The Gondola Scam (23 page)

"Duck," my merry boatman
advised every few yards. I did, slow to realize it was another joke to make my
blind antics all the more comical. I blundered on, pushed and pulled by anybody
that felt like an ego trip. A born duck-egg, I decided the joke had gone too
far and kept going without crouching—and brained myself on some low arch. You
can imagine the jollity and all-round merriment as I was lifted and
elbow-walked down two flights, eighteen steps each. Twenty-seven paces one direction,
a right turn. Thirty paces, a door. Twenty more paces, another door.

Hood off, and somebody untying my
hands. Light so blinding my head felt lasered. Vision returned with some pain.
The first person I saw was Tonio. The second was my boatman, still making
everybody laugh, but this time acting out for Tonio's benefit my blind falls on
the way from the boat.

It was a massively wide
brick-lined room, strip-lit. Huge. A ventilator hummed, but the place's scent
was dankish, cool. A score or so men worked silently at easels, on wall
benches, at desks. One chipped at a piece of masonry in a screened comer.
Hardly a glance from the lot of them. Clearly a dedicated bunch. From a tall
monastic-looking lectemed desk at the far end an old gray-haired bloke peered
down at us. It was a factory.

"Another scratcher, Luciano."
Tonio gave me a bored jerk of his head to report. Luciano the expert,
presumably foreman of all this faking industry. "And you can go, 'Carlo.”

My friendly boatman and his two goons
were actually at the door when I said casually, "Oh, Carlo. Sorry about
your chart," and I headed for Luciano's desk.

"Wait!"
I paused agreeably at Tonio's command. "Chart? What
chart?"

"Eh? Oh, Carlo's." Tonio's
pale stare worried Carlo. You could tell that from the way his smile had
frozen.

"I keep no chart, signore,"
Carlo said, his voice an echo of my own terror-stricken croaking.

"It was an accident," I
explained, ever so anxious to avoid misunderstanding. "I nudged him. Carlo
said I'd spoil this chart he was keeping, if I wasn't careful." The two
goons took a quiet step away from Carlo. Nobody was laughing now. I was really
pleased at that. "But it wasn't mv fault, you see. I couldn't see a damned
thing, for that hood."

"Shut it, Lovejoy. You keep
interesting secret charts. Carlo?"

Carlo went gray. "He's lying.
There are no charts."

"I never actually saw it," I
put in, so anxious. "Does it matter?"

"Carlo." Tonio's reproachful
voice was a sickly purr. I went cold. Carlo began to sweat.

"Signore. I swear before God."

"Find it, you two."

The goons whisked him out of the door
before I could grin and tell Carlo to mind his head. It would have been my
little quip, but my throat had clogged. I still feel rotten about Carlo, God
rest his soul. Not wanting to face Tonio's gaze I ambled down the factory
towards Luciano, who had my skewered Elizabethan coaster on his high desk. He
looked straight out of Dickens: tidy dark suit, if you please, neat dark tie
and white cuffs showing, even pebble specs.

His voice was the quavering of a lamb
in the next county. "What was all that about?"

''Dunno. Some chart or other."

"Crummy piece of work, this,
Lovejoy." His eyes bubbled at me through the thick lenses.

"Never said it wasn't."

That tickled him into twinkly humor.
"Not had time to put the word round to see if you're any good as a faker,
Lovejoy." The unyielding complaint of the disciplined serf.

"Faker? Me? I'm an authentic
antique dealer."

An artist painting nearby overheard and
snickered, a sound I heard with a glow of pleasure. As long as we were all
being sensible.

"You did a perfect sketch, I'm
told," old Luciano said. "And burnt it."

"Hardly perfect." I cleared
my throat. "Yes. The signora was playing games."

He harumphed, nodding, indicated the
nearby artist. "Take a look. Tell me what you think."

I went over, asking, "Where'd you
get the photo?" The artist, a skeletal bearded geezer shoddied in smeared
denim, took no notice, working steadily on at his canvas. It was laid
horizontal on a trestle, first time I'd actually seen that trick used. As long
as your paint's consistency is exactly right, once the canvas is dry enough you
can lift it erect and judge the craquelure as it actually develops. This is
great for artificial aging. I'd have to try that when I got a minute. A huge
photograph was mounted on the wall, skillfully lit. "I thought cameras
aren't allowed in the Correr."

They're not," Luciano said.

'Well done." The Correr Museum
forbids cameras and handbags. It makes you deposit them in the ticket office
anteroom at the head of the stairs, and that's the only permitted entrance. So
a marvelous color of Carpaccio's
La Visitazione
spoke volumes about Tonio's powers of organization. "Isn't your photo a
bit small though?" The canvas looked about right, four feet by four ten or
so.

"It's the way I work," the
artist said.

"Mmmm." Fakers sometimes do
this, copy from smaller photographs because it prevents that telltale woodenness
from creeping into the fake, the bane of all art forgers since the beginning of
time. Don't try it when forging watercolors, incidentally. Doesn't work.

He was "squaring." This means
dividing the photo of the original into squares, and painting his repro square
by square. Makes faking easier, but is a dead giveaway to seasoned
connoisseurs—especially if they have an X-ray machine handy. Almost anybody can
create a fake which will pass for original at a quick glance. It takes somebody
like Keating or On to do class jobs. Or me, on a good day. This bloke was using
a camera lucida to cast reflected lines onto his canvas. It saves drawing them
and leaving telltale marks, and seems like a good idea. I raised my eyebrows.
Luciano gave me a rueful shrug as I strolled back.

"Is he careful enough,
Luciano?"

"He's not bad."

"I can't see his reference
lines." Forgers using squares from a camera lucida must have a standard
measured square, because you have to adjust the damned thing when you switch it
on at the start of every session. Most of us— er, I mean those nasty illegal
fakers—nail a piece of card to the top rear of the canvas frame and focus in on
it for accuracy.

"Domenico does it by eye."

'Two cheers for Domenico." A
steady but faint thump-thump-thump came from behind the brick wall. Somebody
must be forging the Great Pyramid with a steamhammer. As I listened, it faded
into silence.

"Decided, Luciano?" Tonio
called.

The old man quavered instantly,
"Si, Tonio. Lovejoy can start helping Giovanni on the Doge's Palace
stonework. We're behind with those."

"Eh?"

"Over there." Luciano pointed
to the far corner with his quill, a real quill.

"Me?" I said indignantly.
"I'm only here to advise, you ignorant old sod."

He shook with inaudible laughter. "I
work too. Lovejoy. Look." He showed me what he was doing, a large
Missa Solemnis
on his high bench, faking
away at a hell of a lick. He had black and red inks. It's a saying among
forgers that a fake must be even better than the original. Well, grudgingly I
had to admit his massive pages looked superb. The cunning old devil was even
annotating the margins in a diluted ochrous brown as he went. Lovely work.
"Get to it, Lovejoy," he scolded amiably. "Remember. Idleness
was a capital offense among the Incas."

"They're extinct, right?" I
groused back, and ambled over towards the screens in the comer.

Tonio saw and nodded. "You do
exactly as Giovanni says, Lovejoy," he ordered. "We want our money's
worth."

"Cheek. What money?" I peered
behind the screens. The comer space was rigged out exactly like a medieval
stonemason's workshop. This thinnish bald bloke, presumably Giovanni, was
chipping away at a supported capital.

"The signore will explain."
Tonio wasn't smiling, so presumably he meant it. "Get to work."

"I already told him that,"
Luciano piped querulously.

"Yes. Get to work," the
stonemason said, not even bothering to look.

"Coming, bazz," I greeted
Giovanni cheerfully. "Call that carving? Shift over and give me a
go." I'd made it. A worker in old Pinder's factory of forgers and fakers.

22

"Cocky bastard."

That was Giovanni's greeting, almost
all he said during that long working night.

"Ducal Palace, eh?" I said
chirpily, coming in and shedding my jacket while I gave his stone carving the
onceover. "Name's Lovejoy. Why'd you choose the judgment of Solomon,
Giovanni? You should have started with that lovely stuff by Bon."

"Get to work."

"It's from the capital next to the
Basilica, isn't it?" I fondled the stone, checking its progress against
the plaster-cast mold he had ledged on a chair. "Look, Giovanni, old pal.
D'you really believe it's old Jacopo della Quercia's work? I mean to say, 1410
a.d. is a hell of a—"

"Get to work."

"Your Archangel Gabriel's head's
too protuberant."

I reached for the sander. Giovanni
moved aside and called, "Ventilator's on, lads." I looked about
inquiringly. The others all down the factory called fine, okay. Giovanni
nodded, pushed down a boxed switch, and a hood above us hummed into action. The
lazy blighter sat while I smoothed part of the angel's form. He also had his
lunch from his sandwich box, offering me none. Lucky I'd stocked up with that
bellyful of pizzas. He didn't offer to lend me his goggles, either.

I slammed into the task of copying the
plaster cast. Go to the comer of the Doge's Palace and look at the capital
nearest the actual Basilica. These capitals are grand stuff as sculpture, but
they're too grim for my liking. All with the same despondent message of
mortality, and what a horrendous business life is. Not a smile anywhere.

Still, I was happy, doing what comes
naturally. Don't misunderstand. Forgery's not as bad as it's painted. Not even
factory-sized.

I mean, generations of collectors have
enjoyed their "Canaletto" paintings sublimely unaware that the young
William Henry Hunt actually painted many of them as copies in Doctor Monro's
so-called academy (for "one shilling and sixpence the hour," Hunt's
little fellow slogger John Linnell said bitterly). Some were sold as originals,
as Linnell knew, but that doesn't really worry me. Why should it? The
"Canaletto Secret" was to paint a series of color glazes over a
monochrome painting. That extraordinary light effect he achieved in his
natural-history pictures has given a zillion people pleasure. So if little
William and John painted just as brilliantly, what the hell. And I don't mind
that El Greco by 1585 had a cellarful of minions turning out titchy copies of
his own efforts while he dined grandly upstairs—to the scrapings of a private orchestra
in the twenty-four-room pad he'd hired from the Marques de Villena. The morals
of fakery are the same by the ounce as the ton. Make a note of that.

As I worked, I tried merry chat as a
way of collecting some news. Giovanni was impervious. He chomped, swilled his
vino. Then he sat, dozily coming to every few minutes to see how I was getting
on.

"How many of us are there,
pal?" I tried. And, "How long you been at this game, eh?" And,
"What's the going rate, Gianni? Paid piece by piece, from the way you
stick at it, I’ll bet!"

Not a word. A Venetian's silence when
the subject's money spoke volumes. Gossip is therefore forbidden, the penalties
very, very heavy. I began to worry about that ashen look on Carlo's face.
(Worried sick about being worried—now about the flaming enemy, I ask you!) I
gave the somnolent Giovanni a friendly kick and told him to start roughing out
the next stone capital.

Luciano put his head through the
screens at this point, smiled and nodded and moved on. Doing his rounds of the
forgery factory to see we were all doing our stuff, I supposed. Whatever the
rest were like, I was determined Lovejoy would be exemplary. I'd see I would do
twice as well as these fakers. If they worked fast, I’d work faster. And I'd
make their natural forgers' versatility look like the plod-dings of pedestrian
hacks. I told Luciano not to interrupt the workers.

All that long night we worked, and I
learned nothing useful. A couple of odd details, though. One was that
thump-thump-thump that recurred occasionally. Another was that Tonio
disappeared once I'd got settled in and working. He was replaced by the two
goons.

And there were other oddities. For
instance, I'd never seen a forger worth his salt simply stand aside and let
another bloke take over his handiwork, because forgers consider themselves
artists of a high order. Yet Giovanni, the slob, had let me take charge of his
sculpture. And, at least as strange, nobody talked. Three times I went past the
other busy forgers on my way to the loo, and paused to make a friendly comment.
No avail. Even Domenico gave me the bent eye.