The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (12 page)

With him came a badly rattled, overworked assistant who had carried in a precariously balanced tower of cardboard boxes containing, as the great man said, a variety of samples for Mr. Manship’s personal “delectation.”

Smile never wavering, Mr. Tsacrios unveiled each of his creations with a flourish. “Brie
en croute,
” he trumpeted, “Minis caspianis,” then offered Manship morsels of each.

“And, of course, the wine.” He flourished a leather-bound book thick as a telephone directory. “You’ll want a white for the crab. Nothing too big or overpowering, mind you. May I suggest the Chablis. And then something red and positively sinful for the lamb.”

By the time they’d settled on wines and chosen the silver and china patterns, Manship’s head was spinning.

T
HE LATE-AFTERNOON SEPTEMBER
sun had already set. The western sky behind the dark silhouette of the apartment building known as the Dakota across the park had turned a molten orange.

He’d been up and running since five that morning and now, as dusk crept through the branches of trees, Manship paused for a late-afternoon espresso at his desk. The hot, bitter pungence of it triggered a throwback to Florence a few weeks earlier—narrow, choked streets, lights coming on in the shops, people streaming along the riverfront. Recalling those fleeting images of the old Tuscan city, he felt a pang of regret he was at a loss to explain.

He thought for a minute with a shudder of dread what he would do for dinner. He was alone, as he usually was. Mrs. McCooch, his housekeeper for a dozen years, was across the way at 5 East Eighty-fifth Street, the little brown Victorian mews house he’d occupied from the first day he’d come to New York. It had been left to him by his uncle Rupert, an idiosyncratic millionaire doorknob manufacturer who’d never married, along with an annual stipend for taxes and upkeep. The bequest was made out of Rupert’s justifiable fear that on the salary of a museum curator, his hapless nephew, his brother’s only child, was doomed to a life of grungy indigence. His generosity had been motivated out of a sense of duty, for his brother, it seemed, had been just as hapless as his nephew.

At that hour, Mrs. McCooch would be getting ready to go home to her garden apartment in Queens. Having put a comb through her hair, then perching the little gray pillbox hat atop her head, she would put the finishing touches on a light, cold dinner for Manship—sliced ham, sliced veal, or sliced whatever; along with some limp greens and a tasteless greenhouse tomato, all entombed under Saran Wrap, then tucked neatly like an airline meal into the refrigerator, ready for him when he got back. She had been Rupert’s housekeeper before and, like the little mews house, Manship had inherited her, as well.

It was nigh onto 8:00 P.M. as Manship was getting ready to leave. He puttered about, finishing up odds and ends, then reviewed a freshly typed version of his annual departmental budget for the coming fiscal year, already a week past due.

“You’re still here.” Bill Osgood ducked a head in.

“So are you, I see.”

“If I am, we’re about die only two fools dumb enough still to be hanging around at this hour.”

“Maybe Van Nuys will put a little something extra in our Christmas envelopes.”

Osgood sauntered forward, a lanky Texan whose sharp granity features seemed more suited to the Marlboro man than to a museum director. The simple, almost colloquial line of patter belied the half a dozen or so college degrees, one a doctorate in art history and two or three others in business administration from the most prestigious institutions. He was also a Rhodes scholar and a lawyer, for good measure. Just forty, he was the sort of man who, after a distinguished career, is usually sent off to Washington to head some powerful committee on the arts.

“Watcha got?” Osgood slouched into the chair opposite Manship, craning his neck for a glimpse at the papers spread out on the desk.

“Budget stuff.”

Osgood made a disagreeable face.

“Did you get a chance to speak to Van Nuys?”

“For over an hour.”

“And?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“So what? I never like it. I only want to know if he’s going to try and meet us halfway.”

Osgood propped a cowboy-booted foot up on the edge of the desk. “The chairman asked me to tell you that he wants the biggest and best show in the history of this institution and respectfully declines to pay an additional pfennig for it. Moreover, he asked me to wish you well.”

“Bugger the chairman,” Manship muttered, and went back to his budget.

“In all fairness,” Osgood went on, “he’s sunk more money into this show than anything the museum had done since the Degas. The point is—”

“Skip it, will you, Bill. I already know the point.”

“Van Nuys is on the spot, too,” Osgood went on, determined to complete his thought. “You’ve got to appreciate the fact—”

“Sure, sure. I appreciate it. We’ve been running at a loss for the last three years. We’re presently carrying a deficit of slightly over three million dollars. Local Sixty-two of the Museum Workers Union is threatening a strike and Mr. Van Nuys has the board nipping at his buns.”

Osgood’s frown widened into a begrudging grin. “Say, that was pretty good.”

“I practice.”

“And when you take over my job, you’ll be able to sit in my seat and do a more graceful job of telling some smart-ass hotshot curator the cupboard’s bare.”

Manship took a long, sober look at him.

“Pay heed, Mark,” Osgood added. “My term here is running out. I’ve already informed Van Nuys I have no wish for reappointment. You’re shortlisted, along with Colbert and Klass, for the next directorship. You’ve lots of friends on the board, but also two powerful enemies—Van Nuys being the most powerful. He can be overridden, of course, providing you don’t blow this Botticelli gig. Van Nuys wants to have his name vindicated with a success d’estime. When he goes, he wants to go out like a Roman candle. All glory. Not out the back door.”

Manship brooded as he scanned a column of numbers. Then at last, he spoke. “By the time you leave, this place will be a financial shambles. We’ll all be selling ties at Bloomingdale’s. Hopefully, Van Nuys, too, pompous old shit.”

Osgood tilted his head back and hooted at the ceiling. “Frankly, I’d been thinking more along the lines of a night-school typing course at Katie Gibbs myself. The girls are prettier there than at Bloomies.”

Manship’s lingers fiddled idly with the grinning netsuke monkey on his desk. He’d had it since college days, a present from Uncle Rupert, whose other passion after doorknobs was the Orient. For Manship, it served as a pacifier in troubled times, with possible talismanic overtones, as well. “Any plans for dinner?”

“I was going to dine with the ex-Mrs. Osgood. But she canceled at the last minute. I take it a better offer came up.”

“Come back and have a bite with me. Mrs. McCooch always leaves something decent lying around the refrigerator. It’s not Bouley, but there’s generally enough for two, and there’s a fairly decent bottle of wine chilling in the fridge.”

William Osgood III uncoiled his long, seemingly joint-less legs and rose to his full six and a half feet. “Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess. Are you ever going to tell me about this Cattaneo gal?”

“Oh, our Simonetta? What about her?”

Osgood flashed him a leering wink. “You tell me.”

Chucking some papers into a battered briefcase, Manship rose and started for the door. “She, my friend, is a piece of work. I’ll tell you all about it on the way over.”

“W
HEN DID YOU LEARN
this, Aldo?”

“I’ve known about it for some time.”

“Who else knows of it?”

“Maybe two—maybe three others. His closest associates.”

“Can they be trusted?”

“To the extent that you can trust crazy people. Who else would be drawn to such an organization?”

Aldo Pettigrilli lifted his cup of tea and sipped. As he did so, Isobel noted how his hand trembled.

They were seated on the flagstoned patio behind the Villa Tranquillo. Isobel wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and sandals. Pettigrilli sat in a badly rumpled suit, the collar of an un-laundered shirt poked up above his soiled lapels. There was a touch of the ludicrous in a man so attired extending a pinky finger as he sipped tea.

Isobel tipped the steaming spout of the teapot into his outstretched cup, refilling it as she continued to speak. “And, I take it, you don’t believe that anyone else knows?”

“That Borghini has the drawings?” Pettigrilli shook his head in the negative. “And in future, Isobel, please don’t send any more of your friends to me regarding that matter. It’s my neck that’s at risk here. Moreover, may I ask, why in heaven’s name you would send this Mr. Manship to me in the first place?”

“Rumors, Aldo. That’s all. You used to run with that bunch.”

Pettigrilli regarded her with an air of haughty disbelief.

“Have you told anyone else, Aldo?”

“Whom would I tell? I can’t very well go to the police.”

“Why not?”

“Are you mad? I told you, these people are crazy. You know that as well as I do. They kill the way you and I eat or breathe. It’s nothing to them.”

“You think they would kill you if they knew you knew about the drawings?”

“In a minute. Dead—kaput. And I don’t mind telling you that your knowing—”

“Puts me at risk, too.” She sighed. “So knowing that, you told me anyway.”

“I told you because you sent me this man, asking me very specific questions about those drawings.” Pettigrilli banged his cup down on the table. “Oh, come on, girl. I just gave him an address in Parioli. I told him nothing.”

“And you have no idea whether he actually went or not.”

“No. That was the end of it. I walked out of the restaurant and washed my hands of it entirely. Now I regret having even given him the address. If he’s serious about locating those drawings …”

“He’s serious. Take my word for it.”

Pettigrilli brooded into the palms of his hands.

“Let’s assume he went.” Her eyes closed, focusing hard on something. “If he’d found something of importance, wouldn’t he have notified one of us? You or me?”

“No doubt you.” Pettigrilli fretted. “I left no forwarding address.”

“But if he’d found something truly of significance, wouldn’t he have first notified the police?”

Pettigrilli paled. “The police?”

“Surely. That would have been the most logical thing. The drawings are stolen goods, and he couldn’t very well have gotten them out of the country—not to mention exhibit them—without first notifying the police.”

The thought of the police plunged Pettigrilli into a fit of gloom.

“But since we’ve both heard nothing,” Isobel went on, “I can only assume he found nothing in Parioli.”

Pettigrilli’s hand rose in protest, then dropped back limply into his lap. “What exactly is your interest in these drawings, Isobel?”

“None at all,” she shot back.

“They’re of no financial interest to you?”

“None whatsoever.”

“And they have nothing to do with the gentleman?”

“The gentleman? Oh, you mean the curator chap.” She laughed. “God no.”

Pettigrilli’s mouth curled into an unpleasant smirk.

She went on, ignoring the smirk. “He’s a perfectly decent fellow. He gave me supper once, and I thought it would be nice if his show were to be a success.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t be bitchy, Aldo,” she said, then changed the subject. “Do you still see any of that crowd?”

“The Pugno?” He made one of those consummately Italian gestures with his hand.
“Finita la commèdia.
Seven years is more than enough for me.”

“And, besides, the world has changed.”

He conceded the point, then nodded gloomily. “Trouble is, they haven’t. They never change. They’re still waiting for the ghosts of Almirante and Pino Rauti to arise so they can all put on their uniforms and go goose-stepping up and down the Forum.” Pettigrilli lay a palm against his flushed cheek and laughed bitterly. “Borghini is madder than ever. Better I’m out of there, and my advice to you, Isobel …”

“Yes?”

“Don’t go near him. Stay far away. Don’t go poking about in Parioli if you know what’s good for you.”

“You think I’m mad?”

Eyes squinting, he watched her, nodding slightly to himself. “A bit, yes. That’s your appeal. That enchanting, tricky madness of yours. That’s why he’s always been so drawn to you. One madness infatuated by another.”

“I was young and a bit seduced by the whole thing.”

“So were we all. It
was
seductive—the unity, the power, the oaths, the cabala, the great mission. All very glamorous in a kind of stupid, juvenile way.”

His eyes closed and he appeared to have drifted back over the years to better times. A smile played around his lips as he savored memories. But then the eyes shot open. The old petulance returned and he was glaring at her. “Take heed, Isobel. Hear what I say. Stay far from Parioli. Don’t go near Palazzo Borghini. You wouldn’t recognize it today. It’s a house of horrors.”

“T
HE THING ABOUT TANNING
is that so few realize what an art it is. It goes back to the Bible—Genesis Three, twenty-one, I believe. ‘Unto Adam and also his wife did the Lord God make coats of skin and clothed him.’ Then, of course, came the Egyptians and Hebrews. Your Jews were no slouches there. Direct records date back to the building of the pyramids, nearly five thousand years ago. There’s an early recipe of the Arabians that tells of first putting the skins into flour and salt for three days to cleanse them of all the fats and impurities. And I bet you didn’t know that the first settlers in America were taught tanning by the Indians. The Crow and the Navajo in particular were masters at skin dressing. They made their own flensing knives from the leg bones of certain animals. It was the Crow who developed the technique of removing hair by applying lye made from their campfire ashes, then rubbing the skin with a mixture of brains and liver. If we have time, I’ll show you that today.”

Colonel Borghini paused in his dissertation to thrust his pole into a lye pool, stirring it along the bottom until several limp, sodden objects lumbered up to the rippling surface like creatures roused unwillingly from deep sleep.