Cheyney Fox (10 page)

The next evening was no less exciting. A line of folding chairs followed the curtain walls of glass on the first floor of the Museum of Modern Art, above its famous sculpture garden, cleared this evening of its customary cache of treasures. Excitement hummed within the milling black-tie, long-dress crowd of invited art people. Below, under floodlight, in the crisp evening air, a long, hulking sculpture of many parts, rising some ten feet or more above the ground and resembling a pile of junk from some up-market trash heap, randomly or
artistically deposited, according to the eye of the beholder. It brooded in the sparkling light, against the black night and the skyscrapers of lighted windows with people pressed against them on the street beyond the garden. Like the guests within, they were hoping to catch sight of a sculpture said to be able to come alive and transform itself before your very eyes. And certainly, the pile looked capable of starting to crawl at any moment.

The spectacle was running late. A fine drizzle of rain and the fire department dressed in full regalia were holding things up. While the museum people and fire chiefs remained in confrontation, the artist, Jean Tinguely, raced around the mammoth piece adjusting wheels and cranks and boxes, balls and glass bottles. He even plunked a few notes on a battered upright piano, accompanying his instructions to several assistants. It was mad. It was glad. But, most of all, it was a bold challenge to win over the art establishment.

Good luck, MOMA. I hope you do better than I did with my machine exhibition, thought Cheyney. A sudden surge of applause sent the mass of people rushing to the windows to look below. Once again, they dispersed because nothing was happening. Cheyney found herself alone amid the crowd.

She saw Christopher making his way through the crush of people to her. Unfortunately Tony’s threat of financial ruin remained a worry in the back of her mind. Christopher had on his arm one of his Mayflower matrons, very Elizabeth Arden, all family emeralds, patently a museum trustee type. The Metropolitan. Cheyney steeled herself to be charming to the woman, who every time they met cut her dead. Evidently this was not the day for breaking the sequence. Cheyney’s charm was duly cut dead.

Christopher had come to the exhibition as the woman’s guest and wore his uppity, high society face. This irritated Cheyney, even more than the woman and Christopher conversing in French next to her as if she were wallpaper. Cheyney turned to walk away, but was stopped by Christopher discreetly grabbing her hand and squeezing hard on it to keep her at his side. She managed to slip away when three other people joined them and Christopher was forced to let go of her hand.

She wandered back to her front-row seat overlooking the
garden and sat down. All the real excitement was going on just below. She wasn’t going to allow Christopher or Tony Caletti’s threats to spoil the exhibition for her.

The drizzle had stopped. It had put a kind of gloss on the scene below. The clouds folded apart like a theater’s velvet house curtain. A sky studded with stars shimmered an all-clear bright as trumpets. At last those in the garden — shiny, miniature tin people dressed as firemen or in tuxedos — shook hands with the artist. Everyone except Tinguely retreated to the sidelines of his garden stage. Cheyney was loving every minute of the tension this controversial artist was causing with his work. The seats on either side of her were empty. She sat there alone, feeling quite happy, and tapped out a tune with her foot. She hummed and sang under breath, “Is this, or is this ain’t my baby, hmm, hmm, hmmm, hmm, hmm, is this is or is this ain’t art.” And smiling she gave a soft, throaty laugh, meant only for herself.

An eye caught hers. Its owner had been standing next to the window, about ten feet away from her, in a group of several very glamorous women and men Cheyney recognized as VIP’s. The only ones she could put a name to were the secretary of state, a Rockefeller, a Whitney, and Ali Kahn. The women were French and Italian. They radiated their own special chic.

She laughed again, openly this time, for having been caught out by him. He was a man well into middle age, not very tall, well proportioned, well dressed to an extreme in conservative, old-money style. He had thick white hair, and deep blue, fiercely intelligent yet decadently sensuous eyes dominating a handsome Teutonic face. A man of some charisma, who emanated wealth and power. He both frightened and excited Cheyney. The way he looked at her made her restless. As if he was undressing her from across the room, and as if the act was not unwelcome to her.

He surprised her by detaching himself from the woman on his arm and presenting himself to her. He leaned forward and, raising her hand from her lap, he lowered his head and grazed his lips over the back of it. The classic continental kiss.

He smiled, “You seem to be enjoying yourself thoroughly.”

His English was English rather than American English, with just a trace of a Viennese accent. Cheyney’s immediate reaction
was “lady-killer.” “Yes, I am,” she answered and, feeling herself obliged to, rose from her chair.

In her all-black, all-seductive sheath of satin, sliced sideways from the floor to the thigh, she was aware that she looked more like a siren, about to commence the long descent of a sweeping staircase, than an art dealer. The sheath, modest to the front, seductive by being backless, was the perfect vamp’s dress. Cheyney was not unaware of the siren coming alive in her when an attractive man of any worth appeared in a room, nor that real business can be as easily done in black satin as in Harris tweed. She was enjoying her little flirt. With a swish of her long black hair, she turned from the man to remove the black, transparent silk jacket, banded in slashes of satin ribbon on wide sleeves and along the hem, from over the back of the chair next to hers.

Turning to confront him once more, her face lit up. She smiled at him as if he were the only man in the world, and then she tossed her head back ever so slightly and gave him a sexy, promising laugh. His attention made her feel so alive, so female, happy with herself. Something was on the point of happening down in the garden that took her attention from him. She heard someone say, “It’s about to happen.” The news rippled through the now-impatient crowd.

“How exciting.”

“Ridiculous, more like.”

“So that’s art, is it?”

Comments that went with sniggers or nervous laughter and some upstate sardonic grins. People began rushing to their seats or pressing as close as they could to the windows. Cheyney and the man saw an elegant couple approaching them. He turned a whispery sort of voice, as seductive as silk on Cheyney, to announce, “We’ll meet again, in another place, and after that,” he bent forward and in her ear — as his companions beckoned him in Italian not to miss anything — he lowered his voice to add, “possibly one more time, and then I will marry you.” He left her with a brief but captivating glance and was gone.

Cheyney watched him walk away flanked by his friends. He never even looked back. She had to smile at his arrogance, the
plausibility of the man, and the directest line in seduction any man had ever thrown her.

Down in the garden, a large chrome wheel began to turn. The spokes of a second, somewhat small wheel spun at twice the speed of the first. A ball rolled down a plank. Jean Tinguely kept rushing around his creation, pushing a button, twitching a lever. The guests began to applaud. The sculpture was coming alive. Dozens of pieces were now in motion and the great hulk of junk began to change form. In sections it sprayed itself with color, or lit bulbs. It was fantastic as it cranked and choked and sputtered into action. It was a riveting piece. Cheyney admired its uselessness, its clumsy beauty, the pure-fun philosophy behind it, its audacity. The drizzle began again, just as the old upright began to play its out-of-tune self. The mobile had so far transformed its shape twice. Certain sections ground to a halt, having completed themselves, while certain others were still at it. One section, near the piano — or maybe it was the piano: difficult to tell from her angle of vision — burst into flames. The sculpture was destroying itself.

“That’s auto-eroticism for you.”

“What a mess!”

“Is it a phoenix?”

Titters from the crowd.

“It’s called Assemblagism.”

“I believe you.”

“Wrong,” shouted a man with a French accent, “Tinguely is a Nouveau Realiste.”

“Wrong again, he’s a mechanic,” quipped a booming Texan voice. More titters.

The flames lapped at various inviting pieces of wood. Now it was fire that was transforming the work. Twirling smoke began to transform the garden, too. Of course, (you said to yourself) the fire was part of the creation. But firemen don’t like to see a fire go unattended. This was their cue to make their entrance with hoses and extinguishers at the ready. Miss it they would not. Tinguely sprang forward to exclude them from the world of art. A hush descended once again upon the guests watching the scene below. The flames were becoming very artistic. The museum men were joined in the fracas. Firemen were taking their positions. No amount of assurance from
the artist that the fire was contained within the sculpture could hold them back. The poor man appeared distraught, but kept producing transformations of his piece. It was still alive with motion, flames, and smoke. Rain seemed to be stealing some of the firemen’s thunder. Now you could only see the piece through thick white smoke like the white ground on a canvas awaiting paint. Art did battle with flames against the rain and the fire service.

The great art extravaganza ended in fiasco. The firemen were only too willing to take hose and ax to the lurching sculpture. The local Fire Code had declared this piece of molten art irresponsible and was about to rubbish it. Earth to earth, and junk to junk. The last thing Cheyney saw before she pushed through the crowd to leave the museum was a dejected Tinguely slumped on the steaming ground, his head lowered over his arms.

These were the best of times. But they were the calm before the storm.

Chapter 10

A
few days after the Betty Parsons vernissage. It was early evening. Cheyney stopped by her office to get some money for taxi fare and found Tony Caletti working late.

“Hi, Tony.”

“Don’t you look all glamorous! Another big night in the art world with those phonies. How much did the dress set the gallery back?”

“This one was on me. Like all my clothes. As you know.
Why not cut the bitching? You’re out of line. What’s bothering you?”

“Not true.”

“What’s not true?”

“The books say the gallery has been paying your personal bills. And Uncle Sam may not like that.”

“Then why, for God’s sake, did you pay them through the gallery account?”

“Because if there is a nil balance in one, the office uses another. And there is always the temptation to try for tax deductibles.”

“Is that legal?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. It all depends how I present it in your next tax return. So now you know who to be nice to.”

Cheyney’s patience ran out. For months, she had strung him along, given him plenty of rope. Tonight she decided he could hang himself with it.

“I always am nice to you, Tony. Not nice enough, it seems. I think you have taken on too much, so I’m lifting some of the burden from you. You won’t have to do the tax returns or any more financial tap dancing, just bookkeeping, which I suspect is how we should have left it in the first instance. Just pull out the relevant documents and we’ll send them over to Bernard Reiss. He’s our new accounting consultant. Anything else you have to say can wait till morning. I must dash: you know how it is when you’re late …”

He was visibly upset, but he still held his ground. “I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”

“I think I do.”

“Oh?”

“I haven’t worked this hard to set things up so you could eventually become a rich lady without thinking of myself. Not to have you hand it all over to some slick, artsy-fartsy accountants, either. Now we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Which is it to be?”

“Tony, that’s a pretty silly question.”

“Good.”

He opened his shabby briefcase and drew from it a manila folder. And from that he withdrew a check. Rising from his
chair, he leaned across the desk and placed it squarely in front of Cheyney, who was sitting directly opposite him.

“This is the easy way. Sign it.” The check was made out to him for the sum of ten thousand dollars. He placed a cheap ballpoint pen at an angle across the check and sat down again.

Stunned, Cheyney tried to play for time. She picked up the check and studiously read it aloud. Turning the check over, she saw typed across the narrow end, “Please pay bearer cash,” a space for her signature and then her name.

“Now why would I sign this?”

Tony Caletti bent forward to shuffle through his briefcase once again. He pulled out a wad of envelopes. “Because if you don’t, I’ll post these. This one will be the first, because it’s the most dangerous one: ‘Something for the Internal Revenue Service.’ ” Then, one by one he pulled other envelopes from the pile. “The landlords, The Morgan Guaranty Bank, your most lucrative client, each and every one of your creditors. Inside each envelope is a simple statement suggesting that the recipients demand payment by return post of the monies owed them. Otherwise, it suggests, they might get as little as ten cents on the dollar. Or nothing at all. So they had better rush to get in on this first-come, first-served situation. I stuck stamps on the envelopes. If you are stupid enough not to sign that check, then I walk out this door and put them in the nearest post box. That will bankrupt your three companies and you personally within a week. Ten days at the most.”

Pure and simple blackmail. In a voice barely audible, she asked, “Why? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Money.”

“You would destroy me and everything I’ve worked for, for money. Why didn’t you ask me for it?”

“Ask you for it? That’s a joke, you sanctimonious bitch. Because you wouldn’t give it to me, that’s why. You like to think that you’re generous, a lady bountiful who would give me a handout if I came begging to you. What a lotta bull that is. Oh, yeah, you’re generous, to some snotty, gigolo artist type who thinks himself too good to even speak to the likes of me. To a drinking nigger, ’cause she cleans up and yes ma’am’s you all the time. To a bunch of phonies, fags, and fairies, people who matter, and artists. Yeah, and you
think
you are
generous to me. Well, you’re not. I don’t call the few bucks you pay me generous. The Christmas bonus, fifty dollars, generous? Chicken shit. You don’t actually think I put in all this work just to be treated like some Victorian bookkeeper kept in a dark corner, head down over the ledgers under some dim light bulb, and nothing more.”

Devastated by his words, the violence in his voice, the crude vulgarity of the man, she stammered, “I never knew you wanted more. You never said.”

“Never said. What the fuck did you think I was saying with all that overtime, when I was restructuring your business? You’re either naive or stupid, or both, if you think anybody works the way I did for you without expecting a piece of the action. Turn my books over to Bernard Reiss, see you pay him what I deserve? Not on your life. Sign the fucking check,
Miss Fox
, and cut all this pig-squealing. Or you get what you deserve.”

“I can’t do that.” Cheyney picked up the check and tore it in half. They both watched the scraps flutter to the desk. “Now get out. And I mean it, Tony. If you’re not out of here in ten seconds, I’ll call the police.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t gamble on it. You’re nothing to me. Just a thief, a blackmailer, scum. I must have been blind not to read the evil in you.”

“I need that money, Cheyney. I’m desperate for it, and you’re gonna give it to me.” Tony Caletti was visibly sweating.

“Not on your life. Out, I said, and out I mean.” She picked up the telephone.

“If I go down, you bitch, you’re going down, too. That’s the way you want it, that’s the way you’ll get it. You’ll die more than one death over this story. And, if I get my way, you’ll get a conviction for fraud.”

He mopped his face with the sleeve of his jacket. He was white with rage. He raised his arm to hit her. Through her fear and fury, she saw herself grab her handbag and swing it across his face. She was appalled, yet could not stop. Cheyney kept beating him across his shoulders, his head. One lens of his glasses smashed. He fled, groping with one hand for the intact lens, crushing his briefcase against him for protection. She
chased him from the darkened gallery. Obscenities mingled with the obscure sounds of struggle as Cheyney propelled the bookkeeper out the door.

Christopher found her barely an hour after the rumpus had subsided. She spared him the unflattering details of the confrontation, but she was in such a traumatized state he knew things were far worse than she intimated. Her fear that Tony was going to return, assault her, burn the place down even, or at least vandalize the gallery, made him summon help from friends. Roberto Fadagatti, an Italian count, and his mistress of many years, Lala de Ganza, rallied at once and arrived to help.

Christopher could not calm Cheyney, but when Roberto walked into the room, he was like a miraculous healer. His arm around her seemed to enfold her in reassurance. His kiss to her hand suddenly eased her erratic breathing. He said, “My dear girl, you are too sensible and clever to be broken by such a petty thief. He will do his worst, and you — well, you must do your best, no matter what. Or he wins.”

It was simple, it was clear. It was delivered with a trace of Italian accent, enough to give it a momentary flavor of the ancient wisdom of the Mediterranean, older than feuds and vendettas. The mild flattery lent its charm, too. Cheyney began to emerge from her shocked, hyper-anxious state.

She sat with Roberto in silence for several minutes, Christopher and Lala anxiously looking on. Cheyney felt herself coming alive again in the mere presence of the gaunt and craggy-faced Roberto, handsome in his nobility, calm as a Giacometti sculpture. He wore his kindness and unquestioned integrity like a modest prince of the realm, which some said he most definitely was and which he denied.

Exiled counts abounded in Europe after 1945. Roberto Fadagatti’s truest claim to nobility was his obvious integrity. Beyond that lay titles renounced amid the violence and anarchy of Italian Fascism and an impeccable record of resistance to Nazi tyranny of whatever nationality. His name was synonymous with freedom, and now years after the end of that war that had not changed. But Roberto had. He was one of that rare breed of men who can mobilize themselves for a great
cause, fight and defeat his enemy to win. But in less tyrannous times, he found it difficult to use his statuesque virtues to work for man’s petty selfish means. He found it degrading, embarrassing, nearly impossible to manage successfully. But at least this left him with great reserves of reassurance to communicate in moments such as Cheyney’s crisis.

He and Lala lived from hand to mouth and on the very outer edges of international high society. As art dealers, they had eked out a living in Rome. They were trying to establish themselves in a small gallery where they represented Italian and French painters, but it was hopeless. They were the least likely pair to be in business. He gave away more than he ever sold. Any sob story opened his always lean purse. Any favor was granted, no matter the cost. Lala tried, and tried hard, for them both. She was better at it, but only slightly. She worked in their gallery between hair appointments at Bergdorf’s, shoe-buying at Ferragamo, dress fittings at Saks Fifth Avenue, visits to her jeweler. She was forever redesigning old family bits of rose-cut diamond brooches, aquamarine necklaces, ruby rings, emerald bracelets, that miraculously popped up from nowhere. Cheyney had never seen her outdone in elegance, even by the Duchess of Windsor herself, one of Lala’s role models.

Lala was young, dark, and slender — more the contessa than the beautiful society lady. She could, and did when it suited her, play the helpless little female and make it work. She was at her most clever when needing to get out of a scrape of some sort. In and out of the pawnshop with her pearls, the questionable family silver, or her diamond earrings, using the place more as bank than shop, trading in desperation — she was masterly at merchandising.

No one in the New York art world took them seriously, but no one took against them either. The one thing they did very well was enjoy themselves and amuse at the same time, wherever they went, whatever the circumstances. That and the exercise of perfect courtly manners — ideal qualifications for up-market New York party lists. Lala might pawn a wristwatch for money to send three dozen white roses to some ambassadress as a thank-you note. They were genuine eccentrics.

The couple survived by the generosity of the wealthy Italian nobility and industrialists who respected Roberto’s goodness
and supported it when they had a chance to. The occasional purchase, a public relations job that was low on work, high on salary, all designed to help without offending his easygoing pride.

By local standards, Roberto and Lala were no more making it in New York than they had in Rome. Cheyney knew that and had to admire how philosophical they were about it.

To her, Roberto seemed all that was good, just as Tony Caletti and his schemes seemed the embodiment of all that was perfidious.

“Roberto has the knack of taking the sting out of adversity,” said Lala, handing Cheyney a champagne glass, and Roberto a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon to be opened. “So tell him all that went on. Maybe he can help you find a way out. At least you’ll get a bit of good advice.”

Thumb on the wire cage around the cork, Roberto said, “Helping is trickier than getting a bottle open. But perhaps I have already given you my best advice, ‘Do your best, no matter what.’ That means
whatever
he does.
If
he does anything.”

A lively pop, as Roberto twisted the cork from the bottle. A stream of vapor swirled out like the bottle’s own genie. He poured champagne while Cheyney disgorged more lucidly than to Christopher her slanging match with her bookkeeper.

“Call the police, have him arrested,” advised Lala, “and don’t think another thing about it. What a louse!”

“I’m more worried that he is going to have me arrested for assault and battery. I can’t believe I was so violent.”

“Stop thinking about that, Cheyney. No police,” said Christopher. “You do that, and the scandal will leak out. You don’t want that, do you?”

Cheyney could see more annoyance than concern in Christopher’s face. This irritation sobered her yet more. She felt vulnerable again. Lala dispensed more calm.

“Have another glass of champagne, Cheyney. Everything will come all right, you’ll see. Now that you’re over the initial shock, you’re looking much better. Let’s all go out to dinner, Roberto will treat, won’t you, darling?”

Typical of Lala to turn a disaster into a celebration. Cheyney watched Lala slip her arm through Christopher’s and cajole
him into supporting her caprice. Roberto’s generosity as usual needed scant urging. Still, Cheyney wished that Lala could understand that Cheyney was hardly more than the ghost of her usual self. Maybe the decade was only just starting to borrow the word “trauma” from medical jargon. But a girl still knew when she was traumatized. It was asking a lot of Cheyney to play “Let’s pretend” right now.

But then, how could Lala understand? Her whole life was lived in “Let’s pretend.” Lala was an orphan. Her wealthy foster parents had doted on her. Her childhood fantasy world made her the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish prince and a German princess. The foster parents, amused by her fantasies, and seeing no harm in a child’s game of make-believe, strung along. By the time she was eight, Lala had a collection of Spanish royal memorabilia. In her fantasy, they were simply relics of her royal past. Her quixotic foster parents, the Rafaels, nurtured a fantasy of their own: their little girl’s fascination with European royalty meant she loved history. Clearly they were raising a future luminary of the academic world. They eagerly scoured the antique shops. Everybody’s fantasy grew fat on the scourings. The house was crammed with regal junk.