It was the kind of situation where you can’t really believe it’s happening to you, and I kind of chuckled, like he was a big kidder, and said, “Who are these partners?”
He kept smiling, as at an idiot child: no, we mustn’t stick the fork in the wall socket, dear.
“They prefer to remain silent partners, very discreet people, these partners. In any case I urge you to reconsider your position. Really, it’s a choice between being rich and happy or else all three of us floating out into the laguna.”
“What about Franco? Is he going to float too?”
I looked at Franco, who was standing in the corner with his arms folded. He gave me a white-toothed smile too. Everyone was happy except Mark, who looked like a piece of old Gorgonzola.
Krebs said, “Oh, Franco! Franco will be fine. Franco doesn’t work for me, you see. He is a representative of the interests I was just discussing. In fact, I believe he would actually participate in the disposals, should they become necessary. With great regret, I’m sure.”
He clapped his hands; Mark jumped an inch off his cushion.
“But…why are we dwelling on hypothetical unpleasantness? You will do the job, yes?”
I nodded. “Now that you put it in those terms…I would be happy to.”
He said, “Excellent!” and extended his hand, and we shook.
“And now you are in the great Venetian tradition of contrafazzione, in which I believe you have already begun with your marvelous Tiepolo. Wilmot, I don’t think you have yet understood that now you have entered a completely different mode of being. Before this you belonged to the world of people who wait in lines like sheep, at the tram, at the airport, and scrabble for a living because there is never enough, and eat shit every day. You have before now wasted yourself making pictures for magazines and have had to wait in the anterooms of men who are not fit to clean your boots. And when you became ill, or your children became ill, then you also had to wait, wait for some doctor to give you a moment of his so valuable time. You have a sick child, yes? You have no idea of what it will now be like for you and this child. The finest care, the finest! Clinics in Switzerland…do you need organs? Expensive drugs? There is no question you will get what you require, and with a smile too, and with no delay.”
I said something stupid about the forgery business having a good health care plan. He ignored me; he was in full flood and went on for quite a while about the difference between the proles and their masters, and all about how the masters deserved the art and the proles didn’t, and how wonderful it was going to be for me, probably not a set of opinions you’d be likely to hear in New York society, but maybe I was wrong, maybe this was how these people talked all the time when people like me weren’t around. It was an interesting change, anyway, from hanging around with rich liberals. And then he said something that really got to me.
He said, “You are a great artist, Wilmot, and now that we have discovered one another you will fulfill your destiny, you will be my Velázquez. This is what you have wanted your whole life-to paint like this and be rewarded for it, am I not right?”
And, you know, he was. That’s what I wanted. That is what I’d always wanted, and never knew until that moment.
I said, “And you’re the king of Spain.”
He nodded and said, “Yes. I am the king of Spain.” No irony. We were in an irony-free zone, which I also found strange and bracing.
And I said, “Okay, Your Majesty. Where do you want this painting done? Here in Venice?”
And he said, “No, in Rome, of course. It’s all arranged.”
Slotsky and I went out to the launch and boarded it, and as soon as we’d cleared the dock I turned to him and said, “Well, Mark, you really know how to show a girl a good time.”
“Jesus Christ, Wilmot! Do you think I knew what that crazy fucker was going to propose? I just thought he was going to give you another restoration job. Do you think I like being threatened with fucking death? I’m an art dealer, for crying out loud! I thought I was going to crap in my pants there.”
“Don’t bullshit me, buddy. I think we’re way the fuck out of the bullshitting regions now. I’ve heard a little about Herr Krebs from another source; he’s not just your everyday old masters dealer, and if I knew it, so did you. You set this whole thing up, but you were too chickenshit to let me in on it before he proposed it and it was too late. Why? Because you knew goddamn well I would never have come if I’d known. So spill!”
He said, “I swear to God I didn’t know he was talking about a forgery. I never would have gotten you into this if-”
I stepped closer to him, put my arm around his shoulders, and grabbed his near arm.
“Let me interrupt you here, Mark,” I said, close to his ear. “I am angry. I’m a mild kind of guy, but like many mild guys, when I blow my top I’m out of control. I’m shaking from the adrenaline and I probably have the superhuman strength you read about, and so, my little man, if you don’t fucking level with me about Krebs and this whole deal, I am going to pick you up and throw you over the side of this vessel.”
And after a little struggle, out it came, because I really would have tossed him in the drink, and he knew it. I think it was the four-thousand-dollar suit and the five-hundred-dollar shoes more than the fear of actually drowning.
“Okay, here’s the whole thing,” he said. “First, what do you know about art theft?”
“Enough to know that ninety-five percent of it is bozos grabbing pictures off the wall and running out the door. Most museum security is a joke.”
“Exactly. But here I’m talking about the other five percent. I’m talking well-known paintings that can never be sold openly. Assuming they’re stolen by halfway smart thieves, what do they get out of it?”
“Ransom?”
“There’s that, but the fact is that when professional thieves lift major works of art, they want them for purposes of collateral. Criminal enterprises need to raise money the same as legitimate ones, and obviously they can’t go to legitimate sources of credit. A twenty-million-dollar painting is light, portable, easily hidden. I give you my painting, and you give me the five mil I need to buy heroin or armaments, and then when I’ve made my pile I pay you back plus your vig and you give me back my work of art. If the deal goes sour, you get to keep the painting. There are paintings we know of that’ve been used this way multiple times. It’s better than drugs or cash because there’s less possibility of pilferage, a little like commercial paper for bad guys.”
“I thought those boys worked by shooting people if they didn’t pay.”
“Oh, they do, they do, but that doesn’t do shit for their cash flow. With the artwork, they’re covered.”
“And where does our friend come into this?”
“I’ll tell you where. Think about it: at any one time there are a couple of dozen major works of art floating around the underworld, and these guys are not usually connoisseurs. They got no use for a Renoir. After the need for collateral is over, or if the party who has it in pawn needs some ready cash, what does he do? He’s got something worth twenty mil and he’s got no fucking idea in the world how to realize it. That’s what Krebs does.”
“He sells stolen artworks for criminals. Terrific. Who does he sell them to?”
“The people he was talking about. Rich fuckers who don’t give a damn.”
“And let me guess-you find the rich fuckers for him.”
“What’re you, nuts? I’m a legitimate dealer, I can’t be associated with the sale of stolen goods.”
“So what’s your end of the deal?”
“I’m a consultant.”
I laughed in his face.
“Seriously,” he said. “No kidding. He needs someone to talk to.”