The Cézanne Chase
Page 29
“But not any old suitcase,” Tobias said, “and not being carried by some careless old fart. Come over to the window, I’ll show you something. In that gray sedan down there are two men, both career cops, each with their favorite piece and the experience to use it, and both are old and good friends. One will be with me until I’m in my seat on the plane.”
“They know?”
Tobias shook his head. “They don’t ask, I don’t tell. I’ll be met in Barcelona the instant we’re off the plane.” Tobias gave Llewellyn a reassuring smile. “Not to worry, I don’t do things half-assed.”
“I leave for Paris next Tuesday, the sixth, and I’ll have with me what everyone believes is the genuine Cézanne. No escorts, no friends from ‘the department’ with a gun. Just Fraser and Clyde—” He smiled. “Hell, Clyde won’t even be with me, he’ll be in belly of the plane.”
“It’s not too late,” Tobias said. “You’re allowed to change your mind.”
Llewellyn studied the burly detective, then sighed. “I trust you, Alex.” He put out his hand and each gave the other a firm handshake. Fraser escorted Tobias down the stairs.
Llewellyn watched Tobias get into the gray car and drive off. “There it goes,” he said aloud. “Either I’ve just broken the record for involuntary philanthropy, or I’ve made the fattest blunder of my life.”
Fraser had returned and heard Llewellyn’s gentle self-imprecation. “You’ve done the right thing, sir. You’ll see.” It was Fraser’s way to look on the bright side.
Chapter 44
Jimmy Murratore closed the door to Oxby’s office then slid into the chair directly across from the detective chief inspector.
“Like I said I’d do, I made some plans to see what Pinkster was doin’ with his waterman’s license and a tugboat that he had fixed up for tourists and day-trippers. Seems, though, the old tug’s not been rented out—not so far as anyone I talked to could decipher ‘out.’ ”
Oxby couldn’t stop the trace of a smile that crept along the edges of his mouth. Jimmy had a way with words that ranged from dazzling to malapropian. Enough of the preliminaries,” Oxby said. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
Jimmy began at the beginning, describing to Oxby how he had received cooperation from the Thames Division and followed Pinkster’s Sepera from its home berth to a point off Canary Wharf, where it had received the two visitors.
“Next it—”
“Do we know who the visitors were?” Oxby interrupted.
“No and yes,” Jimmy answered. “I had them followed, and I expect answers in a day or two. Then after the meetin’, the Sepera pulled in to Tower Pier and Pinkster got off and took a taxi. I wanted to have him followed, but I couldn’t get it lined up in time.”
“We know he has two homes,” Oxby said, “one on land, one that floats. Just might be he’s got another, and we should know about it.”
Jimmy continued describing how the tug returned to Cadogan Pier and the skipper and his wife went off to a pub. “I worked my way into the tug and down to what I figure was Pinkster’s headquarters.”
“What did you find?”
“A big room, but it was pitch black, mind. I had a small torch, and with that and some luck I opened a couple of the panels that lined the walls clear around the room. Inside one panel was a paintin’ by the Russian artist ... the fanciful, bright stuff, it was by ...”
“Chagall?” Oxby said.
“A circus paintin’, lively colors and that. I can’t believe what I saw next, and maybe I didn’t even see it. It was a portrait, skipper, I swear, though I didn’t get much of a look at it—maybe two seconds. If I saw it again I’d know it.”
“Cézanne?” Oxby said softly.
“I want to say it was. Be a damned coincidence if it was some other artist. It was just then that I got smashed by some big lout who came up behind me.”
Jimmy described how he broke away. “He let a hand go, and I knew what to do.”
“Then what?”
“I got the hell off the boat, ran off the pier, then managed to get picked up by my chum Tompkins. We circled back and bobbed on the water until we saw the skipper and a woman go back aboard the tug. That was it. Whoever grabbed me must have gone off the boat while I was waitin’ for Tompkins.”
Oxby scribbled a few notes. “Did you have a search warrant with you?”
“No, Skip—”
“Did you report the incident to the duty inspector?”
“I didn’t—“
“And did you attempt to contact me about this little experience immediately after it happened?”
“Inspector Oxby, I—”
“Good. Let’s just keep this to ourselves, and if you receive any additional information or recall any other detail about your episode on board the Sepera, I expect that you will pass it on to me in person. No written reports.”
Chapter 45
Kondo stopped at the gate, gave his name, and indicated that he and Miss Shimada were visiting the gallery at the request of Mr. Pinkster. One guard called in the information while another aimed a videocamera at the car and its passengers. Kondo was waved through. David Blaney was waiting and showed the way to the gallery’s conservation room in the basement.
“There it is,” he said sadly. “I’m not sure why you’ve taken a bother to come and see it, but help yourself.”
Mari Shimada bowed graciously, put down a canvas bag that bristled with compartments, and immediately began withdrawing what appeared to be surgical instruments. She took out a number of small bottles containing liquids of various colors and an assorted variety of empty vials. She probed the congealed paint with tweezers and knives and collected a half dozen samples, putting drops of a colored fluid in each. Then, carefully, she poked about in the canvas and cut away several pieces, some with paint; one of them, an inch square taken from the edge of the painting, had been neither painted and varnished nor sprayed with the solvent.
She worked quickly and professionally; After forty minutes, she began gathering up her tools and vials and returning them neatly to the bag.
She bowed to Blaney, thanked him for his cooperation, then nodded to Kondo. They got into their car and drove off.
Chapter 46
Fraser and Clyde had taken an overnight Air France flight on Monday; by midday on Tuesday, luggage, dog, and family retainer were ensconced in a top-floor suite at the Hôtel Meurice on Rue de Rivoli. That evening Fraser taxied to the airport to meet Llewellyn’s inbound Concorde due on the ground at 10:45. Also on hand was a contingent from the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, headed by Mirella LeBorgne. She extended a warm welcome and introduced her colleagues. “You had a good flight?” she asked.
“Smooth as glass, and on time, too,” Llewellyn said.
Without warning, bright lights flooded over the group and a loud voice came from behind a camera.
“Bienvenue! Monsieur Llewellyn!” Unmistakably it was Scooter Albany.
André Lachaud, LeBorgne’s assistant and as quiet as a penitent at the security council meeting, fawned and fussed over Llewellyn, “Can you ever realize how famous your painting has become?”
“We’ll take you to your hotel,” LeBorgne said pleasantly, as if there were no alternative.
Fraser sat next to Lachaud, who was behind the wheel of a low-slung Citroën; Llewellyn and LeBorgne were in the back. “You should know that while you are in Paris you will have the best possible protection,” Mirella LeBorgne said. “Just now there is a car following, and another is ahead of us. At the hotel and during all of tomorrow, there will be God-knows-how-many police and other agents watching every move you make.”
“Too much,” Llewellyn replied, almost apologetically. “All that isn’t necessary.”
LeBorgne shook her head and looked distressed. “I’m afraid Henri Trama agrees. He’s clearly not pleased that you are taking such a risk. In fact, he wishes, and I agree, that you should go directly to Aix. Have you thought about doing that?”
Mirella said, “I’m afraid that I must tell you that Trama may file a complaint through the National Security office.”
“Complaint? About what?” Llewellyn asked.
“I can’t be sure, something to do with procedure and diplomatic courtesy from Scotland Yard.”
The telephone rang less than a minute after Llewellyn walked into his hotel room. It was Jack Oxby. “Trama has refused to arrange for security after Lyon. Your days as a lightning rod may be over before they begin. Disappointed?”
“Of course I am. I worked myself up for this gig, and I want to go through with it.”
“I can’t guarantee your safety.”
“Who’ve you got?”
“There are two of us.”
“Armed?”
“Unofficially.”
“There are five of us. I’ll take those odds.”
“Five?”
“Fraser and I make four ... Scooter counts for a half. Clyde’s another half.”
Llewellyn’s presentation was scheduled for 8:00 P.M. on Wednesday, January 9. He planned to give a brief account of Cézanne’s career then unveil the portrait. It would take place in the Musée d’Orsay, a hundred-year-old railroad station that had been converted at a cost of 1.3 billion francs for the purpose of housing and displaying art from the period 1848 to 1914. Better there, thought Llewellyn, than in the Musée National d’Art Moderne in the Centre Georges Pompidou, a garishly painted building with structural steel and utility pipes crisscrossing its outside like the entrails of a mechanical dinosaur.
The throng of the six hundred who came to see the painting and listen to Edwin Llewellyn overflowed the largest gallery; not by coincidence was it the gallery that contained works by Cézanne and his contemporaries. A raised platform was at the closed end of the gallery; on it was a lectern and behind that a brightly lighted backdrop on which was the Llewellyn portrait, covered with a maroon-colored cloth.
Llewellyn had personally mounted his painting, tactfully refusing assistance and careful not to draw attention to the fact that he allowed no one to as much as lay a finger on even the frame.
He was unaware that Henri Trama had come onto the platform and was standing behind him; when he turned he did not immediately recognize him. At the security meeting Trama had dressed informally. Now he was in a black dress uniform a size too small, with strings of gold braid on the lapels and cuffs and a row of ribbons on the front.
Trama quickly dispensed with pleasantries. “I cannot guarantee your safety once you leave Lyon.” He looked at Llewellyn steadily, “In fact, I cannot guarantee your safety even before that time and would be very pleased if you would go directly to Aix and forget this game that Inspector Oxby has invented for you.”lay
Llewellyn pondered for a moment. Trama’s English was thickly accented, and that, too, differed from his earlier impression. There was anger in the police commissaire’s voice. Llewellyn said, “I’ll be safe. I have an alert traveling companion, and a superb watchdog.” He smiled a little wickedly. “Norwich terriers become particularly testy when they’re away from home.”
They were joined on the platform by Mirella LeBorgne and Gustave Bilodeau. Bilodeau had been allotted three minutes and would have the honor of extending a formal invitation to visit the Cézanne retrospective in his beloved Musée Granet.
Scooter Albany aimed his camera at the quartet then scrambled onto the platform and put a microphone between himself and Llewellyn. As if he had never seen a drop of alcohol, Scooter conducted a fast-moving interview and wrapped up a prime-time segment the networks would happily put on the air.
The interview continued, and Albany was joined by a team from French television. A reporter interviewed Mirella LeBorgne and Gustave Bilodeau and was about to put Llewellyn on camera when Henri Trama shooed them from the platform.
Mirella LeBorgne announced to the audience that she had been summoned at the eleventh hour to substitute for the ailing managing director of the Musée d’Orsay then read off the names of the curatorial staff who were in the audience. Gustave Bilodeau spoke briefly and nervously, as perspiration glistened on his cheeks. He was awed by the spectacle and just as awed that his dream of honoring Paul Cézanne was so close at hand.
“Come to the retrospective early, if you can,” he said, extending the first formal invitation. “Opening day is January 19, the birthdate of Cézanne.”
It was Llewellyn’s turn. His presentation was delivered in his nearly forgotten Deerfield Academy French, but he consoled himself with the certainty that the audience had come to see his painting, not to criticize his accent. “The world owes Conservateur Bilodeau its gratitude,” he said. Then, climaxing his presentation, he pulled away the cloth from his painting. A scattering of applause built to a rousing ovation.
“I regret that you will not be able to have a close look at the painting tonight,” he said. “But in Aix you can spend as much time as you wish. There you will see other paintings by the genius who set in motion one of the most important art movements of this century.”
Watching from the rear of the gallery was a tall man with a broad face and light brown hair. Peder Aukrust applauded, and as he did his attention was drawn to ten people in the audience. Four were in uniform. Three wore dark gray suits and white shirts and blue neckties, obviously members of some sort of police agency who might as well have been wearing badges marked Police Security. He spotted two attractive women and was amused by the way they acted like tourists, clapping and smiling and constantly shifting their shoulder bags from one shoulder to the other, as if a heavy weight were inside—perhaps a compact Smith & Wesson Bodyguard.38 pistol. Then there was a man Aukrust felt instinctively that he knew, and he tried to attach a circumstance or name to whoever it was. But he could not.
Chapter 47
Chez Blanc had become a dirty gray structure, a bed-and-bath on Rue Sedaine in a commercial section of the eleventh arrondissement, sandwiched between an empty loft building and a furniture refinisher, from which the heavy odor of paint remover and lacquer fumes rose to cast its pall over the neighborhood. Peder Aukrust had instructed Astrid to go to the address, and she had waited for him to return from the d’Orsay and Llewellyn’s presentation.
“Llewellyn’s got his face in the newspapers more than the president of France, and he’s got as many police around him, too,” Peder said, and tossed a copy of Le Figaro into Astrid’s lap. “Look at him, grinning like he’d inherited another ten million dollars.”
“The man with him, that’s Fraser,” Astrid said.
“The painting is not as big as you described.”
“In that frame, it’s very large.”
He stared at Astrid, an unblinking stare that penetrated through her to the torn wallpaper behind the chair she sat in. He had been drinking—not drunk, but it showed. “I want that painting, and I want it before he reaches Aix.”
“What will you do with it?”
“Pinkster can be very stupid, but he knows too much, and he has money. I made a bargain with him for your f riend’s portrait.”
“You can’t destroy it.”
“Are you concerned about the painting or Llewellyn?”
“He’s a good person. You won’t hurt him?”
“That depends ... on you. I want you to call and tell him you need his help.”
“Help for what?”
Aukrust was at the window, his arms crossed over his chest, his back to Astrid. “You’ll tell him you haven’t any money and your airplane tickets were stolen.”
“I can’t do that.”
He ignored her protest, “You will call him from the railway station in Lyon, and you will say that when you came back to your hotel room in Paris, someone was in the room, waiting. Yes, that will work.”
“I said no, Peder.”
“Imagine this is your hotel ro
om, and a man was here, inside the door waiting.” Aukrust stood against the wall so that he was behind the door, when it was opened. “You came into the room, your arms full of the catalogues from the antique shops, and you went to the table over there and put them down. Then you turned to close the door, but it was closed; he had closed it quietly and locked it.” Peder grinned, a small, slightly crooked grin. “He told you not to shout, that if you made a noise he would hurt you—hurt you badly.”
“Please, Peder, you make it sound too real. I don’t want to—”
“Then he said you were very pretty, and he came to you like this and put his arms around you.” Peder took her into his arms and hugged her tightly, without affection. “He kissed you then made you sit on the bed while he took your money and the airplane tickets. Then you shouted at him and ran to the door—do it! Go to the door!”
“You’re scaring me, Peder, don’t—”
“Do as I tell you!”
She went cautiously to the door.
“Shout at me, do it, Astrid.”
“Stop it! I’m frightened, can’t you see? Stop it, Peder!” And she did shout, out of real, not playmaking, fear.
He lunged for her, grabbed her arms, and ripped off her blouse, then pulled her skirt away and threw her on the bed. He hit her arm, twice, with his fist. She began to cry. “Why? Don’t hurt me Peder—” Then he tore at her stockings and took off her panties, breathing heavily, covering her mouth with a huge hand. “This is what he did. Remember and tell Llewellyn.”
Now she was too frightened to shout and helplessly watched as he took off all his clothes. He got astride her, glowering down at her. She raised a hand in protest, but he punched it away. He struck her cheek and hit her one last time with the back of his hand, a blow across her mouth that cut her lip. Then his glower became a thin smile, and he showed her, proudly, that he was aroused.
“And tell Llewellyn that he raped you.”