The Play of Light and Shadow & Writing

By Barry Ergang

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Barry Ergang

Originally published in
Futures Mysterious
Anthology Magazine
,

Vol. VII, Issue XXXV, Autumn 2004

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Cover photo from
http://www.fontplay.com/freephotos/light.htm

What follows is a work of fiction. All of the
people, incidents, institutions and places (save for Philadelphia
and Chester County, Pennsylvania) are products of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to real people, places or incidents is
strictly coincidental.

To the memory of my mother, Frances
Ergang

On quiet nights Darnell came into Culhane’s
and sat at a table or in a booth. On busy nights he sat at the end
of the bar, as far away from the traffic as possible. He always had
a book with him, and wherever he sat he’d read, sip Scotch, and
smoke. Sometimes he ordered dinner.

Tonight he sat at the bar. After pouring his
drink, I glanced at the book and asked: “What is it this week?”

He turned it over so I could see the
cover:
The Sound and the
Fury
.

“
Rereading an old favorite,” he
said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Faulkner. Pretty
unconventional for a private detective.”

He chuckled dryly. “You’re
calling
me
unconventional,
Professor?”

“
Good point,” I admitted.

A few months earlier, at the end of the
semester, I had begun a year’s sabbatical from teaching literature
at City University of Philadelphia and taken a job as a bartender
at Culhane’s Pub. The alternative profession, which I had practiced
as a graduate student, gained me unwanted notoriety among the
administration, faculty, and student body, but it got me away from
departmental politics and the hermetic insularity of academia and
back into the “real” world among people with everyday concerns.

Darnell was a regular customer; literature
was our common ground. He wasn’t inclined to small talk, but
discussions about books pierced his reserve and evoked a veiled
passion.

A little over six feet tall, with an athletic
build that could run to fat if he weren’t careful, he was in his
mid-forties, with dark, gray-streaked hair and gray-blue eyes in a
face of hard-won stoicism. Deep brackets etched the corners of his
mouth, marking him, you sensed, as witness for half a lifetime to
tragedy and human darkness.

“
How’s business?” I asked.

He tapped his book. “Let’s just say I have
lots of time to read.”

“
Well, I got a call today from someone
who could use a detective.”

“
If it’s divorce work, I’m not
interested.”

“
It’s more of a security
matter.”

He lit a cigarette. “Talk to me,
Professor.”

My explanation was fragmented by customers
and waitresses who needed orders filled. Darnell’s prospective
client was one of my university colleagues, Dr. Barton Gaines,
Chairman of the Art History Department. He’d phoned to invite my
wife and me to a party he was throwing the following Saturday
afternoon to celebrate an auction he’d won for a painting by
Charles Riveau. My wife works for a large corporation and would be
out of town, but I said I’d be happy to attend. Gaines then voiced
his brooding and abiding concern for the painting’s safety. That
was when I first heard allusions to the shadowy Paul Marchand,
Riveau’s nemesis and Gaines’s hobgoblin—the catalyst for everything
that happened later.

Gaines wanted to hire a high-priced security
agency but his wife Marjorie refused. Hearing this, I said I knew a
lone operative whose rates might be more reasonable and who might
agree to the job if he weren’t already engaged by another client.
Gaines had welcomed the notion.

“
Babysitting a painting,” Darnell said,
then shrugged. “Sounds like paid reading time. Go ahead, set
something up.”

After coordinating schedules, I arranged a
meeting at Culhane’s over dinner the following Thursday evening—two
days before the party.

Darnell was already at the bar when Barton
Gaines arrived with Marjorie and his research assistant, a young
woman named Carol Prentice whom I had known as a student the year
before. We exchanged greetings, I introduced them to Darnell, and
took their orders for drinks. Gaines invited me to join them. It
was a relatively quiet evening, and a coworker covered for me so I
could.

“
With due respect to you,” Marjorie
said to Darnell as I sat down, “I think Barton’s being a trifle
melodramatic about this.” Slender and auburn-haired, she stared at
him with imperial gravity. “I agreed to this meeting to get your
professional judgment.”

“
As soon as I have the
details.”

“
History is on my side.” Red-faced
after his wife’s pronouncements, Gaines spoke quietly, looking at
the tablecloth and biting at his graying mustache. “The painting is
at risk. I don’t want Marchand to get it.”

“
How could he know you have it?”
Marjorie demanded.

“
He knows. Historically—”

“
It’s possible, Mrs. Gaines,” Carol
Prentice said softly. “Newspapers, art magazines, and Internet
sites report auction results.”

“
Even so—”

“
Hold it,” Darnell interrupted. “We’re
getting nowhere. Start from the beginning.”

“
How much has Alan told you?” Gaines
asked.

“
Very little,” I said. “I didn’t know
enough.”

Gaines crossed his arms over his barrel
chest. “All right. About three years ago, after he died, I became
very interested in the work of a French artist named Charles
Riveau. I began researching his life to write a book about him.
Carol’s been assisting me for the past year.

“
Riveau grew up in a small town and
later went to Paris to study. Like many young painters, he learned
some of his techniques by copying the works of major artists. He
got so good that many of his copies were virtually
indistinguishable from the originals. But unlike most artists who
eventually get away from imitation, Riveau stayed at it. He wrote
in his journal that it helped him develop a more diversified and
flexible style. During this time he met Paul Marchand.”

“
The guy who wants the
painting.”

“
Yes.”

Darnell nodded. “Go on.”

“
Marchand involved Riveau in a scheme
to forge masterpieces. But instead of selling the forgeries, as
most thieves would, Marchand stole the originals from private
collections or museums and substituted the fakes. He and Riveau
both profited enormously by selling the genuine masterpieces to
unscrupulous collectors.”

“
How do you know all this, and why are
you worried about protecting a Riveau painting from
Marchand?”

“
Riveau detailed the significant events
in his life in a journal he published shortly before he died. He
wrote candidly about his association with Marchand.”

“
He’s stolen from collectors and
museums all over the world,” Carol said, “even from places
considered impossible to rob.”

“
You’re saying Riveau named him, but
the cops didn’t tag him?” Darnell asked.

“
There wasn’t any proof outside of the
journal.” Her face, pretty in a fresh, snub-nosed way and framed by
short, shaggy dark hair, was as earnest as her employer’s.
“Besides, nobody knows what he looks like.”

Darnell scratched his chin. “This is as clear
as the Schuylkill River.”

“
It needs further explanation,” Gaines
said. “You see, Riveau
was
caught. The police found some of the stolen masterpieces in
Riveau’s studio he and Marchand hadn’t yet sold, and he was
arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for fifteen years. Out of
misguided loyalty, Riveau never told the police about Marchand.
Prison took an enormous toll on his physical and mental health, but
the officials there allowed him to paint, and that kept him from
complete disintegration. That and his journal.” Gaines smiled with
a kind of triumphal empathy. “He began to paint with a renewed
dedication to his own vision. He’d been painting his own original
works all along, you understand, and even sold some. Someone
evidently benefited from the notoriety of his imprisonment by
obtaining and selling work found in his studio. It may have been
Marchand. While in prison, Riveau experimented with various styles
until he found the one that suited him and resulted in the works
for which he’ll probably be best remembered.

“
After his release he continued to
paint and started to show his work. When the work began to sell, he
became an artist of some repute. Along with the profits from his
former illegal enterprises, which he’d concealed from the
authorities, the income from new sales gave him freedom to
concentrate on his art.
Nomad
,
the one I bought, is from that period.

“
Marchand contacted him to revive their
old partnership, but Riveau refused. He didn’t need the money, was
afraid of going back to prison, and was determined to carve his own
niche in the modern art world. He and Marchand had a bitter
argument, and Marchand swore that he would destroy Riveau’s work to
prevent him from attaining the fame he desperately wanted.
Afterwards, many Riveau paintings disappeared from galleries,
museums, and the homes of collectors. It’s assumed that Marchand
stole and destroyed them.”

Gaines unfolded his arms and took a sip of
his drink, waiting for Darnell’s reaction.

“
You want me to guard your painting,”
the latter said.

“
Yes.”

“
Why? What’s the point?”

Gaines frowned as if Darnell were a
dull-witted student. “To protect it, of course.”

“
Yeah, but for how long? I can’t spend
twenty-four hours a day watching a painting.”

“
Exactly what I’ve been trying to tell
you, Barton,” Marjorie said.

Again Gaines’s eyes dropped to the
tablecloth. He spoke quietly to Darnell: “I don’t expect you to be
on duty every day. Just for the duration of the party.”

“
That’s what I don’t get. Why should he
try for it in a houseful of people? What’s to prevent him from
stealing it another time?”

“
Nothing. But it’s his flamboyance that
worries me. He’s frequently committed his thefts on the opening day
of a museum or gallery display. It’s his twisted sense of
vengeance.”

Darnell drank some Scotch. “So having or not
having a party doesn’t really matter.”

“
No. We thought…well, our friend Julian
Lakehurst thought…that a celebration might act as a
deterrent.”

“
Who’s he?”

“
An art dealer.”

Darnell nodded. “The painting’s insured,
isn’t it?”

“
Of course. But that doesn’t mean I
want to lose it. I’ve worked long and hard to own a work this
valuable.”