The Cézanne Chase (23 page)

They took off their shoes, then Aukrust quietly unlocked the front door and guided Pioli to a cramped recess under the stairs in the back of the hall. Aukrust wished the quarrelsome couple who lived above him would come home at that moment, arguing as always after an evening of drinking, causing a perfect diversion. Speaking softly and slowly, Aukrust told Pioli what he wanted him to do, repeated the instructions, and put five hundred francs into his good hand.

“Do exactly as I told you,” he whispered, “and when you have finished, go immediately to the bus terminal and back to Nice. You will call me at my shop next week.” He put a hand over the sore bruises on Pioli's neck, not to show compassion but to convey a clear message. “And tell no one about tonight. No one.”

Pioli went to the front door and let himself out with no more noise
than the flapping of a sparrow's wings. He put on his shoes and began to half-hum and half-sing a tuneless song as if he were coming home from a long, liquid evening with friends. He returned to the front door, rapped against it as he opened it, and when inside, closed the door firmly, and to be certain it was securely shut, opened and closed it again. He climbed the stairs, still singing, dropping his feet heavily on the wooden treads until he reached the top floor, where he pulled off his shoes and, with the same silence as before, retreated down the stairs and out into the night.

While Pioli was performing, Aukrust had worked his way into the closet, then into the bedroom, and when Pioli's outrageous singing stopped, he stood at the door connecting the bedroom to the room in front where he imagined LeToque was waiting. Ten feet in front of him was a bed and a night table on which were a lamp, a telephone, and a clock radio with luminous green numbers. He took the receiver off the hook and placed it so the earpiece faced the door, the faint steady hum of a dial tone coming now from some place in the dark. In a minute, possibly half again that much time, the dial tone would change to another signal announcing that the phone was not set properly in its cradle. He took the aerosol can from his pocket and removed the cap.

The noise from the phone grew louder, now an annoying sound, purposely so, and perfectly pitched to penetrate into the next room.

“What's that?” a voice said in a hoarse whisper.

Aukrust positioned himself just inside the door; a small amount of light from the faraway streetlamp found its way through the window. The only other light came from the green numerals that said the time was 1:04.

The pulsing noise from the telephone grew louder.

“
Merde!
” LeToque shouted. He was now in the doorway.

Aukrust guessed that if LeToque identified the noise as coming from the phone he would blame himself for not putting the receiver back properly. But it was just as likely that LeToque would wonder how the two parts of the phone had become separated, since he had not used the phone.

Based solely on Pioli's inadequate description of LeToque as being thin, tough, and not very tall, it was not possible for Aukrust to assess his adversary. For certain, he was armed. But how? Weisbord had sent the young toughs to rough him up, and now he pondered if LeToque
had been sent to search the apartment for the portrait and, if he didn't find it, to deliver an even stronger message to Aukrust.

LeToque moved cautiously into the bedroom. “Damned telephone!” he muttered and searched for the source of the troubling sound, swearing in frustration. When he located the receiver he slammed it onto the base.

“Who did this?” LeToque demanded. “Who?”

Aukrust knew that LeToque was standing next to the bed, two or three feet from the green numerals in the clock. He aimed the nozzle of the aerosol can at that spot, and to assure that LeToque faced him, he made a soft, scratching sound, like a small animal. Then he pressed his thumb against a metal slide, releasing a whoosh of air. A wide spray shot out, enveloping LeToque in a yellow mist that made his eyes burn with the pain of a live fire. LeToque raised his gun and squeezed off two rounds before he dropped his arm and began frantically to rub his eyes. One of the bullets tore across the top of Aukrust's left shoulder, and he fell to the floor before another shot might hit a more vulnerable spot. The shots had been muffled by a silencer, the sound like the clapping of hands.

The burning mist seeped into LeToque's mouth and nose, and the agony increased as he thrashed on the bed, then rolled onto the floor, clutching at his throat and shouting for water. He got to his knees, then doubled over, groaning as the fire went into his chest. Aukrust put on a light and examined his own wound before finishing the job of putting LeToque under his control. The bullet had grazed a bone on the top of his shoulder, seven inches from the middle of his throat; the wound was more painful than serious.

Aukrust pulled LeToque to his feet and forced him onto the bed.“Quiet!” he commanded. When LeToque tried to wrench himself free, Aukrust forced him back onto the bed. The powerful acids had reached LeToque's stomach, causing him to gag, then vomit. His body stiffened, and his breath came in short, painful bursts. “Water,” he pleaded in a barely audible whisper.

Aukrust took a small plastic bottle from his pocket and soaked the end of a towel he took from the bathroom. He patted LeToque's face with it and squeezed drops onto his eyes.

Eagerly, LeToque tore the bottle from Aukrust's hands and drank the contents.

“You will be surprised to learn that you were sprayed with nothing
more than the oils extracted from plants and vegetables. Some very rare, of course, but others you will know as mustard. Also piperine, one of the exotic pepper plants.” Aukrust spoke dispassionately, in the tone of a scientist pleased by the results of a successful experiment. He found the gun under the bed, a small-caliber revolver that could have done nasty damage from short range. He emptied it and slipped it into the drawer of his night table. Then he went into the bathroom to clean and bandage his own wound. When he returned, LeToque was still lying on the bed, moaning feebly and swearing viciously.

Aukrust said, “I was careless. But you were stupid.”

LeToque tried to reply, but could manage no more than an incoherent wheeze as his throat was all but paralyzed. The sound reminded Aukrust of Frédéric Weisbord after a severe coughing attack.

“The antidote will clear up your lungs and stomach.” He put another bottle containing the soothing milky fluid on the bed beside LeToque.

Aukrust put on his shirt. The clock now read 1:20. It had been a mere thirty minutes since he had put LeToque's girlfriend to sleep. She would be awake but drowsy, and she and LeToque together would not add up to an intimidating partnership. But helping each other, they could manage to drive away in the silver Porsche.

“I
t 's a goddamned good thing the Paley collection went to the Modern,” Curt Berrien said, looking up from a generous splash of Wild Turkey he had just poured into a bucket-sized old-fashioned glass. “Otherwise we'd be wet-nursing a portrait of Paul Cézanne at a cost of about ten grand a week.”

It was nearing 5:30. The late afternoon sunlight was orange and warm and angled through the windows of Llewellyn's third-floor study and spilled over a thick red and gold Persian rug. As the sun moved, Clyde uncurled, stretched, and moved with it.

“I talked with my old friend Chauncey Eaton at the Fine Arts in Boston,” Llewellyn said. “The poor guy needs some heavy consolation. It's as if he's lost his own brother.”

“Chauncey's a sentimentalist, but I agree,” Berrien said. “There's a crazy mentality out there that says it only happens to the other guy, but guess what? Sooner or later you're the other guy!” Berrien waggled a finger at the portrait. “Lew, you can't protect that painting with a dog, Fraser, and whatever goddamned kind of alarm system you've installed. The crazy SOBs that are burning up the portraits are too clever, and someone, namely, you, could get hurt pretty badly.”

Fraser tapped on the door, opened it, ushered Alexander Tobias into the room, put a fresh ice bucket on the bar, and disappeared. Berrien greeted Tobias. “Good to see you, Alex; meet Edwin Llewellyn, an old friend and a trustee of the Met. Also a man who serves civilized bourbon and owns that painting you're staring at.” Berrien turned to Llewellyn. “Lew, this is Detective Sergeant Alex Tobias, Major Case Squad, N.Y.P.D.”

They shook hands. “Thanks for joining us, Mr. Tobias, or is it Sergeant Tobias?”

“Alex,” Tobias said simply and with a comfortable smile.

Llewellyn said, “Curt felt it was a good idea for you to see my house and that infamous painting; in fact he was just lecturing me on
my dereliction and predicting that within a few days, the painting would be destroyed, or, failing that, Fraser, Clyde over there, and I would all be in the emergency room in St. Luke's Hospital.”

If Llewellyn expected Tobias to share his little joke, he was disappointed.

“Very unpleasant places, emergency rooms.” Tobias had an authentic New York accent: basic Manhattan with Bronx overtones. The portrait attracted him, and as he stepped in front of it, he took a small magnifying glass from his coat pocket. “Do you mind?”

“Please, by all means,” Llewellyn said.

Tobias inspected the painting carefully. “It's one of the last portraits he did of himself, at least from the look of it. Have you photographed it in black and white?”

“I'm embarrassed to say I've been putting it off,” Llewellyn replied. “I keep meaning to bring a photographer over from the museum.”

“You'll discover a dozen new details that don't pop out the way you normally see it.”

Llewellyn looked at Berrien, who gave a knowing wink and nodded.

“Are you a student of Cézanne?” Llewellyn asked.

The answer did not come immediately. Then Tobias said, “Somewhat, I suppose, but I try to separate what Cézanne painted from what his paintings meant to the artists who came after him. I like the way he handled people. And his landscapes, particularly the country scenes. But not all those views of Sainte-Victoire.” His eyes twinkled.

“Spoken like a teacher, not a mere student.” Llewellyn's pleasure was punctuated by an approving smile. “A drink, Alex?”

“Scotch and a squeeze of soda, please.”

Llewellyn had just put the drink together as Astrid came into the study. He said, “Marvelous surprise, darling; I wasn't expecting to see you.”

“Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all; come along and meet my friends.”

As usual she was perfectly dressed, this time in an Adolfo that cost someone a lot of money, and he wondered for a moment who the someone was. He led his guests to the windows, where they sank into oversized, overstuffed chairs.

“Alex, what do you make of all this horror with the paintings?”

“That I'd like to wring the neck of the son of a bitch that's doing
it.” A nod toward Astrid was his expiation. Tobias ran fingers through his thick hair. “We've got a psychiatrist and a behavioral psychologist on staff, and for the first time in memory they actually agree with each other. They believe it's the work of a well-educated male, unmarried, in his early forties, and a bona fide psychopath.

“Left-handed?” Berrien asked with a straight face.

Tobias smiled. “They'll figure that out, given enough time. Since the Boston episode, we've gone in high gear assembling reports from Europe and running our own chemical analyses. Now there's speculation that a man and woman working together may have destroyed the portrait in Boston, but there's not much to go on except conflicting witness identification and a few scraps of evidence that were sent to the forensic labs in Boston.”

“That doesn't sound very encouraging,” Llewellyn said.

“There's a lot of hand-wringing, but truth is, fine art is an elitist preoccupation, and as long as no one was hurt, the public wants the police to concentrate on rape, drugs, and homicides. It's different in Europe. Fact is I've been asked by an old friend in Scotland Yard to learn if you might give a hand in his investigation.”

“What can I do for Scotland Yard?”

“I don't have specifics, but Jack Oxby—he's with the Yard—wants to know if there's a chance you can visit him in London next week. Oxby realizes it's short notice, and he had hoped that he could get to New York. But he can't, so I'm his surrogate in a way. Could you possibly meet with him?”

Llewellyn laughed good-naturedly. “I hadn't planned on going to London so soon. Can you tell me more?”

“Only that Jack knows about you and about your painting. As for what he's got in mind, I just don't know. Nothing dangerous, but it would be a different experience for you. Even a little exciting, if Oxby's got anything to do with it.”

“So far I haven't done a damned thing.” He turned to Astrid. “You said you were behind in your antiquing, darling. How about London next week?”

“I'd like that.”

“How do I get in touch with Oxby?”

Tobias handed Llewellyn an envelope. “It's all there. Phone and fax numbers. By the way, have any Cézannes been sold in the last few months?”

“One of his landscapes will be in the Geneva auction in December,” Llewellyn said. “That might tell us something.”

Berrien called over from the bar. “A Cézanne? . . . in Geneva? Are you sure of that?”

“The preview announcement came this morning.” He waved a finger toward Astrid. “Be a love, and find that brochure on my desk.” Astrid picked out a glossy brochure and handed it to Berrien, who unfolded it into a full-color sheet the size of a newspaper page.