Follow That Blonde Page 5

  “I thought I did."

  I had the feeling Nick didn't want to alarm us, but I also felt he was becoming alarmed himself. “Are you sure he wasn't a big guy, blonde hair, square jaw?"

  “No, he was a small, dark-haired man. Why?"

  He shrugged. “Nothing."

  Concern for Bert began to burn at my vitals. We went back into the living room. Nick couldn't sit still. He kept asking me what time it was, pacing, going to the window every few minutes to look for Bert. “I'm going to give Bert a call,” he finally said, and left the room. The phone, a red modern-looking one, was in his studio.

  When he came back about three minutes later, his concern had escalated to anxiety, which proved contagious. I felt little ripples shimmy up my spine. “There's no answer. I think I should go after him,” he said.

  “Why? What's the matter?” Nancy asked sharply.

  “Probably nothing, but—"

  “What are we waiting for?” I exclaimed.

  “There is something wrong!” Nancy said.

  We grabbed up our purses, Nick looked around for his keys, and we were off in the little red Alfa-Romeo, bumper clanking, windshield wiper disturbing our view. As we drove, Nick invented a ridiculous story about a man wanting to talk to Bert about a business misunderstanding, and I sat worrying my conscience, wondering whether I shouldn't tell Nancy the truth.

  We coasted about half the way down the hill into Rome, made a turn, and went through streets that became narrower and shabbier and bumpier as we progressed. There was one benefit—the windshield wiper fell back down to the bottom of the window. We hurtled past dun-colored houses, small stores, and seedy restaurants, dodging children and cats. There were no sidewalks, and the street was too narrow for another car to pass safely. Since there was no room for parking, Nick squealed the car to a stop right in front of the door of a big old stone building with a magnificent carved archway that was fast returning to its original quarried state.

  The combination of grandeur and decay is one of the things that stands out in my mind about Rome. A doorway or arch or statue that belongs in a castle will suddenly pop up in the midst of decayed poverty. This building had been converted into apartments.

  “He has the flat on the second floor at the back,” Nick said. “I'll be right back."

  “We'll all go,” Nancy said.

  “No!” His answer was sharp. “I—I'll go. No need for all of us to go storming in."

  Nick pushed the loose door open and bolted up the steps three at a time.

  “There's something funny going on,” Nancy said, sounding concerned. “Nick wouldn't be this worried if some man just wants to talk to Bert."

  “Now he's got me worried,” I said.

  She began chewing on her thumb. “And he asked about that big blonde guy. I mean, somebody like that could beat the stuffing out of Bert. You thought when we first saw Bert yesterday that he was kind of looking over his shoulder, didn't you?"

  “Yes."

  “He was walking so fast, as if he was trying to get away from somebody. This is all starting to smell fishy. I'm going to see if Bert's there. If he's all right."

  “I'm not staying alone in an illegally parked car."

  “Maybe you should, in case some of those kids steal the hubcaps."

  “The car doesn't have any hubcaps. And I'm not staying in this slum alone. I'll probably be knifed in the back."

  CHAPTER 4

  We both went into the house, up the stairs, and down a dark corridor, which smelled of garlic and dust and sweat, to the apartment at the rear. “Imagine poor Bert, living here,” Nancy said, with a shiver of distaste.

  The apartment door was open. Nick stood in the middle of the room, looking around at a mess that went beyond giving me nervous spasms. It was just too much. A rust-colored sofa was pushed askew, a coffee table knocked over, a chair with the cushion thrown on the floor. At first I just thought Bert was an utter slob, which was, in fact, half the reason for the mess. Shoes in the middle of the floor, shirt thrown over a lamp, used glasses sitting all over—that was Bert's doing all right. But it didn't seem likely he had pushed his furniture all helter-skelter. I noticed there were copies of American magazines all over. Time, People, Playboy. This was how he kept in touch with home.

  The air in the apartment smelled sour. “He's not here?” Nancy asked. Nick shook his head.

  “Does he have an office?” I asked. “Didn't he say the pictures were at his office?"

  “This is his office—he works out of his apartment,” Nick told me.

  “Oh.” Of course. How like Bert to aggrandize the details of his living style.

  “I'll check the bedroom. I can look out back and see if his car's gone,” Nick said, and left.

  Nancy began tidying the living room. I went the other way, toward what proved to be the kitchen. I discovered where the smell was coming from. A pitcher of milk had soured and curdled. A plate of butter had melted into a puddle, and there was a half a loaf of bread turning green on the counter. He hadn't been here for a week at least! But someone had been here, searching for something. I took the milk pitcher to the awful old tin sink and flushed it away. There was a magazine clipping taped above the sink. “The most difficult thing about becoming a millionaire is thinking you can do it.” The clipping was splattered with grease and coffee grounds, and all curled up at the edges. He'd put it where he'd see it every day.

  I felt like bawling for Bert. So ambitious, and so totally doomed to failure. He had the twentieth-century disease: he didn't want to do great things, he just wanted to be rich. The down-at-the-heels Gucci loafers, the knockoff watch—they were his little attempts at looking successful. Living a shabby life might be tolerable if you didn't have such high aspirations, but Bert had always wanted so badly to be “in” with the crowd. And in our day, money was the key. How proud he was of the Contessa, and the champagne and caviar, and how eager to brag to us about them.

  When I returned to the living room, Nancy was in the hall, examining the door. “The door was kicked in,” she pointed out. There were about one hundred years of kick marks on the outside, but the lock had been pulled off the door recently. The splinters looked raw. Nick came out of the bedroom. “His clothes are gone, but his car's still there,” he said.

  “What about your motorcycle?” I asked.

  “No sign of it."

  I showed him the state of the kitchen. “I don't think he's been here for days."

  Instead of concern, Nick seemed slightly relieved. “Maybe he's all right then,” he said. I gave him a questioning look. “It seems Bert's ... moved,” he explained.

  “To get away from the large blonde man who's been following him?” I asked.

  “Was Luigi actually following him yesterday?"

  “I think somebody was. You'd better tell Nancy the truth about Luigi."

  He frowned and bit his lip. “Will it turn her off?"

  “Why should it? She's been going out with men."

  “Mind if we talk in the car? This place gives me the creeps."

  I called a wild-eyed Nancy into the kitchen to tell her we were leaving. “I don't understand!” she said, close to tears. “Where is Bert? What's happened to him?"

  “Nick's going to tell us shortly,” I consoled her.

  But once we were back in the car, Nick admitted he didn't have a clue where Bert was. We decided to head back to Nick's place since we didn't know where else to go, and since Bert might possibly have reached there safely. Nick said he could make a few phone calls and see if he could find out anything. In the meantime, he filled us in on what he did know.

  “There's this girl,” Nick said. “Maria's her name. Pretty, black hair, white skin. I don't know where Bert met her, but he went out with her a few times. He didn't know she was spoken for, but it seems she has a fiancé."

  Nancy clammed up and crossed her arms, pretending to have lost interest. “Luigi's his name,” I told her.

  “Luigi—her fianc�
�—spoke to Bert rather sternly, I believe,” Nick continued. “Since he's about seven feet tall, weighs close to three hundred pounds, and has a temper like Attila the Hun, I thought Bert would heed the warning."

  “He would,” Nancy said curtly.

  I agreed. After four years of high school, you get to know a person, and Bert is not the kind of man to risk life and limb for a woman. He has a loud mouth, but he was also a Grade A chicken.

  “And the reason he isn't in his apartment is that Luigi knows where he lives, and he's hiding somewhere?” I asked.

  “That's the way I see it. I told him he could stay with me when he first told me about Conan—Bert calls Luigi Conan. Bert said Conan knew he worked for me, and where I lived. It'd be the second place he'd look."

  “And that's why you thought Conan might be at your house yesterday."

  “It must have been some other woman's boyfriend,” Nancy snipped from the backseat.

  When Nick pulled into his driveway, the motorcycle was chained to a post. “He's back!” I exclaimed.

  Nick and I went pelting in, with Nancy following behind, preparing to be cool with Bert.

  A very pale, frightened Bert was pretending nothing unusual was going on. “You guys didn't tell me you were going out,” he complained. “I didn't know if you'd taken the ladies on to Naples or what, Nick. Told you I'd only be a minute. Sorry, no sign of the old pix. Maybe you could paint up a few new ones in your old style. I really think Lingini might spring for one."

  Nancy lifted her nose and sniffed. Then she sat on the sofa, picked up an art magazine, and began to riffle through it to show her total disinterest in Bert.

  “Are you all right?” Nick asked Bert. I noticed then that Bert was rubbing his stomach and giving an occasional wince, although he wasn't wearing any visible bruises.

  “Right as rain,” he said, and gave a rictus-like smile.

  “Where were you? When you didn't come back, we went to your apartment."

  “Oh jeez, you didn't take the girls there! I should've told you, Nick. I moved. Couldn't stand the racket in that place. I'm subletting to a student. I thought it'd be fun to live in the Subura,” he said, trying to put a good face on about his hovel. “It's the heart of old Rome. Most tourists don't even know it exists. Full of history. The street at the end used to go right to the Forum, but some old emperor carved it up. Still, it's a great location. How was my apartment?"

  “He'd been there,” Nick said. Bert gave a quelling look. “I told them about Luigi. You can't go on hiding it, Bert. When you disappeared, I had to give some explanation."

  “Shit. Did he wreck everything? Is my stereo all right?"

  “It's fine. The place was just disarranged,” Nick assured him. “Where are you staying now?"

  “I've taken a pensione by the week. That's where Conan got me this morning. I had a feeling he was following me yesterday, but I couldn't spot him."

  “He got you!” Nancy flew up from the sofa, all concern. “Bert!"

  He rubbed his stomach. “Guy's a pro. He kneads you like a wad of dough, and doesn't leave a sign. I retched myself sick."

  “Oh Bert! Sit down. I'll get you some wine.

  “Never mind the wine. A week in the hospital is what I need. Anybody know the symptoms of a ruptured spleen?” He tenderly rubbed his belly.

  Nancy laid him down and lovingly tucked a cushion behind his head. He opened his shirt to reveal a mottled red torso. “We should have this brute arrested!” she said.

  “Forget it. The guy'd have every punk in town after me. He's related to half of Rome. Boy, when Maria told me he was a librarian, I thought he'd be harmless. Huh, Conan the Librarian. He works at one of the art academies, cataloguing stuff. He could lift Grand Central Station with one hand."

  “You should be a little more careful who you go out with,” Nancy said primly.

  “I wouldn't have gone out with her if you ever answered my letters."

  I looked at Nancy. She never told me a word about getting letters from Bert Garr!

  “I answered two of them,” she said.

  “Really?” He gave her a loving, hopeful look, and I rapidly surmised that that was why Nancy had decided to come on this trip with me. That was the spectacular synchronicity at work at the sidewalk café. She'd been looking for Bert, and he had found her.

  “No wonder you never got them, if you move every week,” she said with a smile.

  “You'll have to stay here for the time being, Bert,” Nick said. He didn't get any argument from Bert. We all, except Bert, had some more coffee while we discussed the problem. Nick thought that since Conan had salvaged his honor by beating up Bert, the affair was over.

  “Providing you stay away from Maria,” Nancy added.

  “Don't worry. You won't catch me hanging out at her gallery again. About your pictures, Nick—I don't have them. Why don't you give that Boisvert guy in Paris a buzz? Maybe he can forward the pictures you left with him. Seems a shame to lose out on the Lingini deal. I mentioned fifty thou, in Yankee dollars, and she didn't blink an eye."

  “That's worth a call,” Nick agreed, and left the room. The only phone in the house as far as I had seen was the red one in his studio. He came back in about ten minutes. “Boisvert's away on holidays. His wife's expecting him back in a week. I asked him to call me."

  “You could splatter up half a dozen of those modern blobs in a week,” Bert said. “Make a good retrospective show."

  Nick considered this a moment, making me realize he was not one of those art-for-art's-sake types. “I'd have to buy the acrylics and canvas. I don't have any of them around nowadays. Besides, the pictures would look brand new. Lingini's knowledgeable. She'd know the difference."

  “You could varnish them, or blow smoke on them—stick ‘em in the oven for an hour. There must be some way to do a quick aging job on acrylic."

  Nick laughed, and we just sat around talking, waiting to see if Bert was well enough to do the sightseeing we'd planned. Nick brought out some photographs of his first exhibit in Paris, to show us what his earlier French Frustration period was like. It was as he'd described it, angry slashes of primary color, but not splashed on in gobs. It was refined, with narrow slashes, and much crossing of lines and edges of impasto.

  “It's derivative,” he admitted. “Mondrian in a bad mood, and very impatient. This style has fallen out of fashion.”

  “Oh, I don't know,” Nancy said thoughtfully. We still saw work like that on exhibition in Paris. Remember that Frageau exhibition, Lana?"

  “Frageau? I never heard of him,” Nick said.

  “There's a reproduction of one of his paintings right in this magazine I was looking at a minute ago. He calls it Opus 7. He entitles all his paintings by number.” She riffled through the magazine and handed it to Nick, open at the proper page.

  “Pretentious,” Nick scoffed, but he took the magazine for a closer look. His reaction was like a double take from a silent film. His initial disinterested glance turned to one of riveted attention. His brows drew together and he made a strangled “arggh” sound. "It's mine! That's my Rouge et Noir study! That son of a bitch!"

  We all gathered round to view the reproduction. It was a full-page spread—a good, glossy print. “Tempest in a teapot,” Bert said. “Those exploding firecracker pictures all look alike."

  “Oh, no,” Nancy said firmly, “that's definitely a Frageau. I recognize the brushwork. Remember, Lana, we were wondering how he did it, and I thought he used a very full brush, with a ruler to build up that dynamic edge of impasto—unusual in acrylics. It's more common with oils.” Nancy had inundated me with many of these insider's tricks during our tours of galleries and museums.

  Nick continued staring at the reproduction. “To hell it's a Frageau. It's mine. And I didn't use a ruler. I used masking tape for the straight edge. Acrylic dries quickly. You can do that."

  Nancy examined the picture again. “It says Frageau,” she said, pointing out the signature.

>   “I don't care if it says Picasso! I know my own work. He's painted over my signature.” Nick ran to his studio and came back with a magnifying glass. “No, he hasn't either. What he's done is cut an inch off the bottom of the canvas and ruined the balance in the process. There used to be a heavy black line close to the bottom. You notice this looks top heavy."

  Nancy immediately imagined the composition was unbalanced. “This is awful!" she exclaimed. “What are you going to do, Nick?"

  “Who's got the picture now?” He read the fine print. “From the collection of Monsieur Pierre Duplessis, Paris. He's a noted collector!"

  “It mentions Georges St. Felix also has a couple,” Nancy said. “The famous parfumier. Now that I think of it, Frageau is a made-up kind of a name."

  “Half Fragonard, half Watteau,” I offered, though of course the Frageau-Hansen painting wasn't in that old world, romantic style.

  Bert was unhappy at being abandoned. “God, my gut hurts."

  Nancy patted his hand, without even looking at him. “Poor Bert. Boy, I am just full of synchronicity,” she added. “I mean going to the Frageau exhibition, and now this."

  Bert listened, and decided the picture was Nick's after all. “Boisvert's pulling the old dead artist trick. The artist dies, and the price shoots through the ceiling. Supply and demand. Does it say Frageau's dead?"

  “If it doesn't, it soon will,” Nick seethed. “I'll kill that son of a bitch of a Boisvert. I bet he was selling my pictures when I was in Paris, and keeping my money."

  “Did he have that kind of reputation?” I asked.

  “He didn't have any. I couldn't get a reputable dealer to handle me."

  Nancy skimmed the article and said, “Sure enough. Frageau died tragically at the age of thirty-three, leaving a small but cherished legacy. It mentions he was a heavy drug user. This does look kind of nightmarish."

  I shot a worried glance at Nick. A drugee? “It's just frustration,” he insisted.

  Bert sat up and frowned. “Time to put on the old thinking cap. The thing to do is call Duplessis and what's his name, the perfumer. Want me to do it, Nick? I'll threaten to sic our legal department on them. Hell, they won't know we don't have any lawyers."