The Great California Game

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

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PLAYING antiques auction houses against each other is the ultimate. It’s the dealer’s fandango. Sooner or later we all skip the light fantastic, to their tune. The Big Two skip fastest of all.

I’d chosen Mangold, of Geneva, London, Paris, Monaco and everywhere else where money lurks. Nicko’s people—I supposed Tye Dee, Al, Shell—would be watching Sotheby’s and Christie’s, because the plan I’d formed with Gina included these. Mangold’s wasn’t big. I’d chosen it from many. The reason was its forthcoming lawsuit against the Big Pigs, as dealers call them.

I simply got a hire car—you can get these in America—and drove there in splendour. Remembering Oscar Wilde’s essential for the con trick, I smiled constantly, trying for an aura of wealth. I was Mr Dulane, of Geneva and London, I was also a lawyer. The head man saw me with all the readiness of the smaller company under threat.

We shook hands, some more amiably than others. I apologized to Simon Mangold for my appearance, claimed jet lag and airports. He said it gets everybody.

“You’re the son of the founder?”

“Dad died last year.”

His attitude announced that he was going to go down fighting. But that only tells everybody you’re going down anyway. It must be something about the antiques that does it, makes bravery ridiculous. We were in a panelled office, nothing old in it except a couple of beautiful Chelsea porcelains that warmed my soul. Here was a man who loved antiques, but whose love was the doom of his firm.

“That’s when your troubles started, I hear, Mr Mangold.”

“It’s in the papers,” he said bluntly.

“The Bigs are nothing if not acquisitive.” I went all sympathetic. “I’m here to give you information which may help you.”

He digested this. No fool he. “Give?”

“Give. As in donate. If you like the gift, I’ll suggest a course of action which will benefit us both. If you don’t you’re free to use the information for nothing.”

That fazed him. He excavated with a toothpick, examined his palms for buried treasure, stroked the surface of his desk. I watched, marvelling. We just ask to be researched by sociologists.

“That clear cut?” When I nodded, he asked to see my business card. I shook my head, said I was travelling light.

“Would you hang on a second, Mr Dulane?”

“Not that either,” I said, varying my smile to show no hard feelings. “Your secretary can check the International Business Directory, you won’t find us. I haven’t much time.” I was narked and shut him up. Hell, it was my prezzie. People want jam on it.

“I’ve chosen your auction houses, Mr Mangold, because my information will damage your competitors, please my principals, and enable you to survive. Ready?”

His mind clicked round. The large auction houses were trying to launch a closed shop, effectively eliminating Mangold’s from the antiques market. They’d both tried to buy him out for years. The price for survival was to vanish into either of the Big Two. Mangold’s was suing, despairingly trusting the law courts. Which showed how desperate he was.

“What if I ignore your information? Or simply use it free?”

With some people doubt’s an industry. It was a long way to LA, and time was running out.

He pressed a buzzer, spoke into an intercom. “Get Mr Feldstein and send for Mortimant —”

“Unbuzz your lawyers, Mr Mangold, or I pretend you’ve misunderstood and you’ll look a prat.”

He hesitated, a lifetime’s habit, reluctantly concurred.

“And the recorder, please.” I held out my hand for the tape. He tried telling me it erased automatically, but I didn’t continue until he’d lifted the tape from his drawer and placed it on my palm. I continued with my true story.

“Everybody knows the story. How the English Lord bought the fourteen ancient Roman silvers, illegally acquired via Lebanon from Yugoslavia. All in contravention of UNESCO’s embargo on smuggled antiques. The British Antique Dealers’ Association 1984 Code was also broken. No wonder Christie’s was furious!” I smiled pleasantly, all Edward G. Robinson. “They hate to be confused with arch-rivals, right?”

“Sure.” He was weighing me up. “You have evidence?”

“Who needs evidence?” I asked in all seriousness. “Mudslinging auctioneers don’t.” I held the delay, then said, “Do they, Mr Mangold?”

“This information, properly used, could seriously damage even a firm as famous as, say, Sotheby’s. Or Christie’s.”

He meant improperly, but I let it pass.

“True. Like that terrible Louvre Affair, eh?”

“The Louvre Affair?”

“Spelled as in Poussin, Mr Mangold. Can I refresh your memory by quoting, ‘The Louvre stopped at nothing in its effort to swindle honest people’…?”

Once upon a twenty-five years ago, a Nicholas Poussin painting of 1628 was auctioned by a French engineer. The auctioneers paid him a measly two hundred quid for it, offhandedly telling the owner it was an el cheapo Bologna-school effort. The engineer was sad, of course—but even sadder when the papers blazoned news of the Louvre’s fabulous discovery of (surprise surprise!) his selfsame Olympos painting! Except it was now rare, authentic, and priceless…

As Mangold feverishly tried to keep up, wondering about possible links with his rivals, I listed others for him where the Louvre and other galleries had misbehaved.

“A really malicious person could remember that terrible episode where a certain poor convent sued the Louvre—which had just paid half a million for that famous Lorenzo Lotto masterpiece, the one the Catholic nunnery had just sold for seventy measly dollars, on certain auctioneers’ advice.” I tutted, doing a lot of head wagging to show how I deplored all this. “Fair profit’s fair profit, Mr Mangold. But that’s too many percents for me. And I’ll bet the papers’ll think the same, if you happen to refresh their memories.”

He licked his lips. I’d got him, on his own lifeline.

“There are links between famous auction houses and auctioneers who arrange first sales, Mr Mangold. The pattern’s there. It’s up to you to bring them to the public’s attention. Viciously, savagely. The public understands ruthless greed, but likes to deplore it in others.” I heaved a sigh, in memory of poor old Sokolowsky. “I just can’t help feeling sad over that forthcoming announcement of lawsuits that will be brought against Sotheby’s of New York.” I stood, smiled. “Well, thanks for your time, Mr Mangold —”

He quivered like a greyhound hearing the hare. “Lawsuits?”

I sat. “Didn’t you hear? Well, I hate to be the bearer of really bad news, but it’s just that the antiques dealers in the UK are fed up. So’re the ones on the Continent. Tomorrow there’ll be a media salvo about chandelier bidding, from the Antique Internationalers, in London.”

He thought that one through. “But any AI member who made that protest would…”

“Be driven into the ground by the biggies? Course it would. But it’ll happen, sure as God sends Sunday. Unless you don’t want it to.”

“You wouldn’t link Mangold’s with an outrageous —”

“Never. We’ve got somebody else, who’ll do it for a fee. It’s all fixed.”

He subsided, said slowly, “That will inflict irrevocable damage on them. Immediate.”

Not so outrageous after all. We both thought over the history of recent doubts. They centred on what the trade now calls “Bond borrowing”, and please note the capital.

It came to light when Van Gogh’s painting Irises went up at a Sotheby’s auction. (Incidentally, why is it always poor old Vincent who catches the bad glad? It’s high time some other poor sod had a go.) A mere $53.9 million won the hammer, as we say, for brave Aussie Mr Bond. Everybody was thrilled, especially auctioneers everywhere. And why? Because prices were through the roof, and so was their commission. The trouble was, half the gelt was borrowed. Guess who from? Why, the auctioneers themselves!

The world outcry was followed by instant explanations, that the world’s top auction houses hadn’t deliberately intended to drive up the prices of art works by a secret loan, that Sotheby’s policies would change, et yawnsome cetera. Worst of all, the art market went gaga.

“Art dealers began to ask if the Museum of Modern Art would have paid so high for the next Van Gogh, if Picasso’s self-portrait would have touched forty-eight million dollars, all that jazz.”

“Names?”

I passed him a list of the international dealers who’d complained to the press.

“You’ll combine your diatribe with all sorts of veiled accusations of complicity, naturally. You’ll ask why Thyssen paid over fourteen million sterling, at Sotheby’s, for a painting he already half owned. You’ll scream outrage when the AI hullabaloo is raised tomorrow about big auctioneers allowing the new relay bid—you know the old trick, Joe nods to Betty who winks at Fred who scratches his nose so Jean waves to the auctioneer. You’ll holler Is this fair? and all that. You know how to yell, I’m sure.”

“Mangold’s has been the subject of abuse from —”

“Sure, sure.” My tone was cold. Asking for sympathy, and him an auctioneer. “False high estimates: ‘anticipatory valuation’ to the trade. That too will be complained abour. New legislation will be demanded from the Europeans, and Parliament. Quote Turner’s Seascape Folkestone—the whole trade knows about that. And cite the different values given to different museums for the same painting.” I pretended to think a while, though I’d already decided. “That Cuyp painting simply couldn’t be officially worth only three million sterling in Wales, and twice that in Edinburgh, right? Here’s a list of suggestions for your press handout, with details and dates. Some you’ll already find in your clippings file. Others are my own… imaginings.” I smiled. Even he cracked his face a little. “I’m hoping you’ll dish the obvious dirt, Mr Mangold, like telling the world that all those awful hundred-thousand dollar Utrillos are fakes.”

“Three full pages, Mr Dulane?” He read rapidly, looking for his own name, relaxed when it wasn’t there.

“I was pushed for time.

He did smile then. “Who’ll be making the protest to the Antique Internationalers?”

I sighed at the memory of what it would be costing me when young Masterson, Eton and Oxford, suaved to his feet and delivered the speech in Brussels. I’d be paying for the rest of my life, if I lived that long.

“An interested party, Mr Mangold,” I said mournfully. “Here’s your bill: just get me secretly to Los Angeles, at maximum speed. Add pocket money, and we’re quits.”

He folded the lists away. “When your man has raised Cain in Brussels, Parliament, the European Commission —”

“Now, or I cancel.” I stood, the better to run.

He moved even faster, clambering his desk to wring my hands. “It’s a deal,” he said.

“Plus the phone call.” He unwrung, as if hearing me demand that secret four per cent discount on commission which they allow antique dealers, as a bribe. I explained. “The call I’ll make very soon, from LA, asking you to agree that you’ll donate to me one hundredth of the joint Sotheby-Christie Impressionist sale prices.”

He gaped. “That’ll be a fortune! Mangold’s could never afford —”

“Mangold’s will,” I promised. “Because the Rail Pensions Fund can’t risk scandal. Play your cards, and they’ll switch the sale to you. Surely you can afford one per cent of their gelt?”

Tears filled his eyes. “If that comes to pass, Mr Dulane,” he said huskily, “I’ll give you two per cent”

His mind was orgasming at the thought of failures and suicides among his rivals. I was pleased. I’d hate to see auctioneers mellow. Keep progress at bay, I always say. You know where you are with sin.