Feinstein glanced at her card, then hurried into the boardroom. There were two canvases at either end of the twenty-five-foot room, and he almost ran to the one further away, then stopped in his tracks and turned to look at the other. He had nothing like the expertise necessary to tell whether his so-called investments were genuine or not, and panic began to rise like bile in his gullet. Then he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘PAMELA! PAMELA!’
The girl hurried into the room, notebook at the ready, to find Feinstein sitting at the centre of the boardroom table. ‘Your next appointment is here, Mr Feinstein. Mr... are you all right?’
He was pulling at his collar, loosening his tie. ‘I need a glass of water, an’ get that guy, the art historian, the one who went with me to Harry Nathan’s gallery.’
‘Yes, Mr Feinstein. Do you want him to meet you there, as usual?’
‘No.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Get him here. I want him fucking here.’
Pamela scuttled out. As Harry Nathan’s lawyer, Feinstein knew not only what a mess the Nathan estate was in, but that the outstanding claims against it far exceeded its worth. The only thing Feinstein had been sure about was Nathan’s private art collection, whose value had yet to be assessed, but he had been depending on it to cover the majority of the debts and, most importantly, his own fees. He was sure Harry wouldn’t have pulled a fast one on him. He was his lawyer, for Chrissakes. He’d been his friend, hadn’t he? But as he calculated how much he had paid for the canvases, a sinking feeling engulfed him. He had always known that Harry Nathan was a thieving, conniving, two-faced bastard. It took one to know one.
Kendall hung up the telephone, shaking with impotent rage, as Feinstein’s secretary informed her yet again that her boss was in conference. She had been calling him every half an hour since she had spoken to the insurance company and discovered that Cindy had indeed been telling the truth — Nathan hadn’t paid the premiums on the art collection for two years.
In an effort to calm her nerves, she’d had three brandies, but they hadn’t helped. If anything they had made her feel worse. Part of her was still refusing to believe what had happened, sure there was some mistake — but it was pretty clear what the explanation was: Harry had not bothered to insure the paintings because they were worthless. As soon as she had got a closer look at them she had known that they were fakes. She and Harry had had the brilliant idea of selling valuable original paintings to various ditzy members of the film community, arranging for copies to be painted, and then, after the buyers had had their purchases authenticated, delivering the fakes. No one had noticed; no one had bothered to get the paintings checked a second time.
Now, however, it seemed that Harry had pulled the same scam on her, and switched the originals hanging at the house for a second set of copies. The reason, too, was obvious: he was cutting her out of the proceeds of the fraud and intended to keep the approximately twenty million dollars they had reckoned on netting. Harry wouldn’t have done that to her, would he?
She was almost panting with hysteria, and her outrage rose the more she thought about it: her role in the whole thing had required months of preparation, negotiation and unremitting stress.
Kendall poured herself more brandy, forced herself to try to think logically: what if Harry Nathan hadn’t been shot? It had happened only weeks before they had intended to move all the paintings. What if he had carried into effect what they had so carefully arranged, that the paintings would be moved one by one to private buyers in Europe? Harry had even been in Germany arranging the deals. Kendall’s head throbbed with trying to think straight. She had paid good money for two false passports for him, covered his periods away from LA by saying he was filming, and made calls on his behalf to ensure that no one, not even Feinstein, knew where he was. Maybe Feinstein didn’t know about their scam. But what had happened to the original paintings and sculptures:
She had yet another drink, calmer now, her thin face pinched as she tried to piece together the events of the last weeks, thinking about what Cindy had told her. There was no other explanation, other than that Harry had been concealing the treasures somewhere outside the house for two years. She started to shake: he had been lying to her for two years and had intended to cut her out.
‘You shit,’ she screamed, crying with anger now. He had known she couldn’t report him to the police because she would have been charged for her part in it. He had screwed her into the ground. The fact that he was dead made no difference — he had betrayed her, as he had betrayed Sonja before her, and what a fool she had been, trusting him, a blind, trusting fool... just like Sonja.
As soon as she had seen Harry, she had wanted him and she had told herself at the time that it was love. But it had been something darker and more complex. All her life she had wanted to get out from under, to belong, to be on the inside, and she had known that she had the potential to do that, to lead a life that her parents in Kansas had never dreamed of. Harry Nathan was the most attractive and dynamic man Kendall had ever met: when Sonja had hired her he had been making movies that did reasonable business, still had some respectable friends in the industry. He was charm itself when Sonja brought Kendall out to the house to introduce her, talked to her easily, naturally, as though she was his equal, and over the coming weeks she felt that he took a special interest in her — used to chat to her for a few minutes on the phone if he called the gallery to speak to his wife.
Kendall had soon come to feel that she was like Sonja — her clothes became more elegant, her movements more graceful, the inflections of her voice smoother — but also that, as she herself became more attractive, Sonja was deteriorating. She had never been as beautiful as Sonja, about that she had no illusions, but she was twelve years younger, and she was prepared to make Harry the project of her life in a way that Sonja could not. It was not difficult to get him into bed, though the whole business felt rather perfunctory, almost tawdry, the first time a quick fuck at her apartment, after which he had immediately said he had a meeting and had to go. Kendall had wondered whether perhaps there was some truth in a few remarks Sonja had made, hinting that her husband was selfish and unaccomplished in bed.
Harry had been reluctant either to tell Sonja about their affair or to contemplate leaving her. Some deep, sick, neurotic bond held them to one another, Kendall decided, particularly since Sonja said she had almost finished some major project which she planned on exhibiting. Harry seemed to have bought into all that garbage about disturbing her creativity. That was fine, Kendall reckoned, as she visited her gynecologist for shots to enhance her fertility — she gets her baby, I get mine.
Sonja produced a remarkable piece of work: a huge construction of a series of storefronts, not unlike the block where the gallery was on Beverly Drive, in which the stones in the sidewalk, the trash cans, the merchandise in the stores seemed to be living, watching the parade of humanity with strange, childlike faces.
At the opening Kendall was quiet. She was wondering whether the quick fuck Harry had given her on just the right day two weekends ago, while Sonja was working at the studio, had done the trick.
She received confirmation of her pregnancy a week later, and served this information on Harry like a writ. She intimated, too, suitably indirectly, that if he didn’t leave Sonja and marry her he would indeed receive a writ in the form of a paternity suit. Harry had no option now but to tell Sonja, as Kendall would soon start to swell, and she could see, too, that the idea of a child had worked its old magic, primitive but effective, on his vanity as a man. So that was settled. Sonja received the news as silently as a dagger slid expertly under her ribs, packed her bags and went.