Salinas smiled and shook hands with both of us, with the usual assurances of goodwill, not entirely hiding what I saw, close up now, was extreme terror; he packed up his things and departed in something of a rush. I heard the Mercedes start up outside.
“A useful little man, that,” said Krebs reflectively as the sounds of the car receded. “And a bitter man: well trained, but without the flair needed in a museum director nowadays. He was passed over for promotion as director of collections, and this is his revenge. And his prosperous retirement.”
“He’s going to buy the painting for the Livia?”
Krebs gave me an unbelieving look and laughed. “Of course not. His job is to give us a flawless provenance.”
“How?”
“That you will see with your own eyes, perhaps as soon as next week, when we go to Madrid.”
“We?”
“Yes, of course.” He looked at his watch again. “You know, it’s past one. Aren’t you famished? I am.”
With that we left the house and walked down the street and across the Piazza San Cosimato to a little restaurant where they apparently knew Krebs and were very glad to see him. They gave us a table by the window, and when we were settled with a plate of dried anchovies and one of whitebait fritters, and a bottle of Krug, he said, “Wilmot, I realize you are an artist and thus not entirely of this world, but I must press upon you that from now until however long it takes you must keep yourself under almost military discipline. No wandering off and no unauthorized calls. When we return I will ask you to surrender your cellular phone. It’s not me who makes these rules.”
“Who does then?”
“Our friends. My partners in this venture.”
“You mean you’re mobbed up?” I said, or rather the wine said.
“Excuse me?”
“Mobbed up. You’re working for the Mafia.”
He seemed to find this amusing, and while he was chuckling the waiter came and we ordered food. The waiter said the scampi Casino di Venezia was very good and Krebs said we had to have it in honor of the city where we began our association, so I said, okay, I’ll have that too, and he ordered a bottle of Procanico to go with it. When the man had gone he continued, “Mobbed up-I must remember that expression. But let us not confuse things. The Mafia is about whores and drugs and corrupt contracts for poured concrete. We are talking about an entirely different level of enterprise.”
“Criminal enterprise. Whatever happened to letting the experts come to their own conclusions? Whatever happened to Giordano Luca? You’re planning a major fraud.”
He looked at me with what seemed like amused pity. “Ah, Wilmot, did you ever actually think it would be anything else? Really?”
And I had to admit to myself that he was right. I do have a habit of believing my own lies. I took a breath, drank some more wine, and asked, “So when do I get my money? Or was that another thing, like those crummy sketches you raved about, that I should have realized was too good to be true?”
“Good God, do you think I intend to cheat you?” he said, with what seemed to be genuine amazement. “That’s the last thing in the world I would ever do. Wilmot, I have been searching most of my life for someone like you, someone with your incredible facility with the styles of the past. You are, to my present knowledge, unique in the world. I would have to be insane to treat you with anything but the greatest respect.”
“That’s terrific, but on the other hand I have to ask you if I can make a phone call.”
“I told you, I don’t make those rules. But when the operation is complete, and the surveillance is lifted, you may call anyone you like. Always being discreet, of course. Because, you understand me, there is no-how shall I put it?-statutes of limitations on art forgery. That is, until the actual witnesses are deceased, the authenticity of the painting is always at risk. With one careless word an object worth many tens, hundreds, of millions becomes a mere pastiche and worth nothing, and then the buyers look to get their money back. They go to the dealer and of course he talks, and then the cord that holds it all together unravels. Then it is either prison for all of us or a worse fate, if in any way the gentlemen I referred to earlier are in the least implicated. Not a happy prospect. Especially not for you. Or for your family.”
When he said that I almost lost a mouthful of whitebait, but I managed to get it down and asked him, “What’re you talking about? My family?”
“Well, only as a means of controlling you. While you remain alive.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, well, I speak loosely of witnesses, but in affairs like this one, there is only one witness who counts. I mean, Baldassare knows, and Franco, and that girl who posed, but no one cares about them. Anyone can cry forgery and the interests that wish for the painting to be original can always shout them down. It happens all the time. But one witness can never be shouted down.” He paused and inclined his head toward me and snapped a bit of fish from his fork.
“The forger himself,” I said.
“Just so. Now don’t be downhearted, Wilmot, I beg you. As I keep saying, this is a new life you are in now. Danger, yes, but when has real art not been associated with a certain danger? Quattrocento Florence was a violent place, and art’s greatest patrons have always been violent men.”
“Like the Nazis?” A little dig there, but he didn’t blink.
“I was thinking of the robber barons of America or the aristocrats of Europe. And the artists themselves have always been freebooters, living on the edges of society. When art becomes domesticated into a branch of show business, it becomes flaccid and dull, as now.”
“Sorry, but that’s nonsense, like Harry Lime’s remark about Switzerland and the cuckoo clock in The Third Man. Velázquez had a steady job-”
“Yes, and in his lifetime he did fewer than one hundred fifty paintings. Rembrandt, living on the edge of life, did over five hundred.”
“And Vermeer, who was even more on the edge, did forty. I’m sorry, it won’t wash, Krebs. You can’t generalize about what kind of temperament and what social conditions produce great painting. It’s a mystery.”
I could see he was starting to get a little steamed to have his pet theories exploded like this, but it’s always gotten me steamed to hear theories about how art happens dumped on my head by people who never handled a brush. But then he shrugged, and smiled, and said, “Well, perhaps you’re right. It is a life I am used to, and we all tell ourselves stories to justify ourselves to ourselves and others, because we wish to have some company in these little scenarios. But I see it is not to be, you have a head as hard as mine. And really, it does not matter in the least, as long as you do not forget that the sword that hangs over us is harder than both our heads. Ah, good, here is our meal.”
The food was excellent, but I had acid on my tongue and could hardly taste it. I drank more than my share of the wine, however, and got enough of a buzz to keep me in my seat instead of running out of the place screaming hysterically. Krebs chewed away on his scampi and I wondered how he’d ever gotten used to this kind of life. I mean, he seemed like an ordinary guy, no more ruthless-in fact, maybe less ruthless-than the typical high-end New York gallery magnate.
I wanted to jab him some more, though, so I said, “Is it true, by the way, that you got your start selling pictures stolen from murdered Jews?”
“Yes,” he said blandly, “perfectly true. But as I’m sure you know, there was no question of returning these things to the rightful owners. It would be like trying to return a carving to an Assyrian or an Aztec. They were dead. I sincerely wish they hadn’t died, but I didn’t kill them. I was thirteen when the war ended. So what was I supposed to do, leave them in a Swiss vault forever?”