The Art Forger (33 page)

I keep my voice measured. “If I can find the real one, it’ll prove your
Bath
was a forgery.”

“Which it isn’t.”

I continue as if he hasn’t spoken. “And if that’s true, then the charges are moot. If the painting they got from Patel is a confirmed forgery and they assume the thieves stole a real Degas, then there’s no transportation or sale of stolen goods. There’s no fraud. No connection to the heist. And your lawyer—”

He takes a deep breath, and I see he’s trying to calm himself. “Even if all of this were true, which it’s not, if the painting was the one stolen in the robbery, none of this changes anything.”

“Aiden, you’re not listening to me. It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be a legal possibility. An argument your lawyer can use to get you out on bail. At least for a little while.”

We both look at his right hand, which he places on his lap. “Why are you so sure it’s not a Degas? That there’s another painting?” he asks.

I see that he’s finally listening. “I knew pretty much from the beginning that it was a forgery.”

“You knew and didn’t tell me? Why would you keep such a thing to—”

“We’ve got to focus on finding the painting. I’ll explain everything later. Please just believe me. And now that I have the sketches—”

“This is crazy. Insane. We don’t know the damn painting exists. Or if there ever was one. And even if it does exist, we’ve got no idea where it is.”

Despite Aiden’s catalog of difficulties, I notice his shift to the plural. He’s warming to the idea. “I’ve got some leads,” I say. “About Rendell. His life, his family. His relationship with Belle and her niece.”

“This isn’t worth the effort.”

“What have we got to lose?” I stand and press my palm to the glass. “Lots to gain.”

He matches all five fingers of his right hand to mine. Desperation meets desperation.

A
FTER
I
LEAVE
the jail, I grab a cab and call Rik to see if he can meet me for a drink when he gets out of work.

“Can’t,” he says. “I’m up to my ears in reinstallation. Maybe I can make it to Jake’s around nine. Or ten.”

“How about I bring over some coffee? I have a quick work question to ask you. I’ll only stay a few minutes.”

“Double cappuccino grande with skim milk. Two sugars.”

I have the cab drop me at a Starbucks around the corner from the Gardner, pick up Rik’s coffee, and walk to the museum. When I arrive, trucks are parked everywhere: caterers, construction companies, electricians, plumbers—even closet designers. Workers, some punching high-tech handhelds and others carrying bales of wire or planks of wood or stacks of nested chairs, are walking into, out of, and around the building. I text Rik, and he comes down to get me.

He motions me into the entryway and leans against the tall ticket counter. “This is nuts. They had no business trying to do all this so soon,” he grumbles. “This big a spectacle needs years, not months, to put together.”

I offer him the coffee. “But you love it.”

“Can’t deny that.” Rik stirs sugar into his coffee and takes a long sip. “I’m flat out here. What kind of work question you got for me?”

“Ever hear of a forger named Virgil Rendell?”

A horde of electricians pounds through the narrow entryway, and we press ourselves to a wall to let them through.

“Name sounds kind of familiar,” Rik says. “Who is he?”

“Was. Late-nineteenth-century painter. He was in love with Belle’s niece, Amelia. Did an amazing portrait of her that I saw at Sandra Stoneham’s. Anyway, seems like he had some kind of a big falling out with Belle. I think over her forcing Amelia to marry someone else.”

“And you’re telling me this because . . . ?”

“His painting style is very similar to Degas, and I was thinking that they must have worked together at some time.” I have to stop as two huge speakers are wheeled in. “I was hoping you might be able to get me some information on him.”

“You’re working on your book now? Don’t you have enough on your plate?”

“I’m not painting anything. I’m antsy about the show and need some distraction. And with everything that’s going on with Aiden and all . . .”

“How’s he doing?”

“Not well.”

“Sorry, Bear.” Rik touches my cheek. “When this is all over, we’ll be able to spend some time.”

“I just need something else to think about.”

“Excuse me, sir, miss,” a man in a power suit with a power voice says. “We need to secure this area. Do you have identification?” Rik flips his ID card, but when I start to burrow in my backpack, the man stops me. “Sorry, miss, only museum employees and cleared contractors allowed in the building.”

“I’m really sorry,” Rik says, as he follows me outside, “but I don’t have time to help you with this now. Maybe after the reinstallation. This place is crazy. And so am I.” He squints at me. “I think maybe you’re a little crazy, too.”

We have to step off the sidewalk to allow four burly men with matching headsets jutting from their ears to pass by.

“These security guys are the worst,” Rik grumbles. “They’re crawling all over the building and getting in everyone’s way. Checking out every closet and cabinet. Worried about the riff-raff who are coming to the reinstallation. Like you and me. I heard they found places to wire no one even knew existed.” He gives me a quick kiss and strides into the museum.

Disappointed, although I suppose not surprised, I watch him disappear. Even though it’s dark and the temperature is hovering in the midforties, I walk past the trolley stop and set out across the bustling Northeastern campus, where students are bailing out for Thanksgiving break in droves.

I hesitate in front of the Ruggles T station, which is on the campus, and think about taking the Orange Line. It’ll be faster, warmer, easier, but I need the energy burn. I pass by the station entrance and climb the stairs to the parking garage, which doubles as a walkway to Columbus Avenue. I dodge the screeching cars, so intent on vacation escape, and cross over to the South End.

A week. Maybe two,
Aiden said. I walk down Mass Ave, alongside the belching busses and deafening trucks, searching for options. If Rendell’s a dead end, at least for the moment, maybe I should look at it from Belle’s side. If my theory about the blackmail is true, then maybe part of the deal was that Belle was forced to hide the original.

Checking out every closet and cabinet,
Rik had said.
Heard they found places to wire no one even knew existed.
And Sandra Stoneham had complained that everything Belle ever owned was in the museum.

W
HEN
I
GET
home, I call Rik. “I know, I know, you’re busy and I shouldn’t be bothering you, but I really need this one thing. I’ll owe your forever. Whatever you want. For the rest of your life.”

Rik’s sigh is long and theatrical. “What is it?”

“You know how my undergraduate degree is in art and architecture?”

“Claire. Please.”

“Anyway, the bottom line is that I’m thinking of doing a new series on the architecture of museums.”

“Paintings of museums? Doesn’t sound like you.”

“I’m not talking about the usual aspects of museums, but how their little-known spaces and corners portray them. The details the architect inserted that most people never notice that set the structure apart, give it its unique meaning and personality.” It’s not a half bad idea. “You know, the whole seen and unseen, but with a new subject. Buildings instead of people, but not just any buildings, buildings where people come to see.”

“What about the Degas book?”

“Oh, that, too. I’d do both.”

“Claire, I’m getting a little worried about you.”

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Really. But I was wondering if you have access to the original—or obviously, copies of the original—blueprints for the museum. Because what museum is more architecturally interesting than the Gardner? What museum has more personality?”

Exasperated, he agrees to e-mail me the blueprints in exchange for the promise that he won’t see or hear from me until the reinstallation.

The e-mail doesn’t arrive until two days later. I’ve barely managed to refrain from calling him to ask him where it is. The time shows he sent it at 3:42 a.m.

Sorry there are so many attachments, but apparently Belle kept changing the specs, which necessitated new drawings and blueprints. Some dated. Some not. Hard to tell which ones were the last. Guess she drove the architect and masons crazy. No surprise there. Reminds me of you. xooox

I click on the first attachment. Each drawing is more difficult to read than the last. Almost all are poorly scanned. Many are drawn with so many flourishes that they’re illegible. And some, scrawled in pencil, are just vague blurs. I print them all out, upping the contrast on the printer, which helps a little, but not much. It’s a good thing I spent all those hours at BU sprawled over a drafting table. No way an untrained eye would be able to get anything from these.

I use my magnifying glass and study the first page. It’s a drawing of the courtyard but appears to be more concerned with the decorative than the architectural. There are sketches of the lion stylobates, the mosaic, and various columns in the margins. I put the magnifier down and stare out the window. A hiding place that’s out of the way. Large enough to hold a three-foot-eleven by four-foot-ten painting, but small enough to be overlooked. Perhaps even disguised as something else.

I raise the magnifying glass and resume my search. Two hours later, I’ve found nothing but a pounding headache. I stand, stretch, take a couple of Tylenol. I think about going to Jake’s. I haven’t been there in forever. But, of course, I can’t. Too much talk of Aiden. Too much talk of my show. Too many of Danielle’s mindlessly insensitive comments.

I stare at the piling schedule for Fenway Court. Like the Back Bay and South End, the Fenway is mostly landfill, and it looks like the museum sits on piles driven ninety feet through the fill to the bedrock below. An amazing architectural accomplishment. Although the construction process probably wasn’t all that different from that for the Venetian palazzo Belle used as the basis for her own palace. Except in Venice, the piles would have gone through water.

Ninety feet of landfill. Beneath the museum. Could there be a more perfect place for a secret chamber? I flip through the pages, looking for basement drawings. When I find them, I follow every line with my finger. Nothing.

Then I notice a small plan in the corner of the blueprint. “Sub-basement” is written under a drawing of a space a fraction of the size of the basement. Against the east wall of the sub-basement is a narrow space, fronted by a door almost as large as the interior. Big enough to hold a large canvas; isolated enough to hide a secret.

Forty-one

It feels as if it’s been raining forever. I stand at the window in my new dress and trendy haircut, watching the soaking-wet street for Rik and the Gardner limousine. There’s got to be some reasonable art-related or research-related explanation I can come up with to gain access to Belle’s secret room. I’d love to ask Rik, but that might put him in a difficult position at work. Maybe something will come to me at the museum.

A long, white limo slides sensuously up to my building. A uniformed driver steps out with an umbrella so that I won’t get wet. As I slowly make my way down the stairs in my too-high high heels, I flash back to that afternoon at MoMA, standing in front of
4D,
reading the little white card with Isaac’s name on it. But this time will be different. No one is making a fool of me. And Degas’ name attributed to my painting is, I suppose, an accomplishment of sorts.

“Love the hair!” Rik cries, as soon as I stick my head in the limo. It’s cut in a mass of newly highlighted layers, curly and full, spiky bangs. “Let me see the dress,” he demands.

I slip into the long seat across from him and open my coat to reveal the lapis-blue dress I found in a vintage shop this morning; its shredded hem hits my thighs in places and my calves in others. It came with an “enchanting evening jacket” of lapis, purple, and deep red, is bigger than a blouse, and cost fifty bucks. “Looks better when I’m standing up.”

“Looks damn good when you’re sitting down.” An older man next to Rik eyes my legs.

I close my coat.

Rik pours me a glass of champagne and introduces me to the others in the car. Without specifically mentioning the venue, he tells them about my upcoming show, and I try to be as charming as Aiden would want me to be. But my lack of enthusiasm undermines me. I stare out the window as we glide silently through the sodden streets, thinking about Aiden in a prison jumpsuit when he should be in a tux.

At the museum, there’s a line of limos in front of us surrounded by reporters and photographers holding umbrellas along with their microphones and cameras. A red carpet leads from the street to the entrance, and as each guest alights, the media throngs forward. Rik wasn’t kidding. The Gardner is maxing out.

I spent considerable time studying the blueprints during the afternoon, and once inside, I look around to locate myself within the configuration of the museum. The sub-basement is down two flights straight ahead to the left; the door to the basement is halfway down the building to the right.