Donna and I spent two days in Paris. We went sightseeing, strolled along the rive gauche, had dinners at Taillevent and Chez Andre, all of which was wonderful to experience, but boring as hell to have someone tell you about.
Especially since you want to know about the Monet.
***
WHEN WE GOT BACK TO NEW YORK we headed straight for my apartment, dropped our bags in the foyer, grabbed a screwdriver and made for my bedroom. Donna sat on the edge of my bed as I took my father’s painting off the wall, that oil of a French countryside he’d given me years ago. I held it in my hands, looking it over front and back, then laid it face down on the floor and began carefully prying the canvas from the frame with the screwdriver.
It came apart easily, so I put the gilded frame aside, which left only the painting, stretched on its wooden struts. I had a close look at the edges of the canvas, just as Gilles had instructed. And just as he had instructed, I removed the heavy duty staples that held the canvas to the wood.
I peeled the canvas away, expecting to find the Monet underneath.
It wasn’t there.
***
THE NEXT DAY I HAD TO RETURN to my real life. I left Donna sleeping in my apartment and went to work.
My boss, Harry, was positively thrilled to see me, especially when I told him I hadn’t done a thing on his new automobile account.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, his corpulent frame vibrating in his chair, his cigarette hand extended toward me in a vague attempt at a menacing gesture, “all your promises about what you would be doing while you pulled your little disappearing act, you did none of it. Have I got this right?”
“Not exactly. I did sort of think about the campaign.”
“I see. You sort of thought about it. Well then, what else is there to say?” He stood up which, as I have mentioned, was a major physical activity for Harry. “I’ll just call the client and tell him that my cracker jack account exec has sort of been thinking about him and his car dealership, and that pretty soon we may sort of put together an ad campaign for him. How’s that?”
After everything I had been through over the past week, the predictability of Harry’s tirade came as a familiar relief.
“When have I ever let you down, Harry?”
“Let me down?” he bellowed, though there wasn’t much fire behind it.
“That’s right. When have I ever said I was going to do something I haven’t done?”
“Don’t play games with me,” he demanded, making an effort to raise his voice with each word. “I need that workup, and I need it pronto.”
In the past, I would have said “Yessir,” gone back to my small office, and set out to do whatever he was asking. This time, however, I just stood there and smiled.
“What the hell are you grinning at?” he wanted to know.
I had no answer for him.
“What is it?” he asked again, this time a little less gruffly.
“I don’t know, Harry. I was just thinking, that’s all. I mean, how worked up are we going to get about a guy on Long Island who wants to sell a few more cars? I’m not saying I won’t do it, you know I will. And you know why I will? Because we’re just a couple of working stiffs, you and me. Perspective, Harry. That’s what I’m smiling at.”
“Perspective?”
“That’s all,” I said. Then I left Harry standing there, having no idea what the hell I was talking about.
***
DONNA HAD TO LEAVE NEW YORK that afternoon, and saying goodbye was not easy. I took her to the airport, helped her check in and stood by the security entrance.
She said, “I hope it all works out for you.”
“Thanks.”
She laughed. “Thanks? That’s it?”
“I don’t know what else to say. I’m caught between sad and confused and feeling just awful to see you go. I miss you already.”
“Me too.”
“Which part? I mean, ‘me too’ to which part?”
“How about, all of the above.”
I took her in my arms and we kissed, and for a fleeting moment I considered holding onto her, not letting her get on the plane. Instead, I asked how soon I could come out to see her.
“How about tomorrow?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told her.
She was about to walk away, when I called her back. “Did I mention how great you were? Through everything.”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at me, gave me a little wave, and I watched her until she disappeared down the long corridor to her gate.
***
I DECIDED, SINCE I WAS AT THE AIRPORT on Long Island already, to stop by the car dealership and say hello to the owner, just to show how interested I was in his Cadillacs and to make Harry happy.
I was walking through the terminal toward the parking lot exit when a familiar looking, middle-aged man came up beside me. On my other flank appeared a younger guy I had never seen before.
I didn’t wait for them to speak. I said, “I was wondering when I would see you again.”
The man who had come to my apartment a few days before, claiming he was my father’s old friend only to have his sidekick rough me up, gave a slight shrug of his shoulders in reply.
I looked from him to his new companion, then asked, “Where’s Silvio? Attending an anger management seminar?”
They didn’t answer so I stopped walking and so did they. We formed a cozy little circle with a steady flow of travelers hurrying to and from their flights all around us.
“Look,” the older man said, “let’s siddown and have a talk, nice nice, eh?”
“What are we supposed to be talking about this time?”
“We still think you got something belongs to our friend. We think you should give it to us.”
I laughed, I mean genuinely laughed out loud. “God,” I said, “You guys are something.”
They glanced at each other, then went back to watching me.
“All right,” I said, “there’s a bar right over there. We’ll talk.”
We sat on tall chairs around a small table in one of those Formica airport lounges where you can buy a second hit of booze in your cocktail for an extra dollar. I asked for a double Bloody Mary. Tweedledee and Tweedledum each ordered a beer.
“Okay, so what is this thing I supposedly have?”
The older man said, “Look, I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but, uh—”
“But you don’t know what it is, right?”
He shrugged his shoulders again.
“But you figure it belongs to you, whatever it is.”
“That’s right, that’s exactly it.” He was happy we were suddenly on the same page.
“I’ve been running into that a lot lately.”
He gave me a look that convinced me he was just as moronic as I had guessed.
“My father’s been dead for six years. You guys run a rather inefficient collection service.”
He stuck his lower lip out at me. “Hey, nobody never said nothing to you before, because you was not an involved guy, you see? But now you been askin’ questions, seein’ people. Our boss says it’s got something to do with this something that you gotta give us. Like I said, your father owed it, right?”
That was the moment, when he mentioned what my father owed to his boss, that I thought about what Gilles told me about Blackie’s death, how Benny never found out who the three men were, and how maybe, just maybe, this creep had something to do with it. My head started to pound.
“So,” I said, after taking a long pull of my Bloody Mary, “you guys must know a lot of people in your business.”
“What?”
“I mean, with all this talking you say that I’m doing, you two must get around and meet a lot of people.”
“We get around, sure.”
I took another swallow of my drink. “So how well did you know Blackie?”
The older man said, “Blackie? Tell you the absolute truth, I didn’t really know him that good. He was part of the Arthur Avenue crowd. I’m kinda downtown myself.”
I nodded, draining off a little more liquid courage. “The other day you told me you were an old friend of his.”
“We met, but not really friends. I hadda say somethin’, right?”
“I guess you did,” I said.
“Never knew him,” the younger man said, obviously deciding it was time to enter the conversation. “Heard he was a fun guy though.” He looked at his cohort for agreement.
“Funny?” the older man asked.
“No, not funny,” the younger man said. “Fun. You know, like a good guy.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I hear he was.”
I studied each of them without speaking. They had neither the intelligence nor the motive to lie to me, and neither of them was that good an actor. I puffed out my cheeks and let out a long breath, but my head and chest kept a strong and steady pulse. “Too bad,” I said, meaning that in more ways than one. “You would have liked Blackie. He would have liked you too, I bet.”
“Look kid, let’s get on with this. We know you’re a straight guy. Don’t make no trouble for yourself, all right?”
“It’s all right with me, except I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
They looked at each other again before the older man said, “You gonna work with us or not?”
I leaned forward a bit, so I was right in his face. “Now pay attention, because I want to be really clear about this. I have no idea what you’re after, but I can guess that your boss probably heard some bullshit from my cousin Frank who, I don’t mind telling you, is a certified scumbag of the first order, so take that into account when he’s feeding you his stories. You can tell your boss that I’ll sit and talk with him any time about my father, if that’s what he wants, but he better check out Frank first. I’m sure he’ll discover he was sold a load of crap. You can also tell your boss that my father’s slate was wiped clean six years ago—the hard way, as I hear the story—and you can tell him I said that too. Tell him exactly that, the slate got wiped clean the hard way. All of which, I understand, has already been conveyed to your friends out in Vegas.” I drank off some more of the cocktail, never taking my eyes off him. “Now, I think it’s time for us to say goodbye.”
The younger guy didn’t seem all that impressed with my speech. “You play it smart or you play it stupid, that’s up to you.”
I stood up, ignoring him and turning back to the older man. “Last time, you barged into my apartment, telling me you were some old friend of my father. This time I know who I’m dealing with, which happens to be a couple of guys who have no fucking idea what they’re talking about or why they got sent on this little errand in the first place. Am I right?”
The younger man lowered his voice. “You’re talkin’ pretty tough today, for a guy I hear can’t take a punch.”
I took a step toward his seat, so we were almost up against each other as I stood over him. “I’ve had a few interesting days of training on that score, so you do what you’re big enough to do.”
The older man stood up. “That goes for you too, kid. We tell the man what you’re up to, then it’s whatever. You understand?”
Without taking my eyes off the younger man, I said, “I understand perfectly.”
Since there wasn’t anything left for them to do, they each took a swig of their beers, as if it were some sort of team event.
“It’s not important to us,” the older man finally said, “not one way or another.”
“Me either,” I told him, “so tell your boss everything I said, because if he thinks this is my way of playing it tough, he’s got it all wrong. The guy you should be talking to is my cousin Frank. Let him tell you what he thinks I’ve got, which he found out is nothing. Then you won’t have to bother me again.”
The older man started to say something, then stopped.
I lifted my glass and finished off the drink. “Now I’m going back to my world and you can go back to yours, and if you want to talk to me again, call and make a fucking appointment and I’ll be sure to have the FBI with me.” With that, I pulled a business card out of my jacket and threw it on the table. “And thanks for the drink,” I said. Then I turned and walked away, feeling like I had checked off one more item on a very old list.
***
THE NEXT DAY I FIGURED IT OUT.
It happened, as these things tend to happen, in the dead of night. I woke up thinking about my father, realizing that I knew him well enough to guess what he would have done in those weeks before they came for him, in those final days when he wrote me the letter, when he was trying to arrange for something he’d never done before, the fencing of a multi-million dollar painting. I realized all I had to do was think about it the way he would have.
For starters, Blackie never intended to put me at risk, so he certainly wouldn’t have stuck me with a stolen painting, not without telling me I had it.
He also wouldn’t take the chance of losing the Monet by leaving it storage or some other such place.
He knew that Benny didn’t want any part of it, and I believed Benny when he said he didn’t have the painting and didn’t know where it was.
Which meant there was only one other person he would trust enough to hold the Monet.
That afternoon I made the phone call, then left the office, got in my car and made the drive alone, my memory bank spinning into overtime all the way up the highway and across the Tappan Zee Bridge.
When I pulled into the driveway I sat there, staring out the windshield at the familiar house. It struck me how the place looked smaller than I remembered it. Odd, how when you’re a kid things seem so much bigger and more important.
After a minute or so, I got out and walked up to the front door. He opened it before I could ring the bell.
I said, “Hello Uncle Vincent.”
“I heard you pull in.”
I had not seen him since my Aunt Mary’s funeral. He looked frail and even a little shorter than he used to be. His hair was combed straight back, just as he’d always worn it, but it was whiter and thinner now. He reminded me of my grandfather.
“We need to talk,” I told him.
“I know,” he said.
I followed him inside. The house looked the same as it always did, except it was older and worn and it had that stuffy smell of old people, as if all the doors and windows ought to be thrown wide open for about a week.
He led me into the living room, and before we sat down he asked if I’d like a drink. I said I would.
He left me there, standing in the room where I’d spent so many weekends and holidays, so many birthdays and weddings and wakes. I watched the ghosts milling around the room, none of whom seemed any more surprised to find me there than my Uncle Vincent did.
When he came back he was carrying a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black in one hand and two shot glasses in the other. “You gonna need water?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Good boy,” he said with a wan smile. Then we sat down, opposite each other across the well-worn oak cocktail table, and he poured us each a full jigger of scotch. “Here’s to your father,” he said, hoisting his glass.
I held mine up and touched it to his, then we threw back the drinks. He filled the glasses again before we spoke.
“I know everything now,” I told him. “Everything.”
He nodded slightly. “I’m sorry you had to find out.”
“Why?”
“So many reasons, son. So many reasons.” He didn’t wait for me as he drank down the second shot. “Can’t fly on one wing,” he said.
“Guess not,” I agreed, and lifted my glass. “To truth,” I said, and drank it off just the way he’d shown me years before, when we got drunk together, a few weeks after Blackie died.
“I loved your father, you know. I loved him very much.”
“I know you did. For whatever that’s worth.”
He eyed me expectantly, as if there was something else to say about it.
“So,” I asked again, “why are you sorry I know?”
His posture was very straight, as it always was because of his stiff back. He placed his palms flat on his thighs, as if he were in the military, sitting at attention in the presence of a commanding officer. “Your father loved you more than you can know. He wouldn’t want you to think badly of him.”
“Why should I?” I asked. “We all make mistakes. He paid for his.”
Uncle Vincent couldn’t look at me now. He said, “We all pay for our mistakes, one way or another. Some of us just have to live with them longer than others.” Then he leaned forward and lifted the bottle to fill our glasses.
I told him I’d like to talk a little more before I had another drink.
“All right,” he said, setting the bottle back on the table.
I looked around the room, watching as the ghosts gathered close around us. I said, “You’ve always known the truth, haven’t you?”
He didn’t move, didn’t look at me. “Whatever we think that truth is, yes, I’ve known since a short time after.”
“A short time after my father died?”
He inclined his head forward as if he was nodding, then seemed to have trouble sitting back. When he did, I could see he was crying.
“You should have told me,” I said.
He was silent for what seemed a long time. “How could I?” he finally replied.
I reached out and poured us each that next drink. I lifted my glass and waited for him to do the same. “I miss him,” I said, my voice giving way to my feelings.
“So do I,” my uncle said. “Every day of my life. Every single day.” Then we drank again.
I put down my shot glass, feeling the warmth of the scotch course through me. Then I said simply, “I think you have something for me. That’s why I’m here.”
He didn’t say anything in response. He got slowly to his feet and walked out of the room. When I heard him going down into the basement, I stood up again, having another look around the room. That’s when I heard the front door to the house open and close. I turned, not completely shocked to see my cousin Frank.
“Well,” I said, “the gang’s all here.”
Frank showed me his pearly whites. “Yeah cuz, ‘bout time we settled this thing, don’t you think.”
“Oh yes,” I agreed.
We stood there in silence for a moment, until we heard my uncle coming back up the stairs from the basement. He was holding a green metal cylinder, a couple of feet long and a few inches in diameter.
When he saw his son in the entryway he said, “Frank,” somewhere between surprise and relief.
Before anyone spoke again, I walked over and took the container from my uncle’s hand. The metal was cold. The ends of the cylinder were crudely sealed with wax, a Blackie move if ever there was one, like something from a gothic novel. Whatever was inside had been locked in there for a long time.
“You’ve had this for all these years?” I asked.
“Since a couple of weeks before…before he died.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
My uncle uttered a long, uneven sigh. “He told me never to open it and never to give it to anyone except you. But only if you asked for it.”
I nodded. “And you’ve kept it for all these years, without opening it, without ever telling anyone about it.”
“No one,” he said. When he looked at me, his eyes moist and sunken and sad. “I never told anyone. It was the least I could do. Once I knew what happened, it was the least I could do, to keep that promise.”
“So,” Frank asked, “what the hell is this thing?”
I ignored my cousin, for a moment trying to imagine what it must be like for my uncle, knowing that his brother had come to him for money, that he turned him down, and then living with how that ended up. I told Frank, “It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s over.”
My Uncle Vincent took a deep, halting breath. “I feel like I killed him,” he said. “You understand that? I might as well have beaten him to death myself.” He was sobbing now, and I watched him cry without saying anything. He steadied himself, then said, “Frank, you’re my son, but he’s right, this has nothing to do with you.”
But Frank didn’t care about what happened to Blackie, what his own father had to do with that, or anything other than what I was holding in my hand. “This has everything to do with me,” my cousin said, giving me a look that was supposed to worry me.
Not feeling particularly worried, I said, “Too bad you feel that way, because you’re wrong.” Then to my uncle, I said, “I’m glad you never told anyone. I know my father would have been glad.”
He nodded slowly. “I never opened it, still don’t know what’s in it.” He tried to smile, but it didn’t work. “You need to believe that. It was like a matter of faith for me. I couldn’t bring myself to look.”
Frank took a couple of steps forward. “I think I’ll take a look,” he said. Then he held out his hand. “Let’s have it cuz.”
I stared at him. “You must be kidding.”
“Don’t make any more trouble for yourself. Just hand that over and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do with it, right here, right now.”
I thought of a lot of clever things to say, which would be my usual reaction to a situation like this, but I let them all pass because I also thought of Blackie, and how I hadn’t followed his advice when Sluggo got the drop on me in front of the casino in Monte Carlo. Determined not to make that mistake again, I didn’t say anything at all, waiting until Frank took one step closer. Then I swung the metal canister like a baseball bat, hitting him across the side of the head with a shot that would have been a double in any ballpark in the country.
He staggered back and I moved forward, driving the end of the container up under his chin, knocking him off his feet and onto the ground, flat on his back.
I stood over him, watching the blood begin to run from the side of his mouth. “Look out,” I said, “you’re going to stain your fancy white shirt, cuz.”
He muttered something like, “What the fuck,” then appeared to be on the brink of losing consciousness. His father hurried to his side and kneeled down. Then he looked up at me.
“What are you doing?” my uncle moaned.
I looked at the two of them, figuring fathers and sons get what they deserve in the end. “He’s lucky I don’t kill him,” I said, then walked past them and out the door.
I have to admit, I kept looking in my rearview mirror on the ride home, imagining guys pulling up alongside me, or worrying about what might happen later, if they came crashing through the door of my apartment in the middle of the night to take the painting and slit my throat. But I remembered what Inspector Durand had told Frank’s pals and decided my days of worrying were over.
I got home, parked the car in the basement garage and went upstairs, locked myself in, pulled the window shades closed and sat in the living room where I had first opened my father’s box of memories, just a week before.
I broke the wax seal of the canister with a pocket knife and slowly pulled out the rolled up canvas. I flattened it out on the table, then stood over it, gaping at the most beautiful painting I had ever held, a Monet sunset on the water.
***
IT WAS TOO LATE TO CALL FRANCE, so I telephoned Gilles the next morning.
He asked how I was getting on with Donna. I told him I’d arranged a business trip to Las Vegas the following week, and that she would be coming back to New York for a long weekend after that. He was pleased, saying that the connection between us, having been made through Benny, gave the entire romance a special quality, particularly for him. He said I should never forget that she was a special lady.
I promised never to forget.
I did not tell him about the visit with the two men in the airport, not wanting him to worry about me any more than he already did. As far as I was concerned, all of that was over and done.
Then I explained, in the most cryptic terms, that I had located the item. He said he was happy, but sounded concerned about the trouble I might cause myself. I told him I had a plan, and that I had already deposited the article in a safe place.
“It has no rightful owner,” I said to him. “Not even you and me. But there has to be a certain order to things, don’t you think?”
He agreed.
When I told him my plan he said he was proud of me.
I thanked him.
He said my father would be proud too.
I told him I wasn’t too sure about that.
***
A MONTH AFTER THAT CONVERSATION, just a couple of weeks before Christmas, I received a package from Nice. Frederique Durand wrote to say that the cancer Monsieur de la Houssay struggled against for the past few years had finally won its grim victory, and our friend was no more.
The package Durand sent with his note contained a medal for valor that Monsieur de la Houssay had received in the war, and a sealed envelope. Inside was a letter from Gilles, telling me how much our coming to know each other had meant to him, and how he wanted me to keep this medal, his most prized possession, because I could now appreciate the significance it had for him. He also said again how pleased he was that I had found our mythical treasure and how happy it made him to know that I, as Blackie would say, was doing the right thing.
***
REMEMBER THAT RALLY I PASSED outside the United Nations? Well I started thinking about it as soon as I took the painting from my uncle’s house. I also thought about everything Gilles told me about their mission in France at the end of the war. He and my father and Benny had left it to me to figure out what to do with the Monet, so I did.
I knew someone involved with plans to raise funds for a new museum that was being constructed—as it was explained to me, it was a memorial being built so the world would never forget. I shouldn’t say more than that, for reasons that should be apparent. The important thing was that the painting was going to be given a real purpose when it surfaced. The day after I got it from my uncle I placed it in a safe deposit box at a bank near my office. Then I did all the background checking I could about the museum project, making sure it was the right choice.
It was.
At my request, my contact arranged a meeting for us at the most prestigious auction house in New York. I collected the metal tube and headed uptown.
The art appraiser and my friend were pretty knocked out when I showed them the painting, which is understandable given how beautiful it is, so I allowed them a minute to catch their breath. Then I explained the conditions of the sale. The proceeds would be paid as an anonymous donation to the memorial fund. My identity would remain a secret, never to be revealed. And I had nothing more to say.
The appraiser obviously had about a thousand questions, especially about the painting’s provenance, but I assured him there would be no dispute over the ownership.
“Do what you need to,” I told him. “Whatever research, whatever background checking that has to be done.” I knew what he would ultimately find—there was no one around to contest the ownership.
My friend and the representative from the auction house assured me that the entire thing would be handled with both the utmost discretion and—in response to a little something that I also demanded—total security. After all, I am Blackie’s son, and I did not want to hear about the Monet getting itself stolen all over again. In fact, I had taken photos of the painting in my apartment, placing it beside a couple of daily newspapers, just in case it happened to turn up missing, or in someone’s private collection, without the money going where it should.
After all those arrangements were made, I called Benny.
It was a tough conversation for many reasons, the first being that I had to tell him about Gilles’s passing. Then, of course, was the fact that I was giving the painting away but, as Benny and I both knew, it was my decision, which was how all three of them wanted it. As the survivor of their threesome, I just wanted to be sure that Benny was all right with what I was doing.
He was.
***
THE PAINTING CAUSED QUITE A STIR in the art world, since it was a Monet that had not been seen by anyone for more than forty years. The evening of the auction I was offered a seat in the front row, but chose to sit in the back of the large room. I had already seen the painting close-up enough times, so I was fine there, waiting anxiously for the lot number to be called. As we approached the sale of my painting—which is how I will always feel about it—a sinister looking man in a dark suit sat down beside me. I glanced at his profile a couple of times and, when I turned toward him for a third glimpse, he was the one who spoke.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
He opened his catalogue to the page that featured the main event of the evening, my Monet. “Some painting,” he said as he showed me the picture.
“It is,” I agreed.
“I read about it in the paper. Missing since before World War Two or something.”
I nodded, my head bobbing up and down like it was on a spring. “That right?”
“Wonder where it’s been.”
I didn’t respond. I just looked at him, waiting for more.
But that was it. He never said another thing to me.
It got me wondering again what Frank and his cronies thought. They had taken their run against me and Benny, but came up empty, never realizing what they were after. Neither my cousin Frank nor my Uncle Vincent knew there was a Monet in the metal canister I used to break my cousin’s jaw, and they would never know how close they came to owning that prize. After all these years, I have never seen or spoken with either of them again.
The auction of the Monet was pretty wild and I won’t make you sick by telling you how much some wealthy art collector paid just to have the right to have it put on display in a museum with his name on a plaque beside it. It truly is beautiful, and you’ll probably see it some day in a Monet exhibition somewhere. The important thing, as far as I was concerned, was that the money went to good use.
Oh sure, I had some second thoughts, like maybe I should have gotten a finder’s fee, or a commission, or even some sort of charitable tax write-off for the next fifty years. But it was like Blackie said, straight shooters always win, and I think that’s the one piece of advice he’d really want me to hold onto. I’ve decided to stay with that and let the rest of it go—I figure I’ve already spent enough time wrestling with so many other lessons from the past.