The Loo Sanction Read online

  Jonathan cleared his throat. “I don’t climb seriously anymore.”

  “Not only that,” Vanessa said, squeezing his arm, realizing that he wanted to change the subject, “he’s given up serious criticism as well. Or haven’t you read his latest bag of garbage?” She turned to the crisp, beautiful woman of uncertain years who stood beside Sir Wilfred. “And you are . . . ?”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry,” Sir Wilfred said. “Mrs. Amelia Farquahar. A friend of mine, actually.”

  “No one’s introduced me yet,” the suede jacket said.

  Vanessa patted his cheek. “That’s because no one’s noticed you yet, darling boy.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that.” But his peeve lasted only a second. “Actually, we were having a lively conversation when you broke in. Lively and a little naughty.”

  “Oh?” Vanessa asked Mrs. Farquahar.

  “Yes. We were, in fact, discussing the myth of vaginal climax.” Mrs. Farquahar turned to Jonathan. “What are your opinions on that, Dr. Hemlock?”

  “As an art critic?”

  “As a mountain climber, if you’d rather.”

  Sir Wilfred grunted. “All part of women’s liberation, I shouldn’t wonder. I hear you’ve been having quite a lot of that in your country.”

  “Mostly among the losers,” Jonathan said, smiling.

  Vanessa smiled back. “You turd.”

  “And you, Miss Dyke?” Mrs. Farquahar asked. “Do you have an opinion on that?”

  Vanessa dropped her cigarette butt in suede jacket’s wineglass. “I don’t think it’s a myth at all. The misconception is that it takes a penis to achieve it.”

  “How interesting,” said Mrs. Farquahar.

  “I say!” injected suede jacket, feeling somehow he had been left out of the conversation. “Did you read about that man found impaled in St. Martin’s-In-The-Fields?”

  “Oh, ghastly business,” Sir Wilfred said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. If you have to go . . .” He wriggled a shoulder and took a sip of wine.

  While he was coping with the mouthful of tobacco, Vanessa said to Mrs. Farquahar, “Come, let me introduce you to the young man who has drawn this sparkling company together.”

  “Yes. I’d like that.”

  They pushed off through the crowd, Vanessa leading the way and prowing through the congested sea of people. Suede jacket stood on tiptoe and waved extravagantly to someone who had just entered, then struggled off after a word of apology.

  Jonathan and Sir Wilfred stood side by side against the wall. “What’s all this about climbing, Fred?” Jonathan asked without looking at him. “You get a nosebleed from standing on a thick carpet.”

  “Just the first thing that came to my mind, Jon.” The flappy tones of the bungling British civil servant dropped away from his speech.

  “I see. Are you still in the Service?”

  “No, no. I’ve been on the shelf for several years now. The extent of my counterespionage activities now is trying to find out how much my chauffeur tells my wife.”

  “When I saw your name on my appointment to come over here, I assumed MI–5 had found you an elastic cover.”

  “I’m afraid not. I am well and truly out to pasture. The electronic age has caught up with me. One has to be a damned engineer these days to stay in the game. No, I serve my country by chairing committees devoted to the task of bringing cultural enrichment to our shores. You constitute a cultural enrichment.” He laughed. “Who would have thought in the old days when we were flogging about Europe, now on the same team, now in opposition, that we would be brought so low.”

  “You do know that I’m out of it totally now?” Jonathan wanted to be sure.

  “Oh, certainly. First thing I checked upon when your name came up. The chaps at the old office said you were—to use their uncomplimentary compliment—politically subpotent. By which I take it that you and CII have parted company.”

  “That we have. By the way, congratulations on your knighthood.”

  “Not so much of an achievement as you might imagine. These days few people escape that distinction. When you leave the Service they automatically lumber you with a K.B.E. They’ve found it’s cheaper than a gold watch, I suspect. Ah, the ladies return.”

  As she approached, Vanessa said to Jonathan, “I didn’t lure you here just to punish you with my acquaintances. There’s something I want to show you.” She turned to Mrs. Farquahar. “Jon and I have to run off for a moment.”

  Mrs. Farquahar smiled and inclined her head.

  In the hall where it was relatively quiet Jonathan asked, “What’s this all about, Van?”

  “You’ll see. A chance for you to pick up some pocket money. But look, don’t get uptight, and for God’s sake, don’t cause any trouble. That could be very bad for me.” She led the way down a corridor, past the table at which the maids and caterer’s assistants were flirting, to the door of a small private display room. “Come on.”

  Jonathan entered, then stopped short. A bronze Horse and Rider by Marino Marini stood in the center of a darkened room, its ragged modeling accented by the acute angle of a shaft of dramatically placed light. About forty inches high, a sand-colored forced patina, the modeling seemed to combine those primitive, lumpy Etrurian characteristics typical of Marini with an almost oriental twist of the heads of both horse and rider that was most uncharacteristic. But the fat rider’s stubbed cigar of a penis was a Marini signature. Jonathan walked slowly around the casting, pausing occasionally to take in some detail, his concentration totally committed. So absorbed was he that it was a while before he noticed a man leaning against the far wall, posed under a dim light that had been arranged with almost as much care as that given to the Horse. He wore an extremely trendy suit of dusty gold velvet, and a ruffle of starched lace stood at his throat. His arms were folded across his chest, his stance poised and practiced, but an inner tension prevented his posture from appearing relaxed. He watched Jonathan steadily, following him with gray eyes so pale they seemed colorless.

  Jonathan examined the man with frank curiosity. It was the most beautiful male bust he had ever seen—an unearthly, bloodless beauty such as masters of the Early Renaissance sometimes touched upon. Intuitively, he knew the man was aware of the effect of his cold beauty, and he had stationed himself in that particular light to heighten it.

  “Well, Jonathan?” Vanessa had been standing back out of the light. Her voice was hushed most uncharacteristically.

  Jonathan glanced again at the Renaissance man. Something in his demeanor made it clear that he did not intend to speak and did not wish to be spoken to. Jonathan decided to let him play out his silly game.

  “Well what?” he asked Van.

  “Is it genuine?”

  Jonathan was surprised at the question, forgetting as often he did that his gift was quite unique. As some people have perfect pitch, Jonathan had a perfect eye. Once he had seen a man’s work, he never mistook it. It was, in fact, upon that gift that his reputation had been founded and not, as he preferred others to believe, on his scholarship. “Of course it’s genuine. Marini cast three of these and later broke one. No one knows why. Some defect probably. But only two now exist. This is the Dallas Horse. I didn’t know it was in England.”

  “Ah—” Vanessa fumbled for a Gauloise to cover her tension, then she asked offhandedly, “What price do you think it would bring?”

  Jonathan looked at her, startled. “It’s for sale?”

  She took a deep drag and blew smoke up at the ceiling. “Yes.”

  Jonathan looked across at the Renaissance man, who had not moved a muscle and who still watched him, the colorless eyes picked out by a shaft of light just under the dark eyebrows.

  “Stolen?” Jonathan asked.

  “No,” Vanessa answered.

  “Doesn’t he talk?”

  “Please, Jonathan.” She touched his arm.

  “What the hell’s going on? Is he selling this?”

  “Yes. But he
wanted you to have a look at it first.”

  “Why? You don’t need me to authenticate it. Its provenances are impeccable. Even a British expert could have certified it.” He addressed this to the man standing on the opposite side of the bar of light illuminating the Horse. When the man spoke, his tessitura was just as one would have predicted: precise, carefully modulated, colorless.

  “How did you know it was the Dallas Horse, Dr. Hemlock?”

  “Ah, you speak. I thought you just posed.”

  “How did you know it was the Dallas Horse?”

  As curtly as possible, Jonathan explained that everyone who knew anything at all about the Marini Horses knew the story of the one purchased by the young Dallas millionaire who subsequently picked it up at the plane himself, loaded it into the back of his pickup, then brought it to his ranch. In unloading, it was dropped and broken. Subsequently it was brazed together by an auto mechanic and, because it was imperfect, it was relegated to adorning the barbecue pit. “Any novice would recognize it,” he said, pointing to the rough brazing.

  The Renaissance man nodded. “I knew the story, of course.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “Testing. Tell me. What do you suppose it will bring in an open sale?”

  “I’m a professional. I get paid for making evaluations.”

  Vanessa cleared her throat. “Ah, Jon, he gave me an envelope for you. I’m sure it will be all right.”

  Neither the voice nor the words were in character for the gruff, hard-drinking Vanessa Dyke, and Jonathan’s distaste for this whole theatrical setup grew. He answered crisply. “Impossible to say. Whatever the buyer can afford. It depends on how much he wants it, or how much he wants others to know he owns it. If my memory serves me, the Texan you got it from gave something in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million for it.”

  “What would it bring now?” Vanessa asked.

  Jonathan shrugged. “I told you. I can’t say.”

  The Renaissance man spoke without moving even a fold in the fabric of his suit. “Let me ask you an easier question. Something you can answer.”

  Jonathan’s slum boyhood toned his response. “Listen, art lover. Keep your fee. Or better yet, shove it up your ass.” He turned to leave, but Vanessa stood in his way.

  “Please, Jon? A favor to me?”

  “What’s this yahoo to you?”

  She frowned and shook her head, not wanting to go into it now. He didn’t understand, and he was angry, but Vanessa was a friend. He turned back. “What do you want to know?”

  The Renaissance man nodded, accepting Jonathan’s capitulation. “The Horse will be offered for sale soon. It will bring a very high price. At what point would people in the art world find the price unbelievable? At what point would the newspapers make something of it?”

  Jonathan assumed there was a tax dodge on. “There would be talk, but no one would be unduly astonished at, say, half a million. If it came from the right sources.”

  “Half a million? Dollars?”

  “Yes, dollars.”

  “I paid more than that for it myself. What if the price were well beyond that?”

  “How much beyond?”

  “Say . . . five million . . . pounds.”

  Jonathan laughed. “Never. The other privately held one could be loosened for a tenth of that. And that one’s never been broken.”

  “Perhaps the buyer wouldn’t want the other one. Perhaps he has a fondness for flawed statues.”

  “Five million pounds is a lot to pay for a perverted taste for things flawed.”

  “Such a price, then, would cause talk.”

  “It would cause talk, yes.”

  “I see.” The Renaissance man looked down to the floor. “Thank you for your opinion, Dr. Hemlock.”

  “I think we’d better get back now, Jon,” Vanessa said, touching his arm.

  Jonathan stopped in the hall and collected his coat from the porter. “Well? Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

  “What’s to tell? A mutual friend asked me to arrange a contact between you two. I was paid for it. Oh, here.” She gave him a broad envelope, which contained a thick padding of bills.

  “But who is that guy?”

  She shrugged. “Never saw him before in my life, lover. Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “I’m not going back in there. Anyway, I have an appointment tonight.”

  Vanessa looked over his shoulder in the direction of Mrs. Farquahar. “I think I have too.”

  As he slipped into his overcoat, he looked back toward the door to the private showroom. “You have some weird friends, lady.”

  “Do you really think so?” She laughed and butted her cigarette in the salver meant to receive tips, then she walked into the crowded reception room where the singer with the gold-tinsel wig and the green mascara was bobbing over the heads of the company, chanting in thin falsetto something about a cup of coffee, a sandwich, and you.

  The Renaissance man settled into the passenger seat of his Jensen Interceptor and adjusted his suit coat to prevent its wrinkling. “Has he left?”

  The Mute nodded.

  “And he’s being followed?”

  The Mute nodded again.

  The Renaissance man clicked on the tape deck and settled to listen to a little Bach as the car crunched along the driveway, its lights out.

  A young man with a checked sports coat and a camera depended from his neck stood in a red telephone kiosk beneath a corner streetlamp. While the phone on the other end of the line double-buzzed, he clamped the receiver under his chin awkwardly as he scrawled in a notebook. He had been holding the license number on the rim of his memory by chanting it over and over to himself. Hearing an answering click and hum, he pressed in his twopence piece and said in a hard “r” American accent, “Hi, there.”

  A cultured voice responded, “Yes? What is it, Yank?”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “That hermaphroditic accent of yours.”

  “Oh. I see.” Crestfallen, the young man abandoned his phony American sound and continued with the nasal drawl of public school. “He has left the party, sir. Took a cab.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I thought you would like to know. He was followed.”

  “Good. Good.”

  “Shall I tag along?”

  “No, that wouldn’t be wise.” The cultured voice was silent for a moment. “Very well. I suppose you have the Baker Street ploy set up?”

  “Right, sir. By the way, just in case you want to know, I took note of the time of his departure. He left at exactly . . . Good Lord.”

  “What is it?”

  “My watch has stopped.”

  The man on the other end of the line sighed heavily. “Good night, Yank.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  Covent Garden

  Jonathan sat deep in the back of the taxi, attending only vaguely to the hissing pass of traffic over wet streets. He experienced his usual social nausea after public gatherings of reviewers, teachers, gallery owners, patrons—the paracreative slugs who burden art with their attention—the parasites who pretend to be symbions and who support, with their groveling leadership, the teratogenetic license of democratic art.

  “Fucking grex venalium,” he muttered to himself, displaying both aspects of his background—the slums and the university halls.

  Forget it, he told himself. Don’t let them get to you. He looked forward this evening to a pleasant hour or two with MacTaint, his favorite person in London. A thief, a rogue, and a con with a fine sense of scatology and a haughty disdain for such social imperatives as cleanliness, MacTaint seemed to be visiting modern London from the pages of Dickens or the chorus of Threepenny Opera. But he knew painting as did few people in Europe, and he was England’s most active dealer in the gray market of stolen art. Although Jonathan had never before been to MacTaint’s home, they had often met in little pubs around Covent Garden to drink and j
oke and talk about painting.

  He smiled to himself as he recalled their first meeting three months earlier. He had returned to his flat after a day marred by lectures to serious, ungifted students; meetings with committees whose keen senses of parliamentary procedure obscured their purposes; and gatherings of academic people and art critics, all fencing for position in their miniature arena. He was fed up, and he needed to pass some resuscitating time with his paintings, the eleven Impressionists that were all that remained from the four years he had worked for the Search and Sanction Division of CII. These paintings were the most important things in his life. After all, he had killed for them. Under the protection and blessing of the government, he had performed a half-dozen counterassassinations (“sanctions,” in the crepuscular bureaucratese of CII).

  Tired and depressed, he had pushed open the door to his flat, and walked in on a party in progress. Every light was on, his whiskey had been broken out, Haydn played on the phonograph, and the furniture had been moved about to facilitate examination of the eleven Impressionists lining the walls.

  But it was a party for only one person. An old man sat alone in a deep wing chair, glass in hand, his tattered overcoat still on, its collar up to his ears revealing only tousled gray hair and a bulbous, new-potato nose.

  “Come in. Come in,” the old man invited.

  “Thank you,” Jonathan said, hoping the irony had not been too heavy.

  “Have some whiskey?”

  “Yes, I think I will.” Jonathan poured out a good tot of Laphroaig. “Could I freshen up yours?”

  “Oh, that’s good of you, son. But I’ve had sufficient.”

  Jonathan tugged off his raincoat. “In that case, get the hell out of here.”

  “In a while. In a while. Relax, lad. I’m feasting my tired eyes on that bit of crusted pigment there. Manet. Good for the soul.”

  Jonathan smiled, intrigued by this old leprechaun who looked like a cross between a provincial professor emeritus and a dirty dustman. “Yes, it’s a first-quality copy.”

  “Pig shit.”