The Last Mona Lisa

by Jonathan Santlofer

  “I hope you will forgive another question, but how did he die?”

  She looked a bit shocked but answered. “It appears his heart gave out, though it is unclear. He was not very old and in good health. He was found here…in the shop”—she choked back a sob—“on the floor.”

  “So he died of natural causes.”

  “Yes, as I said—” She stopped, this time angling a suspicious look at me. “Are you police?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Then what? Is there something you are not telling me?”

  “No,” I said.

  She swiped her tears away. “If there is no copy of the receipt, I cannot help you.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, thinking it was too damn coincidental, another of Guggliermo’s booksellers dead.

  57

  “Pressing the buzzer is inutile—useless. She will never hear you…” A young French hipster with a man bun and paint-stained jeans. “But if you are looking for Colette, she is almost always home.”

  In fact, I had no idea who I was looking for, but the address in Belleville was right, so I nodded, and Man Bun let me in. I was amazed the old building was still standing and that I’d found it.

  “Colette is at the top,” he said, “Faites attention!”

  I understood the warning as I started up the wooden stairs, eroded and treacherous, the hallway and landings permeated with the smell of turpentine. Clearly, Vincent and Simone’s old building still played host to artists.

  On the sixth floor, I stopped, caught my breath, and knocked on an apartment door, cracked paint exposing layers of a dozen previous colors.

  Three inches of face appeared between door and chain lock, elderly, wrinkled, and heavily made up, wine-red lips and hennaed hair.

  “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” she asked, her voice scratchy.

  In my best French, I told her I had come all the way from New York, explaining that my great-grandfather had once lived in her apartment and how much I wanted to see it.

  The old woman cupped a hand to her ear, made me repeat everything twice, but finally invited me into the foyer where she spoke rapidly in a combination of French and English: “J’adore les Américains!—my name is Colette—Ce n’est pas mon vrai nom but I chose it, so Colette it is! I am a widow, mon mari est mort many years now—no children—but like Edith Piaf, ‘Je ne regrette rien!’”

  I kept a smile glued on my face, trying to see beyond the small foyer into the apartment.

  “Venez,” she said, ushering me in.

  I stopped, could not believe what I was seeing. Though the walls appeared to have been painted over many times, there were outlines of curling vines with touches of green leaves and pink blossoms—Simone’s handiwork bleeding through layers of paint and time.

  Colette followed my gaze. “It always comes through. What can I do?”

  I moved in closer, fingertips against the painted ivy, a memento of the past refusing to give up. It not only brought the journal to life but it convinced me it was true.

  Heat pipes clanged and Colette nattered on about the noise and the price of milk, almost chasing away the ghosts, while I desperately tried to hold on. I could not stop running my fingers over the pentimento of vines and leaves that bled through the old walls, my mind alive with images of Vincent and Simone.

  I followed Colette into a bedroom with clothing draped over every surface—bed, dresser, a chair—but all I saw was the small painting, a still life of fruit arranged on a red cloth, everything outlined in dark blue-black. “That painting—”

  “Ah, oui. It was here when I arrived, in the back of the little closet. I liked it, so I hung it up.”

  I looked at the signature and date in the lower left corner: V. Peruggia, 1910. “It belonged to my great-grandfather. I mean, he painted it.”

  “Vraiment?”

  I studied the composition and technique, imagined Peruggia’s hand and brush moving across the small canvas, saw how he had attempted to link everything together with his blue-black line. It was not revolutionary, but it had a simple beauty and integrity.

  Colette lifted it off the wall with gnarled arthritic hands. “I have enjoyed it for many years, monsieur, but it belongs to you.”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “You must.”

  I offered to pay for it, but she refused.

  “Wait then.” I took the stairs too fast, almost had a serious tumble, then slowed and managed to make it down to the vestibule and out the front door in one piece. Daylight was fading, a misty rain creating haze. The flower stand I had remembered seeing was still open. The old man, beginning to wrap up his stock, gave me a deal, two bouquets for the price of one, proudly identifying the various flowers in French. I thanked him and headed back, this time more cautiously up the six rickety flights.

  I handed Colette the bouquets. She brought the flowers to her nose, closed her painted eyes, inhaled, and smiled.

  The mist had turned to drizzle, and with nothing to protect the painting, I placed it under my jacket, the hundred-year-old canvas next to my heart.

  When the rain got worse, I got a cab. I looked at the painting, noted the heavy paint, slightly cracked with age, but the colors remained vibrant and alive. When I finally stopped studying the painting, the Paris streets had gone dark. I got my cell phone out and saw I had missed two calls, both of them from Étienne Chaudron.

  58

  I let the lion’s-head knocker fall back against the heavy wooden door, Étienne Chaudron’s messages, both identical, playing in my mind:

  I have something important I must show you, something in my great-uncle’s meticulous hand… Please come.

  His tone was urgent, almost pleading, so much so I had asked the taxicab driver to take me directly to his home.

  I jammed Peruggia’s painting into the waistband of my jeans and tried the knocker again. When there was no response, I used my cell, but the call went straight to Chaudron’s voicemail for the third time.

  “It’s Luke Perrone,” I said. “I’m at your front door. It’s…”—I checked my phone—“almost nine o’clock.”

  Why, after being so insistent that I come, was he not home? I slid the phone into my breast pocket just behind the stolen journal page and tried the knocker one more time.

  I have something important to show you, something in my great-uncle’s meticulous hand…

  I backtracked down the townhouse stairs and looked up. Several windows were lit like bright rectangles of yellow against the dark night.

  Back up the stairs, I tried the knocker again and called out, “Étienne!”

  Was that music? Maybe that was it… They couldn’t hear me over the music. I leaned against the door to listen, and it creaked opened.

  “Étienne?” I said, quieter now. “It’s Luke Perrone.” No one could possibly hear me over the music, which was blasting, the same pop song the girlfriend had been playing when I had been here earlier.

  I took a step in.

  A ceramic lamp cast everything in shadow: wallpaper, rugs, an antique side table—on it several cigarettes crushed in an ashtray. The suitcases were still lined up in the hallway.

  Another step in, I called louder, “Étienne!”

  The song ended, but a moment later, it started again, as if on repeat. It was coming from upstairs.

  I’d taken only a few more steps when I saw her, Chaudron’s girlfriend, on the staircase, her head on the bottom step, one leg stretched above, the other bent at an impossible angle, her eyes open and fixed.

  Breath caught in my throat, frozen for a minute, then I moved on automatic, searching for a pulse in her neck, her wrist, though there was little doubt she was dead: her nightgown was soaked with blood.

  Hands trembling, I fumbled the cell phone from my pocket, smearing it with the girl�
��s blood, not sure who to call. Did the French use 911?

  That damn pop song was playing over and over. Steam hissed from a radiator. The smell of tobacco gone sour in the air. I fought nausea as I followed bloodstains trailing up the stairs.

  Étienne Chaudron lay on the floor just outside his bedroom, face beaten, blue robe gone purple with blood.

  The music was blaring, sending shock waves through my body, the bedroom door half-open, and I dared look in—the room trashed, drawers dumped, pillows slashed, feathers everywhere, several doing a slow dance in the air. Had this just happened?

  From the look of Chaudron’s face, or what was left of it, I guessed he had not given up whatever it was the killer had been searching for.

  Something important to show you, something in my great-uncle’s meticulous hand…

  My pulse was racing. Had Chaudron’s call been interrupted—or had there been a gun to his head when he’d called? Had someone else wanted me here?

  An alarm—intuitive and raw—sounded inside my head: Get out—now!

  I moved backward down the stairs, almost stumbling over the girl’s body, the cell phone in my hand covered in her blood, and could not stop the thought: What else have I touched: the doorknob, the lion’s-head knocker, the banister—the girl!—my name and number on Chaudron’s cell phone, along with my messages!

  Head pounding, mouth dry, I made it to the bottom landing, stood there a moment, looking one way, then the other, alarm still sounding in my brain, body tingling. In the living room, the sheets had been pulled off the furniture, cushions slit, foam bubbling out of them as if they had erupted, a shattered vase, shards of pottery on the floor, an armoire with its drawers open, a table upended.

  I tried to think over the music and the sound of my own blood pulsing in my ears. I looked up and saw the Vermeer painting.

  Something important to show you, in my great-uncle’s meticulous hand…

  The same words Chaudron had used earlier when speaking of the Vermeer painting.

  I wrestled the painting off the wall and turned it around. There was a wad of folded pages wedged into the wooden stretcher bars. I got them out, unfolded them… No question they were from Peruggia’s journal, the handwriting, the buff paper, the torn edges.

  Everything of my great-uncle’s went to my older sister…this painting…some papers…

  I tried to read, but my mind was spinning, impossible. I’d read them later. Now, get out of here!

  I stuffed them into my jacket pocket. A moment later, I felt the stirring of air and heard the intake of breath.

  “Just what I have been looking for.”

  The man came around to face me, gun in his hand. “I will take that.”

  A split second to think, a move toward my breast pocket. He slapped my hand away and reached in. He came out with a folded, blood-streaked page. Then he pressed the gun against my temple and cocked the trigger.

  59

  New York City

  The collector replaced the burned-out spotlight, then moved from one artwork to another. He took in the skillful brushwork of a Monet seascape, the brilliant color in a Matisse still life, lingered in front of a piece he’d acquired only a few days ago, a Toulouse-Lautrec gouache on cardboard, a woman pulling up her stockings, simple and sexy. He admired the way the artist had created a figure out of a few quickly sketched lines, the use of white paint on the shoulders and breasts to give them volume and bring them forward, the stark red-orange of her hair. He did not need the piece, nor had he commissioned the theft. He had almost said no, but the opportunity was too good, the artwork first-rate and an excellent addition to his collection.

  From Lautrec to Leonardo, the two artists worlds apart, yet both fascinated by feminine beauty, Lautrec’s woman earthy and real, Leonardo’s lady ethereal and bewitching, beyond mortal man. But not beyond him.

  It had been twenty years since he had acquired the Leonardo, the fence who’d sold it to him a Frenchman who claimed to represent an upper-class French family whose great-grandmother had owned many well-known artworks of dubious provenance. The family, afraid to have such a famous painting in their possession, were willing to part with it for a mere five million dollars, though he had bargained them down to three, a pittance if indeed it were real, but he still did not have proof.

  How many trips had he made to Paris and the Louvre to stand in front of the painting to study it for similarities or differences, none of which he could ever see? He knew about good forgeries, and it was possible that was all he had. He raised his magnifying glass and drew it slowly across the painting’s surface. But what was he looking for? Was there something here that would prove the painting’s authenticity? He had no idea. Not yet. But soon.

  60

  At the sound of the cocked trigger, I reacted, elbowed the man in the ribs, and he faltered but fired, the gun going off so close to my head I felt the bullet whiz by, my ears ringing. But the gun popped out of his grip, zipped through the air, and hit the floor with a clunk, both of us now lunging for it, falling together, the big guy landing on top of me. Air exploded out of me, a sharp pain in my ribs, but I still scrambled, straining to reach the gun.

  He got there first.

  His hand on the grip, other arm around my neck, cold steel against my temple, the trigger cocked again. No time to pray.

  A flash. Not a shot. Another man sprinting across the room, knocking the gun from the big guy’s hand, a kick to his gut, the guy rolling off me as the second man dove, the two of them rolling on the floor just beside me, and I joined the fight—all of us punching, kicking, cursing, staggering forward to get hold of the gun, one massive six-armed, six-legged creature. I wasn’t sure who got it, just knew it wasn’t me, heard it fire, and a yowling cry, a man up, holding his side, tearing down the hall and out the front door.

  I managed to get up, the other man still on the floor.

  “Perrone!” he shouted.

  I tried to get my bearings, to make sense of it—make sense of him. “What the… What are you doing here?”

  “How about saying”—he struggled for a breath—“thank you for saving…my life?”

  “Fuck that,” I said. “Maybe I…just saved yours!”

  61

  I was led from the townhouse to a police station and into an interrogation room where I was left alone. Cold fluorescent light. One mirrored wall. No doubt someone watching from the other side. I rapped on it, asked “Anyone there?” then stared at my reflection—disheveled hair and sleep-deprived eyes, one swollen and twitching, a purple bruise already forming on my jaw. An hour passed. I knocked on the mirror again and called, “Hello…hello?” then asked to see a lawyer. I might as well have been talking to myself.

  Another hour passed, then the door opened, and the guy strode in, deep scratches on his cheek and the beginning of a black eye. He handed me a Styrofoam cup of black coffee.

  I stared into his face. “Who are you?”

  He dragged a chair up to the table, lit a cigarette, then laid his ID on the table—blue, laminated, his picture on it, the word INTERPOL at the top. He took out a second card, said, “This has my personal cell-phone number,” and jammed it into my shirt pocket. “You’re going to need it.”

  “What’s this about, Smith, if that’s even your name. John Smith… You couldn’t think of anything better than that?”

  “I never gave you a false name, no reason to…” He raised his glasses, met my eyes. “The Paris police have lent me this room for my investigation.”

  “Investigation?”

  “I’ve been following you, Perrone, and it is a good thing for you that I have, or you would be dead.”

  “Like I said before, it’s debatable who saved who.”

  “The man had his gun to your head, Perrone.”

  “And then at yours,” I said.

  “What did you stuff
into your pants after the fight?”

  I tugged the small painting out of my waistband and placed it on the table. “I always keep a spare in my pants.”

  Smith didn’t laugh, stared at it a moment. “Whose painting is it?”

  I considered telling him it was mine but told the truth. “Peruggia’s.”

  “I’ll just hold onto that,” he said, “for evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  He didn’t answer, instead told me he had already searched my Florence hotel room, had been through my laptop too, then slapped the journal onto the table.

  “How did you get that?”

  “INTERPOL credentials open doors. I asked the librarian what you’d been reading and might have implied you were under arrest, so she was particularly cooperative. I don’t think you’ll be welcomed back there. I thought it was a good idea to get the journal when I saw you were leaving Florence. A lot safer with me.”

  “Yeah. I feel safer already.”

  “I could have gone to the library anytime, you know, but I wanted to watch you, see what you were up to. You could have died tonight.” Smith sat back, locked his hands behind his head, said he knew I had come to Florence to read Vincenzo Peruggia’s journal, that he’d seen my correspondence with Luigi Quattrocchi.

  I cut him off to say that Quattrocchi had been avoiding me, that he was missing.

  “Quattrocchi is dead.”

  “What?” I had known something was wrong, but still it was a shock.

  “You don’t realize who you are dealing with, Perrone. There’s a network of art thieves and collectors out there who will stop at nothing to protect themselves and get what they want. That man tonight, he’ll be back. If not him, someone else.”

  “Why?”

  “I would venture to say that he—or the people he’s working for—think you know something important.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  He leaned across the table, face close to mine, prickling with expectation. “You speak to Quattrocchi and he’s dead. You visit Étienne Chaudron and he’s dead—”