The Last Weynfeldt (25 page)

Lorena prepared herself for a boring afternoon. There was only one lot she was interested in, and that was not up till toward the end. Well, perhaps there was one more: the portrait of Adrian's mother, but that also had a high number.

Weynfeldt had clearly meant well, giving her a seat in the second row. But from here she couldn't really watch the people. She wanted to be farther back.

The Hodler study wasn't a good start. It went at just over the reserve. To Riedel. Anything which goes to Riedel has gone for a song, you can rely on that.

Weynfeldt sat in front of his two telephones watching how the auction was going. Judging by the way it had begun, it would take nearly three hours, he reckoned. At least two till Lot 136,
La Salamandre
, which most people here were waiting for. His two lines were still silent. He wouldn't set up the calls to his two collectors till a half an hour before the sale started.

He couldn't stop looking at Lorena. She was sitting there like a child, in a mixture of impatience, curiosity and boredom, less interested in the lots than the bidders. She kept turning her head in the direction the auctioneer was pointing to see who had made each bid and who the lot went to.

He was confident about the Vallotton. Alongside his two telephone bidders, Blancpain and Chester were sitting in the audience in person. It would likely play out between these four. He saw Lorena stand up between two lots, smile over at him and sit herself a few rows back.

What kind of a crowd was this? Lots of art world people, you could tell by looking at them. Some of the others might be people with a connection to a particular picture: the current owners, or their relatives. Then there were students and people with nothing better to do. And then there were the people Lorena was really interested in: the people who could afford to spend an afternoon getting rid of a few tens or hundreds of thousands of francs. These were the people she wanted to watch. That was why she had moved a few rows back.

She was fascinated by the way they held their numbers up with nonchalance, won lots with composure and left the field free with grace. Throughout the entire auction the hall had been full of the sound of people coming and going. Now more people were leaving; only a few stayed seated. Only when she saw Adrian standing next to her, holding his hand out in invitation, did she realize it was the intermission.

“How are you finding it?” They stood in the lobby. She held a glass of champagne; he held a mineral water.

“Crazy,” she confessed. “What about you? Are you excited?”

“Not excited. Intrigued, sure. To see if our estimates were right, whether we reach our targets, exceed them, by how much, whether the magic moment happens.”

“The magic moment?”

“When a lot ignites. When several bidders goad each other on, get into something they shouldn't, lose all sense of restraint and reason. That's the magic moment.”

And
La Salamandre
wasn't deprived of its magic moment. The hall was already full to bursting by the time there were twenty lots to go. All the seats were taken and the people standing in the side aisles were crammed together.

Two TV crews had set up their cameras in the central aisle and in front of the podium; the security team was busy preventing them from filming the audience.

Weynfeldt, Véronique and the young man had their phone lines connected now, and had begun speaking into the mouthpieces occasionally.

Even two lots before
La Salamandre
people were still coming in. The auctioneer had to ask the audience to be quiet several times so he could deal with these last two lots properly.

As two of the smart assistants finally brought the picture in and held it up in front of the podium, the sea of voices surged. But as soon as the auctioneer's hammer was heard the room went silent.

The auctioneer opened bidding at 1.25 million. Several hands went up, and in a few minutes the price had reached 1.7, 1.8, 1.9… Lorena saw that there were eight people in the race, including the bidders represented by Weynfeldt and his colleagues on the telephones.

At two million there was a moment's hesitation, then the bids soared rapidly up again, two bidders having dropped out at the two-million threshold.

Lorena realized she was holding her breath. Now she inhaled deeply. The bids had risen over the two point five million mark. Now there were just five bidders left. The young man had ostentatiously replaced both his receivers and folded his arms. Véronique was only bidding for one telephone client, Number 17, and raised the card time to time. Weynfeldt was still handling two bidders, but both seemed to be biding their time for the moment.

At 3 million, two of the bidders in the hall dropped out, leaving just one, an English-looking gentlemen, one of those Weynfeldt had been talking to when Lorena arrived.

The next to drop out was Number 17. Véronique replaced her receiver and folded her arms like her colleague.

Around three point two million a strange situation ensued whereby Weynfeldt's telephone bidder Number 28 was bidding against Weynfeldt's Number 33, while the Englishman kept out of it.

Following a brief spat in the run-up to three-and-a-half million, Weynfeldt's Number 28 dropped out.

The “Englishman” reentered the race. Offered 3.6, 3.8 and held up his hand at 4 too.

A murmur broke through the room.

All eyes were on Weynfeldt, talking swiftly and intently into the mouthpiece.

He nodded, and held Number 33 up in the air.

The auctioneer gave the Englishman an inquiring look.

He shook his head.

As Lot 136 was awarded to Number 33 for 4.1 million Swiss francs, awe-inspired applause burst out. Lorena joined in enthusiastically.

The majority of the audience left the ballroom. Lorena stayed for Adrian's mother. She went for a hundred and eighty thousand.

I
N DEFIANCE OF ALL THE FORECASTS IT HAD SNOWED
once more, only a little, falling in big soggy flakes. But here in the villa district it had stuck, a pale gray veil over the front gardens and hedges.

On the walkway leading up to the front door he saw small stiletto footprints coming the other way. Someone had left in the previous hour; no one had arrived.

Weynfeldt asked the taxi driver to wait. He was a young man who made a trustworthy impression, with a new, clean Mercedes. Adrian knew him from previous rides and had asked for him specifically when he'd booked. He wanted to know whose hands he was putting himself and his valuable cargo into. On both the outward and return journeys.

The painting was well packed, in a thick layer of Bubble Wrap, tied up with packing string, to which Weynfeldt had attached an old-fashioned wooden handle.

He reached the door and rang the bell; he still couldn't believe he was doing what he was just about to do.

Baier must have heard the taxi. As soon as Weynfeldt rang, he was buzzed in, and entered.

In the hallway stood a few packed, taped-up moving boxes, and a pile of them still folded up.

“Here!” Baier's voice called out.

Adrian followed the direction the music was coming from. Count Basie, as ever. The door to the living room was half-open, and the light pouring through lit a fine curtain of cigar smoke.

“Here!” Baier's voice called again.

He was sitting in his favorite chair: on one arm the glass of port, on the other the ashtray, from which a bluish thread of smoke curled up to the ceiling.

There were a few moving boxes in the salon too, but the furniture was all still in place. The easel was also still in the same position as last time.

“You can start by unpacking it,” Baier said.

“Delivery against payment, we agreed. You get the money out and I'll unpack the painting.”

“Don't you trust me?”

“No. Would you?”

“No.” Baier pointed to the bureau, above which the Vallotton had previously hung. “In there, top drawer.”

Adrian opened the drawer. It was empty except for three piles of thousand notes, sorted and bound with wrappers.

“And now the painting!” Baier demanded.

It took Weynfeldt awhile to tear the tape off the Bubble Wrap. When he'd finished he asked, “On the easel or in its old place?”

“Bring it here!” Baier ordered him. Adrian handed him the painting. The old man held it, took a look, then kissed the woman's bottom. “Welcome home, darling!”

He gave it back to Adrian. “Now you can hang her back in her old spot. We have a few days before we head south together.”

Weynfeldt hung the painting above the bureau and began counting the packs of notes in the drawer.

“I'll tell you right now, there's only twenty.”

Weynfeldt stopped short. “It should be twenty-six.”

“Oh come off it, Adrian, be reasonable. No one could seriously have guessed it would fetch over three and a half million.”

“Everything over one and a half, was the agreement.” He went red, and his helplessness toward any kind of insolence was visible yet again. “It should be twenty-six,” he repeated.

“Be reasonable, Adrian. You're rich: Are you really going to argue with an old man about the money he needs for his final years? Two million is very generous.”

Weynfeldt took a small, folded nylon bag from his coat pocket, unfolded it and began filling it with the packs of notes. “It just isn't okay,” he murmured as he did it, “just not okay.”

The wrapper around the second to last pack was torn through. Weynfeldt looked at Baier.

“An unforeseen expenditure,” Baier said. “Fifty.”

Adrian grappled for words. “You're just not an honest man, Klaus,” he said finally.

“Neither are you any more, Adrian.”

It had started snowing again, in smaller, denser flakes now. It seemed as if the temperature had dropped during the short time he'd been with Baier.

The light in the waiting taxi was on, and fumes rose from the exhaust, lit by the red rear lights. The driver was reading the newspaper, and only heard Weynfeldt as he opened the passenger door. Inside it was overheated.

“Ready to go?” the young man asked.

Weynfeldt nodded and gave his address as the destination. The snowstorm surrounded the streetlights with swirling halos.

“Don't think I don't care about carbon emissions,” the driver said.

“Why would I think that?” Adrian asked.

“Because I left the motor running while I was waiting for you.”

“I assumed you didn't want to freeze.”

“Basically there's no point anymore,” the driver explained. “Even if we radically reduce our carbon emissions, the temperatures will still rise. It says so in the second world climate conference report.” He pointed to the newspaper he had just stuffed beside his seat. “I'm not going to freeze my ass off for nothing.”

Weynfeldt concurred with him. For the rest of the journey they remained silent, the driver concentrating on the slippery streets, Weynfeldt on his nylon bag with 2 million francs in it. Or with 1 million, nine hundred and fifty thousand, to be precise.

As soon as he got home he went to his study. There, in a fairly unoriginal hiding place, behind a still life by Cuno Amiet he was fond of, was his safe. He used it to store a few valuables, which would have been equally secure anywhere else in his high-security apartment, and made sure it was always stocked with cash in all the main currencies. He opened it with the fairly unoriginal combination, his mother's birthday, and stowed the packs of notes away.

Then he listened to the messages on his answering machine—yes, as part of his communications-technology emancipation, he had not only learned to use a cell phone, he had also gotten Frau Hauser to explain how to use the answering machine, and was getting on pretty well with it.

Lorena still insisted on remaining unavailable by telephone. He now knew her surname, but there was no Lorena Steiner in the phone book. And she had given him neither her address nor her cell number. “Don't call us, we'll call you,” she had once told him; this was the standard sentence she'd heard after every casting. And to her, he was still at the casting stage for his role as her constant companion.

For Adrian this meant that on days like today, when she hadn't called him at the office or on his cell phone, the only remaining hope was the answering machine.

The first two messages were about the construction work, the third caller hung up, and the fourth was a man asking, “Just wanted to know if you've received my letter yet.” Finally Adrian heard a drunken Rolf Strasser saying, “Well now, I think we'll start at around 1 teeny-weeny million, and stop at around 4.1 teeny-weeny millions.”

Nothing from Lorena.

What had the caller meant about the letter? Weynfeldt went to the ensemble of chairs by the apartment door and took his mail from the glass table at their center. It was the usual mixture of circulars and bills. There was only one letter which stood out. It was addressed to him using a typewriter, and the postage was neither prepaid nor franked; a traditional stamp was stuck to it.

He opened the envelope and took out a folded flyer from the auction.

Someone had written their cell phone number on the woman's back. And in the top right-hand corner of the
salamandre
the same ballpoint had been used to circle the cast-iron relief.

T
HE DROP OF WATER HAD COME FROM SOMEWHERE UP
above; Weynfeldt had no desire to lift his gaze. Now at any rate, it was just above the level of his eyes. Water must be flowing into its trail, because the drop swelled, till it got so heavy it sped down a few inches, then stopped again. Each time it did this, it left a trail of water behind, which took its time, as if it knew the drop couldn't get away. As soon as the drop halted, it filled up with what it had left behind again, till it had enough ballast to speed down a few more inches.

His pupils were focused on the drops in front of him on the plate glass window in his study. The office windows beyond were blurred. During the time he'd been standing here most of them had gone dark. He hadn't seen this, just deduced it from the minute changes to the illumination of his water drops.