Feint of Art: (12 page)

I wasn’t fooled. Former encounters with the police had not left me entirely clueless. She was setting me up for something.

“One last question. Why did Ernst Pettigrew ask to meet with you? I see you are a faux finisher, but are you an art appraiser, too?”

Here was the sticky wicket. No, I was not an art appraiser, and I was sure the inspector already knew that. It was simple enough to check a person’s graduate training, institutional affiliation, and professional credentials—none of which I had. And what I did have—a felon of a grandfather and a “sealed” juvenile rap sheet in Paris—I preferred the inspector didn’t learn about.

“In a manner of speaking,” I said. “The art world is very small. Ernst Pettigrew and I had crossed paths professionally on a few occasions, and we’d developed a mutual respect for each other’s eye for authenticity. An artistic eye is like perfect musical pitch—either you have it or you don’t. I have it, and Ernst knows it. And, unlike most appraisers, I have no personal stake in whether a painting is real or forged. I also know how to keep my mouth shut.” Boy, did I ever. “I think that’s why Ernst felt he could come to me.”

“Plus the fact that he’s your ex-lover,” Inspector Crawford said, cocking an eyebrow.

Damn. I was willing to bet the rent money Naomi had told them that.

“Ernst is a former boyfriend,” I said, the very picture of cooperation. “But we broke up years ago. It’s all water under the bridge now.”

At an unseen signal, the two stood simultaneously, and Inspector Crawford handed me her business card.

“Thank you for speaking with us, Ms. Kincaid,” she said as she opened the door. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call. I want you to know that in the interests of guarding your safety, we will not release the information that you met with Mr. Pettigrew. However, until this whole thing is sorted out, I encourage you to take basic precautions for your own safety. We’ll probably need to ask some additional questions as we learn more. We’ll be in touch.”

I bolted the door behind them and slumped against it. I glanced at the business card Inspector Crawford had given me, then pulled Michael X. Johnson’s business card from my jeans pocket.

Too bad I didn’t still keep that diary. Today’s entry would have been a doozy.

—Georges LeFleur, “Experts & Other Lower
Life Forms,” unfinished manuscript,
Reflections of a World-Class Art Forger

 

I had few truly useful friends, probably because most of them were either artists or sociologists. My friends were perfect when I wanted to discuss politics, go out dancing, cry on a shoulder, or paint a brilliant forgery. They also threw terrific little dinner parties. But they were not much help when it came to the more practical aspects of life.

I had noticed that fictional heroines always had friends who were doctors, lawyers, and police detectives, people they could call on in the dead of night to perform kitchen-table bullet extractions, defend them from specious homicide accusations, and/or look up the license plates of suspected rapists and other miscreants.

My friends, however, would be able to deliver a moving eulogy over my grave, organize a rousing street demonstration to protest my being hauled off to the state penitentiary, and convince the legislature to pass an anti-stalking law, thereafter to be known as Annie’s Law, in my memory.

None of which would do
me
any good.

The only exception to this friendship rule was Pedro Schumacher, whom I’d met a few years ago when our banners became entangled at the annual Save the People’s Park rally in Berkeley. Having been burned by his recent foray with a computer start-up company, Pedro was now looking to make a quick buck in the lucrative world of computer consulting. A couple of years younger than I, he was handsome in a squat sort of way, with the dramatic coloring of his Mexican mother, his German father having contributed the last name and little else of substance. Pedro had a longtime workaholic girlfriend, lived in a modest apartment in West Oakland, and reveled in Mickey Spillane novels.

Once my new buddies at the SFPD had left me in peace, I started pondering the enigma that was Michael X. Johnson. It occurred to me that private eyes nowadays probably did a lot of their snooping on the Internet, so I decided to give my useful friend Pedro a call. We chatted for a few minutes to catch up on each other’s life, then got down to business.

“Listen, Pedro, is there any way to track down information on somebody who claims to be a private eye?” I asked.

“Sure. What’s his name?”

“Michael Johnson.”

“You’re kiddin’ me, right?” Pedro snorted. “Jesus, Annie, don’t you realize that ‘Johnson’ is the most common last name in the U.S.?”

“I thought that was ‘Smith’ or ‘Jones.’ ”

“Nah—Johnson. How come you know so little about your people?”

Pedro insisted that I was the prototypical American, while I pointed out that since he’d been born in El Paso, whereas I’d been born in Paris, he was technically more American than I. Sometimes I called him “Peter Shoe-maker” to drive home the idea.

“They’re your people, too, Pedro,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, yeah. So this is all you’ve got on the guy? I’m gonna get maybe a hundred thousand hits.”

I had only a vague idea what that meant, but it sounded ominous. “That’s bad, huh?”

“Not for me. I get paid by the hour.”

I smiled. Pedro refused to allow me to pay him for his expertise, claiming it would be a violation of Article 3, Section 7, Subsection 32 of the “Pedro and Annie Friendship Agreement.”

“How about this?” I offered. “His middle initial is X.”

“As in
Mexico
?” Pedro asked.

“As in
Xerxes
.”

“That’s a weird name. Is that with two
X
’s?” he asked, and I spelled it for him. “Okay, what else can you tell me about him? The more details you can give me, the easier it will be to narrow things down.”

“Well, let me see,” I said slowly, conjuring up Michael Johnson’s image. “He’s well spoken and well educated, possibly at a Jesuit school. Knows fine art and art forgery. He’s stylish and well mannered, so he’s probably not a recluse. Dresses casually but expensively, kind of like a cross between L.L. Bean and Ralph Lauren. No wedding ring, earrings, or other jewelry. He’s in his mid- to late thirties. Dark brown hair, green eyes, about six feet tall. Nice build, trim and muscular, but not
too
big.”

A wistful tone had crept into my voice, and I wondered if Pedro had noticed it. I heard his computer keyboard clicking in the background, so maybe he hadn’t been paying attention. Or perhaps he was signing me up for an online dating service.

“You got a little thing for this guy?” Pedro asked.

“Very funny. Is there some kind of state registry for PIs?”

“Dunno. If he’s legit, he’ll have a license to carry concealed. I could try that.”

That was news to me. I was scared of guns. Had I been hunkering with a gun-toting stranger? Those sample boards were looking better all the time.

“Annie?” Pedro broke into my reverie. “Why don’t I call you when I have something? Tomorrow, probably.”

I thanked him, then put down the phone and leaned back in my desk chair. The African Princess and Ichabod had suggested that I take some precautions, which probably didn’t include getting chased through Chinatown and meeting clandestinely with strangers in empty artists’ lofts. But finding Anton and figuring out how he was involved with
The Magi
and if he knew where the missing drawings were seemed more important than ever. In addition to the reward money issue, I was really beginning to fear for Anton’s safety, not to mention Ernst’s.

The problem was, I still wasn’t sure how to find him.

As I sat there thinking, however, realization dawned on me.

The first time I’d met Anton had been at a famous old North Beach bar called Vesuvio’s, where he and Grandfather liked to spend sunny afternoons sipping espresso, smoking unfiltered French cigarettes, and gossiping. I was ten years old and proud to the point of bursting that my grandfather was introducing me to his world. The bartenders hailed him and Anton by name when we walked in, which at the time had impressed me no end. It had been many years since that meeting, but Albert Mason had mentioned spotting Anton at Vesuvio’s not so long ago.

So here was the plan: I would do some actual work for the rest of the afternoon, and then head to North Beach. If nothing else, it would do me good to get out on a Friday night once in a while.

I spent a few hours organizing client files, researching images of ritzy European locales for an exterior mural I was designing for a Porsche dealership, and attending to my quarterly taxes. By eight thirty I was feeling positively virtuous and ready for a drink at Vesuvio’s. Unfortunately, Mary had gone AWOL and my friend Samantha the jewelry designer already had plans for the evening, so I was on my own.

If parking in most of the City was nearly impossible, parking on Columbus Avenue on a Friday night was unthinkable. I took a halfhearted drive down the main strip to see if by chance the karma situation had changed. It hadn’t, so I kept going. I didn’t bother looking in neighboring Chinatown. I wasn’t up to the public ridicule one courted when trying to squeeze a truck into a spot next to cages of live chickens.

Originally settled by Italian immigrants, North Beach stretched along the length of Columbus Avenue, from the downtown financial district almost to the Cannery building at Fisherman’s Wharf. To the east it bordered Chinatown, while bumping up against the historic Jackson Street “Barbary Coast” on the west. At the intersection of Broadway and Columbus were a multitude of seedy strip joints and sex shops, and so within a few blocks’ walk of North Beach one could find world-class Italian and Chinese restaurants, rare-book stores, soaring corporate skyscrapers, steaming loaves of sourdough, fabulous jazz, and a wide selection of dildos. Truly something for everyone.

I was nearing the end of Columbus, up by the Wharf, before I found a space, but I figured the long walk would do me good. Fifteen minutes later I crossed Broadway, ignoring the strip show hawkers trying to lure me inside to see what the “girls” had to offer. I had the same reaction to those shows that I had to the lottery: my odds of profiting from the experience seemed astronomical.

The bar I was looking for was on the next block, at the corner of an alley named after Jack Kerouac. Vesuvio’s was two stories high, but the second floor was mostly a balcony, so the downstairs was open to the gaze of those above. Pushing my way through a throng of beatnik wannabes, I headed toward the bar. A crowd two- and three-deep was vying for drinks, but with a bit of good-natured jostling I managed to elbow my way to the front. On the whole, San Franciscans were a civilized breed, prone to rebuff a shove but yield to a smile. New Yorkers had a hard time adjusting.

“Get for ya?” a young female bartender asked, her voice scarcely audible above the jazz music.

“I’m looking for a regular, a man named Anton Woznikowicz,” I shouted.

“You want a WHAT?” she shouted back.

“Anton. Anton Woznikowicz,” I repeated, louder this time.

“Never heard of an Anti-Whachahoochi. We got Anchor Steam on draft.”

It took a few minutes before she understood what it was I wanted, and when she finally did, she shrugged and went on to the next customer. She was too young to have been working here long anyway, so I made my way down the bar searching for another source of information.

Bartender Bud—according to his name tag—was in his late fifties, with the bulbous nose and pronounced paunch of a habitual drinker. I thought I saw a flicker of recognition when I asked about Anton.

“Yeah, I know him,” he said, as he mixed a local favorite, a wicked combination of espresso, grappa, Kahlua, and half-and-half guaranteed to keep you wide awake and drunk all night. “Haven’t seen him for a while. Who wants to know?”

I said I was an old friend, gave Bud my business card, and asked him to call me if Anton showed up. He took it, though I had little faith that he would do anything but drop it in the trash.

I scanned the bar area halfheartedly just on the off chance that Anton had happened to walk in while my attention was focused on Bud. No such luck. Coming to the bar had been a long shot anyway. But seeing as how I was already parked—usually the most painful part of a night on the town—it seemed a shame not to take advantage of it. Maybe a handsome computer bazillionaire would ask to share my table, fall madly in love with me, and I would no longer be dateless. Or poor. Or lacking health insurance.

Bud mixed me a vodka martini. I left a large tip to help him remember me and climbed the cramped staircase at the back of the room to the second-floor balcony, where I paused at the top of the stairs, searching for a table. I spotted a heavyset woman who was either wrestling with a bear or struggling to pull on a fake-fur coat, and scooted over. I might not have parking karma, but I was no slouch when it came to restaurant and bar seating.

After about twenty minutes of sitting there, watching the ebb and flow of the crowd below, I felt someone approach.

“I understand you are looking for Anton, madam. Yes?”

He wasn’t a computer bazillionaire, that was for sure. Nor was he handsome. In fact, he looked a lot like he’d been hit in the face with a truck at an impressionable age. And he reeked of cologne.

“Why, yes. Yes, I am. Would you care to sit down?” I asked politely.

“Thank you, madam,” the Stranger replied as he settled his considerable girth into the chair across from me.