The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (36 page)

Later, he sat at a table beneath an umbrella outside the cafeteria. He had coffee and a roll and watched the mechanical bronze animals of the zoo clock promenade in circles to proclaim the passing of the hour.

He hadn’t bathed for several days and took the opportunity to wash up in the men’s room of the cafeteria. He removed his shirt and rinsed his face and under his arms. People coming in to use the facilities avoided his eyes and gave him a wide berth.

Later, outside on the footpaths, in his nearly full-length raincoat, a crumpled slouch hat pulled down low over his brow, he mingled with parents and strollers. The impression he conveyed was vaguely dissolute. He walked stiffly on his elevated shoes, one hand plunged deep in his pocket, that hand wrapped around the hilt of a razor-sharp kris.

Along about noon, he bought a frankfurter and an orange soda from a park vendor. Standing under the fellow’s brightly striped umbrella, he chewed, scarcely tasting any of his food, and watched waves of ecstatic children scurrying up and down the paths.

It was past five when Borghini got back to the Met. A normal workday, the museum was scheduled to close at six and the reception for the show would start promptly at eight. All of that, he had carefully written down in a small black pad he carried in an inside jacket pocket.

The police were already there out front, setting up barricades, cordoning off the main entrance, where opening-night guests would start to arrive in less than ninety minutes. An NBC mobile camera unit had parked its van outside the entrance on Fifth Avenue. Its team of technicians ran spools of cable up the stone stairway, setting up lights, drinking coffee from paper cups.

Small clots of curious onlookers had begun to form behind the barricades. They jockeyed up and down the line, seeking out the best up-front positions.

Borghini joined the excited group of spectators. “What’s happening?” he asked a woman who’d obviously been there some time.

She was eating an egg-salad sandwich out of a paper bag. “They’re having some kind of show.”

“A show? What kind of show?”

“Some kind of big art show. Gonna be lots of celebrities. Big names.”

“Oh?” Borghini beamed happily.

“Some excitement, huh?” A daub of egg salad clung to her lip.

“Yes, a lot of excitement.” Borghini nodded, looking around at the police patrol cars and the TV crews.

At promptly 6:00 P.M., those visitors who’d been touring the museum that day began to stream out of the main entrance. Dozens of uniformed security guards took up their positions at the ground-floor exits.

Borghini continued to watch the prereception activity. A buzz of excitement had begun to radiate through the milling crowd. Its numbers had grown noticeably over the past quarter hour and continued to do so.

At several minutes past six, two paneled trucks pulled up to the curb. Borghini watched seven or eight men spill from the tracks, file around to the rear of the lead truck, and proceed to unload enormous trays of food and chafing dishes. The trucks were a bright, fresh garden green and the lettering on their side panels identified them as the property of Tsacrios Bros. Purveyors of Fine Food and Drink.

Borghini watched the men unload the trucks, each of them marching trays and platters up the stairs and in through the heavily guarded entryway.

At a certain opportune moment, just as all of the Tsacrios personnel were preoccupied with the long trek up to the entrance, the two panel trucks were left unguarded.

It was then that Borghini had started to thread his way through the throng. He marched up to the lead truck and, with all of the assurance of the proprietor himself, removed from it a huge platter of smoked salmon and caviar. In the next moment, he was marching his platter up the stairs, trailing not too far behind the first phalanx of food and cup bearers.

When he reached the door, one of the three or four … guards stationed there, noting that he wasn’t dressed in the black-and-white houndstooth trousers and white monkey jackets of the other waiters, gave him a puzzled look. The man gazed at Borghini’s raincoat and muddy shoes and frowned. He was about to ask questions but the colonel, anticipating that, headed him off.

“Which way?” he inquired brusquely.

The guard’s gaze continued to assess the slightly disheveled man in the plastic raincoat, but the tray of canapés he carried finally conquered the fellow’s doubt.

“Round the corner to your right. Palace of Dendur,” the guard yielded and waved him on.

The colonel hoisted his tray onto his shoulder and swept into the museum.

T
HEY WERE HAVING COCKTAILS
in the first-class cabin and preparing to serve dinner when the Alitalia 747 New York-London-Rome flight began to descend. That was a bit off-putting, in that they hadn’t been airborne more than an hour and a half since their liftoff from Kennedy.

No one paid much attention. Most people, like Manship, merely assumed that the pilots were making an altitude correction. Others thought they were simply imagining it, sinking deeper into their second martini or Bloody Mary.

Then the seat-belt signs came on, advising passengers to buckle up, as the rate of descent became faster and decidedly more purposeful. At that point, people began to glance questioningly at one another. Still no announcement came from the flight cabin.

The plane was clearly not out of control. The descent was orderly. The flight attendants, unfazed, made no dire announcements regarding life preservers or emergency exit doors. It looked like business as usual.

Manship, curiously uneasy, glanced out the window. Puffs of vapory clouds scudded past, leaving little droplets of condensation streaking down the glass. In the occasional breaks, he caught glimpses of tiny lights from what appeared to be widely scattered dwellings, suggesting a sparsely inhabited area.

Only when they landed and were taxiing up to an administration building did the captain come on over the PA system and, with that carefully studied nonchalance of airline captains, announce that they’d made an unscheduled landing in St. John’s, Newfoundland. It was purely procedural, nothing mechanical. They would be there no more than a few minutes at most and would then be departing directly for London, then on to Rome.

The plane never reached the administration building, but, instead, taxied to a bumpy stop out on the runway. A good deal of murmuring and edgy laughter filled the cabin, but still no explanation seemed forthcoming.

If Manship was apprehensive, he couldn’t say precisely why. A short time later, a pale, blond Milanese stewardess, more uneasy than he, moved nervously to his seat, knelt over, and whispered in his ear, “Please remove your belongings from the overhead compartment and follow me.”

All conversation in the cabin ceased as people watched them move forward up the aisle, in the direction of the flight cabin. Mystified, Manship followed the young woman, feeling like a recaptured escaped felon. When they entered the flight deck and closed the door, he was suddenly aware of a number of faces all directed at him.

The captain was a swarthy Calabrian with wavy dark hair and a handlebar mustache. Gazing up at Manship from the pilot’s seat, he addressed him. “You are Mr. Manship?”

“I am.”

The captain squinted down at a passenger manifest. “Mr. Mark Manship?”

“That’s right.”

For such a close area, the space was crowded. Most of the flight crew had jammed in, as well as two gentlemen in civilian dress.

“I am Captain Pratesi. I am sorry to have to inconvenience you, but these gentlemen”—he gestured with what Manship thought a look of disdain in the direction of two men in civilian dress—“have several questions to ask you.”

“May I ask these gentlemen to identify themselves?” Manship addressed his question to the captain.

One of the men opened a large vest-pocket wallet and flashed what was unmistakably a federal seal of some sort. By then, Manship knew very well why the plane had been ordered down in Newfoundland.

“All right.” Manship nodded, determined to remain calm. “Fire away.”

“Not here, sir. Outside, if you please.”

They filed out through the flight crew’s cabin door and down a disembarkation ladder that had been rolled up to the plane moments before. A car waited at the bottom of the ladder, its motor idling, the driver at the wheel smoking and listening to country-western music sung in a highly nasal Quebecois.

As they sped off in the direction of the administration building, Manship glanced back in time to see the disembarkation ladder being wheeled off by a Jeep. From inside the plane, a flight attendant had begun to seal the cabin door in preparation for departure.

“May I ask what all this is about?” Manship inquired, certain now that Van Nuys had discovered the
Centurion
was missing and had extracted from a terrified Taverner Manship’s flight plans for that evening. With the possible theft of a Botticelli involved, it would not have been difficult for a man of Van Nuys’s connections to prevail on the federal authorities to have the plane forced down and Manship brought back to face charges of grand larceny before he could vanish somewhere into thin air on the Continent.”

“We’re instructed to say nothing; Mr. Manship.”

“In that case, where are you taking me?”

“To the other side of the terminal,” the other agent replied. “There’s a private plane waiting there to fly you back to New York.”

The customs officials at Kennedy must have been radioed from St. John’s. They didn’t bother with passports, but whisked him through a side door and out into a kind of alleyway where a private government car awaited him, its motor running. A pair of burly motorcycle police in white helmets stood by to escort them back into the city.

For Manship, the episode was more embarrassing than frightening.

He was certain their destination was Rikers Island or the Tombs. Instead, somewhere close on to 10:00 P.M. they rolled up to the museum. Avoiding the main entrance, they chose instead to slip unobtrusively down the ramp leading to the underground garage, where an elevator waited to take them up to the reception. By then, Manship’s embarrassment had changed to a slow, simmering anger.

By the time he stepped from the elevator into the gaudy dazzle of a New York gala, he was in no mood for conciliation.

As such things go, it was a star-studded evening. The event had brought out politicians and pundits as well as celebrities and “Kultur vultures” in full cry. Luminaries from the theater and corporate worlds drank Pol Roger side by side and pretended they cared about one another’s ideas as they mingled and elbowed their way throughout the galleries of dazzling Botticelli paintings.

At a glance, one could see the Honorable Mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, then Senator Patrick Moynihan framed against one of the gorgeous Lemmi frescoes, glad-handing potential backers. Ex-Governor Mario Cuomo, on his way to a roasting at the Friars, paused to chat with Mrs. Pamela Harriman. Waves of courtiers and sycophants encircled the frail, tiny, jewel-bedizened frame of Mrs. Brooke Astor—among them ex-Mayor John Lindsay, William Buckley, and Norman Mailer. A rumor had swept the galleries that Katharine Hepburn was there, but no one actually claimed to have seen her.

Manship turned, to find himself peering into the grinning countenance of Bill Osgood.

“Aren’t you in Rome?” he asked, then glanced inquisitively at the two federal agents on either side of Manship and divined the situation at once. “Well, I guess you’re not.”

Manship ignored the attempt at humor. “I’d like a few words with Van Nuys,” he murmured grimly.

“Come along. I know exactly where you’ll find the great man.” Osgood glanced at the two federal agents. “I suppose you chaps will want to tag along, too.”

All four of them set out, Osgood leading them through the milling throng. The Texan, at least a full head taller than anyone else in the room, served as a kind of beacon they could easily follow through the shifting human maze.

Friends and colleagues, oblivious to Manship’s situation at the moment, rushed up to congratulate him.

“Dazzling, Mark.”

“Well done, old man.”

“Just like old times, Mark. Sumptuous. Give us one a year.”

A tall, heavily scented woman kissed his cheek. “Mark dear. Ted and I are thrilled. Call us next week for dinner. There’s someone dying to meet you.”

It was in gallery thirteen, more crowded than any of the others, that Osgood suddenly began to wave them eagerly forward. Several television crews were up ahead filming something.

The two federal agents were now running a small phalanx of interference before Manship, anxious to carry out the final phase of the night’s operation. Less genteel than others there, they became a flying wedge, before which waves of people fell away like the Red Sea parting.

Manship had a glimpse of cameras. A sizable group of people had all clustered together around a relatively small area. Osgood had already reached there, his tall, whip-thin figure having knifed a path through the crowd. Down that path, Manship and the two agents streamed, moving directly up to the focus of activity, which turned out to be a pack of reporters all barking questions at once. The target of their attention was Walter Van Nuys. There he stood, a small fireplug of a man in a tuxedo.

As they heaved into sight, Van Nuys had his back to them, declaiming to the assembled press. Rene Klass and Pat Colbert hovered officiously nearby. Emily Taverner hung somewhat farther back. The subject of the talk was a painting on the wall, at which Van Nuys kept gesturing. The painting was Botticelli’s
Centurion
—the good soldier, eyeless and in tatters. Seeing it there, horribly ravaged but somehow ennobled by all of the frightful wounds it had sustained, took Manship’s breath away. The impact of it amidst that setting of glitter and inviolable privilege was overwhelming.

At that moment, Manship’s gaze met Osgood’s and the one sent the other a silent message of gratitude across the mobbed and overheated space.

Beside the
Centurion,
and blown up into a six-foot-two glass-framed panel was Manship’s essay on society’s role as protector and preserver of great art.