The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (4 page)

“W
ELL, THERE YOU HAVE
it, and I’m glad to be rid of it. Phuh.” Monsieur Etienne DeMornay rubbed his hands vigorously, as if washing some unpleasant substance from them. He was a small, nervous man with an unnaturally high color. He talked expansively, using his arms. “I don’t mind telling you, it hasn’t been easy.”

That was the Frenchman’s code language for, I think you owe me more than the price we originally agreed upon.

After years of dealing with DeMornay, Manship knew the code words only too well. “I didn’t expect it would be,” he said.

“I’ve given the better part of a year to locating this.” DeMornay pointed to the small pencil drawing mounted on an easel. “Through Italy, Holland, Canada, and, finally, the unnumbered account of some ponce in Switzerland …”

“A gangster?” Manship inquired.

“Worse. All you had to do was look at the man. Phuh.” He made that curious sucking sound again to convey his disgust. “It’s cost me the friendship of several researchers and a top-notch restorer. Wait till you see his bill.”

Manship could sense his own bill mounting by the minute.

“And then to have that—that creature barge in here to my gallery. Right in broad daylight. I thank God there were no people here. I run a respectable establishment.”

“It must have been awful.” Manship took a stab at commiseration.

“I want it out of here now. Take it out.”

DeMornay was one of those individuals who go about with a look of chronic injury. Only when large sums of money crossed his palm did the expression change, usually to that of a kind of religious transport. It was almost beatific. Manship often wondered if there was a Madame DeMornay and, if so, what ghastly indignities she was forced to endure each day at the hands of her husband.

“He didn’t actually lay hands on you?” Manship asked.

“My dear, he didn’t have to. It wasn’t necessary. His eyes were hurtful enough.”

“His eyes?”

“Horrible,”
DeMornay snapped in French. “Mad. Cruel.
Horrible.
Phuh.”

They were standing in a private room located in one of the many wings of DeMornay’s renowned galleries on the Boulevard Raspail. Just outside this room were halls and corridors, individual salons crammed with superb paintings, statuary, silver, gems, porcelain, medallions, rare first editions—a treasure-house of the ages. But the room in which they stood was a simple affair, virtually unfurnished except for a half a dozen Louis Quinze chairs arranged in a semicircle on a fine old Savonnerie. The walls were bare and stark white. There were several powerful halogen lights placed on tracks high up on the ceiling. They all pointed to a single spot at the head of the room. Above them was a clear skylight, through which the brilliant sunshine of a Parisian August streamed down upon them. A Botticelli drawing, the object that morning of Manship’s business at the galleries of DeMornay, had been set up before them on a small easel. Not a particularly fine example of the master’s hand, it nevertheless represented the fourth Madonna of the Chigi series and thus, in the light of Manship’s thinking, took on special importance as a curiosity, if not as great art.

Manship lit one of his panatelas. “You say he did offer to buy it?”

“Yes. For fifty thousand francs more than I’m getting from you. But I stuck to my deal.” DeMornay’s voice was an irritating mixture of wheedling and self-righteousness. “I told him very clearly that I had a written commitment to you and that I intended to honor it.”

“What did he say to that?” Manship asked.

The Frenchman thumped his head with a pudgy fist. “What did he say? I told you what he said. Merely that if I sold to you, I’d have cause to regret it.”

“Was this person French?”

“He spoke French. Rather good French at that. But with an Italian accent,” DeMornay added almost as an afterthought.

The story bore with it a certain whiff of fabrication. The Frenchman was embroidering the tale a bit in preparation for the kill. Manship had dealt enough with DeMornay before to know that he was perfectly capable of doing just that sort of thing when it came time to settle up.

“I tell you, Monsieur Manship, this won’t be cheap.”

Manship could scarcely conceal his impatience. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Why didn’t I call—” The red in DeMornay’s cheeks turned an apoplectic purple. “In the first place, the fellow stormed out of here like a tornado. By the time I could grasp what he’d said, he was gone. In the second place, I didn’t call the police because if you do, they come round to ask questions. The moment they appear, the press lice soon follow on their heels. In a business of refinement such as this, that’s fatal.”

“I see,” said Manship. He was seething inside. “How much do I owe you, Etienne?” He had taken out his pen and checkbook.

DeMornay’s eyes widened. “How much? You know how much. It’s all in the contract.”

“I’m under the impression you’re disappointed with that figure.”

The Frenchman grew apologetic. His voice took on a piteous quality. “Well, you know very frankly, my dear—I don’t make a penny on any of this.”

“Yes, of course,” said Manship. He began to scribble in his checkbook.

“With unexpected expenses; many times I must spend my own money. I don’t even charge you.” His eyes fixed on Manship’s checkbook as he spoke. “It’s been a disaster for me.”

Manship handed him the check. A smile of surprised pleasure illuminated DeMornay’s face when he inspected it.

“That’s awfully decent of you, dear fellow.”

“The least I can do is meet the price of my competition.” Manship closed his checkbook and extended his hand.

“You’re going?”

“I’m afraid I must. I’m very busy.”

“I don’t like to see you go off this way.”

“What way?”

“Angry. I can see you’re angry.”

“Angry?” Manship’s eyes opened wide in bogus puzzlement. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

DeMornay looked sheepishly at the American. “Can’t I at least give you lunch?”

“I’m sorry,” Manship said, in a way that closed the question for all eternity. “I have a previous engagement. I’d appreciate your seeing to it that the Lloyd’s people pick up the drawing this afternoon.”

“Of course, dear fellow.” The Frenchman rushed ahead to open the door. “I take it they know what they are to do with it?”

Manship turned and smiled almost impudently into DeMornay’s face. “I think we can depend on Lloyd’s to do the right thing. Good day, Etienne.”

Standing outside the DeMornay galleries in the dazzling August sunshine, Manship took his bearings, figuring his next move. It was late morning of a working day and virtually impossible to get a cab, so he decided to walk to his hotel.’

Crossing the Boulevard St. Germain, he entered the Rue du Bac and walked slowly, skirting what was left of morning rain puddles. The sound of piano music rained down from somewhere up above. For the briefest moment, all of the sunlight was eclipsed by the brick overhang of two adjacent buildings, and where an alley let out onto the street, a man was seated on the ground. He sat on a badly soiled coat that had been folded up to serve as some sort of cushion, leaning his back against the wall of the building. A clochard, he played something melancholy on an ocarina. Passing him, Manship saw that the man had rolled up his trousers to expose a pair of plastic artificial legs with kneecaps made of stainless-steel balls. The pale pinkish orange of the plastic made Manship a bit queasy.

The clochard greeted him by tapping his plastic legs with the ocarina. A dull, hollow thud came forth from somewhere inside them. Manship peered down into an ancient, haggard face framed in a wreath of lanky gray hair, imparting to its owner the look of an Old Testament prophet. One of the pale blue eyes was covered with a gray, milky cataract, like the blank, sightless orb of a dead fish.

The clochard. held his hat up to Manship and smiled, flapping it at him, while at the same time revealing a mouthful of ruined teeth. Manship fumbled in his pockets and scooped up a few francs, which he dropped into the hat. When he stepped back out of the alley, the sun had once more flooded the Rue du Bac, and moving down the street, Manship could still hear the thin, reedy strains of the ocarina behind him.

Back at his hotel, Manship. went directly to his room and placed a transatlantic call to Osgood.

“Can you hear me, Bill?”

“Just barely. It’s a lousy connection. Where are you?”

“Still in Paris.”

“The Pallavicini business?”

“You heard?”

“It’s bizarre,” Osgood said. “I don’t like the sound of it.”

“The next move should be Scotland Yard and Interpol.”

“Is it that serious?”

“I can’t be sure,” said Manship. “But first Istanbul, then Rome. And just now something pretty strange here.” Manship proceeded to tell him about the DeMornay incident on the Boulevard Raspail. “With DeMornay, however, I take the story with a grain of salt. Probably nothing to it. At any rate, I hope to reach Berlin later today for one last crack at those three missing drawings.”

“You think there’s a chance?”

“Who knows? I’ve got one card left to play. It would be a shame not to at least try while I’m here.”

“I don’t know, Mark. This thing in Rome and Istanbul … What do you make of it?”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” Manship said, loosening his collar and kicking off his shoes. “You think they’re connected?”

“We spoke to Lloyd’s today,” Osgood hurried on, “about increasing our coverage.”

“Probably wise;” Manship reflected aloud. “While we’re on the subject of money, I’ll need some additional funds.”

There was the sound of a throat being cleared, followed by a yawning silence from the other side of the Atlantic. Finally, Osgood spoke. “I was up to see Van Nuys Tuesday. I brought up the matter of more money. He practically laughed in my face. We’ve already exhausted most of the usual sources—the National Endowment, Pepsico, the Wallace Funds.”

“Was it a complete negative?”

“I wouldn’t say complete.”

Manship took a deep breath. “How much?”

There was another clearing of the throat. “A hundred and seventy-five. Maybe two hundred at the outside.”

“I need more.” Manship felt a rush of heat beneath his collar. “I had to pay a hundred above what I’d planned to in London.”

“A hundred?”

“Some old samurai was bidding me up. And then DeMornay decided to roll me for ‘unspecified’ services …”

Osgood made a clucking sound that might have been either disgust or despair. “What’s left in the kitty?”

“About two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“With the new funds, you should have between four hundred and four fifty.”

“What happens if I get lucky and locate the three drawings?”

“Try to arrange for a loan, with an option to buy somewhere down the line.”

“If we do that, we’re going to lose them.”

There was another pause; then Osgood spoke. “I’m afraid you’re just going to have to make do, Mark.” Osgood sounded rushed. “I’ve something to tell you. There’s been a development here.”

“A development?” Manship’s antennae rose. He saw red flags waving. “Van Nuys called me in yesterday. Very excited. Apparently, they’ve located a woman in Florence. Supposed to be the great-great-great—I don’t know how many—granddaughter of the Simonetta …”

“Oh Christ,” Manship groaned.

“I know what you’re thinking. But the lady has documents, credentials, family heirlooms.”

“So did a half dozen Anastasias.”

“Granted. It sounds far-fetched, but this is different. This one’s the real thing.”

“They’re all the real thing, aren’t they? Until invariably, they’re proved not to be.”

“For Christ sake, Mark. Don’t give me more hassles. I don’t need that now. I’ve had a shitty day. My stomach lining is in shreds. The old man’s been on my back all week. You know what this little beano means to him. As of the close of the fiscal year in July, we’re running a deficit of three million dollars. The board’s not in the best of moods. If this show’s as much of a flop as the last two, Van Nuys is out. And if you ask me”—his voice dropped to a harsh whisper—“so are we.”

There was a pause as both men listened to each other’s breathing. When they spoke next, they did so simultaneously, their words colliding over the crackling phone wires.

“Well, what does he want?” Manship had begun to simmer dangerously. “Wait—don’t tell me. I’ll tell you. He wants me to go to Florence and bring this lady back alive. Right?” Not waiting for an answer, he plunged straight on. “Then, on opening night we’re supposed to get her all gussied up like the Primavera in a diaphanous tunic, weave cornflowers through her hair, and have her stroll among the distinguished gathering, followed by an ensemble of lute and sackbut players from Local Six oh two, in velveteen leotards, while the TV cameras lunge after the procession like famished piranha, snapping photos for the six o’clock news.”

“Shit,” Osgood muttered.

“My sentiments exactly.”

It wasn’t that Manship didn’t understand the mentality behind that sort of thing. On a practical level, he understood it only too well. On some other level, deeper, more visceral, he hated it with every bone in his body. But, of course, there was the inevitable budget crisis. Year after year, it was always the same thing—the harangues, the binges of penny-pinching, the veiled threats, the hand-wringing that usually foreshadowed draconian layoffs. They’d been in budget crises for the last six out of seven years. Each fiscal year began with some new cloud hovering above them.

There was the guaranteed donor money; it came from the city, from corporations and foundations, and from a grudging pittance from the federal government. It could cover just so much. The rest had to come from subscribers and people walking in off the street. You had to get people into the museum some way. A megashow was one way to do it. The Simonetta was the hook.

It had a certain kind of romantic, if not tacky, appeal—one of the great beauties of all time, a mistress of prominent Medici and great artists, the source of court and papal scandals. Savonarola, the mad monk, believed her to be the pure incarnation of evil. She was believed to be Botticelli’s probable model for the
Birth of Venus
and the
Primavera,
and, what’s more, the
Chigi Madonna.
And all of this set against the splendor and pageantry of medieval Tuscany. It was the stuff advertising copywriters and public-relations hacks dream of just the sort of thing to catch the interest of a bored and jaded media.