The Jacques Lambert Gallery sat on such a side-street, a prim-looking block for brownstones between Madison and Park. His house was a bit different from the rest. Some clever architect had stripped away the original stone façade, substituting glass brick to give the place an ultra-modern look. On the street floor, a delft blue door, carrying the simple legend:
JACQUES LAMBERT
PAINTINGS-SCULPTURE
Inside, his tiny gallery screamed good taste and upper-class refinement. The two large rooms were designed for pictures, stark white walls and terrazzo floors and black pedestals for the avant-garde sculptors he featured. On the far wall, a dramatic Jackson Pollock and a George DeBeers abstract ahue with quiet power. I stood before it in a state of strange excitement. This was one of his most recent works, a haunting composition of blues and grays relieved by the dramatic interplay of white. It was a masterpiece.
“Was this George’s latest?” I asked.
“His very latest. Admirable? Fantastique?” Jacques seemed lost in the deep mystery of the picture. “This was one of the greatest painters I have ever known. I do not exaggerate. Nobody has excited me as much as George DeBeers since I saw my first oil in the Louvre at the age of seven. Since then I have devoted my entire life to art. I have seen hundreds of painters, perhaps thousands. And can you believe me when I tell you that DeBeers existed as the greatest of the great? It is the truth, ma chérie. Upstairs, my apartment is bursting with some of the most superb names in the history of art. I have in my possession a catalogue of contemporary works. But shall I tell you who holds the seat of honor, the favorite exhibition place, the large wall in my library? It is George DeBeers who hangs there, alone, so that I may taste his talent without interference from any of the lesser masters. That is how fine a painter I consider our friend George, alors.”
“This last period of George’s,” I said, “did he paint many pictures this way?”
“That was the only one.”
“Isn’t that strange?” I asked. “Or was George a slow painter?”
“Strange, indeed,” said Jacques. “No, ma petite, I would not call George a slow painter. He was slow only when he was not inspired.”
“Can you tell me when he painted this one?”
“I can find the date in my files. Come into my office.”
I followed him into his little cubicle at the far end of the room. He minced ahead of me, occasionally throwing a crumb of information about his gallery over his right shoulder. He ducked behind a partition, blocked from my view but continuing his babble of useless information about artists; sculptors and the high rents on his block.
His desk was as clean and neat as a virgin’s libido. To the right, a small bulletin board, on which he had pasted a few of the juicy news plums of his career. In the corner of the board, his first big success, ten years ago, when he arrived in New York with the sensational René Clouvé, the young Parisian painter who made the big time in society by doing willowy portraits of young matrons. Jacques Lambert had represented Clouvé in the marts of art, lining up plush commissions for his protégé.
The bulletin board was dotted with other Jacques Lambert successes, including his famous sale of the renowned Gauguin “Polynesian Widow.”
The headline read:
LAMBERT SELLS RARE GAUGUIN
“POLYNESIAN WIDOW” BRINGS $125,000
IN SALE TO MILLIONAIRE CURTIS DEBEVOISE.
The news clipping was a feature story, a long and detailed account of the transaction, including the interesting history of the famous painting. It included a brief survey of Lambert’s background as an art expert in Paris, where he had made similar sales of fine arts.
“You hide your light under a bushel, Jacques,” I told him. “I didn’t know you were an authority on Gauguin.”
“Authority, no,” smiled the Frenchman. “Salesman, yes. I was fortunate, ma chérie. I happened to know where to locate the paintings when the customers were ready to purchase them.”
He was as modest as a tart in a bikini, anxious to toot his little French horn and tell me what a great little salesman he was. He punctuated his story facts with sly little glances in the direction of my girlish charms, appraising my legs with a subtle eye. I expected the maneuver, of course. I had instructed Gwen to leave Jacques and me on the side walk near Magda’s pad. She would be busy watching Magda now, standing on a plant outside the sculptress’ studio. We would meet once again back at our apartment after I had finished with Jacques. It was my intention to play games with him. Mental games, of course.
And he was ready for sport, right now.
He was pitching an expected question at me.
“In Magda’s studio,” he began, “you said that I was lying, no?”
“Yes.”
“You do not believe that I spent the early evening with her, alors?”
“I know you didn’t.”
“How can you suggest such a thing?”
“Because it’s true,” I said. “Isn’t that why you invited me up here, Jacques?”
“Not exactly,” he smiled, adjusting his Gallic face lest it begin to leer at me. “I assumed that you would enjoy seeing my gallery.”
“Forget it, Jacques. You don’t sell me. I came up here to talk, yes. I want to discuss a few things. The first concerns you, mon ami. Why do you insist on lying about your whereabouts at about nine tonight?”
“I was with Magda,” he said, blinking his shrewd eyes.
“Is that the story you’re going to tell the police?”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a lie.”
“Can you prove it, ma chérie?”
“Of course I can prove it.”
“Then do so.”
“You were seen at that hour. You were seen in the neighborhood of George’s studio.”
“By whom?” He tightened on the line, still smiling at me, as friendly as a snake over a rabbit.
“That,” I said, “is my business, my little secret. I’ll keep it to myself, if you cooperate.”
“Cooperate? In what way?”
“Tell me the truth. Why were you following Marianne Fry at about nine o’clock tonight?”
He was genuinely shocked by my revelation. He paced the tiny room, massaging the remnants of fuzz on his bald head, exhaling huge and airy gusts of worried wind as he moved. The disturbance shook him, rocked him. He went to the small bar and downed a hooker of liquor, his hand shaking on the glass. When he turned my way at last, he was ready to level with me.
“Yes,” he sighed. “I am afraid that you are right, ma petite. I was outside George’s studio at about nine.” He mopped his brow and crossed the room to turn on the air-conditioning. But the place was quite cool. Jacques was suffering from internal sunburn. “A moment ago, you stated that there was no need to inform the police of this fact. Correct?”
“Quite correct,” I said. “Provided you work yourself out of my personal files, Jacques.”
“What does that mean?”
“Simply that I’d like to know why you followed Marianne Fry.”
“Is that of any importance? The girl is a cheap tart.”
“A dead cheap tart.”
“What did you say?”
He dropped his cigarette in alarm, completely upset now. He had been standing behind his desk and when he stepped forward under the reflex of surprise, his tubby bay window upset a small vase of flowers. The ceramic slid and fell, the water creating a giant stain on his immaculate desk blotter. He leaned in this puddle on both hands, insensible to the dampness.
“Murdered,” I added. “Probably by the same madman who killed George DeBeers.”
“Fantastique,” mumbled Jacques. “Incroyable. But why would anyone desire to do away with this one? She was nothing but a demi-monde, a prostitute, a girl of no worth, no mentality.”
“Really? You knew her well, Jacques?”
“Only through George. She was his model, now and then.”
“His model?”
“That is what he told me.” He made a face at the puddle on the blotter, as though it had suddenly appeared out of the infinite to torment him. He idly began to mop up the water, using a large blue blotter and staring at it emptily. “But, of course Marianne was not his model. He used her for more simple tasks, alors. He seemed to prefer her companionship when he drank. A strange man, no?”
“A strange man, yes. But you haven’t told me why you were following her tonight.”
“I have done it before,” said Jacques, with as much sincerity as he could channel through his oily eyes. “You must understand that I was George’s agent, chérie, his advisor. I knew him well. I worried about him, do you understand? Especially when he had much money in his possession, like tonight. Once, a few months ago, I sold one of his pictures, a painting that brought him a sizable sum. Immediately, George cashed the check. It was his way. It was his delight to wander the streets of the Village with much money in his pockets. That last time, my worry led me to his studio. And there I found Marianne, of course. She had taken much of his money. She had waited until after she gave him her body. Then, when he was doomed to exhaustion from too much liquor and sex, she plucked her pigeon. That is why, when I observed her leaving George’s studio tonight. I decided to follow her and find out whether she had robbed him again.”
“So you followed her?”
“But of course.”
“Where did she go?”
“I do not know.”
“You lost her?”
“It was she,” smiled Jacques, “who lost me.”
“Where?”
“In the traffic, on Fifth Avenue. She was not so stupid as I thought, that one. She must have known I walked behind her. She knew the tricks. One moment she was on the street ahead of me. The next moment, pouf! She had disappeared into a taxi.”
“And where did you go?”
“I returned to my gallery. And after that I visited Magda, where you found me.”
“Interesting,” I said. He had been watching me keenly as he told his story. He was eyeing me now, waiting for a sign that I believed him, that I would buy the yarn. But there were too many loose ends, too many holes. He was on his own at the time George was killed. He could have doubled back after following Marianne, murdered George and then returned to his gallery. There would be no point in playing the role of starry-eyed girl reporter any more. It was time he knew the facts of life.
“You do not believe me?” he asked.
“I will if you produce a witness here at the gallery, Jacques.”
“But that is impossible,” he said with a woeful shrug, his fat hands out in a Gallic pose of desperation. “I was alone here. All alone.”
“Nobody saw you at all? Think. Nobody on the street? A cab driver?”
“I took the subway.”
“A bad mistake.” I got up and put away my notebook. “But you’ll be all right with the police, Jacques. If you’re telling the truth.”
“You will tell them?” he asked, putting a pudgy hand on my arm. “But you promised you would not.”
“I’ll keep my promise,” I said at the door to the street. “But they’ll be here anyhow. And I suggest that you tell them the same story you told me.”
CHAPTER 11
3:31 AM. Saturday
The merry-go-round was spinning fast for me. My visit with Jacques Lambert had stimulated me into a quick trip to my desk at The Star. I needed thinking time and I do my best mental labor in certain familiar places. Lady writers are much the same as the boys in this department. A writer finds fodder for thought in the strangest locales. Horace, for instance, might be pounding his typewriter in his apartment at this moment. He was the quiet type, the sort of mechanic who writes best surrounded by things he loves, books and pipes and the sound of Bach on his hi-fi. But my girlish intellect comes to life only under stress and strain. I find my mind opening when the noise of the big presses thump in my ears. I work best against the background hum of the city room, the yapping of the copy boys, the occasional bleat from the editor and buzz and hum of the grinding news gears, the noise of the men and machines that create fresh copy every hour of every day in the year.
There were things to be done at The Star. I dispatched a copy boy to the morgue for a full report on Jacques Lambert’s career, as far back as it could be dug out of the files. I checked the artistic characters with the Art Editor. Magda Trent was a rising young sculptress, not yet included in the collection of any museum, but working her way to the top slowly. Her critical notices were better than average and it was predicted that she might blossom forth into a distinguished artist in the near future. Jeffrey Keck stood much higher on the lists of contemporary talent. Keck had already been purchased by several museums, had worked through a Guggenheim fellowship in Paris, and seemed destined for greatness in the future. There were a few blots on his background, a record of an arrest in Paris for attempted robbery of a French Chateau. His case was dismissed by a Parisian judge, but he became involved with the law a little while later, in Italy. There Keck managed another stab at the easy money, an attempt to marry a young college girl out of a social family, Jane Vandever. But the Vandever clan dispatched an airborne posse in time to foil the amorous Keck.
There were only a few crumbs on Timothy Cantrell. He had achieved prominence in the recent past during a police raid on a beatnik espresso joint in The Village. On his way to jail, he read one of his poems into a television camera, a feat that earned him an appearance on a video interview show. His performance was a classic. Pursing his dairy lips, Cantrell mouthed a glandular little poem about love and lust. His girlish reading endeared him to the maggoty interviewer who invited Timothy back for a return match with his libido. The second appearance of Cantrell elevated him to a key seat in the beatnik empire. He became an expert on Zen. He found himself deluged with offers from magazines. For a short while, his pansy star rose to the heights of beatnik fortune. But the novelty of his lily personality soon paled and he found himself back where he had started, reading his poetry in The Way Out Bar and selling a small volume of self-published odes called Cantos from Cantrell.
And Jacques Lambert?
His file real like something out of a Horatio Alger success story. Jacques was an unknown Parisian artist ten years ago when he leaped into prominence out of the Left Bank. He was commissioned to sell a famous painting—Modigliani’s “Lily Roget.” The masterpiece belonged to Louis Champètre, a French millionaire with the finest collection of twentieth century art in the world. Jacques managed to interest the American collector, Eric Donner, in the masterpiece. Donner bought the Modigliani and shipped it to his home on Long Island, the mansion he called his “living museum.” For three months of the year, Donner’s vast estate was opened to the public, an act that endeared him to the growing army of fine art buffs. It was Donner, too, who had bought the famous Gauguin from Jacques, another deal involving Louis Champètre’s slowly dwindling collection of masterpieces.
The copy boy brought me a few small clippings on Serena Armitage. She had achieved fleeting fame as an art entrepreneur about four years ago when she arrived in Greenwich Village. Serena came to the Bohemian Belt by way of a fairly mild career in show business. She had earned her bread and herring as a stripper in the now defunct Glansky Wheel, a circuit of flea bag burlesque houses on the Eastern seaboard. She was billed as “Serena Latour, The Siren of Amour.” A photo of her appeared in one of her more spectacular newsbreaks when the city fathers in Hoboken raided her show and escorted her to the clink. The picture showed Serena scowling prettily at the cameraman while trying in vain to hide her physical buds from the probing lens. The shot was a classic of news photography. Serena appeared in excellent focus, her face a mas
k of injured innocence. But the reader would forget her face, especially the male reader. He would be far gone in deep admiration for her body, as naked as an undiapered infant.
The story of Serena’s shame was dated March 17, 1952. And her next press release appeared on June 24, 1956, announcing the opening of her new bistro in Greenwich Village. What had happened to her during the intervening four years? Where had she managed to raise the money for her café?
Questions like these irk me, especially when my head bounces with the memory of a recent thud.
I went to visit Horace.
“Sugar,” he said. “What brings you here at this hour?”
“Lust,” I replied. “I get manic after two in the A.M.”
“Seriously now.”
“Passion.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Ask me in out of this damned hall,” I suggested.
“By all means,” said Horace and stepped aside to let me enter. The place was unchanged, warm, intimate, cozy. I had visited his den a few months ago alter running into him at a Broadway opening. He offered me a nightcap and we discussed the merits of Tennessee Williams, after which he discreetly showed me the door, allowing my maidenly yen for him to wither on the vine of Convention.
“Aren’t you going to ply me with a drink?” I asked.
“Of course. The usual scotch?”
“You remember? How sweet, Horace.”
“Soda? Or on the rocks?”
“Rocks,” I said, taking small bites at his throat with my eyes. He could send me in any costume, but the sight of him in informal garb always made my female hammers pound. But here, in his private sanctum, my curiosity rubbed out my lech for his masculinity. The female in me took over. I rolled my eyes over his pad, admiring the quality of his furnishings; the simple Swedish modern, chairs, the functional tables, the delightful wall groupings of contemporary art. And the handsome and utilitarian couch, snug and soft and full of a yielding bounce to the fanny. To the right, on a small table, sat his typewriter. I eased over to peek at the sheet in it. He had been working in his usual analytical way, pounding out a summary and outline of his theories about the George DeBeers murder.
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