Venus With Pistol Read online

‘Nice inconspicuous little pub. What’s wrong with the Ritz or the Grillon if you want to get noticed? The gossip columns check these places, you know.’

  ‘Aye. We decided it would be impossible for her to make the trip incognito, as ye might say. And it’d be even worse if she were trying to hide and got discovered. Most suspicious. So as far as the newspapers are concerned, she’s just doing a European tour, visiting some of the countries she played tennis in. She hasna been in Europe for ten years, ye know.’

  Well, that made sense. Maybe I wasn’t going to have to give Carlos the complete security lecture I’d planned.

  ‘So me - and the buyers you were talking about - we stay somewhere separate and check in by phone? Is that the idea?’

  ‘Something like that. We meet when we have to, of course, but we can be careful about that.’

  So far, reasonable enough. Maybe even too reasonable. What’s so reasonable about lashing out two and a half million on art? Give me that sort of money and just watch me spend it - but at least I’d spend it on things I chose for myself. I wouldn’t hire experts to tell me how to get shot of it.

  ‘This is an investment policy, is it? I mean - General Motors is worth five per cent more a year, but Picasso’s worth ten? Right?’

  A little formally, he said: ‘The gallery, when it’s finished and stocked, will belong to the people of Nicaragua.’

  Oh really? I’d looked up ‘Nicaragua’ in the encyclopedia at the library the night before, and nothing I’d read suggested ‘the people’ owned much of anything. Still, once you’ve given it away you can’t very well ask for it back.

  Hell, it wasn’t my problem. Maybe it was Dona Margarita’s idea of a snazzy memorial to her late lamented husband. Maybe it was a family tradition that you endowed a nifty piece of public works, and this would be a smack in the eye for Uncle Gonzales and his crummy old sewage farm.

  And maybe two and a half million was just a drop in the bucket and it didn’t much matter how you spent it. If so, I was keeping the right company this time.

  Just then the plane gave a shiver and a lurch that always makes me think of headlines like Antique Gun Dealer Among Those Feared Lost. A stewardess came on the intercom asking us to please fasten seat belts since we had a reasonable chance of landing intact at Le Bourget in a few minutes.

  THREE

  We split up before the immigration desk, and I went and dosed myself with a stiff cognac before going back into Customs to pick up my bag. Carlos had vanished by then. I took the bus into Les Invalides and a taxi on to the Montalembert.

  It isn’t the Prince de Galles but it’s a pleasant enough hideout, and a lot nearer what I think is the centre of Paris than the empty windy streets up by the Etoile. I gave my name and passport and the desk clerk found me on his little list.

  As the porter was picking up my over-size suitcase and finding it surprisingly light, the clerk added: ‘Mam’selle Whitley asked to be told when you arrived.’ He had his hand on the desk phone. ‘Shall I do that?’

  The name didn’t mean anything to me (or did it? there was a faint echo) but I’ve no prejudice against meeting unmarried women in hotels, away from their families. In fact, it’s my favourite indoor sport.

  I nodded. ‘I’ll be in my room.’

  The room was just a room: comfortable-looking, slightly old-fashioned. I didn’t bounce on the bed or turn on the taps; they should be okay in the Montalembert, and if they

  weren’t I wasn’t going to draw attention to myself anyway. The only odd thing was a large flat brown-paper package lying on the middle of the bed.

  I said: ‘C’est pour moi?’

  The porter shrugged, accepted two francs and left me alone with it.

  I knew what it was, of course: a picture. A bit over two foot by three. Well, if it was on my bed … I started ripping off the paper.

  It was a painting of four old men sitting around a café table staring into their glasses, pulling on clay pipes and wondering what the hell to say next. Done in an easy, flat style in rather dull browns and blues and things. It was peaceful; the sort of painting you could hang on your wall and never notice any more than you’d notice the old boys if you were sharing the same café.

  There was a sharp rap-rap on the door. I shoved the picture under the bed, shouted: ‘Entrez!’ and she entrezed.

  She was almost my height; a round schoolgirlish face without much make-up, fluffy fair hair without much styling, unless not much styling was the style nowadays, and a bulky blue tweed suit with a black fur collar sticking up like an angry cat. You got the impression that her main interest in clothes was that they kept her warm.

  I’d just started saying: ‘Mam’selle Whitley, I presume?’ when she saw the torn paper and said: ‘Have you opened that?’ A quiet American voice, presumably from the East Coast.

  I shrugged. ‘It was in my room. It could’ve been a late Christmas present.’ I pulled the picture out and laid it on top of the bed.

  She was looking at me with a sort of timid horror. ‘But do you know how much that’s worth?’

  ‘Quite a bit, I’d guess. Cézanne, isn’t it?’ In the left-hand bottom corner there was a signature: P. Cézanne.

  ‘We paid $550,000 for that.’ She started nervously bundling it up again.

  ‘Now, hold on a minute. If I’m smuggling that out to Zurich, and I suppose that’s why it’s here, I’ve got to get the frame off first. By the way, I’m Bert Kemp.’

  ‘Elizabeth Whitley.’ She held out her hand automatically; Americans don’t do the smiling and nodding and shuffling that the British go in for before deciding you’re worth a handshake. Her hand was small, neat, firm.

  I said: ‘I suppose you’re one of the travelling experts.’

  ‘Yes. I do the old masters.’

  That made the name even more familiar. ‘Wasn’t your old man in this game, too?’

  Wrong phrase, of course. She stiffened and said, a little coldly: ‘Insofar as it’s a game - yes. He was Benjamin Whitley at the National Gallery in Washington.’

  I said soothingly: ‘Thought I knew the name. I mean, he wrote a lot of books, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’ She turned back to the picture. ‘Why do you want the frame off?’

  ‘I mean, just look at it.’ It was about three inches wide all round, and at least two inches thick. ‘It’ll more’n halve the weight and, without it, the picture’ll go in my big case. And if the Customs do take a snoop, a frame makes a picture look more valuable. I can pass this off as something I knocked up myself in a wet weekend.’

  She glanced at me, quickly and dubiously. ‘With that signature?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll paint that over and sign it myself.’

  ‘You’ll do what?’ The horror was a lot less timid.

  I said: ‘Just poster paints. I’ve got a kiddie’s paintbox in my case. It washes off easy enough.’

  She looked a little dazed. But hell, she ought to know something about the end of the art trade that doesn’t get mentioned in the coffee-table books.

  Then she shook her head slowly. ‘Mr Kemp—’

  ‘Bert, if we’re going to be travelling around together.’

  ‘Look - I’ll be frank. I know it isn’t your fault, but … but I just don’t like your job. I wish we were doing all this entirely legally. And I didn’t realize we had to take such risks with the pictures.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m a necessary evil, you might say. I mean, I help make pictures more mobile. More people get to see them. I sort of help spread culture all over the world. Rather noble, really.’

  She was looking at me, quite without expression. It was a good face for that: I mean, it couldn’t do very much in the way of extreme expressions anyway. It just went on looking gentle and hopeful, like a new kitten.

  ‘Anyway,’ I added, ‘we aren’t taking any risks getting the frame off.’

  ‘Do you know a lot about art?’

  ‘Me - not a bloody thing. But I know a bit about framing and thin
gs. I mean, that’s part of my job.’

  ‘Well…’ She looked back at the picture. ‘I’ll take the frame off myself, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Go ahead.’ I gave her the double-ended flintlock screwdriver I carried for poking at old guns. ‘I didn’t know Cé zanne counted as an old master.’

  ‘He doesn’t. I didn’t find this; Henri Bernard did. He handles the Impressionists and moderns, but he’s gone to Amsterdam.’ She stopped yanking at the nails and turned the picture over again and looked at it. ‘I still don’t think if the Customs see this they’ll think you painted it.’

  ‘Why not? Customs men aren’t art experts - they don’t have to be. Art-smuggling’s pretty rare; I’m the only professional, far as I know. And this one doesn’t look much. I mean not half a million dollars’ worth.’

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t know anything about art.’

  ‘I’m giving you the layman’s view. Customs officers’ view. Real art’s a big fat naked bird sitting around a landscape and not minding the thorns in her bottom.’

  She started pulling nails again, and said, maybe a little bitterly: ‘You’re going to get on well with our employer. That’s about her view - only she’d like a couple of galleons firing their guns in one corner and the Imperial Guard fighting Waterloo in the other.’

  ‘She’s strictly tits and cannon school, is she?’ I thought it over. ‘Well, I know a bloke who can paint that stuff. I mean, he can really age it, too. Then all you need to do is swear it’s a Titian or Goya or something and we’ll all die rich.’

  She was looking at me as if I’d turned into the Mad Monster of the Montalembert. ‘Are you really serious?’

  I shrugged. ‘Just talking. But I do actually know him. When do I get to meet the Boss Lady, anyway?’

  ‘Oh yes. Sorry - Carlos asked me to tell you: they want us to be on the steps of St Sulpice - d’you know it? - at three o’clock and they’ll pick us up in a big black car.’ She lifted the whole frame gently clear and stood up. ‘It’s all a bit like something out of a bad spy movie.’ She glanced at me and almost said ‘So you’ll love it’ but didn’t have the courage, or maybe bad manners. Then she just nodded and hurried out.

  I had forty minutes; St Sulpice was about ten minutes’ walk away. So I unpacked my duty-free bottle of Teacher’s, had a short reviver, scattered a few clothes and things around, then started picking the framing pins off my bed.

  Which left me with a big fancy frame. Not worth much, but too much just to dump in a hotel bedroom without starting suspicions. In the end I kicked and pulled it to pieces, wrapped it up in the brown paper and then sat there sucking splinters out of my fingers until it was time to go out into the cold. I assumed Miss Whitley would find her own way, and prefer to.

  FOUR

  I started freezing to death on the steps of St Sulpice Church just before three. It isn’t exactly the swinging centre of Paris; the square was empty of everything except a lot of parked cars, shops selling crucifixes and Madonnas and priests’ robes, and occasional pairs of clerics hurrying along holding on to their hats.

  Miss Whitley was late, but the car was later.

  I said: ‘Cold.’

  She said: ‘Yes.’ She’d added a long and rather shapeless black coat with the black fur of her suit collar half in and half outside.

  I said: ‘Used to be a toy shop over on that corner. Sold some rather good toy soldiers.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  After my body temperature had dropped a few more degrees, I said: ‘It is a bit like a movie, isn’t it? I mean, two lonely figures waiting on the long steps. Long black car draws up. Back window rolls down slowly. Edward G. Robinson pokes out a tommy-gun. Rat-tat-tat. Two figures roll dramatically down the steps. Car zooms away. Priests rush out of church, throw up their hands in horror, hurry down to administer Last Rites. Too late. One says to the other: “Ye’d best get on to Captain Brannigan down at th’ station house.” ‘

  ‘In an Irish accent?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She nodded. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, the car’s been there the last half minute.’

  It had, too: a big Mercedes 600. We scuttled down the steps and piled in.

  I said: ‘You forgot the tommy-gun.’

  Carlos looked blank. ‘I did what?’

  ‘Skip it.’

  It was a long car, and roomy, even with me parked as bloody usual on the fold-down seat just behind the chauffeur’s glass panel. The other three got the back seat, and plenty of room with it. We glided away, smooth as a bobsled, and I took a good look at my employer for the next month.

  She was small, with neat strong features and a deep-tanned skin that didn’t look very smooth but on her looked right. Like a statue done in a rough-finished style, maybe. Her hair was jet black except for two sweeps of silver, not grey, but pure silver, like magpie wings over her ears. Cut fairly short and curly. Small pearl ear-rings.

  She wasn’t hiding her age - she must’ve been fifty or near that - but she wasn’t giving in to it, neither. To me she looked pretty good. I mean, she’d got class. She’d certainly got cash; everything except her face was wrapped up in a coat that must’ve left half the leopards in Africa shivering in the wind.

  Carlos said: ‘Dona Margarita - this is Mr Gilbert Kemp. Dona Margarita Umberto.’

  She leant forward a little and so did I and we shook hands. Her hand was strong, a little rough, no rings. All those years of whanging a tennis racket around, maybe.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Señ or Kemp.’ Quiet, confident voice; just about no accent.

  I said: ‘Well, here I am. I’ve met the whatsit back at the hotel - the Cé zanne, wasn’t it? When d’you want me to haul it out?’

  Carlos and Dona Margarita glanced at each other. Then he said: ‘Any time ye’ve a mind to, Mr Kemp.’

  ‘Well - anything else you want me to take as well?’

  She said: ‘I think no. The only other picture we have acquired in Paris is somewhat large. A rather fine battle scene by—’ she turned to Miss Whitley, huddling into the other corner and looking a bit like a damp alley cat alongside that piece of fireside leopard.

  Miss Whitley sighed. ‘Vernet. Horace Vernet.’

  ‘Of course. Perhaps you know him, Señ or Kemp? Napoleonic times - many soldiers, much cannon smoke, the generals on horses.’

  ‘I know the size you mean. You aren’t trying to get that out of the country without a licence?’

  Dona Margarita smiled: a quick vivid white flash, with a touch of gold at the corners. ‘No - we assumed that a picture more than three metres by two metres might defeat even you. So we have applied for permission to export; Señ orita Whitley believes there should be no problem. So you need worry only about the - the Cézanne.’

  Miss Whitley sighed again.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. By now the car was turning on to the bridge across to the Place de la Concorde, the driver moving easily in smooth bursts of acceleration. Paris driving isn’t the best-tempered in the world at any time; with the cold wind and fairly empty streets everybody else seemed to be driving in a blind rage and I do mean blind. But our boy was good.

  Dona M caught the thought, or the look on my face. ‘When a French chauffeur is good he is the best in the world. In Italy I drive for myself. In Belgium I much prefer the trains.’

  I grinned. ‘So how’s the team done so far? Been anywhere except London or Paris?’

  ‘We bought some pleasant things in New York before going to London. Nothing that is much important - so Señ orita Whitley tells me - but I admit I like them.’

  ‘Van der Velde sailing-ships,’ said Miss Whitley. From her lack of expression I got the idea she didn’t go a bundle on sailing-ships.

  I said: ‘Nothing wrong with a touch of the old Horn-blowers, So you’ve had no - er, export problems until now?’

  Carlos said: ‘The London and New York stuff’s been shipped direct. We’re only starting to build up in Zurich now.’


  ‘Okay.’ I looked out of the window. Now we were starting up the great cold sweep of the Champs Elysé es, except that you don’t get a sweep, you get a series of stops and starts at the traffic lights all the way. ‘Who’ve you been dealing with?’ I asked.

  Carlos said: ‘Everybody, anybody wherever Miss Whitley or Monsieur Bernard think there’ll be something to look at.’

  ‘Yes, but who? Specifically?’

  Miss Whitley said: ‘I thought you didn’t know anything about art.’

  ‘I’m not talking about art, I’m talking about dealers. I mean, some gab a lot more than others. If they spread the word about your mission then my job’s going to get tougher.’

  ‘Well -‘ she glanced at Dona Margarita ‘- well, in New York I saw Burroughs and Brague…’

  I said: ‘Oh God.’

  She looked at me almost sympathetically and gave a slight nod. ‘I know, but they do have a lot of stuff. They’re big.’

  ‘So’s Hell, I hear.’ Harry Burroughs and Mitchell Brague were the sort of dealers who’d steal the tattoo off your chest, sign it Rembrandt and sell it in Texas for a million dollars. There was a story that they’d got started in the art business when they were in the American Army at the end of the war and had liberated a lorry-load of stolen paintings.

  But I didn’t believe it. I mean, what happened to the lorry? B and B would have gone into the trucking business as well.

  ‘Well, you certainly went in at the deep end.’ Then I thought of something. ‘Still, if Harry and Mitch know what’s happening, they aren’t going to spread it around. They wouldn’t share a sucker with anybody else. They’ve got offices in Paris and Rome, too, so they could be hoping for a second bite at the caviare. You’ve actually got some of that two and a half million left?’

  Dona Margarita smiled gently. ‘We actually have. Despite a small purchase at Burroughs and Brague.’

  We were almost at the Arc de Triomphe itself. Carlos leant forward and opened the glass partition and said something fast and French. The driver gave a small polite nod.

  Carlos sat back: ‘When will ye be leaving for Zurich, Mr Kemp?’