A Brush With Death Read Free Page A

up—vermilion, cadmium yellow, ultramarine, cobalt, viridian, but in different kinds of pigments, so he's hard to pin down. He even did some on coarse, unprimed canvas—like hessian, though he usually used ordinary primed canvas. He was a bit of an experimenter, so you can't just rule out anything of the right age."
    “His style is certainly distinctive though."
    “A distinctive style is the easiest kind to forge, believe it or not. What tipped us off is that too many ‘new’ Van Gogh's started turning up. Not copies, new paintings never seen before. Of course Vincent was prolific, but even he had his limits. Latour started with sketches. Sold half a dozen, then struck out into oils. That's where they caught him. They found impurities in his reds. He escaped Europe a step ahead of Interpol's Art and Fraud Squad and skipped to North America. The guy's a Belgian, incidentally."
    “Like Hercule Poirot."
    “Yeah, and about that cagey. But he doesn't speak English, just French and Dutch, so we figured he came to the biggest French-speaking city outside of Europe, Montreal."
    “Where does your company come into it?"
    “We took a hosing on Latour. Two of his forged drawings were stolen shortly after they were bought. We have reason to believe Latour ‘sold’ them to a friend, who arranged to have them stolen, and they split the hundred thou we paid in insurance. So I'm here to find Latour and whop a confession out of him, and make him promise not to be a bad boy again. If he pulled his sell and steal act on paintings instead of just sketches, we could be in big trouble."
    “And of course you're here to see me,” I reminded him with a sapient eye.
    “Hey, that's the main reason. But while I'm here ...'
    “Let's find a phone book."
    “He won't be listed as Yves Latour. What we'll have to do is hit some galleries and find out who's been trying to peddle some Van Goghs."
    “Let's try the phone book at least. Maybe he's anglicized his name to Tower. That's what Latour means."
    “It's worth a shot."
    Incredible as it seems, there was a Y. G. Tower on Côte des Neiges. John said Yves's second name was Gerard. He had the car brought around and I directed him up the mountain to Côte des Neiges. The name seemed particularly suitable that day. It looked like a snow coast. I peered out the car window for numbers while John set his jaw to the precarious task of driving in the snow, in Montreal's lawless traffic. As we drew near, we realized Latour lived in one of the apartment high-rise buildings, which made it possible for us to park in the visitors’ parking lot. We pressed half a dozen buttons to get into the building. Y. G. Tower was on the seventh floor, apartment 5. We took the elevator up and began looking for his door.
    It occurred to me that a forger might keep a gun, and when he found himself in imminent danger of arrest, he might use it. “Do you have a gun?” I asked John.
    He patted his pocket and grinned. “I never leave home without it. But I don't think we're going to visit Yves yet. I'd like to get in and have a look around first. It might be interesting to see who he's forging these days."
    “You can do that after you arrest him."
    “I'm not a cop, and I'd just as lief we keep the fuzz out of this, for the time being at least. I want a nice leisurely look around, which I won't get if Yves puts up a fight. If what I find is interesting, I'll call in the A and F boys. For that matter, we don't even know Tower is Latour."
    “What do we do if he's at home?"
    He took a cigarette lighter and a package of cigarettes out of his pocket. John doesn't smoke, so I knew he was up to something. “A camera?"
    “My Bic-Pic,” he grinned, and lit it. It really was a lighter too. “I'll get a shot of Yves for my own personal files. When he leaves, we'll come back and search."
    We were checking out the apartment numbers as we went along the hall. “It must be around that corner,” I said. “We can't just lurk