by M. J. Rose
“Yes, I know, but none of those things preclude him from being a suspect.”
Hawkes splayed his hands on his desk and looked down at the age-spotted skin as if he’d find an answer to his dilemma there. “You’re putting me in a difficult position. I’ve known Beryl Talmage longer than I’ve known your boss. You’re asking me to choose between two people I care about. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to do that.”
Lucian wasn’t ready to give up. Comley had told him about this man who’d won a Purple Heart, taught history at Harvard, had twenty-three honorary degrees, had written several books—including two volumes on the life of Albert Einstein—and had then become the director of the Library of Congress. He’d retired six years ago to travel with his wife, but after she died he’d agreed to take on the directorship of this small private library. What would convince him?
“Do you pay attention to coincidences?” Lucian asked.
“Einstein said, ‘Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.’ But he didn’t really believe in God. He said coincidence was unthinkable in physics, once calling it a weakness of the theory. I’m sorry, you didn’t come here for a lecture. What does this have to do with Malachai Samuels?”
“I am trained to pay attention to coincidences. And they’re piled up around this case like a major accident on the FDR Drive. Can I tell you about some of them before I leave?”
“Certainly.”
Outside, either the clouds had become denser or the rain had intensified, because there was now noticeably less light coming through the sheer curtains, and the atmosphere in the room was suddenly oppressive. “Last year when the ancient stones believed to be Memory Tools were stolen, Dr. Samuels was in Rome.”
“I know that. But you couldn’t find any evidence tying him to the crime. One would have to read the news without glasses not to have been aware of that.”
Lucian nodded. “Last week, while Dr. Samuels was in Vienna, a document was stolen from a library he had—”
“What library?”
“The private library at the Memorist Society, an organization that dates back to the early 1800s.”
“What kind of document?”
“It was a partial list of ancient Memory Tools. A coincidence? Two robberies less than twelve months apart but both dealing with the Memory Tools. Two robberies occurring in cities Malachai Samuels just happened to be visiting.”
Hawkes took a deep breath. It was a few moments before he responded. “What does this have to do with me?”
“Yesterday, Dr. Samuels called and asked you to recommend a librarian he could hire part-time to help him do some research.”
“How do you know that?”
“I regret I’m not at liberty to say.”
The elderly man’s hands knotted into fists on his desk. “Do you have just cause to invade my privacy like this?”
“Not your privacy, Malachai Samuels’s. People have been killed, Dr. Hawkes. You were on the other end of a call, and we’re sorry about that, but that call has put you in a position to help us.”
ACT was anxious to break the case before Malachai could do any more harm. Lucian’s appointments with Dr. Bellmer might or might not yield the kind of infiltration the FBI needed, but this solution could.
“How can I do that?”
“We want you to allow us to supply you with the name of the librarian to suggest to Dr. Samuels.”
“And that man will be an agent?”
“He’ll be a librarian. I’d be happy to show you his CV. I don’t want to impose on you to recommend someone you don’t feel comfortable with.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can accommodate you, Agent Glass.”
“Several people have died. We’re afraid more will die if we can’t put this man in jail. Will you at least give it some serious thought?”
“Yes, that I will do.”
“There’s one other coincidence.”
“What’s that?”
“During his call, Malachai told you he’s anxious to hire a librarian because he recently obtained new information suggesting that his foundation’s own library might contain clues to the location of other Memory Tools, isn’t that correct? What information do you think that is? Where did he get it? Vienna?”
Dr. Hawkes glared at Lucian. “I don’t like how you do business, Agent Glass.”
“I don’t always like it, either. But I like murder less.”
As Lucian rose to leave he felt his cell phone vibrate for the third time since he’d been there. Once outside the office he finally pulled it out, looked down at the caller ID and checked the two previous calls. All three were from Nicolas Olshling at the Metropolitan Museum. Lucian hit Reply and listened to the phone ringing as he walked out of the library and into the unremitting rain and buffeting wind.
Chapter
THIRTEEN
Driving past the monumental, seventeen-foot-tall sculpture by Noguchi that stood like a sentry on Fifth Avenue and Eightieth Street, Lucian pulled into the underground parking garage abutting the Metropolitan. Locking the doors, he walked through the dark, cavernous space to the museum entrance—an ironically unceremonious access to the structure that was the largest and most comprehensive art museum in the western hemisphere.
The brass-framed glass doors opened into the entryway to the children’s museum. The only artwork here was an eight-foot-long, four-foot-wide and three-foot-tall reproduction of the Parthenon. Lucian looked at the kids crowded around it, ogling the colorful statues on the frieze and peering in through the columns to the elaborate miniature of Athena. He could still remember coming here on school trips and always looking at that magical model.
For Lucian, the Met wasn’t just filled with artwork; it was a treasure trove of memories. He’d taken his first painting classes here when he was only six. He had come with his parents every Christmas for the tree lighting and to see the Neapolitan Baroque crèche, a fantastic diorama perfect in every detail down to sparkling streams, goats and barking dogs. He’d taught himself anatomy in high school by sketching the Met’s great classical sculptures and had ultimately been admitted to The Cooper Union with a portfolio of those drawings. And he’d brought Solange here the first time they’d gone out together. Walking through the galleries that day, they’d each passed a test they hadn’t known they were taking. Their zeal for art was the first thread woven into the fabric of their passion for each other.
While she’d looked at paintings, he’d stolen looks at her lovely face—perfect, he’d thought, except for the strange, pale crescent-moon-shaped mark above her right eyebrow that she covered with bangs. She had been self-conscious about the scar and made up different stories about how she’d gotten it. From a vicious babysitter with a knife when she was five. From a French poodle that had leaped up and taken a bite out of her when she was still a baby. From an incident with a hammer when she was trying to hang her first painting at school. From the devil, signaling she’d sold him her soul so she could paint better.
He’d never found out the truth.
One afternoon she’d taken him to see her favorite painting, Martin Johnson Heade’s Approaching Thunderstorm. It was a foreboding landscape with blackening clouds over an even darker body of water and a lone boy on the shore staring out into the tense sky. “All I want to do,” Solange had said fiercely, “is to be able to paint with this much authority and purity. That’s what every artist I respect does—synthesizes a moment or emotion down to its essence. No frivolity.”
Lucian didn’t often dwell on his memories of her—it had happened a long time ago—but Hawkes had asked him if he’d ever lost anyone he loved, and now he was here, where they’d spent so much time together.
Solange still stood out from the other women he’d known. How could she not? Their relationship had been cut short, never having the time to sour or turn. Their year together was like a living thing trapped in amber, protected for eternity by its method of destruction.
Walkin
g up the simple, unadorned marble staircase from the downstairs level to the first floor, he remembered that, after seeing the Heade that day, they’d gone back to his dorm room. It was their first time, and after she’d undressed, she stood in front of him naked. Before he could reach for her, she asked him to draw her. As his hand streaked across the page he forgot how much he wanted her and became consumed with creating his version of the lithe body standing before him. She’d laughed with delight at his skill in orchestrating the charcoal’s movement. The sketch wound up being more assured and alive than anything he’d ever done.
It was a lesson that caused him to look at every piece of art differently from then on. What made something matter on paper or canvas was the intensity of the rage or obsession, the ardor or the excitement of its creator. The urgency to take the moment in, process it and give it back to the world transformed by a singular vision—that was what elevated effort into art.
On his way to meeting Olshling, Lucian walked by centuries-old naked warriors and athletes, immortalized in gleaming marble. Each was a living history of the artists and the models and the journeys of the pieces themselves. Even if their stories had been lost, like his with Solange would be when he was no longer alive to recount it, anyone moved by this art was being touched by the lives of the people who had created it, posed for it, bought it, sold it and treasured it—and even those who had stolen it.
Tyler Weil, Nicolas Olshling and a half-dozen other museum personnel blocked Lucian’s view, but whatever they were looking at had drained all the energy out of the room. He felt as if he’d walked in on a wake.
“Agent Glass, thanks for coming.” Olshling came over to greet him and left enough of a gap for Lucian to see a riot of colors—bright lemon, sharp green, cool blue. He stepped closer and stared down at the serrated streamers and threads of canvas. He was doing his job, listening to Olshling explain, while examining a brutally vandalized painting.
“It’s a Matisse.”
Lucian glanced up. The speaker was a woman in her seventies who had her arms crossed across her chest and was regarding him with hostility. Usually people’s reactions to him didn’t matter, but this woman was making him uneasy. He turned back to the painting.
Yes, even in ruins, the artist’s hand, palette and brushstrokes weren’t just recognizable—they were unmistakable.
“The painting has quite a history,” Tyler Weil said. “It’s entitled View of St. Tropez, and it’s been in the FBI’s national stolen art file for about twenty years.”
Lucian had seen this painting only in photographs. Finally looking at it, staring at it, despite everything it symbolized for him, he didn’t react. All he could think of was that the photographs he’d seen had not done the painting justice, even in this damaged state.
Then, suddenly, bile rose in his throat and his stomach spasmed. Lucian didn’t exhibit any outward sign of his inner turmoil. What was that Einstein quote William Hawkes had told him? Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. But Lucian didn’t believe in God, either.
Everyone in this room might be aware that this painting had disappeared twenty years ago, but Lucian was the only one who knew the day and the hour. He knew it almost to the minute, because this was the masterpiece that had been stolen by an unknown assailant who had tricked his way inside a well-protected framing gallery, brutally stabbed two teenagers and fled the scene. Solange had died that day because she’d still been at the store waiting for Lucian while he’d been in his studio, playing so hard at being an artist he’d forgotten what time it was.
Chapter
FOURTEEN
Robert Keyes made sure the oversize black umbrella shielded his daughter as they walked west on Eighty-Third Street. Last night Veronica’s nightmare had been vicious. He’d heard her wrenching screams and run into her room, finding her thrashing in her bed, twisted up in the sheets, fighting off an invisible evil she couldn’t name. Her hair was plastered to her forehead and tears wet her flushed cheeks. Except for telling him that everything was dark in the dream, she couldn’t recall who or what was scaring her. The night terror didn’t seem to be bothering her now though, as the seven-year-old continued telling him about her class trip to the Metropolitan Museum earlier that day.
“And then Mr. Weil’s phone rang, and then he talked to someone, and then he got really quiet for a loooong time and then he had to leave,” she complained. “Right when we were looking at the rocodial.”
Robert stopped worrying to try to figure out the word. “Crocodile?”
“Uh-huh.”
As they approached the Phoenix Foundation with its turret, stained-glass windows and fancy ironwork railing, Robert spied dozens of gargoyles.
“Look, Veronica.” He pointed.
“Monster spouts!” she shouted out, and then laughed.
Robert smiled. Veronica renamed everything using more descriptive terms: their dog was a “furry four-legger” and grilled-cheese sandwiches—her favorites—were “melted cheese toasts.” Only the nightmares didn’t have names.
Once Frances buzzed the father and daughter inside, Veronica started hopping from black marble square to black marble square up and down the hall, avoiding the whites in some game of her own devising.
“You’re early,” Frances said after she greeted them.
“I picked Veronica up at school and planned on walking here, but the rain was too heavy. Is it a problem?”
“No.” Frances indicated the seating area set up with its child-size seats, a plastic castle and several toy chests overflowing with games, books and puzzles. “There’s lots for Veronica to do. I just wanted you to know that Dr. Samuels is out but he’ll be back in time for your appointment.”
Deep inside Central Park, just west of the Dairy on West Sixty-Fifth Street, Malachai Samuels sat at a stone table inside the otherwise empty Chess and Checkers House. He’d set up the ivory and black pieces over a half hour ago. Since then he’d been playing both sides and checking his watch every few minutes, like any man annoyed that his partner was late—which was exactly how he wanted it to look, even though no one else was there or anywhere near enough to watch.
Malachai had his office swept for bugs every week, but he knew there could be directional mikes aimed at the foundation, and he preferred to have certain conversations out of doors. Frances believed he was at a physical therapy appointment.
A clean-cut man in his mid-thirties wearing chinos, loafers and a blue button-down shirt walked inside the gaming house.
Malachai swept the chess pieces into a wooden box and stood up as Reed Winston approached.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” Reed smiled sheepishly.
“So am I, since I have to leave. But I played a good game without you,” Malachai said, continuing the charade.
Winston followed his employer outside. The rain was just letting up, and neither of them needed to open an umbrella. Once they were out of earshot of the Chess House, Malachai asked if Winston had any news.
“There hasn’t been any activity in Vienna. No one at the society has made any attempt to reach out to any art experts, archaeologists or historians.”
“What about linguists?”
Winston shook his head. “Everyone is still pretty shaken up over Alderman’s death. They haven’t appointed a new director yet, and no one seems focused on the missing list.”
“What about the Austrian police?”
“They haven’t made any headway.” He grinned.
Malachai thought his spy’s smile was unseemly but refrained from mentioning it. They’d reached a fork in the path, and the logical way to proceed was to turn right onto the main path and head for Central Park West. Instead, Malachai took a left and Winston followed him into the shadows under a stone arch.
Malachai knew that habits made you easier to track, so he tried to change his often. And he knew it was better to hire a half-dozen men who knew nothing about each other’s jobs than to have one with enough information to piece it
all together, but he’d made an exception with Winston. Knowing everything allowed the ex-Interpol agent to monitor all aspects of the investigation. If there were connections, he’d be able to recognize them. Malachai couldn’t play it as safe as he wished he could. Even if the Memory Tools catalogued on the list had survived, they could be hidden from view or in plain sight, buried in a ruin, on display in a museum, sitting in an antique store or in someone’s grandmother’s curio cabinet. His search could take years, but his father might not have that long. And Malachai wanted to know about his own past lives. If what he guessed was true, he wanted to shove it in the old man’s face.
“I’m going to be hiring a librarian to go through the archived correspondence at the foundation,” Malachai said, “to see if we can find any information about the whereabouts of the missing tools. We have documents that go back to the mid-1800s, when we were financing digs all over the Middle East and the Mediterranean. I came across information in those papers about the tools we found in Rome. Maybe there’s more information about these others.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Make sure the candidates are clean.”
Avoiding a puddle, Malachai checked his watch. “I need to get back to the foundation. One more thing. Have you found out anything else about the Agent Glass who was hurt in the robbery? Is he working on this case now that he’s back in New York?”
“I’m not sure.”
Malachai stopped, forcing Winston to stop also. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been trained in all the surveillance techniques I’ve been trained in. I can’t track him as if he were an ordinary citizen.”
“I need to know what he knows and what he’s doing about finding out what he doesn’t know.” Malachai spoke in a level voice, as if he were requesting lemon, not cream, with his tea.
Two elderly, white-haired women walked by. Were they in disguise and really there to watch him? Was the man walking the gray French poodle? Or the woman pushing a baby carriage? Paranoia was annoying, but, perversely, it made him feel safe.