A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery)
Read A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) Online
Authors: Aaron Elkins,Charlotte Elkins
ALSO BY CHARLOTTE AND AARON ELKINS
T
HE
A
LIX
L
ONDON
S
ERIES
A DANGEROUS TALENT
T
HE
L
EE
O
FSTED
S
ERIES
A WICKED SLICE
ROTTEN LIES
NASTY BREAKS
WHERE HAVE ALL THE BIRDIES GONE?
ON THE FRINGE
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2013 Charlotte and Aaron Elkins
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
PO Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781477805077
ISBN-10: 1477805079
Welcome to the Home Page of
The Culture Guru
“Seen on the Art Scene”
by
I. Witt Ness
Word is that a multimillion-dollar painting proudly owned by the Greek tycoon-“art collector” Panos Papadakis is not quite all it’s supposed to be, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask Lyons’ esteemed
Laboratoire Forensique Pour l’Art
, which has just finished subjecting two dozen of Papadakis’s paintings to its fearsome array of tests. Twenty-three of them passed. The twenty-fourth? A dud. In other words, a sham. In other words, a FAKE.
Even your intrepid reporter’s skills have not yet ferreted out just which one it is (stay tuned, but I have it on good authority that it is one of the gems of Papadakis’s “collection” and set our boy Panos back something like $2,000,000 when he bought it in the mid 1990s—and that was before the explosion in art prices).
What makes all this especially titillating is that these particular twenty-four paintings were in the process of being readied for what has to be the glitziest and most exclusive art auction of all time. Strictly invitational, it is described in the auction catalogue as “Masterpieces of Impressionist and Modern Art from the Collection of Panos Papadakis,” and it will be the highlight of a lavish Mediterranean cruise on megamillionaire Papadakis’s mega-mega-yacht, the sleek, two-hundred-thirty-nine foot
Artemis.
Some people in the know have begun to wonder if news of the fake will produce an epidemic of cold feet when it comes time to bid on the other paintings in the “collection.” My guess? No problemo,
señor.
They’ll be more eager than ever to be part of the occasion. Nothing like a touch of notoriety to add that delicious little hint of frisson to a society occasion. Especially when one can easily afford to lose a couple mill (as who cannot?).
Interested in securing an invitation to this fabulous junket on the bounding main? Not a problem… as long as you happen to be one of Papadakis’s well-heeled financial clients with at least €1,000,000 invested with him. Oh, and to certify that you’re willing and able to shell out at least the minimum acceptable bid on the least expensive painting. Anyone interested in a snazzy little Mihaly von Zichy (who?) with a reserve price of $980,000?
Know what your dauntless correspondent finds the most intriguing question about the whole affair? WHY is Papadakis putting a sizable chunk of his beloved “collection” up for sale? One can’t help wondering if the mono-multi-mega-mogul’s finances are in as much trouble as his native country’s, so that—
Panos Papadakis slammed the iPad onto the slat-topped dining table hard enough to rattle the Armani-designed luncheon cutlery. “What the hell he means with all these, what you call them, quote marks?” He stared accusingly at Edward Reed, who sat beside him and had called the blog to his attention. “What, he’s saying I’m not really a ‘collector’? My collection isn’t really a ‘collection’?” He emphasized his points with sarcastic little air-quotation marks alongside his ears. “What, it’s not good enough for him, the piker? What does he know? He don’t even got the nerve to use his own name, the bum.”
Suppressing both a sigh and a smile, but not quite managing to restrain one elegantly lifted eyebrow, Reed watched Papadakis stalk to the railing of the mountainside terrace of his enormous home above the posh
seaside village of Gustavia on the Caribbean island of St. Barts. There he stood, the two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-fifty-eighth richest man in the world, muttering and staring down at the marina, squat, neckless, and incontestably toad-like. Thick-wristed, furry forearms stuck out of his short-sleeved sport shirt, from the open neck of which more wiry, dense hair sprouted like some black jungle growth struggling to get out into the sun. Although Reed knew for a fact that the man had shaved that morning, Papadakis’s cheeks were blue-black almost up to his eyes and down to his collarbone. About the only place he seemed to have trouble growing hair was on his scalp, which got barer every time Reed saw him—so much so that, judging from today’s coiffure, he had given up trying to make a comb-across work.
His anger had come as no surprise to Reed. An explosion was to have been expected, but not because of the quotation marks. To be honest, he hadn’t thought that Papadakis would even notice them, let alone grasp their nuances. Once again, and not for the first time by a long shot, he reminded himself not to confuse the financier’s natural coarseness with lack of intelligence.
On the other hand, it also wasn’t the first time that Papadakis had been goaded by snarky observations about his collection, and the more of them there were, the more they seemed to get under his skin. The gist of them, generally speaking, was that his understanding of art was pathetic and his collection wasn’t a collection at all, but a conglomeration, a meaningless potpourri, with no unifying principle underlying it. They were wrong, though; there was a powerful unifying principle, and it was called
profit
. The man had no emotional or scholarly interest in any particular artist, or period, or medium, or style. He bought paintings based purely on his estimate of their likely increase in value—a perfectly logical reason as far as Reed was concerned, and one for which he by no means shared the Culture Guru’s contempt.
In Reed’s opinion, in fact, regardless of all the high-sounding talk out there, there were only two basic motivations that drove today’s art
market—especially the Contemporary and Post-Modernist markets. One was to show off for one’s peers:
You see, by paying millions of dollars for this stuffed shark or this collection of torn pieces of cardboard covered with unreadable graffiti written in chalk, I am demonstrating how very hip and avant-garde I am
. And it usually met its objective. Why else did auction audiences applaud so respectfully when someone paid an obscene amount of money for a preposterous pile of junk, or rags, or medicine bottles “artistically” lined up on shelving?
Reed found this motivation not only ridiculous but troubling. It did not bode well for the future of the market that he loved. The other motive, however—profit—had his wholehearted approval. After all, it was based on the same theory that successfully drove the stock market, the greater fool theory (otherwise known as the “dumber than thou” hypothesis): that is, you buy an object, regardless of its inherent value or lack thereof, in the expectation that someone dumber than you will eventually pay you even more for it.