The Color Of Night (32 page)

“What do you think of them?” Corsier asked. He stroked his mustache and goatee.

Knight sighed and savored the lingering, smoky aftertaste of the wine. He raised his white eyebrows. “Well, they’re sublime, Claude.” His eyes grew heavy lidded. “Why are you showing them to me?”

“I want you to authenticate them. Then I want you to broker them.”

“What’s the matter? Why don’t you do it?”

“I can’t.”

Knight sipped his Pouilly-Fumé. “Explain.”

“I know who will give the highest price for these two beauties,” Corsier said. “Unfortunately, he and I had a serious falling-out recently, and if he knows I’m connected with these drawings, he will not buy. And we will not get the highest possible price.”

“You’re talking about Wolfram Schrade?”

“That’s right.”

“Really?” Knight’s voice rose and fell.

“We’ve exchanged words. Angry words. Legal threats all around. So, you see…”

“Of course.”

“It’s imperative that I remain out of the picture here. Entirely. You mustn’t mention me at all.”

“Why should I?”

Corsier smiled to himself. Carrington Knight was already counting his crowns and pounds and guineas.

“Are you interested, then?”

“Christ. Of course.” He paused, calculating while pretending not to be as he looked at the photographs over the top of his glass. “You don’t want to be connected with the sale in any way?”

“Absolutely not.”

Knight frowned abruptly and cut his eyes at Corsier.

“All this excessive secrecy, not wanting my man Jeffrey here when you come—all that has to do with your anonymity?”

“Precisely. I don’t want anyone other than you to know who’s offering these. You know Schrade. He snoops around.”

“Oh, yes, yes.” Knight nodded, thinking. “It will be of importance to the media.”

Knight was understating it. Egon Schiele was one of the most collectible moderns. His output had not been enormous, and none of the known works could be said to be available. Everyone who had them was hanging on to them.

“You can have all the cream and all of the credit for the discovery,” Corsier said.

“You want to be mentioned after the sale?”

“No.”

“You’d just as soon the attribution remained ‘the Property of a Gentleman.’”

“Forever, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Fine. What’s the commission?”

“Standard.”

“Can’t argue with that. What are you asking for them?”

“If they’re authentic, I have an idea of what they’re worth. But you’ve sold Schrade far more art than I have. I think you’ll know best what he will put on the table.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Knight was sitting forward in his small throne again, elbows on the arms, hands holding the wineglass. His eyes returned to the two photographs. “It’s extraordinary, really, to come up with two unknown Schieles. Extraordinary.”

“I have a suggestion about Schrade.”

Knight looked up at Corsier from under his brows.

“A greater egoist never walked,” Corsier said. “I actually think you could enhance the asking price if he were allowed to be part of the discovery.”

“Explain.”

“Tell him you think you have discovered a couple of lost Schieles. Briefly describe the background. Tell him that you are going to authenticate them. You knew he would want first look at actual Schieles. Would he be interested in being present for the ‘discovery’ itself? If they are Schieles, he will literally have first look. If they are not…” Corsier shrugged.

Corsier could see Carrington Knight’s mind wheeling, his imagination foreseeing the drama… and the value of the drama. Corsier went on.

“If Schrade could share in the
thrill
of discovering a Schiele,” he enthused gently, reaching out with his hand and closing it into a fist, his white French cuffs extending from the sleeves of his dark suit as he turned his fist and drew it back toward himself to connote the compelling effect of his argument. “Schiele the iconized.” His voice softened to a whisper. “Schiele the harsh magician of nervous sexuality. Schiele the disturbed light of modern concupiscence.”

He let his hand return softly to the linen tablecloth.

“I think that even the cold Mr. Schrade could be enthused, as it were, by the drama of seeing these drawings still encased in the frames that have held them since, say, the nineteen thirties, or twenties. The two frames, incidentally, are monstrosities, heavy, ornately carved, gold leaf. Who knows what one might find behind those drawings. Another sketch? A scrawled annotation in Schiele’s own hand that would shed some light into his psyche?”

Carrington Knight was motionless, his face blank. For a moment Corsier was afraid he had overdone it. But no, Knight was seeing a vision. He blinked a couple of times.

“Jesus Christ, Claude,” he said, “have you always been this calculating, and I have simply overlooked it?”

Corsier smiled kindly. “To tell you the truth,” he said, picking up his wineglass, “I think these damn drawings are authentic. I suspect they will be on the market for only the few moments following Schrade’s realization of this. Think of it. They have been lost for three generations, and then they come to light. For only a moment. Schrade will buy them and lock them away until he dies… another generation until his estate is sold. This, my dear Carrington, is a flickering moment of opportunity. It will not come again to either of us.”

Harry Strand sat on one of the wooden benches in Mount Street Gardens, a small, cloistered common of irregular shape enclosed on its various sides by the Gothic Revival Church of the Immaculate Conception, St. Georges Primary School, Grosvenor Chapel, and the rear entrances to the elegant row houses that faced Mount Street.

The afternoon air was fresh as the sun filtered down through the bowers of the ponderous plane trees that dominated the gardens, their hand-size leaves rustling in the light breeze like rushing water. Pigeons sailed into the quiet close, skittering through the dappled light to land on the grass, where they strutted about in addled curiosity before finally settling into a meditative squat to warm themselves in the random puddles of sun.

Strand listened to the intermittent echoes of the voices of children playing behind the tall windows of St. Georges and to the occasional quick step of a solitary pedestrian taking a shortcut through the gardens. He liked the feel of the air on his face and the distant rumble of London traffic that was all but dampened into silence by the surrounding walls of brick and stone.

Bill Howard came into the gardens from the Mount Street entrance, walking through the opened wrought iron gates at a slow, deliberate pace. He stopped at the intersection of the main path and lighted a cigarette, the gesture giving him time to scan the benches along the pathways to find Strand. Without indicating that he had seen him, he turned onto the main footpath. He was wearing a suit that seemed particularly stylish for him, a double-breasted one of chocolate summer wool. He passed through several shafts of sunlight as he approached Strand’s bench. He sat down without saying a word.

They watched the pigeons in silence for a few moments and then Strand said, “Bill, I want to make a deal.”

“A deal.”

“That’s right.”

Howard shook his head slowly. “I don’t know, Harry, you may have gone too far. I don’t know if they want to deal anymore.”

Silence.

“I sent Mara away,” Strand said.

Howard just looked at him. He was trying to decide how to react.

“She told me everything,” Strand said.

Howard smoked, then, slowly, a sarcastic grin twisted his mouth, and he shook his head, looking away.

“She was pretty good,” Strand said.

“No, she wasn’t any good at all.” Howard looked around. “I knew damned well…”

“I know. She told me.”

Howard snorted. “It may be too late for her, too. I don’t think they’re going to—”

“I don’t want to make a deal with the FIS, Bill. I want to make a deal with Schrade.”

Howard managed to hide his surprise. He frowned and leaned back into the corner against the arm of the bench. Like Strand, he crossed one leg over the other and pulled once more on the cigarette.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Two women pushing baby carriages entered from Archibald Mews together and sat on a bench just inside the entrance. They turned their carriages a little to take best advantage of the warming sun. One of them produced a thermos, the other a packet of biscuits.

“I’ve had it,” Strand said. “I’m not up to this anymore.”

“You’ve thought it through?” Howard’s voice was flat, his face sober with restrained emotion, like a physician whose terminally ill patient had just told him he wanted to pull the plug.

“Yeah. I’ve thought it through. I’ve pushed it as far as it’s going to go.”

Howard didn’t move. He took another drag on his cigarette and tossed the butt onto the path. It smoldered there, burning the last bit of tobacco.

“What made you change your mind?”

Strand hesitated a moment. “It’s just the accumulative toll. I don’t want to lose what little I’ve got left.”

“Why are you coming to me? I told you before, it’s all over with the FIS and this guy. There’s no communication channel.”

“I’ve been out of the business for a while, Bill, and I may be a bit rusty. But I’m willing to bet that you still have access to Schrade, some kind of access.”

Howard looked at him blankly, his best poker face. His “no comment” facade.

“I don’t give a damn how,” Strand added. “I don’t care. I just think you’re my best bet for getting this to him.”

“This what?”

“My offer. A deal.”

“Which is?”

“I’ll give it all back. The principal. The interest. Everything.”

“Bullshit. You can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Hell, it’s tied up in charities and all that.”

“Where did you get that information?”

“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Harry. Look, even if the FIS didn’t have the best goddamn intelligence in the world, you know damn well Schrade’s looked into it with a microscope—right up through the ass of all those foundations you set up. He came to us stomping mad, before he left us with our mouths open and our pants down. He showed us what you’d done with the money.” Howard’s neck was swelling in anger.

“He couldn’t have.”

“Okay, he showed us
how
it was done… the system, the way.”

Strand wanted desperately to know how Schrade had discovered their scheme, but he wouldn’t give Howard the satisfaction of asking. Apparently Schrade’s accountants really hadn’t found the actual charities.

“Somehow nobody really believes that money is out of their reach, do they, Bill?” Strand retorted. “I mean, why is everybody still hanging around? Why’d the FIS go to the trouble—the considerable trouble—of training Mara? Because you still think you can get the money. Why hasn’t Schrade killed me? Because, despite what he ‘showed’ you, he, too, thinks he can still get his hands on the money—through me. It hasn’t stopped him from cutting me off from everything but my arms. But I’m still alive. Everybody thinks they can still get their hands on the money somehow, some way, eventually.”

“Christ, Harry.” Howard didn’t know what to believe.

“I hid that money behind a lot of doors, Bill, but not all of them were locked. No one’s found them because they weren’t supposed to. There wouldn’t have been any point if people could find them. I think you know that already.”

Howard gave him a sour look. He was thinking. Finally he asked, “What’s the ‘deal’ you’re talking about?”

“We just want a life.”

“You want to turn back the clock.”

“No.” Strand handed Howard a piece of paper. “I just don’t want Schrade to stop it.”

“What’s this?”

“An Internet address. This is where you can get me.”

Howard looked at the address. “This is the way you want to work this out?”

“No. This is the way I want you to arrange the meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“It’s part of the deal. I want to talk with Wolf face to face.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake…”

“It’s a deal breaker, Bill. It’s got to be this way.”

“What the fuck do you mean it’s a deal breaker? ‘Deal breaker.’ You’re in no goddamn position to talk ‘deal breaker,’ Harry. What’re you talking about? Shit. You don’t do the deal, he kills you. There’s no
deal
here. I mean, even if you give him the money, all of it. The interest. The whole shitload. How’re you going to get him to hold up his end of the ‘deal’?” Howard shook his head, looking at the e-mail address. “This is insanity.”

Strand was surprised. He had thought that Howard would take his offer and run to Schrade as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Instead he was pointing out that the offer was absurd, an act of desperation. A deal in which the “deal” would surely be violated. In Howard’s mind, Strand was already a dead man.

“I’ll make sure he holds up his end of the arrangement,” Strand said.

“What, ‘anything happens to me and the
New York Times
will get an envelope’? Harry, you poor fucking stump.”

“I wouldn’t have come to you with this if I didn’t have it covered.”

“Sure, that’s good.” Howard rolled his head. “You’ve got it covered. Great.”

From the Audley gates an elderly couple entered the gardens with a short-haired dog, an animal of no discernible breed, on a leash. The three of them ambled along the main walk as the dog snuffled busily at the grassy margins, ferreting excitedly among the green clumps. Entrusted with the leash, the woman watched the dog with critical attention, while the man, hands behind his back, gazed about the close with a mild, bifocaled curiosity.

“Why should I do this for you, Harry?”

“Two reasons. First, I can keep the FIS from getting it. I can tie it up for decades. This was not a shoddy operation, Bill. Some very intelligent people put a lot of thought and sweat into this before we even started. Dennis Clymer was a genius. We ran it for six months, fine-tuning it as we went along, addressing potential problem areas that might crop up farther down the road. We shut it down and took another six months to stabilize what we’d done. So if the FIS wants to try to get it, fine, but my guess is, if they’re going to try to get it through the legal system, the Justice Department’s going to take a closer look at this and tell them to forget it. Everyone you know in the FIS will have retired by the time they finally realize it’s a goose hunt.