Counterfeit, p.5
Counterfeit, page 5
“This way, please.”
Jota followed him, still smiling at the guard.
The corridor was narrow and poorly lit. They passed by entrances into different warehouses until they got to a reinforced door, at which the man knocked. A woman’s voice invited him in, and the man left Jota alone with a glance goodbye. Pilar’s office looked like a storage cupboard: it was full of boxes, files, and different outdated models of computer arranged on various shelves, some of which looked suitable for auction themselves. They greeted each other informally, with the intimacy of old friends, in the knowledge that they wouldn’t let each other down. It was as though they’d been a couple for years and all the love, resentment, and hatred were in the past, replaced by security and routine. After a brief conversation, Jota showed her the photograph of the clock, which she studied closely.
“You don’t have a date, a reference, a jeweler, nothing? Look, I know you think that computers are magical contraptions, but they’re just tools. If you can’t give me any real information, we’re not going to get anywhere.”
“Your friend outside was right—with this marvelous new invention, nothing will escape you. I’ll be obsolete.”
“The boldness of ignorance. Hmmm . . . is something similar any good for you? Here, French clocks 1880 to 1900.” She started to scroll down through a large catalog. “See this?”
“Yes, the heads are similar.”
“It’s a copy. That one’s a symbolist copy too. So tacky. They were in fashion in the last decade of the nineteenth century, but they’re still ugly. We sold that model for . . . seven hundred euros, two years ago. They aren’t hard pieces to find; there are plenty around. Yours is rarer. It’s not very nice because it mixes two different styles, both copied poorly.”
“You don’t think it’s silver?”
“Yes, it’s silver, but . . . are you sure that it wasn’t made earlier?”
“Yes.”
“Then it must be from a small town, somewhere provincial. In Madrid and Barcelona these had gone out of fashion by then.”
“Yeah, they were copying other things.”
“And they still are. It must be from the north.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’ve sold a lot of Andalusian pieces. Silversmiths from the south are better in terms of quality, but they’re always tainted by colonial rococo excess; they don’t hold back. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam. You might find something like that in the Bay of Biscay but not elsewhere. In the north, they copied the European styles—the haute bourgeoisie went off to ‘bathe’ in the sea in France. They loved decadence. They had a lot of hang-ups.”
“Will you do me a favor? Can you copy this photo onto the computer, and if you sell a similar-looking piece, let me know?”
“You want to restore it?”
“If I can find it.”
“What if a similar model comes in?”
“If that was likely, you’d have said already. Let me know, but seven hundred euros is a lot for a clock like that.”
“Fine. I’ll let you know if I find something that might help you.”
Jota left the warmth of familiar surroundings and headed back out onto the cold street. He crossed the city again and went into the poorer neighborhoods, an old town that had slowly been absorbed by the capital as it grew, losing its identity but maintaining some of its rural features: the one- or two-story houses and a calm atmosphere that contrasted with the roar of the center. The area tended to be eulogized by old people who remembered how it used to be when they were young, another life before modernity and all the drugs and alienation that came with it changed their offspring’s lives forever.
He found an extremely narrow street and went into a store that, with the blind pulled down over the door, looked abandoned at first sight. It was a store for timepieces. Its walls were toasted cream, an anachronism left over from the postwar period. The wallpaper had long since begun to flake in concentric rings of damp. Hunched over a small easel with barely any light was an old man well past retirement age working on an exquisite-looking mechanism. He greeted Jota affectionately and listened hard as Jota explained about the clock. Everything the man did, he did in a slow, calculated fashion.
“So . . . you say this is a maker’s mark?”
“Yes. As I said, you can barely make it out, so don’t bother.”
Jota repeated everything several times with unusual patience. This man had already been old when he was still a child, sitting in his dusty store, oblivious to the world, trapped in his own dimension of motions and precision clockwork. Once—Jota couldn’t remember when, but he was still very young—on one of the few occasions when they’d met in a bar, the man, forever stuck in his own world, had said to him, “Did you know that Einstein said that if he hadn’t been a physicist, he’d have been a watchmaker?” Jota the teenager had been impressed. “Einstein, absolutely,” the man had said, chuckling to himself with the same candor with which he accepted jobs today. “Einstein knew what he was about. He may have deciphered time, but we have to organize it. My boy: mine is a very special trade.” Ever since, Jota couldn’t see the old man without also thinking of the famous image of the physicist sticking out his tongue. The idols we encounter in our adolescence rarely go away. This man was an institution, at least to those who still remembered, who still understood what he did. One day, he’d dry up in his store like a husk among his artifacts. He was one of the few people whom Jota still respected.
“I’m too old for this kind of thing.”
Jota sighed and summoned his patience. “I told you: what I want to do is find a case with the original mark on it and rebuild the rest completely. It doesn’t look like it’ll be too difficult.”
“You won’t be able to. It’s all one piece, see? It looks like the work of a craftsman . . . if it’s from 1900, you won’t be able to solder it. Look at this line—you can’t hide a soldered joint like that. If the buyer knows their stuff, you won’t be able to fool them.”
“You’re always right, you old fossil.”
“What I’d do . . . I think . . . if you can fool me . . . if you believe in it . . . then it’s a good copy.”
“Are you saying that we need the exact same clock?”
“Well, the same model. Or the front at least. Do you want a motion? A motion from that period would be quite expensive.”
“I don’t want one that tells the time, you crazy old man—I want a rusty old mechanism that will fit inside the case. No one will know the difference.”
“So it doesn’t have to work?”
“No, but it has to look as though it belongs.”
“Ah, if it doesn’t have to work, then it won’t be so expensive.”
“How much?”
“Uh . . . a hundred euros?”
“Sixty.”
“Fine.”
Jota laughed. “So you’re going to give me some rusty old mechanism you’ve got hidden away back there, you old swindler. I always pay what you ask. A hundred euros. Do a good job, and I’ll give you a hundred and fifty. How are things going otherwise?”
“Not well. I should have closed years ago. I get by on the work you give me. Rafael came by yesterday.”
“Rafa’s incompetent.”
“He was when you met him, but now he’s giving me a lot of jobs.”
Rafael Sanz was a great scout, and Jota knew it. He knew it, and it hurt because he’d taught him everything he knew. But like anyone with the talent and willpower—and such people were in scant supply—Rafa had grown up and headed out on his own. He’d done something that Jota couldn’t forgive even though he’d have done it himself, the same kind of thing he’d done at the beginning of his career. Jota had helped Rafa. Jota had been his mentor, and when he’d disappeared, Rafa had taken his place. What else was he going to do? Jota had lost five years, and when he came back, his strength and talent were gone. That became very clear in their circles. How had Rafa betrayed him when he was just taking what belonged to him by right? Still, Jota never forgave him because people could never forgive their own mistakes. Rafa represented his lost years, his fall from grace, the loss of his business and his rupture with his partner, whom Rafa had immediately begun to work with. He represented Jota’s failure.
“For years he lived on my scraps. Everything he knows he learned from me. He must still be working with his faithful lapdog, Gabrielito. Rafael and Gabrielito, what a pair.”
“But now he has a lot of jobs for me.”
“Then keep on working with him if you like.”
“Are you angry because he worked with Diego after you split?”
“That was a long time ago. Do you know what that hero Gabriel, Rafa’s scout, did? He beat up Raul, the junkie that brings us things. You know, the one who lives with his mother. He beat up a wretch, a loser who can barely stand, claiming he’d stolen something. So that’s the future of the profession. The next time I see Gabriel, I’m going to put him in his place so he never forgets who he is. It’s not because of dusty old stories only you remember, old man.”
“They’re the ones that still move us.”
“You, maybe.”
“And you, Jota. You too.”
“Don’t be so sure. Rafa stopped working for Diego years ago too. It’s not about that. I don’t like him—I never did. Not him and not his assistant.”
“These days he’s doing a lot of imports. He’s a customs agent. He brings a lot in from China.”
“Perfect. The moment he finds someone to do your job in China, get ready: he’ll ditch you without a second thought. That’s how your friend Rafa works.”
And with that, Jota brought the conversation to an end. He handed the old man the photograph.
“Here. I’ll leave the photo with you so you have something to think about other than ancient history. Get to work; the crown is eighteen centimeters.”
The old man carefully placed the photograph on a stand and looked at it for a little while. Then he smiled at Jota, a bright, childish smile. He took everything Jota had to say with good grace.
Jota was sitting in his parked car, once again lying in wait. This time, however, he was being discreet, hoping not to be seen. He was in luck. After a dozen cigarettes, he was rewarded. Just as he’d suspected, the telephone call had been right on. How could Miriam expect to keep something secret in this neighborhood? Especially from him? She came out the door of the seedy hotel where he’d been told she’d be, straightened out her clothes, listlessly looked each way, and walked casually to the nearest bus stop, unaware that Jota was watching her. It was a bitter sight for him to see her leaving the building like that. He felt bad for his friend but, although she’d never believe it, especially sorry for her. Jota didn’t know when he’d lost her—perhaps he’d never know—but he felt the pain of knowing he’d failed someone, of seeing that she was unhappy. He could watch her, but he had no idea what to do next. What would he do with this information? Share it with Adolfo? No, it would destroy him. So what, then? Jota refused to admit it, but all he’d done was share in his friend’s suffering and his sister’s disappointment. Their shared frustration. He’d take responsibility—he didn’t yet know for what. He’d live with the burden and decisions that had accumulated over time. Suddenly, he was hit by the kicker. The man left the hotel: he could have been anyone, but no, it was Gabriel, Rafa’s assistant. Rafa might have been his rival, but at least he was a respectable scout. Gabriel, on the other hand, was a piece of shit, a good-for-nothing dealer who’d inveigled his way into the world of collectors, a bum. And now he was sleeping with Miriam and probably boasting about it to everyone.
Miriam had chosen to sleep with the guy who would humiliate her husband the most. But Jota wasn’t going to do anything; he wasn’t going to confront Gabriel or call Miriam. He had no intention of using the information he’d obtained. He had to let her live her life. Or ruin it. Jota was just going to deal with this betrayal little by little, the way you came to terms with a chronic disease. But Gabriel . . . Gabriel would pay. That he swore to himself.
As the days passed, Jota’s workroom changed completely. He hung a corkboard on the wall and pinned different enlargements of the photo of the clock, highlighting specific details: some of them were underlined; others had sketches. A big enlargement showing the crown was life size at eighteen centimeters. Above that were other parts, also at 1:1 scale: both sides, the raised corners and contours, and several pages with separate parts. But the crown was at the center. The two tables began to fill up with clocks and parts, and they soon spread to a sideboard and, eventually, the floor. He’d put up a notice to remind the cleaning lady, who came by twice a week, not to touch his work area under any circumstances, as was usual when Jota was deep into a project.
Several weeks later, Adolfo called him excitedly with good news. For a moment, Jota forgot about the counterfeit and plunged back into the scouting work.
His partner awaited him triumphantly in the store like a schoolboy ready to correct his teacher’s mistake.
“Once again, while you’re busy building dollhouses, I’m finding leads. Don’t you get tired of always being wrong?”
“I’d get tired if I didn’t end up always having to do everything myself. Tell me what you’ve got, and I’ll decide whether it’s worth following up.”
“In a few minutes, we’re going to have to reconsider my cut. What do you want first: the good or bad news?”
“I don’t know. You’ve never given me good news before.”
“I know where your precious clock was sold. But that’s the bad news too. Do you remember the African guy who used to work for Torres?”
Torres’s name was poison to Jota’s ears, and his friend knew it. Jota’s annoyed grimace did not reveal just how much.
“A lot of Africans have worked for Torres.”
“But this one, Abdelazil, and I go back some time. Until about three years ago, he made all the deliveries. Now he has his own van at the market. From the dates you gave me, I knew that if Torres had handled the clock, he’d probably be able to remember.”
“Probably?”
“Definitely. He has a photographic memory. That’s why Torres let him run the warehouse. You know he wouldn’t give that job to just anyone. The African’s a strange guy, but we get on well. He recognized the clock right away—the mixture of styles makes it memorable. Before I could say anything, he told me that he remembered it, that it came to Torres about five or six years ago along with a very cheap lot, and that fits with the information you gave me.”
Jota thought for a moment before answering. Adolfo waited expectantly. He knew that the reaction wouldn’t be good—not because the information was no good but because Torres was involved, and Jota didn’t want to go down that path. He might not want to, Adolfo thought, but sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, and he felt the naughty pleasure you felt when you annoyed the people you loved. Eventually, Jota spoke.
“And what’s the good news?”
“Fuck, you don’t believe me?”
“What proportion of antiques in Madrid does Torres handle? Maybe eighty percent? That’s no revelation. What does your African expect now? For Torres to say, ‘Yeah, we had it probably—who knows?’ when I ask? ‘Thank you, Abdewhatever, you were right?’ How much did he charge for this wonderful information?”
“You’ve got the wrong idea. I did him a big favor a few years ago. He likes me. You don’t charge for things like that; he’s not getting anything out of this. I know that you don’t like getting involved with Torres—no one does—but the information is genuine.”
“I don’t care about Torres. His foreman Fran still works there. He’ll be more than willing to help me. That’s not the problem. The problem is that it doesn’t lead us anywhere, and the whole thing’s getting out of hand. If other people find out that I’m looking for a piece, they might get in the way even if they have no idea what it’s worth. They could screw up everything.”
“Thank you for doubting my discretion. I know how to keep my mouth shut. If Torres sold it, his foreman will remember it. But there’s more. Abdelazil recognized the order because it came from an old acquaintance: Diego, your former partner.”
“Our old friend Diego.”
“Yeah, but he’s still speaking to me.”
“No he isn’t.”
“Whatever. If my information is right, then I’ve given you the lot and the original owner—what more do you need?”
“For you to be right.”
Adolfo saw what Jota was thinking: he was capable of ignoring the lead because of an old grudge. It was deeply annoying. I’ll go myself if I have to, he thought. But they both went back a long way, so long that they always knew what was on each other’s mind. It irritated them both to be read so easily.
“Are you going to Torres’s warehouse?”
Jota looked as though he was about to answer but instead just stared back at his friend as he finished his cigarette. Then he clucked his tongue in resignation.
The industrial park was just under ten miles to the south, and the turnoff from the freeway wasn’t well marked. Trucks came and went, slowing down the rest of the traffic. At the back of the lot were three warehouses, each signposted simply in basic lettering: FURNITURE. TORRES ANTIQUES. Delivery vans and one or two entrepreneurial cars were parked out in front. Although the wares were rarely available to the general public, you often found that the exhibition floor was full of people. The prices were tempting, especially for items that weren’t earmarked for anywhere else, and you could get a good deal even if you weren’t a professional.
Jota drove around the back and parked behind the third warehouse. An open door revealed its interior, which was full of large metal shelves of antique objects and pieces, like a huge junkyard. A couple of employees were unloading wardrobes from a van, some of them in pretty poor shape. To one side, a metal staircase rose up to a few small offices.
An employee came to meet him.
“Excuse me, the store is in the other building. This is a warehouse.”
