Cheyney Fox (22 page)

The Walbrook Collection had within it a small but fine collection of American art. But he was a discerning buyer — it was not often that he found an American painting he wanted to
own. He had often thought of expanding his collection beyond the purchase of the odd painting. But, with his many other interests, he had not devoted to it the time necessary to do it.

The Walbrook Collection employed five curators. Maybe this was the time to think about keeping a sharp eye for a sixth. There would have to be one in a year or two if he did go ahead with his plan. He would think it over well this coming week in Cairo. For the remainder of the flight he put art and Cheyney away. There were ponies to be discussed with his teammates.

Several times he was distracted by the laughter of the women who were sitting together. Maria never missed a chance to meet his glance and dart him a meaningful look. Maria von Geller was the perfect mistress. Aristocratic, well educated, pampered, spoiled, a lady in public, a depraved bisexual in bed. Every glance she gave him was a sexual promise. The French women had been brought along by Maria. And everyone on board knew they were there to flirt with the team by day and entertain Kurt and his friends at night.

She knew about his woman in Paris, his many infidelities. She was capable of real bitchery and horrible scenes in the privacy of her bedroom in Vienna, but never in his presence. She believed he would never marry and he would never leave her, she had told him that many times. As he looked at her that night on the plane, he knew that he would have to keep her even after he married Cheyney. Not just as a sexual distraction, but because there was a hint of madness in her depravity. Though he felt no responsibility for it, he would not abandon her to it. And there was, too, something else. He reveled in depravity, it suited his libido.

He remembered, “The spirit must have something absolute, or it goes crazy. Good needs evil, and evil needs good to bounce off from. Maybe the spirit goes crazy anyway …” Cheyney’s words only a few hours before.

He had known Maria for many years. Her background, her attraction for the depraved, when not held in check, was something akin to evil. He knew the cause: her basic amorality caused her to be concerned only for herself. Her attitude was, “I want this, I don’t want that. What I don’t want, if it doesn’t get out of my way, I destroy.” She would never lose her Nazi heart. He himself was not unaware of the charm and magnetism
to be found in the company of evil. Had he not been surrounded by it, lived and breathed it all his life?

Before the plane landed, what had begun as a whim was now formulated into a plan. There were any number of better people to consult than Roberto and Lala about Kurt’s intention to buy several Acton Pace paintings. That, he had decided, was the artist he much admired and had neglected for far too long, who should be his first purchase. But had he done that, there would have been no way he could get Cheyney to act on his behalf.

Cheyney, in the few deals she had completed for him, had proved an excellent dealer. More than that, her selections for his approval had been faultless. In each case he had purchased every item. And that had nothing to do with altruism or love. She was just very good. What a plume in Cheyney’s hat, to return to the New York art world with a blank checkbook. That is, if she would accept to take on the job. He placed the call to Roberto.

He spoke at length with both of them. All was well. Maybe too many questions from Lala. But in the end she agreed to handle things as she was told. Roberto and Lala had been dispatched to New York forthwith to see Rowena Sicle, Acton Pace’s dealer, and several other dealers who handled the artists whose work interested Kurt. He was sending in the infantry; Cheyney was to be his armored division. They arranged for a meeting as soon as he was available. A surprise that emerged from the conversation was that Acton Pace adored Cheyney Fox. He had been trying to get in touch with her for years. That was how Lala happened to have his studio’s unlisted telephone number.

Kurt made two more phone calls. One to Helmut Furtwangler, to tell him to make available to Kurt a bank draft made out to Cheyney Fox at the Wall Street branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank for four million dollars. The money was to be released to her upon presentation of bills of lading. Kurt owned twenty percent of Furtwangler’s conglomerate, a legacy left to him by his father.

He didn’t relish the second call. It was to Albert Semanan. He knew that Semanan would insist he stay with him for a few days, especially since Kurt’s mother was there for her annual
visit. He would rather have used that time in Cairo, but Albert Semanan could not go to Cairo to visit Kurt. Fear of kidnap or assassination governed his life. He remained always in his palatial prison with his magnificent art treasures. Semanan ought to have been the world’s most wanted Nazi criminal. He knew that, but did the world?: His true identity had so far remained his own secret. But always with the numbing terror: for how long? Well, Maria would be happy and so would Kurt’s mother. The baroness adored her son and even approved of Maria von Geller.

Kurt Walbrook made his last call and then emptied his mind of all of them while he played through a week of glorious polo.

Chapter 22

M
ost of the collectors and dealers that Roberto and Lala knew in New York, who had in the early sixties pooh-poohed Pop Art, had by now embraced it with a vengeance. It made garish their walls and their lives. They were drugging and drinking and swinging a sixties Pop life. It was difficult for the newly arrived Roberto to get a clear picture of the art scene. And not for him alone.

Think yourself into a helicopter, flying low over Fifth Avenue, upper Fifth Avenue. If you looked to the left, you would see the plush green of Central Park with a few cars nosing toward its various exits. To the right, a series of buildings, all very elegant, in stone and brick, with the facades broken by windows draped in beautiful velvets, silks, and satins, here and there a sliding Shoshi screen instead of usual draperies. If the helicopter hovered, you could see through these windows
into one luscious apartment after another. Louis Quinze furniture in one, Marcel Breuer chairs in another, a Queen Anne dining room in another, Directoire and Knoll Associates all flash by. The smartest of the smart and the richest of the rich.

Maybe you could see the walls and so review some of the best paintings in the world. A fantastic vision of the rich, the elegant, and the beautiful. The calm, solid facades of these buildings with the jewels of the world inside.

Must not the owners be wonderful, like their collections? How could they not be? To know them, to be with them, to exist alongside them — yes, the people must be jewels, too. Well, own jewels, anyway.

Occasionally the helicopter might descend a few floors, only to show more of the same. Then up a few stories to see the Fifth Avenue terraces and roof gardens.

At one point it might pass a solid glass turret clinging to the front of one of the buildings. From the helicopter it would look like a huge, domed, three-sided bird cage. Inside might be perched two human beings.

Larry and Tina Finn, superstar collectors of Pop Art, sat at a round glass table. It stood on a white plaster sculpture of a locomotive by the Pop artist Nick Dakota. This sculptured base was entitled
Choo-Choo Train
.

It was seven-thirty in the morning, the only hour of the day when Larry and Tina could sit quietly, having their breakfast, suspended in space over Fifth Avenue. The blue sky above, the green park in front of them, and their ice-white bedroom with all its Pop sculpture and paintings behind. Underneath them, over the black tarmac, rolled all the chrome-plated bolts securing the wheels that earned the money that made them the stars they were.

This was their hour of togetherness. An hour when they sat and talked through their plans for the day. Who they would see, what they would do, how they would spend their money, where they would dine, who with — life in all its grim essentials. The remaining hours of the day were spent in maintaining their positions as superstar collectors of Pop.

Tina was looking really lovely this morning. But her hair needed doing, and so she had it wrapped in a turban of heavy, hunter-green silk with ruby-red lettering spelling out LOVE all
over it. St Laurent. She had on no makeup but Estee Lauder Wild Rice Lipstick and Germaine Monteil paprika rouge gel. Her thin pointed face and lovely blue-green eyes with their heavy, dark lashes made her look fresh and clean. Her perfume was slightly sweet, made up for her exclusively by one of the more famous couture houses of Paris.

She had the fashionably lean body of a young boy. No boy ever worked harder keeping it that way. This morning the top of that body was encased in a T-shirt of ruby-red, silk-knit jersey with an inflated portrait of herself on the front in yellow and green. The work of Barry Sole. She wore wide green trousers of Missoni’s knitted jersey and a pair of handsome green patent-leather shoes by Pierre Cardin. Her earrings were gold and rubies by Dali. Around her neck she wore a choker designed by Calder, and on her arm were bangle bracelets made of gold and enamel — they were Life Savers, Milky Way Bars, and Almond Joys by Oldenburg. More great Pop Art. Her only ring was a wedding band of gold.

She was pretty and decorative, even if it was all a bit on the hard side. Forty, looked twenty-eight. She was elegant, she was “now”; she was art and Pop. Her image out-popped Pop.

Her husband, Larry, who sat opposite her, had on a mocha-brown suit in the style modeled by Mao but made by Cardin. It had a smart, wide white zip-up on the front and one on each wrist. Larry had any number of these outfits. They gave him his own special Pop look; they were his own gray-flannel suit, with Peking-populist chic.

He had mouse-brown hair streaked with gray, dark brown eyes, and a round face. Average height and weight. Shame about the flabby double chin and the bulbous nose. This was not too unacceptable with his style of suit; it raised hopes — of some sayings of Mao from his lips. He wore chocolate-brown, suede ankle boots by Cardin, and no jewelry.

He had the nasty habit of paying cash for almost everything, and so he kept two wads of bills. The wad of hundred-dollar bills was held together by a money clip of gold, inset with huge diamonds and rubies, in the shape of a dollar sign — designed by one of the Pop painters, executed by Cartier. That was always placed in the left-side slash pocket of his trousers. In the right pocket were the wadded bills of tens and twenties.
They were held together by a clip designed by a lady Pop artist. It was a miniature of his wife in tiny mosaics made of precious jewels and executed by Boucheron. He never bothered with small change. He, too, out-popped Pop.

Some extra tension was in the air this morning. The newspapers were waiting in the car downstairs. Larry would read them as he always did on the way to the office, so they were not available to relieve the atmosphere. Tina had gone over the morning mail in the library before breakfast. No mail either, then, to distract them as they faced one another. There were only the yellow daffodils on the table, their breakfast, and these two Pop people in their glass cage. Nothing to do but talk about it.

Tina was being awkward. She simply sat there silently, drank her coffee, and waited. Larry was being made the one to break the silence. He looked across at Tina and told himself, She has deliberately worn that Sole shirt to make a point. Ignore it. Make believe it doesn’t exist, that I don’t even see it.

Larry finally broke the silence.

“Tina dear, don’t be upset about what people are saying. I promise I will see we are on the right side. Please listen to me. We cannot be divided about this, we must stick together, too much at stake. All you have to do is stop supporting that little faggot.

“Look, Tina, if we take that stand, we have a chance to sue the dealers we purchased from, and the museum directors who led us into spending a fortune for Pop Art. We have a chance to recoup our money. Now, for Christ’s sake, get yourself into that dressing room and start thinking the right way for a change. And take off that fucking Sole shirt. He is out.”

“Has it ever occurred to you, Larry, that Barry Soles might increase in value even if a new American art movement replaces Pop Art? Or what our social position is, vis-à-vis Barry Sole and Pop Art?

“You must see that our entire social status depends on how we stand in the Pop world. Sole right now is at the very top of the pile, not just of Pop society either. It wasn’t only you, Larry, who bought all those paintings of his. It was
my
father’s money that bought those pictures. You who decided that Jonas Sandies was a brilliant dealer. It was you who decided with
Jonas what to buy and what to sell, what institutions were the right ones to accept
our
generous donations of Barry Sole paintings. And when to do it so as to get those huge tax deductions. It was you who thought investment, investment. Corner the market, and then art. You didn’t even like half the paintings you had to buy to sustain the market and our image.

“It was all money, money, and wheel and deal for you. Out of all that, we built up a social standing in this city. I may not like all the paintings we have in our collection, but I like the society and life that it has brought us. Barry is my little faggot-companion, Larry. It saves me having a handsome gigolo.

“You may think we invested twelve million dollars for paintings instead of stocks and bonds. What I see is we invested twelve million dollars of my father’s money to get out of Astoria, Queens, and the chrome bolt-and-screw business and into American art-world society, the jet set, call it what you will. I am not going to throw that down the drain. I like my life now, I like being in the society columns, the art magazines,
Vogue
. I happen to enjoy being known all over the world as a patron of the contemporary arts. Everywhere we go, we’re recognized: Tina and Larry Finn, the famous collectors of Pop Art. And I love it. It was and is worth every dime of my father’s money.

“We will be made to look fools if you turn against Barry Sole and our collection, and start dumping it on the art market. I mean to keep Barry’s friendship. I will not take off this T-shirt.

“I intend to remain Barry’s constant good friend — whatever gets said about Barry Sole or his work in this ridiculous courtroom drama that’s going on. We can deal with this problem together and win all the way, no matter what happens to Barry or the collection.”

Tina Finn looked at her husband. She noted the large vein twitching just under the skin of his right temple. She felt sorry for him. They had come a long way together, and she was proud of that.

“Larry, don’t be upset. Darling, you be the businessman — hard, ruthless even, if you have to be — and I’ll be the patron of the arts. That means not dropping Barry. For the moment at least.

“Have you looked at our calendar? Have you seen how many invitations we have? Barry will be at every one of these places. I will play it right down the middle, support you in whatever you do with our collection and at the same time be as sweet as I can be to him.

“What I think you should do, Larry, is take the position that you are protecting
our
investment, but you feel the same as you always have about Barry Sole and his work. He is a friend. The art world’s socialites will drop Barry Sole if Pop Art collapses. We don’t have to put ourselves out on a limb and do it. Now doesn’t that make sense?”

“Okay. There’s something in what you say. But keep this in mind: If we don’t sell off our Barry Soles at the right moment and put the money into some new art movement, I’m gonna look foolish anyway. You, too, if you are constantly showing yourself all over town with Barry, defending him in public. Can’t you cool it, just a bit? Now, I ask you, would it hurt you to change your shirt? Just little things like that can make a difference.”

Just then a helicopter flew low, right past their glass cage. The windows shivered.

“Well, that’s the limit! There’s a law against that. Is there no privacy left? Oh, by the way, I think we should begin buying a few antiques. Maybe even a few Renaissance paintings, that sort of thing. You know, slowly. Let the world know we are interested in all the arts. I think it might be a safe thing to infiltrate our collection with some antiquities. Then when the crunch comes, if it does come, we will seem to have been more patrons of the arts as such. Renaissance men. You know?

“It will give us a chance to move up into a different circle of society in the art world, one we’ve been shut out from till now.

“Matter of fact, I was talking to Wildenstein just yesterday. He has asked me to go by the gallery tomorrow — with you of course — for a drink and a private viewing of a Poussin. How does that fit in with your day?”

“I have Halston for a fitting at four, but I suppose I could meet you after that. I was trying to figure out what made you buy that book on Poussin. I was starting to think you’d gotten interested in art.”

He ignored her bitchy remark. “Okay, five at Wildenstein’s. Leave the Poussin book here.”

“But we can’t stay too long. Remember drinks at five-thirty at Chryssa’s studio.”

The Finns sat silent now, reflected in all their glass cage, as Larry and Tina each drank a final cup of hot black coffee.

The fact that the Barry Sole trial was in recess only added to the frenzy of their lives. The case kept the art world dangling and would until it resumed in a few weeks’ time for the summations and a verdict. That appeared to justify even more parties and gossip than usual.

Lala and Roberto got nowhere with the reconnaissance that was their motive for being there. Instead they got swept up by Tina and Larry Finn, who dragged them from one good time to another. The Finns entertained them lavishly for a week of luncheons, dinners, parties, art gossip, and shopping before they made a concerted effort to talk to Rowena Sicle.

Under strict orders from Roberto, Lala had been discreet about which artists interested them. And that was not easy for Lala. It was much more her style to blurt out who their client was, what he wanted, and how much money they had to play with.

Rowena Sicle was a bitch and had no time for Roberto and Lala as dealers. But she did see them. She never took a chance on losing anything. Knowing that Lala and Cheyney were friends, the first thing she did was to be bitchy about Cheyney. That was bad form, but what was worse was that she had no Acton Pace paintings to sell anyone. He would only release a painting when he needed money and nothing would change his mind. Since every one of his paintings sold in the six-figure range, they rarely came on the market.

The shock loosened Lala’s tongue. Only a swift tap on her shin from Roberto saved her from throwing discretion to the winds. In the street, she could not hold back the tears. How could this happen to them? The break of a lifetime, and they were unable to take it. Roberto calmed her the best he could. He told her she could go shopping with Tina after lunch, while he checked if there were any works by Pace for sale anywhere. On one condition, no gossiping about their business with anyone.

It was definitely not going according to plan. And Lala simply could not stand it. Nor could she keep her mouth shut. She called Acton Pace and spilled the beans, saying that Cheyney and she were in a position to be able to buy several of his paintings, but she wasn’t sure Cheyney wanted to deal in contemporary art again. Acton’s insistence on speaking to Cheyney obliged Lala to call her. Roberto was furious. Cheyney as yet knew nothing of their project per Kurt Walbrook’s instructions.