Picture This (2 page)

Then, Saturday morning, I began on her portrait, from the head-and-shoulders shot she’d given me. It was a beautiful photograph. No, actually. It was a
terrible
photograph, but
she
was beautiful. I took my time. I could see a little sadness in her eyes—even though she was smiling—and I wanted to catch that. What was she sad about? Who was she, really? Why hadn’t she wanted me to know where she lived? All the questions I’d asked before flowed through my mind as I worked.

That afternoon, the phone rang, and a few of my questions were answered.

“Dear boy,” my caller said. I knew him well: Victor Mellish. “I haven’t seen you in weeks. Why don’t you drop in? I have a little work for you.”

The sign on his store said
Victor Mellish, Antiques
. But the store wasn’t really a store, and the “antiques” weren’t really antique. They weren’t even old. Victor wasn’t even a shopkeeper. He didn’t sell much of the junk that was piled up behind the dirty window or on the dusty shelves. His shop was full of wobbly chairs, scratched tables, fake gold jewellery, and “vintage fashions” that were just used clothes.

Victor was a merchant, a trader—but what he sold was information. Did you have a fine piece of silver you wanted to sell? Victor would know someone—perhaps even a museum—that wanted to buy it. A rich banker had lost a fortune in the market? Victor would know where he could sell his million-dollar Picasso painting to pay off his debts.

Like any dealer, Victor brought buyers and sellers together, and they paid him a commission for the service. Was he honest? Well, he’d never gone to jail, so he wasn’t a criminal.
Not quite
.

He was waiting for me in the back of the store. Behind the scenes, as always.

“What do you think, dear boy? What do you think?”

Victor’s little back room held two big leather chairs and a desk that was always covered with books and papers. On a small table sat his hot plate. A kettle was whistling; the air was damp with steam. Victor loved coffee. Now, he bent over the grinder and began grinding the beans,
whirr, whirr, whirr.
“Arabian Midnight,” he said, “
very
good.” With Victor, there was always some new, fancy blend.

“What do you think?” he murmured again.

The room, lit by one bare bulb in the ceiling, was dark and full of shadows. Stacked against the walls and leaning against the chairs were five of the worst paintings I’d ever seen in my life. They were huge, in heavy frames. A landscape, with trees like green umbrellas and cows like black and white rats. A naked lady dipping her toe in a pool—or at least I thought it was a pool. Perhaps it was a cloud and she was trying to fly. A ship sailing through a storm in a sea that looked like spinach and mashed potatoes. The fourth—but it was too painful to look.

“Where did you find them?” I asked.

Victor turned around. His face was plump and pink, like a baby’s. He always wore the same grey suit and grimy white shirt, with a tie knotted like a piece of string. And on top of his head, indoors or out, rain or shine, sat the same shapeless grey hat.

“Halifax,” he answered me. “They’re all by a dear old businessman. He thought he was a painter, but he was forced into the family firm.”

“The family should have pushed harder, I’d say.”

“But surely something can be done with them,” Victor said. He handed me a cup of coffee. I’ll give him credit. The coffee
was
good. “If you put on a layer of varnish, and did some careful re-painting...”

I must now make a confession. Every once and a while, I did a little work for Victor. Even if your rent is low, you have to pay it, right? I’d re-work paintings, Victor would clean up the frames, and they’d become “Old Masters.” What is forgery? What is fraud? He wouldn’t say that the landscape with the cows that looked like rats was by some famous French artist. He’d only say it was “after” or “in the school of” some famous French artist.

I bent down, studying the paintings more carefully.

“They’re filthy,” I said. “I’ll have to clean them before I can re-paint them.”

Victor grunted.

“And they’re
big
,” I said.

He grunted again.

I stood up. “$300 each.”

“Oh dear,” said Victor. He eyed me—like a shark eyes a fish. “$250.”

“$275.”

“Done.” And then he added. “How long will it take?”

“I can’t do it right away. I’ve got another rush job.”

“Really? So you’re busy. How nice.”

I looked at him carefully. There was something in his voice, something going on behind that baby pink face. Then I understood.

“Victor,” I said, “do you know a girl called Zena da Silva?”

He pursed his lips. “Zena? Da Silva?”

“Victor, a crook like you should be a better liar.” All at once, a lot of my questions were answered. How had Zena heard of me? From Victor. Why had she been surprised that I was “a real artist”? Because she was expecting someone like Victor, someone as crooked as he was.

Now, without saying a word, he pressed his face close to mine. I looked into his eyes—small, blue, watery. “Discretion,” he said. “It’s the first thing you learn in this business.”

Discretion. A fancy way of saying,
keep your mouth shut.

I stared backed at him. “Is that right, Victor?”

“It is, dear boy. Don’t you forget it.” And his finger tapped hard on my chest.

Harold Green, Man of the World

On Thursday, when Zena picked up the paintings, she looked even more beautiful than she had the week before. And there was that same hint of sadness—but hardness—in her lovely eyes.

“These are very nice, Mr. Stone.”

“Paul,” I reminded her.

“Yes—Paul. Thank you.”

“The portrait, the painting of yourself. Will your aunt and uncle like it?”

“My aunt and uncle—? Oh yes. They will, I’m sure.” She looked away. She knew she’d made a slip, a tiny mistake. She opened her purse and took out some bills. “Thank you again.”

I took the money. I thought she wanted to say something more, perhaps to explain, but she didn’t say anything. I wanted an explanation, too. I would have liked an answer to this question:
How is a girl like you mixed up with a crook like Victor Mellish?
But I was taking Victor’s advice and being discreet—keeping my mouth shut. I wrapped up the paintings.

From my big window, I watched as Zena reached the street. I had a decision to make. Was I just going to let her walk out of my life? The answer to that question was easy.
No
. I raced down the stairs.

I don’t have a car, but I own a motorcycle, a rusty Suzuki. Like most things in my life, I had to give it a kick, but then it worked. As Zena’s car pulled away from the curb, I was right behind her. She led me straight across town and parked in front of an older apartment building, one of those square things, like a Kleenex box. I watched her take the paintings from the back seat of the car and then go inside.

As soon as the door closed, I chased after her. Peering through the door, I saw her get into the elevator. I watched the light above the
elevator, and saw that she got off at the fourth floor. But what was I going to do? I didn’t know the code to buzz her apartment. Still, I now knew where she lived.

And then, almost by accident, I discovered something else.

As I walked back to my Suzuki, thinking things over, I took a quick glance inside Zena’s car. On the shelf behind the back seat, I saw the usual litter: a book of maps, a folding umbrella, a crumpled flyer.
And a glossy catalogue from an art exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario
. I leaned closer to the window, shading my eyes with my hand. The exhibition had one of those fancy titles they give art shows:
The Natural Eye: The Painted World.
It was on now.

I hadn’t been to the gallery in months. I love art galleries and museums, those marble floors, the echoing halls. I bought a ticket and a copy of the catalogue. A lot of kids were there on a school field trip. They were loving it. But I wasn’t sure about their teacher. “No running!” she kept pleading.

I let them get ahead of me and walked slowly past the pictures. Some were by very famous
painters: Monet, Pissarro, Turner, Corot. These were the artists the teacher was telling the kids about. But some had been painted by men whose names were not so well known. Three caught my eye:

1.
Florida, Two Hummingbirds
, by Martin Johnson Heade. The birds sparkled like jewels. But what interested me was the size, 60×73 centimetres.
Exactly the same size as my painting for Zena of the boys playing ball
.

2.
Jungle Moon
, by Wilfredo Lam. A landscape in his mind, strange, haunting, spooky. Beautiful. My favourite. But what excited me, again, was its size: 51.3×56.5 centimetres,
exactly the same as my portrait of Zena
.

3.
Red Lake, Sunset
, by Tom Thomson. The first photograph Zena had given me, the pines and rocks on the lakeshore, had made me think of the Group of Seven painters. Well, Thomson had influenced their work so much that you might call him their artistic father. And I had a little laugh, because my painting, again, was
exactly
the size of his, 60.3×72.1 centimetres.

Three paintings, exactly the same size as the paintings I’d done for Zena. Chance? Luck?
Coincidence? I didn’t believe it, especially because there was one more coincidence. The three paintings in the exhibition were all owned by the same man. Beside each entry in the catalogue was a little thank-you note:
Kindly loaned by Harold Green, Toronto
.

Harold Green, I suspected, was a rich man. You’ve never heard of Martin Johnson Heade. Don’t be embarrassed, most other people have never heard of him either. He was an American, died in 1904. He painted marshes, beach scenes, flowers, and birds, mostly in Florida. And today one of his hummingbird paintings could be worth $800,000.

Wilfredo Lam? Only art students have heard of him. Still, he is the most important modern painter from Cuba. His best paintings—and the one Harold Green owned was pretty good—sell for around $1,000,000.

That’s also what you’d have to pay for a Tom Thomson, at least one as beautiful as the painting Harold Green owned. Together, Harold Green’s paintings were worth almost $3,000,000.

Who was Harold Green?

It’s a short walk from the Art Gallery of Ontario to the Toronto Public Library. I spent the next two hours there, reading old newspapers and reference books, finding out all I could about Harold Green.

Green had started in the army. Then he’d worked for the government, all over the world, but mostly in the Middle East. He could speak Arabic and also Farsi, the language of Iran. Now he was retired. He divided his time between homes in Toronto, the Bahamas, and Paris. I guessed his money came from his wife, the daughter of a billionaire real-estate developer.

Most of these details came from
Who’s Who
, the reference book that tells you everything about important people. But I also read an article on Green and his art collection in the
Toronto Star
. He’d added a modern addition to his big brick house to hold his paintings. He painted, too. In one photo, he was standing beside an easel. “I’m terrible,” he had said, “but painting helps me understand and appreciate the real thing.”

The real thing. Like the three paintings he’d loaned the gallery, the three paintings Zena was planning to steal.

What else could I think?

Zena and Victor were planning to steal Green’s paintings, and somehow
my
three pictures were involved.

Zena the Beautiful; Victor the Crook. I sat back in my chair. How could she do it? “You’re crazy!” I blurted out loud.

The librarian turned toward me with a frown and put a finger to her lips. “Shh!”

Coffee and Crime

You’ve heard the expression, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off”? That was me for the next few days. I didn’t know what to do. I was completely confused. One morning, I went to Zena’s apartment building, hoping to catch her as she came out, but she didn’t. Next I went around to Victor’s shop—but at the last minute I didn’t go in. What would I say to him? Then I tried to forget about it. If Zena wanted to do crazy things, that was her business.