tell,” said Jerome.

“Margarita here meets us and the other cleaners at the staff entrance, instead of waiting for me in the gallery.”

“I don’t see why,” I said.

“That is precisely why I am the brains of this operation. You never see why, and I always do. Listen. You come and meet us. The girls go off to their allotted galleries separately. We go to the Delacroix Gallery. As usual, we make the switch, wax the floors, take it back to the staff entrance, and out through security. And what precisely is the difference?”

Jerome picked prawns out of congealing cheese. “You’ve been accompanied the whole time by Winter Palace personnel. Are there any anchovies hiding down here?”

“And therefore placing me even more above suspicion than usual!” Rudi swished his wine around the glass. “These little details are the Rudi Touch. This is why my outfit thrives the way it does. This is why Gregorski selected me for this cleaning contract, why he wanted me for this operation: not Kirsch, not Chekhov, not the Koenighovs, but me. Now. Any questions?”

Jerome shook his head nonchalantly. His part was over now. A
pleasant life he must have, playing around all day with his oil paints, waiting for the money to appear in his bank account. His own bank account.

“Rudi, my darling …,” I began.

“What do you want?”

“I was wondering, when, exactly, we were thinking of …”

“…    of what?”

“You know, what we’ve been discussing.…”

Rudi’s emotions are so visible. He doesn’t try to hide anything from me. That’s one reason I love him. He slammed his plate down and the pizza skidded off.

“Oh Jesus wept! Not again! Don’t get old on me again, Margarita! I will not have you getting old and weird and wrinkled on me again! Fuck, you make me feel like it’s my grandmother I’m shagging sometimes!”

I love Rudi, but I hate him too when his eyes shine like that. It’s the bad cocaine. “What are we getting all this money for if we’re never going to use it?”

“Is it a car you want? Is it a coat you want? Are you in debt to somebody again? Tell me who’s been lending you money! Who?
Who!”

“No, nobody, nobody! It’s—” I looked at Jerome, who, sighing, withdrew into his studio, taking his coffee.

“—it’s you I want, my love. It’s our life in Switzerland that I want.”

“A golden goose is living on our roof and shitting eggs down our chimney, here, Margarita! Don’t kill it! Gather the golden eggs!”

“I’m the one who gets screwed every week for these golden eggs.”

“We all have to make sacrifices.”

“I don’t know how much longer I’m prepared to keep making mine. Surely we have enough money in the account now for us to not need to—”

“We haven’t. I had to bribe the customs people a small fortune last time. Then of course I have to give Gregorski his whopping cut. He set the whole thing up, remember.”

“I never get the chance to forget Gregorski, in his armored Mercedes-Benz. Please, darling. Just tell me. How much money do we have?”

“It’s your period, isn’t it. Admit it. It’s your period. Jesus. They bleed for seven days but they still don’t die.”

“How much?”

“Quite a lot. But not enough.”

“How much is quite a lot? Just tell me!”

“Margarita, if you can’t calm down and discuss this like an intelligent adult I’m going to have to terminate this interview.”

“I am calm. I’m asking a simple question. Rudi? How much money do we have from the sale of our five priceless works of art sold so far? Please?”

“In U.S. dollars? Six figures.”

“Tell me!”

Rudi switched tack. “I manage the finances! It’s your job to get us in and keep us covered! You think you can do what I do better, do you?
Do you?”

It’s the cocaine, and the pressure. I stayed calm, and started the pout. Margarita Latunsky plays men like a master violinist. When I want something from a woman I get angry. When I want something from a man I pout. “No, darling, it’s just that the head curator paws me week after week and I can’t see an end to it and I love you so much—” I feigned the watery eyes.

Rudi snarled and looked around like he needed something to sink his teeth into. “You want out? You want to go up to a man like Gregorski and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I don’t fancy this line of work any more, thanks for all the stolen artwork revenue but I’m off now, I’ll send you a postcard’? Get real, woman! He’d eat you for fucking breakfast.”

I thought he was going to hit me. “I thought that’s why we chose Switzerland, because it would be safe—”

“It’s not that simple. Gregorski’s a powerful man.”

“I know about powerful men—”

Rudi mimicked me. “ ‘I know about powerful men.’ You’re talking about the Party crony paper-pusher who used to shag you? Or your geriatric cabin boy with the gammy leg?”

“He was a captain.”

Rudi spat a “huh!”

“What do you know about hiding money? Laundering it? I can give you your share any time you like,
baby
, but how long do you think it would be after you split, before the pigs in Switzerland ask exactly how you came across this truck-load of roubles you’re bringing into their country? We are a team! You can’t just walk out on us any time you fancy.”

“When can we go?”

“In time! In time! Fuck it! It’s no fucking use trying to reason with you when you’re in this kind of mood. I’m going for a drive!”

He slammed the door behind him.

Jerome emerged. “He didn’t damage the Wedgwood, did he?”

“He’s nervous,” I explain. “Now we’re so close to getting away, it’s only natural he gets a little jittery.…” Jerome said something in English.

Today is my birthday.

My feet shouldn’t ache so much, not at my age.

As I climbed the stairs back up to my flat I heard my phone ringing. I fumbled for my key and skidded down the hallway. You see? I understand him, that’s why I forgive him. That’s why I’m not like the other women who take advantage of him.

“I’m back.” I was breathless—

“Hello? Miss Latunsky? I hope you don’t mind me telephoning you at home. This is Tatyana Makuch, from the gallery. Have I called at a bad time?”

I fought to control my panting, and to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “No, no, I just got back, I’ve been running.”

“Oh … jogging in the park?”

“I mean I was running to catch the phone. To get the phone.”

“Are you busy this afternoon?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. Why?”

“I’m lonely. I was wondering if we could meet and I could buy you a coffee, or if you’d like to come to visit my shoe box and I could cook you authentic Warsaw Vorsch.”

Tatyana? I heard myself saying, “Yes.” When was I going to
make it up with Rudi? But there again, why should he find me here pining for him when he gets back? Maybe it would do him good just to pretend that I don’t need him as much as I do. Teach him a little lesson.

“Great. You know the coffee shop behind the Pushkin Theater?”

“Yes—”

“Excellent. I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

That was that. Nemya padded in and jumped onto my lap for some adoration. I told Nemya about Rudi’s tantrum, and about what Switzerland was going to be like, and I wondered why I’d just agreed to give the rest of my day off to a supercilious rival from Poland.

The empty café smelt of dark wood and coffee. Dust motes eddied through slats of sunlight as I barged open the door. A bell jangled and a radio was playing in the back room. Tatyana hadn’t arrived yet, even though I was late. “Hello, Margarita.”

Tatyana shifted slightly and came into the light. Her hair shone gold. She was dressed in a smart black velvet suit and her body was lean and tucked in. I had to admit, I could see the appeal. To men like Rogorshev.

“I didn’t see you.”

“Here I am. Well, won’t you sit down? Thank you very much for coming. What would you like to drink? The Colombian blend is excellent.”

Was she trying to impress me? “Then I’ll have the Colombian blend, when the waitress wakes up.”

A man appeared from the back. “The Colombian?” A strong Ukrainian accent.

“Yes.”

He sucked in his cheeks, and disappeared again.

Tatyana smiled. “Were you surprised when I called you?” A psychotherapist’s tone.

“Mildly. Should I have been?”

She offered me a cigarette. I offered her a Benson and
Hedges. She took one but didn’t admire it, like any Russian would have done. Benson and Hedges must be commonplace in Poland. I let her light mine.