The Cézanne Chase (38 page)

R
oberto Oliveira was not a man glued to predictable habits, yet he regularly lunched in the Grill Room at the Hôtel Beau Rivage on Quai du Mont-Blanc whenever he was not otherwise obligated. He enjoyed being fussed over and taken to the same table where familiar waiters and busboys greeted and served him with special attention. It all made a deep impression on visiting colleagues or potential customers. On the occasions when he was alone, it afforded him an opportunity to compose his proposals for potential sellers or relax over so simple a pleasure as a newspaper. On this early January day, however, Oliveira was not particulary relaxed, and the newspaper did not provide him with either diversion or pleasure. An enterprising reporter had written a postscript to Collyers's pre-Christmas auction, speculating that the auction would have been incredibly successful if Cézanne's self-portrait had been in the sale, as the gallery's high-powered publicity had promised. “No credit for breaking new ground,” he said aloud, “no mention that we did sell the Cézanne landscape for eleven million.... ” He folded the paper and slammed it on the table and was surprised to find that he was no longer alone. The occupant of the seat across from him looked vaguely familiar. He was a thin, young man with black, strangely combed hair and a longish nose. Oliveira stared at the face for a moment.

“You were with Monsieur Weisbord when he brought the Cézanne self-portrait.”

“Weisbord is dead. The painting was stolen,” LeToque said flatly.

“Do you think I have it?” Oliveira said, laughing, as if it were all a bad joke. “I wanted Weisbord to leave it with us, but he would trust no one. Then I learned that he died, and that was the end to that.”

LeToque shook his head, “I know who has it.”

“Who?”

“The one who killed Weisbord.”

Oliveira shook his head incredulously. “There was nothing about murder in the newspapers. Are you sure?”

LeToque nodded. “I know the filthy bastard. If you hear about him or see him in Geneva, call me.” He wrote a phone number on a matchbook cover and pushed it in front of Oliveira. “He is a big man, a Norwegian who goes by different names. The one I know is Aukrust. Peder Aukrust.”

B
oth paintings caught the clear, shadowless light that came through the bay windows in Edwin Llewellyn's study. Both were unframed and perched on an easel. On the left was the painting Llewellyn's grandfather had purchased from Ambroise Vollard in 1904, and on the right was a photographic copy so precisely like the original that only by close examination could one be distinguished from the other. The incredible gap in their respective value was $40 million, and that was rock bottom. Recent estimates for Llewellyn's painting were stratospheric, but a tally of every penny of costs for the copy came to $2,468.14, including Nigel Jones's Maine lobster dinner at Anthony's Pier Four.

Alex Tobias lifted the genuine portrait with appropriate reverence and laid it inside a flat, traylike affair, which he then slid into an open-ended case. The two parts were made from tough vinyl and painted a dull black. In all, it measured only slightly more than the painting, 19 x 16 inches, and less than an inch thick. He looked up, as if uncertain what emotion he saw in Llewellyn's face. “Having second thoughts?” he asked.

“Of course I am,” Llewellyn said. “Yet I can't think of anything more important than putting a spike into Vulcan's ass.”

Tobias laughed. “I hadn't thought of it quite that way; in fact I was thinking that a week in Provence was incentive enough. But that's nothing if I can't help catch the bastard.”

Llewellyn picked up the plastic case. “How are you going to carry it? You can't just tuck it under your arm.”

“In that old one-suiter over there.” He pointed at an undistinguished piece of luggage that would have qualified as luggage for a charter member in America's oldest frequent flyer club. “It's twenty years old and looks a hundred.” He smiled. “But there are two bottoms in the damned thing.” He unpacked a week's clothing then lifted a bottom flap, laid the case on the bottom of the suitcase, lowered the flap and
snapped it securely, then put the clothing back, closed the suitcase, and turned the dial on a combination lock. “If necessary, I use this.” He fitted a leather-covered chain through the handle and looped an end around his wrist.

“Does your wife know what you're up to?”

Tobias shook his head. “Nope, and I won't tell her until we're in Narbonne. That's over the border in France, about a three-hour drive from Barcelona.” He smiled, and lines crinkled around his eyes. “We'll look like a retired New York City couple on vacation. Not bad, right?”

“Not that part of it,” Llewellyn replied. “Yet I feel a little woozy knowing the painting's in the bottom of an old suitcase.”

“But not any old suitcase,” Tobias said, “and not being carried by some careless old fart. Come over to the window, I'll show you something. In that gray sedan down there are two men, both career cops, each with their favorite piece and the experience to use it, and both are old and good friends. One will be with me until I'm in my seat on the plane.”

“They know?”

Tobias shook his head. “They don't ask, I don't tell. I'll be met in Barcelona the instant we're off the plane.” Tobias gave Llewellyn a reassuring smile. “Not to worry, I don't do things half-assed.”

“I leave for Paris next Tuesday, the sixth, and I'll have with me what everyone believes is the genuine Cézanne. No escorts, no friends from ‘the department' with a gun. Just Fraser and Clyde—” He smiled. “Hell, Clyde won't even be with me, he'll be in belly of the plane.”

“It's not too late,” Tobias said. “You're allowed to change your mind.”

Llewellyn studied the burly detective, then sighed. “I trust you, Alex.” He put out his hand and each gave the other a firm handshake. Fraser escorted Tobias down the stairs.

Llewellyn watched Tobias get into the gray car and drive off. “There it goes,” he said aloud. “Either I've just broken the record for involuntary philanthropy, or I've made the fattest blunder of my life.”

Fraser had returned and heard Llewellyn's gentle self-imprecation. “You've done the right thing, sir. You'll see.” It was Fraser's way to look on the bright side.

J
immy Murratore closed the door to Oxby's office then slid into the chair directly across from the detective chief inspector.

“Like I said I'd do, I made some plans to see what Pinkster was doin' with his waterman's license and a tugboat that he had fixed up for tourists and day-trippers. Seems, though, the old tug's not been rented out—not so far as anyone I talked to could decipher ‘out.' ”

Oxby couldn't stop the trace of a smile that crept along the edges of his mouth. Jimmy had a way with words that ranged from dazzling to malapropian. Enough of the preliminaries,” Oxby said. “Tell me what you've been up to.”

Jimmy began at the beginning, describing to Oxby how he had received cooperation from the Thames Division and followed Pinkster's
Sepera
from its home berth to a point off Canary Wharf, where it had received the two visitors.

“Next it—”

“Do we know who the visitors were?” Oxby interrupted.

“No and yes,” Jimmy answered. “I had them followed, and I expect answers in a day or two. Then after the meetin', the
Sepera
pulled in to Tower Pier and Pinkster got off and took a taxi. I wanted to have him followed, but I couldn't get it lined up in time.”

“We know he has two homes,” Oxby said, “one on land, one that floats. Just might be he's got another, and we should know about it.”

Jimmy continued describing how the tug returned to Cadogan Pier and the skipper and his wife went off to a pub. “I worked my way into the tug and down to what I figure was Pinkster's headquarters.”

“What did you find?”

“A big room, but it was pitch black, mind. I had a small torch, and with that and some luck I opened a couple of the panels that lined the walls clear around the room. Inside one panel was a paintin' by the Russian artist ... the fanciful, bright stuff, it was by ...”

“Chagall?” Oxby said.

“A circus paintin', lively colors and that. I can't believe what I saw next, and maybe I didn't even see it. It was a portrait, skipper, I swear, though I didn't get much of a look at it—maybe two seconds. If I saw it again I'd know it.”

“Cézanne?” Oxby said softly.

“I want to say it was. Be a damned coincidence if it was some other artist. It was just then that I got smashed by some big lout who came up behind me.”

Jimmy described how he broke away. “He let a hand go, and I knew what to do.”

“Then what?”

“I got the hell off the boat, ran off the pier, then managed to get picked up by my chum Tompkins. We circled back and bobbed on the water until we saw the skipper and a woman go back aboard the tug. That was it. Whoever grabbed me must have gone off the boat while I was waitin' for Tompkins.”

Oxby scribbled a few notes. “Did you have a search warrant with you?”

“No, Skip—”

“Did you report the incident to the duty inspector?”

“I didn't—“

“And did you attempt to contact me about this little experience immediately after it happened?”

“Inspector Oxby, I—”

“Good. Let's just keep this to ourselves, and if you receive any additional information or recall any other detail about your episode on board the
Sepera,
I expect that you will pass it on to me in person. No written reports.”

K
ondo stopped at the gate, gave his name, and indicated that he and Miss Shimada were visiting the gallery at the request of Mr. Pinkster. One guard called in the information while another aimed a videocamera at the car and its passengers. Kondo was waved through. David Blaney was waiting and showed the way to the gallery's conservation room in the basement.

“There it is,” he said sadly. “I'm not sure why you've taken a bother to come and see it, but help yourself.”

Mari Shimada bowed graciously, put down a canvas bag that bristled with compartments, and immediately began withdrawing what appeared to be surgical instruments. She took out a number of small bottles containing liquids of various colors and an assorted variety of empty vials. She probed the congealed paint with tweezers and knives and collected a half dozen samples, putting drops of a colored fluid in each. Then, carefully, she poked about in the canvas and cut away several pieces, some with paint; one of them, an inch square taken from the edge of the painting, had been neither painted and varnished nor sprayed with the solvent.

She worked quickly and professionally; After forty minutes, she began gathering up her tools and vials and returning them neatly to the bag.

She bowed to Blaney, thanked him for his cooperation, then nodded to Kondo. They got into their car and drove off.

F
raser and Clyde had taken an overnight Air France flight on Monday; by midday on Tuesday, luggage, dog, and family retainer were ensconced in a top-floor suite at the Hôtel Meurice on Rue de Rivoli. That evening Fraser taxied to the airport to meet Llewellyn's inbound Concorde due on the ground at 10:45. Also on hand was a contingent from the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, headed by Mirella LeBorgne. She extended a warm welcome and introduced her colleagues. “You had a good flight?” she asked.

“Smooth as glass, and on time, too,” Llewellyn said.

Without warning, bright lights flooded over the group and a loud voice came from behind a camera.

“Bienvenue! Monsieur Llewellyn!” Unmistakably it was Scooter Albany.

André Lachaud, LeBorgne's assistant and as quiet as a penitent at the security council meeting, fawned and fussed over Llewellyn, “Can you ever realize how famous your painting has become?”

“We'll take you to your hotel,” LeBorgne said pleasantly, as if there were no alternative.

Fraser sat next to Lachaud, who was behind the wheel of a low-slung Citroën; Llewellyn and LeBorgne were in the back. “You should know that while you are in Paris you will have the best possible protection,” Mirella LeBorgne said. “Just now there is a car following, and another is ahead of us. At the hotel and during all of tomorrow, there will be God-knows-how-many police and other agents watching every move you make.”

“Too much,” Llewellyn replied, almost apologetically. “All that isn't necessary.”

LeBorgne shook her head and looked distressed. “I'm afraid Henri Trama agrees. He's clearly not pleased that you are taking such a risk.
In fact, he wishes, and I agree, that you should go directly to Aix. Have you thought about doing that?”

“Yes,” Llewellyn said, nodding, “but I'm sticking with my plans. I'll be safe.” He saw her disbelief. “I truly will.”

Mirella said, “I'm afraid that I must tell you that Trama may file a complaint through the National Security office.”

“Complaint? About what?” Llewellyn asked.

“I can't be sure, something to do with procedure and diplomatic courtesy from Scotland Yard.”

 

The telephone rang less than a minute after Llewellyn walked into his hotel room. It was Jack Oxby. “Trama has refused to arrange for security after Lyon. Your days as a lightning rod may be over before they begin. Disappointed?”