Lost Children

by Willa Bergman

  The first thing I do Monday morning is call up the library’s number for submitting research requests and speak with a lady called Ellen. She answers each of my questions in that uniquely American way which is almost overly polite but also manages to be completely impersonal and distant at the same time. I confess the style grates with me a little but I can’t complain as she speaks very knowledgeably about the library’s collection and informs me that I need the municipal state planning archives which contains listings of all billboards and permanent advertisements approved in the state of New York. She tells me a lot of files are now kept off site and so I would typically have to wait a day or two before they would be available for me, but I’m in luck as these particular files are still stored in the library.

  Buoyed by this good news I ask her if I could come in today to use the files. She tells me library policy is not to permit same day access but I plead with her and to my genuine surprise she tells me as it’s quiet today if I show up before she heads off for her lunch break at midday she’ll let me in. I thank her sincerely, immediately regretting my initial cold impression of her.

  I collect my things and with a cabbie that seems to consider stopping at red lights optional I’m up in Bryant Park in ten minutes. As we approach the library I see dozens of young undergrads sitting on the entrance steps, each one kitted out in their regulation hoodies and baggie jeans, all looking somehow reminiscent of the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.

  I head straight up to the third floor where Ellen told me to go. There are only a handful of people walking the corridors but I find the room I’m supposed to be looking for and sure enough there she is waiting for me, the lady who I’ve now decided is the heart and soul of this city.

  Ellen gives me my day pass which will let me access the archives and then I’m off again to another corner of the building, this time deep in its bowels. What feels like endless rows of movable bookshelves fill what is an enormous underground archive. I have to walk up and down it more than once before I have my bearings and work out the section I’m looking for. I run my finger along a line of files and then just like that, there it is: a long row of binders listing in black and white every New York state municipal planning permission granted to the Galkin Matches company for a permanent advertisement.

  There’s pages and pages of superfluous and irrelevant information that I have to work through but as I wade my way through it I start to understand the structure of how the information has been collated and start being able to filter out and skip over some of the data. First I get rid of all the billboards and canvases, they’re not what I’m looking for. Then I get rid of anything that’s not a permission for an advertisement on the side of a building wall and anything where the height dimension is less than two metres. I’m there for the better part of four hours before I’ve finally worked my way through all of it, but when I’m done I’ve narrowed it down to a grand total of forty-seven permanent fixture applications. When I cross out the last application on the list I have to hold my head in my hands and push my palms into my eye sockets to try and relieve the pressure on my eyes which are throbbing from staring at all these pages.

  I want to stop, I feel I’ve more than earned a rest, but I don’t have the time, I need to start working through the forty-seven. The buildings the adverts are on are dotted all across the state; it would take me the better part of a week to go and visit each of them, time I don’t have, but Street View should do the job. I grab a sandwich and a can of coke from the library cafeteria to pep me up and then settle myself in on one of the library computers.

  I work my way through each of the forty-seven. Some are easy to cross off the list: the wall isn’t red brick or the sign is the wrong colour or the sign is too high above street level. Others I have to work harder on. I narrow it down to eight which all have red brick walls and all have the sign at street level just like the one in my mother’s photo. But there’s only one with a fire hydrant in front of it like the photo, on what looks like an old factory in Brooklyn that’s been converted into a trendy block of apartments. This is it, I’ve found it.

  At first I almost can’t believe I’ve found it. It feels like a victory but after my initial elation it’s a quick come down and I’m not actually sure how much more it tells me. I keep looking on Street View to see what else is around the block of apartments that the Galkin Matches advert is on. There’s a grocery store, a couple of small restaurants, a gym, a pharmacy, nothing that helps me. I google the apartment building itself and see lots of pictures of smart pads for the young urban professional. The bumf they write about the building’s history tells me it was a printing press before they converted it. None of this helps me. Starting to reach I try looking up the developer of the building but they’re a small company and don’t have a separate website. There’s a link for the developer in the National Corporations Directory but when I click on it it’s just a list of the company’s directors, it’s another dead end. My head falls to the desk, I’m in equal parts exhausted and frustrated. There doesn’t seem to be any significance to the location of the photo, it might as well have been taken anywhere.

  I slowly lift my head up from the desk, my eyes coming in and out of focus looking at the screen. Amongst all the pixels I start to realise that I’m looking at the name Y. Steinberg. Yuliya Steinberg is listed as a non-executive director of the development company. Suddenly very alert I look further at the page and see that it’s her ex-husband who’s the chairman of the company. How can Yuliya Steinberg be connected to this building? It’s too much of coincidence.

  I collect my things and head outside the library so I can use my phone, I need to check something with the detective Yan introduced me to, O’Rourke. I don’t have his number so I have to go through a switchboard. The line rings for a long time but eventually he picks up. When he answers he doesn’t seem particularly pleased to hear from me. At first I’m not sure if he even remembers me, but then it clicks for him, I’m the idiot who’s looking for that lost painting. I don’t care what he calls me, I just need information. I ask him if Yuliya Steinberg was ever questioned as part of the original investigation into the painting.

  “Probably,” he replies gruffly. “We questioned all the dealers. It was an investigation, we don’t cut corners here.”

  I ask him what she said in the interview.

  “Well you may not believe this but I don’t happen to have the transcript of her interview in front of me, but I can still tell you what she said – nothing. The investigation didn’t find anything, none of the dealers said they knew anything about it, including her. Now why are you interested in Yuliya Steinberg? Why are you asking me these questions?”

  He doesn’t get a response from me, I’ve already hung up the phone and started making my way to the Upper East Side. It’s time that Yuliya Steinberg and I had a real conversation.

  2

  Everything is different about my second visit to Yuliya Steinberg’s apartment. I’m met at the front of the building by the doorman, I tell him I’m here to see Ms Steinberg. He asks me if I have an appointment, she’s clearly got him on the payroll. I lie and say I left my bag by mistake after the party the other night and was just coming to collect it. He seems to accept my story and lets me through. I take the lift up to the twelfth floor and get out.

  The energy of the place from the night of the party that spilled out into the hallway is now gone. Now it feels almost eerie. I ring the bell to Yuliya’s apartment, her assistant greets me, a little cold at the unexpected intrusion. I try to spin her the same line as the doorman but it doesn’t get me through the door, she tells me they didn’t find any bags when they cleaned up. I stall her, trying to keep her talking while my brain scrambles for a reason for her to let me in. As I stutter over my words I see Yuliya walking between rooms in the background smoking a long cigarette; without looking she asks who’s at the door. I take that as enough of an invitation and announce myself, much to the annoyance of her assistant. I step into
her hallway to present myself.

  “Oh. What do you want?” she says, with little more enthusiasm than her assistant before her. I tell her I have some more questions about the Polignac. Her assistant makes to speak but I ignore her.

  “I don’t have any more time for your little treasure hunt. I said everything I have to say about that painting the last time you were here.” Her tone is very different with me this time. She begins to walk away from me, indicating the end of the conversation, so I dispense with the platitudes and get to the point.

  “I checked with a detective in the NYPD, you were questioned two years ago about the painting as part of an investigation. You told me you’d never had anything to do with it. Why didn’t you want to tell me about that Yuliya? It shouldn’t have mattered if you had nothing to hide.”

  She turns around. She stands there looking at me, confident in her kingdom. “You think because I didn’t tell you about some little police interview that happened years ago that you’ve suddenly got me by the balls?! Please, I hope you’ve got more than that Eloise, because if that’s it then you are a great disappointment.”

  It’s now or never. I take a chance.

  “I found Carlos Azevedo.”

  “Who?” She answers too quickly, it’s forced and uneasy. She knows who he is, I can feel it! But she’s not rolling over just yet.

  “The man who fifteen years ago sold the Lost Child to you. He’s dead but he left enough of a trail of breadcrumbs for me to find him and to tie him to you. You knew about the painting.”

  She looks at me intently. I can see she’s trying to work out what to make of me.

  “You have been busy haven’t you. Alright, yes, I knew about the painting. Do you really think a painting like that could turn up in my city and I wouldn’t know about it? What was his name, Carlos? He turned up with his bulging, greedy eyes, licking his lips. No class whatsoever. I remember when he talked about it he made these pitiful attempts at nonchalance, like this was all very ordinary for him. But his whole body was just twitching with anxiety. Anyone with half a brain could see what he was, a small time antiques jeweller who for the first time in his life and through sheer blind luck had happened to fall upon something of actual value. He thought he had the Mona Lisa, that he’d hit the jackpot. He hadn’t the first idea what he was doing. But eventually he realised he wasn’t going to get much for a stolen painting.”

  “What price did you give him for it?”

  “It was fifteen years ago, I haven’t got the faintest idea.”

  “You’re lying. You know exactly what you paid for it. Why be coy, did you rip him off?”

  “Come on now, neither of us are children so let’s not act like them. He was a man with a stolen painting and no way to move it. Every dollar I paid him was a dollar he wasn’t going to get anywhere else. He should have been thanking me.”

  “So what did he get for it?”

  “He got a fair price.”

  “What did he get for it?”

  She pauses and then says simply: “Ten thousand dollars.” That was it. Everything we’ve been through because of that painting, all of it was for ten thousand dollars. What Jack did all those years ago on that fateful night was an act of self-defence and he was a child, the police never would have brought any charges against him or my mother, even if Arnaud was their friend. All of this, everything that’s followed that terrible night has been because she stole the painting and the paltry ten thousand dollars she got paid for it.

  “Who did you sell the painting to?”

  She pauses again, weighing her next words carefully. She stops smoking her cigarette, taps the ash into a small golden ashtray and says, “I sold it to a man called Isaac Brewer. But he was just a broker representing a client. I honestly don’t know who he sold it to.”

  “Call him, call Brewer. Ask him.” I say forcefully.

  “I’d love to darling but he died a few years back, brain tumour I believe, very sad. So he took his little secret to the grave I’m afraid.”

  I look at her with menace. “You need to do better than that.”

  “Or what?” She goads.

  “Or I’m going to speak with my new detective friend in the NYPD and vociferously argue the merits of the NYPD conducting a thorough investigation into your off book activities.”

  My threat seems to have the desired effect, she stubs her cigarette out on the table in frustration and gives me a long cold stare.

  “Brewer was very successful, but he wasn’t a very prolific man. What I mean to say is, he didn’t have many clients. I knew him just about as well as anyone in the business and to the best of my knowledge he only ever worked for three people.”

  My heart begins to beat faster.

  “Who were they?”

  “If I tell you them will you get out of my apartment?”

  “Who were they?”

  She pauses, then reveals her treasure.

  “Elizabeth Meyer, Carl Walden and Alberto Bonucci. One of them will have bought it and I very much suspect will still have it. None of them give the impression they’re in the business of selling.”

  I don’t say anything. I wonder if I misheard it, that maybe it isn’t true. I can’t believe it. I just stand there. All I can feel is the cool air flowing into my lungs through my half open mouth. Just like that everything’s changed. “Thank you.” I don’t say anything else. I turn to leave.

  “It’s funny, I look at you and I ask myself, who is this curious little girl who comes from nowhere and seems to glide effortlessly through the rank and file of the art world?”

  I stop and turn around to face her.

  “You’re not doing this for a client are you.”

  “You don’t want to pull on that thread. There’s nothing for you to find there.”

  I turn away and begin to walk again. Just before I reach the door she says, “She had a daughter, didn’t she?”

  I reply, “And a son. But they both died a long time ago.”

  I turn around once more and walk through her front door. She doesn’t try to stop me. Her assistant is waiting at the entrance but I keep walking. I continue down the stairs, through the lobby and straight out of the building, straight into the fresh air and bright lights outside.

  3

  Three names. That’s all that’s left. You start with every name in the world and then you whittle them down till you find the one name you’re looking for.

  The first of the three, Elizabeth Meyer, I knew a little bit about her already. She’s the heir to the Meyer Pharmaceuticals fortune. Until relatively recently they were the toast of society, but the family is now in virtual hiding due to a massive media backlash against them saying they’re responsible for the opioid epidemic in the US.

  The second name, Carl Walden, I was unfamiliar with but a quick online search tells me he’s a successful corporate financier who has also had a number of fairly serious brushes with the lawmen.

  And then finally the last name on the list, Alberto Bonucci. This name was also new to me, but not it seems to just about anyone else in New York. I could try and be prosaic about this but essentially he’s a big New York mobster. He’s been implicated either directly or indirectly in the murder of fifteen people and is currently serving a life sentence for racketeering and extortion.

  So a drug pusher, a corrupt corporate financier and a mobster. Quite the client roster. After Yuliya told me the names I went straight into the office, ran each of them through the art databases and reviewed the information that Kim had already pulled on them to see if there was something there that I had missed. The three of them were all on the list of names she’d provided me before, along with the other four hundred and ninety-two names the various art databases had identified as persons potentially connected with illegally trafficked art. And reviewing their respective files again for the third, fourth and fifth time there was again nothing there to distinguish any of them from the other persons on that long list of potential candidates
.

  So I have no information that helps me say one of these three names is more likely than the others to be the one I’m looking for. But I need to start somewhere. The first rule of any job is to do the easy things first. None of this job is easy so I’m stuck with the least difficult, and there I’m left with the inescapable fact that I only know where one of these three individuals is; unfortunately he’s the last one of them I want to meet. Alberto Bonucci is an inmate at Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. I resign myself to making him the first name on my list to investigate.

  No one in the art world will touch Bonucci so the information I have on him is very thin, if I’m going to investigate him properly I’m simply going to have to meet him. A little research tells me that visiting hours at the Lewisburg penitentiary are from 8am until 3pm on Saturdays and Sundays only. Inmates have a visiting list with all their friends and family who they want to come visit them, these are the only persons allowed to visit them. Having never met Bonucci unsurprisingly I’m not on his list. There are special exceptions for visits from attorneys and the clergy but that doesn’t help me either. A little further digging however unearths that they do allow business visitors. Inmates can have a visit if it’s necessary to protect the operation of their business or profession. I don’t fit that bill either but it’s the best shot I have.

  I call the Lewisburg Penitentiary. I’m on the phone for well over an hour, on hold for most of it, before I start getting somewhere. The person at the other end of the line explains that special visits have to be authorized by the Captain and Associate Warden of the penitentiary and that there’s a bunch of forms I have to fill in and send over for approval, justifying my visit. I also have to supply ID so I give up any attempt at false pretences for who I am and why I’m wanting to visit; I write that I’m looking for a missing painting and believe Mr Bonucci may have information that can help me. I supply my auction house credentials to quell any suspicions of ulterior motives they might have about me. I scan the forms and email it all through, it’s late before I get it all done. It’s taken me the whole day just to get this far and I’m worried my time is slipping away. It’s only Tuesday but Arnaud has me on the clock, I need to get in on the visiting schedule for Bonucci this weekend. I want to keep going but I’m too tired. I call it a night and hope for better things tomorrow.