Murder at the National Gallery

by Margaret Truman

“I know, I know,” Luther said, his elbows on the table, face buried in his hands. “But I just don’t know if I can go through with it. When I discovered that Peter Lafroing had been hired by del Brasco to evaluate the painting, I almost threw up. And then learning that my own son was sleeping with Lynn Marshall, and that they know almost everything that’s going on, was too much to bear.”

  Pims laid the knife on the counter. “And look at yourself, Luther,” he said, turning and facing the curator. “Sitting at my table sniveling like some pimply schoolboy caught cheating on an examination and fearing expulsion. Snap out of it, man! Be a man!”

  Luther raised his head. “You’re right,” he said. “It isn’t the money. I can return the original to the National Gallery. All I want is peace.”

  “Peace? Do you really think giving Grottesca back to Court Whitney and his bureaucratic cronies will buy you peace? It’s too late for that, Luther. As we speak, your boss, and Lord knows who else, are planning your public hanging. Your only option is to go forward. I’ve examined both paintings very carefully. Saison did a masterly job. Lafroing, despite his impressive credentials, will have a bugger of a time branding it a forgery.” His voice became louder. “Think of it, Luther. Think of having Grottesca hanging on the wall of your pleasant little apartment in Greece. Sunshine, soft breezes, no more groveling to the demands of the National Gallery and its artistic pretenders. Evenings on your veranda with nubile young women, a leaded goblet brimming with Metaxa in your hand. And when you choose to be alone, there will always be the majesty of Grottesca in which to bask.”

  Luther slumped in his chair. For the first time since launching his plan, he was incapable of making a decision. His internal reasoning circuits had shut down. That was why he’d come to Pims’s apartment in the first place. He needed another person to think through this final phase. There was no one else in the world to whom he could turn. Pims had been along for almost every mile of the wild ride.

  “I just don’t know what to do,” Luther said again.

  “Your ability to make rational judgments hasn’t been totally impaired. You had the wisdom to seek my counsel.” He pulled out a chair and sat opposite Mason. “Actually, Luther, things are not as grim as you think. Consider. While finding out that your own flesh and blood has been sleeping with your former paramour has battered your male ego, it doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things. You’re better rid of both, which you are. They think you’re meeting these dreadful people representing del Brasco tomorrow night. But you’re doing it tonight. Which means they are out of the picture. By the time they discover what you’ve done, you’ll be on a plane to the Hellas, land of Homer and Hesiod, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, Iliad, and Odyssey. Think of it, man! Greece! You and Grottesca.” He chuckled. “A fitting reward for having endured the parasites who’ve dominated your life.”

  Detecting that his friend’s spirits might have picked up a bit, Pims continued his lecture.

  “You’ve thought things out very nicely, Luther, despite your tenuous emotional state. The two choices you contemplate make sense.

  “You meet Lafroing at the Atlas Building at the appointed hour. I shall drive you and remain in my car at a respectful distance. But never out of sight.

  “You tell Peter you will hand over the painting to him then and there and that he has it for the next twenty-four hours. In return for this act of trust on your part, he is to give you a down payment on the million dollars. I rather think he will jump at the opportunity to walk away with the painting, probably cackling to himself about what a fool you are to have given it up so easily and for such a meager amount. But you, Luther, shall have the last laugh. You will have the original Grottesca, as well as the down payment in your pocket.

  “How much should you ask? As in all things, it depends on what the market will bear. I think asking for two or three hundred thousand dollars is more than reasonable. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know if Peter will have money with him. The others—”

  “The others will be in close proximity, I assure you. All Peter has to do is step out of the building for a moment and get the money from them.”

  Pims’s clear, forceful presentation served its purpose. Luther was calmer now. “Yes,” Mason said. “I see what you mean.”

  Pims wasn’t finished. “Your other idea, of bribing Lafroing to give his client a false report, also has merit.”

  “Peter Lafroing is a legitimate and respected expert,” Mason said. “For me to admit to him that—”

  Pims smashed his padded fist on the table. “Luther! Think about what you’re saying. Peter Lafroing is knowingly taking part in a criminal act on behalf of Mr. del Brasco. He is well aware that he comes to the Atlas Building to examine a stolen Caravaggio. What makes you think he would not jump at the chance of putting an additional half-million dollars in his pocket?”

  “I don’t know,” said Luther.

  “And remember this, my friend, there is every possibility—probability is more accurate—that Mr. Peter Lafroing will proclaim that the Saison version is authentic. Legitimate. From the grubby hand of Caravaggio himself.”

  Pims’s uncomplimentary reference to Caravaggio stung Mason. He rose unsteadily and went to the living room, where the wrapped paintings stood side by side. Maybe it will work, he thought.

  He wrapped his arms about himself and rocked from side to side. Pims was right. Nothing he had done—the painful decisions, the sleepless nights, the frantic trips to Rome and Ravello, the tension of dealing with the defrocked priest Giocondi and with the drunken Frenchman Jacques Saison, the surly del Brasco—none of it had been for money. If he didn’t succeed in flying away with Grottesca under his arm, it would all have been a useless exercise, a futile attempt to break the bonds of respectability that bound him.

  Pims entered the room and extended his hand. “Come, Luther,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”

  Luther picked up the wrapped paintings.

  “Leave the original here,” Pims said.

  “No. I want them both with me.”

  “Good God, Luther, be sensible. What do you intend to do, make a decision on the spot which version to give Lafroing? Madness. He gets the copy.”

  “I want them both with me.”

  “You’re liable to make a mistake—intend to give him the copy but hand him the original.”

  “The original has the dot on it.”

  “Here.” Pims placed his index finger on the pencil dot and punched a small hole in the paper. “At least you’ll know which is which without having to use a magnifying glass. And what will you do, place both on a table for Lafroing to see?”

  “I want them both with me. I’ll put one away before he comes.”

  “He’s letting you in the building. You won’t have the opportunity.”

  “I—I’ll decide what to do before we get there. I’ll leave one in the car with you.”

  “That’s better,” said Pims. “You’re coming to your senses. Come. We mustn’t be late.”

  They rode the elevator to the basement, where Pims garaged his Cadillac. The paintings were placed on the rear floor. Pims slowly drove up the exit ramp and turned right.

  “Why are you going this way?” Mason asked. “The Atlas Building is—”

  “To avoid company.”

  “What company?”

  “Unwanted company. I’m not feeling especially sociable. The two men who followed you to my apartment. They parked behind you on the street.”

  Mason twisted in the seat to see through the rear window. “Them?” he said.

  “Yes. I thought we might evade them coming out of the garage, but they’re evidently smarter than they look. Moved their car to give them a view of both front door and garage. No matter. We can handle them if necessary.”

  Luther reached behind his seat and fingered the two versions of Grottesca.

  “Still there?” Pims asked, with a light laugh.

  “Who do you think the
y are?” Mason asked.

  “Brokers of fine art. They also break things, I imagine.”

  It began to rain as they drove past the Atlas Building at ten-thirty, a half hour ahead of schedule. That strip of Ninth Street was dingy and dark. The yellow window of one of the pornography shops spilled a garish puddle of light onto the sidewalk. Young men loitered on the corners. A man wearing a tan raincoat came out of the porn shop and glanced left and right before lowering his head and walking away. No one stood at the entrance to the Atlas Building. Its chains and padlocks sent an ominous message.

  Pims circled the block, followed by the other car. He pulled to the curb on Ninth, a hundred feet from the building’s entrance, and shut off the lights. “I feel like a detective reconnoitering a den of depravity,” he said.

  The other car passed them and parked a block ahead.

  What had been a lovely, gentle day in Washington had deteriorated into the leading edge of a storm roaring up the East Coast. The wind had picked up; the rain was whipped by it. Low, dirty clouds obscured the sky, the moon covered with cheesecloth.

  “Have you made your decision?” Pims asked.

  “Yes. I’ll give him the copy. As planned. But should things go awry, you’ll be here?”

  “Oh, yes, Luther. I will be here guarding your treasure.”

  “Do you have an umbrella?”

  “Of course.” Pims reached beneath his seat and came up with a short umbrella that opened with the push of a button.

  They sat in silence until another car turned the corner and stopped in front of the Atlas Building. Luther couldn’t see through the vehicle’s darkened windows, but there appeared to be three men in it. The back door opened and Peter Lafroing stepped out.

  “It’s him,” said Luther.

  “It certainly is,” Pims said.

  The car drove away and turned the corner in the direction of Constitution Avenue.

  Lafroing unlocked two padlocks on the door, disengaged the chains, and disappeared into the pitch-black lobby.

  “I suppose I should go now,” Mason said.

  “I suppose you should. Do you want to go over it with me one more time?”

  Mason shivered against a sudden chill. “There isn’t much to go over,” he said. “Don’t worry about me, Scott. I’ll be fine.”

  “Of course you will, dear friend. It is almost over. After tonight, you’re a free man. A bird on the wing.”

  Luther reached behind to grab one of the paintings from the rear. Pims reached, too, inserting his finger into the hole he’d made in the brown paper. Luther brought the other over the seat and into his lap. “That’s it, Luther,” Pims said.

  Luther opened the door on his side and stepped into the soggy night. He hunched down in his raincoat as though to make himself smaller, closed the door, considered opening the umbrella, but decided the wind was too stiff and walked resolutely in Lafroing’s direction, the painting cradled in his arms. He paused halfway there and turned to look at Pims. Pims snapped on the Caddy’s interior lights and used his fingers to indicate he should keep going.

  “There is weeping in my heart like the rain falling on the city.” Verlaine’s line from Romances sans Paroles came to Mason as he stepped up to the Atlas Building’s entrance.

  Lafroing opened the door. “Come in, Luther,” he said. “Miserable night.”

  * * *

  That evaluation of Washington’s weather was shared by everyone in the vicinity of the Atlas Building that night.

  The two men from the Italian Embassy who’d met earlier in the day with the Vatican’s Joseph Spagnola sat glumly in their car a block ahead of where M. Scott Pims waited.

  Franco del Brasco’s golden-haired bodyguard and a colleague recruited from New York had parked around the corner after dropping off Peter Lafroing. Blond Curls had traveled to Washington with clothing suited to a stretch of record-breaking heat in San Francisco and shivered and swore as he and his compatriot waited for Lafroing to rejoin them.

  “What’s this all about?” the New York man asked.

  Blond Curls’ teeth chattered. “Some painting my boss wants. This guy Lafroing is meeting, Mason, has it, only my boss thinks maybe Mason will try to pawn a phony off on him.”

  “A painting? What is it? Worth a lot?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how much. Christ, I’m cold.”

  Julian Mason and Lynn Marshall left the bar of the 701 Restaurant at Seventh and Pennsylvania, a few blocks from the National Gallery and not far from the Atlas Building. He’d had three beers, she’d nursed a strawberry daiquiri. Neither had heeded the weather forecast. Lynn held a newspaper over her head while Julian expressed concern at what the rain would do to his leather jacket. They walked at a fast clip in the direction of Ninth Street.

  It had been at least three years since Luther had been in the Atlas Building, his last visit having been to the studio of a friend, art conservator Hilary Daley-Hynes. As he felt his way up the dilapidated stairway to the second floor, a rush of emotions came and went like wind gusts. He was, at once, dreading this moment, yet exhilarated at its contemplation. Judge Grottesca as you will, Peter, he thought. Judge me as you will. It matters not.

  They passed the door to Daley-Hynes’s studio and went to the next, where Lafroing inserted a key. The inside was nearly black, illuminated only by ambient light through dirt-crusted windows. Lafroing found a lamp attached to a drawing board and turned it on. Hardly sufficient light to examine the painting, thought Luther. How convenient.

  “So, Luther, here we are. You will, I assume, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I would think it’s self-evident.”

  “Some of it. What did you do, have a copy made to send back to Italy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who made it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Look, Peter, I’d really like to get this over with as fast as possible. This is no place for you to examine it. The light. What I suggest is—”

  “This is fine, Luther,” Lafroing said. “Why not unwrap it and put it on this table. I don’t need a lot of time or a lot of light.” He laughed softly. “I spent hours with it at the National Gallery. Why my client is so concerned is beyond me. But he’s paying me to do this, so I might as well go through the motions.”

  Mason placed the Saison copy on the table. “You unwrap it, Peter. Go ahead,” he said, walking to one of the windows overlooking the street. He couldn’t bear to look at the painting with Lafroing. And standing there helped obscure the light.

  “Oh, yes,” Lafroing said. “How beautiful.” He gently ran his fingertips over the canvas, up and down, across, touching the boy’s face, the animals, the twisted thorny stems. “We’re looking at this on the right night. He was a stormy genius, Luther.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Mason said, at the window.

  “The use of light,” Lafroing said. “The naturalism that upset so many others in his time. Aha! You know, of course, that he started this work with the boy’s ear, as he usually did.”

  “Yes, I know.” Starting with an ear was a Caravaggio trademark. Saison had obviously known it, too. Score one for a drunken Frenchman.

  “I love the way his fattura in this work is looser than some of his others. And that he chose—we know it was deliberate, don’t we, Luther?—that he chose not to have certain figures cast a shadow even though the placement of the light source dictates that they should.”

  Mason continued to listen from his position at the window. Lafroing was showing off his academic knowledge of Caravaggio for Mason’s benefit, so blinded by the need to impress that he was incapable of making a reasoned judgment about the painting’s authenticity.

  After another five minutes of posturing, Lafroing came to Mason, smiled, and slapped him on the arms. “One day I assume I’ll read about this,” he said.

  “I hope not.”

  “Or hear about it on the pompous ass’s television program—Pims.”

  “You’ll report to you
r client that it’s the original?”

  “Of course. You mentioned the possibility of my taking the painting for a longer look.”

  Luther’s heart sank.

  “My client’s colleagues asked that I give you this—if I judged the work to be genuine.” He handed Luther an envelope.

  Luther opened it. Inside was fifty thousand dollars and a letter:

  I have instructed my representative to give you this cash if everything is in order and to take the painting with him. An equal sum will be delivered to you tomorrow at a place you designate. In addition, nine hundred thousand dollars will be deposited in a Swiss bank account bearing your name. The name of the bank and the account number will be sent to you. All, of course, dependent upon the final validation of the painting.

  “Care to share what it says?” Lafroing asked.

  “What? No. I really can’t, Peter. Sorry. It says you are to take the painting with you. That’s fine. The arrangements are fine.”

  Lafroing laughed. “I must admit, Luther, I never would have dreamed that you were capable of—well, of pulling off such a monumental theft. Awesome.”

  “Not something of which I’m especially proud, Peter. It just happened.”

  “Just happened or not, I am impressed. I take it you are now a rich man.”

  “Of course. Why else would I have done this except for money?”

  “I can’t think of another reason,” said Lafroing. “If I had the opportunity, I’d do the same. Take the money and run, thumbing my nose at the world all the way. Congratulations, Luther. Drop me a postcard now and then.”

  Lafroing started to rewrap the painting.

  “Careful with that,” Mason said. “Don’t let it get wet.”

  “I will, I will. There’ll be no rain on Caravaggio this night.”

  “How did you get here?” Mason asked after they’d left the building and Lafroing had secured the door.

  “My client’s colleagues. They’re waiting for me around the corner. Ride?”

  “No. I need a walk.”

  “In this weather?”

  “I like the rain. Good night, Peter. And please tell your client I’m pleased Caravaggio’s greatest work is in good hands.”