by M. J. Rose
“No. I haven’t.”
“Are you ashamed of what happened?”
“Do you really need to know this stuff?”
She smiled. “It helps. Honest.”
“Okay. No. I’m not ashamed.”
“When you hypnotize yourself, what kind of imagery do you use?”
Briefly, he described a process that must have been familiar to her because she nodded as she listened.
“I use a similar method. Would you be willing to let me hypnotize you and see if we can get somewhere? If you need some time to think about it…”
She was offering him exactly what he was paying her for: the opportunity to return to the heart of Malachai Samuels’s lair. He knew enough about hypnosis to fake it.
“Do you have any open appointments later this week?”
Chapter
TEN
Tyler Weil herded the second-graders through the double glass doors of the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The children immediately responded to the hangar-size space and broke ranks. Some ran toward the sloping north wall where the thirty-foot-tall floor-to-ceiling windows looked out into the park; others wanted to see the shallow moat where copper and silver coins sparkled underwater. But the majority of them clambered up the stone steps to the eighty-two-foot-long Temple of Dendur.
When their teacher started to protest and tried to rein them in, Weil shook his head and said, “There’s no better way to interest them in art than to let them play around it and in it.”
The Met’s new director always looked forward to Tuesday mornings, when he left his fourth-floor office and gave these guided tours to schoolchildren. He felt that he was discovering the museum through their eyes in a way that would help him steward it.
Today’s group was special because among the children was Veronica Keyes, the granddaughter of a director of the museum’s board and one of its most generous benefactors. Nina and Veronica were regulars at the Trustees Dining Room for Sunday brunch.
The little girl was standing in front of the fifteen-foot-tall temple—not running around it, playing in it or ignoring it like some of the other kids, but surveying it. Nina had called him earlier that morning to ask him to keep an eye out for Veronica. As much as she loved the museum, she’d become distraught the past few times she’d visited, panicking when she walked into the main lobby, shrieking and wailing as if she were being chased or hunted. When Tyler had met the class at the school entrance earlier he’d been on alert, but Veronica had been fine.
Tyler found her by the moat, looking up at the temple, very contemplative for a seven-year-old.
“Do you like the temple?” he asked.
She nodded. “It came a far way.”
“Yes, all the way from Egypt. Do you want to see on the map?”
“Don’t you think I know where Egypt is?” she said, so indignant that Tyler had to swallow a smile. “It should have more trees around it,” she added.
“Why?”
“So the people who pray and make sacrifices here have somewhere cool to rest afterward.”
Nina often regaled the board of directors with Veronica’s precociousness. She read at a fourth-grade level already and devoured history books. “As if she’s on a quest to find out,” Nina had said.
“I’ll let the head gardener know and see if we can fit in a few more trees.”
“Can we go see the rocodial now?”
Weil smiled at the way she pronounced the word. “Yes, we can.”
Together they walked over to the moat surrounding the temple, where two boys were pointing to the stone sculpture of a small crocodile and making faces at the red granite, first-century-BCE crocodile.
“Have any of you ever seen a real crocodile?” Weil asked.
The taller of the two boys, whose shirt was pulled out of his pants and whose shoelaces were undone, shook his head without taking his eyes off the sculpture. The other, who had a bruise on his chin, said, “I did. In Florida. It had ginormous teeth. Can we see this crocodile’s teeth?”
Weil explained how it was a sculpture and static. “Just like in Florida, they had crocodiles in ancient Egypt, too. They lived on the banks of the Nile and were extremely dangerous—some even say the most dangerous creatures the Egyptians had to deal with.”
“Didn’t they have bears?” asked the child with the bruise.
“Don’t be silly, of course not,” Veronica said.
“Well, maybe they did,” the boy countered.
Before Weil could intervene, he felt the vibration of his cell phone against his hip.
It was his assistant saying it was urgent Weil meet Nicolas Olshling in the shipping department.
Weil had been director of the MMA for five months and this was his first potential crisis. A knot formed in the pit of his stomach as he searched the light-filled room for one of the teachers to let them know he needed to cut the tour short.
Five minutes later he was standing in the windowless shipping room of New York’s greatest museum looking at the contents of an unpacked crate, at what he could only describe as a tragedy, staring hypnotically into a lemon-yellow sun shining over a watery azure sea. The bright orb—or what was left of it—burned his eyes. He felt as if someone had just knifed right through his soul, even though it was the Matisse seascape that was no longer intact.
The painting that lay like a corpse on the stainless steel table had been slashed into ragged ribbons, the irregular strips of canvas attached only at the top to the stained wooden stretcher.
Chapter
ELEVEN
Nicolas Olshling, the head of security, was holding a crowbar as if he needed a weapon against this violence. It was probably what he’d used to open the crate that lay in pieces on the floor.
“Why would anyone do this?” Weil asked. He didn’t really expect a response and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get one.
To Olshling and the other employees in the room, it appeared as if the square-jawed man was completely in control, taking in the situation, assessing the damaged painting and making a decision about how to proceed. What no one could see was that the current head of New York City’s great and glorious museum, who was in charge of a six-hundred-person security force and over one thousand employees, was crying.
“Can someone ask Marie Grimshaw to come down?” he said, without turning around. Weil wanted the curator of the European art department here to identify the painting. “Tell her it’s urgent.”
As Weil returned his attention to the canvas he was vaguely aware of Olshling making a first and then a second call, this last to the FBI Art Crime Team. Exactly right, Weil thought, pleased Olshling was being proactive and not waiting for orders. There was a protocol to follow. The authorities needed to be brought in on this right away.
Weil thought of the Met like a great fortress protected by an army of soldiers with Olshling as their general. His was a job that required constant ingenuity, secrecy and cooperation, and he’d been doing it for over fifteen years without incident. This was one area of the museum Weil had felt confident he could let run without his interference while he got up to speed, and so far he’d been right. The Met’s security department operated as a fully functional independent entity.
Inside each of the entrances, uniformed men and women inspected the briefcases, pocketbooks and shopping bags of the four million people who visited the cultural Mecca yearly. Hundreds more guards patrolled the high-ceilinged exhibition rooms, keeping watch over the treasures and softly warning visitors to step back when they ventured too close to an object. There was also a phalanx of plainclothes men and women disguised as museumgoers, all trained to be on the lookout for any suspicious activity and avert any potential disasters. Behind the scenes there were hundreds more employees who protected the art in other ways, from conservation to temperature control to running security systems. And since September 11, there were more of these vigilant soldiers employed than there had been before. But nothing criminal o
r suspect had ever occurred at the Met to make headlines. For such a large institution, one that served so many, the museum remained a calm shelter in the storm of one of the most frenetic cities in the world.
Until today.
Even though Weil was sure this violence to the Matisse had been done off-site and the Met was simply the recipient of the atrocity, he felt as if he’d failed. The museum had been violated on his watch. His new watch. Weil thought he’d been prepared for how difficult it was going to be to follow in Philippe de Montebello’s footsteps, but he’d been wrong. After three decades that man and the institution he ran had merged, and the museum was still in shock at having a new leader—especially one with such a controversial background and conflict of interest.
No one had expected the trustees to agree on the president of Sotheby’s as the Met’s next director. Dissenters complained that Weil didn’t have the scholarship needed, while those lobbying for him successfully argued that a twenty-first-century museum was not only about the wall hangings. Managing endowments and understanding legal issues—especially those concerning cultural heritage conflicts—were areas in which Weil had extensive knowledge. Overseeing and guiding educational programs, publications, community development and fundraising were all of equal importance, especially in the economic downturn the country was experiencing. There, too, Weil excelled. Sotheby’s was a for-profit corporation, and Weil had been credited with its considerable success under his aegis. On behalf of his choice, the president of the Met’s board argued that while scholarship had flourished under the previous director, income building had languished and the museum’s corporate mission had lost focus.
In the end, Weil had been elected by a small majority. Now, the very last thing he wanted, while he and the Met were still getting acclimated, was a trial by fire, and he feared this urgent situation was about to escalate into one.
“My God.” Marie Grimshaw had arrived and was trying to absorb the monstrosity. The much-beloved elder statesperson of the staff, she was an indomitable scholar who’d authored half-a-dozen books on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists. Usually she was the one who helped everyone else through their crises, but now the seventy-two-year-old woman looked pale. Weil guessed that this time she was going to be in need of some support.
“I’m sorry, Marie,” he said. “I should have asked them to warn you.”
She waved away his concern. “I’ll survive. This hasn’t.”
“I wanted you to see it right away.”
She turned her gaze on him. “Do you know what you have here, Tyler?”
“It’s obviously a Matisse, or done in his style. With all that damage, it’s not easy to be certain.”
“But which Matisse?”
“I don’t recognize it. He did hundreds of seascapes, Marie.” Tyler resented the inquisition.
Like a schoolteacher, she shook her head, admonishing him, and Weil guessed she was pleased with the opportunity to lecture him. Unhappy, like many of the Met’s old guard, that the reins of the museum hadn’t gone to someone who was more of a scholar, she’d been vocal about her concerns over his appointment.
“It’s Matisse’s View of St. Tropez.”
She was watching him with her light blue, inscrutable eyes, waiting, he thought, for some sign of recognition, but the title of the painting didn’t mean anything to him.
“I’d like to know what I’m facing before the FBI shows up. That’s why I asked you to come down here. Would you fill me in on the painting’s background? What’s its significance to us?”
“This Matisse was bequeathed to us in the late 1960s by its owner, who died in 2003. We weren’t able to take possession because it was stolen before its owner died. The robbery was in the news for weeks all around the world, Tyler.”
He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of reacting to the dig. “Thank you, Marie.”
“How did it get here?” Grimshaw asked.
“I haven’t been briefed yet.” Weil turned to Olshling. “Who unpacked this?” he asked, not accusatory but inquisitive. “Do we know who sent it?”
“Joe McBurney, here, unpacked it.” Olshling nodded at a young man in a white smock who shuffled nervously from foot to foot under the director’s scrutiny. “And yes,” he said, pointing to an ordinary white envelope taped to the inside of the crate, “there’s a letter. It’s addressed to you, Mr. Weil.”
Weil bent over and read his name, typed, with no other identifying marks. He reached out for it.
“Mr. Weil, could you just wait a moment?” Olshling reached behind him, pulled a pair of nitrile gloves out of a dispenser and offered them to the director.
Like most professionals who worked around artwork, Weil knew he should wear gloves while examining a work of art to protect the precious objects from the oils on his skin—and in a situation like this, to protect himself from any hazardous materials—but he’d forgotten. From the look in the chief of security’s eyes, Weil knew that Philippe de Montebello wouldn’t have needed to be reminded not to contaminate the evidence.
Hands encased in synthetic rubber, Weil slit open the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper folded around four photographs. He examined each one slowly and carefully before handing the pile to Marie, who had also donned gloves. “I’m guessing these have something in common with the Matisse.”
“You’re right,” she said in a low voice as she looked through the photos a second time. “Every one of these belongs to the museum. All were bequeathed to us, by different donors. And each one was stolen before we were able to take possession.” She handed the pile back to Weil. “What’s going on?” Her voice trembled like a crystal chandelier reacting to a door being slammed shut.
Chapter
TWELVE
Lucian pulled his 1988 Mustang into a restricted spot on East Seventy-Ninth Street and, because of his government plates, ignored the meter. He’d bought the car at a police auction, and had restored it to pristine condition. Forgoing an umbrella despite the drizzle, he hurried west. A strong wind blew young leaves off tree branches, and a sheet of the Daily News plastered Lucian’s leg. Pulling it off, he glimpsed the headline, CENTRAL PARK HIT-AND-RUN, and hurried on toward his destination, the New York Society Library.
The library had been housed in this classic limestone building designed by Trowbridge and Livingston since 1937 but had originally opened its doors in 1754 at old City Hall, on Wall Street facing Broad Street. For more than one hundred and fifty years it had been known as the “city library” until the public library system was founded and it became a treasured landmark.
Lucian had passed the building often, but this was his first time inside. He was struck by the quiet after the noisy street. Standing in the entryway for a moment, he looked around, feeling the same grace he experienced whenever he stepped inside a museum. Once he’d read that one of the ways a society’s humanity could be measured was by how well it treasured its artwork, literature and music, how much it revered the work of the soul. In a place like this, he thought, you could almost be optimistic. He’d have to share that insight with Matt; his partner would appreciate it.
Following instructions from the elderly woman at the front desk, Lucian climbed a wide marble staircase, took a right, then a left, and found the director’s office.
William Hawkes, a venerable man whose skin was so thin Lucian could read his veins like a map, greeted him in a surprisingly youthful voice, gave him a firm handshake and offered him a seat.
The office was richly decorated with a fine Louis XIV partners desk, a large bay window enclosed by ruby damask curtains, an Oriental carpet and three walls of carved walnut shelves with rows of leather-bound, gilt-edged books. The ceiling was paneled, and the crossbeams were feathered with gold inlay.
“It’s not often that I get a visit from my friends at the bureau. So how can I help you, Agent Glass?” Hawkes asked after they’d exchanged pleasantries.
“It’s about Dr. Malachai Samuels. I
know you’re close to his aunt, so you might be aware we’ve had him under suspicion for quite some time.”
“Yes, I am.”
“He’s still the prime suspect in several crimes, including a recent robbery that resulted in a brutal death.”
Hawkes put both his hands on his desk and used them to propel himself up. He clasped them behind his back, walked over to the window and looked down to the street below. With his back still to Lucian he said, “Beryl is convinced of her nephew’s innocence. She has MS, do you know that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Stress is terrible for her,” Hawkes said and turned back to face Lucian. “And the past eighteen months have been very stressful.” He shook his head, and a lock of his thick white hair fell across his forehead.
“We have a lot of circumstantial evidence but no hard proof. That’s why I’m here, to ask for your help.”
“At my age there are so many people I’ve cared about whom I’ve lost to age, illness, accidents… I know the toll that loss takes on the spirit, and I just can’t imagine what something like this will do to my dear friend Beryl.” The news had shaken him, and as he walked back to his desk he seemed more feeble and fragile. “Have you ever lost anyone you cared about, Detective?”
Lucian had come to in the hospital days after Solange’s death, too doped up with painkillers to miss her or mourn her. In the months following, when he should have confronted the pain of her death, he focused instead on the physical pain of learning to work the muscles the knife had cut through and the doctors had sewn back together. Loss? It was a tight, impossible knot inside of him that he’d long since given up hoping to unravel.
“I’ve known Malachai since he was a graduate student…an incredibly bright man. Did you know he studied at Oxford?” Hawkes asked.
Lucian nodded.
“He’s a scientist and a well-respected therapist. He works with children, Agent Glass.” He shook his head. “He works with children.” The shame on you was unsaid but implicit.