The Fatal Touch (32 page)

“We dealt mainly in legitimate art, so John, or someone he was paying to bid on his behalf, was often to be found at auctions buying works. Sometimes he would pay over the odds for a work, and then sell it for less. But not often.

“Let’s say I had created a ‘Corot’ landscape, which is the easiest thing in the world, in my opinion . . .”

Blume looked up startled as Nightingale barked like a seal, “Hah! He could never do a Corot. I told you, he couldn’t paint air.
Too much weather even in old Corot for Harry. The man is a pathological liar.”

“Shall I read on?”

Nightingale muttered something, and when he stopped, Blume continued:

“Nightingale would bring the painting to a dealer friend who, for a fee, would agree to pass it on to another dealer who, again for a fee, would pass it on to a ‘buyer’ who would then decide to sell it to the auction house, setting a minimum price. John would turn up and bidding would begin. If there were no takers, one of John’s hidden agents would bid against us until they reached a suitable price. Now the painting had a history and a value ascribed to it. There was no legal danger in this, because if the painting was exposed as a fake John came across as victim. But there was a moral danger. If everyone knows you are buying a fake, then you are either a poor swindler or a sorry victim. Swindler is a term you can live with in the art world. Victim, no. No one likes a victim.

“I think it’s fair to say that the more important a person is, or is supposed to be, the less I shall like him or her. I particularly detest self-important artists, those self-advertising modernists who think they have something to say because they are too ignorant of art history to know it has already been said and done, and vastly better, by others. Worse still, of course, are the Nihilists, the showmen, the charlatans, shit artists like Pietro Mazoni, whom I once had the misfortune to meet at a dinner party. But I was very honored to meet Giorgio de Chirico. This is a man who has recognized the crisis in art. He accepts my argument that since there is nothing more to say and nothing can be better done than it already is, the only solution is to become surreal or to imitate. De Chirico manages both and, to top it all, he forges his own work, signing other people’s paintings with his name (only if they ask, of course, for he is a gentleman).

“But unlike just about every other surrealist, none of whose works I can bear to look at, let alone honor by emulation, de Chirico is a draftsman. Nobody wins my affection and admiration more than a modern artist who still knows how to draw. His surreal works (which he insists on calling
pittura metafisica
, even though I think surreal will do just fine) have a command of line, shadow, and perspective like any of the old masters. He’s always closer to Mantegna than that mustache-twiddling Spanish showman Dalí. To be sure, he messes about a bit, but he knows how it’s done.

“Another thing that marks him out from the others is the breadth and depth of his learning. His linguistic skills alone make him exceptional. Italian, Greek, German, French, English, Latin, and, of course, Russian (and what a beautiful Russian wife he has).

“A draftsman when he is being surreal, he is a classicist when he’s being post-modern (how I hate that term). Like me, he knows that the giants, Titian, Raphael, Rubens, and Velázquez, dwell in the past. Like me, he does freehand riffs on them, but unlike me, he imposes his own style on them. Me, I let their style speak directly through me.

“I prefer his ‘classical’ style. Most of all, I adore his references to Velázquez, his re-elaborations of Velázquez’s pictures of Villa Medici, Villa Falconieri. And Velázquez, of course was interpreting great Italian architects, some of them also mad, like Jacopo Zucchi. So when I copy de Chirico, I am drawing on layers and layers of great tradition.

“But here’s the thing. This is important. Pay attention those who love me. When I painted some works in the style of de Chirico, I found he did not have a style completely his own. He was uncomfortable with himself. He was a modernist, in other words. So my interpretation of de Chirico’s Villa Medici is different. I have made slight changes. It could be the same villa; it could be another one that is very similar. An attentive observer should be able to tell. Perhaps I am referring more to Velázquez in this work, which bears my signature and imprint. Some day it will be worth millions. And I am referring to the work itself, my painting, not just what it indicates.”

“None of this makes any bloody sense!” Nightingale exploded. “That bastard couldn’t paint Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Velázquez. I just told you that. De Chirico, yes—like Harry said, that was all draftsmanship.”

“That’s what had me wondering,” said Blume. “And what about the last bit about de Chirico, Velázquez? And the ‘Pay attention those who love me’?”

“I have no idea what he is on about,” said Nightingale. “No one loved him. Not even his own mother, if I recall his drunken confessions, which unfortunately I do. But I have no context to judge the meaning here. You really ought to let me have the notebooks.”

“I will,” promised Blume. “As soon as I work out one or two things for myself. Meanwhile, to judge from the uncharacteristically agreeable smile on your lawyer’s face, I don’t think he understood a fucking word of that. Explain it to him on your way out.”

Chapter 26

The youth did not say anything, but he sat down as asked.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Sandro.”

“Sandro, I want you to tell me what you know about the muggings of foreign tourists.”

“Nothing.”

Caterina’s feet hurt. Her bra strap was cutting into her side like it was made from bailing wire, and her eyes and nose felt hot, dry, and flaky.

“Your friends will be here soon. It will take twenty minutes at most.”

“I know nothing.”

“What was this I heard about you seeing something?” she asked, not holding out much hope for a meaningful response. It was probably a setup, Grattapaglia getting his revenge by showing her the sort of stuff he knew she couldn’t handle.

His suspension from duty, still her fault evidently, was just hours away. But she did not need him to prove she could not do what he did. She already knew that. She did not have his bulk, swagger, girth, experience, age, his bullying instincts and capacity for sudden violence, his slyness and menace. Maybe Blume was punishing her, too.

Stay there and question this one, Grattapaglia had ordered her; ordered her though she was his superior in rank; I’ll round up a few more. Then he abandoned her, against regulations, with a male youth and no supervisors anywhere.

The youth was shaking his stupid shaved head and mumbling something incoherent. What did you have to do to a child to allow him to become like this? Ignore him. That was probably all it took. That and the bad luck of giving birth to him in the first place.

She tried again, probing gently at first, then with more insistence. All she got were monosyllables. After twenty minutes, she had established that Sandro knew nothing about tourist muggings. All he knew is that when a patrol came to move him and his friends off the bridge, he had told the two cops they were cowards, hassling him and his friends but not bothering about rapists.

“What rapist?” asked Caterina automatically, wishing she hadn’t bothered.

“Maybe not a rapist. I don’t know.”

Which was why she shouldn’t have bothered asking.

“When was this?”

“On Tuesday, April 4.”

The precision seemed uncharacteristic, and caught her attention. “You remember the date?”

“It was three days after my birthday.”

“Happy birthday. How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“An adult now. What time did you see this incident?”

“Around three, four in the morning.”

“Where?”

“That piazza with the bar on the corner, you know. Trees. Behind Vicolo del Moro.”

“Are you talking about Piazza de’ Renzi?”

“I don’t remember the name.”

“Can you remember the name of a bar or anything?”

Sandro cleaned his nose with the back of his hand. Caterina fished a packet of Kleenex from her bag. “Use a tissue, for Christ’s sake, child. Clean your hand.”

He wiped his hand across his sleeve and said, “There’s a bar with two umbrellas. The bartender’s an asshole. I totally tagged the front of his bar.”

“You spray-painted his walls? I’m not going to follow up on this, so just say yes or no.”

“He caught me doing a throw-up on a wall once. It wasn’t even his wall, but he thought he’d intervene. He reported me to the cops, but not before he had tried to blind me spraying the aerosol into my eyes. So we’ve been targeting his bar.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

They were interrupted by shouting and curses and trampling feet that announced the arrival of Grattapaglia and three more youths. Two girls, no older than sixteen, and a kid who looked about fifteen.

They all wore tattoos and metal studs and rings on their faces, and as soon as they entered the basement, they seemed to converge on Caterina. They were aggressive, but they crowded her also like kids around a teacher, or greedy toddlers around a mother with candy. Two of them were clutching bottles of beer by the neck.

“You didn’t take the drink away?” Caterina asked Grattapaglia, who was standing with one foot against the wall.

“You afraid they’ll use the bottles as weapons? These creatures?”

A greatly pierced and abscessed girl walked with a sideways lurch, as if the bottle of Ceres she held in her hand weighed heavily.

Caterina said, “OK. Both of you put your bottles on the floor. Both of you.”

She stood patiently as a torrent of abuse flowed toward her, moving back and forth a few steps trying to show it did not bother her, but it did.

When they had stopped cursing her, they looked at each other for new ideas. Then the young boy detached himself from the group, picked up a beer bottle, and dangled it at his side. He went up to Caterina, leaned closer, then belched loudly in her face, opening his mouth wide.

It was the funniest thing they had ever seen.

Grattapaglia took his foot off the wall, stepped forward two paces and, with a lazy, sweeping slow-motion movement of his arm, slapped the kid across the face. He opened his fingers at the last moment to lessen the blow, but the kid still fell sideways as if shot. The beer bottle dropped straight to the floor and cracked and rolled.

The pierced girl came running over, screaming. She knelt down beside him and cradled his face. The other two shuffled around, bumping into each other like blinded animals in a pen, unable to decide whether to stay or go. The girl began to cry, rubbing the back of her hand across her perforated nose.

Caterina was beside Grattapaglia now, her lips drawn back, the tendons on her neck throbbing. “What the fuck was that? The child is about fifteen, younger maybe.”

“I hardly touched him. It was a slap, not a punch.”

“That’s not what you do to a child.”

“He’s bigger than you,” said Grattapaglia.

She looked at the youth whose head the girl was trying to lift and cradle. The scarlet weal on the boy’s face showed the white outline of Grattapaglia’s fingers.

“I’m going to sue you fuckers,” said the boy, pushing the girl away and struggling into a standing position.

“That’s likely,” said Grattapaglia. “You really look like the sort of person who has a personal lawyer on a retainer.”

“My parents will sue for me. When they hear this, they’ll sue. My father has contacts. When I tell them, they’ll . . . they’ll . . .” He pointed to Caterina. “What’s your name? You’re going to jail,
puttana
.”

Caterina tried to touch the child’s face, but he pushed her hand roughly away.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“The fuck you are. I’m suing.”

“Stop it,” said Caterina. “Nobody’s getting sued.”

She had had enough. “Sovrintendente, get these kids out of here. Put them back wherever you found them, send them to social services. Just so that you and they get the hell out of my sight. Now!”

“I thought they might have seen something.”

“Sandro stays with me,” said Caterina. She looked over at his white face. He had put his thumb in his mouth. When he saw her looking, he started biting at the nail, rubbing his teeth, rolling his eyes as if the police exasperated rather than terrified him.

To her surprise, Sovrintendente Grattapaglia did what she asked.

When the clumping up the stairs and babble of voices had died away, she repeated her question. “What did you see?”

“I already said. I saw this old guy try to grab a girl. I saw him do it. Then she lashed out and punched him and ran away. And the old guy fell and didn’t get up.”

“How do you know he didn’t get up?”

“I went over to him. I was going to give him a kicking, and I don’t have a problem saying that. But when I got there I could see he was, you know, out of it.”

“Do you mean unconscious?”