Brush With Death

by Lind, Hailey

  “Imagine being busted by the pope while you’re doing it,” Mary said. “Now, that’s what I call a buzz kill.”

  “What are the other clues?” Pete asked, intrigued.

  “A few years ago art restorers at the Galleria Nazionale discovered myrtle and quince bushes—the traditional symbols of love, fidelity, and fecundity—in the painting’s background, and, most importantly, a small ring on La Fornarina’s left hand. The bushes and the ring had been deliberately painted over, either by Raphael or by one of his students. After Raphael’s death, the woman believed to be La Fornarina entered a convent where she was known as ‘la vedova Margherita,’ which means ‘the widow Margherita.’ ”

  “That’s so romantic,” Mary breathed.

  “I still don’ geddit,” Evangeline said.

  “Which part?”

  “Who painted Da Fornicator?”

  “It’s not important,” I sighed. I checked my watch, got to my feet, and brushed pizza crumbs from my overalls. “It’s just a pretty story.”

  “C’mon, Evangeline,” said Mary. “I’ll explain it to you on the way to Oakland. Did you bring your stuff for the overnight?”

  “I really wish you would reconsider, guys,” I said, thinking of last night’s grave robber. True, the ghoul in the green mask had been scared off by a woman who weighed less than the average Great Dane, but what if he returned with reinforcements? “I heard there’s been some trouble at the cemetery recently.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got my can of mace,” Mary said. “And if we get busted I promise I won’t mention your name.”

  I glared at her. I was jittery about any interaction with the police, and had recently learned that if someone knew a painting was stolen and didn’t alert the authorities, that someone could be prosecuted, in some instances more seriously than the thief. Even worse, there was a statute of limitations on criminal acts, but not on criminal knowledge.

  This was the sort of thing that kept me up nights.

  The happy campers wrapped up the leftover pizza, grabbed Mary’s sleeping bag and tote, and lumbered out of the studio. As I stood in the door watching Evangeline’s leather-clad form bump into the wall twice as she made her way down the hall, I wondered how she and Mary would secure their gear, plus their two ample bodies, on Evangeline’s BMW motorcycle for the trip across the bridge to Oakland. I decided I didn’t really want to know.

  “I have always found this Evangeline to be a very handful woman,” Pete murmured. His soft brown eyes were shining and there was a goofy half smile on his face.

  Well, well, I thought. “I think you mean ‘handsome,’ Pete. But you’re right about one thing. Evangeline is quite a handful.”

  Chapter 5

  The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

  —Francis Bacon (1909-1992), British painter

  The job of the art forger is to render the mystery impenetrable. Especially to Interpol.

  —Georges LeFleur

  At the end of my first year in business I had been shocked to discover that the IRS expected me to pay hefty self-employment taxes even though True/Faux Studios had lost money. As my unsympathetic tax accountant commented: “You gotta pay your taxes. Business is ninety percent paperwork whether you’re selling art, paper clips, or pigs’ snouts.”

  Kind of took the glamour out of the old day job.

  Then again, being self-employed allowed me to deduct the cost of art supplies as a business expense, which was a boon for an artaholic like me. More than once I had assuaged my woes with a ream of expensive Belgian linen canvas or a pot of powdered pigment. And though I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing fur, I was known to salivate over brushes of sable and rabbit hair.

  I spent the next few hours blasting partway through the mountain of paperwork that is the reality of running a business: keeping the books and paying estimated quarterly taxes to the IRS and the State Board of Equalization; filling out reams of forms for Mary’s biweekly check; making sure my insurance policies and business licenses and resale numbers were current; updating inventory and supplies so we didn’t run out of boiled linseed oil in the middle of faux-finishing a ballroom; developing a Web site for increasingly computer-dependent designers and the public; and every now and then taking clients to task for “failing to fulfill their contractual obligations”—i.e., not paying me.

  Given my family history one might think I would know that a love of art did not always accompany a sterling character, but I still took it as a personal insult when clients— usually the wealthiest ones—tried to stiff me.

  My cell phone rang and I leapt on it, hoping for Cindy or Michael. It was Josh. I gave him the rundown on Aaron Garner’s renovation, and he made me laugh as he described the moneyed inhabitants of Aspen. We lingered for a while on the phone. Josh was sweet and steady, and I pondered why I doubted my relationship with one of the few men I knew who had no unclear, possibly nefarious motives in wanting to be with me.

  After hanging up, I spent a few minutes tidying up the studio, gathered my things, switched off the lights, and headed downstairs. Maybe tonight I’d catch up on my sleep deficit. Great. Thirty-two years old, single, and I was looking forward to a quiet evening at home and an early bedtime.

  Maybe I should get a cat.

  As I descended I noticed the lights blazing in the office of DeBenton Secure Transport. Peeking in the window, I saw Frank DeBenton sitting behind a massive desk, his neatly combed head bent low over paperwork, and felt a perverse satisfaction that my landlord worked even longer hours than I.

  I opened the office door and poked my head in. “Heya, Frank.”

  His dark eyes swept over me, and I felt the little zing I had been getting lately around Frank. He sat back in his chair and gave me a slow smile.

  Double zing.

  Dammit!

  “We’ve missed you around here, Annie,” Frank said in his deep, deliberate voice. “The alarm hasn’t tripped once since you began working in the East Bay. And hardly anyone uses the fire escape anymore.”

  Last fall I had gotten a reputation for setting off the building’s shrill alarm, even though I had done it only once. Come to think of it, I had only used the fire escape once, too.

  But as my mother used to tell me, once was enough to ruin a girl’s reputation.

  “Very funny,” I said, plopping into one of the two cushy red leather chairs my landlord kept for clients and visitors.

  “Aren’t you working at the columbarium tonight?”

  “The paint needs to dry.” I knew from painful experience that if we jumped the gun the still-volatile underpaint would mingle with the new overglazes to create an all-around muddy disaster. The only remedy would be to start over from scratch.

  “Mmm.” A man of few words, Frank.

  “May I ask a question?”

  “You just did.”

  “You’re a riot, Frank.”

  My landlord was looking especially handsome tonight. Last fall Frank and I had taken tentative steps towards developing a personal relationship, but just as we were about to head off to have Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, Josh had shown up and Frank had backed off. It was probably just as well, I thought. He was smart and funny, but he was a real straight arrow. Which explained why my mother was planning the wedding and I was doing my level best to ignore those pesky zings. Frank was a security man who hung out with law-and-order types. I was an insecurity woman who ran around with wanted-by-the-FBI types. I feared Frank might have to turn me over to the cops one day, or testify against me in court, and it was difficult to build a relationship when one person was looking for an escape route. Literally.

  Not to mention I already had a boyfriend. Good ol’ Josh.

  Frank grinned.

  Zing.

  “Fire away,” he said.

  “Are you familiar with Raphael’s La Fornarina, which is supposed to be in the Galleria Nazionale at the Barberini Palace . . . ?” I trailed off as Frank sat back in his chair
and laced his fingers over his flat stomach in his customary “We Need to Talk” posture. It never ceased to amaze me how his warm brown eyes could turn so cold, so quickly.

  “Go on.”

  “You okay, Frank?”

  “Jim dandy. Continue.”

  “You’re cozy with art security types. I was wondering if you’d heard anything about the Barberini’s La Fornarina.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like whether it’s been sold.”

  He shook his head.

  “Removed from the museum for restoration?”

  Another head shake.

  “Replaced by a forgery?”

  “You’re the forgery expert, Annie.” Frank’s voice became quiet and measured, a sure sign he was agitated. “I transport fine art, but La Fornarina has never been under my care. Cut to the chase and tell me what you’re fishing for.”

  “There’s a version of the painting in the Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium, and it’s been brought to my attention that—”

  Frank interrupted. “Are you saying you saw a painting you believe to be a genuine Raphael?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “What did you see?”

  “A cheap copy. One of those created by paint jets and a computer, you know the kind.”

  Frank nodded.

  “But it was labeled a copy from the nineteenth century.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Frank said, running a large tanned hand over his face. “You saw a computer-generated copy of Raphael’s La Fornarina that was labeled a nineteenth-century copy, and this prompted you to imagine Raphael’s original wasn’t in the Barberini Palace?”

  “When you phrase it like that it sounds kind of silly.”

  “Is there any way to phrase it that doesn’t sound silly?”

  “I know it’s a wild idea, Frank, but my gut’s telling me something is wrong. Another scholar swears the one she saw in the columbarium was the original. Maybe it was switched with the computer copy. I know there’s nothing substantial to go on at this point, but I would feel a lot better if I knew the original Raphael was safe. And, um, an original.”

  “Who’s this ‘other scholar’?”

  “She’s a, uh . . . Okay, she’s an anthropologist. But you know as well as I that academic training only goes so far in this field. I don’t have an MFA either.”

  “Yes, but you’re a former art forger. Which brings me to my next point. You’re far more qualified than I to determine the authenticity of a Raphael masterpiece,” Frank said, his head tilted to one side. “Not to mention you have more contacts in the art underworld. So why are you asking me?”

  “Because I don’t have any official contacts. Nor do I have the time or money to hop a plane to Rome to check it out for myself. I was hoping you might give your buddies on the FBI art squad a call.”

  The art squad was the FBI’s answer to Interpol. Over the years the European law enforcement agency had worked to foil international art crime. In the U.S. of A., stolen art had traditionally been the jurisdiction of local law enforcement agencies, which meant that if the Guggenheim lost a priceless work of art it called in the NYPD. But urban police departments, overwhelmed with street crime, drugs, and random violence, rarely had the time, interest, or expertise to track down stolen masterpieces. A few years ago the FBI launched a specialized unit dedicated to tracking art and art criminals. Not only did the formation of the new squad recognize the historical and cultural value of art, but it was also a response to trends in crime in the new millennia. Stolen and forged art were now the third most profitable international crime, and were often used to launder drug money and as collateral for arms deals.

  Frank was on good terms with the FBI art squad. I feared I was on file with the FBI art squad.

  “I’ll make a few inquiries,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “One more thing. Have you ever heard of Donato Sandino?”

  “Of course. He’s a fake buster. Probably the fake buster. For the last decade or so he’s been the director of the Dietrich Labs in Germany. I’m surprised you’ve never run into him.”

  “Well, you know me. I keep my nose out of fakes and into faux.” I repeated the phrase to myself. I liked it.

  “Smart woman. Why the sudden interest in Sandino?”

  “I was just wondering what he’s been up to lately.”

  “He’s rumored to be chasing a forger he calls ‘the Bandit. ’ I don’t suppose you know him?”

  “Who?”

  “The Bandit.”

  “The Bandit?”

  “Because if you did happen to know the Bandit,” Frank said with a ghost of a smile, “you might want to warn said Bandit he’d better beat it out of Bavaria.”

  “’Fraid I don’t know who you’re talking about, Frank, but thanks for the heads-up.” I kept my face straight while my mind raced. Had straight-and-narrow Frank DeBenton just tipped me off to warn my grandfather about Sandino? Maybe I should make a phone call or twenty to Bavaria. I rose to leave.

  “Now I have a question for you,” Frank said.

  I sat back down. “Shoot.”

  “How well do you know a man who goes by the alias Michael X. Johnson?”

  “Doesn’t, um, ring a bell. . . .”

  “Johnson came by yesterday to discuss what he calls the ‘discreet retrieval’ of stolen art and artifacts. As I suspect you know, he is uniquely qualified for the position.”

  “Oh?”

  “Indeed.”

  “What makes you think—”

  “Annie, please.”

  I looked away. Frank’s scorn was harder to deal with than it used to be.

  “Remember my friend Kevin, the FBI agent? If I’m not mistaken, you met Kevin last fall at a cocktail party in Hills-borough. Your escort that evening was a man who called himself ‘Raphael,’ aka Michael X. Johnson. Ring a bell now?”

  Damn. “How’s Kevin doing?”

  “He’s recovered nicely from the bullet wound,” Frank said. “His ego took more of a beating. Answer my question.”

  “Now that you mention it,” I said, “Michael’s an old family friend. I had no idea what he was up to that night.”

  “Are you telling me your father, the eminent art scholar Dr. Harold Kincaid, consorts with art thieves?”

  “The family’s tie to Michael sort of skipped a generation,” I said. “But, Frank, Michael has nothing to do with—”

  “Annie,” Frank said, a hint of sadness in his voice. “I doubt you can appreciate how much I regret having to say this, but . . .”

  My heart sped up.

  “. . . if you continue your relationship with this man I will not be able to employ you. In any capacity. In fact, if you continue your relationship with this man, it would be better if we did not associate. At all.”

  A few months ago Frank and I had worked out our mutual difficulties regarding the studio rent—I had trouble paying, he had trouble collecting—by striking a deal: I functioned as his on-call art restorer and expert, and he reduced the rent. Since Frank not only owned the building but also ran an art transportation service, it seemed like the perfect fit. I had not counted on Michael X. Johnson complicating my life.

  Yet again.

  “What are you saying?” My voice caught in my throat.

  “I cannot have a tenant—much less a friend—who is in cahoots with an art thief, even one who claims to have gone straight.”

  “But I’m not in cahoots with anyone! I’m one hundred percent cahoots-free!”

  “Be that as it may,” Frank said as he opened a manila folder on the desk in front of him. He continued without looking up. “I can’t afford even the appearance of impropriety. My clients would pull their accounts so fast I’d be bankrupt in six months.”

  “Surely you’re exaggerating. It’s none of your clients’ business with whom one of your tenants ‘consorts’—and may I add that Michael X. Johnson ha
s never been convicted of art theft?” I did not mention that I knew for a fact Michael was guilty as sin.

  “I can’t take that chance.”

  “Are you throwing me out of the building?” I rasped. I loved my studio. I needed my studio.

  “Of course not,” Frank said, his face softening. “I’m not an ogre, remember? But please—for both our sakes, do not continue your relationship with Johnson. He’s bad news, Annie. Very bad news.”

  He closed the folder, picked up the telephone, and started dialing.

  I had been dismissed. Guess I better tell Mom to cancel the caterer, I grumbled as I shuffled out to my truck. On the way home I rewrote the conversation with Frank in my head and dazzled my landlord with my biting, clever replies. I stopped at the Safeway on Grand Avenue to pick up something for dinner and found myself vacillating between buying a fifth of Stoli and splurging on a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk.

  I got both.

  The next morning I awoke with an upset stomach and a pounding head. Rats. Time to lay off the booze and chocolate. If I weren’t careful I’d turn into a fat, drunken, studio-less artist.

  I glanced at the clock: ten thirty. Double rats. I had intended to get up early and accomplish a million and one things, but working the swing shift had played havoc with my biorhythms. Make that a fat, drunken, studio-less, unemployed artist.

  My late rising wasn’t entirely the fault of the Stoli ice cream floats and strange work schedule. I had spent almost an hour on a fruitless round of international phone calls, and wound up leaving a trail of messages for Grandfather from Sussex to Sicily. After that, Frank’s assumption that my past associations would drive away his current clients had kept me tossing and turning half the night. I hadn’t been arrested since my seventeenth birthday—I didn’t count the two brief detainments for civil disobedience because, after all, protest marches were one of my few regular forms of exercise—but that one teensy accusation of forgery had made me an outcast. And as much as I denied it, the rejection of the legitimate art world rankled. I was happy with my faux-finishing business, but I missed the world of rarified galleries and fine museums. If nothing else, it would be nice to be able to take in an exhibit without feeling as though I had to avoid the security cameras.