Feint of Art: (7 page)

She sighed. “Really, Ann. He’s involved with a lovely woman. I know you’ve made some bad choices, but don’t you think it’s time to get on with your life?”

That did it. Maybe she
was
evil. The gloves were coming off.

“Thank you
so
much, Naomi, you’ve been
such
a help,” I purred. “Do be sure to let me know if I can ever return the favor. I may have a few old drawings lying around.”

I hung up on her shocked silence. Art restorer, my ass. I could out-restore Naomi with my hands tied behind my back and a paintbrush in my mouth. Speaking of which, I now had an idea for how to find Anton. My grandfather had once mentioned, in a tone suffused with contempt, that in addition to forgery Anton did legitimate art restoration for a number of local gallery owners and art dealers. I could remember the name of only one of those galleries, but it seemed like a good place to start.

I crawled across town toward the shopping mecca of Union Square, swearing at the midday traffic, and gratefully surrendered my truck to the parking garage at the intersection of Ellis and O’Farrell. Within several blocks of Union Square was a high concentration of art galleries, both small and large, alternative and mainstream. There were galleries sprinkled all over San Francisco, but it was not a true art-loving city in the style of New York or Paris, where entire city blocks were devoted to art. Here people were in pursuit of the artistic life more than the actual art itself.

As I marched past Macy’s, eyes averted to prevent my lusting after things I didn’t need and couldn’t afford, I realized I was dreading doing the gallery hop alone. Like Hester and her scarlet
A,
I always felt as if I bore the mark of Georges LeFleur. Whenever I walked into an art gallery I half expected the owner to bolt from behind a desk, point a long, scrawny finger at me, and screech, “Forger’s spawn! Forger’s spawn!”

For today’s mission I needed someone irreverent. Someone sassy. Someone who was a lot like me when I wasn’t having a crisis of confidence caused by my unfortunate choice in grandfathers. Whipping out my cell phone, I called Mary, who as part of her commitment to being earth-friendly, traveled by bicycle. It would take her half an hour to get here. I signed off, relieved.

Still . . . thirty minutes was plenty of time to speak with at least one gallery owner. Why was I being so cowardly? Was I somehow less worthy because I had taken a brief walk on art’s wild side?

I lifted my chin, squared my shoulders, and hiked a few blocks to a building on California, where I took the elevator to the sixth floor and sauntered down the corridor, past several modern art galleries, until I reached Albert Mason’s Fine Arts.

I moseyed through the gallery, perusing its offerings while an exotic-looking woman at the front desk went to fetch “Monsieur Mason” for me. Paintings in the Old Master style had become all the rage, forcing smaller galleries like this one to scramble to meet the demand. Mason had several quality eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pieces, but he also had a lot of bad art that just happened to be old. Evidently he was not immune to the pressure to fill his customers’ orders regardless of artistry.

Albert Mason materialized, inquisitive yet sedate, pleasant yet distant, in the manner of gallery owners the world over. In his late fifties, with short salt-and-pepper hair, a stocky build, and the kind of complexion that reddened easily, he looked the type to take ballroom dancing lessons and dote on an overfed cat. He wore gray gabardine pants, a crisp pink Oxford shirt, a striped tie, and a blue blazer with brass buttons. Imported Italian leather loafers with tassels graced his dainty feet.

“Thank you for speaking with me, Mr. Mason,” I began after introducing myself. “I’m looking for a mutual friend, Anton Woznikowicz—”

“In that case, you are not welcome in this gallery, young lady,” he spat, turning a disturbing shade of scarlet. “I’ll thank you to leave.”

Pivoting on his heel, he disappeared behind a privacy wall. I followed.

“Mr. Mason, please,” I pleaded to his blue serge back. “I need to know . . .”

His shoulders twitched, which I took to be an encouraging sign.

“How about Harlan Coombs?” I persisted. “Could we talk about him?”

That stopped him. He jerked his head toward his office.

“Who are you?” he demanded as he sank into a leather chair behind his desk.

“I’m, uh, well, as I said, I’m Annie Kincaid,” I told him, following his example and taking a seat. “I worked in restoration with the Brock Museum,” I said, twisting the truth a tad, “and now have my own business in China Basin. I’m trying to locate an old friend, Anton Woznikowicz. Coincidentally, I’m also trying to track down Harlan Coombs.”

“Is Coombs an ‘old friend’ of yours as well?”

“Uh, no, not really.” Why hadn’t I worked out a story before I came here? Still, I supposed I could tell him what I was doing without naming names. “A . . . mutual friend asked me to look into some drawings that he’d lent to Harlan Coombs. I thought they might have been . . . um, shall we say, ‘improved’ by Anton, and I know Anton has done restoration work for you in the past, so I thought you might know where I could find him.”

Now that wasn’t so hard. I smiled at him brightly.

Mason glanced at the closed office door, as if worried that all of San Francisco was lurking outside to catch a whiff of scandal. Those of us in the art world tended to think that everyone was as passionate about art as we. In fact, most of the people in my life not only didn’t know a Bronzino from an Alma-Tadema, they didn’t much care. But because this man was an art dealer who clearly cared passionately, I scooted my chair closer.

“Listen, Ms., uh, Koolaid,” he said, a pink tongue darting out and licking his lips. “If you do find Harlan, he’s got a few things of mine, too. Bastard skipped town with all kinds of drawings.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked, mentally filing “Koolaid” away for use in the future as a possible alias.

Mason leaned forward, his arms crossed on the desk, an eager look on his face. “I heard he was involved in day trading.”

“Oh?”

He glanced about furtively, and I found myself doing it, too. Paranoia was contagious.

“You know,” he said impatiently. “In the stock market. He apparently made a lot of money, but when tech stocks took a dive last fall
he
took a bath. I heard Harlan kept hoping that if he invested more, he’d recoup his losses. Even make a killing. That was when he took off with seven of my most valuable drawings, including a sketch of a mother and child by Mary Cassatt and a sketch for
Madonna del Baldacchino
by Raphael. He sent back two, but they were obvious forgeries. The rumor is it was because of a woman he was seeing, that she pushed him to live high on the hog.”

Sure, I thought sourly, blame a man’s bad behavior on a woman. Some things never seemed to change.

“Do you have any idea where Harlan might be?” I asked.

“If I knew that, I’d have my drawings, wouldn’t I?” he snapped.

So much for our friendly gossip fest.

“What about Anton?” I asked.

“The last time I saw Anton, he was having a drink with Harlan at Vesuvio’s, in North Beach. That was when Harlan was still playing the market. Then, when he disappeared with my drawings, Anton claimed he didn’t know him.” Mason snorted derisively. “Well, I know what I saw, Ms. Koolaid. I haven’t heard from either of them since.”

I mulled that over. “Do you have an address for Anton?”

“It won’t do you any good. He’s gone.”

“Could I have it anyway, please? And Harlan Coombs’ address as well.”

Mason put on a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses and flipped through the giant Rolodex at his elbow. He scribbled the information on a piece of paper and shoved it across the desk.

“You said you were associated with the Brock Museum, Ms. Koolaid?” he asked as I was rising to leave.

“Mmm,” I managed.

“Can you tell me anything about last night? Do they think the curator—Pettigrew—did it?”

“Did what?”

“The murder. Didn’t you hear?” Mason asked with relish.

“Yes, but what does Ernst Pettigrew have to do with it?”

“He’s only the most obvious suspect.” Mason lowered his voice and leaned toward me conspiratorially. I leaned forward, too, so that our foreheads were almost touching. Frankly, it was kind of creepy.

“I heard that
The Magi
is a
fake
and Ernst killed the janitor to hush him up,” Mason whispered.

I leaned back. That was absurd. Ernst was no killer. Moreover, if he were, and he wanted to silence anyone who knew the Caravaggio was a fake, I would have been the first to go. Last time I checked, I was still alive and kicking.

“Why would Ernst kill the janitor to cover up a crime and then disappear? Wouldn’t that just make him look guilty?” I asked. “Besides, don’t tell anyone, but
I
heard from a very good source at the Brock that Dupont was involved in a love triangle, and that Ernst was in Cabo San Lucas wooing a wealthy donor, some old friend of Agnes Brock’s.”

This was how nasty rumors got started, and I was happy to do my part. I was, after all, a forger’s spawn.

I thanked Mason for his time and started toward the door.

“By the way,” he said, “I would be willing to offer a small reward in the event that my drawings were recovered.”

I turned back to him and smiled. “I believe twenty percent of the market value is the going rate.”

Mason looked as if he’d swallowed a bad oyster. “All right. Twenty percent.”

Before I left I got it in writing.

As I wandered out of the gallery and rode the elevator down to the street, my mind was on Ernst. What in the world had happened last night? I kept imagining Ernst calling me up and amusing me with some long, involved tale, told in his cute Austrian accent. The scene ended with Ernst announcing that his model girlfriend, Quiana, was too skinny and too vapid. He had never realized how much he missed my idiosyncratic take on the world, until—

Get it together, Annie,
I told myself.
Not only is that not going to happen, but deep down you
know
you don’t want it to, anyway.

Here’s what else I knew: while I was at the café waiting for Ernst, somebody killed Stan Dupont and Ernst Pettigrew dropped off the radar screen.

Here’s what I did not know: everything else.

No, wait. I also knew that Anton Woznikowicz had forged
The Magi
as well as a number of sketches that Harlan Coombs used to defraud gallery owners, such as Anthony Brazil and Albert Mason. And at some point before the murder, Harlan had disappeared.

So what did it all add up to?

Darned if I knew.

“Annie! Hey!” Mary called as I wandered onto the street.

Mary looked like an angel on steroids. For reasons known only to herself, she had donned a sparkly tuxedo jacket over her vinyl vest, put on fingerless black lace gloves, and exchanged her usual Doc Martens for leather motorcycle boots. The very outfit I would have chosen for a bike ride through inner-city traffic.

Now that I had Anton’s address, I could call off the gallery walk in favor of dinner. But gossiping with Albert Mason had provided a lot of information, and a possible commission, for very little effort. I figured it couldn’t hurt to shake down a few more artsy types. Somebody had to know something. In the art world, somebody always did.

“You want to grab something to eat first, or should we work up an appetite by assaulting some gallery owners?” I asked Mary.

“Assault and battery, by all means.” Mary smiled, her big blue eyes blinking disingenuously.

“Let’s hold off on the battery, shall we?” I said, not entirely sure she was kidding. Those boots looked like they could kick some serious butt.

We walked toward Chinatown, then turned down an alley crammed with small tables and umbrellas. Well-dressed San Franciscans lounged in the late-afternoon sunshine, enjoying colorful salads of tapenade-topped pan-seared tuna with endive, and watercress with blood oranges and cinnamon-infused almonds. My mouth watered as we headed for the next street over, where there was a clutch of small, understated, and very pricey galleries.

We went into the first one we came to, the Catharine Chaffrey Gallery, and while Mary strode around ostentatiously checking out the paintings and rolling her eyes, I asked the curator about Anton and Harlan. Catherine Chaffrey, a woman in her fifties who looked as if she’d just been goosed by an electrical current, knew Anton only by reputation. Her voice, dripping with acid, conveyed precisely what that reputation was. When it came to Harlan Coombs, Chaffrey repeated much the same gossip as Albert Mason had: Harlan played the stock market, got into debt, and disappeared with artwork that did not belong to him, although she, at least, did not blame Harlan’s misdeeds on a mythical woman. But the local art scene had clearly been stunned by the betrayal, and we shared a moment of sadness that a system so dependent upon professional ethics had broken down.

The moment ended when Chaffrey started dishing about the murder at the Brock. Apparently the gossip grapevine worked even faster than I thought, because she speculated that Ernst had been having an affair with Stan Dupont’s wife, who was some sort of minor European aristocrat, and that they had eloped with the money derived from selling the original Caravaggio. I speculated that her scenario was about as likely as Jasper Johns learning how to paint. By her reaction, I gathered she was a Jasper Johns fan.

We were interrupted by Mary, who had begun wondering loudly what kind of moron would buy this kind of crap. Hustling her out the door, I led the way to the next gallery, where folks claimed, improbably, not to have heard of either Anton or Harlan but were dying to talk about Ernst Pettigrew and the Brock. The next few galleries yielded the now-familiar responses: outrage at Harlan, wariness about Anton, and titillation over the murder. No new information was forthcoming, but it was evident that the respectable art-dealing world agreed on two things: Anton was a scoundrel and Harlan was a crook.