The Oldest Confession Read online

  They finalized the deal. Bourne’s capital investment, repayable to him out of the first monies received, was not to exceed an amount equal to twelve and a half per cent of the total profit projection which they agreed as market value to be appraised when the Market and the market value had been established. Jean Marie and Lalu and everyone they knew in the world of art were to tell everyone they knew that Jean Marie had seen a blinding light, that all copying was fraudulent and parasitical, that in the future he would only paint to create his own seen images. He was to tell Lalu, who would be shocked at the idea of giving up such a regular income, that Bourne believed in him and would sponsor him at the rate of fifty thousand nonreturnable francs a week, a cool fortune, until he was established. They shook hands on the understanding that he would have a one-man show ready in six months, the exhibition of which Bourne would arrange and finance out of the aforementioned common fund, together with suitable publicity designed to erase forever the memory of Jean Marie as a copyist, and to whatever degree made possible by the quality of his original paintings, to establish him as a serious painter.

  It was at that point that Jean Marie made his suggestion. Bourne’s immediate reaction demonstrated Bourne’s reason for pre-eminence as a criminal. His instant recognition of the main chance demonstrated a lack of rigidity which allowed him to discard entirely The Marketing Plan he had built up so painstakingly over the past fourteen months. It took him not more than seven minutes to hear, digest, and evaluate Jean Marie’s information, which had been proffered in a most casual manner, quite indifferent to its possibilities, and in sort of a social acknowledgment of Bourne’s reference to the eventual marketing of the merchandise.

  A Swiss lawyer, known to be of high character and practice, a client of the most successful Parisian art dealer Jean Marie had ever known, had cultivated Jean Marie over expensive lunches twice a month for three months now, as had Bourne. Using the expanding musical note system the lawyer had convinced Jean Marie that the great dealer believed Jean Marie to be the most gifted copyist who had ever lived. Seeing Jean Marie’s immediate appreciation of that observation, the lawyer had proceeded to outline, in most general and entirely academic terms, his point of view.

  He had a client. No matter how successfully these chats might proceed the client’s name could never be mentioned. The client was a man of exalted tastes in art and a man of not inconsiderable means. He had recognized the lawyer as a man of absolute integrity, as a man who would not consent even to discuss any matter which even seemed to take advantage of the law. He told the lawyer of certain properties which were his by right and which he desired to reacquire. He would pay a fabulous amount to reacquire these, however to overtake these properties the client would need to have exact copies which was the matter which the lawyer would very much like to discuss with Jean Marie at Jean Marie’s convenience.

  “Did you discuss it?” Bourne asked.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “He was a crook, that guy. I didn’t like the way he put it to me.”

  Bourne left Paris for Zurich that evening, after telephoning ahead for an appointment for the following morning.

  Lawyer Chern was bald on top, and so yellow on the sides of his head that he looked painted. He was yellow and pink and blue and white; the last two colors accounting for his clear eyes and strong, square teeth. He was an excessively, even repellently, healthy man whose handshake was too strong, whose voice was too loud, whose laugh was too harsh, whose beam was too broad, and whose every move was so insincere that Bourne decided at once that if he should ever have the chance to recommend it, Lawyer Chern must have a place on his father’s payroll.

  They concluded their arrangements the following day because Lawyer Chern was duck soup to Bourne. Bourne’s father had taught him how to screw chaps like Lawyer Chern before Bourne was out of high school. The details of the agreement were clean. The negotiations opened something like this, with Bourne relaxing and playing into Lawyer Chern’s greed, just as his father had taught him.

  Bourne said, “It has come to my attention through a painter friend of Margat and Sons that you represent a client who is interested in Spanish paintings.”

  “What painter friend of Margat and Sons is that?” Lawyer Chern asked.

  “Jean Marie Calbert.”

  “Ah!”

  “We are associated.”

  “Ah!”

  Bourne stopped there. Chern being a lawyer and therefore doctrinaire fell back upon the law school instruction of waiting silently while the world spilled out gratuitous information. Four silent minutes passed then Lawyer Chern volunteered that he had had discussions with a principal some time ago who had expressed an interest in reaching an arrangement with a special kind of art dealer who might be able to secure Spanish paintings, but that nothing had developed from the discussions since then and that had been some time ago.

  Bourne continued to stare at him. Exasperated, Lawyer Chern finally blurted, “Do you have a quantity of Spanish masters?”

  “They are available.”

  “Are any of these available?” He opened the top drawer of his desk. He moved two thin sheets of paper which contained listed typewriting and slid them across the desk toward Bourne. Bourne glanced at the lists without picking them up.

  “Some of them.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Later.”

  “What—later?”

  “After I have a written agreement.” This pleased the lawyer secretly; agreements in writing are covered with cabalistic signs for lawyers, anything in writing was. One’s word wasn’t worth spit with lawyers. He began to chew absent-mindedly on his thumbnail. Minutes passed. Then Lawyer Chern said, “You understand that the name of my client may not appear in this agreement at any time?”

  “My dear man,” Bourne told him, “neither may mine.”

  “You are joking, of course.”

  Bourne did not bother to answer. They concluded their arrangements that day.

  In the place of bona fides, Bourne agreed to post an amount of one hundred thousand Swiss francs in escrow against the delivery of the first of three Spanish master paintings, covered by lists known as Schedule A and B, within a period of not more than two hundred and eighty one days. At the time of the delivery of the first canvas the deposit money was to be returned in full to Bourne, plus a captive bonus of fifteen per cent of the good faith amount held in escrow, plus the amount of one hundred and thirty thousand dollars if the painting delivered was on Schedule A or the amount of eighty-three thousand five hundred dollars if the painting delivered was on Schedule B. Deliveries of all paintings were to be made to the premises of Traumer Frères, bankers doing business at 46 Rue Balzance, Paris, to Wolfgang Gregory Mandel. In consideration of the good faith shown by Bourne in establishing the deposit under escrow, and realizing the necessity of advance expenses and charges made necessary by the gradual acquisition of the paintings in Spain, and the costs of travel and maintenance to and in and from Spain, it was agreed that a sum equal to twenty per cent of the average valuation of the paintings listed in Schedules A and B or a mean sum of twenty-one thousand three hundred dollars, nonreturnable and nonaccountable funds, would be payable to Bourne two-thirds upon signing and the remaining one-third upon delivery of the first painting.

  At first there had been a good deal of haggling over the Bourne insistence that the client underwrite the expenses of the project and, later on, over Lawyer Chern’s insistence that Bourne enter into the escrow agreement. Lawyer Chern said, “But, it is eminently fair, my dear fellow. You insist upon being paid in advance for operating expenses, something which is unheard of in the art field but you are a specialist and I can see your argument, but what about your bona fides? You will not give me your name. I must take you, a stranger, on faith. How is my principal to know that you won’t take this expense money, and you are talking about a very respectable amount of money, sir, and disappear. I mean, how are we to know you wo
n’t go to. Spain and then come back saying you had no luck but that you unfortunately spent all the money? I mean, you are a specialist. If you had suppose, in the past, acquired other paintings or say, some jewels, for a principal in the past in this proposed manner, well I could check on you. I would have bona fides even in your own unusual specialty. Oh, no. No, no. If you deliver the paintings, all right we will pay the expenses but in the meantime it is only sound business to demand that you agree to put a good will deposit in escrow under an agreement which will protect my principal.”

  “But the money may be tied up for eight months!”

  “So?”

  “Why should a bank enjoy the interest on my money because you want to impress a client?”

  “Are you asking if we will repay you for the idleness of your money?”

  “Yes.”

  “We will not. And that is final.”

  “Then we have finished.” Bourne got up immediately and started for the door.

  “One moment—please.”

  Bourne kept walking. Lawyer Chern yelled, “All right!” Bourne didn’t smile or shrug. He returned to the chair and sat down.

  It was agreed that Bourne should sign the agreement under the name of Werner Schrampft; agreed mainly because Bourne had given no other name. Lawyer Chern, on behalf of his client, was to sign as Wolfgang Gregory Mandel. Upon the signing of the agreement each was to open a separate account with Traumer Frères in Paris, London or Zurich in any amount required to be accepted by the bank as a number account, that is a nameless account carried by number and kept forever secret by the bank’s officers, in this case the Traumer Frères themselves. Upon delivery of the canvases to Lawyer Chern in Paris identification for contracted payments by the bank would be made by the presentation of the numbers of each account as established by the Schrampft and Mandel signatures as used when opening these accounts.

  Bourne and Lawyer Chern finalized the transaction in the bank’s Zurich offices. Bourne deposited his check in escrow, under detailed agreement, in the amount of one hundred thousand Swiss francs, the equivalent of twenty-three thousand eight hundred and nine dollars and fifty cents and accepted a cashier’s check from the bank, issued upon receipt of a personal check from Lawyer Chern, in the amount of fourteen thousand two hundred thirteen dollars and thirty-two cents. They parted agreeing that when Bourne was ready to deliver the paintings he would cable the word TOLEDO to Lawyer Chern who would proceed at once to the Hôtel Rochambeau on the Rue la Boétie, Paris for meetings the day following the receipt of the cable.

  When he left the bank with the signed agreement Bourne wired Jean Marie to tell Eve and Lalu to stand by for a celebration that evening. They had a wonderful time. He had returned to Madrid aching for another month to go by so that he could see her, hear her and hold her again.

  They started the evening at the English Bar of the Plaza-Athénée because that would be an easy place to find a cab after they had worked out the unbelievably complex suggestions as to what they should do with the evening. As they left number eighteen Avenue de la Motte-Picquet a private detective named Sacha Youngstein, loaded with Japanese cameras, took their pictures with a camera having a telescopic lens from an automobile across the street. Youngstein was the true ideal of human life, a hypochondriac who was also intensely interested in medicine for objective purposes, so there was no question of their tiring him out no matter how late they stayed up. He would arrange to have various night club concessionaires take more pictures of them while he simultaneously diagnosed his own twinges and speculated as to the possible ailments of strangers who moved around him. He followed Bourne to Eve’s apartment on Rue du Boccador, riding a Vespa at three eighteen in the morning and anticipating a bad cold. When he felt much better three days later he returned to the building and bought information about Bourne from Eve’s concierge, using the photographs. His client, Lawyer Chern, was a stickler for facts for the total protection of his clients.

  Jean Marie and Eve sat in numb silence in an indefectible restaurant called Lucien on Rue Surcouf. Somehow they had contained their consternation in the presence of Lalu. Until the moment of discovery of the emptiness of the cardboard tube everything had gone so effortlessly that neither of the amatuer criminals could have foreseen their feelings, and now each one began to examine the small fear that if someone knew enough to steal the paintings from Eve, that someone had been watching all of them for sometime which suggested vague peril, past and future. Then Jean Marie began to think of the amount of money his share of the sale would have represented, how much they were being cheated out of, and he became extremely indignant. He spoke bitterly about the kind of criminals who would be low enough to allow them to do all of the work and undertake all of the strain and then just swoop down and carry the spoils away. It seemed to him that Eve had looked at him somewhat sardonically as he spoke of undergoing all that strain so he told her not to get her nose out of joint, that she knew bloody awfully damned well what he meant. He was so incensed that he forgot himself and went as far as sipping a Dubonnet.

  “You must start from the absolute beginning,” he told her. “Start from the instant you got up this morning.” He stared at her expectantly, then his face blanked as though lightning had struck. “Aha!” he cried. “Are you sure the substitution was not made during the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Jim was there. We didn’t sleep much.”

  “Oh. Well, then, start recalling every move you made from the instant he left the room this morning.”

  “Send a wire to Jim. Tell him what has happened. Why are we sitting here? Send a wire to Jim!”

  “Eve, we have to have something to tell him.”

  “I certainly think we meet the requirements there, my friend.”

  “I mean we must be able to say something more than that the paintings are missing. It sounds so childish. I mean—”

  “Please, Jean Marie. Send Jim a wire. I don’t know how to send it or I’d send it.”

  “It’s time you knew. The brother of a friend of mine who runs a Basque restaurant on Rue de l’Université is a betting agent in the jai alai frontón across the street from Jim’s hotel. His name is Jorge Mendoza-Diaz. Number twenty-three Calle de Marengo.” Jean Marie asked a waiter to fetch him a piece of paper and a pencil. When it came he thought for some time then wrote: DIEGO AND HIS BROTHERS DID NOT COME HOME SISTER IS HERE BUT MOTHER WORRIED CAN YOU HELP and signed it MIROIR. He showed it to Eve who told him it would be very clever when he wrote it in Spanish instead of French, and he agreed, translating it at once then suggesting that they send it right after lunch because the post office on Rue de Grenelle was only a block away, on the way back to his studio, but she insisted that he go to the post office at once and send the message at an urgent rate. He agreed and hastened away.

  When he returned Eve began the self-recriminations all over again.

  “Jim will flip.”

  “Eve, stop it! There is no one to blame! Who could have foreseen this? You brought the tube through. It isn’t as though you had lost the tube.”

  “But, baby. The way he worked to get those paintings! He was sick, physically, actively sick, the night he got them back to the hotel. He’s spent almost three years, and now—” She spread her empty hands out in front of her pathetically and looked as though she were going to cry.

  “Please, Eve. Please don’t be so upset. Look at me, sweet child. As of this minute I have lost sixty or seventy million francs. Am I crying?”

  She smiled at him. “Frankly, darling, you look as though you’re afraid to start to cry because you’re afraid you wouldn’t be able to stop.”

  He grinned wanly. “In ten years I’ll probably look back on today and shoot myself,” he said. “But, look here. Jim is a professional. He thinks of everything and he has undoubtedly thought of this and I know we can be of help to him when he starts his plan to get our paintings back for us. We must reconstruct every move you mad
e from that hotel room to my studio so that we may give him an intelligent, detailed accounting so that he may decide what must be done.”

  “But I can’t think!”

  “I don’t want you to think. I want you to relax your mind utterly and feel what happened to you this morning,” he said. Eve shivered. “I wouldn’t trust a person who could think at a moment like this,” he added.

  Eve stared at the service plate on the table in front of her and returned, in her mind, to the hotel in Madrid, and began to talk.

  Jim left the room. He kissed her goodbye then she looked up and down the hall to make sure that the coast was clear and he left. She put on lipstick then she called down for a porter. Where was the tube, Jean Marie wanted to know. The tube was on the bed. Two porters had arrived. The assistant manager Señor Elek had come in. Jean Marie interrupted again to tell her not to remember with her mind but to feel with her body and her senses what had happened as she had moved and the other people had moved with relation to her. Did she feel anything about the two porters and the assistant manager after they had arrived.

  Eve was concentrating with her senses so hard she could have been in a trance. Yes. She felt that the two porters had arrived because they liked to look at her body. Good, good—Jean-Marie said, what about the assistant manager?

  Lucien, the proprietor of the restaurant, stood discreetly at tableside, the cartes ready. Jean Marie looked up at him, shook his head imperceptibly, but lifted his glass to signal for a refill.

  Eve told him that although it had not registered on her mind then, the assistant manager, a man who, with the rest of the men in the hotel, had always indicated a silent but wholly healthy interest in her body, had not had any interest in it while he had been in the room that morning. He had been his usual friendly, agreeable self, but he had had no interest in what she had always represented to him in the past. What did he do, Jean Marie wanted to know. He bustled about supervising the ludicrousness of two large men trying to make a proper job of transporting one suitcase and one small make-up case.