“Yes, Moriarty,” Binny said with a smile. “It’s Irish.”
“Or English by way of Ireland.”
“Well, they do say we’re descendants of William the Conqueror.” Binny paused. “But, you know how it is . . .”
“Everyone says they’re from William the Conqueror.”
They said the sentence at the same time, and although true, it was a very odd thing to say simultaneously. Dekalb laughed, then raised his hand to his mouth to stop the momentum. Generally, he didn’t laugh. It didn’t suit him. But he was charmed by this lad. Binny laughed too, and Dekalb felt the rolling of the wheel of laughter again, hard to halt.
But halt it he did. Charming or no, Dekalb had to establish control. And so he held up his hand, and then he launched into his usual spiel about the unique pieces he dealt with, how he liked to work alone, how he wasn’t like any other dealer in the New York art world.
Binny nodded, eyes bright. “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you,” he’d said when Dekalb gave him a pause. “I’ve been following your career ever since you sold the Vernet. It set you on the map. You’re one of the best.”
Dekalb felt something bulky catch in his throat, and he swallowed hard. The Vernet was his gleaming moment of dealerdom, one that was a step onto other greats, but one that he hadn’t exactly been able to replicate since. It wasn’t that he hadn’t sold other such painters or Old Masters. He had. But nothing topped the Vernet in terms of sheer, unadulterated excitement—the find, the initial secrecy, then the perfectly-placed rumors at the perfectly-placed time to send the price soaring. He wasn’t sure why the others had been a slowly sloping hill downward. Not even the forgeries he’d detected could flag the same enthusiasm, that same joy he’d had with the Vernet.
Sherlock Holmes was said to be a descendant of Vernet, the New Yorker journalist had mentioned, and now here was this man-boy, with a Sherlock Holmes kind of a name. It seemed the universe was circling back around, bringing Dekalb back to that state of mind he’d enjoyed early in his career.
Later, it struck Dekalb that Binny couldn’t have followed his career since the Vernet sold. The boy had probably been thirteen years old—thirteen and living in a shabby walk-up in the Bronx with his mother and his scruffy pack of sisters, where the sale of a rare Vernet certainly could not have been news.
But he didn’t pick up on that at the time, too flattered by Binny’s words, Binny’s apparent art knowledge, his mischievous good looks, and the fact that he didn’t travel in any of Dekalb’s circles (past or present). All that had converged like planets aligning to get Dekalb to hire him, and in truth, those things had probably made him fall for Binny, too, which was why Dekalb hadn’t seen the almost malevolent power that Binny possessed. Because like Professor Moriarty in the tales of his adopted namesake, Binny had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind.
“Dekalb! How lovely,” BB said, as she pulled him into a loose, false hug. The aroma of her signature perfume—some spicy, Asian fragrance made just for her in Thailand—overpowered him. He hated women’s perfume, especially BB’s, but inhaling it was one of the sacrifices he made for his business.
“Thank you for having me, BB.” Dekalb stepped into her foyer with its gold and white marble floor. High above them, ornate moldings carved with cherubs framed the room.
“Well, it’s about time,” she said, as if she’d been inviting him without response for years, when he’d practically had to beg his way into this lunch.
Dekalb attempted to discreetly shake the damp from his right leg. Before he’d come, he’d visited the Vietnamese grocery, a filthy place that smelled of old fish. Dekalb had spent an eternity trying to point the seemingly mute and illiterate clerk toward his French cigarettes. There was only one pack left, he could see, and he was terrified that another patron would somehow claim them first. Once they were in his hands, he was so grateful he decided to light one as he left the store. The clerk had given him matches, which he rarely used, and he fussed with them instead of digging for his lighter. He’d stepped off the curb, ready to hail a cab, but his right foot sunk into a pothole filled with swampy sewage water. Now, he felt the still-wet pant leg clinging to his calf. He prayed BB wouldn’t look down.
Luckily, she swung an arm up and around his shoulder, an arm that managed to be both bony and taut with muscles. It was the look that all BB’s crowd went for these days—anorexically thin but with a light layer of brawn. BB had to be at least sixty, probably eight years older than he was, but the combination of the hard body, perfect clothes, and a symbiotic relationship with a plastic surgeon made her look in her forties.
Strangely, BB reminded him of his mother. It was partly due to the blond hair and the heavy-lidded eyes. Of course, his mother’s eyes were swollen really, regularly pummeled into shape by her boyfriends, while BB’s were surgically crafted to give her a sexy, Veronica Lake look. But BB, like his mother, could be sweet and playful toward him one minute, icy-cold the next.
She led him down a hallway where millions of dollars of paintings hung on the walls, one right next to another, as if they were posters, not rare originals. Dekalb’s eyes flashed on each one, searching for the Gargeau, which was, of course, his whole reason for coming to this lunch. He had to see for himself if what Binny and the Post reporter claimed was true—that a painting worth over two million dollars had been replaced with a fake.
Dekalb did use faux masterpieces occasionally, just never for the Gargeau. All dealers used them for those times when a painting needed to be shown but the insurance would be too high. The forgers who did these copies—maîtres copistes—truly were artists, masters, because the results were flawless. Unless you were actually looking for the forger’s signature mark, such as a minuscule white dot or an excruciatingly small black check mark, you might never know the difference. But no matter how good the piece, they were always destroyed immediately after use so there’d be no mix-up. Accidentally shipping a forged painting to a client was unforgivable in Dekalb’s world. It branded you an amateur, and people in this town had no patience for amateurs.
He was fairly certain he could identify if the Gargeau was a fake. He simply needed to turn on his investigative Sherlockian skills once more. The gut-turning reality was obvious to him though—this time, discovering a forgery could mean his own demise rather than someone else’s.
But there was no sign of Wheels of a Rogue in BB’s front hallway, just the European landscapes that BB seemed to favor so much—an Edouard Cortes showing a rainy Paris street, a James Kay with its myriad fuzzy browns and blues depicting turn-of-the-century London, even a Cézanne landscape of the French countryside. Although BB considered herself superior to everyone in this city, everyone in the country for that matter, Dekalb had found that most of her type felt decidedly inferior to Europeans. BB’s way of compensating for that, apparently, was to acquire these paintings and practically line her drawers with them. Normally, they gave Dekalb a thrill, these paintings, making him want to stand close to the walls and breathe in the faint oily, dusty scent of old canvases, but today he noticed only the absence of the Gargeau.
“You know Char and Tommy,” BB said as they walked into her sitting room, a vast space where the walls were plastered with salmon-colored damask silk and then more landscapes. BB pointed to Charlotte Raford-Jennings and Tomasina Winters, both of whom jumped from their gold leaf chairs and took turns squeezing him around his middle with more of those tiny, rock-hard arms.
“Hello, ladies. You look fabulous,” he said, dialing up the effeminate act. Women like BB, Char, and Tommy still loved to have a gay male friend around, a man who could talk clothes and spas and haircuts, unlike their husbands.
And so talk he did, all through the tea service (a European tradition that BB liked to call her own, although she mistakenly served it before the meal instead of mid-afternoon) and all through the lunch of sea bass and some kind of exotic greens. The women stayed away from the food, but BB had a win
e cellar bigger than most studio apartments, and they soon got rather drunk on the Fumé Blanc. They usually did at these lunches—something Dekalb had counted on, since he needed to search the apartment at some point for the Gargeau. He needed to see it by himself, to study it.
The anticipation of seeing Wheels of a Rogue was killing him, and so he drank too much as well. It was impossible to tell exactly how much he imbibed since BB’s waitstaff kept filling up his glass whenever he took so much as a sip.
Finally, when he could take it no longer, he pushed his chair back. “Mesdames.” He stood and made a slight bow, knowing BB would love that. “I must use the little boy’s room.”
BB waved a bejeweled hand. “You know where it is, Dekalb. Help yourself.”
He tried not to run down the hallway as the ladies’ laughter trilled behind him. He didn’t need to examine the paintings in this area, since BB probably wouldn’t hang the Gargeau in a short hall that led to a guest bath. No, it had to be somewhere more prominent. The formal dining room, perhaps, or maybe over the fireplace in the living room? He couldn’t ask BB. That was out of the question, for BB didn’t like to talk about where or how she acquired something; she liked to pretend it was always hers.
He ducked in the powder room, planning on relieving himself in a lightning fast way, then giving himself a few minutes to prowl the rest of the apartment before BB noticed him gone and sent one of the servants looking.
As he flicked on the lights, he saw a figure lurking in the corner, and he felt a clench and then a pounding in his heart. “Good Lord!” he said, a hand flying to cover his chest.
He tittered when he saw what it was—a white marble statue of an angel, standing at least six feet tall. He shut the door, berating himself for being so jumpy. While he urinated, he stared at the statue. A Benzoni, if he wasn’t mistaken, probably 1852 or so. God knew BB had taste—a Benzoni this size was hard to come by—but she had absolutely no sense of placement, and this reminder made him even more nervous. The Gargeau could be anywhere.
When he was done, he left the bathroom light on and closed the door so that someone might think he was in there. He tiptoed down the hall, trying to minimize the squishing sound his shoe made every time his still slightly-wet sock rubbed against it. He turned right, moving away from the sitting room where BB and the ladies were still giggling. He poked his head in a large yellow living room cluttered with amber inlaid commodes and French clock garniture, thinking he definitely might find Wheels of a Rogue on the walls, but there were only more European cityscapes and such. As he continued on, he saw two bedrooms, both of them guest rooms with canopied beds and the antiques BB had relegated to second tier. No Gargeau.
At the end of the hallway, there were two doors, one of them open. He popped his head in the room, seeing a study painted a rich, dark gray and filled with leather furniture that had a red sheen. The husband’s room, Dekalb thought. Probably the only place he could relax in this mausoleum, the poor bastard. He quickly scanned the walls before moving back into the hallway and staring at the last remaining door. Closed.
He knew he shouldn’t. He’d already overstepped his bounds. You didn’t go traipsing around one of these apartments unless you were invited to do so. Space and privacy traded at a premium in Manhattan, and lurking about was the social equivalent of putting your hands in your host’s underwear drawer.
He stayed still a moment and strained his ears. Were the women still carrying on—swirling wine glasses and making promises of double workouts to banish the calories? He couldn’t hear anything, but he was sure he was too far away now. Just a quick peek was all he needed to see if the Gargeau was real.
The door to the master opened silently as he turned the gold doorknob. Inside was an enormous bed with footstools on either side. And, above it, Wheels of a Rogue.
Rogue depicted a pair of men’s shoes at the foot of a bed. One lay on its side, the other at an angle. Between the two were a glittery blue handbag and a white lace bra.
Rogue was a sexy piece, despite the fact that it portrayed just a floor with shoes and such, because you couldn’t help but wonder about the man, the rogue, who’d enticed a woman to throw her jeweled handbag and lingerie on the floor. You couldn’t help but imagine what they were doing on that bed.
Dekalb moved further into the room until he reached the end of the bed. It was so bloody big he still couldn’t get a close look at the painting. He tilted his body forward, leaning over the fluffy yellow linens that looked like lemon chiffon, but still he couldn’t get near enough to inspect it for marks. He walked to the side and strained his neck forward. Everything looked fine from that angle, yet he couldn’t be absolutely sure. And he had to be sure, or he’d never sleep again.
He glanced over his shoulder, heard nothing, and after a quick intake of breath, moved to the side of the bed and crept up one of the foot stools until he towered over the bed, his face nearly even with the painting now. His eyes flicked over the canvas. Top left quadrant, fine. Top right, no problem. Mid portion, fine. Bottom left, okay. Bottom right . . .
There it was. Right under the corner of the golden-brown bed was an equally golden dash. It was only a fraction of an inch at most and so close to the bottom of the bed that no one would notice. But there it was.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He bent farther over the bed for a better look, just to make sure. He leaned one hand on the lemon yellow pillows, making a deep indentation in the linens, his ass high in the air, his nose close to the painting.
His breath was coming faster now, his chest rising and falling under his cashmere sweater.
The fingers of his free hand squeezed and unclenched and then squeezed again repeatedly. He felt a familiar ping somewhere in his chest, somewhere high near the top of his lungs, and it caused him to freeze, his hand sinking like a stone into the bedding. He wasn’t eating the way he’d promised the doctors, and he hadn’t quit smoking, but he thought he had his heart problems under control. Binny’s letter must have brought it back. It was all about Binny. That first ping, a year ago, the one accompanied by the flames shooting down his arm, had happened at the beginning of the end of their relationship, when Binny asked to become his partner.
“Not just like this,” Binny had said, stroking Dekalb’s forearm, “but in the business, too.”
By that time, they had worked together for years. Binny no longer bought designer rip-offs, but instead saved his pennies, or waited for Dekalb to get in a generous mood, and took home the real thing—the Prada shoes with leather as soft as silk, the sport coats from Gucci. With the smart clothes and the job that gave him a ticket inside the art world had come a new sort of confidence. Oh, Binny had always been confident. He’d probably been confident when he was a pimply prepubescent in the boroughs, but after a few years with Dekalb he carried himself with a different kind of self-possession, no longer hanging back at the parties but rather jumping right into conversations, letting his newly acquired knowledge and his newly acquired garments, carry his inherent good looks until a little circle fell around him, both men and women beaming at him, the women whispering about the way his jet-black locks fell over his eyes, the men wondering if they could take him home for just one night.
As Binny spoke that day, talking about how much he’d learned from Dekalb, how much he loved him, how all this made him believe that they could be partners in every facet of their lives including the business, Dekalb had an explosion of an awareness—the dawn of a recognition. That was when he’d seen the malevolence that Binny Moriarty possessed. And like Holmes with Professor Moriarty, he was both appalled and impressed. But mostly betrayed. And so he sat, staring with dead eyes at the one person in his whole life who he’d thought had truly loved him, the whole of him. He’d been wrong, he saw that. Binny hadn’t loved him, he’d just played him, wheedled his way into Dekalb’s life and home, and hoped for Dekalb’s business and checkbook as well.
That was when the pain started.
And now it tinged his c
hest again. Then the flames flared and pain soaked his chest, his being.
Fucking Binny. How could he?
He heard a brittle cough behind him, and the shock of it dispelled the chest pain.
“Dekalb,” BB said. “What in the hell are you doing?”
Binny came in his apartment using his old set of keys, the keys that had allowed him to snatch the Gargeau and maim Dekalb’s business, making it a limping horse that would soon have to be shot.
He’d called an hour ago, saying simply that he would like to stop by.
Dekalb said only one word. “Okay.”
He’d been caught in BB’s bedroom only two days ago, yammering excuses about wanting to visit a favorite painting, and yet already the rumors had started. Customers he called on sounded odd, the Christie’s appraiser he spoke to made a crack about having too much to drink at the Shore house, and Char Raford-Jennings admitted that BB was talking, whispering hopes that the pressure of the art scene wasn’t leading to an emotional breakdown. The irony, of course, was that now he did feel on the verge of a breakdown, on the very edge of a tremendous abyss with the bottom nowhere in sight.
After the phone call, Dekalb sat on his balcony, his back to the door, not caring that the sun snuck around the building and soon shone on his face, probably making him look old and haggard.
He’d been reviewing, again, his meager options and once again decided that none of them would do any good. Even if he could get the original Gargeau from Binny, he couldn’t envision how he could sneak in BB’s apartment and switch it. Not after getting caught with his ass in the air, staring at the painting. And he couldn’t simply tell BB what had happened, because that would amount to professional suicide. No one would ever buy from him again, too afraid that they were being peddled a fake. He considered getting the original back and hiding it somewhere in the hopes that BB would never find out. But she would. When she divorced the current husband or when she simply tired of the painting, it would be appraised and the truth would come out. Dekalb couldn’t stand the thought of waiting for the ax to fall like that. So now he just sat, his hands lifeless on his lap.
In the Company of Sherlock Holmes Page 12
