“When he first came he just wanted to see the paintings. I guess someone told him they were there.”
“He’s seen the photo.” Bill spoke for the first time and Anna turned to him. “The woman who took it was showing him the sculpture.”
“Tony Ling’s? The foil?”
“She thought he’d like it. She still thinks that’s what he was excited about.”
“Poor Tony. Haig almost knocked that piece over, bulldozing past it.” She pushed some loose strands of hair back from her forehead. “Haig had probably never been to Queens before in his life. He came in a limo. Someone saw it pull up and word raced through the building before he got to the front door. Everyone ignored him, to not be uncool, but everyone was praying he’d come to their studio. They stuck their heads out after he passed, to see where he was going. We could tell from the way he was galloping along like a hippo in a hurry that he wasn’t there out of curiosity, to check out the show. He was on a mission. It never crossed anyone’s mind, especially mine, that he was coming to see me. I just kept cutting. I looked up when he got to my door, just to watch him pass. I almost sliced my finger when he actually came in.”
“You were papercutting?” I asked. “Not painting Chaus?”
“I’d done four Chaus by then. I had them up in the studio. They were … comforting. But at an open studio show, when people are wandering in and out all day, they like to see you making your work. The work they’ll write up if they’re critics, or the collectors will buy. People like to see it being born. And anyway, the Chaus were just for me.”
“Not for Pete Tsang’s bombshell show?”
“He hadn’t suggested it yet. That came later. Partly because of Haig.”
“I’m not following. Haig knows what Pete’s planning?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. When Haig got to my studio he barely glanced at my papercuttings but he spent a long time with the Chaus. It made me uncomfortable. They were for me, they were about Mike. He was wearing a loupe around his neck on a gold chain, how ridiculous is that? He leaned close and examined them, every inch. Then he turned to me, all oil and smiles, and said those were nice paintings, where did I get them? I almost laughed. It seemed like he actually wasn’t sure if they were real. I got the sense he was hoping they were and I didn’t know what they were worth, so he could steal them cheap.”
“Did you tell him you’d made them?”
“No. He was so taken with them that it felt like bragging to say they were mine. They were none of his business, anyway. I wished I’d thought to take them down. I told him a friend had done them.”
“Did he ask who?”
“And he got really mad when I wouldn’t tell. Bottled-up mad, like he’d have screamed at me except losing it was beneath him. He told me I wasn’t doing my friend a favor, and who did I think I was to stand between an artist and interest from Baxter/Haig? I promised I’d tell my friend. He left steaming, but what could he do? After he’d crashed out through the halls, Pete came to my studio to find out what was going on. ‘You could hear us?’ I asked him. ‘We could feel it,’ he said. ‘Like an electrical storm. Your studio was shooting off sparks.’ So I told him. He thought it was pretty hilarious that the paintings had convinced Haig. Then he got thoughtful, and he came back the next day with the idea of the show. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but I did take the paintings down.”
“Why?”
“Well, first, the open studio was still on and I didn’t want anyone else to drool over them the way Haig had. And if I did decide to go ahead with Pete’s idea, we’d want to spring them on people. We needed them to be a surprise.”
“But Haig had already seen them.”
“Pete said that wasn’t a problem. In case they were real, Haig would keep them to himself for now, until he’d browbeaten me into giving them up. And when we unveiled them, we could count on Haig to add to the hype because he’d go around telling everyone he’d seen them first and known right away what they were.”
“Self-aggrandizement R us,” Jack agreed. “Except didn’t Haig think they were fakes? Didn’t he believe in your ‘friend’? ”
“I think for a while he thought my friend might be Chau himself.”
“Those paintings must be damn good. Haig’s a parasite but he has an eye.”
“No,” said Anna. “Or if they’re good, they’re good imitations. But eye or not, we all see what we want to see.”
“Meaning?” asked Bill.
Anna said, “Haig’s in trouble. He needs money. That’s the rumor, anyway.”
“We’ve heard it,” I said.
“I think the idea that the Chaus might be real, it was like a lifeline. If they were and he could get them cheap and sell them all his troubles would be over.”
“Well, too bad for him, then.”
Anna shook her head again. “That’s the problem. It’s dawned on him that it doesn’t matter if they’re real, as long as people think they are.”
“But people wouldn’t,” I said. “As soon as you said you’d made them.”
She didn’t answer that right away. “I don’t have them,” she said after a pause. “I came in yesterday to work, and opened the drawer I’d had them in, and they were gone.”
Bill and I exchanged glances. Jack said, “Someone stole them?”
“Doug Haig called an hour later. He has them.”
“Someone sold them to him already? That was quick work.”
“No,” said Jack slowly. “Not sold them to him. Stole them for him. Am I right, Anna?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Jon-Jon Jie. He has the studio beside you. He climbed over the wall.”
I thought of the quiet building, the ceilingless studios.
“The security commissar,” Anna said bitterly. “We’ve never protected ourselves from each other. Artists? What was someone going to do, steal your brushes? We lend each other everything all the time anyway, who’d steal? The only reason we lock our studio doors is so you don’t have to go round up your stuff every time you come in. But all the real security worries were about the bad guys outside.”
“Jie’s signed with Baxter/Haig,” Jack said. “Francie See told us. Just yesterday. She said she thought he bought his way in.”
“Looks like he did,” I said. “Just not with money.”
“Haig has them,” Anna went on, her voice suddenly urgent, “and he wants to put them on the market. As authentic.”
“But how can he?” I demanded. “You’ll just say you painted them. You’ll show everyone the paper, and the ink, that it’s easily available. And your sketches, don’t you do sketches? How can he pretend they’re real if you do that?”
“He says if I do that, he’ll tell everyone I already sold them to him as authentic, for a lot of money. Because I’m Bernard Yang’s daughter, so I knew he’d believe me. I cheated him and the only reason I’m admitting it now is I’m mad and I want to make him look stupid because Baxter/Haig wouldn’t take me on. He’s got a whole story cooked up, bills of sale and everything.”
“Would people believe that?” I looked to Jack.
“If he’s got paperwork,” Jack said. “And the paintings are good enough. Maybe they would.”
“It would make him look like an idiot,” Bill said. “Buying fakes.”
“A trusting, honest idiot,” said Jack, “bamboozled by a cold-blooded cheap thief trading on her father’s reputation. He’d look stupid but it would pass. But it would end Anna’s career. No gallery would take her on, no one would show her.”
Anna and her mother sat silent, Anna pale, her mother seeming tight-packed, like TNT.
“Still,” I said. “Suppose Anna doesn’t say anything, then. No one will pay Chau’s prices without getting the paintings appraised. Wouldn’t it take more than the supposed word of an expert’s daughter and some old paper to get some other expert to put his reputation on the line, authenticating new work by someone who’s supposed to be dead?”