Dark Portrait, page 16
part #4 of Nicole Tang Noonan Mystery Series
Irene gagged so convincingly I looked to see if she was getting ready to lose her bagel.
When we came to the next intersection, we turned left and saw that two houses in the block ahead had a dumpster and a portable toilet in front of them.
“What’s up with this neighborhood?” asked Irene. “You can’t walk two blocks without seeing a house being gutted. It’s not as if the area is run down.”
“I read an article about this in the Chronicle,” I said. “A realtor said in this price range it’s common for someone to buy a house that was remodeled within the last few years and remodel it again.”
“Why?”
“The realtor said people talk about it as artistic expression or achieving a life-long dream of living in a certain style. I’d call it bragging rights.”
As we walked another block, Irene said, “So, this painter used a code word, odal-something . . .”
“Odalisque.”
“. . . to tell the king, ‘This one’s young and willing?’”
“Yes, although I don’t think it was a secret code. I haven’t researched the use of the word in Europe, but Boucher wasn’t the only one to use it. Three hundred years later Matisse did a series of paintings of odalisques. I think it’s one of those words like ‘mistress’ that’s a polite way of saying something nasty.”
As we crossed Spruce Street, I noticed the houses were now of a size that must cost in the tens of millions. Between them, I caught glimpses of a view over the trees of the Presidio and out to San Francisco Bay.
“Let’s bust this guy,” said Irene.
“We can’t bust him for liking art we disagree with.”
“Well, let’s bust him for something.”
“The only thing I can think of is giving Otani a credible tip that the guy’s a sadist and might not have liked Horvath’s copy of the portrait of Sade.”
As we came to the end of that block, Irene pulled out her phone and said, “Just checking the address I found online. Yep. That’s Travers’s house over there. She pointed diagonally across the intersection to the grand house on the corner.
“Unbelievable,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Irene. “Even in this neighborhood, that one’s pretty impressive.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I said, staring at the house.
Irene looked at me, waiting for an explanation.
I turned to her. “It’s the Petit Trianon.”
Chapter 27
I pulled out my phone to take photos of the house.
Irene said, “Nicole, you’re killing me with the French words. What did you say this house is?”
“The Petit Trianon.” I did a quick search on my phone and showed her what I found.
“Okay, so it’s online,” she said. “Is it famous?”
“Not this one,” I said, pointing to the house, “although there probably is an article about it. This,” I said, pointing to the picture on my phone, “is the original, in France.”
Irene looked at the picture on my phone and again at the house comparing details: the four Corinthian columns across the front, the sweeping dual stairways to the entrance, and the stone railing along the top. “Yeah. They look the same. How’d you know this house looks like one in France?”
“The original is pretty famous.”
“Famous for what?”
“Remember the king in the first video? Louis XV? He built this as a retreat for his chief mistress, Madame de Pompadour.”
“A place for them to shack up? Why couldn’t he just buy her a condo on the other side of town like any other self-respecting billionaire?”
“They had apartments in lots of towns. He built this house in Versailles where the palace is.”
“So, the original petit what’s-it was a whore house.”
“Since he was the king, he had mistresses, not whores. Therefore, this was a retreat, not a whore house.”
Irene shook her head. “Amazing, what money can do.”
“Especially when it’s government money.”
“So, why did somebody build a replica of the petit thing in San Francisco?”
“That I don’t know, but it will be interesting to find out. Meanwhile, follow me across the street. I want to get some pictures of the side of the house, and maybe we can see the back.”
The street that ran alongside the house descended sharply from the intersection. The house and its neighbors were built along the edge of a steep hill. The backs of these houses looked over the rooftops of the houses on the next street and had a view of the Presidio. For the first time I understood why this neighborhood is called Presidio Heights.
I glanced back to the street that ran in front of the house, noted the dumpster and portable toilet in front of the house across the street, and all the pickup trucks parked nearby. I checked both sides of both streets for cars with emblems of private security companies but saw none. “In case, a security guard comes by while we’re here, we should pretend to be tourists out sight-seeing. While I get a few more snaps of the house, use your phone to take pictures of the view over the Presidio, and point to things, and explain to me what we’re looking at. Just don’t look at the house.”
Irene did as I asked. “This is where Padre Junipero Serra sailed into San Francisco Bay aboard the Good Ship Lollipop and built the first Spanish Mission which later burned down so they built the other one on the other side of town and this became a vineyard for Ernest and Julio Gallo until the real estate got too expensive and that’s when the Army decided to hang out here because, you know, the weather is so great, except they didn’t know about the wind, which is just awful, and it’s foggy especially in summer . . .”
I looked out over the view, as Irene rattled on and nodded as if she was making sense. Meanwhile I took a few snaps of as much of the side and back of the house as I could see. I didn’t get much because the property along the side street was planted with hedges and trees.
“. . . when they were filming The Rock, Nicholas Cage used to take long walks in this part of town to get into his character . . .”
“Okay. That’s enough, Irene. Let’s get out of here before we start to attract attention.”
As we started back through the neighborhood, I asked, “Are we really going to do this?”
“That’s up to you. You’re the one going in. I’m the backup.”
“I appreciate that, though I’m not sure where you can hang out. You can’t just walk up and down in front of the house.”
“No. That would definitely attract some attention from the guys working on the house across the street. But, not to worry, we’ll figure something out. The important question is, how do we keep you safe?”
“If anything doesn’t feel right, I’ll just call you and you can knock on the door, or whatever.”
“I think we need to be more proactive. Again, maybe the guy is a sexual predator, and maybe he’s even a murderer. If it just so happens you’re right about all that, you may not be able to make a call.”
“Let’s keep it simple, Irene. I go in, look at his art, ooh and ahh about how cool it is, don’t give him any reason to think there’s anything else going on, say thanks and good-bye. If he happens to mention the Marquis de Sade, even just to say he was around in the 1700s, I’ve got all I need to go to Otani.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to Otani now?”
“With what? She hasn’t exactly been eager about to investigate things I’ve mentioned so far.”
“You don’t know that. She could have officers looking into all that stuff.”
“She could, but she keeps coming back to me.”
“Alright. You know I’ve got your back, but we need a better plan.”
“Okay, let’s do some planning. Are you up for spending the afternoon at my place?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s go this way and catch the 43 bus.”
We got off at Ninth Avenue so we could stop at the bakery on the way back to the house. We knew we were stress-eating, but the stress was real.
Back in my suite, I made a pot of tea and we settled in around my desk. I used my laptop to find out what I could about the copy of the Petit Trianon in Presidio Heights. Irene tapped away on her phone, refusing to tell me what she was researching.
After an hour or so, she stretched, yawned, and said, “What have you got?”
“Back before the 1890s a wealthy couple took a vacation in France, visited Versailles, liked the look of the Petit Trianon, and decided to build themselves one. Whether or not they knew the history is debatable. For a housewarming, they even had a costume party where everyone dressed up like French people in the 1700s.”
Irene laughed. “They definitely should have read the history.”
“It’s been sold a few times, and it was empty for a while. Then a venture capitalist bought it.”
“Alex Travers?”
“No, some other venture capitalist. He spent several years restoring it and then sold it. It had a few other owners before Travers bought it.” I turned my laptop around so she could see it. “Here’s an article from the last time it was on the market. It’s a big house. I was just looking through these pictures of the various rooms, so I’ll know where I am when I visit.”
As we scrolled through the article. Irene said, “It looks like you get to a lot of the rooms from the atrium in the middle.”
“I’m sure that’s as far as I’ll get. He probably has his art in this living room or maybe this study toward the back of the main floor. I’m definitely not going upstairs where the bedrooms are and definitely not going downstairs to the party room.”
“Good. Send me the link to that article. I’ll save it on my phone and memorize the names of the rooms and the layout.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“I’ll be outside the house, listening in.” She showed me a website on her phone, and then emailed the link.
I went to the website on my laptop and read about the software that would allow Irene to use my phone as a listening device. “So, you’re going to listen to my conversation with Travers on your phone?”
“Right. I’ll hang out at that spot next to the house where we pretended to take pictures today. Then, like it says there,” she said, pointing to the web page on my laptop, “I send a text message to your phone, and the software on your phone turns on the microphone. It also lets me hit “record” on my phone. Then, when all this is over, assuming Travers talks about Sade, you can play the recording for Otani.”
“Is that legal?”
“Why not? It’s eavesdropping. If I happen to hear a conversation, so what?”
“Don’t police have to get warrants for wire-tapping our whatever this is?”
“We’re not gathering evidence. Otani will have to do that. We’re just letting her know there is evidence to gather.”
“Okay then, you’re outside, recording. If he mentions Sade, I say, ‘Oh, it’s getting late, I have to go,’ and I meet you out on the street.”
“That’s right,” said Irene. “And if he starts saying or doing anything weird, I’ll know about it, and I can put a stop to it.”
“By pounding on the front door.”
“Or calling the cops, or whatever.”
I read a little further on the web page. “The version of this software that lets you record what you’re listening to costs over two-hundred dollars.”
“Worth it, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. When am I ever going to use it again?”
“You never know. But I’ll pay for it if you don’t want to.”
“No,” I said. “This is my problem. I’ll pay for it, but do you think it really works?”
“One way to find out.”
I got my credit card out of my purse, made the purchase, downloaded the software to my laptop, and installed it. Following the directions, I downloaded it to my phone. Then I used my phone’s browser to go to a website where I unlocked the software with a numeric key.
I said to Irene, “Now it says if you send my phone a text message, you’ll be able to listen through my phone’s microphone.”
“Let’s try it out. I’ll go outside and walk down to the corner. Then I’ll send you a text and see if I can hear you. You’ll have to be doing or saying something . . .”
“Don’t worry, I’ll read this web article out loud.”
Irene took my phone from where it was lying on my desktop and slipped it into my purse. “Let’s try it this way,” she said, “so we’ll know how well it will work when you’re in Travers’s house.”
I listened until I heard Irene leave the garage by the street door. Looking at the web page on my laptop, I said, in a conversational tone, “I don’t want to read this page directly. I want my voice to sound like it will when I’m talking to someone. So, I’ll just talk about what I see here. Marie Antoinette was a princess from Austria. . . the people of France never liked her. They protested her expensive lifestyle . . . that’s pretty funny, considering how the French aristocrats lived anyway . . .
“Let’s see . . . Oh! Madame de Pompadour died before the Petit Trianon was finished, so she never lived in it, even though Louis XV was building it for her. Louis XVI gave it to Marie Antoinette . . . I guess he didn’t need it for his mistresses . . . Oops, there was a scandal about Louis failing to consummate the marriage . . . Hmm . . . If he couldn’t seal the deal with his queen, maybe he didn’t have mistresses . . .
“This is interesting. She probably didn’t say, ‘Let them eat cake.’ Rousseau, the philosopher, wrote about telling some princess, ‘The people have no bread,’ and the princess said, ‘Then let them eat cake.” However, he wrote this before Marie Antoinette came to France, and Rousseau never says who that princess was . . . It sounds like the French blamed Marie Antoinette for everything . . .”
I heard the street door slam, and a few seconds later Irene came back into my suite. “Got it,” she said with a grin. She unplugged her earpiece and tapped a few times on her phone. I heard my own voice, loud and clear. “I don’t want to read this page directly. I want my voice to sound like it will when I’m talking to someone. So, I’ll just talk about what I see here. Marie Antoinette . . .” Irene stopped the playback.
I nodded. “It works.”
“Did your phone make any sound when I started recording?”
“No.” I pulled the phone out of my purse. “Start it again.”
Irene did. My phone was silent, and it did not light up. There was no sign it was transmitting. “Is it recording?”
Irene stopped the app on her phone and tapped the play button. We heard, “Is it recording?”
“We’re all set,” I said.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“He could be a really bad guy.”
“I’m no threat to him. To him, I’m just a woman half his age who’s all gaga about his art collection. So, I visit, he enjoys having an art historian admire him, and I leave. If he mentions the Marquis de Sade, we’ll take your recording to Detective Otani. If not, too bad, we tried.”
“Can you set this up for tomorrow?”
“Let me think. I should probably study up on Rococo a little more.”
“Forget that, Nicole. You already know more than he does. Let’s do this and get it over with. Or do you want to wait for Otani to come after you again.”
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll send him an email right now.”
Chapter 28
The next morning, a few minutes before ten o’clock, I got off the 43 bus at Laurel Village and called Irene. “I’m on California Street, ready to walk up to the house.”
“Okay. I’m two blocks away. I’ll start walking toward the side street alongside the house. I want to be in place before you get to the front door so you can have a visual on me before you go in.”
“You don’t have to say, ‘have a visual.’ You could just say, ‘so I can see you before I go in.’”
“That’s what they say in movies about special forces.”
“Let’s not pretend we’re in one of those movies. I’ll be more relaxed if I think of this as a simple interview for information.”
“Roger that.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I figure, as long as we’re going to all this trouble . . .”
“Fine. I’ll meet you back at Laurel Village when it’s over.”
We hung up and I put my phone in my purse, making sure to leave the microphone pointing up, toward the opening of the outside pocket.
It felt as if I covered the blocks to Travers’s house in less time than it took the day before. Maybe that was because my mind was busy playing through scenarios so I could think of what I would say in each of them.
Under gray skies, I walked up one of the curving stairways to the front door. The screech of power saws and the pop of nail guns sounded from across the street. I pushed the white button on the electronic box by the front door and waited to hear a voice from its speaker.
Instead, the front door opened, and Alex Travers stood before me, dressed the way he was dressed when we had lunch and when I met him in his office: polo shirt, sweater, slacks, loafers. Today’s color scheme favored pale blue.
“Nicole, come right in. I appreciate your being on time.”
“I appreciate your opening your home to me and offering to share your collection.”
As I heard myself say that, I made a mental note to keep it short and simple. Over-explaining things would not put me in control. I was not there to talk to him, but rather to get him to talk to me.
Smiling my widest, I said, “You live in the Petit Trianon.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You do know your history.”
I stepped inside, and he closed the door behind me.
“How in the world did you manage this?”
He shrugged. “It came on the market a while back and I snapped it up.”
“Is that when you became interested in Rococo?”
“No, my trip to the Louvre was years before I bought this house. But since I moved here, seeing my artwork in the kind of space it was made for has inspired me to collect more. Come over here. You’ll see what I mean.”
