by Ian Hamilton
“That sounds sinister.”
“Not everyone on my side plays as nicely as I do.”
“Noted,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“And last, there’s the matter of timing and attention. Bluntly speaking, I don’t want to wait for an auction and I don’t want the risk attached to the publicity an auction might generate. So sell both of the paintings privately. Take a discount on the Picasso if you have to, but just get Harrington’s to sell it as fast as they can.”
“We would save on commissions,” he said.
“All the better — that can accommodate the discount.”
“Is that it? Have we covered the buts?”
Ava sipped her wine. It was lighter than what she was used to and it was going down very easily. She had no doubt they would go through the first bottle in no time. “Yes, though I still want to talk about timing.”
“Sam is waiting up for me in London to find out if we have an arrangement. Since we do, he’ll instruct some people from his New York office to come by the house in the morning. They’ll crate the two paintings and ship them to England by courier, accompanied by all the appropriate paperwork and provenance. It will be up to Sam to judge the best time for him to officially put his seal of approval on them and to start contacting potential buyers.”
“What is a normal timeline for authentication?”
“Could be weeks, months even. No two situations are the same. In this case the provenance is quite straightforward and Sam has my written professional opinion that the paintings are wonderfully genuine, so in theory he could do it in a day. Though he won’t.”
“Best guess?”
“A month.”
“I don’t want it to take that long.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“A week.”
Hughes sighed. “I’m concerned about the optics. These are two important paintings, and Sam can’t seem to be in a rush. He’ll likely have more than one buyer for them and he’ll want to play the buyers against one another, get the highest price we can. Besides, the longer it takes, the better it will look.”
“Why don’t the two of you come up with a story saying you contacted him about them several months ago. That’s feasible, no?”
“Yes, it is possible.”
“You could say it was then that you sent him the detailed photos, copies of the provenance, and whatever else, short of his having actual physical possession of the paintings. Couldn’t that shorten his timeline?”
“Are you always this creative?” he asked as their food arrived.
They ate silently, the wine, as she had predicted, extending to a second bottle. Ava hoped Hughes was concentrating on ways to meet her deadline. Her thoughts turned to Uncle. There was no way she could tell him how she intended to reclaim the money. As he got older he was becoming more and more cautious, and he might not approve of her involving them and the Wongs — however far removed — in a fraud, even if to correct the first fraud. So Ava would have to go it alone on this one. In all their years together, she had never barefaced lied to him, although she had once in a while withheld information. She hoped he wouldn’t push her too hard to find out exactly how she had come up with the money. Uncle had often said that he trusted her judgement when it came to making big decisions. This was a time when she’d run with that trust.
“How is your fish?” Glen Hughes asked, spiking her thoughts.
“As good as last time,” she said, and noticed that he had made quick work of his wagyu. When he was done, he waited for her to finish, his impatience beginning to show. She suspected he was anxious to call Sam Rice.
“You can leave anytime,” she said.
“We’re finished?”
“I am.”
“You don’t want anything in writing? You seemed keen enough to get my brother to put his foibles on paper.”
“Between Maurice O’Toole and Edwin I have everything I need to ensure your continuing co-operation.”
“Our agreement?”
“The last thing I want on paper.”
“So that’s it?”
“No, not quite,” Ava said, dipping into her bag. “We’ll need to keep in touch. My cellphone number and email address are on that card. Let me know how your conversation goes with Sam Rice, and keep me up to date on the timeline. Don’t be surprised if I contact you now and then as well. When the paintings are eventually sold and the money is in your possession, I’ll give you details of the bank account where I want it sent.”
“You’re leaving New York?”
“That’s the plan, unless you think there’s a need for me to be here.”
“No, I’ll handle things.”
“I’m counting on it,” Ava said.
Hughes called for the bill. With the tip, Ava figured it would be close to a thousand dollars. Adding in her spa treatment and two nights at the hotel, she had put more than $3,500 into the Mandarin Oriental’s till. Thank God for expense accounts, she thought.
They walked out of the restaurant together as heads swivelled in their direction. “We are a striking couple,” Hughes said.
“You’re the attraction,” Ava said. “I’m just the sideshow.”
(30)
Ava waited until nine thirty before calling Uncle. By then she figured he’d be eating breakfast with his cronies at one of the many restaurants that surrounded his apartment in Kowloon, and would be unable to question her in any great detail. Her objective was simple: tell him what he and the Wongs wanted to hear, go to bed, and get a morning flight out of New York for Toronto. After that it was up to Sam Rice and Glen Hughes.
So Ava was surprised when Lourdes answered his cellphone. “He isn’t well, Ava,” she said. “He woke with a fever and went back to bed.”
“Have him call me when he gets up. Tell him it’s important.”
She groaned — she had been primed.
The wine was now having an effect on her. She lay on the bed fully clothed and turned on the television. She had gotten no more than five minutes into a reality show before she fell asleep.
She woke up suddenly, the duvet wrapped clumsily around her, with an urgent need to pee. She stumbled to the bathroom with no real sense of time or place. It wasn’t until she came back into the bedroom and saw the clock that Ava realized she had slept in her clothes for eight and a half hours.
She checked her cellphone. No calls. What’s going on with Uncle? she thought.
She took off her shirt and slacks and climbed back into bed in her panties and bra. The duvet was still warm. She dozed, her mind flitting back and forth between the deal she’d struck with Glen Hughes and all the things that could go wrong. After half an hour she hauled herself out of bed and called Hong Kong.
Lourdes again answered Uncle’s phone. “He had food poisoning, I think. He’s spent all day between the bathroom and the bed. He’s just putting on some clothes to go out for dinner, so he must feel a little better. Hold on.”
“ Wei,” the familiar voice said a few minutes later.
“Food poisoning?”
“I ate some raw oysters last night. Not so good.”
“Take better care of yourself.”
“I try,” Uncle said, his voice sounding weak. “Lourdes said you called earlier.”
“It’s about the Wong matter,” Ava said. “It’s resolved.”
She had been in his apartment many times. In her mind’s eye she could see him leaning back in his old armchair, his feet not quite touching the ground, a small table to his right layered with newspapers and racing forms, the phone held to his ear. “Resolved?”
Ava realized the word was far too vague. “I got the money,” she said.
“How much of it?” he asked. There was anticipation, some pleasure in his voice.
“I think I have all of it — seventy million or so. I won’t know until we finalize all the liquidations of assets and the transfers, but I think I’m close.”
She heard
him breathe deeply and knew he was already calculating their commission and planning his phone call to the Wongs. She had listened to him make such calls before. Low-key, slow-paced, building towards a climax, the good news hinted at, then delivered only when the massive scale of the task had been explained. Uncle made every successful job sound as if they had performed a miracle. He could have been an actor. And then she thought, Maybe he is.
“Ava, this is remarkable,” he said.
“Hughes was co-operative. The leverage we had through the other paintings scared him. We could have destroyed his reputation, set the animals loose on him, and probably have caused him to go to prison, or worse.”
“I am surprised he still has the money,” Uncle said. “Usually this type of person squanders much of it.”
“Lucky — we were lucky,” Ava said carefully. “It isn’t all in one place, though, and liquidating some assets and arranging the transfers will be a challenge. But I’ve already started the process, and in a week or two — maybe two, to be on the safe side — everything should be done.”
“Are you certain about the amounts?”
“Yes, within ten percent or so.”
“And you have control of the assets?”
“Yes,” she said, biting her lower lip.
“And the timing?”
She knew he was going to call Changxing Wong as soon as they hung up and that he was identifying the boundaries of what he could say. Knowing how cautious he was, she was sure he would fudge the amount she had given him even more: the ten percent would turn into twenty, maybe even thirty. He would also play with the timelines, and her two weeks would become three weeks or a month.
“Two weeks should see it done.”
He hesitated and she braced herself for more questions. Instead he asked, “Ava, would you like to call May Ling yourself and give her the news?”
“No,” she said, more quickly than she should have.
“They are too important for you to carry a grudge, and May Ling thinks very highly of you. She could be an important ally in the years ahead. I have told you, you need to build more bridges. It is all well and good while I am still active, but when I step aside, Ava, you need to have your own alliances — friends, guanxi.”
He said it slowly, carefully, and she knew he was speaking from love.
“Uncle, when you step aside, I step aside with you.”
“You are too young — ”
“Some things have nothing to do with age.”
“Ava, you know my religion is Tao.”
“Yes, I know.”
“May Ling is Taoist as well, and when we spoke of you, she said to me that the second she looked into your eyes she felt qi, life force, flow between you.”
“I’m not sure what that means, and right now I don’t have any interest in finding out.”
Uncle sighed. “I will phone Changxing tonight,” he said. “They have both been calling me, wondering about your progress. Regardless of your skepticism, they were tremendously impressed by the way you managed Edwin Hughes. Of course, they do not fully understand that gweilos do not have our sense of family. No Chinese of any character would do that to his brother.”
He had passed along her fax from Edwin Hughes’ office to the Wongs, she realized. It was unusual, and she felt unsettled. How close is Uncle getting to them? she thought. “Uncle, you gave them copies of the paperwork I sent you?”
“Yes,” he said.
Ava swallowed hard. “Well, when you speak with him tonight — with them — please ask that May Ling not call me. I am very serious about that.”
“I still think you are misjudging her,” Uncle said. “But I will tell her.”
It was just past seven o’clock in New York. Ava looked outside, hoping to see the sun, and there it was, its rays emanating like a personal invitation. She made herself a Starbucks VIA coffee, downed it quickly, put on her running gear, and headed downstairs.
She did a complete lap of the park, slowing down when she got to East 65th Street, thoughts of dropping in on Glen Hughes entering her mind. She decided against it and finished her run back to the hotel.
By nine Ava had called Gail and asked her to book a one-o’clock Air Canada flight back home to Pearson Airport. She emailed Mimi and her mother to let them know she was arriving that day, and that she’d call later. She wrote to Maria, I’m arriving this afternoon around 2:15 p.m. from New York on Air Canada. If you can meet me at the airport, that’s great. If you can’t, call me later at the apartment. Love, Ava.
She sat at the desk with her notebook. She laid out the gist of her agreement with Glen Hughes and then started making a list of loose ends, calls she had to make, promises that needed to be kept. There was a hotel in Dublin with twelve boxes in storage. Edwin Hughes and Helga Sorensen both deserved a call to calm their nerves. Then she thought of Nina, and just as quickly pushed the thought aside. If Ava was going to maintain her relationship with Maria, Nina would have to become a distant memory.
Back home, back to Toronto, she thought. It had been one hell of a week. And it wasn’t over; it wouldn’t be over until the money had found its way through Harrington’s to Liechtenstein to Uncle’s account in Hong Kong. Don’t start taking things for granted. Don’t be a jinx, she told herself. There are still so many things that could go wrong.
She called Glen Hughes, her mind still swimming in a pool of anxiety.
“Glen, it’s Ava Lee,” she said.
“My dear Ms. Lee, how nice to hear from you. I have to tell you, before you say anything, that was a wonderful dinner last night. I will be going back there again — under different circumstances, I hope.”
“I thought the meal was fine as well.”
“I also have to say that a friend of mine — a client, actually — was in the restaurant and saw us together. He’s insanely jealous. He called me this morning to find out who you are. He thought I was dating some Hong Kong starlet.”
“Tell him thank you.”
“You’re calling for an update, no doubt.”
“Exactly.”
“We’re bang on schedule. In about an hour, the Harrington’s team will be here to collect the paintings and send them to London. I spoke with our friend there last night, and he likes the idea of going private, even at a discount. He thinks it will be an efficient exercise. As for your time constraints, well, he thinks the deal can be concluded within ten days.”
“Mr. Hughes, I am impressed.”
“Coming from you, I assume that’s a compliment.”
“It is.”
“I appreciate it.”
“But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If we can stay focused for ten more days the compliments will mean something more,” Ava said.
“Let me assure you, I am focused.”
“I’m leaving New York this afternoon, but you can email me or reach me at the phone number I gave you if the need arises.”
“Oh, I’ll call if it’s necessary,” Hughes said. “And actually, you might hear from our friend in London as well. I passed your number on to him. He said he was having a bit of an issue with one of his employees and might need to enlist your aid.”
“Frederick Locke?”
“He didn’t give me a name.”
It has to be Locke, Ava thought. What is he up to now?
“Does your friend want me to call him?” she asked.
“No, he says he’ll call you if he needs you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Ah, the Harrington van just pulled up in front of the house. I’m going to go and look after the boys,” Hughes said. “Safe journey.”
Ava packed her carry-on, placing the files in the bottom of the bag, the Steinum sweaters on top, and everything else jammed in between.
It was a half-hour cab ride to LaGuardia, and she was checked in and through security in fifteen minutes. Ava sat at the departures gate and watched CNN on an overhead television. She thought about turning on her laptop, but she was a
lready in shutdown mode. She had just leaned her head back and closed her eyes when her cellphone rang. She was reaching for the phone to turn it off when she noticed the U.K. area code.
“Ave Lee,” she said.
“Ms. Lee, this is Sam Rice calling.”
His voice was a deep growl, made all the more distinctive by an accent she couldn’t quite place. “Mr. Rice, how are you?”
“I’ve been bloody better.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Your cohort, Frederick Locke, is the problem.”
“What exactly is he doing?”
“He’s acting like an old lady over those paintings you unearthed. You know he came to me about them shortly after you met?”
“Yes, Frederick told me. I was surprised, actually. I thought he and I had an understanding that nothing would be said or done until I had a chance to work things out on my end.”
“Well, the fool couldn’t contain himself,” Rice barked. “He came to me, and now he’s been dithering about whether or not you’re going to plunge the firm into some kind of crisis.”
“You know that’s not going to happen.”
“I know, but Locke doesn’t.”
“I’ll call him.”
“No, it’s gone past a phone call. He came to me in the first place because he doesn’t want sole responsibility for making a decision that has so many far-reaching implications.”
“Does he know about your involvement with the Modigliani?”
“Of course he does, and that’s one of the problems, though not in the way you might think.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Locke believes I was taken in by the painting, that I made an error in professional judgement — nothing more than that. He’s concerned that if the painting is revealed as a forgery, then my reputation will take a serious hit, and of course the firm’s along with it.”
“So he wants to bury the fact of the forgeries?”
“He and I have had some long and tedious discussions about the ethics of this situation, about the pros and cons of going public. The bloody fool thought we should let the owners know about the forgeries. He thought we could keep it contained among the parties involved. I got rid of that fantasy in no time. I told him it would explode and that none of us had any idea of the direction it would take, how it would end. I even told him we would have to prepare to have every transaction this firm has made over the past ten years or so examined and re-examined. And God knows how many other mistakes would be found. And even if none were found, God knows how many clients would lose trust in us.”
