Sugar Shannon

by Lawrence Lariar

  I moved to the door. It was easy to lift the latch through the cracked glass. Inside, the smell of morning airlessness grabbed at my nose, a stale, dirty odor, the legacy of last night’s smoking and eating and drinking. I went to work on Serena’s desk at once. It was a modern affair, a Formica top with a small row of drawers on the left side, all of them narrow and ridiculous. I found nothing in her desk to interest me.

  But the wall held me. I studied it, working my memory over it, counting off the number of paintings Serena had placed here. The job was not too difficult. There were dusty shadows outlining the spots where they had hung and the picture hooks still remained. Seven picture hooks. I closed my eyes, fighting to remember the sizes of the paintings. They were all on the smallish side. Could a lone man carry off this artistic loot? Would it be easy for an average-sized male to transport the small load of pictures through the streets of the Village?

  “Hello, Sugar.”

  The sudden greeting almost lost me my panties. I whirled toward the door. It was Horace, standing out on the tiny terrace and smiling knowingly at me.

  “Curious about the robbery?” he asked.

  “Just browsing,” I said. He stepped inside, as casual as bacon and eggs. His face seemed tired, loaded with fatigue. But his eyes looked keen and alive, a symptom of his enthusiasm for work of this sort, stories that required cerebration all the way down the line.

  “You were considering the pictures, Sugar?”

  “Not exactly,” I lied. “I’m more interested in the thief who carried them off.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “None. You?”

  “A suggestion,” he said. “It seems to me that the ideal pilferer would be a local man, somebody who could pass unnoticed in the streets, an artist, perhaps?”

  “Not necessarily,” I countered. “There’s an easy way out, without stepping into the street at all. He could have walked through the yards and ducked into any number of cul-de-sacs, stashed the pictures and then removed them one at a time.”

  “Logical,” said Horace. “But isn’t the entire affair rather pointless, Sugar? Pictures are not normal goals for thieves. What type of robber would entertain the idea of a fine arts pilferage?” He smiled so hard that he almost laughed, amused by some inner thought he wouldn’t let me share. “My point is this—he would have no way to get rid of his loot, don’t you see? Which conjures up a strangely humorous picture in my mind. I see the burglar, alone in his evil abode, sullenly studying the pictures he stole and wondering where he might easily dump them. I see the whole affair as a bit of nonsense, unless our man is an artist of sorts.”

  “That makes it easy,” I said. “There must be at least five thousand artists in the Village area”

  “Not quite, Sugar. But there are quite a few.”

  “And some of them are involved in the George DeBeers case, is that it?”

  “Possibly.” Horace shrugged. He seemed suddenly interested in the far side of the room. There were a series of shelves, full of books and small decorative objects, sculptures and ceramic bowls and. an occasional carved wooden piece. Horace was handling a terra cotta animal, a delightful art object fashioned by a skilled artisan.

  “Clever craftsmanship,” he said.

  “Delightful.”

  “Know the artist?”

  “It looks like Jeff Keck’s work.”

  “Ah? Serena seems to like his stuff, wouldn’t you say? Plenty of these ceramic animals around.”

  “Keck makes his living doing them, Horace. You’ll probably find a few of his cows in every Village shop and hangout. He sells scads of them.”

  “Yet he doesn’t earn much that way,” Horace said dreamily, rubbing the small cow delicately. “Jeff Keck has a rather good name in sculpture. It must nauseate him to prostitute his art this way.”

  “He seems to thrive,” I said. I tried to hold the conversation on a light level, but my memories of last night’s brawl in Cantrell’s hole rose up to freeze my tongue. How much digging would it take to uncover the deeper layers of Keck’s life? How long before I could establish the true relationship between Keck and Magda? The thought of her sent shivers up and down my shanks. I saw her in a new light. I saw her nude and stripped of her social varnish. Magda Trent would be starting a new day now, building herself up for another fix, another bout with drugs. It would be good to talk to Horace about her, to share my knowledge with him. But my reporter’s heart rebelled. What I had belonged to my paper.

  The sudden sound of voices came from inside the restaurant. Horace tugged me quickly toward the door and we bounced across the yard and back into the street.

  Gwen was waiting for us at the corner.

  “Who went in?” I asked.

  “Serena. And she looked mad enough to spit. Wanted to know what in hell I was doing around here so early in the morning.”

  “And you told her?”

  “I told her I was looking for a Cuban guitar player.”

  Horace took us to a nearby ham and eggery for a cup of coffee. He seemed anxious to discuss the arrival of Serena, surprised by her appearance. He was aware of her habits, of course. He had done much research on his own since I saw him last in the wee hours of the morning. He had found some information concerning the missing years in Serena’s dossier, the period between 1952 and 1956. She had been abroad, in Paris, where she achieved some notoriety as the proprietress of a small club called “Chez Moi,” an intimate type of bistro that afforded even more intimacy to key customers who were allowed to romp upstairs with a select coterie of concubines. Serena’s sexpot layout was finally closed by the gendarmes, and she returned to New York where she opened her Village bistro.

  “She must have had loads of loot,” Gwen said. “The Grotto is rich with furniture and fixtures.”

  “An interesting thought,” Horace said, “because she was obviously broke when she returned from France.”

  “No problem at all for Serena,” I said. “She probably conned a few investors.”

  “I wonder,” Horace said. He seemed suddenly heavy with seriousness. He eyed me for a deep and penetrating appraisal, a rare gesture for him because he usually looked at me as though I might be part of the landscape. He touched my arm with tentative fingers, enough to send electric charges up and down my spine.

  “Sugar,” he said slowly. “I’m bothered by this story, really bothered. I wish you’d stop where you are. It may be dangerous to go any further.”

  “How sweet,” I said, grabbing his hand and holding it tight. “And will you stop if I do, darling?”

  “I can’t.”

  “But you want me to chicken out?”

  “I’m truly worried,” he said. “This thing has ramifications that puzzle me and frighten me. There may be more violence if we dig too deep. And I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Honest?” I gushed. “I didn’t think you cared, darling.”

  “Be sensible, Sugar. You may get hurt.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  CHAPTER 15

  10:43 A.M. Saturday

  On Saturday morning the summer hordes crowd the highways leading to Long Island. The traffic crawled and coughed and gasped over the Triborough Bridge and it took almost an hour to reach the straightaway stretches of the new expressway. Here we were able to move at a good clip, my Hillman convertible alive with the fresh breezes from the Long Island hills.

  “Whither away?” asked Gwen. “Don’t tell me we’re going to warm our shanks at Jones Beach?”

  “I won’t tell you.”

  “Something more interesting, no doubt?”

  “More involved, Gwen. I brought you out with me to expertize.”

  “Me, an expert?” she laughed. “On what? Guitar players, perchance?”

  “Fine art.”

  “Come again?”


  “We’re visiting the Eric Donner mansion. We’re looking at paintings.”

  “My aching back.” Gwen screwed her pretty face into a sincere snarl, but only for a moment. She was suddenly interested in a passing Porsche, complete with a young buck behind the wheel who slyly eyed her. She blew him a kiss and almost sent him into an adjoining Ford. “Maybe I’m going to like this trip after all,” she said. “Follow that Porsche, Sugar.”

  But we lost the Porsche when I turned off the Express way into a road that led deeper into the hills on the North Shore. Here we entered a neighborhood of giant estates, rimmed with brick fences that rode alongside the rustic road for long stretches. This was the last bastion of the rich, the final stronghold against the encroaching developments, the ranches and splits that dominate the Long Island suburban landscape. Eric Donner no longer lived at his chateau. It would be open to the public as a museum, a fantastic collection of art of all periods, from Giotto to Jackson Pollock.

  We turned into the gateway marked:

  ERIC DONNER HOUSE

  ART MUSEUM — OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

  ADMISSION FREE

  We rolled along a macadam road under a canopy of giant oaks. Ahead, the great North Field, now converted into a public parking lot. A few scattered cars sat in the bright sunlight. It was a bit too early for the tourist crowds.

  The guard showed us into the gallery, a modern room of tremendous proportions. It had been added to the main building, an artfully schemed place where each picture hung like a gem against the stark white wall.

  “How about this one?” I asked Gwen.

  “Gauguin,” she said, enraptured. “One of my favorite people. He knew life. He knew what he wanted and he went after it. Did you ever read the saga of his sex habits in his South Pacific pad? What a man, Gauguin!”

  “The picture,” I reminded her.

  “Primitive elegance,” said Gwen. “One of my girlhood dreams in art school involved old Gauguin, did I ever tell you? I burned with the yen to be painted by a man like him. Can you imagine how my corpuscles bubbled? I saw myself sitting on the beach with him, dressed only in my skin, prone on the sand while he fed me small scraps of mango, pineapple and fried shrimps. Then he would run fingers over me...”

  “The picture,” I said again. “Study it.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Could it be a fake, Gwen?”

  “A fake?” Her voice leveled off to a whisper, a sure sign that she was no longer in the mood for jokes. She stepped away from the painting and put on her glasses and measured it with a fresh scrutiny. It was a challenge to her background and experience. She had emerged from college with a deep knowledge of the arts, the result of four years of intensive study. She had abandoned her bookish past to attempt an artist’s career, but the old love of research and study would never really leave her. In moments like this, she blossomed into a new personality, a gal with a deep insight into the mechanics of painting, the history of painting, the wonderful lore of painting.

  “A fake?” she said again. “I don’t know, Sugar.”

  “I didn’t expect you to guarantee it,” I said. “But is it possible?”

  “Possible, yes.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “There are ways,” said Gwen. “Not too long ago a strange Dutchman was discovered. This man had painted imitation Vermeers, so skillfully that he baffled the greatest art experts on earth. He was adept in the copying of art and knew his way around all the styles. For years he escaped detection and made a fortune at his craft. He was exposed, finally, but not before he had himself a real ball fooling the big shots.”

  “You know the history of this Gauguin?”

  “I remember it well. Jacques Lambert sold it to old man Donner for a fabulous price.”

  “And it was authenticated?”

  “Tested by the best in the field,” Gwen said earnestly. “That’s why I don’t quite grab what you’re getting at, Sugar. How could it be a fake if all those professionals checked it?”

  “Ever hear of the game of switch?”

  “Some of my best married friends play it.”

  “With pictures, it isn’t too easy. But it can be done.”

  “Are you insinuating that our little friend Jacques may be a Gallic con man?”

  “Let’s you and I find out, shall we?”

  “Fun and games,” smiled Gwen.

  It was after noon when we parked my car at a lot in the East Sixties and walked briskly back toward the Jacques Lambert Gallery. Across the street from his door, we found a small French restaurant, complete with hors d’ouvres, onion soup and a good view of Jacques’ front door. I phoned the gallery and a girl answered and told me that Monsieur Lambert was out to lunch and would not be back until mid-afternoon.

  “Maybe so,” I told Gwen, “but we’ll play cat and mouse with him for a while, anyway.”

  “You think he’s in there, alors?”

  “I think he may be upstairs, in his apartment, alors.”

  “And how did the great brain arrive at that conclusion?”

  “Gallic customs. Most Frenchmen take a late lunch and dawdle over their food. It’s my guess that Jacques is a one o’clock diner.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Gwen, pointing to the gallery door. “Get a load of the Frenchman’s date.”

  Jacques emerged from his doorway at exactly twelve-thirty-seven. But there was a reason for his early departure. He had a woman on his arm, a buxom gal with a smooth and swishy stride, a walk that made you think immediately of burlesque runways and bumps and grinds. She was Serena Armitage. And Serena was towing him off to the west as though she had a personal lien on his arm.

  “I’ll be ding-donged,” said Gwen. “The little man seems to enjoy Serena’s company. They go well together, don’t you think?”

  “Like snakes and worms. He’s hailing a cab, Gwen. Gulp down your coffee.”

  The Jacques Lambert Gallery was a freshly painted gray dwelling in a long line of similar houses. Jacques’ house, however, stood out among the rest. I had missed its distinctive character last night because of the darkness. Right now, in the midday sun, the façade was loaded with class. Some clever architect had stripped away the brown bricks and redesigned the place in the modern manner. The entire front was glass. Inside the small vestibule, a door on the right led upstairs. I nudged Gwen into the gallery and slipped quickly to the stairway, a marbled flight of steps partially covered with an elegant cerulean carpet.

  There was a landing upstairs, about the size of the vestibule but much more airy. Here the visitor could gasp and marvel at the fantastic entrance to the Lambert sanctum. There was a collection of small oils in this area, a charming Vlaminck, a fantastic Modigliani nude, an arrangement of three tiny Klee water colors.

  The silence ate at my ears. It was the kind of noiselessness that made your head sing, a quiet that seemed to push you out of the world, into a strange closet where nobody could ever hear you if you screamed. I checked my womanly intuition for lunacy, aware that my pulses were hammering. The nagging fear in me would not depart. Yet, reason made me pause and grin at my own foolishness. Certainly, the sight of so many fine paintings should have relaxed me, cooled me, calmed my bumping heart. This was a place for refined introspection, cool enjoyment.

  And still my heart would not level off.

  “Sissy,” I told myself.

  “Ssssssssss,” said a gentle echo.

  Straight ahead, the door led to the living room, a tremendous square place. The décor was simple, stark white walls, alive with Jacques Lambert’s personal art collection, a breathtaking assemblage of paintings. The large fireplace sang with unique design, a Scandinavian type of corner, complete with the simple appurtenances that indicated steady use. The furniture was casual and of unique quality, warm-wooded and brightly upholstered and in
perfect harmony with the rest of the place. The entire ensemble did Jacques proud. It was a perfect setting for his priceless pictures, a room of warm and intimate charm. I stalked it carefully, walking the full length of it slowly, before pausing to examine the large Danish desk.

  Jacques Lambert was a tidy housekeeper. His desk held no scrap of casual paper on the delightful salmon-colored blotter. The top drawers, too, were neatly arranged, containing his personal note paper and a variety of precisely pasted clippings of his gallery shows. He was a good business man, a filer of facts culled from the local press reviews. He was obviously proud of his success. Over the desk, on a cork wall, he had pasted a group of the finest notices, raves by key critics, and news clips of his latest Gauguin sale to Eric Donner.

  In the bottom drawer I found his check book. His entries were neat and orderly, reflecting the stubborn quality of his business temperament. Jacques Lambert would keep his house in order even if he lived in a Sing-Sing duplex.

  I thumbed the checkbook. There was an item for five hundred and fifty dollars made out to George DeBeers in payment for an oil painting and dated three months ago. After that, Lambert had only withdrawn checks for casual expenses. I flipped the pages quickly, scanning the check stubs.

  And then a strange figure caught my eye.

  Jacques had withdrawn five thousand dollars a week ago. I engraved the serial number of the check in my mental card file and continued my search of his desk. In moments like this I needed the methodical brain of Horace Gordon. He would know the procedure for uncovering the important clues. He would search for the important items, digging deep for note pads, directories, address books, odds and ends of written information. I abandoned the desk drawers and approached the telephone. It sat on a small table near, the leather arm chair. There was a small pad near it, a combination address book and memorandum. On the empty white sheet, Jacques had doodled a strange mixture of nervous designs and freewheeling calligraphy.