Restoration (11 page)

“How’d he make his money?” I said to Rhys. “Had to be oil.”

“No, as a matter of fact it was real estate,” she answered. “He began by pioneering blighted neighborhoods, fixing up abandoned houses and selling them or renting them to people who couldn’t abide living in housing projects any longer. For years he was known around town as the ‘Section Eight King,’ which means he ruled the market for federally subsidized housing. But then Smallwood started buying up old office buildings downtown and in the French Quarter and putting luxury hotels in them. He recently sold one of his properties in the Lower Garden District to a strip mall developer for a cool two million after Wal-Mart announced plans to build a Supercenter in the neighborhood. Only the year before, Smallwood had invested all of ten grand in the weedy, trash-strewn lot. People hate him, no one more than the city’s preservationists who’ve fought to stop him from razing important historic structures and replacing them with giant chain stores and discount hotels. I look at Tommy Smallwood and one word comes to mind.”

“Cheesy piece of shit?”

“Sure, that works,” she said. “But that’s four words, Jack. No, the one that always comes to me is
motherfucker
.”

As Smallwood and his companion drew closer, I happened to get a whiff of the man. He smelled powerfully of roux, that muddy blend of flour and vegetable oil used as the foundation for gumbo. This surprised me. All things considered, in particular the girl, I’d anticipated a scent more on the order of musk oil.

Suddenly Rhys was upon him, thrusting out a hand for him to shake. “Mr. Smallwood,” she said. “How nice to see you again. Mr. Smallwood? It’s Rhys Goudeau, with the Crescent City Conservation Guild.”

“Rhys Goudeau,” he said. “Are you the one that keeps sending me letters?”

“One and the same, sir.”

“You need to cut that shit out,” he said, then quickly moved past her on his way to the Louisiana Room.

“Mr. Smallwood…?”

But he was gone, talking to someone else now.

“What on earth was that about?” I said.

“I’d rather let it go,” she said.

“No, Rhys. Tell me what just happened.”

She looked at me. “It’s simple, really. I’ve been trying to get him as a client. And he’s avoided me. I’ve mailed him at least two dozen personal letters and he’s answered none of them. About a month ago I sent him a press packet complete with copies of stories about the Guild that have appeared in local and national publications. Smallwood returned the package unopened, with the words ‘Leave me be,’ printed across the envelope’s seal. Did that stop me?” She shook her head. “I asked some of my clients—the ones who see him socially—to speak to him on my behalf, but even their intervention failed to bring him onboard. His conservator is someone named Mary Thomas Jones. Mary is my competition. She’s also rumored to be one of his girlfriends.”

“I’m a little confused here, Rhys. You’ve been courting the man’s business, even while personally despising him.”

“Please don’t think it’s his money I’m after. Sure, an account as big as the Smallwood collection would pay a lot of bills and help raise the Guild’s profile. But that’s not what keeps me chasing after him. It’s his
stuff
, Jack. It’s what he’s got. From all reports he owns examples by every major southern artist but one.”

“Asmore?” I said.

“Asmore,” she answered. “Don’t you dare ever mention this to anyone, but I’d do the work for free just to get my hands on his paintings.”

The commotion died down, and Rhys led me back to the Louisiana Room. Smallwood, now, was standing in front of the Walker, and his girlfriend was using an index finger to count something in the painting. It wasn’t long before I understood that she was trying to determine the number of workers in the cotton field. Her lips moved as she ticked off each one. “How many?” Smallwood said when she seemed to finish.

“I can’t tell if this one’s black.”

Smallwood took a step forward and bent at the waist to see. He squinted as he tried to decide. His face was inches away from the canvas and a figure standing off to the side. “Looks white to me. Well, Mexican, maybe.”

“There are three dogs, one cat and four mules,” the girl announced.

The number of animals didn’t impress Smallwood. His focus remained on the person of indeterminable race. “You think he’s the boss man who runs the plantation?”

“Maybe the artist ran out of white paint.”

“Well, he painted all that cotton white.”

“If you think about it,” the girl said in an apparent moment of clarity, “even white people aren’t really white. They’re more
pink
than they are white.”

“He should’ve painted the man pink, then,” Smallwood said. “In my paintings, I like as many Negroes as I can get. I thought I made that understood already.”

“You got thirty-nine in this one,” the girl said.

Smallwood came back up to his full height and resumed his wide-legged pose. “Then why on the phone did Lucinda make it sound like a hundred?”

By now Smallwood and the girl had the room to themselves. He glanced back over his shoulder and let on a smile when he saw how many people were standing at the entrance watching him. Rhys and I had joined a group of perhaps forty—approximately the same number, it occurred to me, as were shown in the Walker painting.

“I like how peaceable everybody looks,” Smallwood said. He meant the people in the painting. “I don’t see a militant in the group—nobody trying to make it difficult. Those were the days, huh, Dusty?”

“Everyone knew their place,” Dusty said.

“Damn right,” said Smallwood. “Knew it and liked it.”

Rhys came up on her toes and put her mouth next to my ear. “Tommy Smallwood is a racist pig,” she said, intentionally speaking loud enough to be heard.

Someone behind us coughed a nervous laugh, and I figured Rhys had just destroyed any chance of ever landing Smallwood as a client. I also figured she was in for a fight. “Tommy,” said Dusty, “that girl over there just called you an ugly name.”

He faced the knot of observers gathered at the door, but before he could say or do anything someone pushed past us and entered the room, diverting his attention. She was a small woman, small but for her hips, which seemed to occupy the entire area between her breasts and her knees, and to do so in the shape of a butcher’s block. She fearlessly positioned herself next to Smallwood in front of the Walker, and mimicked his pose by spreading her legs out as he’d spread his, fists on hips.

“Well, if it isn’t Mary Lou Cohn,” he said.

“Is that you, Tommy?”

“Have you met my friend Busty Dusty?” he said.

Mary Lou Cohn smiled at the woman. “Your name is Busty Dusty?”

“My stage name. My friends just call me Dusty.”

“Mary Lou,” said Smallwood, “we’ve been counting, me and Dusty. We don’t get past thirty-nine. How many did you count?”

“You counted thirty-nine what?”

“Blacks in the picture. We couldn’t make out if he was one.”

Mary Lou Cohn was staring at Smallwood now. She waited until he looked at her before saying anything. “When it’s the property of the Historic New Orleans Collection you’ll have to confer with Mrs. Thibodeaux, our curator of paintings. I’m sure she’ll be able to answer any questions you may have.”

Smallwood laughed so hard he sprayed saliva on the surface of the painting. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Mary Lou, coming at me with that.”

“Yes, you’re right. I do have a lot of nerve. I don’t think you know how much, especially at auction when I’m bidding on an item that belongs in the Collection. Tommy,” she continued, “can we come to an understanding today?”

“An understanding,” he repeated.

“I’m going to make a proposal, an offer you can’t refuse.”

“I own ninety-two Walkers,” he said. “I’ll quit collecting the man when I reach a hundred. After that I’ll listen to your proposals, Mary Lou. Not before. Besides, I got a place over my commode that’d be just right for this picture.”

Of course Smallwood, being Smallwood, pronounced the word this way:
“pitcha.”

Mary Lou Cohn raised a knuckled finger to her nose and sneezed.

“Most of mine are little things with a single black standing at the edge of a field. Some are bigger, though, with two or three blacks and chickens and a dog and some cats. Some are your
natures mortes
with
dead birds and rabbits hanging from nails. One I have shows an old boot with a baby kitten playing inside. Little children really like that one.”

“Meow,” said Dusty.

“But my best,” said Smallwood, “has thirty-five of your blacks in it. I’m always looking to upgrade, and this painting will help me do that. If I can prove somehow that this old boy here—” Smallwood plucked the canvas with a finger—“if I can show he isn’t a white or a Mexican… well, I would break out of my rut.”

Mary Lou Cohn was still staring at Tommy Smallwood with a look mixing amusement and disbelief. “Tommy,” she said, “I’m here tonight to ask you a favor. I’m here to appeal to your sense of fair play and to that altruistic spark in each of us that inspires philanthropy.”

“It does what?”

“Tommy,” she said, resolve still evident in her face, “as you may have heard, both the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Louisiana State Museum were interested in acquiring this painting. So was the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia. The country’s top Walker collectors—the Jewells of Baton Rouge, the Hunters of Birmingham, and the dealer Alfred West of Charleston—also expressed a desire to purchase it. Tommy, in the past we at the HNOC have backed away from items that we’ve coveted but that other institutions and important private collectors, for whatever legitimate reason, have appealed to us not to compete with them for. Today we’re taking our turn and asking these institutions and collectors to return the favor and let us have the painting.”

“Dusty, count, sugah,” Smallwood said. “Ignore her and count.”

“Tommy?” said Mary Lou Cohn. “Tommy, listen to me.”

“Count loud, Dusty. Count
loud.”

Dusty started to count, though not loud enough to drown out what Mary Lou had to say. “Tommy, in consideration of your backing off this painting, I’m going to give you a voucher that you can redeem at any time in the future. This voucher would eliminate the HNOC from competition for one object of your choice, to be determined at
your discretion, at a future sale. Anything you want, and you return this voucher and we don’t bid on it. Now, Tommy, the voucher is invisible, but nevertheless I’m going to make a point in front of all these witnesses of handing it to you. I give it trusting that you will keep your end of the bargain. There is always the next great thing to buy, Tommy. Who knows? Maybe at the next auction there’ll be a William Aiken Walker with a
hundred
workers in it. Have you considered that?”

Although Smallwood seemed to have stopped listening, Mary Lou Cohn took his hand and placed an invisible voucher in it. “Redeem it, Tommy, and we go away.”

Smallwood lifted his hand and looked at his empty palm. Mary Lou Cohn sneezed again. Smallwood’s hand slipped into a pocket and retrieved a handkerchief. “Mary Lou,” he said, “I do believe you’re allergic to me.”

She reached for the handkerchief, but Smallwood brought it up to his own face and spat into the silky fabric. Mary Lou Cohn lurched backward. Smallwood cleared his throat and spat into the cloth a second time.

“I just got to know,” he said, then began rubbing the painting’s surface with the wet handkerchief. He was squinting as he lowered his face and studied the mysterious figure. Squinting as the Walker seemed to resist him and repeatedly banged against the wall. “Nah, he’s a colored boy, all right,” Smallwood said. “Dusty? Here, sugah. I’m giving you Mary Lou’s voucher.”

The girl pinched the invisible item between her thumb and forefinger and held it out in front of her. “What do I do with it?”

He waited until Mary Lou Cohn had recovered and was looking at him again. “Save it for later,” he said. “You can clean me with it when we’re done.”

Two days later we were back in the auction house, sitting on metal folding chairs and following the action in the house-copy catalogs we’d pilfered at the preview. We sat so close together that our thighs touched and our forearms rubbed together, and I had to focus on the auctioneer lest my growing feelings for Rhys wipe out the purpose of our being there. I tried to recall if I’d felt such an attraction for the last girlfriend, or for any of them, but with Rhys so close by all memory eluded me.