The Edge of Doom (11 page)

“And yours.”

“And mine,” Kate said. “But, obviously, with reservations.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

What should I do but tend
Upon the hours and terms of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend
Nor services to do, till you require.

The next day, Friday, Kate and Reed, spelling each other, were able to be home so that Jay was never alone in the apartment. Neither of them, if asked, could have explained their powerful disinclination to leave Jay in the apartment unattended, but, explicable or not, they acknowledged their apprehensions and were guided by them.

Clara would not come to clean until the following Tuesday. Something, anything, had to be done about Jay before then. It was, indeed, true that Clara did not enter the maid’s room; it was impossible to clean, and the agreement that it would be ignored during her weekly visit was well-established. Nonetheless, Kate and Reed did not intend to leave her alone in the apartment with a strange man of whose presence she was ignorant.

At the same time, neither of them felt an immediate need to continue their conversation with him, or to listen to his recounting of his life. Kate pointed out to Reed that Desdemona had loved Othello “for the dangers [he] had passed, and he loved her that she did pity them.”

“I feel somewhat the same,” Kate said, “although he is my father. Do you find that odd, or distressing?”

“No. But I do think it interferes with an altogether objective view of the situation before us,” Reed said.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I need to think, that’s all. And having thought, if what I think is even remotely productive, I need to act. It may turn out that I need to hear more of Jay’s adventures before I can act. At the moment, I need to put my feet up and cogitate.”

“Well,” Kate said, after a pause, “I had thought of going to Boston. Perhaps I could fly up early tomorrow, and be back that night, or early the following morning. Would that suit your needs and enhance your cogitations? You would have to take Banny for all her walks.”

“Why Boston?”

“It’s a long time since I’ve seen Selma Rodney. And she is an art historian; might not art historians, or at any rate assistant curators, know something about art theft? It’s a subject that has taken a remarkable hold on my imagination.”

“Surely there are art historians and curators in New York.”

“No doubt. But Selma is an old student and an old friend. And somehow by consulting her in Boston I shan’t feel that she’s likely to want immediately to pursue further inquiries into my sudden new interest in the subject of art thieves.”

“Yes, I see. And you want to demonstrate that you trust me with this situation, at least for twenty-four hours, and you wish to grant me my need to think alone and uninterruptedly.”

“Let’s just say it’s a journey that seems nicely to serve us both. You will remember, however, that Jay needs to eat, at least occasionally. You might want to check on him from time to time in any case; there is always the danger of his succumbing to claustrophobia and despair.”

“Kate, you are either a very wise woman, or a frightened one. Perhaps both. I think a day away from here, from him, from me, would be an excellent idea. And who knows—Selma might just drop a useful hint of some sort, as well as providing information about art theft.”

And so Kate set off for Boston, having called Selma who declared herself delighted at the chance to spend a day with Kate, and happy to forego any other plans.

Kate took the shuttle to Boston, and found Selma waiting for her at the airport. “I wasn’t sure I could make it,” Selma said, “and then I found I could. You never change, you know,” she added, smiling at Kate and taking her bag.

“Gray hairs,” Kate said. “And all the other changes those gray hairs represent. You don’t exactly change much yourself,” she added.

But sitting in the car beside Selma, and later, settled across from her at Selma’s kitchen table, Kate realized that, in truth, she could hardly have described Selma, had she been asked. Why, she wondered, do I never really
look
at people? That’s not true, I do look. But I can’t seem to remember faces or even whole persons. I do register if someone is six feet six or five feet three, but not much in between; I’d be a total loss trying to describe someone to a police artist. Whenever you meet a character in books, Kate had noticed, he or she is always described from hair to boots. A detective in a mystery may be face-to-face with a suspect, but we are told how the man or woman is dressed and everything else about them before a question is asked. Is Selma wearing a skirt or trousers? Kate suddenly asked herself. She leaned over the table and peered at Selma’s legs; she was wearing a long skirt.

“Lost something?” Selma asked.

“I’ve suddenly realized that while I recognized you instantly, I couldn’t have described you to save my life.”

“Have you just become aware of that?” Selma asked.

“Do you mean it’s obvious?”

“Of course. Your students have always noticed it. Until we spoke, you sometimes couldn’t tell us apart if there was even a superficial resemblance.”

“How frightful. And I’ve been thinking myself an observant person. How deluded we all are, or I am.”

“But you are observant. You remember every conversation, every paper a student ever wrote, and, we all suspected, every word you ever read. You’re just not into seeing, and I’m not sure most people are, except maybe in books,” she added, unconsciously echoing Kate’s thoughts.

“I mentioned once to Reed,” Kate said, “that rooms are always described also in great detail. Do you think I could describe this room?”

“Since you’ve been in it for all of five minutes, I doubt it. Is this really worrying you?”

“No. It just occurred to me. As an art historian and a curator, you must notice people and paintings and the looks of things, surely?”

“Probably more than you do. That’s no doubt connected to why I left graduate school in literature for graduate school in art history, with your kind and active encouragement. Is this what you wanted to discuss?”

“No. That was just idle chatter,” Kate said. But she was in fact wondering if her failure ever to have taken note of her difference from the other Fanslers was connected to this odd disability, or if she had developed the disability so as not to notice the difference. Certainly none of the other Fanslers had noticed it; perhaps it was a Fansler gene. If I don’t watch out, I’m going to take up Freudian analysis, she warned herself.

“What I was hoping,” Kate said, “was that you could tell me something about art theft.”

Selma stared at Kate for a moment, and then laughed. “Whatever you wanted to ask about, I knew I’d never be able to guess it. On the other hand, I could now describe you from top to toe. Shall I?”

“Please, no. What about art theft?”

“Am I to know the reason for this particular inquiry?” Kate shrugged. “Very well, no questions asked,” Selma said. Kate had been a crucial figure in Selma’s life, as teacher, as supporter, ultimately as friend. “The problem is,” Selma continued, “I don’t know much about art theft. Nothing more than the most famous cases, and I haven’t thought of them in years. Do you want me to find you someone more knowledgeable?”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. By famous cases, you mean like the theft of the
Mona Lisa
from the Louvre in 1911, or the Isabella Stewart Gardner robbery?”

“That’s the idea. There are a few more of that order, though not quite as dramatic or, as with the Gardner Museum, as disastrous. Everyone in Boston has followed that case; the pictures have never been recovered.”

“Tell me about the other cases.”

“Let me think. Art thefts in America became recognized as an important crime only in the 1970s, I think. If you’re writing a paper about this, you must check everything I say. I’m just rattling on, without much to rattle on about.”

“I’m not going to publish a word on the subject,” Kate assured her. “Probably, as you talk, more examples will come to mind. It always seems to work that way; surely you’ve noticed.”

“Let’s see.” Selma looked at the ceiling. They were drinking coffee; Selma got up to refill their cups, and then sat down and began to ponder. One of the things Kate liked best about Selma—and Kate liked much about Selma—was that she was not an obsessive questioner, nor one who felt compelled to relate every conversation to herself. She was, rather, able to pick up on a conversation or subject and treat it with seriousness and, if that mood suited the topic under discussion, with a kind of giddy pleasure.

“I think it was in the early 1970s that art theft became a federal crime,” Selma said. “You could be sent to prison or fined, or both, if stolen art was taken across state lines. The point, of course, was to get the FBI involved in pursuing stolen art. If the robbery was done for money, the robbers were likelier to be caught. Often they were common crooks without much knowledge of art, who thought this was an easy way to make some dough. It was when the criminals knew what they were doing that recovery became more difficult and sometimes impossible, particularly if they, or the people they steal for, have no intention of selling. Someone who steals a painting for the sheer joy of owning it in secret is almost impossible to catch.”

“Ah,” Kate said.

Selma waited for further comment, and then, when there was none, went on. “There are also the jokers; these are the stories about art theft that everyone knows; thefts for a joke or to show it could be done. In these cases, the paintings or whatever are usually recovered or returned. Sometimes art students have stolen paintings to copy them, more often in Europe, or to remove the effects of restoration and then return them with a nasty note.”

“They sound like the type who used to sit on flagpoles or swallow live goldfish; college pranks for the hell of it,” Kate said.

“That’s the idea, but art theft is usually serious; very serious, and for money. Here again the art work is usually recovered. You and I steal a Vermeer, let us say; never mind how. We know it’s worth millions of dollars. So we send off a note saying for ten percent of its worth, we’ll return the picture. There’s no way anyone could sell a Vermeer, and we, the thieves, know it. So we’re just speaking here of kidnapping and ransom. No one likes to admit it, but both the museums (or owners or galleries) and the insurance companies would far rather get the picture back than help the police or the FBI to prosecute the thieves. Is any of this helping?”

“I’m hanging on every word. Surely what you’re describing isn’t only ransom, it’s also blackmail.”

“Right you are. The insurance companies are being blackmailed. But the sad truth is that many museums don’t carry insurance on particular paintings or objects; the Gardner didn’t. Kate, I do hope you aren’t thinking of taking up a life of crime; you don’t contemplate trying to steal a painting, do you?” Selma actually sounded a bit worried.

“Absolutely not. Do go on.”

“I don’t think I can dredge up much more.”

“It doesn’t sound as though security is very sophisticated in most of the museums that were robbed.”

“That’s improved. Some of the worst crimes were in Europe decades ago—that notorious theft of Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington, for instance, and a Rembrandt that was stolen from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam by an insane man and mostly destroyed; security has improved since then. Guards stand about, visitors have to check their belongings, and the press is not given much information about how thefts are carried out, information that might inspire others to similar acts. Technology has become very sophisticated, of course. My museum has circuit television, video cameras, electric beams that follow all movement, and so forth, but even these devices can be evaded by clever thieves. I recently saw a movie with Sean Connery about such cleverly planned thefts. And there have been security systems so sensitive that they respond to the most innocent circumstances, and thus are in danger of being ignored, like the boy who cried wolf. The Gardner, of course, didn’t even have separate alarms for each picture or object; I don’t know how many museums do. Worst of all, the police and the museum are after different aims: the police want to respond to the alarm and catch the thieves; the museum wants the alarm to scare the thieves away.”

“Do thefts still go on?”

“Oh yes. There are often insiders helping thieves, selling information about security systems or helping the criminals to get in after hours, or to stay after hours. Labor is expensive, and guard jobs are boring. Often most of the guards in a museum aren’t on the museum’s staff at all, or only a few of them are, and these are not highly paid. The greater number of guards are hired from ‘cops for rent’ or some such organization. Does any of this help?”

“Yes, it does. I can’t tell you exactly why, at least not yet, but I can say that what you have told me is important for one main reason: there is a distinction between art theft for profit and art theft in the service of a particular passion. Knowing that is important to me.”

“If you say so, Kate. As long as the particular passion doesn’t include destroying the picture, as with the Rembrandt.” Selma rose and picked up the coffee cups. “Is cheese and bread and salad sufficient for lunch, or shall we go out and celebrate this reunion with something special?” she asked.

“Might we do the something special for dinner? Bread and cheese is a favorite of mine.”

“So I remembered. Crusty, fresh French bread, Brie, and Stilton.”

“What a memory you have.”

“You came to my house only once before I moved to Boston, and that was what I had. You liked it.”

“Perhaps we could visit your museum,” Kate said, embarrassed as always to hear herself complimented, even by implication. “I’m not much on museums, or art if it comes to that—too visual I guess—but there is an intense pleasure in viewing museum pictures in the company of an informed guide.”

“So you shall.”

“Good,” Kate said. “It has been, and promises to continue to be, a lovely day. I’m glad I decided to stay for all of it.”

“Me, too,” Selma said.

And Kate promised herself to return one day soon to tell Selma the reasons for her inquiries. Today, Kate needed to speak of other things.