“Yes, I know,” I said quickly. “I’ve put together quite a few slides for you based on our discussions. I’m sorry not to be able to get back to you sooner, but I did tell you that I was going to be tied up with jury duty for several weeks,” I reminded her gently.
“Oh, yes,” she said vaguely, uninterested. Or maybe it was just that such a preposterous activity was outside her scope of imagination.
She looked at her watch. Valentin was obviously late. He made it a habit, which is one reason I found him so irritating. She roused herself to make small talk. “What kind of trial was it?”
“Murder,” I said.
Even a witless mannequin would have to have had some reaction, and Mira was something more than that. Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes. You might have read about it in the newspaper. The Natasha Ivanova case.”
The doorbell rang. Mira got to her feet gracefully but promptly. The door was a good half acre away, so she might have needed a running start.
She paused. “I do know about it,” she said, looking serious. “The thing is, I met her a couple of times. I’m glad they caught the killer.”
This was intriguing. “Where?” I asked, as she was disappearing down the hall.
She turned back a little and shrugged. “At parties.” Obviously not an unusual event. Frowning, she pressed her hands together. “As a matter of fact, she’s the one who introduced me to my husband.”
Valentin swept in before I had a chance to digest this, so I didn’t pursue it. But—wow—could the rich and handsome venture capitalist and the gorgeous ex-model really have required the services of a matchmaker to get together? It boggled the mind.
Everybody in the South Bay suddenly seemed to know something about Natasha Ivanova. Everybody, that is, except the jury who’d been sitting on the case for weeks.
Valentin was not in a friendly mood, which meant that his usually biting sarcasm was even more corrosive than usual. He was a big man, with a shock of gray-white hair (one of his favorite colors, apparently), high Slavic cheekbones, and dark piercing eyes without a trace of warmth. Like Mira, he was wearing black. The two of them could have been going to audition for a particularly stylish symphony orchestra.
Valentin’s irritation might have been due to his unsuccessful six-day shopping excursion with the Jensens, which meant that now he would have to give the art commission to me. He didn’t enjoy my company any more than I did his, but he had to work with me because there weren’t many people who specialized in Latin American art. I’d “discovered” it before it got hot, so I had all the contacts. Brazilians were especially popular right now, and of course the Mexicans had been a big draw for years. I did lots of other things, too, but in Southern California, Latin America had the advantage of being politically correct as well as out of the ordinary. At least for the time being.
Valentin settled himself grumpily onto the Jensens’ eggshell leather couch. It probably cost as much as my Camry. “I hope you brought lots of slides,” he announced. “Mira and Jordan are very selective.”
Mira acknowledged what she apparently believed was a graceful compliment with a small, satisfied smile. Some clients relish the idea that they are difficult, so you have to humor them by acknowledging it. The best thing is to do it in a way that doesn’t encourage them to get even worse.
“Did you tell Ellen about the party?” he asked her, leaning over to reposition a glass bowl on the table. It was white, naturally. He turned to me without waiting for her response. “We need these now, Ellen, I hope you understand. This is going to be a very exclusive gathering.” His tone suggested that, by comparison, the Last Supper was far too democratic.
“But I—we—would like both of you to come, too,” said Mira disingenuously.
Well, not too exclusive, apparently.
“People might have questions about the art and furnishings,” she added, by way of explanation.
Valentin looked as if he smelled something awful, but since that was his habitual look, it was difficult to tell if he was seriously displeased. “Thank you,” he said abruptly. “I think we should get on with the slides.”
I started with my less-than-top choices because whatever I put on first had a good chance of being rejected by Valentin out of ill humor and by Mira out of a determination to prove how selective she was.
“Here’s one I think might be very striking,” I told them, after the first four or five had passed without any comment except indecipherable muttering from Valentin. “The colors are very strong, and the lines are simple.” It was a white ceramic bowl of fruit against a yellow background.
I put the slide on the screen. “Unfortunately, this artist’s work does tend to be rather expensive.” Mira sat up straighter on the couch, leaning forward.
“Mira doesn’t like fruit,” Valentin said decisively.
“Really?”
She nodded.
“How about flowers?”
“Even worse,” Valentin answered for her. “I like the lines and colors, but what we’d really like is a bowl without the fruit.”
“Or a pot without the flowers,” I said.
He looked at me suspiciously, to see if I was making fun of him. I was, but I’d heard far worse and it didn’t show.
“How expensive?” asked Mira suddenly.
I tried not to smile. “Something major by the same artist went for just over two hundred thousand dollars at a Christie’s Latin American art auction. But that was before the collapse of the market. This one would probably be in the twenty-to-fifty-thousand-dollar range.”
“We could probably manage that,” she said smoothly.
“I’ll contact the gallery and arrange for you to see it, if you think you might be interested. Most of the artist’s works are represented in New York, but this one is in Santa Monica.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s not too far. I hate it when you have to drive really far to look at something.”
“Or when they make you walk up the stairs,” I said sympathetically.
I mean, come on. Valentin was looking at me suspiciously again, so I thought better of scoring more points off my client—a dangerous thrill in the best of circumstances.
By the end of the slide show, I had also interested her in two “horizontals” and a “vertical” as well as a very high-tech piece of sculpture for the bathroom. They were lots less expensive than the fruit bowl, but it was a great morning’s work. Valentin gave grudging approval to the selections. I would have to keep my fingers crossed about Jordan, but the biggest battle was already won.
I put the slides and catalogues back into my briefcase and picked up the projector. “I’ll call you in the next day or so, so we can get moving on any of these you like,” I promised her.
“Speed is of the essence,” Valentin reminded me nastily. “We won’t be dropping out of sight again any time soon, will we?”
“I certainly hope not,” I told him.
Mira came unexpectedly to my defense. “Ellen’s been on jury duty,” she said.
“How lovely for you,” murmured Valentin.
“The Garcia trial,” she persisted. “You know, the boy that killed Natasha Ivanova.”
He drew himself up to his imperial height. In the shadowed entryway, his skin tone was as pallid as the decor. He gave me the creeps. “I’m afraid I don’t follow that sort of news story,” he said dismissively.
“I was just telling Ellen before you got here that she was the one who introduced me to Jordan,” she chirped.
Ordinarily, I would have expected this to elicit some enthusiastic comment from Valentin, who, despite his dyspeptic outlook, still knew how many beans make five. He said nothing, however. I couldn’t think of the right response, either.
She caught us looking at her. Enlightenment dawned. “Oh, not like that,” she said, with a lovely, silvery laugh. “I mean, I know she had a matchmaking business, but I didn’t know her that way. She was an art collector,” she said to
me. “She gave these fabulous art soirées. I’m surprised you didn’t know her, Ellen. Lots of our friends did.”
I remembered the Erté statue. “Well, maybe she collected art I don’t usually handle,” I told her.
She frowned. “Yes, maybe that’s it.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “She was a Russian aristocrat, you know. The Soviets killed all her family, like the czar.”
I refrained from pointing out that the aristocracy had disappeared in 1917, which would have made Natasha a bit long in the tooth by the time of her death. Michael’s specialty had been prerevolutionary Russia. I didn’t mention that, either.
“Really?” I inquired politely.
She nodded. “Yes. You can always tell. Something in the way she carried herself. Those dramatic clothes and jewels. And those tragic eyes.” She turned to Valentin. “I thought she had a beautiful house, didn’t you?”
He put his hand on the doorknob and opened the door. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” he said in a tone that bordered on rudeness. He amended it moments afterward by kissing his patroness’s hand, a gesture she seemed to find in no way unusual. Maybe he was inspired by all that talk of aristocrats. I settled for a handshake.
“I fear I must leave à l’instant,” he said. He looked at us, apparently considering whether this required a translation. He decided against it. “Coming, Ellen?” He practically propelled me out the door. Since my arms were full, I was powerless to resist him.
“What? What is it?” I said, when the two of us were alone outside. I almost blinked in the sunlight, the colors were so bright after Igloo Jensen. The courtyard seemed improbably lush and tropical, full of potted palms and other exotica. A wild peacock, the bane of peninsula residents, shrieked close by. I jumped.
Valentin walked me over to the car, his grip tight on my arm. “I don’t want you seeing her alone,” he said seriously, releasing his hold.
“Why not?” I asked stupidly.
“Don’t think I don’t realize what’s going on here. You’d like to cut me out of the loop. Don’t think I didn’t pick up on all your little innuendos.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I told him.
“Is it? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of how much more you could make if I weren’t in the picture. Don’t tell me you didn’t arrive early on purpose.”
“Valentin, stop it with the ‘don’t tell me’s’. You’re being paranoid. In the first place, I wasn’t early; you were late.” I forbore mentioning that he was always late. “I know how these things work. I have no interest in cutting you out of anything.” I tried to make a joke out of it. “This isn’t real estate, for God’s sake.”
“I hope you do know how they work.” He reached across me and opened the car door. His nails were polished to a high gloss. “Nobody cuts me out, Ellen. Just so we understand each other. Nobody.”
5
It was June, the wrong time of year for a Santa Ana, the hot desert wind that writers like to suggest makes people a little crazy. Less literary types merely note that it toasts the skin and the vegetation, and blows all the smog out over the sea. Since the weather was ordinary “June gloom”—overcast in the mornings and late afternoon—why was everyone acting bizarre?
I felt as if I were living in some real-life version of a Quentin Tarantino movie, its landscape seething with quirky villainy. In less than two days, I’d been called a racist and received hearty encouragement to take a celestial hike. I got intimations of mortality whenever I started my car. A person with whom I’d worked for two years, with studied—if insincere—cordiality, had felt moved to threaten me. My daughter wanted me to date.
And that doesn’t even begin to touch the eeriness of discovering that the entire South Bay area seemed to know a great deal more about Natasha Ivanova than I did. Granted, the coincidence of finding two people with inside information was less than it might have been if we were talking about Greater L.A. The South Bay was just a small section of the big sprawl, and it was not surprising if the rich, who are clubby everywhere, kept tabs on each other. What bothered me was, where were all these people when the trial was going on? If they were social acquaintances, fellow patrons of the arts, invited guests at exclusive parties, why hadn’t they been heard from?
I had a lot of questions, but the answers came up short. Things seemed to be slipping out of control. I hadn’t had that feeling since Michael died, when I’d stopped asking questions I couldn’t answer. There were things I just didn’t think about; that’s how I kept it together. Now my sense of order was under attack.
Still, I had to admit that Natasha—under the circumstances, I thought I was justified in feeling we were on a first-name basis—had me curious. There seemed to be more than one view of her character, and I bet she’d been up to something. Not necessarily something bad, but something. I still couldn’t square the Erté with the aristocratic Connoisseur of the Arts that Mira had described to me. An émigré countess or whatever she had styled herself would presumably have been more interested in Fabergé eggs than in Art Deco-ish Nefertitis with posture problems. I hate to belabor the point, but Erté is not the artist of first choice for collectors who want art for investment and social imprimatur. In the first place, he was primarily a costume designer and illustrator, albeit a glitzy and pretty successful one. Plus, there are too many works available, the price is too low, the style is too accessible, and the masses like him. The kiss of death, for sure.
Besides, I had an ax to grind. I’d just spent several weeks of my life trying to sort out her death, and now I learned that somebody had been holding out on me. I found myself an interested party. It was a strange bond, but a bond nonetheless.
I felt restless and dissatisfied, and not just because I’d caught myself resembling somebody’s Bank Vice President in Mira’s looking glass. The trial was supposed to be over, but all these leftover whirlpools and eddies remained in its wake. For five years—since Michael died—order and routine had sustained me, had made me safe. Now I was sailing in uncharted waters. Maybe the trial would shake things up, I’d thought.
Be careful what you wish for, wasn’t that the saying?
It was still early, so I decided to drive up to Santa Monica to visit the galleries and arrange for the Jensens to view two of their initial choices. Karin Deacon, who had run the prestigious Vendôme Gallery since the heady days of the L.A. art scene in the sixties, was on the warpath.
“Is this an OTC?” she asked, lifting her reading glasses off of her nose and fixing me with a penetrating stare.
“Well, not quite Over The Couch, but more like your instant designer-label collection,” I admitted ruefully. “I’m sorry, Karin.”
We both stepped back to admire the painting. It was very simple, but so beautiful. A slide couldn’t capture it.
“I hate selling the work of an artist I admire to someone who doesn’t know what they’re buying. It just kills me.”
“I know what you mean,” I said sympathetically. “But still…”
She looked resigned. “Well, at least you had the decency not to come in and ask me for a size and color, the way some consultants do. Like it’s a fucking dress, for God’s sake.”
I didn’t tell her I was far too scared of her to let on what everyone knew and no one would admit. When Michael was alive and I was a dilettante ex–art major working “for fun” (certainly not for a living wage) in a gallery on La Cienega, Karin had been a formidable figure, a true “character” in every sense of the word. Her tongue could blister, but she was absolutely dedicated to the artists she represented. In the eighties, she had made a lot of easy money. The Vendôme was still one of the top galleries in the country, but times were different now, requiring compromise. It wasn’t politic to remind her of it.
“Well, at least we might get a good price,” she said at last. She brightened. “And maybe we can bring the buyers along, educate them.”
I remembered Mira’s comment about not wanting to go out of her way to l
ook at art works and had my doubts, which I certainly did not communicate to Karin. I nodded.
“Do these people have any eye at all?” she asked, not fooled by my silence.
“You might say it’s evolving,” I told her.
“From what?”
“From pretty much zero,” I admitted. “The good news is that you can probably influence their taste. Also, they’re interested in having a party to show off whatever they get, so you might get some new customers out of it in addition to the original sale.”
“The good news is that I get to spend hours I don’t have, doing my ‘what is art’ routine for a couple who doesn’t have a clue as to what’s going on?” She laughed. “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is that they have a decorator.”
She closed her eyes. “Who?”
“He calls himself Valentin. No last name, at least that I know about.”
“I know him.” She pursed her lips in an expression that boded ill. “I won’t work with him, but I know him.”
“Why not?”
She extended her fingers, touching each in turn to tick off the reasons one by one.
“I don’t like grandstanding. I don’t like tardiness. I don’t like cutting corners. I don’t like him.”
“Oh, dear.” This was going to complicate matters.
“I don’t have any concrete evidence against him, but my gut tells me he’s a sleazebag. I don’t need him. If your clients want to buy from me, they’ll have to work through you. I don’t make exceptions.”
“Okay,” I told her. It was useless to argue; I knew she wouldn’t back down, and anyway it was my problem to find a way to tell Valentin that the other children didn’t want him at the class birthday party. In light of our last conversation, it was a safe bet that he would assume I had somehow shafted him again. He’d exact revenge, too, if he could. It didn’t matter. I needed the Vendôme Gallery and Karin more than I needed Valentin. But I didn’t look forward to it.
Staying Cool Page 5
