Murder at the National Gallery (6 page)

The Italian sun had not yet made an appearance when Giliberti and Mason drove away from the hotel in Giliberti’s Fiat. The forecast was for a sunny, pleasant day with low humidity.

Because Giliberti seemed unsure of the route, he drove more slowly than usual. Mason was not displeased, and neither was his stomach. They passed through lush farmland as they traveled inland from the coast, past fields of sheep and large grape arbors that looked like aircraft hangars, and through thick forests of umbrella pines and cypresses.

By the time they turned off the main road onto a rutted dirt path wide enough for only a single automobile, the sun had come up, and Giliberti was able to turn off his headlights. They went a hundred yards before reaching a break in the heavy vegetation lining the road. Giliberti turned through the opening and proceeded on yet another dirt road until arriving at a rambling, ramshackle farmhouse covered with vines. Two large
dogs of mixed origin, one yellow, the other black, came around the side of the house and barked as the men got out of the car. Giliberti noticed the apprehension on Mason’s face and told him in Italian that they wouldn’t bite.

The dogs, tails wagging in energetic circles, followed them to the front door. Giliberti knocked. The door was opened by an elderly woman wearing a black dress and white apron, a white net on her hair. She was stout; her face was sweet. The two young men who’d protected Sensi at the restaurant came up behind her. Giliberti said something to the woman in Italian, and she stepped back to allow them to enter.

Inside, there was a musty coolness, and the strong odor of garlic and stale tobacco. The woman disappeared to the left; Mason and Giliberti followed one of the two men to the right, into a living room overflowing with old furniture. Drapes were drawn tightly over every window, keeping the room in virtual blackness, broken only by two lamps in opposite corners that spilled small amounts of yellow light onto a worn red carpet. From one of the darkened corners came the voice of Luigi Sensi, who sat in a chair that all but swallowed him.

“Ah, Signor Sensi,” said Giliberti. “We are early. I apologize for that.”

The old man struggled to his feet and leaned on the cane that had been hooked over an arm of the chair. “Better to be early than late,” he said gruffly. To Mason: “You have come.”

“Yes.”

Sensi hobbled from the room and out the front door, Mason and Giliberti behind him, followed by the two young men. This day, without their suit jackets, the bodyguards’ shoulder holsters and revolvers were plainly in sight. The dogs joined the entourage as Sensi led it across the broad front yard and through a series of grape arbors fat with fruit. The guards opened large doors to a barn partially collapsed at one end, and they entered. The smell of hay and manure was pungent. Sensi gave an order in Italian, and the two men went up a ladder to a loft. Mason heard them rummaging about. Eventually, one descended the ladder; the other handed down a large rectangular object wrapped in burlap.

Sensi instructed the young man to unwrap the object near a broken window that allowed a shaft of light to illuminate a small portion of the darkened barn. He motioned for Mason to come closer. “Look,” he said. “Come see.”

Mason felt as though his shoes were glued to the floor. He was weak from his physical illness the night before and from the hangover he’d suffered since waking. But something other than those maladies kept him from stepping forward. Sensi had beckoned him into the holiest of churches, into a sacred shrine of a lost civilization. Although the only light cast upon the object came through the window, the entire area seemed to glow.

“Yes, let me see,” he said, his words breaking the inertia. He stood at Sensi’s side and looked down at the thing that had brought him to this rundown farmhouse in southern Italy. His gasp was involuntary. He pressed his lips tightly together to keep any further sounds from emerging.

Sensi was amused at Mason’s behavior. “Come closer,” he said, gesturing toward the painting. “Examine each inch. Touch it if you wish.”

The chore of examining it cleared Mason’s head, gave him purpose. He went on one knee and did what Sensi had invited him to do, using a magnifying glass he’d pulled from his pocket.

When he stood twenty minutes later, Sensi broke out in a broad grin that exposed yellow teeth with gaps. It was the first time Mason had seen the old man smile. Ordinarily, when someone smiles, it gives comfort and assurance. But this did not. Mason turned away.

“Okay?” Giliberti asked.

“Yes. Okay,” said Mason.

“It is a deal, Signor Sensi,” said Giliberti.

“I would like to leave now,” Mason said, taking quick steps out of the barn and toward the car.

Giliberti ran and caught up with him. “Do not offend him, Luther. He has been most gracious. You must thank him properly.”

Mason stopped and looked at his friend. “And how do I do that?”

“By expressing your appreciation for allowing you to come here. For the pleasure of having dinner with him last night. For honoring you with his trust in this business deal.”

When Mason turned to do so, he saw only the back of the old man entering his house. “You thank him for me the next time you see him,” he said.

It wasn’t until they were almost back in Rome and heading for the airport that Giliberti once again brought up Mason’s lack of courtesy. “You are much too nervous, my friend,” he said. “But if you continue to act with such animosity toward your benefactor, I cannot guarantee what will happen.”

“Benefactor? He is an old, ugly mafioso who steals and plunders and murders.”

Giliberti let the comment go until he pulled up in front of the Alitalia terminal. As Mason got out and removed his luggage from the rear, Giliberti leaned across the seat. “Remember one thing, my friend,” he said. “Signor Sensi may be old and ugly. He may murder and steal. But he is a man of honor. And you have chosen to do business with him. I suggest you become a man of honor yourself.”

Mason didn’t know how to respond.

Giliberti laughed. “Don’t take me so seriously, Luther. And relax. Everything will be fine.”

“You’ve made all the arrangements for the painting to go to Paris?” Mason asked.

“Of course. It will be there in the morning. By special courier.”

“And you will be there to see that it is handled properly?”

“Again, my friend, I say not to worry. I have taken care of every detail. Go. Catch your plane. Safe trip. I will be back myself in a few days and we will have dinner. To celebrate. At my house. My wife will cook a fine meal. She asks for you often.”

Did Caravaggio know in gouache heaven that the art he created three hundred years ago would spawn so many meetings in a city that didn’t even exist in his time?

George Kublinski, chief of design and exhibition, gathered a group around him in an empty room in the East Building of the National Gallery to demonstrate a fiber-optic lighting system he’d designed especially for the Caravaggio exhibition to avoid potentially damaging heat. Kublinski was acknowledged throughout the international museum world as the preeminent expert on new lighting techniques. It was no surprise that he worked for “America’s Museum,” affectionately so-called despite technically being a gallery. Its reputation for excellence in art conservation and restoration, scientific testing, packing, shipping, and, because of George Kublinski, lighting, was without peer.

The group surrounding Kublinski included interested employees, and design and exhibition experts from elsewhere who’d traveled to Washington to learn more about fiber optics.

As Kublinski conducted his demonstration, several meetings were taking place within the institution.

Agents from private insurance companies, and Gallery attorneys, met with representatives of the federal government to finalize details of insuring the Caravaggio paintings while in the Gallery’s possession. Because most of the works would
come from other nations, the federal government would indemnify the bulk of the exhibition through the Federal Council on the Arts, administered by the National Endowment for the Arts and augmented by private insurers.

In another office, in the East Building’s basement, the National Gallery’s top security brass huddled with the deputy administrator to review security plans. The Gallery’s “cops” prided themselves on never having lost a work of art since the Gallery opened in March of 1941. The only “breach” of security in its fifty-four years had resulted in an
addition
to the Gallery’s collection. A young Washington artist had spirited one of his paintings
into
the West Building and hung it on a wall alongside the works of the great master painters. It remained there until a sharp-eyed security guard noticed one too many “masterpieces.”

The security meeting concluded with a tentative schedule to provide most of the three hundred guards with a short course in Caravaggio and to arrange for increased practice time on firing ranges around the city. Until recently, the National Gallery had had its own range. But after years of use, tests showed the ground to contain a shockingly high lead level, and it was closed.

The director’s office on the seventh floor of the East Building was also the scene of a meeting between Director Courtney Whitney and Senior Curator Luther Mason.

“Luther,” Whitney said in a tone intended to pacify, “I understand your concerns about including Caravaggio in the computer system. And rest assured I would like to accommodate you. But I’m afraid my hands are tied. The trustees are one hundred percent behind the Micro Gallery. They are not about to make exceptions.”

He was referring to the National Gallery’s newest innovation, a privately funded computerized visitor’s center in which gallery-goers could sit in front of computer monitors and use touch-screen technology to create their own personal tours of the vast Gallery without ever leaving their chairs. Older curators, Luther Mason very much included, were aghast at the notion of pixelizing masterpieces. But the project had many
advocates. To Mason’s chagrin, Whitney had eagerly embraced the concept and had pushed to get the system up and running as quickly as possible. Luther had been informed of the decision first thing that morning, the wrong time to lay such unpleasant news upon him. For one thing, he did not much like mornings. For another, he’d been awakened before the alarm by a call from Cynthia, the second former Mrs. Mason, who informed him that she intended to hire a lawyer to pursue half of his personal art collection.

“That was determined in the final divorce decree,” he said sleepily.

“That was determined before I learned you’d lied about its worth, Luther. You defrauded me.”

“No, I didn’t—goodbye, Cynthia.” Fact was, he hadn’t lied. His small collection was well chosen but mediocre at best in market value.

Another prebreakfast call came from his only child, Julian, son by his first marriage, to Juliana. Julian, an artist, struggling, naturally, needed money.

“I just gave you money,” Mason told him.

“I need more. Supplies don’t grow on trees. The landlord’s bugging me. I have to find a new place. I need more room.”

I need—I need. Luther promised to think about it.

And now this. Caravaggio reduced to bits and bytes and manipulated by a “mouse.”

“Bad enough this is happening to any work of art in this institution, Court,” he said. “But to subject Caravaggio to this technological abortion is something I simply cannot, and will not, live with.”

Whitney checked his watch. They’d been talking for a half hour, and he’d grown tired of the debate. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to end this conversation,” he said. “I’m running late for another meeting. No matter what your views, Luther, Caravaggio in the Micro Gallery is, as they say, a done deal.”

“Nonsense! You can still stand your ground with the trustees.”

“I prefer to pick my battles with them, Luther, and this is not one I choose to take on. Besides, if it’s good enough for
the National Gallery in London, it will be good enough for the National Gallery of the United States. End of discussion.”

Whitney had conducted the session in shirtsleeves. He took his jacket from the coat tree, slipped it on, and checked himself in a mirror. The director’s concern for his appearance only further upset Mason. He knew he could do little. He was, after all, an employee, and the man about to walk out the door—how he hated the thought—was his boss.

In a final attempt at conciliation, Whitney stepped behind Mason and placed his hands on the curator’s shoulders. “Luther, don’t let this issue taint your achievement of bringing Caravaggio to America. Like it or not, we both work for the trustees. They have spoken in all their infinite wisdom, and you and I must abide by their decision. By the way, is everything still on track?”

Whitney removed his hands, and Mason stood. “Yes, Court, things are going smoothly, aside from some loose ends to tidy up at the Borghese. I’m going to Rome tomorrow to resolve them.”

Whitney’s expression said that he wasn’t pleased. Mason had become a virtual commuter between Washington and Italy since the project began. He’d returned from his most recent trip only days ago.

“A problem?” Mason asked.

“Just a silly thing called a budget, Luther. We’re already thirty-two percent over on Caravaggio. Travel costs are far in excess of what was allocated.”

The cost of the Caravaggio show had risen with each passing day. That morning’s estimate put the total close to nine million. But Whitney chose not to challenge his esteemed senior curator any further. “No problem at all, Luther. By the way, I’ve told Annabel Reed-Smith that I agree with Mrs. Aprile. Annabel
should
accompany you on some of the Italy trips. Will you be traveling alone tomorrow?”

“No. Donald is coming with me to take a final look at
The Entombment
at Vatican Pinacoteca. It’s the only work we seem to have any serious debate about. He’s still not sure whether it’s prudent to travel the painting. I think he’s being overly cautious,
but that decision is his, after all. He’ll be going on to Malta to make a final decision on
Saint Jerome
. He might be right about that one. It’s in dreadful shape. Even if he does decide it can travel, the amount of conservation and restoration that would have to be accomplished in Malta could prove prohibitive.”