“It’s dangerous,” Lowenstein said. “Come on, Levette. Let’s go back.”
“I mean the river,” Asmore told him. “I mean the river’s beautiful. I never thought so before, I always feared it before, but now I see it’s beautiful.”
He laughed and spread his arms out on either side of him. His hair whipped behind him and his eyes were closed and Lowenstein saw him sway ever so slightly.
“Levette? Please…”
Asmore glanced over at Lowenstein and a smile came to his face. He lowered his arms and leaned forward against the rail to regain his balance.
“I’ll take you home,” Lowenstein said.
“I am home,” Asmore told him. “Dammit, Low, I am home.” Somehow Lowenstein understood that he meant the river. “I need to clear something up,” he said. “Will Henry never wrote me no letter.”
“What did you say?”
“I said he never wrote to me. Will Henry? I made that up. I never had another way to get out here, either. I meant for you to take me.” The smile was gone from his face now. He turned away from Lowenstein and stared out in the distance, out past the blackbirds. And it came to Lowenstein that his friend meant to kill himself.
“I forgive you,” Asmore said. “You couldn’t help it, Low.”
“What are you saying, I couldn’t help it?”
“I forgive the others, too,” he said. “I forgive them all.”
Lowenstein stepped up closer with the half-formed intention of grabbing him by an arm and guiding him down from the bridge, but Asmore moved to avoid him and seemed to lose his footing—he might’ve tripped on a shoestring, the way he suddenly got tied up. He fell backward hard against the guardrail. “Low,” he said and gave a quick laugh to show his surprise. A spark of recognition flashed in his eyes and he reached out for Lowenstein’s hand and they touched briefly before Asmore followed the pull of his weight and went over the side without a sound.
“I couldn’t watch it,” Lowenstein said. “I didn’t see him hit the water. I was so traumatized that I sat at the foot of the guardrail clinging to it. I remember looking around and the cars were still coming and blowing their horns and out over the river the blackbirds still hung suspended in a swarm. The world was exactly as it had been a minute before except for the presence of that one man, and yet I knew that without him in it the world would never be the same again. After a while I was able to stand and I stumbled out into the road. I should’ve been killed then myself, I wanted to be, but somehow I succeeded in stopping traffic. A man out for a drive with his family was the first to offer help. The passenger door fell open and I looked in and there must have been six or seven of them and they were all gazing out at me with the same expression.
“The man said, ‘You weren’t planning to jump, were you, son?’ I said no and his wife squeezed up closer to him, to make room for me on the seat. ‘Come sit,’ the man said. ‘We’ll drive you to the other side.’”
ELEVEN
We were waiting when she arrived in the U-Haul and parked on the driveway that ran under the old hotel. Joe Butler raised the rear door and we unloaded the panels and lighting equipment and she gave the keys to one of the garage attendants and told him she wouldn’t need the truck again until later tonight. Each of the panels was fitted taut over wood stretchers and covered with butcher paper, and we carried them into a service elevator, then up past the lobby with its liveried door staff, Italian-inspired ceiling frescoes and crystal chandeliers, and stopped finally on the floor where she’d rented adjoining suites with four-poster beds in the bedrooms and Louis XIV furniture arranged on the fancy rugs. In advance of our arrival Rhys had asked the hotel to clear out the furniture in one of the living rooms. We removed the paper and stood the panels against the wall and Rhys set up a photoflood lamp on each side and one directly in the middle, and when she turned them on we stood back and stared past the heat and the glare.
“It blows my mind,” Rondell Cherry said. “It really blows my mind this was there all that time.”
“Hiding,” Joe Butler replied.
Asmore’s signature, painted black, was in the upper-left corner. On opposite sides of the painting, positioned along the edges, I could see Paul Ninas with the girl and Alberta Kinsey in the nun’s habit. I had another close look at Lowenstein as a young man gambling his life away while all around him the Carnival celebration was going full steam.
“Tell me this dude’s name again,” Cherry said.
“Asmore,” Rhys said. “His name was Levette Asmore.”
“A black man?”
“Yes, he was black, as a matter of fact.”
“You can see that,” Cherry said, although he never did explain how.
Cherry had a butterfly bandage covering a closed wound on his face where he’d taken a punch thrown by one of two thugs who’d attacked him outside the Wheeler Beauty Academy the week before. In his fifteen years at the school it was the first time he’d been the target of a crime, and even after he’d pummeled the boys senseless, neither would admit that it wasn’t his wallet they were after but retribution for his having sold Tommy Smallwood a worthless piece of canvas.
Like Joe Butler and me, Cherry was wearing a suit with a clean shirt and necktie, as per Rhys’s instruction. It was strange to see him out of his usual canvas coveralls and I wondered where a man that large went to buy clothes.
“You look sharp, Mr. Cherry,” I said.
He shook my hand, the second time today. “I feel sharp.”
As for Joe Butler, his transformation was even more dramatic. He’d had his hair cut and his shirt collar covered the tattoos that usually were visible on his neck. Most surprising, though, was the tan that browned his skin. He’d had so much sun that his forehead was flaking. “Have you been vacationing at the beach or something?” I said.
“Yes, I have. Did Rhys tell you?”
I had a good laugh at the thought, Joe Butler the scarecrow wearing a swimsuit and stretched out in the sand. “You’re a strange man, you know that?”
“Thank you, bro.”
Rhys opened the door adjoining the two suites and called for a meeting in the other living area. This room had furniture. I sat between the two men on a sofa and Rhys sat across from us in a wing chair with her legs crossed, a yellow writing tablet propped on a knee. She was wearing a tailored jacket with a velvet collar, a black skirt, hose and shoes that looked new. Her hair hung down and fanned out over her shoulders and her face held subtle touches of makeup that sharpened her bones and brightened the shine in her eyes. She glanced at her watch and I checked my own, somehow succeeding in pulling my eyes away from her for a moment. It was eight o’clock in the morning.
“Okay, listen up,” she said. “The first of them arrives in less than an hour. His name is Cedric Anderson. Mr. Anderson is the only visitor we’ll have coming today from Texas. He owns a computer software design company in Austin. Mr. Anderson collects American regionalist paintings and is reputed to own three excellent examples by Thomas Hart Benton, all of them bought privately in New York. He also owns a Levette Asmore cityscape, a view of Canal Street in the rain, for which he paid a dealer three hundred thousand dollars. He bid on Beloved Dorothy by phone, one of the last of the phone bidders to drop out. Like the others, Mr. Anderson will have thirty minutes to inspect the painting. He’ll be accompanied by his wife, Julie.”
Joe Butler raised his hand. “Should we be taking notes?”
“No notes. Just listen. I thought you might like a brief introduction to the collectors we’ll be meeting today.”
“Cedric Anderson,” Rondell Cherry said. “He’s not black, is he?”
“I can’t answer that,” Rhys said. “I spoke to him on the phone and we’ve exchanged e-mail. But I’ve never asked him his race.”
“Because his name sounds black,” Cherry said. “I grew up in Pigeon Town with this boy, name of Cedric Williford. Now he was black.”
“We need to move on, Mr. Cherry.”
&n
bsp; He pushed back deeper into the sofa. “I just thought you’d like some input.”
“Thirty minutes after the Andersons leave, Taylor Dickel of Columbia, South Carolina, will be our guest. Mr. Dickel inherited his money and hasn’t worked a day in his life. His wealth is estimated at a hundred and fifty million. His mother is reputed to have sat for Asmore in 1938, but the painting’s whereabouts is unknown. Mr. Dickel attended the Beloved Dorothy sale but did not bid because he said he wasn’t feeling well after eating bad oysters at dinner the night before. Witnesses, however, observed Mr. Dickel drinking Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s that Friday evening, and in fact he failed to attend dinner with friends. Mr. Dickel has long included Asmore on a wish list left with Lucinda Copeland at Neal. He is an erratic but engaging personality, and a faithful client of the Guild’s. He will be alone today, and, I hope, sober. Joe?”
“Yes, boss?”
“I’m putting you in charge of serving beverages. If Mr. Dickel asks for a drink, please limit the amount of liquor you serve him to a jigger.”
“Will do.”
“Now he’s white,” Rondell Cherry said. “He is definitely white.”
Rhys ignored him. “After Mr. Dickel we’ll have Amanda Howard and her husband, David,” she said, referring to her notes. “The Howards, who live in Miami, own several hundred fast-food restaurants in the state of Florida and will be traveling to New Orleans this morning by private jet, their own. They collect southern art, mostly images of black people. They’ve been redecorating their home and need ‘something large, busy and dramatic,’ as Mrs. Howard said it, to hang in a hallway. Mrs. Howard already owns a Beloved portrait, Beloved Molly. She’s hoping the mural’s colors will match those of the runner she and her husband intend to use in the hall.”
“I don’t have any idea what those two are,” Cherry said.
“Mr. Cherry, am I going to have to put you out in the hall?”
“But I was just saying…”
Rhys provided profiles for five other potential buyers, all of whom were coming from out of state but one, Tommy Smallwood, the last of the group scheduled to view the painting. His appointment was set for six o’clock.
“In summary,” she said, “there are several common denominators among these collectors. The first, obviously, is wealth. The second is an impulse to spend this wealth on things that are important to them. The third might be called greed if that word didn’t carry such a negative connotation. These buyers are all competitive individuals whose motivation to spend money often is driven by their desire to possess things simply so that others of their financial stature can’t have them. Any questions?”
“What about the issue of provenance?” I said. “Might they be dissuaded from bidding on the painting without some record of previous ownership? For all they know, the mural could’ve been stolen from a private collection or, worse, a post office.”
“Good one, Jack. I failed to mention a fourth common denominator, that being a disdain for the federal government. When I spoke with these collectors, I explained the history of Levette’s mural in detail. I then followed up these calls by overnighting them packages containing photocopies of old stories about the mural. I also included a batch of eight-by-ten color photographs documenting every step of the restoration, from the start when the surface was yellow with house paint to its current state. None seemed opposed to taking possession of an object that was produced for and then discarded by the government. In fact, to a collector they seemed excited by the prospect.”
“Eight collectors, that really isn’t so many, is it?” Joe Butler said.
“You would think for something as important as Levette’s mural there’d be more.”
“You’re right. But for obvious reasons I couldn’t involve the museums or those private collections that offer access to the public, such as the Historic New Orleans Collection. And after consulting with Lucinda, I also decided against involving potential buyers who, to put it simply, were straight arrows. I didn’t want anyone who conceivably could take issue with buying an object that might be considered stolen property.”
“What about dealers?” I said.
“I eliminated them, too.”
“All of them? What about the guy in Charleston, the one who was supposed to be such a player? West, was it?”
“I couldn’t risk it,” she said. “Dealers have big mouths, and some of them can be difficult, not to mention stingy, jealous and hateful. Competition has made them that way. If a dealer were to be the winning bidder, other dealers would be bad-mouthing him and the purchase before he could get the painting out the door. The losing dealers would then be on the phone reporting us to the General Services Administration. Also, why sell to a dealer when we can sell directly to a collector? The dealer’s interests begin and end with himself. Any dealer who bought the painting would only turn around and try to place it—at a profit, a great profit—with one of the collectors visiting us today.”
“The people who are coming,” Rondell Cherry said, “they sound a little different to me. They might have the money, they might know what kind of pictures they like, but they sound like they’re not right in the head, you know what I’m saying?”
“You’re right, Mr. Cherry, they’re eccentrics, all of them. But most serious, committed collectors are flawed personalities. Most of them feel a sense of duty to the things they buy. They feel they have a responsibility to their collections, and that responsibility compels them to continue growing their collections. It’s like feeding a monster whose appetite can never be satisfied. These people are as addicted to buying what they like as heroin addicts are to shooting up. But you know what I say? I say thank God for them. Without them I wouldn’t have a job, and we wouldn’t be here today in these lovely rooms in the Hotel Monteleone.”
“Boss?” Joe Butler raised his hand again. “Boss, do I have to keep my tie on?”
“Sweetie, if you knew how cute you looked, you wouldn’t be asking me that.”
Both Rondell Cherry and I turned to him and nodded.
Over the last few days Rhys had contacted each collector and given him the suite number and his appointed time for viewing the painting. As Rhys had drawn up the rules, no one was to be more than fifteen minutes early or fifteen minutes late, and no one could inspect the mural for more than his allotted time. If anyone did arrive more than fifteen minutes early or late, he would forfeit his chance to inspect the mural. The auction itself was scheduled for the next day at three o’clock in the afternoon. It would be held in the same suite. To protect the integrity of the auction and avoid against any possible allegations of phantom shill bidding, buyers had no option but to attend the sale in person; there would be no phone bidding allowed. Payment in full was to be made within twenty-four hours after the hammer came down. Rhys would accept a wire transfer only, and the painting would be released to the winning bidder as soon as the deposit registered in her bank account.
“What about a reserve?” I said. “What’s the minimum you would take for the painting?”
“I haven’t set one. But, as I told the collectors, I reserve the right to stop the auction at any time and withdraw the painting.”
“And they went for that?”
“It’s a twenty-foot-long oil painting by Levette Asmore, Jack. It’s the single greatest thing he ever did and it’s likely to be the greatest southern painting these people see in their lifetimes. Most of these collectors would travel around the world for a chance to see newly discovered sketches by Asmore. They can’t expect me to give the mural away and, believe it or not, they wouldn’t want me to.”
“And why is that?” Cherry said.
She carefully considered the question. “It’s like love, I guess. If it doesn’t hurt a little, and if you don’t bleed for it, then it somehow doesn’t feel right. They need to know that what they’re buying is unique, special and historically significant. The best gauge of that is how much they have to pay for it.”
Not wis
hing to intimidate any of our visitors, Rhys asked the three of us to remain secluded in the second suite. She would leave the door unlocked in the event of a problem. We were welcome to leave the building one at a time, as long as two of us stayed behind. She also green-lighted room service orders and gave us permission to eat and drink anything we wanted from the concessions bar. “Last but not least,” she said, minutes before the Andersons were scheduled to arrive, “I want to thank you all for being here today. Mr. Cherry, thank you, sir. Joe? Thank you, sweetheart. Jack, you’ve been amazing. Thank you for everything.”
And that was how she left it, before quietly pulling the door closed. Joe Butler went back to the bedroom and lounged on his stomach, grazing TV channels with the remote, while Rondell Cherry sat by a window in the living room and read the morning paper. I stood next to the door between the two suites smelling the quiet residue of Rhys’s cologne, and replaying her last words to me. “It’s going to be a long day, Jack,” Cherry said. “Maybe you should come have a seat.”
“Rhys called me amazing, Mr. Cherry. You caught that, right?”
He was wearing drugstore reading glasses and his shaved head glowed a rich copper in the block of sunlight. He didn’t look up from the paper. “I was wondering about that myself,” he said. “Miss Goudeau knows a lot, she’s smart about that art, especially. But I guess she doesn’t know everything.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
“No problem.”
I was listening with my ear against the door when Cedric and Julie Anderson arrived promptly at 9:00 A.M. Rhys welcomed them and Mr. Anderson weighed in with an ominous weather prediction, but after they moved off in the direction of the painting their conversation became too muffled to make out. I pulled a chair up to the door and sat there until their voices were clear again. By now thirty minutes had passed and Rhys was thanking them and saying good-bye. “I’m glad you’ll be coming tomorrow,” she said. “We open at two, and you’re welcome to inspect the painting again at that time.”
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