The Art Thief: A Novel

by Noah Charney

  Suddenly, Coffin heard a clink. What do I have that clinks? he thought. Then he felt his ribs nudged by a neighboring elbow.

  He turned to the Fellow seated to his right, a toothless, red-faced old goat with a beard like a white sneeze. He was clearly on the losing side of the war for sobriety.

  “You’ve been pennied, my boy!”

  Coffin could feel the man’s breath. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ve got to save the Queen from drowning. Bottoms up!” The Fellow gestured to Coffin’s wineglass, at the bottom of which lay a one-pence coin.

  Coffin rolled his eyes and downed his glass. The Fellow laughed and gave him an old-boy smack on the shoulder. When he had turned away, Coffin dropped the recently saved penny onto the Fellow’s plate of bread-and-butter pudding. The Fellow spun around and his smile faded.

  “Now you have to eat your dessert hands-free,” said Coffin, coolly. “You know the rules. If I penny your plate without your noticing…”

  The sounds of the hall nearly masked the ring of his mobile phone. Coffin lifted it to his ear.

  “Pronto? Buona sera. I didn’t expect to hear from you. What can I…Really? No, I can…I’ll be on the earliest flight back to Rome tomorrow morning…”

  Something had been stolen.

  CHAPTER 3

  Geneviève Delacloche sat in her office with her stockinged legs slung up onto her desk. She had a fountain pen clutched between both thumbs and forefingers, and she was massaging it near to the point of breaking across the middle. Then her assistant brought in the coffee.

  “Et voilà! I’ve never needed it so desperately, merci bien, Silvia. How much time before the call?”

  “Only ten more minutes, madame.”

  “Putain de merde,” Delacloche muttered. “Ten minutes. Right. Just give me…just…” Her assistant knew and had already left.

  Delacloche pulled out a cigarette, always Gauloise, and drew heavily on it. She gathered her thoughts as she stood, left arm across her chest, right arm at a right angle supporting the cigarette like a spyglass. Smoking helped her to see more clearly.

  The president of the Malevich Society was away on business in New York. With a probable fake about to enter the market, they had to decide on the Society’s next move. Delacloche sat, rolling her fingers along the cherry wood table. Before her lay a fat folder. She knew the decision that was needed. The president was their public face, a good hand-shaker and fund-raiser, but he knew little about art. It was up to her.

  The phone rang.

  “Alors,” she began, “I’ve just spoken with that asshole, Jeffrey, at Christie’s. He’s not removing it from the sale. In fact, he’s not taking us very seriously at all…. I know that one solid claim that it is a fake should be enough to shut them down. The difficulty is that it is in no one’s interest that this painting be found a fake…. Right…

  “The problem,” Delacloche continued, “is one of finance. Consider for a moment. If it gets out that this painting is a forgery, then a number of things occur. The benefit is for the Malevich name, and the name of justice. But the art world is rarely high and mighty when it comes to such things.

  “But who is to suffer? The auction house looks the fool for vouching for a painting that turns out to be bogus. Their reputation, and specifically the reputation of this so-called expert, is tarnished. As we all know, the one thing that will ruin an expert’s career is to be publicly fooled by a forgery…. I know, that’s why…. yes…

  “Remember the Getty affair, when their man claimed that several seventeenth-century Italian drawings that the museum had just acquired for millions were fraudulent. He even claimed to know who the forger was. And the Getty refused to acknowledge the accusation by testing the drawings. If they were indeed forged, then the Getty had just been screwed for millions. If they turned out to be legitimate, the scholar would have lost all his credibility. From the Getty’s perspective, he was out to embarrass them, one way or another. And of course, all he wanted was the truth and a little justice…. I know…

  “And he was fired without anyone ever testing the drawings.” Delacloche tapped her fingers on her folder. “So, that’s what we’re up against. Christie’s has already put out the catalogue. That means they’ve told the world that this painting is a Malevich. Not only that, they have it estimated at four-to-six million pounds…. How could they make such a mistake? It’s simple. The provenance seemed…seems flawless….

  “I don’t know.” Delacloche lit another cigarette. “Of course, they won’t let me research it, and they won’t allow me to see the original documents. From the catalogue entry, I recognize about half of the places on the list. Some of the others are more obscure. It occurred to me that the obvious solution is that the image in the catalogue is incorrect, that there is a Malevich that fits this provenance but that it’s not ours, and the photograph of ours somehow replaced it. But Jeffrey assures me that it is correct, and that the painting was on his desk…. Well, we can only do something legally, to prevent them from selling it, if it’s proven to be a stolen object…”

  Delacloche was preparing the next cigarette for launch. “The owner, who remains top secret thanks to Christie’s anonymity policy, of course does not want to discover that his Malevich, and I use that in the loosest sense of the word, is a fake, because it will no longer be valuable…uh-huh. And if he’s a criminal and knows that it’s a fake, then he certainly doesn’t want it discovered…right. And the buyers are such that they’d prefer, although they’d never admit this, to be blissfully ignorant of a fake than to have one fewer Malevich on the market to decorate their walls and adorn their pride. The discovery of a new Malevich on the market is a hot enough story that a world of the wealthy would be disappointed to see it melt away. So, Christie’s would lose face and commission, the owner would have a valueless piece of canvas with paint on it, and the clientele would be heartbroken. It’s no wonder Christie’s isn’t even willing to look into it.

  “You’d think this expert would have been a capable enough man to investigate more thoroughly. But he’s not a Malevich guy, he’s a generalist in twentieth-century art. That means he knows shit-all about any one artist, like Malevich. You know how specific this sort of expertise gets. But you’re right…he still should have taken an X ray, for instance. With my training as a conservator, that’s the first action that came to mind. But scientific investigation is expensive, and faith is more highly valued than fact. The owner certainly wouldn’t pay for it. Without good cause, Christie’s wouldn’t either. We all agree that our accusation is good cause, but there’s another reason, airtight from Christie’s perspective, for them not to investigate further: the provenance.

  “It’s only if provenance is shaky, or absent, that people look deeper. In this piece, it is unquestioned. This expert is the head curator of Russian and Eastern European paintings at Christie’s. That means that he is in charge of everything to do with this upcoming sale. The catalogue has one hundred and two lots in it, and all of them have to be examined, estimates made, catalogue entries written, and so on. If the provenance of one piece checks out, it is highly unlikely that anyone in that office would give the piece a second look. Case closed, malheureusement…

  “Uh, no. No, I don’t think we should we go public with our accusation. It is most likely that it will jump-start interest, rather than scare people off. Buyers will believe the Christie’s experts above other sources. Most of them are ignorant of the minutiae, and just happy to buy a recognizable name that they can drop in the Hamptons, or in St. Tropez. Museums want the real deal, but they also want the flash of the celebrity name. They are better off with a small handful of renowned pieces, rather than rooms full of excellent examples of little-known artists. Your average public would flock to an exhibition that consisted solely of Whistler’s Mother, before they’d grudgingly attend a museum full of Kusnetsov, Tatlin, Malevich, Kandinsky, and Chashnik and the history of Suprematism in Russia, in which you run the risk of actual
ly learning something. No, museums want the big names to put on their ties and coffee mugs.

  “Word will circulate, I am certain, about the questions we’ve raised regarding the painting. The buzz will draw out more bidders and voyeurs at the auction, and that will only add to the chaos, and the payoff for Christie’s and their anonymous seller. That’s…that’s correct, yes…I think all we can do now is wait and trace. They’re the ones who will get screwed in the end. If we involve the police now, then Christie’s will crawl inside their shell, and if there’s any foul play about, we risk scaring off the perpetrator. I will attend the auction and be sure to see who the buyer is. If it’s a museum, then it will go public, but if it’s a private buyer who will want to keep publicity under his control, I will need to be there to see for myself who is bidding. Otherwise the bidder, and the painting, could disappear from our radar.”

  Delacloche leaned back in her chair. She had some more paperwork to do. The phone call had put her off her usual day’s work. In addition to overseeing the care and upkeep of the Society’s private collection, she was in charge of investigation. There was an eighty-year-old in Minsk who claimed to have a letter from Malevich to Vladimir Tatlin, while in Lyon, a man wished to have the authenticity of a drawing, thought to be by Malevich, confirmed. That was just today.

  Delacloche was exhausted. Her eyes scanned blankly around the room. Framed posters, diplomas, a black-and-white photograph of her as a newborn in her mother’s arms, a Boston Red Sox World Championship pennant, a Whistler etching of old sailors in a tavern, empty coffee cups, a postcard of Boston Harbor at night, her silver Zippo lighter on the desk. She looked outside her narrow window. The azure sea of twilight floated gently on the tide of the evening breeze, above the darkening canopy of the city streets. I’m glad that the Malevich Society isn’t in Russia, she thought.

  She stacked the stray papers that had migrated on her desk into some semblance of order, ensured that all of the pens in her coffee cup were facing point-end down, and snapped shut her briefcase. Monday, mon Dieu. She closed her office door and stepped down the curling stairs to the ground floor.

  Everyone else in the office had left. Delacloche continued down the stairs into the basement. She liked to find moments of quiet introspection to share with the artworks that it was her duty to protect. They could not thank her, but they did not need to. She punched in the code outside the vault door and inserted her key. Then the satisfying click, and the door swung open.

  Inside the vault hung a phalanx of parallel-stacked metal grates from floor to ceiling, mounted on rollers, each no more than one meter away from the next. To the left were wide, shallow filing cabinets. They were filled with Solander boxes that kept out light and contamination, to protect works on paper, such as drawings and watercolors, and letters.

  Delacloche turned right and walked to the end of the room, to the last row of movable wall. She leaned back as she pulled on the metal grate, and slowly the wall slid out toward her, with its cargo of framed Malevich paintings hanging loosely off either side. Once it was extended, she walked down to the far end, and scanned the titles. White on White, where is the White on White? Her eyes glided over the hanging works until she stopped.

  The painting was missing.

  Inspector Jean-Jacques Bizot was well into his third half dozen oysters, when the mobile phone, clipped between the bulge of his belly and the alligator gooseflesh of his green-tinged belt, began to buzz.

  “L’enfer, c’est les huîtres,” he said, sliding a knotted snotty mollusk down his gullet.

  “Let’s hope not,” replied his dining companion, Jean-Paul Lesgourges. “The Oyster Affair of ’75 is not one to remember. I wonder if the plumber was ever resuscitated.”

  It was well into the third succession of buzzes that Inspector Bizot noticed that something in the region of his loins was vibrating. But he attributed this to the aphrodisiacal powers of the bivalves of which he was in midconsumption.

  All was going to plan, he thought, as he dreamt ahead to his liaison with Monique, or was it Mireille, at nine that night. It was not until the plate of asparagus descended from the hand of the waiter, like the hand of God presenting lusty fuel to Jean-Jacques’ libido, that the phone began to buzz once more.

  This time, Bizot could certainly feel something, as the vibration shimmied down the interior of his thigh. He cast a salty, bewildered glance at Jean-Paul Lesgourges, who was slipping the last slimy oyster between his equine lips. Lesgourges slowly noticed Bizot’s gaze, and he returned it with a silent “What?”

  “Why are you rubbing me, Jean?”

  “Me? Are you nuts? You’ve eaten too many oysters. I wouldn’t rub you if you were a magic lantern with a genie inside, you great walrus!”

  “Jean, I can feel you rubbing me!”

  “Alors, laisse-moi tranquille et mange!”

  Bizot and Lesgourges resumed eating, as the fourth and final round of vibrations alerted Bizot to his nether regions. His belly, weary of the unnoticed mobile phone, finally rejected and ejected it, popping the phone from its clip to the floor with the elastic projection of Bizot’s folds of fat. The phone clattered to the restaurant floor.

  Jean-Paul Lesgourges did not look up from the cutting of his asparagus. “Something just hopped out of your stomach area,” he said, as he thought about his meeting with Angélique, or perhaps Mireille, scheduled for later that night. “You know, the Emperor Augustus’s favorite phrase was ‘faster than you can boil asparagus.’”

  “Fascinating, Jean…” Bizot, too, recognized that something had fallen, but he was in a bit of a tough spot. The bulk of his stomach was wedged between his knees and the underside of the table. He could not see under the table, nor could he move at all, he now noticed, as he made an initial attempt to bend over and retrieve the fallen object.

  “Il y a quelque chose de coincé dans le mécanisme,” Bizot grumbled, as he recognized the preposterousness of his situation. Lesgourges met his eyes and saw the beads of frustration on his brow. He opened wide his horse face in a crescendo howl that wept into laughter, as Bizot joined in, heart reddened by the two and a half empty bottles of wine that still stood on the table.

  The laughter eventually attracted the attention of a waiter, but only after everyone else in the restaurant had stopped to turn and see the source of the cacophonic expulsions emanating from a booth in the back corner.

  It was a sight to behold, the exceedingly reedy Jean-Paul Lesgourges, with putty-stretched cheeks that looked rouged, and a glassy cackle in his eyes, whooping with joy, as the puff adder Bizot, like a broken aqueduct, every facet spherical, rumbled mercilessly, the table and his knees pinching him in place, bright smile tears puddling up around his tiny, hidden eyes. His brambly peppered beard was a tangle of chin and leftovers, and bounced of its own volition, revealing his gummy smile.

  It was some minutes before Bizot and Lesgourges stopped laughing enough for the waiter, who had bent and retrieved the fallen phone, to attract their attention sufficiently to return it to its owner. The other occupants of Restaurant Étouffe-Chrétien could not help but smile and laugh along with the infectious good nature and Santa Clausian demeanors of the two rollicking, incongruous gentlemen in the corner. Each table wished silently that they’d been invited to dine with that oddest couple, the burly bombastic cannonball of Bizot beside the candle-wax-dripped taper Lesgourges, both exuding the color red, as if they were Titian-underpainted.

  Then Bizot saw the flashing message on his phone that indicated four missed calls. “Putain de merde, ta gueule, vieux con, salaud.” He giggled as he checked his messages. “Jean,” Bizot whispered loudly.

  “What is it, Jean?” Lesgourges replied from the midst of a chew of asparagus.

  “There’s been a theft.”

  “Sans blague? What is it?” Lesgourges was engrossed in his food and did not look up.

  “That’s when someone steals something.”

  “Oui?” Lesgourges was elsewhere abso
rbed.

  “From the Malevich Society.” Bizot struggled to pull a small black-bound Moleskine notebook from the breast pocket of his blue jacket. With one hand, he endeavored to unsnap the black elastic that locked shut the notebook. Failing to do so, he swung a stubby arm across his corpulence and snugged the phone between ear and shoulder. He opened the notebook and began to take notes, before realizing that he did not have a pen in hand.

  “A pen! My kingdom for a pen! Jean, give me your damned pen.”

  Still focused on asparagus, Lesgourges handed Bizot a butter knife, with which Bizot preceeded to write in his Moleskine notebook.

  “Ça ne marche pas, Jean. Can I have a pen that writes?”

  Lesgourges finally looked up and resumed his enthusiastic giggles, as he handed over a maroon Mont Blanc fountain pen from his pocket.

  “J’ai dit,” Bizot continued, as his notes finally flowed out in ink onto the page, “that there’s been a theft from the Malevich Society.”

  “What was taken?”

  “A Malevich.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s the Malevich Society—what else would they take?”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought.” Lesgourges served some bacon-wrapped eel onto Bizot’s plate.

  “Hadn’t thought. That I believe.” Bizot clicked shut his phone and stared down at his notes, which were scribbled beyond legibility. He shrugged.

  “Eat, eat,” Lesgourges beckoned. “You’re nothing but skin and bones!”

  “I’ll give you skin and bones, you old donkey. There’s a crime that’s been committed.”

  “Mmm,” replied Lesgourges. “Shall we go investigate?”

  “After dinner I’ll check in with the officers on the scene. It’s been secured, so we’ll have a proper look round tomorrow. And what do you mean we? I’m the investigator. You’re just an academic, and not a very good one either. The worst kind. What sort of academic has no degrees, and doesn’t work in academia?”