The Last Mona Lisa

by Jonathan Santlofer

  “He doesn’t love me,” Alex said to Baine, as if trying to telegraph what she wanted me to hear—you do not love me!

  “Beauty for beauty,” Baine said, looking from Alex to the two Mona Lisa paintings. “A fair exchange.”

  “He won’t do it,” Alex said. “Believe me. He won’t.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Baine said.

  “Go ahead then,” she said. “Do it.”

  Baine drew the gun closer to her breast, but I saw something in his face—doubt? fear?—and his hand was trembling.

  A split second to make the decision, body coiled, ready to leap.

  97

  “Stay where you are!” Baine cocked the trigger. “Do not make me do this.”

  I froze; there wasn’t enough time. I looked at Baine, then Alex, and caught a look between them, something fraught, but more than that.

  “Go on,” Alex said to Baine, chest out, challenging him.

  “Oh, Alexis, what does it matter now? I lost you so long ago.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You did.”

  “She still blames me for divorcing her crazy mother,” Baine said. “It’s absurd. The woman is mad as a hatter.”

  Alex’s slap came fast and hard. Baine didn’t flinch, but his cheek bloomed red.

  “Your father?” I said.

  “People find it so hard to understand.” Baine shrugged. “But really, what is this parent-child thing, a mass of cells and genes? Any fool can procreate.”

  “Go on then!” Alex said. “Shoot me! Shoot us both!” She was practically shrieking now, her body trembling. “Is that what you want, the two of us rotting away in your little vault with your dead artists and your dead artworks! Go on then. Shoot!”

  Baine just sighed and shook his head. “How little you understand about beauty and immortality, Alexis. It’s hard to believe you really are my daughter. And such a sweet child you were, all smiles and golden ringlets, and so eager to please.” He turned to me. “Of course, she still is. Not with me, not unless it’s about money, but you saw it, didn’t you, Luke, her eagerness to please, to do whatever is necessary. Quite effective, isn’t she?”

  Alex turned to me, tears tracking down her cheeks, and I lunged, tried to wrest the gun from Baine’s hand, but he swung it hard into my face and I staggered back, a hand to my cheek.

  Alex screamed.

  Baine cried, “Watch out! Do not get blood on my paintings!”

  I stared at my fingertips, the red, the blood, and it came to me. All he cared about. His paintings. I swiped my bloody hand against an Edouard Manet seascape.

  “Stop!” Baine shouted.

  I yanked the painting off the wall and threw it to the floor, foot hovering inches above it. “The painting or Alex,” I said, daring him. Was he really willing to kill his own child for a roomful of art? When he said nothing, I brought my foot down hard, grinding it into the canvas. Baine’s face went from pain to stone, but he didn’t lower the gun from Alex’s heart.

  “Plenty of Manets in the world,” he said with a studied calm, though I could see his hand was shaking. “Enough. I want my answer now. Which Mona Lisa is the original?” He pressed the gun against Alex so hard she let out a cry.

  “Wait—” I said. “I’ll tell you.” I moved quickly to the twin paintings, made a show of looking from one to the other.

  Baine was waiting but impatient, the gun twitching in his hand.

  “Give me a minute,” I said. “I’m trying to find something here.”

  “Where?” Baine inched closer.

  “Something the art forger, Yves Chaudron, put into his copies.” I bent down to study the lower painting, peering closely at its surface. “Yes. It’s here.”

  “What is…where?”

  “Wait…” I glanced up, eyes on the painting above. “Damn. It’s in this one too!”

  Baine’s eyes flicked between the two paintings.

  “I hate to tell you,” I said, “but you’ve got two fakes.”

  “No! How can you tell? Show me.”

  “It’s easier to see in this one,” I said and bent down, pointing at the spot just below Lisa del Giocondo’s hands. “Look for yourself.”

  Baine kept the gun trained on Alex and leaned over, trying to see what I had pointed out. And in that instant, I bolted up, the top of my head connecting with his jaw. Baine tumbled backward, and his gun fired just as a large silhouette filled the vault’s entrance.

  98

  The intruder’s silhouette had taken solid form, the man who had attacked Smith and me in the park. “The gate was easy to pick,” he said, a gun in his hand. “You should warn your rich neighbors.”

  Baine had righted himself and was rubbing his jaw. The Ed Brown Compact had flown out of his hand after firing and lay in a corner of the vault like a small creature playing possum.

  Alex, flattened against a wall, held the mangled Manet painting against her chest like a shield.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, and she nodded, though she looked pale and unsteady.

  The intruder glanced at the two Mona Lisa paintings, then at Baine. “I am the one who sent you the second painting. I work for you, or for your middleman, that fool you sent to kill me.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Baine said.

  The intruder smiled, lips pulled back to expose his small, stained teeth. “Your middleman is dead, but I have his cell phone, with your number on it. I do not think you want to play games with me.”

  Baine gave a bored shrug. “How much do you want?”

  “Not money,” he said.

  “What else is there? Art?”

  “I am here for your life.” He took a step, thrust the gun into Baine’s gut hard enough to make him double over.

  As he did, I lunged for the Ed Brown, got it, and aimed it at the intruder.

  “You shoot me and I shoot this pig,” he said, his weapon still aimed at Baine. “But I am used to shooting and you are not. I will manage one more shot, and you will die too.”

  I cocked the gun.

  Alex cried out, “Luke…no!”

  The intruder aimed his gun.

  Baine lunged, grabbing hold of the guy’s arm. Baine lunged, grabbing hold of the guy’s arm, but the guy fired, once, twice, and Baine fell. But the gun fell too, just enough time for me to fire, and I did, again and again, until the gun was out of bullets.

  It was only then that time normalized and I could see what had happened: Baine in a corner gripping his shoulder, the intruder on the floor, blood leaching out of his head and chest, Alex against the wall, her eyes shut tight. A moment later, she dropped the Manet painting, toppled forward, and I raced to catch her.

  I saw it now. A bullet had torn through her sweater, a spot of dark maroon spreading.

  “Oh no! God no!” Baine cried, crawling toward her.

  “It was…your bullet,” she said. “You…who killed me, Father.”

  “No…no… I never would have done it… It was just a threat…a game.”

  “A game?” Alex laughed, a bubble of blood bursting at her lips. “Go to…hell.”

  Baine curled up in the corner, clutched his shoulder, and whimpered.

  I got my arms around Alex, noticed for the first time that I’d been hit, a sleeve of my blue shirt streaked with blood, but I hardly felt it and didn’t care. I held Alex, told her not to talk, that she’d be okay.

  She whispered my name, “Luke,” asked me to hold her, to talk to her. “Tell me anything,” she said.

  I held her tight and started talking. “Remember how the librarian was always telling us to be quiet, and the Duomo lit up at night, so beautiful and…” I stopped, choked up, couldn’t think.

  “Please…don’t…stop…” She gripped my arm.

  “Hang on,” I said. “You�
��re going to be fine.”

  “Please,” she said, “keep…talking.”

  “Yes,” I said and joked about the plague book she’d been reading and slid the cell phone from my pocket and dialed 911, told them where we were as another image slid across my brain: Vincent in the back of a taxi, holding Simone and singing while she coughed blood and begged him not to stop.

  Alex’s face had gone white, her lips purple. I kept talking—about the café where we’d first had coffee and the fancy hotel where we had spent our first night—but by then, Alex’s grip had loosened, she’d gone slack in my arms, and I knew she could no longer hear me.

  99

  The day was chilly but there were hopeful signs of spring, trees starting to bloom, crocuses making their way up through patches of earth, the sky a sharp cerulean blue, the sun strong. I had over an hour and wanted to walk, to think. So much time had passed, and I was still trying to make sense of things and how I felt. I headed north up the Bowery past Cooper Union, its old buildings in sharp contrast to the new modern one, something I’d been thinking about a lot lately—the past and the present. There was construction on every other street, adding to the noise in my head as I made my way uptown, though I still arrived early.

  It was just past lunchtime, the café half-empty. I chose a booth in the back, ordered coffee, and passed the time checking my phone, reading and rereading emails so that when Alex said, “Hi,” I was startled to look up and see her.

  She took a seat opposite, removed her silk scarf, and unbuttoned her jacket.

  “You look well,” I said, measuring my words. I wanted to say You look so beautiful, and she did. Though something had changed, something knowing and open in her expression, almost as if I were seeing the real Alex for the first time.

  She ordered a cup of tea and waited until the waitress was gone. “You shaved,” she said. “I can see your face.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Yes,” she said, then looked down.

  I hadn’t seen her since that night she’d been shot almost four months ago, and though I had called the hospital every day, had gone there on three separate occasions, she had refused to see me, until now.

  I asked how she was feeling.

  “I’m fine now,” she said. “The bullet grazed my lung, but you know that. It looked a lot worse than it was.” She laid her hand over her breast as she spoke, then took it away as if the gesture was too intimate. “The surgeon told me I was lucky…” She paused, thanked me for coming to the hospital, asked about my arm, which had totally healed, then said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t, couldn’t see you, but—”

  “I’m just glad you’re okay,” I said.

  She thanked me again and let out a breath. “I want to say that I’m sorry, that I…” She shook her head and fell silent as if she’d run out of words or had reconsidered what she’d been about to say, then painted on a smile. “Enough about me. What have you been doing?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “You don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That I returned it—the Mona Lisa.”

  “What?” She leaned toward me.

  I leaned forward too, wanted to touch her face, to kiss her, but held back, strained to keep my emotions in check while I told her what happened.

  “You understand this is not for public consumption. None of this can be repeated,” I said and asked for her word.

  “Yes, I swear.”

  I decided to trust her, because in fact, I was bursting to tell her. “I went to Paris—to the Louvre—explained everything, showed them the evidence, and gave them back the original. That’s the short version. It was a bit more complicated. I worked through INTERPOL, had an analyst and an inspector along with me. I’ll tell you all about it another time.” The words another time echoed in my head, and I kind of hoped there would be one. “But it worked out really well for my friend, Smith, the analyst. He was reinstated, even got a big promotion, but that’s another story.”

  “You have friends at INTERPOL? I always knew you were a spy,” she said and laughed, then stopped. “So you’re telling me you found the original painting and returned it to the Louvre, that the Mona Lisa that has been in the museum all these years was a fake?”

  I nodded.

  “And the original was—where? How did you find it?”

  “It was…” I paused, couldn’t help dragging out the moment. “Hanging on the wall in your father’s vault.”

  “What? Wait… So you lied to him that day?”

  I nodded again.

  “Wow,” she said, was quiet a moment, then, “Promise me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “That my father will never find out he had the original. I don’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing that.”

  “He won’t hear it from my lips.”

  “Nor mine,” she said and sat back, shaking her head. “So you won’t get any credit for this major discovery?”

  “No,” I said. “We made a promise to the museum. Only the Louvre and INTERPOL know the truth. All the documents, everything, are sealed. For all I know, shredded.”

  “Wow,” she said again. “Well, I’ll never breathe a word of it.”

  “You can’t. Not even at your father’s trial.”

  “I promise,” she said. “But there won’t be a trial.”

  “What do you mean? Why not?”

  “He probably spent a day in jail, if that. I’m sure he’s out on bail, though I don’t really know. I haven’t spoken to him, and I don’t intend to, not ever.” She sucked in a breath, let it out slowly.

  I told her we didn’t have to talk about it if it was too difficult, and she said it was okay, that she wanted to talk.

  “So why no trial?” I asked.

  “He’ll be long gone before that ever happens.”

  “Isn’t he wearing one of those ankle things?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s paid someone to wear it for him by now. He has money hidden in accounts all over the world. He’ll simply disappear.”

  “At least all his stolen paintings were returned.”

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s something.”

  We were both quiet.

  I wanted to tell her how much I cared for her, ask if she’d ever cared for me, but I didn’t say either, afraid to hear her answer. Instead, I asked, “How’s your mother doing?”

  Alex took a moment. “She’s why I did it… You know that?”

  I nodded. I had figured that out.

  “My fath—Baine, threatened to put her in a dreadful state facility, and…” She took a breath, held it a moment. “It doesn’t excuse anything, I know that. But everything Baine paid me I put in an account for her care. I’ve prepaid the facility for the next two years, which is something. After that…well, I have time to figure it out.”

  “That’s great,” I said, and she nodded, running a finger under the chain that held her locket, a thin gold line against her cream-colored skin, like the painting I’d been making of her.

  “So why Verde?” I asked.

  “It’s my mother’s maiden name. My father left when I was a kid. There was no reason to use his—” She stopped, then softly, “Look, I have to say it. I’m sorry, Luke. For everything. I never thought, never imagined—”

  I was sorry too and said so. I had rehearsed this moment a dozen times, the things I wanted to say, but they no longer seemed to matter, and sorry was enough.

  Alex nodded, brightened a bit, asked what else was going on with me, and though I was a lot less interested in talking about myself, I wanted to keep her there, so I told her I was painting again and how different the work was from what I’d been doing before. “I’ve even had a few dealers over, and one of them is interested in giving me a show when I get a body of work together, which may take
a while but—”

  “You see,” she said. “I told you once that you had nothing to worry about, that you’d get another gallery, remember?”

  I said I did and remembered thinking that even then, she seemed to believe in me and how much it had meant to me. “I think I asked if you were a witch.”

  “No comment,” she said but smiled and said she was happy I was painting again.

  I told her how I felt I was onto something new and how I just wanted to keep painting and see where it led. She leaned in, and I could see she was really listening. I wanted to tell her everything about my new paintings because I wanted her to respect me, to be proud of me, something I’d never had when I was young and had worked so hard to get and had almost lost. I thought of Peruggia, how Simone had believed in him and his art when no one else did, and how, when she died, she had taken that belief with her, and the loss had driven him to lie and steal.

  “A friend told me that you never know what will get you working again, what will fuel you.” What Smith had said to me, something I’d almost forgotten, and he was right.

  “That’s great to hear,” Alex said. “Are you back to teaching?”

  “Yes, and that feels better too.” And it was true. I’d been enjoying it, feeling like I really knew my subject and wanted to be there. “It’s sort of funny,” I said. “I now see the mystery in art history and think I convey some of that to my students.”

  “Now there’s a good course title, ‘The Mystery in Art History.’ It even rhymes.”

  I smiled then fell silent, and so did she. There were so many things I wanted to say that I could almost feel the words at the back of my throat, but I wasn’t sure Alex would want to hear them.

  “I’m glad you’re doing well,” she finally said.

  “And what about you?”

  “I have a lot to sort out.”

  “I’m sure you will,” I said.

  She thanked me, started to get up, and I said, “Stay, please,” no longer caring if I sounded needy.

  She sat, tentative. “I’m thinking about going away.”

  “Oh? For how long?”