The Forgery of Venus (16 page)

“Really? That’s strange, I haven’t painted for the gallery trade in a long time.”

“No, I meant the pastiches. The advertisements and magazine illustrations. I said to myself, this fellow, whyever is he wasting his time with this garbage? He really knows how to paint in the grand manner, and not the degraded form that has dominated that sort of painting for a hundred and fifty years—Landseer, Bouguereau, and so forth—but as the old masters painted, with penetration and density and passion. You seemed like a man born out of his time.”

I felt a bubble of tension form in my belly and rise into my throat so that I had to swallow a lump, first, because since my breakdown this was the first independent, undeniable confirmation that the miserable life I recalled was real in some objective sense; and second, because for the first time in my adult life I’d found someone who really understood who I
was
.

I managed to say, “Well, thank you. I’ve often felt that way myself.”

“I’m sure. I also am a man born outside of his time, so we have something in common, you and I. So when Castelli mentioned that he was repairing his palazzo and wished to hire an artist, I naturally thought of you and so he made the offer through Mark Slade.”

“Well, then, thank you, again.”

“Yes, but this is really nothing compared to what you are capable of, isn’t it so? There you were copying an existing design, but of course, you can paint from your own imagination as well, as Velázquez did, as Rubens did, and so forth. Fate has brought us together, yes?” Here a smile, a charming one, we men of the world sharing a moment. Okay, to be honest, I was bowled over a little. Like I say, stuff like this doesn’t happen to me on an average day in New York.

He led me back to the living room of the suite and had lunch served; waiters brought in a table and a whole spread, with wine and everything, and we ate convivially enough. Krebs pulled Mark out of the freezer, to which Mark responded like a toy poodle. I was a little loopy from all the wine and so it took a while for me to pick up that the conversation had swung around to me, that somehow an arrangement had been made that involved me doing something and that a million dollars was involved. Mark had neglected to tell me that I was part of some done deal.

So I said, “Excuse me, guys, I seem to be missing something. What am I supposed to do for my million?”

There fell a silence, and Krebs shot Mark a look that turned him moth-wing green. Krebs said, “I thought you had thoroughly briefed Wilmot on this project.”

Mark spluttered some lame excuse, but Krebs shut him down. He gave me a look like a stainless steel rod, no smiles now. He said, “When Velázquez was in Rome, according to reliable testimony, he made four paintings of women in the nude, in all probability for Don Gaspar himself. As everyone knows, only one of them survives, the so-called
Rokeby Venus
. You’re going to paint one of the others, in the same style and with the same skill. And, later, who knows? There may be other opportunities in that line.”

Okay, so at first I figured this was the
Vanity Fair
job again, which was cool, but then I thought, Why so much money? I recalled Mark’s crackpot scheme to sell real-fakes to the masters of the universe, and for a bit I thought this was the same on a larger scale. I asked about that, and he said, “No, I am not interested in decorations for the nouveau riche. I am interested in a painting that is stylistically and physically indistinguishable from a genuine Velázquez—accurate in every respect: the stretchers, the canvas, the pigments, all must be period. And that requires a certain skill, which I am willing to pay for.”

So then—
duh!
—I got it.

I said, “You’re going to sell it as genuine, aren’t you? You’re paying me a million bucks to forge a Velázquez.”

The F-word, once out in the air, didn’t seem to affect him at all. He said, “Call it what you like. You understand, Wilmot, there is an immense private demand for old masters, not to mention the attraction of the subject matter. Who would not want to have their own
Venus
by Velázquez? And this sort of thing has been going on for years. You go to a museum and you read the little tags and so you know, this is a Tintoretto, this is a Vermeer, and mostly that attribution is based on people like Duveen or Berenson or even your friend here, whose pri
mary interest is in selling paintings for large sums. But the main thing is the quality of the painting, what it does to the eye and the heart. If the painting speaks to the eye and the heart, who cares if it came from the brush of Titian or from someone just as good?”

I pointed out that it was, like, still illegal, and that I preferred not to go to prison, because when any unknown old master painting showed up at auction, not to mention a Velázquez, people would ask questions, there were forensic tests…but he waved his hand in the air, brushing away flies.

“First of all,” he said, “there is no question of any auctions. This will be a strictly private sale, for cash. And as far as forensics go, I have people who are experts in this, they will advise you. Besides this, there is no illegality without a complaint, and there will be no complaint. The clients will be happy, you will be happy, I will be happy, even Mr. Slade here will be happy. Happiness all around, what could be wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess. Look, no offense, but this is a little strange for me. Can I think about it a little before I decide?”

So Krebs kind of leans forward and makes a little tent with his hands, and now he has a different kind of smile.

He said, “My friend, you put me in something of an uncomfortable position. Arrangements have been made with various people on the understanding that you are agreed on this project. Monies have been advanced, and the kind of people who advance monies for such a thing are not the Deutsche Bank. Also, you are now privy to the plan. If I now go back to my people and say, well, Wilmot will not do it, then I am in big trouble and, I am very much afraid, so are you and so is your friend Mark. Here we are in beautiful Venice, the home of the oubliette, you know? The little hole in the floor where you drop the fellow who has become inconvenient? You wait for the right tide, of course, and all your errors are flushed away by the sea. I’m sad to say I have very unforgiving partners.”

It was the kind of situation where you can’t really believe it’s happening to you, and I kind of chuckled, like he was a big kidder, and said, “Who are these partners?”

He kept smiling, as at an idiot child: no, we mustn’t stick the fork in the wall socket, dear.

“They prefer to remain silent partners, very discreet people, these partners. In any case I urge you to reconsider your position. Really, it’s a choice between being rich and happy or else all three of us floating out into the
laguna
.”

“What about Franco? Is he going to float too?”

I looked at Franco, who was standing in the corner with his arms folded. He gave me a white-toothed smile too. Everyone was happy except Mark, who looked like a piece of old Gorgonzola.

Krebs said, “Oh, Franco! Franco will be fine. Franco doesn’t work for me, you see. He is a representative of the interests I was just discussing. In fact, I believe he would actually participate in the disposals, should they become necessary. With great regret, I’m sure.”

He clapped his hands; Mark jumped an inch off his cushion.

“But…why are we dwelling on hypothetical unpleasantness? You will do the job, yes?”

I nodded. “Now that you put it in those terms…I would be happy to.”

He said, “Excellent!” and extended his hand, and we shook.

“And now you are in the great Venetian tradition of
contrafazzione,
in which I believe you have already begun with your marvelous Tiepolo. Wilmot, I don’t think you have yet understood that now you have entered a completely different mode of being. Before this you belonged to the world of people who wait in lines like sheep, at the tram, at the airport, and scrabble for a living because there is never enough, and eat shit every day. You have before now wasted yourself making pictures for magazines and have had to wait in the anterooms of men who are not fit to clean your boots. And when
you became ill, or your children became ill, then you also had to wait, wait for some doctor to give you a moment of his so valuable time. You have a sick child, yes? You have no idea of what it will now be like for you and this child. The finest care, the finest! Clinics in Switzerland…do you need organs? Expensive drugs? There is no question you will get what you require, and with a smile too, and with no delay.”

I said something stupid about the forgery business having a good health care plan. He ignored me; he was in full flood and went on for quite a while about the difference between the proles and their masters, and all about how the masters deserved the art and the proles didn’t, and how wonderful it was going to be for me, probably not a set of opinions you’d be likely to hear in New York society, but maybe I was wrong, maybe this was how these people talked all the time when people like me weren’t around. It was an interesting change, anyway, from hanging around with rich liberals. And then he said something that really got to me.

He said, “You are a great artist, Wilmot, and now that we have discovered one another you will fulfill your destiny, you will be my Velázquez. This is what you have wanted your whole life—to paint like this and be rewarded for it, am I not right?”

And, you know, he was. That’s what I wanted. That is what I’d always wanted, and never knew until that moment.

I said, “And you’re the king of Spain.”

He nodded and said, “Yes. I am the king of Spain.” No irony. We were in an irony-free zone, which I also found strange and bracing.

And I said, “Okay, Your Majesty. Where do you want this painting done? Here in Venice?”

And he said, “No, in Rome, of course. It’s all arranged.”

S
lotsky and I went out to the launch and boarded it, and as soon as we’d cleared the dock I turned to him and said, “Well, Mark, you really know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Jesus Christ, Wilmot! Do you think I knew what that crazy fucker was going to propose? I just thought he was going to give you another restoration job. Do you think I like being threatened with fucking
death
? I’m an art dealer, for crying out loud! I thought I was going to crap in my pants there.”

“Don’t bullshit me, buddy. I think we’re
way
the fuck out of the bullshitting regions now. I’ve heard a little about Herr Krebs from another source; he’s not just your everyday old masters dealer, and if I knew it, so did you. You set this whole thing up, but you were too chickenshit to let me in on it before he proposed it and it was too late. Why? Because you knew goddamn well I would never have come if I’d known. So spill!”

He said, “I swear to
God
I didn’t know he was talking about a forgery. I never would have gotten you into this if—”

I stepped closer to him, put my arm around his shoulders, and grabbed his near arm.

“Let me interrupt you here, Mark,” I said, close to his ear. “I am angry. I’m a mild kind of guy, but like many mild guys, when I blow my top I’m out of control. I’m shaking from the adrenaline and I probably have the superhuman strength you read about, and so, my little man, if you don’t fucking level with me about Krebs and this
whole deal, I am going to pick you up and throw you over the side of this vessel.”

And after a little struggle, out it came, because I really would have tossed him in the drink, and he knew it. I think it was the four-thousand-dollar suit and the five-hundred-dollar shoes more than the fear of actually drowning.

“Okay, here’s the whole thing,” he said. “First, what do you know about art theft?”

“Enough to know that ninety-five percent of it is bozos grabbing pictures off the wall and running out the door. Most museum security is a joke.”

“Exactly. But here I’m talking about the other five percent. I’m talking well-known paintings that can never be sold openly. Assuming they’re stolen by halfway smart thieves, what do they get out of it?”

“Ransom?”

“There’s that, but the fact is that when professional thieves lift major works of art, they want them for purposes of collateral. Criminal enterprises need to raise money the same as legitimate ones, and obviously they can’t go to legitimate sources of credit. A twenty-million-dollar painting is light, portable, easily hidden. I give you my painting, and you give me the five mil I need to buy heroin or armaments, and then when I’ve made my pile I pay you back plus your vig and you give me back my work of art. If the deal goes sour, you get to keep the painting. There are paintings we know of that’ve been used this way multiple times. It’s better than drugs or cash because there’s less possibility of pilferage, a little like commercial paper for bad guys.”

“I thought those boys worked by shooting people if they didn’t pay.”

“Oh, they do, they do, but that doesn’t do shit for their cash flow. With the artwork, they’re covered.”

“And where does our friend come into this?”

“I’ll tell you where. Think about it: at any one time there are a couple of dozen major works of art floating around the underworld, and these guys are not usually connoisseurs. They got no use for a Renoir. After the need for collateral is over, or if the party who has it in pawn needs some ready cash, what does he do? He’s got something worth twenty mil and he’s got no fucking idea in the world how to realize it. That’s what Krebs does.”

“He sells stolen artworks for criminals. Terrific. Who does he sell them to?”

“The people he was talking about. Rich fuckers who don’t give a damn.”

“And let me guess—you find the rich fuckers for him.”

“What’re you, nuts? I’m a legitimate dealer, I can’t be associated with the sale of stolen goods.”

“So what’s your end of the deal?”

“I’m a consultant.”

I laughed in his face.

“Seriously,” he said. “No kidding. He needs someone to talk to.”

“Who, Krebs? Mark, with all due respect, Krebs doesn’t need you to advise him about paintings.”

“No, but he does need a legitimate dealer to get him close to the museums. Not that the big houses are above handling dodgy stuff, but Krebs is poison. So when the time comes, it turns out that someone not to be named has offered Mark Slade Associates the stolen Renoir. Does the museum want it back? Of course they do, and so do the insurance companies who paid out. I arrange for the transfer and take a commission. The thief gets something, Krebs is insulated, the insurer cuts their loss, the picture’s back on the wall. Everyone is happy.”

“So you’re a front. A beard.”

“If you want to call it that. As far as the museum is concerned, I’m a hero. And this is all very discreet. I mean, you know me for years and you had no idea.”

“But I’m sort of not surprised. Where do the cops figure in all this?”

“What cops? Some of this isn’t even reported, and what is reported, well, most cops think there are better uses of their time, the guy who holds up liquor stores with a gun, drug gangs, rapists. They could care less, really, if some rich assholes lose a couple of paintings, especially if they get them back. They might get interested if an art theft led to a drug gang, or a big arms dealer, but if not, then not.”

“Not even about forgery?”

“What’re you talking
forgery
? Forgery is I steal some checks and draw money from your account. Forgery is a fake will, Auntie Agatha’s money goes to the evil nephew and not the old cats’ shelter. There’s an injured party. Here, you’re producing a work of art indistinguishable from an original.
Indistinguishable!
Where’s the injury? The buyer looks at it and he’s full of exactly the same pride and pleasure as he would be if the work came from some guy who died three hundred years ago. And like Krebs said, how the hell do we know if
anything
is genuine? Because a so-called scholar who was getting paid by a dealer said so? The whole attribution thing is horseshit from beginning to end.”

“So we might as well get rich off the corruption.”

“Damn straight! Look, you probably don’t know any Wall Street types, bond traders, mergers and acquisitions guys, hedge fund managers, but I do. They’re my best customers. Chaz, believe me, these guys are assholes. They know nothing. When the market’s up they’re geniuses, and when the market’s down it’s not their fault, and they walk away with billions. These are people who run up a fifteen-thousand-dollar bar bill in an evening and they don’t even
think
about it.
And you want me to be scrupulous about the authenticity of some
painting
I sell them?”

“It’s a point of view.”

“It’s the only one that makes sense, given the world as it is. Look, Chaz, I
love
painting. That’s something we have in common, me and Krebs. It’s not just commodities or bragging rights for us. It’s the only fucking
genuine
thing that’s left. And I love your work. You’re a wonderful artist, and over the years every time I’d see one of those things you’d done for some magazine, it’d stab me in the heart; I’d think, What a waste! And okay, you wouldn’t show your work, I don’t even want to ask why, but, honest to God, I always wanted to see you get out of that grungy world, busting your ass for three, four, five grand a pop, living in that shithole you’re in, never having any leisure, none of the respect your work deserves, and when this opportunity came up—”

“How did it come up?”

“Well, like he said, he’s a big fan.”

“That wasn’t bullshit?”

“No, and in fact that’s how I was able to get close to him. I met him at a party at Castelli’s. I’d sold him—I mean Castelli—a nice Correggio red chalk study of St. Mark, and I got introduced. This is like seven, eight years ago. Of course, I’d heard of Krebs, and we got to talking about painting, I mean contemporary stuff, and how we neither of us would hang on our own personal walls the work of anyone who couldn’t draw, and we talked about who could and couldn’t and he brought up your name. He’d seen that poster you did for the AIDS group, the Bosch? He thought it was amazing, and he was blown away when I told him you were like practically my best friend.”

“Former best friend.”

“Oh, come off it, Wilmot! I saw your eyes light up when he started talking about the money. Stop acting like a girl who just lost her cherry.”

I gave him a hard look, or what was meant to be one, but I knew there was no moral force behind it, and so did he.

The boat touched, bounced; the deck man leaped off and secured the prow to a cleat. I said, “Yeah, well, why the hell not?”

Mark grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. We walked into Venice like regular people.