The Last Mona Lisa

by Jonathan Santlofer

  “This one you also purchased from Monsieur Chaudron,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I saw it in his studio. It is called Le Chemin de Sèvres. The original hangs in the Louvre.”

  With his mouth set tight, Fournier dragged the damp cloth across the landscape. It came away stained with color. Now he turned back to his Mona Lisa, staring hard at the initials. He tested the surface again in another corner, and one more time, the cloth came away blemished by pigment.

  “I thought she was mine,” he said, his voice a mix of disgust and defeat. “What a fool I was.”

  Vincent would have agreed, for he felt no pity for him, but he needed his help. “We are both fools.”

  “I want them dead!” Fournier said.

  “But first you want your money back, no?”

  “Can you find them?” Fournier asked.

  “I am determined to do just that. But I have no idea where they might be. I hoped you would know.”

  Fournier shook his head, then stopped. “Wait… I bought another painting from Valfiero just a few months ago.”

  Vincent asked to see it.

  “I sold it,” Fournier said. “It is probably another forgery, and if so, I am now implicated. But that is not the point. What matters is how I bought it and where—from Chaudron’s studio in the south of France.”

  “And you have been there?”

  “No,” Fournier said. “I sent a courier. I had been given a daguerreotype of the painting. I paid half before, the other half when it was delivered.”

  “Whom did you pay?”

  “Valfiero. He was always the intermediary, the businessman. I never met Chaudron.”

  “And this courier, you can reach him?”

  “There is no need.” Fournier turned to a small desk and slid open the drawer. “Here,” he said and handed Vincent a small card. On it, the name Café Bleu. “It is in the town of Lacoste, in the Vaucluse region. That is all I know, all that Valfiero would tell me, and all that I was allowed to tell my courier.”

  “So your courier went?”

  “Yes. He met Valfiero in the café, where money was exchanged for the painting.”

  “And you say this was only a few months ago?”

  Fournier nodded.

  Vincent took the card and slipped it into his pocket.

  “So you will go?” Fournier asked.

  “Yes. Right away.”

  “I will go with you. I want to confront those bastards!” Fournier shouted, fists clenched.

  “Monsieur, you are the president of a bank. Are you willing to take such a risk with your reputation?”

  Fournier drew in a long breath, looked at Vincent, then back at his counterfeit beauty. “No, I will have to trust you.”

  And so, they made a pact. If Vincent retrieved the money, he would return the bulk of it to Fournier and keep a third as his reward.

  In truth, Vincent’s plans did not include Fournier. If he found Valfiero and Chaudron and got the money, he had no intention of sharing it with anyone. That money represented the return of his son and that was all he cared about. Fournier could afford to lose the money. But Vincent could not.

  The Café Bleu was in the center of the small medieval town of Lacoste. Vincent walked from the train station, the train a necessary expense though one he could hardly afford. It had been a long walk, though even in the cold and drizzle, the walled town appeared lovely and peaceful. The café was neat and simple, tables with blue-and-white-checkered tablecloths, matching curtains.

  The waitress, a young woman, blond and pretty, greeted him with a smile, and for a moment, his eyes played a trick, transforming her into Simone. He tried and failed to stifle a loud sigh.

  The waitress asked if he was all right.

  “Yes, fine. Thank you. A brandy, please. It is so cold.” He rubbed his hands together.

  “Yes, it has been awful, raining for days. How I long for the sun.”

  It was the kind of thing Simone often said about the cold Parisian days, Vincent thought. “Do you live in town?”

  “Yes. My entire life.” She eyed him a moment, perhaps uneasy about giving such information to a stranger. Vincent smiled to put her at ease.

  “Where are you from, monsieur?”

  Vincent almost said nowhere. “Paris. Though not originally.”

  “Oh, Paris! I’ve never been but I long to go. Is it very beautiful?” Her face filled with longing.

  “Yes, very beautiful.” Vincent wanted to tell her everything, this girl who reminded him of Simone.

  “One day, I must go.”

  “Yes, you must. Paris will embrace you. It is a city that admires beauty,” Vincent said, unable to stop himself, a foolish man flirting with a young girl.

  “Oh—” She blushed. “Your brandy.” She scurried away, her wide skirt billowing above her ankles, evoking yet another vision of Simone.

  Vincent stared after her, then forced himself to look away. He slid the journal out from under his jacket, opened it, and scrawled across a page, “Arrived,” followed by “Café Bleu,” then closed it. He would fill in the details later.

  The girl returned and placed a glass of brandy in front of him. “Would you care for something to eat? We have a wonderful herb omelet or—”

  “Perhaps in a moment. After this.” He raised the brandy glass. “I wonder if you know a friend of mine, a fellow artist.”

  “You are an artist? How merveilleux! I thought perhaps you were a writer,” she said, eyeing the blue-covered journal.

  “Oh, this… It is just…a notepad, nothing special.” He drew it closer. “My friend, the artist, Yves Chaudron, I believe he lives nearby.”

  “There are some artists living in town and just beyond.”

  “He is a small man with a mustache and—”

  “May I help you?” A woman of fifty or so had come up behind the waitress, her tone unfriendly and suspicious.

  “My mère,” the girl said.

  Vincent stood and bowed slightly. The woman did not smile, her eyes wary.

  “Who is it you are looking for?” she asked.

  Vincent described Chaudron again, and the woman shook her head no, very curt, very fast.

  “Perhaps his friend then,” Vincent said and, without naming him, described Valfiero, from his pointy nose and sharp features to his limp and silver cane.

  The woman’s face opened, then closed. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh…” Vincent waved a hand, straining for nonchalance. “We had business in Paris once. I was passing through and remembered he had a house nearby.”

  He could see the woman taking stock of him, his dark, foreign looks, his worn jacket.

  “I do not know such a man, monsieur.” She turned to her daughter. “Brigitte, there are other customers.”

  Only two that Vincent could see, a couple at a table across the room.

  “Oui, maman,” Brigitte said and turned away.

  Vincent sipped his brandy, convinced the mother knew Valfiero; he’d seen it in her face. After a moment, he signaled Brigitte.

  “Another brandy, monsieur? Perhaps something to eat now?”

  “Yes. Another brandy, and that omelet you mentioned.” He had little money left but he was hungry, and he needed to spend more time here, needed to get the answers he had come for. Valfiero and Chaudron were nearby; he could feel it.

  By the time he’d finished a smoke, Brigitte had replaced his brandy with a new one and set the omelet just beside it, the eggs golden and sprinkled with green herbs, and Vincent scooped up a forkful. “This is delicious. Did you make it?”

  “Oh, no. The cook—my mother—did.”

  “Please tell her it is excellent.”

  “I will,” she said. “You must excuse my mother. She c
an be a little abrupt with strangers.”

  “It is perfectly understandable. I apologize if I was rude to her.”

  “Oh, no,” Brigitte said, waiting as if wanting to say something more. She leaned down as if to arrange the salt and pepper shakers, though they did not need rearranging. “The man you speak of,” she whispered, “the one with the cane and limp, an odd duck, who spends his money freely in town and often on dinner and drinks here. My mother would not like to lose his business.”

  “I only want to say hello to him. It has been some time since we last saw each other. When you live in a big city like Paris, you lose track of old friends. It is sad. We were once quite close, and I would like to see him again.”

  Brigitte took a moment to look behind her, then leaned down again, whispering. “He lives in an old stone house with blue shutters and tall evergreens on either side, about two miles south of town. It is the only house for miles. And the other man, the artist you described, he is there too.”

  Vincent thanked her, taking hold of her hand. He wanted to press it against his cheek, to call her Simone, if just for a minute.

  She let him hold her hand a moment, then gently slid it out, and when he looked up, her face was flushed before she hurried away.

  Outside, the damp and drizzle had not let up. Vincent tucked the journal into the waistband of his trousers and pulled his jacket over it. He peeked through the café’s window for one last look at Brigitte. He felt embarrassed by his actions with such a young woman and walked quickly past the small shops that lined the town’s main street until he came to the old stone wall and passed through the archway. Here, the sidewalks gave way to a dirt road.

  He felt a combination of excitement and rage, which he had been tamping down for months. Now, as he walked, he let it fuel him. He only wanted what he was owed, but he was prepared to fight for it, the switchblade in his pocket hammering against his thigh with each step.

  The clouds parted, and rays of sun illuminated the stone house with blue shutters. It stood alone on an incline, the tall evergreens the waitress, Brigitte, had described standing like sentries on either side.

  Vincent tugged the journal out for one last entry. “Trovati!” he wrote. I found them!

  71

  “Holy shit!” Smith was up, lighting a cigarette. “So what’s next? Did he go to Paris? Did he sell the painting?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s it, all he wrote.”

  “You kidding? Fuck. Well, at least we got the most important info, how to identify the forged Mona Lisa paintings.”

  It was true, and what I’d come here to find out. So why did I feel a hollowness in my gut and an overwhelming sense of loss?

  Smith was already planted in front of his laptop, fingers on the keyboard. “I need to run a check on this Fournier,” he said. “Maybe there’s something in my INTERPOL databank.”

  “A hundred years later?”

  “You never know.” He typed for a minute. “Nope, nothing on the name Georges Fournier.” A couple more minutes of typing, then he turned the laptop around.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Google Maps, a street view.”

  A grand-looking house with a silver-domed roof filled most of the screen.

  “The banker’s house… It’s still there?”

  “Yeah,” Smith said, “and tomorrow, we go check it out.”

  72

  “I’ll do the talking,” Smith said, then raised the knocker, which was large and made of metal, possibly iron, the face of a horned creature with a heavy ring that hung from its mouth. It looked old, expensive, and a little intimidating, like everything about the domed house.

  A woman in her sixties opened the door, elegant and crisp-looking in a beige straight skirt and blouse. Smith displayed his INTERPOL ID, introduced me as his “associate,” and I felt it again, a thrill that went even further back than my posse, something primal: the little boy who loved playing with toy soldiers.

  Smith told her we were there on old but official business and added “rien de sérieux,” his French pretty good to my ear, but the woman answered in English, the way the French always do, and she looked wary, eyeing Smith suspiciously. “Are you Madame Leblond, the present owner of this house?”

  She nodded, and he asked if we could come in. She hesitated, opened the door, then led us through a foyer that opened into a large sitting room with modern furniture and abstract paintings on the walls, incongruous in such a stately old home. She indicated a sleek leather sofa for us and arranged herself on a stiff-backed chair tentatively, eyes narrowed, mistrustful.

  Smith asked if she had lived there long, and she said, “Why?”

  “It’s a simple question, Madame.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve lived here much of my life. It was my grandfather’s home, then my father’s.”

  “Does anyone else live here with you?” Smith asked.

  “No. I live alone. Is this really necessary?”

  I wanted to tell Smith to take it easy, use a little finesse. It was clear he was a researcher, someone unused to questioning people, his technique, such as it was, a tad less than charming.

  Smith told her it was just routine, asked again if she lived alone.

  “Yes,” she said, “I am divorced. I have a son, but he lives with his wife on the Île Saint-Louis. Now what is this about?”

  “Your grandfather was Georges Fournier?”

  “My mother’s father. He died before I was born.”

  “May I ask how—”

  “Monsieur.” Madame Leblond cut Smith off and stood up. “You will have to explain why you are here and what this is about before I answer another question.”

  I tapped Smith’s arm, but he ignored me.

  “You’re not in any trouble, Madame.”

  “I should hope not! I know nothing of my grandfather’s affairs.”

  “But you live in his house.”

  “Is that a crime?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t think I want to talk about this any further,” she said.

  “It’s nothing to be alarmed about,” Smith said, “just a few more questions. Please, sit.”

  Madame Leblond sat, though she did not look happy about it. She said she had inherited the house when her parents died. Smith asked how, and she hesitated, then said “In a car accident, a long time ago.” He said he was sure her grandfather had been admirable and honest, just that he may have come in contact with a painting that had a dubious provenance, not that he would have known.

  “It’s only lately”—I made it up as I spoke—“that this painting has come to light. That’s all we are checking.”

  She looked surprised but also, for the first time, interested. “I am afraid my grandfather’s collection is long gone,” she said, “except for the joke.”

  “The joke?” I said.

  “Come have a look,” she said.

  The study was dark, totally unlike the bright, modern sitting room, bookcases sagging under the weight of overfilled shelves, an easy chair with stuffing dangling beneath its seat, wallpaper curling along the seams. But none of this mattered. What caught my eye was the painting.

  “It is humorous, no?” Madame Leblond said. “The joke, as I have always called it.”

  Neither Smith nor I were smiling, the two of us mesmerized by the painting, which hung on a wire, unframed.

  “I guess it is quite good,” she said, “for a copy.”

  I came in closer to study the brushwork, the soft blurring sfumato. I saw the initials too, could even make them out upside down.

  “And this belonged to your grandfather?” Smith kept his voice steady and calm.

  “I believe so. It has been hanging in this spot since I was a little girl. This was my grandfather’s study, then my father’
s. I did not want to change it. Not even to change the wallpaper or paint the walls. Sentimental of me, I suppose, but after my father died, I decided to leave everything as it was.” She turned to face us. “This can’t possibly be the painting you have come to see.”

  “It is,” Smith said.

  She asked why, and he said there were other such fakes and that INTERPOL was collecting and cataloging them so they could never be sold as originals.

  Madame Leblond looked incredulous. “How could anyone believe this painting is real when everyone knows the original is in the Louvre Museum?”

  “Some people are easily fooled,” Smith said, trying to sound offhand.

  “Goodness,” she said, “if I thought that were possible, I would have sold it for a million euros years ago!” She laughed for the first time, then sobered. “I am kidding, of course. It was the only painting left in the house when I took possession. As far as I know, my mother had sold all of her father’s collection after he died.”

  I couldn’t help but ask how her grandfather had died.

  “I believe it was a heart attack,” she said, frowning, “on vacation in the south of France.”

  Smith asked to take a few pictures, cell phone already out, photographing the full painting several times and details, then asked if it was okay if we took the painting off the wall.

  “Mon dieu!” she said when she saw the back, the faux stains and the Louvre seal, all perfectly replicated. “I never saw the back,” she said. “How remarkable.”

  Smith said nothing, his cell phone camera clicking away. While he took pictures, I asked another question. “You say your grandfather died in the south of France. Do you happen to know the name of the town?”

  “A small town in the Vaucluse region,” she said. “I believe it was Lacoste.”

  Lacoste.

  The medieval town Vincent had described was back in my mind, along with too many unanswered questions: Did he find Valfiero and Chaudron? Get what he was owed? Ever see his son again?