Read Online Perfect Touch by Elizabeth Lowell - Free Book Online

right eyebrow shot up. “Did Google or one of my competitors state that?”
    â€œI’ve got connections that you don’t even know about,” Barton said, “in places you can’t imagine.”
    Barty is bucking for a session in JD’s punishment chair, Jay thought.
    â€œConnections?” Sara asked. “I suppose you mean the big auction houses.”
    â€œYou don’t know,” Barton said.
    She shrugged. “If you want to jump in and let Christie’s take twentypercent of the pie before you start paying out your agent—and remember, that’s all installment payments to you, not lump sum—you’re welcome to try to convince Jay. If he agrees, it will be the slowest fast money you’ll ever make.”
    â€œDon’t you dare take that tone with my son,” Liza said. “Those paintings are much more valuable than someone like you can imagine.”
    Sara’s expression showed just how impressed she wasn’t.
    â€œYou don’t know anything,” Liza said, her voice rising. “I knew Armstrong personally and those paintings are priceless!”
    â€œWhat else did Beck tell you?” Sara asked calmly. “Did he mention that half the money trading hands in art today is modern art?”
    â€œHe knows his business,” Barton said quickly.
    â€œThen he knows that everything painted after World War One isn’t modern art.” She leaned closer, her body crackling with restrained energy. “ Contemporary modern art is making the big money. Custer isn’t a modernist. If you can’t understand that simple truth, Beck will smile all the way to the bank. Custer was a brilliant artist, but east of the Rockies, he’s not an easy sell.”
    Beautiful, beautiful woman, Jay thought. I’d love to have that fire warming my life. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t been warm since Afghanistan.
    And that is an outstandingly stupid thought.
    I’m not a San Francisco kind of man. She’s not a ranch woman. But it would be good while it lasted. Really good.
    â€œThat’s not what Beck says, and he’s the expert,” Barton said. “You’re just a pretty wannabe who doesn’t mind putting out to—”
    â€œBeck knows the difference between genre and modern and contemporary,” Sara said, cutting off the standard insult every successful woman heard. “Contemporary is what’s selling now. Industrial buyers are driving up the prices on commercial fine art. But Custer won’t raisean eyebrow in those big-money circles. They want Lucy Giallo and Damien Hirst.”
    â€œWho?” Jay asked before Barton could say anything.
    Sara turned to him. “They’re consortium artists. They get a ‘vision’ and then dictate it to a workshop. Highly conceptual and cold. Their work sells to emirs and corporations. Installations, not traditional paintings or even sculptures.”
    Barton spoke up. “I’ve heard of Hirst. I saw Beyond Belief when I was in London a couple years ago. Fifteen million pounds sterling worth of diamonds stuck to a human skull. Takes balls to do that.”
    â€œThat piece sold for a hundred million pounds,” Sara said without looking away from Jay. “The buyer was a consortium of which Hirst himself was part. That should tell you something about art business and artistic scruples in some circles. The man doesn’t even execute his own designs. It’s not traditional art, but it’s being eaten up as fast as he dishes it out.”
    â€œSo he just collects the money after putting his name on something someone else did,” Barton said. “Sweet. That’s my kind of business. Smart, really smart.”
    â€œThat isn’t art. It’s manufacturing,” she said flatly.
    â€œBut people pay through the ass for it,” Barton said.
    And there it is, Jay thought. The meat of the matter.
    Money.
    Sara leaned