The Art Forger (37 page)

“We found a concrete wall that isn’t on the blueprints,” I explain, as I outline the drawing with my finger. “Just about here. Right in front of these double doors. Which are there, behind the wall.”

“And that’s where you think Degas’ painting is?” Lyons asks.

“If it’s not there,” I say, “it’s somewhere. And we need to find it.”

“This is ridiculous,” Alana barks. “We don’t need to find anything. Degas’
After the Bath
is hanging downstairs in the Short Gallery.”

Lyons says they’d like to excuse themselves. Alana tells me to take a seat at her assistant’s desk right outside the office, which I do.

When they close Alana’s door, I stand and press my ear to the wall, but their voices are too low to understand. In a few minutes, they come out, and Alana orders me not to move. I think of Aiden, forced to sit in a cell, at the mercy of someone else’s relentless commands.

To distract myself, I look at the sepia-toned photographs hanging on the wall. There’s a photo of Belle, wearing a horrible black hat and climbing a ladder during the construction of Fenway Court. A wiry little thing, quite homely without her jewels and fancy dresses, and clearly displeased with what she’s seeing. How did this woman have all those men at her feet? Amass so much power? Everything about Belle Gardner is either improbable or contradictory, and I can only hope I’m on the right track.

“I
S THE OVEN
still in your studio?” Alana demands, as she walks up to me, Agent Lyons at her heels.

I blink at what seems like a non sequitur, then understand: They found the green dot. “Yeah, I have the oven.”

“And despite what happened with MoMA, you still want to claim the painting downstairs is yours?” Lyons asks.

“That one was mine, and this one is, too.”

“Not exactly what MoMA concluded,” Alana mutters.

“Look, Agent Lyons, Ms. Ward, I may not be sure about a lot of things right now, but I know my own work. I’m sorry to disappoint you. The museum. Everyone. To create this huge hassle. But I thought that in the end, you’d prefer the truth.”

“This is the plan,” Alana says. “Three of us will be at your studio at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll bring an old canvas and you’ll go through your whole process for us.”

“That’s fine. No problem. I can—”

“I’m not asking your permission, Ms. Roth.”

I look down at my hands.

“I’m going to have to fly a number of experts to Boston to begin the second authentication,” Alana continues, “and order special chemicals and equipment so the process can be done quickly and onsite. This will be expensive and time-consuming. And if, I’m thinking when, we discover this is all a hoax, you’ll be liable for all costs and damages. Including loss of revenue due to our inability to display
After the Bath.
”

“It’s not a—”

“And if it turns out the painting
is
a forgery,” Agent Lyons interrupts, “and that you’re the one who forged it, my colleagues from the agency and I will want to sit down with you. In what you might call a more official capacity.”

Forty-four

As promised, Alana shows up at eight a.m. with two academic types: an older man and a young woman who looks as if she’s still in high school. Both wear glasses and pull laptops from their briefcases: his cracked and beat-up, hers pristine and expensive. His name is Mr. Jones, and she’s Ms. Smith. When I smile at this, they just stare at me. Looks to be a fun time.

Not that I’m so jolly this morning either. Yesterday, after I left the Gardner, I went directly to Nashua Street to update Aiden and make sure he was okay. But they wouldn’t let me in. Said he’d already had his allotment of visitors for the day. Later, Kristi texted me: “Markel said 2 tell u 1 week left.”

Needless to say, I spent a long sleepless night pacing, beating up on myself, and talking to Rik on the phone. I told him about Aiden’s deadline, and he told me that Alana was furious at him but that he didn’t think his job was in jeopardy. Some good news. The rest was bad. Alana is on a mission to prove me wrong, to destroy my career and my life, to get me arrested. And if that doesn’t work out, I have Agent Lyons to contend with.

Now, Alana hands me a one-foot square canvas; it’s an oil painting of a waterfall, a bad painting of a waterfall. “Work from this,” she says, her voice crisp and no-nonsense. “Paint one of the
After the Bath
nudes. Go through the process you claim you used to produce your so-called forgery and—”

“Copy.” I know I have to stay calm, but the parallels to repainting
4D
have me on edge. I remind myself that the situation is reversed this time around: Then my object was to be recognized as the painter, now it’s to be recognized as the forger. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t make me feel any better.

Nor do the much higher stakes. I try to cheer myself by noting that the stakes aren’t as high as they were for Han van Meegeren. He’d had to repaint his fake Vermeer to prove he didn’t sell a national treasure to the Nazis, thus avoiding a death sentence. This doesn’t make me feel any better either.

“Explain to us everything you’re doing,” she orders. “Even if you think we already know it.”

I nod. “Can I get anyone coffee? Tea?”

“This isn’t a social visit, Ms. Roth,” Alana reminds me. “The sooner you start, the sooner we’ll be finished.” I’ve got no problem with that.

I go through the now second-nature motions, explaining as I proceed. Smith and Jones are mostly quiet, except for a few respectful questions, but Alana can’t contain her irritation. She shrugs derisively at my comments, rolls her eyes, mutters under her breath. I do my best to ignore her, but her every response, her every movement, reminds me how much she holds in her hands.

It’s growing dark by the time I’ve gone through three rounds, and Alana says, “Let’s call it a day.” No one objects. She turns to me. “I’m going to take this painting with me to make sure it isn’t altered in our absence. We’ll be back with it first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Sure,” I say, too exhausted to take offense at her not-so-veiled aspersion on my character.

“And,” Alana adds, “I’ll need Degas’ and Rendell’s sketchbooks. Agent Lyons and I want to examine them.”

Although the sketchbooks corroborate my hypothesis, I’m reluctant to part with them. Alana takes the books from my hands. “Thank you,” she says, in an overly polite tone that indicates she’s not thankful at all. Of course she isn’t. Nor should she be.

They return the next morning with the painting and their phones and computers. Last night, Rik told me that he got news on the hush-hush from his buddy who’s a security guard, who has a buddy, another security guard, who went into the sub-basement with Alana and Lyons. Although Alana was completely against it, Lyons plans to bring ultrasound equipment in to determine if anything is behind the concrete wall. The guard thought he heard Alana mutter, “Fucking bitch.”

Alana, Jones, Smith, and I take our places. I paint and bake. They watch. It’s a lot less interesting today as I’m not doing anything they haven’t seen before. I have nothing to explain, and they have no questions. After two more rounds, the painting is actually starting to look pretty good. Even with only five layers, the colors are growing deep and luminescent; Jacqueline’s arm holding the towel glows. I stare at her, think about my own work, my windows. Kristi texted yesterday to remind me we’re going to start hanging my show on Thursday. It almost seems trivial.

“Are there other steps you do at the end to make it look old?” Alana demands.

“It has to be inked.”

“Can it be done now?”

“Sure,” I say, more than glad to comply. “We just need the craquelure to show through the last layer of varnish. Then it’ll be good to go.”

“Do it,” she says.

I glance up and notice the dark circles under her eyes, the wrinkles I hadn’t seen before, and feel a stab of sympathy. Also a stab of guilt. I’ve been nothing but a complete pain in the ass to this woman who only wanted to enjoy her museum’s moment of glory. Driven by my own hubris to right a wrong that may be better left unaddressed. But it’s a bit late for these regrets now. Especially when I know that there’s more pain to come.

When the craquelure has risen, the India ink applied and dried, I begin cleaning the ink off with a soapy rag. They watch, transfixed, as I wipe away the top layer of varnish, which leaves a hair-thin web of fine lines on the painting. I then add a touch of brown paint to the original varnish, explaining that the tint mirrors aging, and cover the canvas with it. When I’m done I hold the canvas up for their inspection.

Alana gasps.

F
IRST THING THE
next morning, I call Kristi at Markel G. “I’m back.”

“Great,” she says, but I hear annoyance in her voice.

“I’m really sorry about screwing this up. You think it’ll be possible to reschedule any of the interviews?” A half-dozen interviews had to be canceled because I was painting for the Gardner. I told Kristi it was a family emergency, age-old excuse yet always reliable, and guaranteed to keep questions to a minimum.

“Some. I hope.”

Although I never wanted to play the publicity game, the distraction is now welcome. I don’t have anything to do while I wait for the Gardner but look for Virgil Rendell’s family. And that’s not going well. “What did I miss?”

“Arts reporters for the
Globe,
the
Phoenix,
and
Boston Magazine,
” she says testily. “
Newbury Street Gallerie. Metro.
”

“Do you have the names and numbers? I’ll call them and set up new ones.”

“They don’t like dealing directly with the talent. I’ll see if I can get any of them to come by the gallery when you’re here doing the installation. Today you’ve got radio interviews all day. You’ve got the list I e-mailed you?”

“Sure.” I haven’t had much time for e-mail of late. “It’s all under control.”

“Are you free in the evenings?”

“Whatever you need.”

“Good. These things mean more than you might think.” She hesitates. “So is the emergency taken care of? Everything okay?”

“Pretty much,” I assure her. “But you know how family drama is. Never really over.”

Kristi laughs, which must mean she sort of forgives me. “Oh, don’t I,” she says with meaning.

As soon as I hang up, I check my e-mail and scan down the seemingly endless messages. There are at least ten from Markel G, and I quickly open them one by one. When I find the radio interview list, I groan. Four interviews. The first one in an hour. I race for the shower.

When my hair’s dry, I mentally thank Aiden for making me buy an interview outfit, climb into it, and head for the door. My cell rings, and I press it to my ear as I run down the stairs.

“They’ve got some ultrasound or sonic or sonar thing in the basement,” Rik says.

“Do you think this means I convinced Alana? Or that maybe the authenticators decided
Bath II
is a forgery? The equipment’s got to be expensive.”

He hesitates. “I don’t think so . . .”

“What do you know?” I don’t like the sound of this.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. “Haven’t a clue. Really, I’m pretty much out of the loop. All I can say is that I hope to hell it’s down there.”

“Me, too,” I say, as I wave down a cab.

“What’re you doing now?”

“Four radio interviews in the next seven hours.”

“Keep your phone on vibrate. I’ll call as soon as there’s anything to tell.”

“You’re a prince.”

“And here I thought I was a queen,” he says, laughing, then clicks off.

I do better at the interviews than I expect. I’m thinking it’s because I’m distracted, waiting for the phone to buzz, worrying about what’s happening at the Gardner, about what’s happening to Aiden, rather than worrying about what I’m saying. Plus, my concerns about interviewers trying to trip me up about
4D
or Aiden are unfounded. Almost all the questions are banal or benign: No one mentions
4D,
and only one makes a passing reference to Aiden’s “troubles.”

As I ride the Red Line home from Cambridge, I check my phone for the umpteenth time. It’s two minutes later than when I last looked, but nothing else has changed: Rik still hasn’t called, and somehow this feels ominous.

I hang onto an overhead strap, pressed on all sides by strangers’ bodies, suffocated in their heat and unpleasant odors. My only consolation is that there’s no way I can fall down. The train is packed and overheated, everyone stuffed into their winter coats, grumpy to be forced to suffer this final indignity after a long work day. Me included.

As the train slithers out of the sooty darkness and over the Longfellow Bridge, the city springs to life, fully formed. Shiny glass towers flood the sky with their interior illumination; the exterior of the State House dome glows yellowy gold. Pedestrians in brightly colored coats flood the sidewalks, and the cars looping down Storrow Drive wink between bare trees. Even with everything on the verge of falling apart, the sight, the pulse, the energy of the city send a jolt of joy through my body.