“I deny every insinuation, Lovejoy!”
“Sit down, mate. Think a minute.” He subsided slowly. I could hear his grey cells starting up with a whirr. “A series of articles in some Latin American newspaper, raising all hell about the national treasures you’ve got here. Their national treasures. Or in an Accra daily, with African politicians complaining of neo-colonial exploitation. Get the idea?”
“No.” He spoke only for Prunella’s pen.
“Let me explain. World headlines yelclass="underline" It’s those bad old Yanks again, nicking antiques. The world loves shouting this slogan.”
“So?”
“So you issue a denial— the same ones you used over the Tairona Columbia items, the Kwoma New Guinea ethnics. Isn’t it a bit odd, incidentally, to have those near the North America exhibits?” He didn’t answer. I smiled now, home and dry. “You raise the admission fee—okay, recommended donation—to that gallery. Cloak it in mystique. You have a special guard, get local volunteers on oh-so terribly vital vigilante duties, maybe even restrict the number of visitors.” I spoke over his shocked gasp. “You sell a certificate that they’ve seen it on the Great Dispute Day. Do I have to spell it all out?”
He removed his glasses, possibly for the first time since birth. “Nothing creates interest like an argument.”
“Wrong—like a patriotic argument.” I watched his smile begin, slowly extend, eliminating wrinkles. “You’re the patriot who takes on the might of… well, pick a country.”
“There’s one thing, Lovejoy. No ambassador has criticized us to the United Nations, not for three years.”
“Not for two years, six months and seventeen days, Mr Bickmore.” I smiled and stood, extending a hand. “I honestly do think another’s about due any day now.”
He came with me to the door. “We haven’t cleared things up, Lovejoy.”
“We have,” I said. “Six times what Bethune cancelled.”
He spluttered, reeled. “Six times?”
“It’s simple. You up your special ticket. Respond to the news splash, you’ll not know what to do with the money.”
His only grief was the thought of a fraction of the income slipping through his sticky administrator’s fingers. “But that’s an impossible fee, Lovejoy!”
“Not a fee, Mr Bickmore. Think of it as a suggested donation. Ready, Prunella?”
BY the end of the day I was worn out. We’d done over half a dozen museums, all official places with superb antiques, paintings, furniture, stuff I’d have given my life to halt at and adore. But that was the point: my life was the stake.
It’s called a “trilling” in the trade. That is, you introduce a kind of pressure from a third person— nation, ambassador, whatever you can think up— and shove it onto a second person. You yourself are the first person who makes up the prile. The problem is, you’re inextricably linked, bonded for life in a trilling. It’s not just a once-off, some deal you set up and close tomorrow and it’s goodnight dworlink at the door. Oh, no. A trilling’s everything but a marriage, though there’s even less love, would you believe. The one important factor different from all other con tricks is that big trillings need big organization. And even little ones sometimes do. Our UK trillings occur in London, Newcastle and Brighton. I’ve only been in two in my time, and was lucky to get out of both.
We did trillings on the Brooklyn Galleries Centre (sorry, Brooklyn Center), the American Numismatists’ Society Museum, two Modern Art galleries where I drove a harsh bargain because I was feeling bolshie and Prunella and I’d had a row because by then she’d got the bit between her teeth and was geeing me along like a bloody tired nag. Plus the Museum and Gallery of Broadcasting Arts off Fifth Avenue at East 53rd Street where I drove one harder still on account of I blame them for time wasting. Oh, and the Natural History place. That was a particular difficulty I’ll tell you about, in case you ever do a trilling.
You vary the trilling, of course. The threat of an international lawsuit wouldn’t work with a Natural History place, at least not much. But I had little compunction, what with the Natural History Museum of the Americas standing on Columbus Avenue, Central Park West, and being the size of London. It chills my spine. I mean, stuffed animals are all very well, but the poor things should have been left alone, and I’m not big on dinosaurs even if 2.8 million New Yorkers see them every single year.
It’s a question of tactics. I had to raise the great Disease Scare Tactic on this occasion, telling the gentle Mrs. Beekman after an hour’s jockeying that she would soon hear a clamour that would close her museum, possibly for good, if she didn’t accede to my humble request for a small fraction of the ticket takings. She was a harsh bargainer. I was practically wrung out by repeating my gilded threats under her vociferous cross-examination.
I told her, “Our London churches are excavating their crypts all over the city. They have devoted doctors to check there’s no diseases itching to pop out and grapple with the populace. Understand?”
“London had its problems in the seventeeth century,” she said primly. “So long ago, wasn’t it?”
Okay, so she knew that diseases fade away. “The public doesn’t know that, lady. And what with AIDS, series of unknown viruses yet to be announced…”
My clincher was promising to have specimen newspapers delivered to her next morning, carrying banner headlines announcing Contagious Disease Risks at Museum of Natural History, adding regretfully that it might be difficult to prevent them falling into the wrong hands. I also promised that she’d be saved the bother of legal claims filed against her museum. She tried the police threat. I asked her to phone Commissioner J.J. Kilmore and talk the matter over with him.
She surrendered eventually, she guaranteeing a payment of fifty cents on the dollar. I guaranteed a bonus: her request for staff increases the following year would be given favourable mention in high places. I wouldn’t pass that on to Denzie Brandau, of course, because I was lying. She’d really put me through it. I’d tell Jennie to pay a fraction of each Natural History instalment into a numbered bank account in, say, Philadelphia. In Mrs. Beekman’s name, of course. Safety does no harm.
Trilling ploys are not necessarily animose. You can have quite friendly gambits. Like the Bickmore one. I mean, that would bring money pouring in over the transom. We’d get a share, but so what? A plus is a plus is a plus. The Numismatists—loony obsessionals the world over—were a pleasure to deal with, because I could faithfully promise a major find of certain hammered silver coins, right here in New York State! The bloke was really delighted, because the carrot (there’s always got to be a carrot in a trilling) was that the hoard would be mainly the sort his main foe collected.
“Fall in value of your pal’s collection?” I guessed.
“He might be inclined to sell,” he replied evenly.
“Good heavens,” I said just as evenly. “Whereupon you’d buy them, the day before the coins were revealed as counterfeit?”
He fell about at that, me laughing with him.
“I’ll see the publicity’s done right,” I promised. “Fancy some early English hammered silver coins, soon to be discovered at Roanoke? Only, I’ve got some maniacs back home who’d be really keen to have a regular thing going…”
See what I mean? Some antiques people are a pleasure to do business with.
THAT evening I totted up the sums fleecing in soon, and found I’d bettered Jim’s by a clear six-fold. It took me two hours on the phone with Prunella close by reading her notes in the hotel at Pennsylvania Station where Jennie had booked us in. I fixed all the frayed edges, the outstanding threats and promises, settled the transfers, formed up a method of checking on the payments with Gina’s accountants, and had the contributors listed at Jennie’s.