The Perfect Marriage(16)
“That doesn’t completely solve your problem, though. Because if they are, in fact, Pollocks, then I’m pretty sure what you have here is some stolen art.”
“No way. Tommy’s on the up-and-up. He knew Lee Krasner. He’s got photos of the two of them together.”
“That may be, but it’s still possible that at some point in this lovely relationship—which by the way, assuming Murcer’s eighty now, means that he was having sex with a seventy-five-year-old when he was in his early forties—ole Tommy decided to help himself to some of the master’s work while Lee was looking the other way . . . or after she died.”
Reid shook his head. “Why can’t you just believe what Tommy says?”
James laughed. “Because I’m an art dealer. And if you did so much as a Google search on Lee Krasner, you’d know that she jealously guarded her husband’s legacy. She would never in a million years have gifted to anybody what seems clearly to be unfinished work. Much less four of them.”
“Then why did she keep them?”
“I don’t know. People keep gum wrappers their husbands left in their pockets, Reid. She was probably sentimental enough about his work that she didn’t want to throw them out. Or maybe she intended them to go to a museum or something for study about his work. She died in the mideighties. By that time, she knew full well that her husband’s doodles on napkins were worth the price of a house. Maybe she gave one away to a friend. Hell, the Springs section of East Hampton is chock-full of stories about shop owners and tradesmen with original Pollocks they received as barter. But those were one-off deals. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way Lee Krasner gives anyone but a museum four unfinished pieces. On top of which, unless your friend Tommy lives under a rock, he would have been smart enough to know he’d need some type of authentication. Certainly Lee Krasner would have known that. So, at the time of the gift, she would have given Tommy a notarized letter or something to prove that they were a gift.”
“I asked him about that. He said that Lee didn’t want the tax implications of gifting it through her will, or any gift tax that would be associated with her giving them away before she died, so they didn’t do any paperwork.”
“I’ve heard that story before,” James said. “In fact, it’s the art-world equivalent of ‘the check’s in the mail.’”
“Well, that’s what Tommy said. And I believe him,” Reid said defiantly. “You going to help me on this or not? Because it’s just too big an opportunity for me to pass up. I thought, to be honest with you, that I was giving you a gift. But if you don’t want to do it, no worries. There are lots of other guys I know who would jump at the chance.”
Wayne taught biology at the Sheffield Academy, where the elites of New York City sent their offspring. For fifty thousand dollars a year, these princes and princesses could hobnob without interference from anyone whose parents couldn’t afford the tuition. Wayne had risen to become the chairperson of the science department, and from that perch he ruled over the biologists, the chemists, and the physicists, exercising all the fake authority with which high school teachers are imbued.
Wayne had attended an elite Manhattan high school too. Stuyvesant High School was the crème de la crème of the New York City public high schools. Acceptance was by test score only. Thirty thousand kids took the entrance exam, and about eight hundred made the cut, for a 2.67 percent acceptance rate. Harvard accepted 5 percent, for comparison’s sake.
Even among this group, Wayne rose to the top, almost to the very top. He graduated second in his class, a distinction that his father had mocked, of course. Salutatorian—does that mean you’re the smartest of all the idiots? Wayne had his choice of colleges, and his heart was set on MIT, but Archibald Fiske once again intervened.
“You think I got the tuition money coming out of my ass?”
“I can get loans for most of it. It probably won’t cost that much more than a SUNY in the end.”
“Did you say it was the same cost of a SUNY?”
“Not the same, but maybe close.”
“Well, I’m not bankrupting this family for you to tell me that your shit don’t stink because you went to some fancy Ivy League college.”
Wayne likened his matriculation at SUNY Buffalo as a detour, determined that after four years he’d arrive in the same place as if he’d gone to MIT. Sure enough, it played out exactly that way, and Wayne was accepted at Harvard Medical School. This time, admission came with enough financial aid that Archibald Fiske couldn’t say boo about it.
Ole Archie still ended up with the last laugh, though. He died during the second semester of Wayne’s first year, leaving Wayne’s mother without even enough resources to cover the funeral expenses, much less keep her in her apartment and fed.
So instead of his second year in medical school, Wayne took a job teaching biology at Sheffield. He told his mother that it was only another detour. He’d teach for a year, maybe two, and then go back to medical school. Deep down, however, he knew that this time was different. Archibald Fiske had finally kept Wayne down. He had given up his life to do it, but Wayne imagined his father would have considered it a fair trade-off. Winning was winning, after all.
About ten years ago, Wayne’s students had started calling him Heisenberg, a reference to Bryan Cranston’s character in Breaking Bad. Jessica had thought it was disrespectful and told Wayne that he should put a stop to it, but Wayne rather enjoyed the comparison. It told him that even his students knew that, given the opportunity, he could be a man like Walter White. A man whom other men feared.