above.
Calvin was shaking his head. 'Well, that's not the way she remembers it. The way she sees it, Vachey walked on water.' He put down his fork and leaned forward. 'Let me tell you.'
If the story she had told Calvin was even half-true, and I hoped it was, I could see why she felt that way. Far from being a despicable predator who had thrived on others' misery, he had been a genuine hero, according to Clotilde. Yes, he had taken over her Uncle Joachim Lippe's Galerie Royale under the Nazis' policy, but he had used his earnings and his influence to assist others less fortunate. He had spent 80,000 francs-real francs, not Occupation notes; a colossal sum to him in those days- and had undergone enormous personal risk besides, in trying to arrange the Lippe family's escape from Occupied Europe.
In Joachim's case, he had failed-the Gestapo arrested the elderly man three hours before he was to leave Paris, and he had frozen to death in a cattle car while en route to Auschwitz- but Vachey did succeed in getting Joachim's wife and two little girls to Vichy France, then to Portugal, and finally to Canada. Afterward, he had continued to send them money until the mid-1950s, when Mrs. Lippe married again.
Clotilde, then sixteen, wasn't Jewish herself, but as far as the Gestapo were concerned, having a Jewish uncle had been close enough. With her arrest and deportation to slave labor in Eastern Europe imminent, Vachey had hidden her, her mother, and Clotilde's six-year-old brother in his own basement for seven weeks-an act that would have resulted in his own death if it had been known-while he cajoled and bribed French and German officials into issuing the precious papers that certified the Guyots' non-Jewishness.
Once they were safe, he had given Clotilde a job in the gallery, and she had worked for him ever since.
'Fifty goddamn years, can you imagine?' Calvin said. 'How'd you like to work for Tony for fifty years? I'm telling you, she thinks he was the greatest thing that ever walked around on two legs.' He shook his head slowly. 'And no wonder.'
Still, I did wonder. Clotilde's relationship to Vachey was even more equivocal than Pepin's. Vachey had risked his own life to save her and her family-but he'd also been the man who'd profited from the death of her uncle and the confiscation of his gallery, the man who'd taken it over with the approval of, and perhaps on the instructions of, the Nazi authorities. Now, in the end, he'd given it back to her, but he had already made good use of it as a springboard to wealth, while she had remained a paid employee for half a century.
Did she hate him? Love him? Both? What would I have felt in her position, or in Pepin's? It was impossible to imagine. Here I'd known the man only a single day, and I couldn't seem to figure out whether I admired him or despised him.
'What else did she say?' I asked.
'Nothing much. Why, what else did you want her to say?'
'Possibly something about this Flinck thing. If she's been working for Vachey since 1942, she'd know whether there was anything to Mann's charges.'
Calvin finished his omelet and slid the plate aside. 'Yeah, but would she tell? She's really loyal to the guy, Chris. If you want, I could talk to her tomorrow and see.'
'Let me do it, Calvin. I'll catch her in the morning, before I go to Paris and hunt down that junk shop. You know what you can do, though; you can get hold of Les Echos Quotidiens and set them straight on our actual position on the Rembrandt.' I smiled. 'Which is no position at all, of course.'
He nodded. 'Will do. Tony already asked me to talk to them. The rest of the press too. My instructions are to stonewall. I'm real good at that.'
'Tony? When did you talk to him?'
'This afternoon. The Echos Quotidiens people tried to get a statement out of him, and he didn't know what they were talking about.' He raised his eyebrows. 'He knows now.'
'You filled him in on everything?'
He nodded. 'Oh, except about your getting sloshed, and sneaking into Vachey's study, and falling out the window. I forgot that part.'
'Thank you, I owe you. What did he say?'
'Well, you know Tony; it's hard to fluster him. But he needs to talk to you.'
'I need to talk to him. It's eight o'clock,' I said, looking at a wall clock. 'Eleven in Seattle. If I call him right now, I can probably get him before he goes to lunch.' I signaled the waiter for our check.
'Go ahead,' Calvin said, 'I'll get the check. And if I were you, I'd hit the sack early. You look bushed.'
I stood up. 'I think I'll do that. Thanks, Calvin.' I started for the door, then turned with a laugh. 'And thanks again for forgetting the part about Vachey's study.'
He grinned back at me. 'Hell, he wouldn't have believed it anyway.'
Chapter 14
I reached Tony at 11:20 a.m. Seattle time. The call was forwarded to him by his secretary.
'Well, well, Chris, how's everything in France?' he asked jovially. 'Things going well?'
Tony Whitehead was a man of more than one telephone voice. I recognized this particular persona as the avuncular one that he used when speaking with staff members while important people-board members, donors, journalists-were within earshot. It was meant, I believe, to convey the impression (more or less accurate, give or take the occasional crisis) that we were one big, happy, problem-free family.
'Call me when you're free,' I said. 'I'll be in the rest of the night.'
'I'll certainly do that,' Tony boomed. 'Wonderful hearing from you, Chris. Keep up the good work.'
Sixty seconds later my phone chirped. 'Calvin tells me you've run into some problems.' He sounded like Tony again, not like Santa Claus. 'Sorry to hear it.'
'Well, you did tell me it'd be interesting.'
'Do they know who killed Vachey?' 'I don't think so.'
I heard a familiar crik-crak over the line; the sound that my office chair made when it was tipped back. Tony had gone down the hall to make the call from my office. I imagined him leaning back, looking out over Elliott Bay, watching the green-and-white ferries pull into Colman dock.
'Calvin says you like the picture.'
'It's beautiful,' I told him enthusiastically. 'It's a portrait of the old man they used to call Rembrandt's father. It's just about as fine as the one in Malibu, Tony.'
'That's saying a lot,' he said, and I could hear the suppressed excitement. 'So-is it by Rembrandt?'
'Maybe. Probably.'
'Not by Govert Flinck?'
'I don't think so, but that's not the main issue anymore, Tony. Now there are Vachey's wartime activities to think about. Even if this isn't the painting Julien Mann's talking about, it's still possible Vachey got it the same way. If he did, I don't think we'd want to touch it… would we?'
'Absolutely not,' Tony said without hesitation. 'I'd want to see it back where it belongs. 'However-' He let out a long sigh. 'I want to ask a big favor of you, Chris.'
He paused for an affirmative response, but I held my tongue. When Tony skips the flimflamming and tells you right up front that he's about to ask you for a big favor-you can count on it being a big one, all right.
'We don't have to sign for it until Friday, is that right?' he asked when I didn't reply. 'Three more days?'
'That's right. Vachey extended the time limit.'
'Now, I know you want to fly home tomorrow-no, don't stop me-and I know how long it's been since you've seen Anne, and that she's only going to be here until Saturday, but… well, I'd like you to stay on in France a few more days.'
'Tony-'
'I know, and, believe me, I hate to ask it. But this could be the most significant acquisition-'
'If it's authentic. And if it hasn't been extorted from Mann's father or anyone else.'
'Right. Exactly. And that's my point. We still have three days. I'd like you to see if you can dig up anything at all on its provenance, look into Mann's claim, find out if there's anything else in the woodwork we need to worry
