A Glancing Light (A Chris Norgren Mystery) (27 page)

She sat back and eyed me quizzically. "An audience with the Mafia
padroni
." She sighed. "Tell me, Chris, is this what life is like for other art curators, too, or is it just you?"

"It's just me. Anyway, the only time these guys showed any interest was when they thought I might know Sylvester Stallone."

"Maybe you were talking to the wrong
padroni
."

"Maybe. Antuono claims the ones involved are in Bologna now. Apparently, he's close to some kind of deal with them to get the pictures back."

"Chris . . . should you really be going back to Bologna, even for a night? Somebody tried to kill you there."

"No problem. They think I'm dead."

"They—?"

"Oh, did I forget that part? Yes, Antuono 'disappeared' me. He put out a story to the press that I'd been successfully blown up. So I'll be safe. In any case, I have to go back. I wound up coming straight here from Sicily; most of my things are still in Bologna."

"Oh." A perceptible hollowness had come into our conversation. Anne was looking down at her empty cup, turning it slowly on its saucer. "What time do you have to go?"

"I'd better head over to the train station at four," I said. "It takes about an hour to get to the airport."

She looked at her watch. "Fifty minutes, " she murmured. I cleared my throat. "What about you? When do you leave?"

"I've got a military flight at a little after eight." She suddenly looked up at me. That delicate, oddly affecting tic below her eyes was back. "Chris, couldn't you—"

"Anne, couldn't we—" I said at the same time, and we both laughed.

We could and we did. Anne had some time off due her, and there wasn't any pressing reason I couldn't take a few days' vacation, too. The post office across the street had a rank of international telephone booths from one of which Anne convinced the United States Air Force that they could get by without her until the following Monday. I wasn't able to get through to Seattle, but I'd try again later. We came out of the post office hand in hand, delighted with ourselves, but as yet undecided as to where we would spend the time.

"We could stay here, Anne suggested. "Maybe in one of the beach hotels."

"Except that my things are still in Bologna."

"What about going back then? All that good eating—"

I made a face. "Maybe we can do that another time. For the moment, Bologna seems to have lost its charm for me."

Besides, although I saw little danger in returning for a single night, I wasn't keen on being seen around the city by anyone who was under the happy impression he'd killed me. Especially not with Anne at my side.

"Well, how about going back long enough to get your things?" she asked. "I can try and get a seat on your flight. Then tomorrow we can go someplace else. Have you ever been to Lake Maggiore?"

I shook my head.

"It's wonderful. I know a hotel in Stresa that's straight out of the eighteenth century. You'd love it—stuffy and old- fashioned—"

"Thanks a lot."

"—and romantic as they come."

"That's better. Uh, you've been there?"

"Yes; by bus, as part of an R and R group tour, not that it's any of your business. It can't be much more than three hours from Bologna by train. The water is this incredible turquoise-green, and there are lemon trees and pomegranates and coconut palms, and the Borromean Islands are like a set from Sigmund Romberg. We could just laze around and take it all in. What do you say?"

What would anybody say? We went directly to the KLM terminal in the central railroad station to get her a seat on the plane. Then we picked up the bags we'd both left in the luggage room and boarded the train for the airport. I couldn't seem to stop grinning.

And no longer, even in my heart of hearts, did I carry a shred of resentment toward Calvin for his long weekend on the Riviera. Poor Calvin, with his dreary, eternal flitting from woman to woman. My heart went out to him.

Chapter 19

When we arrived at the hotel in Bologna, there was a note in my box: Willem van de Graaf had called. I was to telephone him at home if I got in before eleven. And, I was informed at the desk, another gentleman had telephoned that morning. Although he had become somewhat agitated at missing me, he had left no message except to say that it was quite important and he would call again.

"An Italian gentleman or an American gentleman?" I asked.

"Italian," I was told.

"Maybe it was Colonel Antuono," Anne suggested a few minutes later in our room.

"Not likely. The Eagle of Lombardy doesn't get agitated." She stretched and covered a yawn with the back of her hand. "I'm beat. I think I'll take a hot shower."

I smiled happily at her. How quickly we had relaxed into the old rhythms, the old, easy intimacy. On the flight from Amsterdam I'd begun to get a little anxious about how comfortable we'd be with each other once we were alone. I'd even considered raising the possibility of separate rooms, at least for the first night, until we got used to one another again. Fortunately, good sense had prevailed.

"Go ahead," I said. "I'll give Willem a call and see what he's come up with."

The receiver was picked up on the third ring. "Willem, this is Chris Norgren. Is it a fake?"

"A fake?" Surprisingly, he laughed. "Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Amusing, in a way."

I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that.
Amusing
wasn't a word I associated with van de Graaf. Willem didn't have a sense of humor so much as a sense of irony.

"The
cañamograss
around the edges is no more than a few months old," he told me, "and not real
cañamograss
at that."

That was what I'd thought from the beginning. What was so amusing about it? "And?" I asked warily.

"And the panel is actually two separate layers laminated together, the process being disguised by the
cañamograss
."

Also as I'd thought. "Willem," I said, "why do I feel as if I'm waiting for another shoe to drop?"

"Shoe?"

"Willem, is the Uytewael a fake or isn't it?"

"No," he said, "the Uytewael is not a fake."

I sat down on the edge of the bed. "What?"

"It's not Uytewael at his best, but it's Uytewael, without question."

Just what Di Vecchio and his people had concluded. "But you said—"

"The Uytewael is authentic. The back to which it's glued is not. It's an imitation, a very good one, of a seventeenth- century Dutch panel. But it's quite recent."

This took a few seconds to sink in. "You're telling me someone took a genuine Uytewael, sawed off the front of it—"

"Evidently."

"And then glued it onto a
fake
panel-back?"
 

"Precisely."

"Why? What could possibly be the point?"

"I was hoping," van de Graaf said, "that you could tell me."

"The question is, what did they do with . ."

Whatever I was going to say trailed away. I stood frozen and mute, the receiver pressed against my ear. I was at long last having a moment of real insight, obvious and startling at the same time—what the psychologists call an aha experience. There
was
a link between at least some of the disparate happenings of the last few weeks; specifically, a link between Sicily and Seattle, between Ugo Scoccimarro and Mike Blusher. How could I have failed to see it, or even to guess at it, before?

"Have to go, Willem," I mumbled. "Hold on to that painting. I'll be back in touch soon."

More thoughts crowded their way in; more links, more possibilities. Hypotheses sprang from hypotheses, like a crossword puzzle being filled out every which way at once.

The telephone rang the instant I put it down.

"Chris, is that you? It's Lloyd.'

"Lloyd?" I was still tracing out the crossword puzzle.

"As in 'Lloyd from the Seattle Art Museum'? Your place of employment? Lloyd, the director's faithful administrative assistant—the director who, I might add, has been seriously concerned about you since you failed to arrive on your scheduled flight, and has had me searching hither and—"

"Oh, God, I forgot to call, didn't I? Look, I'm back in Bologna—"

"No, really? Do you mean, Bologna,
Italy
?"

I sighed. This was Lloyd's typical mode of conversation, and I was generally up to it. But not now. "Lloyd, I'm sorry. Something important came up. Is Tony in? I have to talk to him."

"I'm not sure. Just a minute." There was a pause for muffled conversation. "Chris? I'm afraid our leader is out, but Calvin Boyer is just pulsing to speak with you. Hold on, he's going to his desk."

A few seconds later Calvin came on to the line, pulsing. "Chris—hey, did you hear about Mike Blusher?"

It took me a moment to respond. The talk with van de Graaf was still rumbling around my mind "No, what now?"

"They arrested him, can you believe it?"

That cleared my head. "You bet I can," I said with enthusiasm. "For what, fraud?"

"You got it. The FBI was in here talking to us about it this morning. They got him in a sting. He's selling the Terbrugghen all over the place. There are four of them, at least. They nailed him with a fake Uruguayan. This guy from Oman—"

"Wait a minute, will you, Calvin? Slow down. What's a fake Uruguayan?"

"Well, a real Uruguayan. You know, an Uruguayan- American. He was supposed to be a millionaire from Montevideo or someplace, but he's really an FBI agent.
Capisce
?"

"No," I said irritably. "Slow down, will you?"

"All right, pay attention, don't interrupt." There was a pause and a slurp; his afternoon Coke, straight from the can. Then, more slowly, if not that much more coherently, he explained. In the end, after many questions and explications, a more or less intelligible story emerged.

A week earlier, an Omani hotel magnate and novice art collector, Mr. al-Ghazali, who was in New York for several days of auctions at Sotheby's, had gone to the New York Police Department to express certain reservations about a purchase he had tentatively agreed to make—not from Sotheby's, but from a Mr. Michael Blusher, who was also there for the auctions.

According to Mr. al-Ghazali, he had recognized Blusher at a cocktail party at the Central Park South condominium of a Manhattan art dealer and had approached him on the terrace to congratulate him on the spectacular discovery of the Terbrugghen. Blusher had asked him if he collected Old Masters, and al-Ghazali had replied laughingly that he was thinking about it inasmuch as the Impressionists and the Modems seemed to be priced beyond reach. They had then each gone on to talk with other people, but as the party was winding down, Blusher had suggested they have dinner together.

Afterward, over
truite fraîche grillée
at Lutece, Blusher had revealed that he was interested in quietly selling the painting to a discreet buyer. He had come on strong—"like a yacht salesman," al-Ghazali disapprovingly said later—but the Omani's interest had been aroused all the same and they had talked price. Blusher had asked $850,000, al-Ghazali had offered $300,000, and they had settled on $425,000, contingent on al-Ghazali's later examination of the painting in Seattle.

Blusher, too, had a condition: that the sale not receive any publicity, at least for the time being. The only reason he was letting the painting go, he had explained, was that he was in a financial hole, and if word of it got out, others would guess the reason, something that would do his business no good. Al-Ghazali had accepted the condition, and they had shaken hands on it over the
soufflé au Grand Marnier.

But later the Omani began to have second thoughts. He was new to collecting and unsure of himself, and the hard sell hadn't sat well with him. Nor had the secrecy, the emphasis on discretion. The following evening, at another party, he had chatted with a South Korean newspaper publisher who, like al-Ghazali, was in New York for his first major auction. The Korean had astonished him by saying that Blusher had offered
him
the Terbrugghen over lunch. The Korean, in fact, was under the impression that his own conditional offer of $330,000 had been accepted.

Stung by this evidence of bad faith (and very likely by the lower price the Korean had gotten), al-Ghazali went to the police. He was referred to an art-squad detective who in turn contacted the FBI's white-collar crime squad, which had already been following Blusher's much-publicized art adventures with skepticism if not outright suspicion.

"Ha," I said on hearing this.

"What?"

"I said ha. They weren't the only ones. Didn't I say all along he was pulling something?"

"Did you?" Calvin said. "I don't remember that."
 

"Go ahead, Calvin."

The FBI had quickly gone into action. A few days after Blusher returned to Seattle, he was approached by a Portland art dealer claiming to be an intermediary for a rich Uruguayan interested in making some, ah, discreet art purchase, preferably without the usual bothersome and time-consuming forms and declarations.

Blusher had leaped slavering for the bait. The mysterious Uruguayan had been shown the Terbrugghen, with the over-painted "van Eyck" now removed, and a price of $400,000 had been agreed upon. The Uruguayan, who preferred to deal in cash (Blusher had cheerfully agreed to this), would return with the money the next day.

Instead, a team of FBI agents and Seattle Police Department detectives had arrived at Venezia with both a search warrant and an arrest warrant. In a closet next to Blusher's office they had found the Terbrugghen. Within an hour they'd uncovered three identical copies. "Exact duplicates, front and back," was the way they put it in their report.

At first, Blusher had claimed that they were all part of his legitimate authentic-simulated-masterpiece business. Then he had changed his mind and gone to a modified version of his mistaken-shipment-from-Italy story. Then he had decided that he wanted to talk to a lawyer, after all, and had said no more.

I sighed with satisfaction. It was just as I'd thought. The panel on which Blusher's Terbrugghen was painted had, of course, come from Ugo's picture, the back of which had been sawed off and replaced with an imitation. The Terbrugghen had then been forged directly on the genuine panel, which would have been a little thinner than before, but so what? Old panels were hardly uniform in thickness. Then, to spice up the eventual "discovery," the Terbrugghen had been painted over with the van Eyck.