“I hope that evidence guy hurries up,” Claire said. “I’m hoping I can paint over those words before she sees them.”
“Charlie’s a strong woman. Words are only words.”
Claire wasn’t so sure. “But will it stop with just words? There have been three racially-motivated attacks around here.” She sketched out for Tom what else had happened.
“Those sound more like crimes of opportunity.” Tom sounded as if he were trying to convince himself as well as Claire. “Gang of skinheads see a white homeless guy, or a Hispanic guy waiting at a lonely bus stop, then they lay into him.”
“What about the Indian hotel owner? It’s not like they were just driving down the street and had X-ray vision to see that he had dark skin.”
Tom squared his shoulders. “Then we’ll make sure that Charlie is never alone until they’ve caught these guys.” He managed a smile. “It will give me a good excuse to spend as much time as possible with her.”
Claire wondered if Charlie shared the same desire. Things seemed to be moving pretty fast. Then again, at eighty you wouldn’t want to waste any time. And the two of them had already been a couple, even if it was a long time ago. As Claire herself got older, she had already noticed time speeding up. Maybe when you were eighty, fifty years didn’t seem like that long.
“What happened between you two, anyway? Claire would never have asked the question if Charlie were there. It wasn’t a matter of Charlie not answering. With Charlie, you just didn’t ask the question in the first place. Charlie was close-mouthed about her heart. Only once had Claire heard Charlie say the name of her husband, who had died in the camps.
“We fought over money. Warren gave me a $500 bonus for finishing the wall, and told me he could count on my discretion. In those days, that was a lot of money.” Tom had been cracking eggs into a bowl, finishing the omelet he had started earlier, but now he paused. “Charlie thought I should give it back. She said Warren was just paying me to keep quiet. She didn’t realize I was doing it for her. In my mind, it was like I felt like I needed to bring something to her, like there was no way I could marry her without some money of my own. Here I was, this day laborer with nothing but his back and his hands and an old pickup to offer. And there she was. Charlie had graduated college, she had traveled all over Europe before the war, she spoke three languages, and even after everything she still had enough of her family’s money to live on and to buy this house. To me, Charlie was all money and class. And I didn’t have either.”
“And what did Warren want you to say? Or not to say?”
“That Elizabeth must have slipped and fallen and hit her head. Nothing about her killing herself. Of course, now Charlie has got me thinking that Warren’s version was closer to the truth. For sure, somebody or something hit her head. He was probably covering up for his son, not saving his family embarrassment.” Allen cracked the last egg and then picked up the whisk. “It didn’t work, though. Everyone knew very quickly what had really happened, or I guess they knew what we thought had happened. I don’t know who talked, if it was the people at the funeral home, or the nurse at the doctor’s office who took the call, or maybe someone from Elizabeth’s huge family. Her dad spent most of his time on a bar stool at Renners. There were just too many people involved to keep it quiet.”
They both started at the sound of a knock on the door. It was the criminalist, a compact man with a short black crew cut, gray at the temples. He carried a digital camera and a black plastic toolbox. Working in silence, he took pictures of the words, both close up and from a distance.
“What are you looking for?” Claire asked.
“For one, how many people were responsible for this.” He spoke without taking his eyes off his work. “I’m looking at the letter shapes, the spelling, how close they stood, how they crossed their Ts or dotted their Is. It’s like handwriting analysis, only it complicated by the fact that it’s spray paint, not ballpoint. The height of the letters also gives me a clue to the height of the perps, assuming they didn’t stand on anything.”
With an X-acto knife, he cut a swath of paint from each of the three hateful slogans, then slid them into glassine envelopes. “We’ll try and identify the paint, but it’s probably something common you can pick up at any Ace Hardware or Fred Meyer. I’m hoping, though, that we can match it to paint used in the other incidents.”
“Other incidents?”
“Those beatings. We’re keeping it kind of quiet, but in two of the three cases, we found spray paint next to them. Very similar to this. With that white homeless guy, for example, we found the words ‘Race Traitor’ spray-painted on the wall next to him.”
“The people can’t have had much education,” Tom said. “Half the words are spelled wrong.”
“Sometimes people do stuff like that deliberately. To make you look in one place instead of another.” He shrugged. “Although in these cases, I don’t think the guys involved are that smart.”
“Do you think my roommate is in any danger?” Claire asked.
He turned from his work and his gray eyes appraised her. “I would be careful, if I were you. Both of you, even though I was told it was your roommate who was Jewish. These are probably just young bored kids cruising around, looking for someone who’s different. In the three previous cases, either the victims were robbed or there was an attempted robbery. So this” – he swept his hand out to indicate the words –”no physical attack, no robbery, is new. But maybe robbery has always been a secondary motive, a little bonus after they had kicked the victim’s teeth in. I understand that you’re roommate’s in great shape for her age, but she’s not a young woman. She wouldn’t stand a chance against these guys. Until we’ve caught these punks, I’d advise you to both to be careful whenever you enter or exit the house. Call 911 if you see or hear anything out of the ordinary.” He shrugged. “Of course, they’ve more than likely moved on to other victims. Kids like these, they’re basically cowards. They’ve left their mark, managed to scare a bunch of citizens, and now they’re sitting back and laughing. Why come back when someone’s on alert? They’ll probably pick on some new person who has no idea what’s coming.”
#
Claire called Dante’s cell phone. “Did you look at the outside of the house when you were leaving? The side by the English walnut?”
“No – the cab picked me up in the driveway and when we drove past I didn’t pay any attention. Why? Did someone break a window?”
Claire explained what had happened. “I don’t know whether we should be scared or not, and the police can’t tell us either. There was a criminalist here taking samples, but he doesn’t seem to think it will lead to them immediately catching anybody.”
“What about Charlie? How’s she taking it?”
“She’s still at the ice rink. Tom’s here, though, and he’s vowing to stay for the duration. It sounds like he’s not planning to leave her alone. They seem to have picked up where they left off and then some.”
“Since he’s there, do you think it will be all right if you left for a couple of hours?”
“I guess so,” Claire said uncertainly. “Why?”
“It would really help me if you could down here and talk to me. Something’s really bothering me, and I need to talk to you about it.”
“Is this about last night?” Her stomach suddenly hurt.
“In a way. But it’s not really the kind of conversation I want to have on the phone.”
Was this why Dante had left without even talking to her this morning? “I’ll give Tom your cell phone number, and then I’ll be there as soon I can take a shower.”
Had she ruined things to such an extent that he was rethinking everything, Claire thought as she turned the shower spray until it was as fine and sharp as needles. Was Dante longing for his old girlfriend, with her monied charm? She would never have made a scene or a fool of herself. Claire had only met her a couple of times, but she had been smooth, sophisticated, and polished from the tips of he
r Prada mules to the top of her casually sexy tousled hair that probably cost $250 to get trimmed and highlighted.
Claire pulled on some simple black cotton pants and a black silk jacket hand-embroidered with colorful flowers. She ran a mascara wand over her lashes, then pushed out her lips and quickly coated them in tinted Blistex. Real lipstick made her look too much like Mick Jagger.
She was so lost in thought, in imagined conversations, that she hardly noticed the drive to the Oregon Art Museum. She had to hunt for a parking space, and by the time she found one, it had begun to rain. Her feet trudged up the marble steps and in through the tall glass doors bound in brass that gleamed like gold.
“I’m here to meet Dante Bonner,” she told the elderly woman at the desk.
“He asked that you meet him in the work area downstairs.” The woman stood up and pointed to her right. “Go through that doorway, down the stairs, and he’ll be behind the second doorway on your left.”
Claire knocked softly. After a few seconds, Dante opened the door. In addition to a black turtleneck and slacks, he was wearing white cotton gloves and an anxious expression. The small room was crowded with easels, each of them holding a painting or drawing. The rest of the space was taken up by a long table where more art was lined up, side by side.
“This is so hard for me to explain, Claire. There’s something I’ve been pushing away, trying not to think about it, but I can’t keep doing it. There’s something wrong here. That’s what my gut is telling me, anyway. But I don’t know if I can get you to see what I’m seeing.”
“Wrong?” Claire echoed. It was like something inside of her was shrinking, smaller and smaller. How could she have been so stupid last night?
“I need to talk to someone, Claire, and you’re the only one I can think of. Even if it’s just to hear myself talk.”
Relief washed over Claire. So it wasn’t about her, then. It must be the art that filled the room “You mean there’s something wrong with the paintings?”
“It’s the drawings. The paintings, at least on first blush, are solid, if unspectacular.” Dante was agitated, pacing back and forth on the narrow strip of unencumbered carpet. He picked up one of them, his white-gloved hands contrasting strangely with his swarthy skin and untamed curls. The drawing was framed in a gold-leaf frame, at least six inches wide, that threatened to overpower the plain pen-and-ink sketch it held. “This one was the first that caught my eye. It’s part of the reason I asked to come back here today.”
Claire looked over his shoulder, trying to see what Dante was seeing. The sketch was about twelve by sixteen inches, done on fading, yellowed paper. She could see how fragile it was, appreciate the miracle that it had survived five hundred years. The drawing was of a seated woman, shown from the waist up. Her full, rounded shoulders were bared by a richly embroidered dress. Around her thick neck was a string of jet beads. The pendant ended in a pearl as big as a thumb nestled in the beginning of her cleavage. A thick neck rose from the swell of her shoulders. Even her hands, with rings on most of the fingers, looked wide and plump. She was a woman, Claire thought, who would be forced to shop for plus sizes today. But hundreds of years ago, when only the rich could afford to be fat, she must have worn her flesh like an expensive fur mantle. The left side of her face had been lightly crosshatched to suggest shadows. In the background, a few puffy clouds and a single tall tree had been limned with quick, sure strokes.
Dante said, “At the Met, we had a beautiful little pen-and ink-study, very similar to this one. A seated portrait of a female figure, circa 1498. Same pendant, same rings, same woman without a discernable mood.”
Claire bent closer to it, as tentative as if her breath might somehow injure it. The woman’s expression, while less ambiguous than Mona Lisa’s, still seemed to be open to interpretation. The full lips neither rose in a smile nor were pulled down into a frown. She looked – Claire sought the right word – pensive. Her wavy hair was worn loose down her back, caught back by a circlet just visible at the top of her high forehead. Her eyes were large and round, her nose straight, long and narrow.
Claire wondered what the final painting had looked like, or even if it still existed. What color had the woman’s dress been? Had her face been as pale as milk, or had her complexion been ruddy?
“So is this one of the drawings you were talking about last night, you know, the ones you thought you could use to build a joint show? Would you display this one side-by-side with the one from the Met? Are they both signed or just from the same school?” She had learned that it wasn’t uncommon to find artist’s reworking their own or other’s subjects, or the pupil aping the master.
“Both are unsigned. Originally, the Met’s drawing was attributed to Raphael.”
Claire’s knowledge of art didn’t extend to knowing whether this was a clue to Dante’s discomfort. “And?”
“And a few months ago I decided the one the Met has is probably a forgery.”
“A forgery!” Claire thought for a minute. “Do you mean this could be the original and the one the Met has is a copy of it? Or do you think they are both forgeries?”
“To me, this one just isn’t - right. Just like the other one wasn’t. And after spending the last four hours looking at these drawings, I’m beginning to wonder if three of them might be the work of a forger who was very active a few years back. In fact, I’m pretty sure Troy Nowell of Avery’s was working with him. You remember Troy, don’t you?”
This stung a little. Claire had dated Troy exactly twice before she figured out he was pursuing her simply as a means to get his hands on her great aunt’s painting. She narrowed her eyes and then gave Dante a nod.
“I was never able to prove it, but I think Troy was working with a partner, a man named John Maxwell. John had a certain … gift for taking previously undistinguished canvases and making them more marketable.”
Dante explained how under the delicate touch of John’s brush, older women lost their wrinkles and were revealed as young and beautiful. Soldiers in an unknown military campaign gained a general’s rank and fought on a storied battlefield. Every previously empty field of grass was now grazed by a thoroughbred. Some of his best forgeries required the smallest amount of effort – a squiggle of paint that turned an unsigned canvas by an unknown painter into something much more valuable.
“I think some of these drawings of Allen Lisac’s are genuine,” Dante continued. “You’d have to have balls of brass to sell a whole passel of fakes. So some of these are real, if undistinguished. But I believe they’ve been salted. John was killed in a car accident last year. Rumor has it that toward the end of his career, he moved on by moving backward.”
“Backward?” Claire asked.
“What he did was to take real works of art and then invent the sketches, drafts and preparatory studies that must have come before. In the past two years, suddenly all these wonderful Old Master drawings have been turning up. Including the so-called Raphael the Met bought.”
“And how did you know the Met’s was faked?”
“That’s the problem. I still don’t have proof.”
“Aren’t there tests you can run?”
“And I did. The ink was made from authentic ingredients, primarily oak gall. But a good forger, and a patient one, can whip up his own inks. Then there’s the matter of the paper. It was carbon dated to the time period Raphael was working.”
“So does that mean it didn’t begin life as a fake? Maybe it’s something one of his pupils did that’s now been passed off as the master’s.” Claire had learned that this was common, sometimes done deliberately, sometimes just the result of a collector’s or a museum’s wishful thinking. “That would explain the carbon dating.”
Dante shook his head. “Forgers know about carbon dating, too. Not only did John Maxwell scrape paint off old canvases, but he also laid out a lot of money buying Renaissance-era books and manuscripts. Not for what was written in them – he didn’t care about that – but only if they ha
d blank pages he could harvest. He studied paintings and worked backward. First he might do a careful rendering, then a study, then the barest of sketches. He created evidence of artistic processes that never took place, all in preparation for finished masterpieces that in some cases never even existed.”
Claire looked at the drawing of the seated woman with more interest, trying to see what Dante saw, lines and shapes that didn’t look right. Were her thick fingers clumsily drawn? Or was that simply the artist’s style? After all, a painting wasn’t supposed to be a photo. “What do you see that makes you doubt it?”
“That’s the tricky part. It’s more art than science. Authentic works are-” Dante hesitated while he tried to find the right word “- are true all the way through. They hang together and make a single statement. There’s nothing odd that nags at you. It doesn’t matter what angle you look at it, or whether the lighting is strong or indirect, or if your mood is good or bad. With a fake, on the other hand, the more you go back to it, the more it reveals its weaknesses. To me, this paper seems to be overwashed and unnaturally aged. The ink looks tired, as though the fading has been accelerated. And then there is the work itself. This is supposed to be just a sketch. But it seems, too, well, too complete. Too detailed. It’s got all the motifs of finished paintings.”
Claire, of course, could see none of this. The drawing still showed what it had before, when she had thought it had been drawn five hundred years ago, and not five.
“Let me show you in a different way.” Delicately, Dante reached out and turned the sketch upside down. Everything shifted. Claire had always thought a person’s eyes were in the top third of the face, but upside down, it was clear they were set in the middle. The woman’s plump body, rich clothes, and half-dozen pieces of jewelry became an abstract jumble of line and shape.
Softly, Dante said, “When a fake is right side up, we anticipate the whole, and our brains automatically correct subtle problems. It’s called the principle of closure. But once you turn a fake upside down, mistakes begin to pour off the page. Look at her hands. They look stumpy. And the shading on her face seems exaggerated.” His voice strengthened. “Her hair is lifeless, her arms grow out of her ribs, and she has hands like flippers. To my eye, this woman is so awkward that there is no way she was drawn from life. But Renaissance artists almost always drew from life. Forgers tend to draw from other paintings.”