Stuart Woods - Insatiable Appetites

“I had a call from Mary Ann this morning...”

“No kidding? That’s a first, isn’t it?”

“I guess so. She had some information about Eduardo’s art collection.”

Joan buzzed Stone, and he put Dino on hold. “Mary Ann Bianchi on two for you.”

“Tell Dino I’ll call him back.” He pressed the second button. “Good morning, Mary Ann.”

“Good morning, Stone,” she said. “I had a very interesting phone call from Dolce this morning. I had told her about the forgeries, and she had a look at the paintings.”

“Did she confirm that they are forged?”

“Just the opposite. She said that when she was a girl, studying painting, she copied eight of them as an exercise, and she took large-format, Kodachrome photographs of them to work from. She compared the color transparencies to the paintings, and she says that they are all genuine.”

“That’s very interesting. Why do you think the appraisers thought they were forgeries?”

“I talked to the chief appraiser: their opinion was based entirely on the little check marks pressed into the frames. In the absence of the check marks, they would have authenticated all the paintings.”

“And that’s because Charles Magnussen told Raoul Pitt that the check marks meant he had forged them?”

“Yes.”

“And that was their only basis?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll look further into this,” Stone said. He hung up and got into his coat; he told Joan to tell Dino he would call him later.

“How long will you be out?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll call you if it’s more than a couple of hours.”

Stone took a cab up to West Fifty-seventh Street and the Pitt Gallery, and asked at the front desk for Raoul. He was soon seated in the gallery owner’s office.

“You know, Stone, don’t you, that the audit of my gallery and storerooms has been completed and that none of the pictures bear the check marks?” Pitt asked.

“Yes, I know,” Stone said. “I’ve come about something else.”

“How can I help?”

“Tell me, in as much detail as possible, about the meeting where Magnussen told you about the check marks.”

“His girlfriend, Greta Olafson, called me and told me Charles was dying, so I went to see him at New York Hospital. He was in a private room and obviously in pain.”

“Had he been sedated?”

“He said his pain was being managed, but he seemed perfectly lucid to me.”

“How did the subject of the check marks come up?”

“I raised the subject of his legacy. I told him that he would be remembered as more than a forger, that he was a brilliant painter. He laughed.”

“Why did he think that was funny?”

“I think he disagreed, and he appreciated the irony that he would be remembered more for his forgeries than his original work. Then he said he had done many forgeries in recent years, and he told me how he had marked them. He said, ‘Believe me when I tell you, it’s the forgeries that will make me immortal.’”

“Did you believe him?”

“I didn’t know whether to or not. He was getting tired, so I said my final goodbyes and left.”

“Do you know where his girlfriend is?”

“I believe she’s living downtown at Charles’s place. He bought a disused commercial building in SoHo twenty years ago. He lived and worked there.”

“Let’s go and see her,” Stone said.

“I’ll call her and see if she’s available.”

“Don’t call — let’s surprise her.”

“All right.”

They got a cab downtown and found the building. Raoul rang the bell, and a woman answered the unicom and buzzed them in. They went to the top floor in a freight elevator and stepped off that into a large living room, comfortably furnished. The walls were adorned with what Stone assumed were Magnussen’s original paintings, since he didn’t recognize any paintings by others.

They were greeted by a striking woman in her fifties with long, perfectly straight gray hair, and dressed entirely in black. Raoul introduced Stone to Greta Olafson. She seated them and asked a maid to bring them coffee.

“It’s a nice surprise to see you, Raoul,” she said. “Thank you for coming to Charles’s memorial service.”

“I’m glad I was there,” Raoul replied. “It was nice to hear Charles spoken well of.”

“He was a better man than most people knew,” she said. “He helped many struggling artists — gave them studio space in the building and, often, stipends.”

“That was good of him and perfectly in character for the man I knew.”

Coffee came, and the maid served them.

“Why have you come to see me?” Greta asked.

“There’s something I want to ask you about,” Raoul said. “The last time I saw Charles — when he was in the hospital — we had a brief conversation that puzzled me.”

“About what?”

“He said that he had pressed into the wood of some pictures he had restored a little check mark. He said...”

Greta began to laugh.

Stone and Raoul exchanged a glance and waited for her to stop, but she continued to laugh.

Finally, she got control of herself. “That,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, “was Charles’s little joke on the art world.”

“Joke?”

“When he restored a picture, he had this little dye, and he tapped on it, leaving the mark on the frame. It amused him to tell me about it.”

“Why did it amuse him?”

“I told you, it was his little joke. He didn’t tell me why it was funny.”

“I think I’m beginning to see,” Raoul said.

“Then please explain it to me,” she said.

“I think Charles wanted to make some waves in the art world after his death,” Raoul said. “He told me he placed the check marks on forgeries he had made when he accepted pictures for restoration.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Greta said. “After Charles got out of prison, he never did another forgery. I watched him work all the time. I would be working on a sculpture while he was cleaning and restoring the pictures that came to him. He never once copied one of them.”

“Well, his little joke worked, at least once. Stone, here, is the executor of Eduardo Bianchi’s estate, and the appraisers found twenty-four paintings with the check marks and, having heard the story, thought they were forgeries. It appears they are not.”

She began to laugh again. “I can hear him laughing with me,” she said. “He would have loved to see their faces when they examined the paintings. They must have thought Charles was an even better forger than he had once been!”

In the cab on the way back uptown, Raoul said, “I think I’ll have a word with an art critic at the Times I’m friendly with. I believe he will find Charles’s little joke to be newsworthy, if not amusing.”

“I don’t think the appraisers will find it amusing,” Stone said, “but I will take great pleasure in telling them about the joke.”

Stone called the head of the art appraisal team and broke the news about the check marks. He was met with silence.

“Hello?” he said finally.

“I’m still here,” the woman said. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’ve just met with Charles Magnussen’s longtime companion, Greta Olafson, and she assures me that, once Charles got out of prison, he never forged another painting. They worked in the same studio, so she would have known. Does that impress you at all?”

“I’m not sure,” the woman said.

“Well, you had better be impressed, because if you should lend credence to a rumor that the Bianchi collection contains forgeries, I will fall on you and your group from a great height, and no one will ever again purchase your services. Do you understand me?”