“David, to what do I owe the pleasure of a Monday morning phone call?” Haley said.
She imagined the scene playing out in real time. James had called his shark of a lawyer first thing, which for Manhattan lawyers meant 10:00 a.m. After receiving James’s call, Angela or Abigail or Applesauce must have spent the next hour and a half drafting a cease-and-desist letter. That letter had just arrived in David Kaplan’s email, and he’d wasted no time in calling Haley to start his meter running.
“One question: What could possibly have possessed you to show up at James’s house—at his anniversary party, no less?”
“I assumed he wanted me there and my invitation got lost,” she said.
Like all men, David was not immune to her charms. Of course, his professional life was devoted to helping women at their most vulnerable, so he was accustomed to clients flirting, and he’d never suggested he would cross any line with her. Still, men go the extra mile for women they want to sleep with, even when they know it’ll never come to pass.
David sighed. “Haley . . . we’ve been over this before. These types of shenanigans are serious. Not only does it cost you legal fees every time you engage in one of these stunts, which you no longer can afford, but sooner or later, James will take real action.”
“Is this one of those times?”
Another sigh from David, but louder. That meant no.
As Haley suspected, this was all for show. In order to placate Jessica, James could now report that he’d sicced his lawyer on Haley. But James must have also instructed Abigail or Angela or Artichoke to heel as soon as she delivered her threat.
“The impression I got was that if you send James an email promising to stop and apologize for the other night, he’ll drop this thing for now without a court filing.”
“Let me think about it,” Haley said.
She felt sure David knew what that meant—never gonna happen.
Reid had always struck James as something of a man of mystery. Part Jay Gatsby, part John Galt from Atlas Shrugged. Self-confident to the point of cocky, an incorrigible womanizer, and rich without a discernible source of income. That said, there were times in James’s life when the same description could have been fairly applied to him.
Reid’s East Hampton house was at the end of a long pebbled driveway, tucked away from the ten-thousand-square-foot behemoths that surrounded it on all sides. It looked as if it had been designed from a Beatrix Potter illustration, with shake siding and sloping roofs. The interior elaborated on the theme—grandfather clocks, English antiques, and large windows overlooking manicured grounds.
Reid led James into the first-floor study. A Louis XVI desk was in the center of the space, an English secretary standing against the wall.
Reid pulled open the center drawer of the desk, retrieving an old-fashioned skeleton key. “Not the greatest security system, I know,” he joked. He carefully lifted the few items that were on the desk and moved them to the floor. With his shirttail, Reid cleaned the desk of any dust, then made his way to the secretary.
From it, he removed four sheets of paper, careful to hold them from the underside so as not to mar them. Then he laid the pieces on the desk.
James excused himself to wash his hands. When he returned, he looked at the first, then the second, and finally the last two drawings on the desk.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think you’ve got one of two things here.” James lifted his eyes from the artwork. “One possibility is that your friend Tommy Murcer is a forger. Or that he knows some forgers.”
“They’re authentic. I know it.”
James thought so too. The genius of Pollock was both undefinable and unmistakable. How many times had he heard that someone’s kindergartener could create a piece that rivaled some modern masterpiece? He had always been tempted to respond that if they could, they should, because the world needs more beauty, and their five-year-old would be paid handsomely.
“That doesn’t completely solve your problem, though. Because if they are, in fact, Pollocks, then I’m pretty sure what you have here is some stolen art.”
“No way. Tommy’s on the up-and-up. He knew Lee Krasner. He’s got photos of the two of them together.”
“That may be, but it’s still possible that at some point in this lovely relationship—which by the way, assuming Murcer’s eighty now, means that he was having sex with a seventy-five-year-old when he was in his early forties—ole Tommy decided to help himself to some of the master’s work while Lee was looking the other way . . . or after she died.”
Reid shook his head. “Why can’t you just believe what Tommy says?”
James laughed. “Because I’m an art dealer. And if you did so much as a Google search on Lee Krasner, you’d know that she jealously guarded her husband’s legacy. She would never in a million years have gifted to anybody what seems clearly to be unfinished work. Much less four of them.”
“Then why did she keep them?”
“I don’t know. People keep gum wrappers their husbands left in their pockets, Reid. She was probably sentimental enough about his work that she didn’t want to throw them out. Or maybe she intended them to go to a museum or something for study about his work. She died in the mideighties. By that time, she knew full well that her husband’s doodles on napkins were worth the price of a house. Maybe she gave one away to a friend. Hell, the Springs section of East Hampton is chock-full of stories about shop owners and tradesmen with original Pollocks they received as barter. But those were one-off deals. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way Lee Krasner gives anyone but a museum four unfinished pieces. On top of which, unless your friend Tommy lives under a rock, he would have been smart enough to know
