POKER AND OTHER SHENANIGANS IN A PARIS ART GALLERY
One afternoon just before Halloween I was playing head-on Texas Hold ‘Em with my friend and chief client, Alain Bertier. Seated a few feet from the entrance to his boutique, we were surrounded by many of the countless objets d’art the renowned dealer had accumulated over the years. I must have been winning close to a thousand dollars when a slim elegant gentleman wearing thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses came into the shop. Bertier eyed him briefly before urging me to get on with the game.
“Make yourself at home, Monsieur,” he said to the gentleman. “Call me if you need any assistance.”
I was reluctant to deal the cards. Not because I wanted to protect my gains. Soon enough the other players would be arriving next door at Madame Nicole’s. If lucky, I might be able to add my wins and Alain’s losses to the end of the day’s score sheet.
“What are you waiting for?” said Bertier.
“Something must be wrong with you,” I said. “You seem unaware that one of the most important people in Paris just came into your gallery.”
Alain rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “what do you take me for, an ass?”
“Well, now that you mention it . . .”
“Make it snappy,” he said. “It’s your deal.”
“But what about your client?”
“Good God, man, you have the commercial sense of an orangutan.”
“Alain, that is Yves Saint-Laurent!”
“Keep your voice down. He is an extremely private person who does not like to be fussed over.”
The fashion designer walked from one end of the shop to the other, stopping occasionally to examine different pieces of glassware. Finally Bertier pushed aside the playing cards and approached him gingerly. Conversing in hushed tones, the two took turns holding a glass vase to the light. Saint-Laurent smiled, nodded and said something I could not hear before leaving the shop empty-handed.
.
“He’ll be back,” said Bertier. “Anybody who wants to buy a Marinot Vase is obliged to pass by me.”
Early shadows floated over the city. I looked at my watch. Bertier continued to fondle the vase that had caught Monsieur Saint-Laurent’s eye. A Japanese couple entered the shop. Bertier nodded a greeting but paid them no attention.
“Those are sightseers, not clients,” he whispered.
“How do you know?”
“I can tell. Whose deal is it?"
Without waiting for a reply, Alain dealt a card to me, and one to himself. As usual when he was losing, I knew he would play every hand.
A laborer wearing a workman’s smock walked into the shop carrying a heavy bronze horse. Bertier told him to put the statue on his desk. That crowded the poker action, but the art dealer wanted to look the animal over. Satisfied, he slipped a few bills into the workman’s hand. Retrieving his cards, he went all-in.
“I bet you cannot even recall what cards you have,” I said.
“Maybe I can't. Are you paying or not?”
While I was deliberating with a pair of sixes, Tom Filer came into the gallery. Even if Bertier and he were arch rivals, they remained in close contact. The American was carrying the ‘Gazette de Drouot,’ the weekly magazine that announces art sales and auctions throughout the country..
Filer and Alain went off to a corner. The visitor pointed to a picture in the Gazette. Bertier shook his head. Filer raised his voice. Standing toe to toe, the two art dealers looked like a pair of boxers at a weigh-in. Again Filer pleaded his case.
“Nothing doing,” said Bertier.
“You’re a damn fool,” said Filer.
He glanced at me then looked away. Well aware that neither he nor Bertier wanted an outsider listening in, I kept a blank expression on my face. Of course I knew what they were up to. The American dealer was trying to arrange what is called a revision in French and a knockout in English, a tactic in which two or more dealers agree not to bid against one another at a public auction so that one of the parties may obtain an object at a bargain-basement price. Afterwards, he will pay off his fellow dealers, but at a cost far lower than had the bidding not been pre-arranged. At times, members of the auctioneer’s team are co-conspirators. An expert can estimate an object at less than its true value, or the auctioneer is capable of dropping his hammer prematurely. Either way, the seller comes up short. Or the converse might take place. Dealers, experts and auctioneers can equally contrive to bid an object up so that the seller, assuming he is one of the happy few, ends up getting more than he rightfully deserves.
Filer was barely out of sight when another American came into the shop. A frail man with a high-pitched voice, his face had a yellow pallor that made him look like he was recovering from a tropical disease. Overdressed in a long winter coat, his eyes were rheumy and small. As soon as he set foot inside, he went to the bronze horse on Bertier’s desk.
“What gives, Alain?” he said in a surprised tone of voice. “This piece is not signed.”
Bertier opened his mouth but was unable to speak. His Adam’s apple danced along the edge of his throat.
“What-what-what are you doing here?” he finally stuttered.
The American continued to study the bronze. “Really, Alain, I do not understand this at all.”
“It’s Wednesday,” Bertier said with difficulty. “You told me you were coming on Friday.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Plenty,” said Bertier. “It would have been signed by then.”
The man stormed out of the boutique. I followed him into Madame Nicole’s bar. He told me the horse he had expected to find was sculpted by P. J. Mene and should have borne the artist’s signature before his death in 1877.
A minute later, Bertier came running into the bar. His eyes were afire and his face was angry. Without a glance at the American collector, he grabbed my arm and pulled me outside.
“Whatever you see or hear around here, you keep to yourself. Is that understood?
“It is,” I said.
He kicked the door to his shop open. The telephone was ringing. He did not answer it. I noticed the bronze horse was no longer on his desk.
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