by Kelly Oliver
“Put that thing away,” Dmitry said. “At least for now,” he added, looking straight at the teenage drug dealer. Maybe he and Vanya could intimidate the kid with some good cop, bad cop.
“Alexander, be reasonable. The Pope is dangerous. Tell us what you told him and we can protect you,” Dmitry said, realizing his good cop was coming off patronizing.
“I know full well what Vladimir is capable of. That is precisely why I’m not telling you anything.”
Dmitry took out his wallet. Maybe he’d have better luck with a carrot instead of the stick. He took out a hundred-dollar bill. “Answer one question and we’ll go. Do you have my paintings?”
Alexander held out his hand palm up.
“Answer the question first,” Dmitry said, holding the edge of the bill just out of the kid’s reach.
“No,” he said, snatching the money.
“Answer one more question. Did you take my paintings?”
Alexander opened his palm and held it out. Dmitry emptied his wallet and placed the contents, eighty-two dollars on the kid’s sweaty palm.
“I did you a favor, Dmitry.” The kid stuffed the bills into the pocket of his oversized robe. “The Pope thought that forgery you made for Professor Schmutzig was the real deal, so I got him what he wanted. And I got what I wanted.” He pointed to the cart. “In fact,“ he said grinning. “He may have sold your fake to some gullible collector by now.”
Dmitry resisted the urge to shake the stupid kid until his teeth fell out. “You little idiot. You’re in way over your head.”
“What do you know?” Alexander asked. “Vladimir and I are like this.” He crossed his fingers.
“Sure you are, kid.” Dmitry whistled and Bunin appeared at his side.
“Come on Vanya. We’re going to Pavlov’s Banquet for breakfast.”
“But Boss,” his cousin said, following him out of the dumpy house, “Banquet doesn’t serve breakfast.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be doing the serving.” Dmitry said as he marched to the car. “I plan to serve the Pope his own deep-fried sins.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
"The Pope don’t like prying,” his cousin said, geting behind the wheel of the Escalade.
“It’s not just about the Pope anymore.” Dmitry buckled his seatbelt, and then scratched Bunin behind the ears. “If my father learns about the paintings, I’m a dead man. I have to find out if the Pope has Kandinsky’s masterpiece or my lousy copy. Whatever he has, we need to get it back before he sells it, or worse.”
“What do you mean, Cousin?” Vanya asked, lighting a cigarette.
“I mean, if the Pope tries to move those paintings in an art house or on the black market, my father will find out and then he’ll find me.” Dmitry rolled down the window to get some fresh air. “Whatever the Pope does, Kandinsky’s Fragment, real or fake, is going to get attention. You can’t hide an anvil in a sack.” He was trying to calm himself by stroking Bunin’s head.
“Real or Fake? I don’t get it.”
“I hid the two masterpieces together in the same canister, so if the Pope has the real Kandinsky, then he’s got the real Goncharova too. Those two paintings are worth millions of dollars.”
“Whew.” Vanya whistled through his grill.
“Whew, indeed. If the Pope has the original paintings, word will get back to my father faster than a Siberian lynx.” Dmitry took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.
“If it’s fake?”
“If it’s fake, then according to that detective, I’m a forger and my father would still find out.” He dabbed his forehead. “If it’s fake, then at least the Blue Riders won’t be on the auction block or headed back to Moscow and we’ll still have a chance to find the real ones. Either way, we need to get my paintings back from the Pope.”
“Blue Riders?” Vanya asked.
“Vassily Kandinsky and Natalia Goncharova were both members of The Blue Riders, a group of artists, mostly Russian and German, known for figurative expressionism and abstract compositions.”
“Figurative what?”
“Never mind.”
As they pulled up in front of Pavlov’s Banquet, remembering his last visit, Dmitry winced. He sent Vanya to the front door, and a burly thug answered it. From the Escalade, Dmitry watched his cousin bounce from foot to foot talking to the bull. When the front door shut, Vanya turned towards the SUV, gave an exaggerated shrug, then lit a cigarette, and stood under the awning smoking.
When Dmitry rolled down the window, the cool, damp, dawn air reminded him of why sunrise was his favorite time of day. At dawn, there was always still the chance that today would be better than yesterday. When he glanced towards the Banquet, he saw that the brawny bull was back. His cousin waved, so Dmitry got out of the SUV, and walked up to the entrance.
Red-eyed, the Byk motioned for them to follow, and then lumbered up the stairs, dragging one size 12 boot after the other. When they reached the top floor, Dmitry put his hands on his knees and bent over, trying to catch his breath. His cousin was coughing so hard he dropped his lit cigarette onto the carpet. When the breathless bull scowled at him, Vanya stomped on the smoldering butt with one of his fancy Italian lace-ups. Dmitry smiled.
The Pope’s man led them into a parlor with weighty dark-burgundy curtains, dark leather, overstuffed chairs, and substantial wooden side-tables with thick legs, and then instructed them to sit and wait.
A uniformed maid appeared with a tray and offered them strong Russian coffee and Vatrushka. Vanya noisily attacked the thick pastry, smacking his lips and licking the sweet cheese filling off his fingers. He grinned at Dmitry as he took a second slice. After twenty minutes of waiting, Dmitry lost his resolve and helped himself to the Vatrushka. After all, he needed to keep his strength up. The bitter coffee and hearty pastry were a match made in Rayu.
Finally, the Pope appeared, freshly showered and shaved, wearing a formal green smoking-jacket with dark velvet lapels attached to its glimmering sharkskin fabric. Dmitry thought of Kandinsky’s description of the color green, “a fat cow, capable only of ruminating and contemplating the world through its stupid, inexpressive eyes.” The Pope’s round body, blunt nose, and narrow-set black eyes, along with the fact that he was constantly chewing, added to the bovine effect. Close behind the Pope, a man in a butler’s formal black tails wheeled a cart loaded with Russian delicacies. Vanya rubbed his palms together and flashed his gold grill.
“Serve our guests and bring me a plate too,” the Pope said to the butler.
Cheeks bulging, Vanya was making obscene noises as he wolfed the rest of the pastry. Dmitry narrowed his eyes.
“Whaa?” his cousin said, Vatrushka shoveled into his open mouth. “Can’t a man enjoy good food?”
“Glad you are enjoying it,” the Pope said. “I trust a man with a hearty appetite.” The contrast between his dainty movements and his giant fingers was unsettling. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Vladimir, we’ve heard that you recently acquired some art works,” Dmitry said, glancing around the room.
“You did, did you?” The Pope laughed and wiped his mouth on his embroidered napkin.
“Yes, Alexander, uh, Alex the Pharmacist, told us that you might have a painting for sale.”
“He did, did he?” Those delicate motions must be efficient because the Pope finished his plate and demanded another. “Our little birdie has a big mouth.”
“What are your plans?” Dmitry asked, looking up over his coffee cup.
“My plans? Yes, well, I haven’t decided yet. I’m thinking that the Oxford Don would pay a pretty penny if I sent it to him and that you would pay pretty if I didn’t.” The Pope laughed. “Am I right, or am I right?”
“If you allow me to see it, I’ll let you know.” So the Pope only had one of the paintings.
Still chewing, Vanya smiled and nodded his head.
When the Pope ordered his bodyguard to fetch the painting, Dmitry’s pulse quickened. “It’s true, my father w
ould go to great lengths to retrieve his painting. But once he knows you have it, you can be sure he’ll find a way to take it from you.” Dmitry watched for his reaction. “As you know, his methods can be brutal. Of course, with your formidable knowhow, I’m sure you can keep it out of his hands if you want to.”
“I can do what I want because it is mine.” He licked each fat finger one by one.
“Yes, you’ve succeeded where my father couldn’t.”
“Your father thinks he is so smart with his Oxford degree. But who has the painting? Him or me?” The Pope chuckled. “I’ve got street smarts.”
“As you say, you have the painting. And, as long as my father doesn’t, you are the wiser man.” He continued down the path he hoped would lead the Pope away from his father.
“Is that so?” The Pope paused. “Perhaps you would like to buy it back then? Am I right?”
“You would be right, of course, if I had any money,” he said. “But, as you know someone burned my nest and my nest egg along with it.” He glared at Vanya.
“I did hear about that. Unfortunate accident.” The Pope folded his fat hands over his rotund belly and sat back in his chair.
When the bodyguard returned with the canvas and unrolled it on the table, Dmitry leapt to his feet, put on his glasses, and inspected the painting. Even if it was his copy and not the masterwork, he had to get the painting back before the Pope did something stupid with it. As he examined it, he couldn’t conceal the smile stretching across his face. There it was, his tiny Tiger Lily. Then, it dawned on him, and a shadow fell over his glee. If the Pope didn’t have the original, who did?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jessica fidgeted in the wooden chair as she waited in the hallway. Her future was riding on this meeting. But distracted by thoughts of her advisor’s dead body, her rejected thesis still in his office, and the plan to crash a frat party later tonight, she had a hard time concentrating on the spiel she’d prepared to give Professor Cynthia Van Dyke about her thesis.
Van Dyke was her last chance to stay in the Ph.D. program. For the zillionth time, she repeated her Nietzschean mantra: “Everything decisive in life comes against the greatest obstacles.”
So far, graduate school had been one long series of obstacles: seminars that flew over her head, professors ignoring her hand raised in class, or worse, calling on her just to humiliate her, and then criticizing her in front of the pedigreed boys. In that stable full of purebred geldings (stallions they weren’t), she was one mangy filly, the only girl in the Ph.D. program and the only kid grown and raised in a trailer park--in the backwoods of Montana no less. Looking down their snooty noses, the geeky boys in the program alternately insulted her (calling her “air-head” and “pussy-galore”), or hit on her, drinking too much at parties and then declaring their undying love.
One day in her first semester, she was walking down the hall when she overheard two advanced graduate students talking to one of their professors in his office. The professor asked them, “Who’s that blonde girl sitting in the back of the class sulking?” Heart racing, she stopped, held her breath, and listened from the hallway.
“That’s Jessica James,” one of the stuck-up bluebloods responded.
“Oh, right, the fellowship girl we had to admit because the Dean was on our case to accept more women. I remember now. We got double points for her, both female and underprivileged.”
“Trailer trash air-head. And what’s with her clothes? Western grandma with red boots?” the other arse-hole said, and the professor laughed.
Jessica ducked into the bathroom, locked the door, and then spooling toilet paper by the handfuls, dried her silent tears. No way she’d let those bastards see her cry. Their insults just made her more determined. She’d get the damned degree just to spite those elitist horse turds. Success would be the best revenge.
Ever since she could remember, boys had been trying to tell her what she could and couldn’t do. In fact right before her very first rodeo competition when she was only eight years old, little Jimmy Dalton told her, “My dad says girls shouldn’t ride horses coz then they can’t have babies no more.” She’d glared at him. When her name was called to race, she gripped the reins with her right hand, clutched the saddle horn with her left, and gave her grade horse the spurs. Spirits flying as high as her legs and arms rounding the third barrel, she’d decided then and there she’d take horses over babies any day. She’d show Jimmy Dalton she was no ordinary girl.
Now, sitting on a rickety chair alone in the hallway, rejected by one advisor and waiting to make her appeal to another, she was beginning to wonder. Maybe she was an ordinary girl. Maybe she should give up her dreams of becoming a professor, move back home to Whitefish, and have babies like the girls she’d hung out with in high school. Maybe Wolf was right and she wasn’t Ph.D. material.
She stared down at her cowboy boots. She’d painted them blood-red with model paint to cheer herself up before her meeting with Van Dyke. She’d also put her unruly hair into French braids that wound around her face.
She’d worn her great-grandmother’s cobalt-blue calf-length gingham dress with black velvet embroidery. It still held a whiff of mothball tinged with early 20th Century perspiration, and she was hoping it would impart some of her great-grand mother’s grit along with her sweat. She tried to imagine her great-grand mother wearing that fancy dress back in Montana: Saturday night dances at the Eagles or the Elks Clubs, and picnics on Whitefish Lake; she knew it wasn’t to church, since apart from her own wedding, her great-grand mother proudly proclaimed she’d never set foot in a “holy meeting-house full of hypocrites.” Her great-grandmother had obviously taken better care of her dresses than Jessica did. Then again, they probably weren’t made for climbing over fences, playing flag football, or leaping onto elevated trains.
Jessica’s breath caught when the door to the office opened and a short stout woman in her early thirties stepped out, and said, “Sorry to keep you waiting,” gesturing for her to enter the office.
Before today, Jessica had only exchanged pleasantries with the junior professor at holiday parties and departmental functions. Now, sitting in her office, Jessica grasped the weight of the diplomas hanging on her wall.
Surrounded by shelves of books the junior professor had undoubtedly read, bitter bile rose in her throat as it always did when she was expected to sound smart. She noticed Van Dyke staring at her cowboy boots and blushed. As she stammered to explain her thesis project, the professor sat upright on the edge of her chair, eyes wide, nodding. Either she liked what she heard, or she was in a hurry for Jessica to finish and get out.
“Nietzsche’s influence on Russian art, I like it,” Van Dyke said with a smile. “Have you considered a feminist angle? Nietzsche has some interesting, ahem, things to say about women.”
“’When you go to woman, don’t forget your whip’. Or, ‘Women make the highs higher and the lows more frequent’. That sort of thing?” Jessica was trying to remember more of Nietzsche’s spicy tidbits about women. She stifled a laugh.
“Does Nietzsche ever talk about men strew ation?” Van Dyke asked.
“Excuse me?” She frantically tried to understand the question. Did he talk about what? What in the hell was men strew ation?
“Menstruation, he might have something to say about it.” Van Dyke’s fuzzy brown hair sat on top of her round head, dried moss on a boulder.
Jessica’s cheeks turned as red as her boots. “Oh, not that I know of, but I can look into it.”
“Yes, that might be interesting. Say, have you met the new art history professor? Professor Charis? He specializes in 20th century Russian art. He just moved into his office next door.” Van Dyke picked up her telephone. “We should add him to your committee.” She looked up his number on her computer, dialed, and then chatted amiably to someone on the other end about Jessica’s project.
“He can see you this afternoon if you have time to go over to his office. It’s just next door, Ro
ckwell, third floor,” she said with satisfaction as she hung up the phone.
“Okay.” Jessica shifted in her chair. She was ready to do whatever Van Dyke asked if it meant getting the damned degree.
“Do you know if any of these artists actually read Nietzsche?” Van Dyke asked.
“Kandinsky mentions Nietzsche in On the Spiritual in Art and supposedly the artists involved in The Blue Rider’s Almanac were reading Nietzsche aloud to each other.” Jessica tightened her lips to keep from laughing imagining a bunch of painters consulting Nietzsche’s Gay Science as a sacred text. “It’s on Nietzche’s influence on Russian Expressionism.”
“Interesting. It might be worth thinking about the gender politics in The Blue Riders. The women always get short shrift,” Van Dyke said.
“Okay. If you think it best.” Jessica picked at the velvet on her dress. “I mean if you’re willing to direct my thesis.”
“Of course, I’ll be happy to direct your thesis,” Van Dyke announced as she stood up and extended her hand to Jessica. Relieved, she bounced up and hugged her new advisor. They both laughed to release the awkward tension, two women swimming upstream in a river full of men.
“I’ll see you at the memorial this afternoon.” Professor Van Dyke said as she waved goodbye.
Skipping out of the office door, Jessica rammed her hip into the doorknob, but she didn’t care even if it meant another giant bruise. With tears in her eyes from pain and happiness, she bounded upstairs to her attic nest to find a black dress for Schmutzig’s memorial. No, not that one.
She chose another of her great-grandmother’s, a long black gabardine frock with a black cord bow at the collar. Between her black Converse All-Stars and red cowboy boots, she decided the latter were more formal. And besides, they added a big dollop of fun to her ensemble. She smiled. She was too happy to be going to a funeral. Now she just had to get the meeting with the new art professor out of the way.
When she stepped outside, clouds were suffocating the brilliant June sunshine, so she trotted back upstairs to fetch her umbrella. She smiled as she thought of the wacky French philosopher who wrote a whole book about Nietzsche making a marginal note about forgetting his umbrella. She was glad she’d grabbed Nick’s jacket on the way out. Just a hint of his cologne had reached her slightly crooked nose as she put it on, and she’d lowered her head to breathe in its spicy scent. She hoped her oversized woolen armor would keep her safe.
