…?'
'I explained that was impossible, Christopher,' Lorenzo said sternly.
Bolzano's dog now had its head on his knee. His blunt fingers slowly worked the loose skin of its neck. 'All right,' he said simply. 'Lorenzo, you'll make a copy of the key and give it to signor Norgren. Signore, I know you'll treat this information with discretion.'
Lorenzo stared mutely at him, his eyes popping with surprise.
'I want this settled,' Bolzano said. 'Signore, will that relieve your mind?'
I hesitated. There was something else, but I didn't look forward to Bolzano's reaction. 'There is one more thing,' I said warily. 'I'd like your permission to have some of the paintings scientifically analyzed if need be.' I held my breath.
So did Bolzano. I thought for a moment that it was all over, that he was going to renege on The Plundered Past and have me thrown out of the house as well. The dog's eyes popped open as his hand inadvertently tightened on its fur. Then the hand loosened and the bullet head nodded once, firmly. 'You have it.'
Tony Whitehead has told me that I've fouled up a lot of deals by an overinsistence on clarity, that there are a lot of things better left open to interpretation. I suppose he's right; I'm uncomfortable when things aren't out on the table. 'You understand,' I said, 'some tests might require the removal of material: a sliver of stretcher-bar for radio-carbon dating, a tiny cylinder of pigment-no more than a few hundredths of a gram-for microscopic core analysis-'
It was too much for Lorenzo, who leaped gawkily to his feet, toppling a white plastic table lamp off a white plastic end table. 'Can you be serious? Destruction of the painted surface? Of a Rubens, a Hals? A 'mere' few hundredths of a gram from a Vermeer?' He looked down at me with a choked, incredulous laugh.
Bolzano, very somber, let him finish. 'If you have to make physical tests, make them,' he said quietly to me.
We both stared at him, Lorenzo not much more surprised than I was. It wasn't the sort of thing a collector willingly submitted to. When Lorenzo finally got his mouth working to protest, Bolzano talked over him.
'I want this settled,' he said again, more harshly. 'I don't want gossip, whispers, insinuations. I trust you, signor Norgren. I know you'll treat the pictures with the respect they deserve.'
'Of course I will.'
'One thing I ask-I demand. Should you find something you believe to be inauthentic-'
'Father!' poor Lorenzo cried disbelievingly.
'-then I hope I will hear before anyone else.'
'I promise.'
He nodded, sighing. 'Bene. Now. Would you like some more Vecchia Romagna? A little more coffee?'
'No thank you,' I said. It was time to go. I was beginning to feel a little guilty, wondering if I'd put too much strain on him after all. I'd won all the battles, as he'd said, and over the last few minutes the energy seemed to have drained out of him.
'You've seen the gallery?' he asked as I rose.
'Yes, Lorenzo took me over it.'
'You liked it?'
'It's magnificent.'
'And this room?' he said. His look was slyly challenging.
I looked at the immense Rothko behind him: three formless, immense, dark dabs on a red background. Next to it was an even larger Twombly, looking like nothing so much as a big blackboard covered with a child's orderly twirls in chalk.
'It's, uh, quite interesting-'
He laughed. 'You don't like postpainterly abstractionism?'
I didn't even know that's what it was called. 'Well-'
'Neither does Lorenzo. But let me tell you something: The paintings you saw upstairs, the objects in the other rooms-those are my reason to live. Every time I buy a work of art I train myself, I commit myself, intellectually and spiritually, to its essence. My involvement with my paintings is total, total. I converse with them, I become them. They are my life.'
It is an indication of Bolzano's rough charisma that he could deliver even a speech like that in a credible way.
'So my days are full of intensity, full of unattainable strivings, you see. And then I come here.' He gestured at the walls. 'I look at a de Corolli, at a Klos, and it's wonderful; I can relax. They don't mean a damned thing.'
I burst out laughing. 'Guggenheim once said the same thing about his Kandinskys.'
'Well, then, I'm in good company. You'll tell me what you find?'
'Definitely.'
'Maybe you'll have nothing to tell.'
'I hope so. Sincerely.' But I doubted it.
Later, Lorenzo drove me back to the Hotel Augustus. There were, of course, no parking spaces on the Via della Scala, so he stopped in the middle of the street in front of the hotel.
'Christopher,' he said, leaning a bony elbow on the steering wheel, oblivious of the honking and shouting behind us, 'do you remember the questions you asked about the packing of the paintings? Did I oversee it? Did I actually see the crates closed up…?'
'Yes, I remember.'
'Well, there's something I didn't mention. I don't see how it can be important, but still…' He paused to roll down the window, shake his fist and make Italian gestures at the impatient drivers behind, then roll the window back up.
'What I want to tell you is, yes, I did see the screws go in. But the next day, the day before they were shipped, someone came and had them opened.'
'Someone?'
'The small man, the assistant to Colonel Robey. His name-'
'Edgar Gadney? Egad?'
'Yes, that's it.'
'Egad had them opened? Why?'
'I don't know,' he said sheepishly. 'Some sort of paperwork I don't understand these things very well. I had to commute to Rome that morning, but I gave my permission.'
I sat silently, thinking that over.
'What else was I to do?' Lorenzo asked nervously. 'He's an official of the exhibition, a representative of your governmnent. Was I not to trust him?'
'Was Peter with him?'
'No. He went back to Berlin as soon as the packing was done, along with the other one, Flittner.'
'And your father was in the hospital. So what you're telling me is that Gadney had a day all to himself with the paintings. In open crates.'
'Well… yes. The workmen were there, of course. Christopher, you're not suggesting… you don't mean to imply that-'
'Lorenzo, I just don't know,' I said honestly.
Chapter 12
The next morning I breakfasted in the hotel's little bar with its fake but charming rococo ceiling. The meal was brought by Luigi, the ageless, taciturn man who had worked at the Augustus ever since I'd begun coming, and whose duties seemed to consist of serving breakfast from seven to nine, manning the never-very-busy switchboard, and wandering the hotel for most of the day, sniffling, plumping cushions, and mumbling to himself. In all the seven years I'd been a client, he had never said anything more to me than 'Caffe o te?'
No, I take that back. In the old days, the hotel had served inexpensive fixed-priced dinners to guests, and
