None of what Nick was saying was improvised. The potency of his performance came from the weeks he’d spent researching and preparing it. If West possessed any lingering doubts about Nick’s aptitude, his seemingly off-the-cuff encyclopedic knowledge would put those suspicions to rest. Nick picked up the tankard, which was, according to Ari, the least successful of the forgeries.
“Notice the SS hallmark of Simeon Soumaine punched on the inner lid. It was Soumaine’s idiosyncrasy to punch his tankards only in this unorthodox location. His lids and handles were often bulkier than the central vessel, so it has an effect of both lightness and heft. He did a lot of work for the great Dutch families of the age. It’s no surprise that the van der Haars used him. I’m guessing this piece dates to somewhere between 1720 and 1725, before Soumaine became a little too grandiose with ornamentation.”
Nick found himself impressed by his own bullshit. It was undeniably top-quality bullshit. It sounded so erudite and convincing, even to the one who was spewing it. West ate it up, nodding with his arms clasped behind his back like a child on his best behavior. Only Eva, who stood behind her uncle, chewing on the insides of her cheeks, worried Nick.
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions?” she said.
“Of course not,” Nick lied welcomingly.
Surprisingly, Eva’s voice turned uncertain, all Southern California in its vertiginous ascents, and she threw marshmallowy softballs at him. Why did these pieces look so dull compared to the French and British silver she’d seen? Was American silver worth less than its European cousins? Did that curly engraving on the side of the vessel mean anything?
Nick fielded each question like a veteran. He began to wonder if his fourteen months at Wickston had, in fact, transformed him into a connoisseur. A part of him wished Ari could be here to eavesdrop; he might be proud of what he’d taught Nick.
“At school in Toulouse, I only did paintings, carpets, and frescoes,” Eva admitted. “I dabbled a bit in marble and wood. But I never touched the metals.” It sounded like she was listing the drugs she’d tried in college. Nick was thankful that Eva had never experimented with silver. She laughed as she stretched the sleeves of her cardigan over her hands. “I underestimated you, Nick. I fell for that baby face of yours. But, fuck, you know your stuff.”
Nick next selected the punch bowl. The tankard might have been the most evident fake, but this piece had its own problems. A punch bowl would have been hammered out from a single sheet, but Nick could feel the faint globs of the soldering around its base. He held the bowl toward West and pointed out the engraved pattern running around its center ring.
“Do you see the gadrooning motif?”
“I see it!” West exclaimed religiously, as if seeing really was believing.
They went through each piece, with Nick gratuitously and inaccurately championing them for their beauty, artistry, and design. By the time they were finished, West was worn out from listening to antiquarian terms and Nick was equally tired from reciting them. He took a seat in West’s desk chair, his neck stiff and his mind cramping. He was so drained he could have put his head on the desk and fallen asleep. But there was also a high that accompanied the deception. He’d made it through the performance and had succeeded in turning junk into sterling. Nick remembered as a kid spending hours at the kitchen table with his markers and pencils trying to duplicate a dollar bill so perfectly that it would be accepted as real cash. Every kid on the planet must try their hand at that cheating art. Kids dreamed of being counterfeiters just as they dreamed of being president.
West pulled out his phone and snapped photos of the van der Haar plunder, repositioning them in different arrangements as if they were visiting grandchildren.
“Congratulations,” Eva said.
“Don’t congratulate me yet,” her uncle replied. “I still don’t own them.” He leaned against his desk and swiveled around to Nick. “So what do you think? Give it to me straight. How much are they worth?”
“Hard to say,” Nick said with a sigh. But it wasn’t hard to say. Nick and Clay had already agreed that they’d take seven hundred thousand dollars for the entire set. That would be enough for Clay to clear his loans, pay back his father, and leave them with more than three hundred thousand to live on for the immediate future. The lowest they would accept was six hundred thousand. Nick felt confident about their chances—so confident, in fact, that seven hundred thousand suddenly seemed pitifully low for a zillionaire to be united with objects he coveted. But Nick had to be careful. He couldn’t get greedy at the last second. Naming an outrageous sum might encourage West to seek a second opinion. West had to feel he was getting a bargain.
“Those five antiques are worth well over a million dollars on today’s market,” he counseled. “They could go as high as a million three or a million four.” West looked both delighted and horrified by these figures. “But that’s only if there’s a willing buyer. Right now, silver isn’t particularly popular. It’s cyclical. In five years, tastes will change and it’ll be back with a vengeance. In the long run, we’re talking about an extremely safe investment.”
West didn’t speak. He closed his eyes. He must be comparing his earthly desires against his monthly luxury allowance—or more likely, he was trying to determine the smallest cash offer that Clay was likely to accept.
“That’s a lot of money,” Eva muttered.
West opened his eyes and spat, “I know it is!”
“But the kid next door won’t know they’re worth that much,” Nick continued. “Now, I’m sure he’s not stupid. He could google recent auction prices and make an educated guess. But if you’re offering cash on the spot”—Nick wanted more than three hundred thousand; he wanted five, seven, ten—“why not offer eight hundred thousand. Trust me, that’s a deal of a lifetime! I worry if you go to him with anything lower than that, he’ll be making a call to Christie’s. Then you’ll have lost them for good. They’re worth more broken up. The auction houses know that. It would be impossible to reunite them all on your cupboard again. Even if you could, the taxes alone—”
“Of course, of course,” West agreed. He slapped his knee. “Eight hundred thousand. That’s a steal, right? I’d be making out like a thief?”
“You couldn’t do better. I know collectors who would kill for just two of these vessels at that price.”
“Eight hundred thousand,” West repeated as if he were trying to acclimate himself to the number. “For these beauties, I think I can swing that.”
Thank god, Nick wanted to cry. He imagined rushing over to Il Dormitorio to deliver the news. Clay, you’re finally free of debt! Not only had Nick secured their future, he’d won them four hundred thousand dollars of extra spending money instead of three.
But the very moment Nick started celebrating, a seed of regret swam upstream. Sure it was a lot of money, but how long could even four hundred thousand last them in Europe? Maybe four or five years. Six if they really stretched it. Avoiding whole swaths of the Mediterranean where the rates were too high for their budget. How long before they had to skip meals or stay in less accommodating cities in order to stretch the remaining money? Every week there would be less and less of it. Clay could always come back to Il Dormitorio—that was his. But Nick would never be able to stay with him here as long as West was the neighbor. And after four or five years, when the money ran out, what then? Back to New York? Back to Dayton? Back to zero.
Nick knew his sudden swerve into pessimism could be chalked up to exhaustion and the high of his gamble wearing off. But tiny doubts began to nip at his mind as he sat under the astral lights of West’s office: Should he have risked trying for a million dollars? Maybe a million two? Why couldn’t he be greedy? Everyone else was. It dawned on him that the failure of their plan hadn’t been its risk. Rather, it was that they had played it too safely. West had gobs of money at his fingertips. Why hadn’t they tried for more?
He shook himself out of this spiral, blinking his eyes to bring h
imself back to the present. West and Eva were standing at The Rape of the Sabine Women mural, studying it under the bright wattage.
“You didn’t let them use the solvent AB 57 on it, did you?” she was asking her uncle.
“I hired the best conservators available,” West said in defense. “What they used, I can’t recall. There was apparently a lot of animal glue on the fresco from an earlier attempt to brighten the colors.”
Eva shook her head despondently. “AB 57 strips away a lot of the glaze and oils. I would have used something much more delicate. You know, we’ve come a long way in terms of cleaners and finishes in the past ten years.”
West punched his hands on his hips and gave his fresco a vaguely incensed inspection. He seemed disinclined to weather a lecture on bad conservation practices from his beloved niece. “Well, you should see the one next door! It’s a sin the way it’s been allowed to decompose. Honestly, that kid is committing a crime against Venice as far as I’m concerned by not taking any measures to have an authentic Sebastiano Ricci restored!”
West described the rare Blue Madonna fresco he’d finally managed to glimpse while negotiating the silver with his neighbor. It was caked in centuries of soot, the Madonna’s voluptuous, opalescent body as yellow and cracked as a ninety-year-old Sicilian’s. “The doves that surround her are flaking off. Whole doves! They’re falling to dust in the cereal bowls of the Guggenheim interns! And the blue background is basically the color of a black eye.”
Eva inventoried each atrocity with expressions of outrage. West told her to try not to imagine what cigarette and oven smoke were presumably doing this very instant to the Blessed Virgin. “A travesty!” he cried. “But the van der Haars never had the Ricci listed in the government registers. So no one can really step in to save it. It’s left to Clay Guillory. And I’m sure a restoration project is the first thing he’s going to spend his inheritance money on.”
“Is there any way I can see the fresco?” Eva begged. “Do you think he’d let me in to have a look?”
A peevish pssst leaked from West’s lips. “Not a chance. Not. A. Chance.” West had saved face with his niece by turning his new neighbor into a devil. “I’m not saying he murdered Freddy. I won’t go that far, although others—believe me—have. But there’s no way he’s going to let us in to inspect the place. He practically shot daggers from his eyes every time I looked up at that ceiling.”
“What about when you return the silver? I could come with you.”
“Oh, I’m not taking the silver back.” West turned to consult his appraiser. “Nick, don’t you think I should text him my bid? If he accepts, I’ll wire him the money. I worry if I give the pieces back, he might change his mind or hold them hostage for more cash. And this way he can’t send pictures of them to Christie’s.”
“Yes, that’s best,” Nick agreed. His mind had wandered again, or rather at some point while Eva and West were squawking over the badly damaged Madonna fresco, a bell had begun to ring in his head. It rang louder and more insistently, and it chased away his worries about money the same way the kitchen light in his crappy Brooklyn apartment had chased off rodents. Why couldn’t he and Clay try for more money? They’d succeeded once. Why not a second time? Clay had inadvertently laid the groundwork with the lie he told West about owning all of Il Dormitorio. Why not make that lie true as well? It might be an insane idea—a risk bordering on a major felony—but Nick knew one thing: they’d never get this opportunity again.
“How about it, Nick?” West was asking him. “Let’s go into the living room and have a drink. I owe you about a hundred drinks for your help today.”
Nick rose. “Yes,” he said excitedly. “I’m sorry. I’d love a drink.”
Chapter 11
It had begun with the patter of tiny feet.
Except that wasn’t how Nick first interpreted the ominous scampering across the ceiling of Ari’s Riverside Drive apartment. Nick had followed the sound from the living room into the kitchen, where it magically evaporated. An hour later, as Nick stood at the coffeemaker, the faint phantom noise scurried across the ceiling again. This time, Nick followed it with fiercer commitment, tracking its movement back through the living room and on to the dining room, where Ari was leaning against the doorframe in his underwear. Ari was distractedly rubbing his palm over the curly black hairs that spilled from the waistline of his briefs—curlier only by a degree than the rest of the hair that shrouded his pale Manhattan body—while talking on the phone.
“No, that’s too close to the city,” he told a Pennsylvania realtor. “Yes, still a minimum of twenty acres. But now I’m also interested in a decent school district. I know I said I didn’t care before, but I’ve changed my mind.”
Nick glanced at his boyfriend to bait his eyes. He guided them up at the disturbing sound as it circled their lamp fixture.
“Tell me you heard that!” Nick cried when his boyfriend hung up.
“Heard what?” Ari replied, picking lint from his belly button.
“The scurrying! That’s twice I heard it in the ceiling this morning.” Nick shook his head with horror. “It’s mice.”
“It isn’t mice.”
“Yes, it is! I know what they sound like. They’re in the walls.”
“It isn’t mice.”
Nick snapped his fingers in revelation. “You know what? I haven’t heard our upstairs neighbor’s clip-clop stilettos lately. She must be out of town, and that’s when mice take advantage. They love an empty apartment.” There it went again, the scuttle across the ceiling. “You’re telling me you don’t hear that?”
“You moron,” Ari said, laughing. “I ran into our upstairs neighbor yesterday. And you’re right, she isn’t wearing her evil stilettos anymore. Just listen to the sound for a second.” Nick tried to listen into the disgusting rumble for a hint of what it could be if not mice. “You really can’t tell what that is?” Ari asked. “Marcella adopted a toddler from El Salvador. That’s the footsteps of a child.”
In the weeks that followed, Nick would have preferred mice. He should have caught the clue in his boyfriend’s conversation with the Pennsylvania realtor. Ari had asked for a decent school district. Ever since Nick had known Ari, he’d been mulling buying a weekend country house, spending free hours cruising real-estate apps without ever seriously considering driving out for an open house. Highly rated school districts had never previously been a concern. But one night, over the failed science experiment of Nick’s home-cooked vegetarian lasagna, Ari asked, “If you had to choose, would you prefer adoption or fertilizing a baby from one of our sperms?”
“You’re forgetting,” Nick replied, “that the great thing about being an adult is I don’t have to choose.”
“Say you did.”
“Wouldn’t it be more fun to say I didn’t?”
Ari shoved an orange forkful into his mouth.
“Anyway,” Nick said, “doesn’t that idea go against your cardinal belief in nihilistic bohemianism?”
“How so?”
“You know, our contributing to the endless arcade of kindergartens that most Manhattan cross-streets have become. Ari, you use every taxi ride as a personal tour of how old, mean-streets New York has been ruined by playgrounds.”
Ari hunched over his plate. “People change,” he said quietly. Then he tried a different tactic. “Obviously the Halfon gene is the superior life-form. I’m sure we’d agree to use my sperm.” Here, Nick was supposed to defend the illustrious portfolio of attributes that came with a lifetime Brink membership. Instead he said nothing. What he really wanted to do was sink his face in the tray of lasagna and sob for Ari’s forgiveness.
None of this baby talk was coming out of the blue. Nick was sure of it. Whether consciously or not, Ari must have realized that Nick had been cheating. And in Ari’s beautiful, monogamous head, he figured the best way to keep hold of Nick was to move their relationship forward a step: its problem must be stasis, and thus its survival relied on a bolde
r, more irrevocable act of commitment. Children. Marriage. A decent school district in the tick-ridden hills of Pennsylvania. By this point, Nick had been sneaking over to a brownstone in Bed-Stuy three afternoons a week for the sole purpose of falling in love with Freddy’s murderer.
It was all Ari’s fault, Nick decided. If he hadn’t insisted on Nick breaking the news to Clay Guillory in person about the counterfeit silver, they never would have gotten together. But it wasn’t Ari’s fault. It was Nick’s fault. He thought of it more like a defect, a defective fidelity bone that caused him to wake up in the vicinity of Ari’s slim, warm body and love him tenderly, all the while pining for equally warm Clay with his serious eyes and chewed lips locked in an eternal frown. Nothing made Nick happier than getting Clay to laugh against his will, unless it was leading him up the brownstone stairs to the small bedroom with its pilled gray sheets.
Nick wished it were only about sex, because sex had a reliable expiration date. But more often than not on these Bed-Stuy visits, Nick and Clay would just sit with legs and arms intertwined on the carcass of a downstairs sofa watching old black-and-white movies from Freddy’s extensive DVD collection. Or Nick would help Clay craft elaborate descriptions of Freddy’s bizarre curios to sell on eBay. A box of mannequin heads; lightly worn handcrafted maharaja slippers; a collection of gay diaper-fetish porn (“Don’t judge Freddy!” Clay growled protectively); a mother-of-pearl backgammon set with gazelle teeth for tokens; two hot-pink George Foreman mini grills; a vintage denim jacket purportedly stained with the puke of Candy Darling; twenty bootleg Greta Keller recordings. The month before Nick met Clay, an estate-auction company had sent a moving van to the Jefferson Avenue address to clear away Freddy’s more valuable possessions. Those profits had covered nearly a year’s worth of neglected electricity bills, and Clay was praying that the sale of Freddy’s art-poster collection might keep the lights on until the brownstone found a buyer. “You can’t sell a house at a fair price when the power has been shut off,” Clay explained. “They see you’re suffering, and they go in for the kill.”
A Beautiful Crime Page 20
