“Mrs. Weidermeyer was described to me as a stiff-jawed example of an east coast snob,” I said. “Not at all like the lovely Ms Clarice Snow, who presents herself as the mother of Frankie.”
“Of course, a successful businessman with a proper wife and a beautiful mistress; so ordinary,” he said. “What is unusual, I think, is for a mistress to name her son after his married father. A hostile gesture, is it not?”
“I am not all that familiar with the etiquette of naming extramarital children, Jean-Paul, my own history not withstanding.”
“I’ve meant to ask you,” he said, turning to stir the soup. “What shall I call you? Your grandmother in France calls you Marguerite, your American mother calls you Margot, your friends call you Maggie, except for Kate and Roger who call you Mags. Which do you prefer?”
“Take your pick, just, please, not Maggot; that’s what my brother and sister called me,” I said, taking bowls out of a cupboard. “Or Miss M, as my students do.”
We hadn’t yet switched on lights in the house when we went into the kitchen to start dinner; it had been twilight then, that brief lower-latitudes moment between day and full night. Without our taking notice, the inky blackness of a moonless mountain night made our warm and fragrant room feel like a bright island in a vast dark sea; there were no street lights in our neighborhood.
White light suddenly filled the dark living room beyond the kitchen door, flashed up the side of the house and hit the stone canyon wall on the far side of the patio outside our French doors.
Jean-Paul looked up sharply, a question in his expression.
“Something tripped the motion-activated lights out front,” I said. “Probably coyotes.”
I excused myself and walked through to the front windows to check, as I always do.
Duke, Mike’s big horse, had run across his enclosure to look down the driveway, as he always did when the front lights were tripped; he was as vigilant as any watchdog. Peering through the front windows, I saw nothing in the yard that shouldn’t be there. I rapped on the window and Duke looked up toward the house, gave the enclosure rail a token thump with his forehead and a snort to express his displeasure at being bothered by the lights, or maybe as warning to local wildlife that he was on the alert, then sauntered back to rejoin his buddies.
“Maybe raccoons,” I said as I reentered the kitchen. “If Duke isn’t worried, I’m not.”
Jean-Paul had put green beans in the pan with the chicken and was basting them with pan drippings.
“Perhaps fifteen minutes more,” he said.
I ladled soup into bowls and, carrying them, led Jean-Paul to the table in the many-windowed alcove at the end of the kitchen.
He held out a chair for me. When he had settled into the chair beside me, I took his hand and leveled my gaze at him.
“It’s time, Jean-Paul, for you to spill it, and I do not mean the soup.”
“Ah, yes, my mysterious friend on the telephone.” As if he had forgotten.
“Yes. Whom were you speaking with?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he said. “And this is lovely soup.”
“It’s my grandmother Élodie’s recipe. And I’ll take the risk; who is this guy?”
“His name is Gilbert. I wish I could say he is something glamorous like CIA or MI6, but he is only a bureaucrat who works at the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in the area of the security of national treasures. So, of course, he is hard-wired into Interpol.”
“What did he have to say about Weidermeyer, Senior?”
“Mr. Weidermeyer was an international arms broker, a very successful one.”
“Was?”
“Yes. He filed for bankruptcy and lost his export certification. I don’t know what he does now.”
“He and Park Holloway were good enough friends at some point for their families to vacation together. In Asia.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Certainly it would be convenient for an arms broker to have a friend in the American Congress; it is not easy to get proper export licenses for American-made weapons and weapons systems.”
“Where does fine art enter the picture?”
“One of Mr. Weidermeyer’s better clients was the dictator that your friend Dr. Chin worked with,” he said.
“Was Hiram Chin involved in arms sales?” I asked, dubious.
“Not that I am aware, no. But there is a connection,” he said. “The old demagogue was quite a clever character. With Dr. Chin as his advisor, he acquired what became a very famous personal art collection. He then used that collection as collateral to purchase arms.”
“But the collection turned out to be full of fakes,” I said.
“Yes, but not entirely,” he said. “There were some very fine examples of Asian antiquities, many of them gifts to his nation from other heads of state. And there were several very valuable pieces that, it turned out, were looted from museums in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia during the upheavals of the 1970s and acquired on the black market, probably fairly cheaply.”
“I would imagine that those nations would want their treasures back at some point,” I said.
“Yes, of course. And in a few instances they successfully regained them through American courts.”
“American courts?”
“Yes.” He certainly was enjoying himself. “Before he was deposed, this fine example of post-colonial corruption, perhaps seeing the handwriting on the wall, shipped the entire collection to Hawaii in a steel cargo container under cover of diplomatic courier, immune from U.S. Customs inspection. However, before the ship carrying his container arrived, he was-shall we say?-past-tense as his nation’s leader and his diplomats had all been recalled. When there was no one to claim the shipment, it was impounded by U.S. Customs until ownership issues were resolved.”
“Poor bastard,” I joked. “Ferdinand Marcos and Nguyen Van Thieu left their countries with briefcases full of diamonds and gold, much more portable. He should have given them a call.”
“Perhaps he didn’t have the resources to acquire diamonds.”
“Ergo, he acquired fake masterworks.”
“Donc,” he said-“Therefore”-grinning, “the American courts were able to return certain pieces to their countries of origin.”
“And the rest to Weidermeyer and others to settle their claims.”
“Yes. And some of the Asian pieces were very fine, indeed.”
“But the remainder of the collection was fakes?”
“So it seems, yes, primarily the works attributed to European artists, a sad truth Mr. Weidermeyer discovered only when he tried to sell them.”
“When was that?”
“Initially, about ten years ago. Of course, final resolution was tied up in the courts for many years. My friend Gilbert says that Weidermeyer’s latest attempt to get an amended judgment, asking for further assets in repayment of the debt, failed only recently.”
“I found an abstract of the case,” I said. “I don’t know the details, except that Hiram Chin was called to testify and that the judge ruled, essentially, ‘Let the buyer beware.’ It was Weidermeyer’s obligation to verify the value of the works before he accepted them as collateral. If he accepted the collection as surety against the loan, so should the court.”
“And there you have it.”
“Can’t blame Weidermeyer for being a bit peeved.”
He raised his eyebrows as he does when a word isn’t familiar.
“Upset,” I said.
“Of course. More than peeved, perhaps.” Jean-Paul rose and picked up empty soup bowls.
“According to Gilbert, what your Dr. Chin told the court was most remarkable,” he said as we walked back toward the kitchen counter. “Your interim academic vice president claimed that the dictator was fully aware from the beginning that the paintings in question were imitations done in the style of various great European artists, but were not themselves masterworks.”