Murder at the National Gallery

by Margaret Truman

  Graduating from Harvard raised the first serious debate in their relationship. What would they do next with their lives, and where would they do it? Despite Juliana’s objections, Luther accepted a post in San Francisco as an apprentice curator in Medieval and Renaissance Spanish Art at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. Juliana was unhappy there and not silent about it. After a year, she announced that she was going to Paris to study painting. That she’d made her plans without discussion or warning bothered him, more so than the fact that she would be gone. Their relationship had cooled to that extent. There was no discussion of divorce. It wasn’t necessary.

  They attempted a reconciliation a year later, resulting in Juliana’s pregnancy and the eventual birth of their son, Julian. Some found it strange for a son to be named after the mother, but that mattered little to Luther. Although he loved the child from the first day of his life, becoming a parent did not generate the heightened sense of accomplishment other first-time fathers enjoyed. It had happened, that’s all. A natural development in a married person’s life. And an added burden, one he was committed to shouldering.

  Luther and Juliana lived in relative happiness in California until Julian was two, enjoying the bohemian spirit of the city and its abundance of cultural and social opportunities. And Luther was taking more pleasure from his young son than he’d imagined. The boy was smart and funny. Luther was not the sort of man who laughed often or loud, but Julian made him do that.

  Juliana pursued her painting, studying with a San Francisco artist, but she wasn’t happy. She missed Paris and urged Luther to leave his job, pack their belongings, and move to the City of Light. Her suggestion had its appeal, but not enough for him to abandon what had become a budding curatorial career. His superiors viewed him as a bright talent who might one day make a significant contribution to the art world.

  One day, Juliana said she wanted to visit Luther’s mother in Indiana and take Julian with her. Luther couldn’t accompany them because of a particularly crowded schedule at the museum, but he wished them a safe and happy trip. Juliana called from Indiana a few days later: “Luther, I’ve decided to go back to Paris.”

  “Back to Paris? I thought—”

  “It’s best for everyone concerned. I’ve discussed it with your mother and—”

  “Do you think it’s best for Julian?”

  “Your mother has agreed to care for him.”

  Luther caught the next plane to Indianapolis, where his mother picked him up at the airport. Luther was emotional during the ride back to West Lafayette, Catherine Mason calm and stoic as she presented her case for his leaving Julian with her.

  “Fine,” he said angrily. “The hell with Juliana. But I’m taking Julian back to San Francisco with me. He’s my son.” His mother’s smile further angered him. It was a smile that said “poor, confused Luther. I know best.”

  Luther’s confrontation with Juliana was heated. He begged her to reconsider, to give it another year with him in San Francisco. Then, he promised, they would go to Paris together. “Julian will be a year older and—”

  She replied by closing her packed suitcase and snapping its locks. Luther turned to see Julian standing in the doorway, eyes red and wet. Luther reached for him, but the boy ran to his mother and grabbed her legs. Catherine Mason appeared and said sweetly, “Come, Julian. I just baked peanut butter cookies for you.”

  Julian looked up at his mother, who smiled and nodded. “They’re your favorite,” she said, giving him a squeeze. To Luther as Julian ran from the room: “This is a wonderful place for him to grow up. You’re never home, Luther. He needs stability, someone always there for him. Don’t look at me that way. I know I don’t provide it either. Go back to San Francisco and follow your dream, like I’m doing. Give our son the chance to grow up in normal surroundings. Your mother is a good woman, dedicated to him. We’ll both visit often. When he gets older, he can come stay with us whenever he likes.”

  Luther was gripped with a sense of helplessness. Juliana joined Catherine and Julian in the kitchen, where they ate cookies and played a game with the boy, causing him to laugh with rare abandon. Luther sat on the front porch, their voices and giggles reaching him through the open kitchen window. He heard Juliana tell their son that she was going to a wonderful city called Paris and that he would come visit her there many times. “What fun we’ll have,” she said. “You’ll learn to speak French and we’ll take long walks and eat yummy cakes and cookies and …”

  A taxi picked Juliana up at five that afternoon to take her to Indianapolis and her flight. She kissed Luther on the cheek. “Talk it over with your mother,” she said. “Whatever you decide to do is fine. He is your son.”

  That night, after Julian was asleep in “his bedroom,” Luther and his mother sat in the living room. Pictures of his father were everywhere, on the walls and in small oval silver frames on the mantel and piano.

  “Juliana is right,” his mother said softly. “Not about leaving. She isn’t terribly stable, you know, leaving her only child like this.”

  “Leaving her husband,” Luther muttered.

  “She tells me you weren’t happy together. No wonder, the sort of lives you lead. Out all hours of the night, artists using drugs and drinking. She told me you stay at that museum where you work for half the night. Weekends. No time for him.”

  “That’s not true. Maybe there isn’t a lot of time with Julian, but I always try to make it quality time.”

  That knowing smile again. He hated it, wanted to strike it from her lips.

  “I spoke with Reverend Gormley, Luther, and told him the story. He agrees. Julian deserves a decent Christian upbringing. I’ll see that he gets it. I’m young and healthy enough to take good care of him.”

  And lonely, thought Luther.

  “Why don’t we try it, Luther? You can come take him any time you wish. After all, he is your son.”

  The next morning Luther called to Julian, who was playing in the pretty yard with a red wagon his grandmother had bought for him. The boy sat on Luther’s lap. “Daddy’s going back to San Francisco for a while, son. He has a lot of work to do and wouldn’t be able to be with you. Grandma loves you very much. You stay with her until I come back.”

  Julian looked at him with expressionless large brown eyes. Luther Mason fought back tears. “Okay, son?”

  Julian nodded, ran from the porch, and pushed the wagon across the yard, making motor sounds. Luther kissed his mother and got in a taxi for the trip to the airport. He didn’t dare look back.

  Julian Mason remained with his grandmother until graduating from high school. In the early years, Luther traveled regularly to Indiana to spend time with him. But the visits became less frequent as time passed, especially after Luther accepted a position in the curatorial department of Washington’s National Gallery of Art.

  To Luther’s surprise and pleasure, Julian decided to pursue a degree in fine arts at George Washington University. That decision reunited him with his father, who by this time had gained his deserved reputation as one of the world’s leading authorities on the life and works of Caravaggio. He was also married for the second time, to a woman he’d met at a gallery reception.

  Cynthia Walsch had been left a considerable amount of money by her deceased first husband, allowing her to devote her time to favored local charities. She was physically different from Juliana—a big woman, almost raw-boned, with high color in her cheeks and a body that would remain chunky no matter how hard she dieted.

  Perhaps Cynthia’s most striking feature was her laugh. She laughed easily and often. Luther enjoyed being with someone who found the things he said to be witty. Too, she demonstrated a sexual aggressiveness that pleased him.

  The easy laughter and sex vanished after they were married. Although they were together when Julian moved to Washington, it had become a classic marriage of convenience, leaving Luther plenty of spare time to help his son settle into his new surroundings and to get to know his father once ag
ain.

  “Do you hear from your mother often?” Luther asked him during their first dinner together.

  “No,” Julian said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “When are you coming?” Catherine Mason asked Luther.

  “I don’t know, Mother. I’ve been spending a great deal of time in Italy getting ready for my Caravaggio exhibition. And now this dreadful murder of my friend. I must go to California soon. Maybe I can stop on the way there, or back.”

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “Well, I just wanted to call because—I wanted to tell you about my good friend being killed last night.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, Luther. You will let me know ahead of time if you plan to visit?”

  “Yes. I will let you know. Take care.”

  The phone in Indiana was gently replaced in its cradle.

  Luther sat back in his chair and closed his eyes against tears that threatened. He was sorry he’d called, even sorrier he’d indicated he might visit her. The truth was he didn’t know who else to talk to about Carlo’s murder. He had no interest in the gossipy speculation running rampant in the East and West buildings of the National Gallery. He could have called his friend, Scott Pims, but he’d left him only a few hours ago after sitting up all night talking.

  By 5:00 A.M., Luther had become sufficiently lubricated by Pims’s steady flow of expensive brandy to launch into a long, meandering, self-pitying monologue about his life and the people in it. Mason seldom drank to excess, and only, it seemed, in Pims’s apartment, where he felt—safe? With this overbearing, inveterate gossip and intellectual bully with whom he’d become close friends? It was here, in this apartment, plied with brandy, that he’d shared with Pims his dream of possessing Grottesca and how he intended to do it.

  This particular night, Pims lost patience with Mason’s soliloquy. “Oh, for God’s sake, Luther,” he said, “stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re about to take a dramatic leap into a life of excitement, intrigue, and adventure. Isn’t that what you want?”

  Mason responded with sudden, unbridled enthusiasm. “Yes, exactly, Scott. That is the point of what I’m doing, isn’t it? To light a flame. To take my turn at riding bareback and naked in the moonlight.”

  Pims laughed and shook his large, leonine head. “You really must come up with a new metaphor, Luther. I’m growing weary of your Equus infatuation.”

  Pims was referring to Equus, a play that Luther had seen more than a dozen times. In it, a disturbed young man, treated by a conservative, inhibited psychiatrist, talked with rapture of riding a stallion naked across the field at night, causing the psychiatrist to reevaluate his own life, which lacked the young patient’s free spirit: “When will it be my turn?” the psychiatrist asked himself. And so had Luther Mason, over and over since first seeing the play.

  “Dinner tomorrow?” Pims asked as Mason was about to leave.

  “Afraid I can’t, Scott. I’m hoping to have dinner with Julian, although you never know with him. He has a habit of not showing up. He’s terribly irresponsible.”

  Another laugh from Pims. “A chip off the Caravaggio block, I’d say.”

  “I prefer to not think of it that way, but I suppose you’re right. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  He went home, napped, showered and shaved, and headed for work.

  Usually, while driving to the Gallery, he listened to WGMS, one of Washington’s classical-music stations. This morning, he decided to catch the news on WMAL.

  The report of Carlo Giliberti’s murder almost sent him off course into oncoming traffic.

  Who could have done such a thing?

  What had happened to Carlo Giliberti in Rock Creek Park early that morning was known to three people—the two men who’d killed him, and who weren’t likely to come forth with the information, and Carlo, who was in no condition to. Had they been able to explain, they would have painted this picture.

  After his conversation with Luther in the West Sculpture Hall, Carlo had gone outside for a cigarette. His display of calm to his curator friend was a sham. Inside, his nerve ends were sputtering, live wires touching.

  That he shouldn’t have tried to play both ends against the middle was reinforced when he saw the two embassy “security men” approach.

  They declined his offer of cigarettes. “Come, Carlo. We take a ride.”

  “No. Too late. What do you have, women?” Carlo tried his most engaging laugh. “Not tonight.”

  “Andiamo!” one of the men said. His voice was hard.

  Carlo knew it was useless to argue. He might as well go with them, hear what they had to say, smooth it over, straighten it out. Was it such a sin to try to make a little more for all his hard work? All they had to do was say no. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as his American friends were fond of saying.

  They flanked him as they headed for a dark-blue rented sedan parked on the wide cobblestone road between the National Gallery’s East and West buildings. Carlo sat in the front passenger seat. The second man sat directly behind him.

  They drove slowly, aimlessly, without an apparent destination. Carlo’s chatter was met with grunts. He chain-smoked as they traveled the city’s nearly deserted streets.

  “Hey, look, my friends, what is this all about? Huh? It was a mistake, that’s all.” He turned to the man in the rear seat. “Capisce? I was testing Signor Sensi. You know, seeing if he would be generous with me for being so loyal to him. A little more money from him was all I asked for. But I don’t want that anymore. No need. I talked to my friend, Mason. He will soon have another half-million American for Signor Sensi. That’s right. I intended to give most of it to him. No. I will give all of it to him. You tell him that.”

  When Carlo sent word to Sensi that he wanted more money from the old mafioso or would walk away from the deal, he knew he had little chance of succeeding. Hitting up Luther was a less risky sell. He would lie to his friend, tell him that Sensi was demanding additional funds. Judging from Luther’s fear of the old man in Italy, Carlo was certain he’d go to his moneyman, del Brasco, to get it. And if he didn’t, what was the harm in trying? Sensi would never know Carlo had used his name in vain to extort a bigger payoff from Luther.

  “Be quiet,” the driver said to Carlo.

  “Sure. Hey, look, my friends, we forget all of this. When I get the half-million from my friend, I save some for you. Enough for you to—”

  The man in the rear seat wrapped his left forearm around Carlo’s head and thrust a needle-thin stiletto into the back of his neck. The blade entered smoothly and silently into the cultural attaché’s cranial cavity, piercing the pituitary and stopping only when the shank made hard contact with Carlo’s skull.

  Death was almost instantaneous.

  Giliberti’s final words were obscenities, directed not at his killers but at the artist and current toast of Washington, Michelangelo Caravaggio.

  13

  THAT SAME MORNING

  By the time Annabel reached her gallery on Georgetown’s Wisconsin Avenue, it had started to rain. The parking lot she used was two blocks away; the only things in shorter supply in Washington than character and integrity, she thought, were parking spaces in Georgetown.

  Her hair dampened, but not her spirits, she let herself into the gallery, punched in the code to deactivate the alarm system, turned on the lights, and went to her small office in the rear to settle in for some administrative duties before her buyer arrived. She hoped other customers wouldn’t come in. Browsers almost never bought any of the expensive artifacts. Her sales were primarily to a network of collectors she’d established, each name carefully entered into her computer’s database, including what she knew of the pieces in their collections, their personal preferences, the financial limits to which they were likely to go, and other pertinent information.

  She took a break a half hour later and entered the showroom, standing in the middle of the large, well-lit space to admire what she’d managed to accomplish. Each
work had special meaning for her, making it sometimes difficult to part with them. When she forgot that she was in the business of selling the pre-Columbian art in the gallery, Mac was always there to gently remind her.

  She went to what she considered the centerpiece of her current collection, a baked clay, six-inch-high, Tlatilco female figure, unusual, and by extension more expensive, because of its double face. It was a superb example of Mexican preclassic culture, dating back to circa 1300–1700 B.C. She’d negotiated long and hard to purchase it from its previous owner, a wealthy Mexican physician. When the deal was set, she could barely contain her trader’s glee. As far as Annabel was concerned, she’d “stolen” the piece; its worth was far greater than what she’d paid.

  She’d bought that particular piece before she’d closed her law practice and opened the gallery, having made the purchase purely for personal pleasure, installing it in an alarmed Plexiglas case in her law office. Clients often admired it. Eventually, Annabel began using it to make a point with warring couples—that rather than approaching divorce from two distinctly different standpoints, two faces, it was better for everyone concerned, especially children, that the parting couple cooperate. She was never sure whether the analogy was effective. But she did have an impressive number of divorcing couples come to the bargaining table under less angry circumstances than when first becoming involved with her.

  “I trust you slept well,” Annabel said to her inanimate Tlatilco friend before returning to her office to resume running figures on a broad spreadsheet.

  Fifteen minutes later, a buzzer indicated that someone had entered the gallery. Annabel got up and looked into the showroom. A short man wearing a green raincoat and a Baltimore Orioles’ baseball cap closed the door behind him.