The Brush-Off (23 page)

A waiter arrived and put cappuccinos in front of us. Eastlake studied me carefully, as though attempting to discern my reliability. Then he made up his mind. Picking up his spoon, he leaned forward. When he spoke, it was in hushed, confidential tones. ‘Can you keep a secret, Murray?'

I didn't reply, but he was welcome to continue.

‘I'm not the one being had,' he grinned. ‘You are.'

Eastlake built a floating island of sugar on the froth of his cappuccino and watched it slowly sink. ‘Giles Aubrey is a bitter and twisted old man,' he said. ‘And he's been spinning you a line. I don't suppose you happened to mention to him how much we're paying Karlin for the picture, did you?'

‘I might have said something about it,' I allowed.

‘And that's when he came out with his story?'

‘He was very convincing.'

‘Aubrey can be, by all accounts. You wouldn't be the first he's taken in. Lots of authentic Szabo embroidery, I imagine. This bit about the suicide in the National Gallery moat, this whatsisname…'

‘Marcus Taylor.'

‘That's a nice topical touch. Aubrey saw the story on the news, no doubt, and grabbed the opportunity to make a little mischief.'

‘Why would he want to do that?

‘Ancient history,' said Eastlake. ‘Old wounds. Aubrey genuinely believed in Victor Szabo, but he never succeeded in making anything of his career. Szabo probably even cost him money. Seeing the sort of figures Szabo's pictures are currently fetching must really piss him off. But the money, I suspect, is the least of it. He's jealous of Fiona Lambert getting all the credit for securing Szabo's posthumous reputation. It was Fiona who found
Our Home
in Karlin's collection, pegged it as a benchmark work and suggested that the CMA acquire it. Casting doubts on the authenticity of
Our Home
would be the perfect way to undermine her reputation.'

This made a certain amount of sense. Perhaps Aubrey had seized on my phone call as an opportunity to exact a little belated revenge on Fiona Lambert. But that still didn't explain everything. ‘The drowned guy, Taylor,' I said. ‘He left a note. A manifesto, the press were calling it. Angelo thought they might beat something up. So I went to his studio yesterday morning, just before Max Karlin's brunch, and took a look around. He'd painted a perfect copy of
Our Home
.'

Eastlake slowly sipped his cappuccino, studying me over the rim of his cup. ‘You're quite the eager beaver, aren't you?' he said. ‘But I'm not sure what you're getting at.'

‘Neither am I,' I admitted. ‘It just seemed like an odd coincidence, given what Aubrey told me later.'

‘It's not unusual, you know, for younger artists to make copies of landmark paintings. Just proves what I said.
Our
Home
is a masterpiece.'

‘But Taylor also had a photograph of himself with Victor Szabo. Doesn't that tend to corroborate Aubrey's story?'

Eastlake indulged me, amused by my persistence. ‘I've got a picture of myself with the Prime Minister. That doesn't make me his love child.'

Put like that, my concerns were all starting to feel a bit farfetched. ‘Looks like I've been wasting your time,' I said, burying my face in my own coffee.

‘On the contrary,' said Eastlake. ‘You did the right thing coming to me. We
have
got a problem. The art world thrives on gossip. Giles Aubrey's malicious inventions could do a lot of damage.'

‘Aubrey can say what he likes,' I said. ‘But he can't prove anything. By his own admission, Taylor was the only other person who could confirm his story—and he's dead.'

‘You miss my point,' said Eastlake. ‘We're talking perceptions here. The value of a work of art is a fragile abstraction. If word gets around that doubts exist about the authorship of
Our Home
, similar speculation could easily arise about the integrity of other works in Max Karlin's collection. Suggest that one picture isn't what it's purported to be, people might wonder about the others. A person in your position, close to the Minister for the Arts, has a certain credibility. What you say gets heard, passed on, amplified.'

‘I think I understand the situation, Lloyd,' I said pointedly, resenting the implication that I needed to be warned not to go blabbing Aubrey's story all over town. ‘But I'm more concerned about potential embarrassment to Angelo than the market value of Max Karlin's art collection. In either case, the question is to make sure Aubrey stays quiet. He agreed to keep the story to himself yesterday, but who knows how long that will last.'

Eastlake had already figured this out. ‘Call his bluff. Make him put up or shut up. If he took Karlin's money knowing that
Our Home
wasn't authentic, that's criminal fraud. Mention the prospect of prosecution and I bet he'll fall over himself to sign a statement confirming the picture's authenticity.'

A more informed discussion with Giles Aubrey was certainly on the agenda. ‘I'll go and see him tomorrow,' I said.

‘You do what you think advisable, Murray.'

Business done, I accepted a second cup of coffee and eased back into my surroundings. The Deli's cafeteria decor was obviously not its prime attraction, no more so than the quality of its profiteroles or the freshness of its juices. The customers were there for each other. As we were talking, Eastlake had been fielding social signals from the other booths. Spotting his opportunity, the beetroot-faced realtor table-hopped over, cup in hand. ‘Hey, Eastie,' he said, wagging his tail. ‘How's that new Merc of yours running?'

Eastlake introduced us, first names only. Malcolm was wearing a Gucci shirt that might have done something for a man twenty years younger. ‘Seen Lloyd's new car?' He jerked his head back towards the street. ‘High performance automobile like that and he gets a chauffeur to drive it. That's like having the butler fuck your mistress. What do you drive, Murray?'

‘Something smaller,' I said. Then, since the subject had come up, ‘Good drivers easy to find, Lloyd?'

‘Noel?' Eastlake was back at ease, expansive. ‘I didn't find him,' he said. ‘He found me. You know the Members' carpark at Flemington?'

Malcolm squeezed in beside me, ready to catch any gems of wit and wisdom Lloyd Eastlake might care to drop. The Members' carpark was where the silvertails held their chicken and champers picnics on Cup Day. Not a place you needed to be a regular race-goer to know about. I nodded. Go on.

‘Last spring racing carnival, it was. I was out there with your predecessor, Ken Sproule. Terrible man for the gee-gees, Ken is. We've had a pretty good day and we're both well over the limit. So we get to the car and Ken decides he's not going to let me drive, not in my condition. It's starting to rain and there we are, standing next to the car…'

‘That was the 450 SLC, right?' chipped in Malcolm. ‘The two-door coupe.'

‘…arguing the toss about whether I'm in a fit state to drive. Anyway, this bloke comes along, he's doing the rounds, working for some car-detailing firm. They go around during the afternoon, checking for dents, rust spots, that sort of thing. They put their card under the wiper—flaking chrome, cracked light, whatever—and a quote for the job.'

I could just see it. Spider Webb prowling the toffs' carpark with a twenty-cent piece in one hand and an eye to the main chance.

‘So Ken gets an idea. This bloke can drive us into the city, take the car overnight, cut and polish it, drop it off at my place in the morning. It's either that or walk through the rain to the main gate, get a cab, come back the next day for the car. So I said okay. Next morning, there's the Merc in my driveway, spic and span, never looked better. It hadn't been running at its best, and he had a few ideas about that. Ended up looking after my wife's car as well. When I moved up to the SEL, I needed a driver and put him on full-time.'

Malcolm loved it, the adventures of the cavalier millionaire. ‘Hundred and fifty grand's worth of vehicle and you handed the keys to a complete stranger?'

Not a bad story, but it sounded like pub talk to me. And a funny way to hire a bodyguard. Through the Deli's plate-glass front window, Spider was visible across the road. He was sipping from a polystyrene cup and lazily chewing gum at the same time. Blank-eyed, bored, watchful. Drip dry. ‘This is the guy with the ears, right?' I pushed mine forward by way of example. The wound was healing nicely. ‘Thought I saw him down near the Arts Centre yesterday morning.'

A pair of social lions prowled over, her in an Alice band, him in a track suit, faces from the CMA opening. Eastlake tossed me their names. ‘You remember…' I remembered I had someone better to spend my time with. Offering my seat, I said hello, made my excuses and went to find Red.

His ten dollars had bought a roll of mints and a small electronic game in the shape of a spaceship. The mints weren't bad. I was trying to wheedle a couple more out of Red when we crested the Punt Road hill and hit the tail end of a string of traffic that ran all the way to the river.

Throwing a hasty left at Domain Road, I cut past the Botanic Gardens and through to St Kilda Road. The traffic was lighter there, although the Arts Centre had attracted quite a crowd. Had Marcus Taylor's famous death, I wondered, prompted a renewed interest in the Old Masters? The gelati vans were back in force and delinquents on skateboards were surfing the steel waves of the sculpture on the lawn next to the Concert Hall. Red was drawn like a magnet to the sight. On impulse, I pulled into a vacant parking space.

A juggler had set up shop beside the sculpture in front of the State Theatre, a hideously ugly brown lump. The sculpture, not the juggler. The juggler was dressed as King Neptune and had three carving knives and a flaming firebrand aloft simultaneously. I thought I knew how he felt. Just as he finished, an octopus on stilts appeared through the crowd. ‘Check this out,' I told Red. ‘It's harder than it looks.' Especially since one of the stilts had a bend in it. Red wasn't interested in some promenading fish. His interest lay with the skateboarders. I told him to run ahead, that I'd join him in a few minutes.

Jumping up onto the parapet of the moat, I threaded my way past parked backsides and headed towards the entrance of the National Gallery. The parapet was a little less than a metre across, about the width of a standard table. Not exactly an acrobatic challenge. But then Marcus Taylor didn't have a great track record when it came to tables. It would, I could see, have been quite easy for someone with a few drinks under his belt to slip and knock himself out on the hard grey basalt. But what was Taylor doing walking along the parapet? He was coming from the other direction and the most direct way to the YMCA did not lie along the front of the building.

I went the way I'd have gone if I was Taylor, skirting around the back. At the stage door of the Concert Hall, I found the same guy on duty who'd let me into the Arts Ministry the previous morning, and got him to unlock the YMCA. The same air of scrofulous melancholy pervaded the place, but not the same silence. As the lift juddered open at the third floor, Lou Reed advanced down the corridor to meet me.

He was coming from one of the formerly locked rooms. A woman in bib-and-brace overalls stuck her head through the open door and watched me advance, her eyes narrowing. ‘If you're a journalist,' she said, ‘you're a bit late. I already told that lot who were here yesterday everything I know. Which is nothing. The guy was a hermit.' She had a stick of charcoal in her hand. Behind her I could see big sheets of parchment paper taped to the walls. They were covered in black squiggles that might, given a couple of million years, have eventually evolved into horses. Or dogs. Or giraffes.

‘If I look like a journalist, I can assure you it's not intentional.' I nodded towards Taylor's end of the corridor. ‘I'm a sort of friend.' Well, Taylor was in no position to contradict me.

‘Oh,' she said, scowling. ‘I didn't…' She was going to say she didn't know he had any, but stopped herself in time. ‘Didn't have a lot to do with him. Like I said, he kept to himself.'

‘There was a painting he was working on last time I was here,' I said. ‘I was sort of interested in it.'

‘Help yourself,' she said, turning her back in disgust. ‘Everyone else has.'

When I opened Taylor's door I discovered what she meant. Taylor's rooms had been plundered of almost anything of value. The camp stove had been nicked, the microwave oven, the desk lamp, even jars of used paintbrushes. Most of the books had gone from the brick-and-board case. A half-dozen back copies of
Veneer
remained, a thin tome entitled
The Necessity of Australian Art
and a dog-eared copy of
A Fierce Vision
. I thumbed through it. A sheet of tracing paper marked the plate of
Our Home
, the principal details precisely transferred to a pencil-drawn grid. Using such a template, a competent draughtsman could easily have enlarged the image to actual size and transferred it onto canvas. It told me nothing I didn't already know, that Marcus Taylor had whipped up a pretty fair version of
Our
Home
. Whether it was his first or second attempt, why he'd done it, and where it had gone, were all questions that remained unanswered.