Murder at the National Gallery (22 page)

“Must I again stare into a room of vacant faces while I try to
explain
Caravaggio to them? Do you
explain
Mozart? Perhaps if I were speaking about a new Nintendo game or gene-splitting technique they would be interested. Why are Americans so comfortable with science but uncomfortable with art?”

Not this time.

“I think it’s wonderful,” deputy director Naomi Warren told Court Whitney over coffee in his office one morning. “It’s as though Luther not only discovered
Grottesca
, he discovered himself in the bargain.”

Whitney could only agree. Mason’s calendar was chockablock with talks and interviews. The only problem Mason’s leap into the spotlight created was the envy it generated in his senior-curator colleague, Paul Bishop. Bishop complained regularly to Whitney that the exhibition was turning into a circus, hardly befitting the reputation of the National Gallery of Art. The considerable professional and personal attributes that had qualified Whitney to be director of “America’s Museum” included the art of assuagement, which he found himself having to practice with Bishop nearly full time.

Since returning from Paris, Mason seemed to find an extra hour in each twenty-four-hour day, causing security guards to question whether the senior curator was sleeping at the Gallery. He was there day and night and insisted upon making the final decision on virtually every aspect of the exhibition,
large and small, important and trivial. He challenged the design created by George Kublinski, chief of the Gallery’s Design and Exhibition Department, including the choice of color for the walls. Like all good curators—and the best exhibition specialists—Luther knew the importance of color as a backdrop for works of art. Kublinski’s plans called for the walls to be painted a burgundy thinned with a special white paint.

Mason disagreed. He’d spent days researching color and its relationship to Caravaggio’s work. The walls would be a pale apricot tint.

He took the same hands-on approach to the framing of
Grottesca
. The Matting and Framing Department, which fell under Donald Fechter’s conservation group on the National Gallery’s extensive organizational chart, had chosen an elaborate, bordering on the ornate, cherry frame with thin gold-leaf inlay.

“Too big, too rococo,” Mason insisted. “It detracts from the work. I want it kept simple, and smaller.” When he announced he would seek outside consultation with Max Mowinkle, a New York framer, the Gallery’s framers complained to Fechter. He dismissed their complaints. “The man is consumed by this show,” he told them. “Let him pick his own goddamn frame and get on with other things. You’d think
he
was in the frame.”

A week later, Luther attended a meeting of the Framing and Matting Department accompanied by Mowinkle, a diminutive man in his fifties who had a nervous tic in his left eye and spoke with a matching stammer. Mason presented the frame Mowinkle had created. It was cherry but considerably less bold than the original. There was no gold leaf, no elaborate carvings. It was slender and simple, barely protruding from the painting itself.

Fechter and his people were unanimous in their belief that Mason had made a bad choice. But again, Fechter declined to argue the point.

The next morning, Mowinkle dropped off a package at Mason’s apartment. Inside were two identical copies of the
Grottesca
frame. The doorman accepted them and handed the framer a fat envelope Luther had left with him before going to work that morning.

The press breakfast set for the day of the Caravaggio opening was a week away.

So was the dinner.

All the loaner works were in Washington and ready to be hung.

The show was sold out.

The two copies of
Grottesca
were in the rear of Luther’s living room closet, along with the duplicate frames.

“Mother?”

“Hello, Luther.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I feel all right.”

“Mother, I want you to come to Washington as my guest at the opening of my—our—Caravaggio exhibition.” He’d sent her some clippings.

“I read about it. Sounds very nice.”

“But only if you’re here. This is the greatest moment of my life, Mother. I want to share it with you.”

She said nothing.

“Julian will be here. It would be a good chance for the three of us to spend time together. Please say yes. I’ll send a first-class airline ticket to you by Federal Express. I’ve already booked a suite at the Watergate Hotel. You know that hotel. It was where Richard Nixon—”

“I know it. Why is it still open?”

“Will you?”

“Luther, I—”

“I won’t take no for an answer, Mother. I insist.”

She agreed, providing him with a profound sense of relief. It would be the last time he would ever see her.

“This has been a long and challenging undertaking,” Court Whitney said as he wound up a Friday-morning meeting. “I commend each of you for your dedication to seeing this challenging undertaking come to fruition. My suggestion is that we all get an early start on the weekend, rest up, and be ready to hit it hard again on Monday. Unless there are further questions, we’ll meet next at eight sharp Monday morning.”

Earlier in the day, Mason had stopped by the security office to scan the weekend duty schedule. A veteran member of the Gallery’s police force, Tom Morris, was due to come on duty at six Sunday morning. Good, Mason thought. He and Morris had a cordial relationship.

He left the Gallery and headed for home. As he looked in the direction of the Gallery’s Constitution Avenue entrance, his heart tripped. A huge red-and-green banner with white lettering was being raised above the doors:
GENIUS COMES TO AMERICA
:
THE WORKS OF MICHELANGELO MERISI CARAVAGGIO
.

“My God,” he said aloud. “It’s almost over.”

The upcoming week promised to be relatively relaxed. Most loose ends concerning the exhibition had been wrapped up, leaving Mason time to tie up the loose ends in his personal life. Or to clip them off.

Scott Pims called at five to invite him to dinner at his apartment
and to an auction the following day. “I’ve been toiling all day over a
coquilles Saint-Jacques au jus de truffe
. Morton was to dine with me but he stubbed his toe. I hate to invite you as a substitute, Luther, but better that than eating alone. You will come, of course.”

Mason sighed. The thought of one of Pims’s meals was attractive; he had little energy to prepare himself a meal, and the contemplation of eating out was equally unappealing. On the other hand, his instincts told him it would be prudent to content himself with something from the freezer and a good night’s sleep. “I’m afraid I’m too tired to go anywhere tonight, Scott. You know the merry-go-round I’ve been on. With only a few days until the opening.”

“Trash talk, Luther. I know you’re tired. But I assure you, a few hours at my table will not only pick up your spirits but infuse you with renewed energy. Besides, I’m dying to hear the latest.”

“Maybe I could—”

“Splendid. Seven. I have an excellent bottle of Chablis—Grand-Cru—which I will open with only slightly less ceremony than your Dago painter’s show. After dinner, we’ll watch my program together.”

Pims’s television show aired each Friday night at ten, taped earlier in the day. “There’s a brewing scandal in Le Beaubourg. Actually, it’s the Centre Georges Pompidou. But as you know, the French hate naming anything after a dead statesman. I have wonderful contacts in Paris. Come to think of it, I have wonderful contacts all over the world.” His sudden, sharp laugh was a 4.7 on the Richter scale. “You’ll love the show. I’ve managed to top even last week’s production.”

“All right.”

“Seven then. Don’t bother dressing. We’ll make it an informal, cozy night.”

After hanging up, Luther rationalized having dinner with Pims. In a sense, it would serve as a rehearsal for doing things he preferred not to be doing. Lord knew, there were enough of those situations to be faced over the next seven days.

His calendar read:
Dinner
,
Lynn
.

Mason’s affair with Lynn Marshall had commenced six months ago, two months after she’d come to work for him.

She’d been among more than two hundred candidates submitting résumés for the opening on Mason’s staff. From those, he’d narrowed the field to thirty. And of the thirty bright, ambitious young people he interviewed, Ms. Marshall gave the most favorable impression. Her educational credentials in art history, along with a productive two-year stint as an apprentice curator at Washington’s first museum—the prestigious Corcoran Gallery of Art—provided the background Luther sought. Her knowledge of the Old Masters was broad based. Most important, she’d presented an interesting philosophical view of many of the works they discussed during the hour interview in his office. She viewed Roman art as inferior to that of the Greeks, with which Luther agreed. An emphasis on learning how to
draw
, Lynn felt, was to the artistic detriment of Roman artists. It stifled their purely creative output. Score another for her, Mason thought. She considered artists of northern Italy during the Renaissance to have possessed even greater talent than their counterparts in Rome and Florence, although she was careful to pay homage to the Romans and Florentines: “I’m especially fond of Correggio,” she said. “His experiments with movement and emotion created a remarkable bond between artist and viewer.” Mason nodded.

It was when she began to discuss the Baroque period that she captured Mason’s heart, and the job. She knew a great deal about Caravaggio and waxed poetic about his power and technique. Luther assumed she’d done her homework before the interview, having learned that Caravaggio was his passion. But that was in her favor. If she was energetic and creative enough to delve into the background of the person interviewing her, she would likely bring to the job a similar dedication and ambition.

Then, too, Lynn Marshall was attractive. Her features were too coarse to be considered classic, lips large and full, her nose
broad. But the overall effect was proud sensuality, and the fleshiness of her body enhanced it. Mason was aware that she was subtly flirting with him during the interview, which he found pleasant, even flattering. What he most enjoyed was Lynn Marshall’s easy laughter.

Her first overt sexual overture happened while they were working late, the merest brush of bodies in close quarters. Mason offered little resistance. He’d been celibate since leaving Cynthia three months ago, with the exception of a weekend fling in New Orleans with a middle-aged Dallas curator who’d latched on to him at a cocktail party and enticed him to her hotel room. Easily and quickly forgotten.

But sex was not the prime motivating factor in his affair with Lynn. “Torrid” was not the word Mason would apply to their occasional nights together, nor would others observing those episodes. It wasn’t in his nature to let himself go to that extent. But he did revel in her doting on him when they were together, complimenting his sexual performance in a way that caused him to ignore the possibility—no, probability—that she was being disingenuous.

They got together twice a week at best. Sometimes, weeks went by without their seeing each other outside the office. This was a controlled affair, not a brushfire. And she worked hard at her job. He’d hired smart.

Mason knew it had not been prudent to enter into an affair with a professional colleague, especially one reporting directly to him. Books on how to advance careers and manage employees counseled against it; so did common sense. But Luther didn’t read such books or allow for common sense. Everything seemed distinctly irrelevant once the affair was underway.

As far as Luther knew, he represented the only male extracurricular event in Lynn’s life. When she wasn’t with him, she seemed consumed with the art lessons she took at the A. Salon of the Jackson School, a nonprofit arts group funded by the District of Columbia’s Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her problem as an aspiring artist was that while her mind was willing, her brush was weak.
Woefully so, Mason knew upon first seeing the work that she’d pinned up on every inch of wall space in her small Capitol Hill apartment. Julian had produced better art in the sixth grade. Her paintings were without form, articulation, even content. Naturally, he did not express his opinion. The relationship was too important to him for honesty.

Instead, he praised her work in as elaborate and noncommittal ways as possible: “It has a certain raw, unleashed power.” “You have an—interesting, original—approach to color.” “What a pleasant, unforeseen melding of geometric shapes.” And, of course, he spoke at length about the Dionysian quality of her painting, using the psychiatrist from
Equus
as an example.

It wasn’t long before his artfulness led him into the inevitable. She asked him to arrange a gallery showing of her work.

Luther tried to ignore this unreasonable request, but she pressed. As she did, her exquisite female softness and bubbling laugh that so delighted him began to harden. After some months, she hinted for the first time that she might enjoy having others at the National Gallery know of their affair. “Wouldn’t that raise some eyebrows, Luther? Wouldn’t Court get a charge out of it?”

One night, while Mason and Lynn were having dinner in a Georgetown bistro, Julian arrived unexpectedly. He was accompanied by another young man. Mason invited them to join their table. He found it engaging at first that Lynn openly flirted with his handsome, strapping son. But as the evening wore on, it began to nettle him, to the extent that he abruptly called for the check before coffee had been served and whisked her out of the restaurant.

“You were pretty taken with my son,” he said angrily as they drove to her apartment.

Her laugh, which he used to enjoy, now had a slight edge of cruelty. “So what?” she said. “I’ve always had this fantasy of being mistress to father and son.”

That irksome incident was soon smothered in a tangle of soft, sweet-smelling sheets. Strangely, the intensity of the sexual act that night was of a dimension Mason hadn’t experienced
in a long time, going back to his earliest days with Juliana. And it was apparently the same with Lynn. Sexual competition with his young son? The stuff of talk shows and tabloid newspapers. He worried about it for a few days, but because he considered himself above such shabby musings, he stopped worrying. The Caravaggio took over all his emotions and fantasies.