Aaron Elkins - Old Scores

We will remain on the job!

I put down the newspaper, went to the high window, leaned my elbows on the sill and my chin on my forearms, and stared out at the ancient, narrow towers of Saint-Benigne, drenched in clear morning sunlight.

"Who in the hell," Calvin said to the back of my head, "is Govert Flinck?"

Govert Flinck (aka Govaert Flink), b. Cleves, 1615; d. Amsterdam, 1660.

Or maybe it was 1670. Either way, I told Calvin, he was bad news. Flinck had been another of Rembrandt's students. Not as famous anymore as some of the others have become, but well-known in his day, and-this was the bad news-particularly gifted in imitating the style of his master, as anyone who has seen his portrait of Rembrandt in London's National Gallery can attest. So gifted, in fact, that long after he left the workshop, he was going around selling his own paintings as Rembrandts. And getting away with it.

Had he been capable of painting the portrait in question, Calvin wanted to know.

That was the question, all right. Flinck had been a fine artist, good enough to take commissions away from Rembrandt-on his own merits-in the 1640s. There were pictures of his not only in the National Gallery, but the Met, the Louvre, and the Hermitage. When he'd been on his form, not too many of his contemporaries could beat him.

"Well, I'll need to look at it again," I said, "but I'd say that, at his best-his absolute best-probably, he could."

And was I capable of telling if he had? Calvin persisted.

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Jeez," said Calvin, "this thing isn't getting any tidier, is it?"

"You know, Calvin," I said, still looking out the window, "this question of who did or didn't paint that picture doesn't seem quite so important anymore. We've got a bigger problem to worry about now."

He looked up, squinting against the sunlight. "Who owns it, you mean. Can this guy Mann prove his case?"

"Exactly."

A lot of claims like this one had been made in the fifty years since World War II. Some had been won, but many more had been lost. For one thing, the more time passed, the harder it was to prove anything about anything, particularly when it involved the Occupation, an era that everyone would like to forget. For another, not everybody who made a charge like this was honest. Crooks and poseurs had gotten in on it, as on anything else where big money was involved, and as a result the rules of evidence had gotten very strict. Moreover, French law made it extremely difficult to get anything done about a crime committed more than thirty years ago. For that matter, what crime had Vachey committed? Mann himself said the painting had been bought, not stolen, but on the other hand…

"No," I said, turning from the window with a sigh, "who am I supposed to be kidding? The question isn't how good a case he can make, the question is, do we-Tony, you, me, the SAM board-want to get into the middle of a disputed ownership contest, especially one like this?"

"I don't see that we're in the middle of it," Calvin said. "This is between this guy and Vachey. Where do we come into it?"

"We come into it because we have to decide whether to take the painting or not. If we do, then it's us he'll have to make a claim against to get it back."

"So? Let's say the courts say it's rightfully his. That's that, he gets it. There's no problem. Nobody at SAM is going to fight him on that, Chris. You know that."

"Sure, but say he loses. Maybe it's not 'technically' his. Maybe his story doesn't stand up to the rules of evidence. What difference would it make? Regardless of what the courts decided, would we want it as long as we thought there might be any truth at all in what he says?" I shook my head roughly. "I don't know, the whole thing has turned so… so ugly-I'm starting to think we don't want anything to do with it."

Calvin put his coffee down on the end table and came to stand with me at the window. "Now, listen to me for just a minute," he said firmly. "You're jumping to conclusions. Why don't you just do your job and wait and see what happens? Even if this guy thinks he's telling the truth, that doesn't mean that's the way it was, you know. He was, what, seven at the time? So the chances are he's repeating things he heard from his father, not things he really remembers for himself."

This was Calvin earning his keep, Calvin the realist, the hard-headed M.B.A. snapping the muzzy, oversensitive art historian out of his funk and putting him back on track. Or trying to.

"That doesn't mean they aren't true," I said stubbornly.

"Look, Chris, how could he even know what Vachey's picture looks like? Vachey kept it a secret from everybody. Hell, we were the ones he was giving it to, and he wouldn't even let us see it ahead of time. Unless Mann was one of those hundred people there last night, which he wasn't, there'd be no way for him to have any idea if this was his father's painting or not. I'm telling you, the guy could be inventing the whole thing. He's probably just another crook." He grinned. "Think positive."

I drained my coffee and smiled back, but thinking positively was more than I could do. There was a queasy sensation deep in my chest, as if my stomach had shifted up where it didn't belong. The Rembrandt-the Flinck?-had been fishy enough from the beginning, and getting myself shoved out of a window hadn't improved my attitude about it. But now it was tainted with something genuinely repugnant. As much as I didn't want to believe Mann's story, it sounded like the truth. I didn't want to be involved in it, and I didn't want my museum involved.

"I'm going to call Tony and recommend that we forget it," I said.

"Well, you're not going to call him now. It's the middle of the night in Seattle. Listen, we were going to see Vachey this morning anyway. Why not put this Nazi thing to him and see what he says?"

"Calvin, it doesn't make any difference what he says. There's too much. I just want out. I have a lousy feeling about the whole-"

"Christ, give the guy a chance to defend himself, Chris. What can it hurt?"

I shrugged. He was right, I supposed. "All right, you're-" The telephone rang.

"This is Monsieur Norgren?" the unfamiliar voice asked in French.

I said it was.

"Of the art museum in Seattle?" I said it was.

"Very good. I am Sergeant Huvet of the Police Nationale. It would be helpful if you could come to the Galerie Vachey on the Rue de la Prefecture at ten o'clock. Is this convenient?"

I frowned. "Does this have something to do with-with what happened last night?"

"Pardon?"

"What is this about, please?"

"It is concerned," the sergeant said with businesslike detachment, "with matters proceeding from the death of Monsieur Rene Vachey."

Vachey had been found dead early that morning, the sergeant explained, in the Place Darcy, a small park near the center of town. The cause of death appeared to be a gunshot wound.

"You don't mean-do you mean he was murdered?"

"So it would appear."

That was as much as the sergeant would tell me. "You will be there at ten o'clock, monsieur?"

I told him I would.

"Your associate, Monsieur Calvin Boyer-he doesn't answer his telephone. Perhaps you know where we could reach him?"

"I'll have him there for you," I said numbly.

"Very good."

I sat slowly down on the bed, my thoughts tumbling.

"Who's murdered?" Calvin asked.

"Vachey," I said. I told him what little I knew, and sat there staring at my clunky jogging shoes.

"We better get going," Calvin said when I'd finished. "It's nine-fifteen.

We talked about the murder on our walk to Vachey's house, of course. Not that I remember much of it. I seemed to be functioning in a near stupor; a sort of jumble-headed reverie. How could he be dead, I kept thinking. Hadn't I seen him only last night-what, nine, ten hours ago?-and hadn't he been sparkling with life, rascally and genial? How could he be dead this morning? I found myself mouthing the question without meaning to: How could he be dead, how could he be dead?