“I hoped it wouldn’t show, Prez.”
They exchanged significant glances while I pretended to be superawed by the crystal building. It didn’t take much effort.
“Lovejoy. Your financial offer…?” He sat beside me, clapping his hand on my shoulder while Annalou pressed close. They were quite a team. “It’s to do with your special gift, right? That was the most fascinating display of perception I’ve ever witnessed. Why, a gift like that, recognizing antiques by sense, why, that’s a gift which must be used for Good. I feel we have a rightful claim on your services, Lovejoy.”
I came to, smiled. “That’s right, Prez. I came here to offer my gift in your service.”
“How wonderful!” Annalou pressed my hand. “That means you’ll be able to stay a while, rejoicing in prayer!”
“Afraid not, love. But I will provide a list of items which are fakes. In your exhibits, as they stand.”
Silence. I admired the ghastly Deus building. “You deserve help, Prez. I was guided here by a higher power.”
“Well, I feel that too.” He was uncertain.
“Those saintly relics from Trier, the pottery on display by the Saints of Europe scenarios. They’re fakes, Prez.”
“They’re…?” He looked hard at Annalou. From the corner of my eye I caught her worried shrug.
“We’ll get confirmation from Queen Mary College, London. They do it with physics somehow. Some mumbo-jumbo called inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry. That’ll show it, I’m sure. And that Roman glass from the Holy Land’s all rubbish. They use spectrophotometry. I think, but we can give them a call —”
“Fakes?” Prez said faintly. He checked we weren’t being overheard. “Lovejoy. You can’t be right. Our Foundation bought those items from the most reputable sources.”
“You have my sympathy, Prez. And so has your lovely wife here.” I dragged my eyes from his lovely wife and gave him my best soulful smile. “I feel your anguish. Here you are, having built up this great… er, thing. And now to realize you’ve spent a fortune of your income on worthless junk. It’s a setback, Prez. I weep for you.”
“Are you sure, Lovejoy, honey? About the fakes?”
“Shut up!” Prez snapped at her in an undertone. I tried to look startled. He smiled at me, abruptly back to holiness. “Lovejoy. The strain of this revelation’s afflicted my soul. Are you sure?”
“Yes. That specimen of Egyptian grain from Joseph of the multicoloured coat fame is duff—er, false, Prez. Like the bowl it’s in. I think these science people use something called electron spin resonance for that —”
“Lovejoy, we got to talk.”
He signalled Glad Tidings and the custom golf truck. We drove to his private palace through crowds of adoring devotees, who cried their blessings down upon us. I felt a right prat, and a fraud, but that’s par for my course. He gave few blessings on that return journey.
DEALS are hard for me. I mean, I’d loved to have called off the whole thing and scarpered, with those precious gleaming Jesuit porcelains as payment. But that would have left Magda and Zole, and Gina, and the Californian Game looming a week away. And dead Bill. And Rose Hawkins. And me on the run from everyone on earth.
So I listened, was offered everything I wanted if only I’d join this heavenly pair and their labours. I was left alone with Annalou for a sordid set of promises while Prez ostentatiously conversed with his special bodyguard of devotees outside in plain view—allowing us time to reach some sort of conclusion, I surmised. I weakened, made promises to return, saying I’d use my services on their behalf all round the religious antiques markets of the world. She sulked, but brightened when I showed fear of my lust being recognized for the sinful thing it was. She slipped me an address in St Louis where she had a private apartment for religious retreats. I pretended to be exalted, thrilled. Which of course I was.
Then it was Prez’s turn while Annalou went somewhere. I insisted I simply had to write to all the authorities I knew about this terrible fraud that had been perpetrated on this holy enterprise, giving it maximum publicity for the sake of honesty and…
I got two point four per cent of the investments in the theme park. I insisted on refusing the one per cent of the admission fees to the church Exhibition of Eternity, and said it would be my personal contribution to the work. He watched me go, musing hard, as Glad Tidings walked me out to where Tye and his goon waited by the helicopter. I was wringing in sweat as we ascended into the heavens. See what religion does to you? It’s catching.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
« ^ »
THE risks in antiques fraud are relative. Other criminals risk the absolute. You’ve never heard of a fraudster involved in a shoot-out, of the “Come in and get me, copper!” sort. Or of some con artist needing helicopter gunships to bring him in. No, we subtle-mongers do it with the smile, the promise, the hint. And we have one great ally: greed. And make no mistake. Greed is everywhere, like weather. You get varieties of it, from tempestuous to a benignity so tranquil you kind of forget that it’s there. But it’s never very far away, thank God. Wasn’t there a European king, heavens preserve us, done for fiddling his investments the year before last? See what I mean?
Fraud is the daughter of greed.
Going, that second day in Louisiana, to the house of the famous collector Mr D. Hirschman, it seemed to me that I hadn’t needed to be lucky so far. In each case the marks’ greed had bolstered my endeavours. Their greed had made them overreach — Mortdex’s man Verbane was hiving off a share of the Mortdex millions for himself, so couldn’t afford a whiff of scandal. Annalou, bless her, had succumbed to that greediest of impulses, the craving for me. She’d believed that her obvious charms would seduce me into helping her and Prez to cull still more ancient religious relics to drag in more susceptibles to the fold. Prez’s greed had been more direct—let’s shut this bum up, in a manner beneficial to all.
I defy anybody to answer this next question with a resounding negative: Have you ever been a fraud?
Think a moment before answering. That hair tint? That little white lie about being only twenty-four? Your height? Weight? Telling the doctor you honestly stuck to his rotten diet? And saying yes, you really stayed home every night your partner was away in Boston…? Fraud. The Church is at it, governments, the UN, Inland Revenue, emperors and monarchs. But there’s some kind of cons that are morally permitted, it seems. Like spying, like in wartime, like when Scotland Yard does a drugs stake-out and captures dope smugglers.
Fraud is a necessary part of our personality. No good complaining. We’re all born con artists.
I would have had great hopes for Zole, if it hadn’t been for that damned dog.
“WHY did you let him buy that mongrel, you silly cow?”
“He’s a kid. It didn’t cost. Where’s the harm?”
“Whose was it?” I grabbed Zole by the throat. The dog growled threateningly so I let him go.
It was early evening. We were in a street filled with sound and ironmongery, scrolled iron balconies and music bands milling away in every doorway. I was having to shout to make myself heard.
“You little sod, you thieved it.”
The dog Sherman was a small white Scotch terrier thing that had seen better days. It kept grinning at me, coming close, wanting an orgy of affection. It forgave easily.
“Lovejoy. That business at the Deus Deistic Theme Park. Did it work out okay?”
“It was worth more’n what you gave, Lovejoy,” Zole claimed, cocky little swine. Just how much he’d been worth for a few seconds while holding the porcelain figure, he’d never know.