From a set of luggage in the bedroom closet, he took a rolling suitcase that was large enough to hold the painting. He was about to leave when, passing through the kitchen, his eye happened to fall on the phone on the counter. On an impulse, he put it to his ear and heard a dial tone.
Ilya stood there for a moment, the suitcase in one hand, the phone in the other. He did not want to make this call, at least not yet. Before he could bring himself to put down the receiver, however, he had already dialed. After three rings, a fatherly voice answered the phone, roughened by vodka and cigarettes: “Yes?”
Ilya felt his heartbeat kick into a higher tempo. He set the suitcase down. “It’s me.”
There was a pause. “Ilya,” Vasylenko finally said, his tone guarded. “I never expected to hear from you again.”
“I know.” Ilya groped forward one word at a time. “You wanted me dead. Why?”
“Because you failed me in Budapest. That painting was important in ways that you couldn’t begin to imagine. There were other reasons, to be sure, but that one alone should suffice.”
Ilya closed his eyes. “Sharkovsky told me that you’re working for the Chekists. That you betrayed the oath you swore—”
“The only oath that counts is the one a man swears to himself,” Vasylenko said. “I don’t expect you to understand my reasons, but before you judge me too harshly, I would advise you to look closely at your own life. For all your talk of righteousness, you are still a man who can do nothing but kill.”
Ilya, thinking of the dog in its plastic carrier, pushed the memory away. “Which gives you all the more reason to fear me.”
“I have no doubt that you could hurt us. Given your nature, I would expect nothing less. But consider this. Not even a Scythian can survive on his own. These men will find you and kill you. Right now, I’m the only one you can trust, because you have something I want. Now tell me where you are.”
Ilya saw the world go red, like the smudge that had been left on his forefinger. When it cleared, he spoke carefully. “This is the last time that you will ever hear my voice. Tell Sharkovsky that I’m coming.”
Hanging up, he pulled the phone out of its jack. Sharkovsky, he reflected, might not know all the answers, but he would, at least, know some of them. From his pocket, Ilya withdrew the stun gun, his thoughts already turning to how it might be used. Then he slipped it into his suitcase and left the house.
29
“You know who Walter Arensberg was,” Ethan said, angling his laptop so that she could see the screen. “A renowned art collector and the most important patron of Duchamp during his lifetime.”
“I know,” Maddy said, standing behind the chair in which Ethan was seated. “He bought most of Duchamp’s major works, then left his collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But I don’t see why this matters.”
“It matters because Arensberg was obsessed with the Rosicrucians.” Ethan pointed to his browser. “He was convinced that Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, was the true author of the works of Shakespeare, and spent years looking for coded messages in the plays. He also claimed that Bacon was the founder of the Rosicrucians, and that his grave was the real tomb of Christian Rosencreutz.”
Maddy wanted to wrap her arms around Ethan’s smooth chest, but something held her back. “Was he crazy?”
Ethan scrolled to the next page. “Well, let’s see. He claims to have discovered the location of the tomb, based on the shape of some gravel on the floor of Lichfield Cathedral. He notes that two of the pebbles look like a vulva, a symbol for the philosopher’s stone. Later, he finds that the gravel has been removed, which he takes as evidence of a massive cover-up.”
Maddy wasn’t sure what to say. “And what does this have to do with Duchamp?”
“Everything. An artist is always influenced by his patron’s obsessions. Look here.”
Ethan opened a web page in his browser’s recent history. On the screen, Maddy saw a photo of one of Duchamp’s earliest readymades, a ball of twine sandwiched between two metal plates. “I’ve seen this work before,” Maddy said. “Arensberg put something inside the ball without telling Duchamp what it was—”
“And here, on the plates, Duchamp inscribed a coded message with missing letters, a reference to Arensberg’s interest in Shakespearian cryptography. But the most important thing about this piece is the day it was made.”
Maddy read off the date in the caption under the photo. “April 23, 1916. Which is—”
“Easter Sunday. And three hundred years to the day after the death of Shakespeare.”
Maddy was surprised by this sudden eagerness, which seemed even less explicable in light of his earlier skepticism. She was on the verge of asking him about this when a musical tone sounded from across the room. Going to her purse, Maddy took out her phone. “It’s Reynard.”
When he heard this, Ethan’s enthusiasm seemed to wither. “You’d better take it.”
The phone rang again. Maddy thought about letting it go to voicemail, but in the end, she answered it. When Reynard spoke, there was a hollowness to his voice that she had never heard before. “Are you in Southampton?”
Maddy shut her eyes. She had been dreading this moment. “Yes. I’m with Ethan.”
“I want both of you in the office right now,” Reynard said. “I know it’s the weekend, but I need you here anyway. I assume that you’ve seen the story that came out this morning—”
Maddy glanced at Ethan, who was watching her intently. “No, I haven’t seen it.”
Reynard read off the name of an influential art website. “It’s bad, and it’s only going to get worse. But I’m sure you knew that already.”
He hung up. Maddy, feeling Ethan’s eyes on her face, went to the laptop and typed in a web address. When the page loaded, the lead headline and the name of the author came as a blow to the gut. They read the story together. After they had reached the end, Maddy looked at Ethan. “We’re fucked.”
“Yeah, I know.” He rose from the chair. “Come on. We’ve got a long drive home.”
As they hurriedly dressed and checked out of the hotel, Maddy kept her distance. She did not speak again until they were driving west on the Montauk Highway. “This isn’t going to end until they find that painting.”
“If they ever do.” Ethan looked out at the road. “I still can’t see why the thief went for that particular work. I know something about these guys. Aivazovsky is more their style. Why the fuck would they care about Duchamp?”
“They care because it was worth eleven million dollars. It isn’t so complicated.”
“It might be more complicated than you think,” Ethan said. “I’m not sure how much you know about our pricing system, but it’s what you call a multifactor model. The price of a work of art is a function of a set of variables, including size, provenance, and sale history. Feed in the right variables, and it spits out a range of prices. For this painting, the range was between three and seven million.”
Maddy’s background in computational finance was less than extensive, but the underlying point was clear enough. “Which means that eleven million is way outside the expected range.”
“Exactly. It’s crazy. There’s no good explanation, unless—” Ethan hesitated. “Unless we failed to account for some important variable. Ever since the auction, I’ve been trying to figure out what factor might be missing, and a strong possibility occurred to me this morning. It’s the occult factor.”
She searched his face for irony, but saw that he was serious. “That’s hard to believe.”
“But it isn’t unprecedented. At the turn of the century, occult societies commissioned art based on Rosicrucian principles. These commissions were a source of demand, which drove prices. What if this demand still exists? Maybe it’s underground, and collectors say they’re buying art as an investment when, in fact, they’re driven by other factors. And if this demand is strong enough for certain works, it might be enough to upset our pricing model.”
Maddy recalled that Lermontov had said much the same thing. Collectors did not always base their investment choices on rational motivations. “How do you know so much about this?”
“It’s my job,” Ethan said simply. “And there’s something else. If I’m right, and this painting has a secret significance to certain buyers, it may also explain why it was stolen. And if we can figure out why the painting was targeted, we can narrow down the list of suspects.”
Maddy saw an unsettling light in his eyes. “That isn’t part of your job description.”
“Maybe not,” Ethan replied. “But neither was looking at Archvadze’s call history.”
Something in his voice, which had the tone of an unintentional rebuke, shocked them into silence for the rest of the ride. An hour later, they were seated in Reynard’s office, where the fund manager had been awaiting their arrival. With the blinds drawn against the morning glare, the only light came from his computer, its browser opened to the story that had appeared a few hours before.
Griffin’s article was casually brutal. Citing anonymous sources, it disclosed that two employees of the fund had been present when the painting was stolen. It noted that the fund had bid on the study only a week before, and speculated that it was under suspicion for a role in the heist. Worst of all, it had unearthed an interview, given a year ago to a pension magazine, in which Reynard had cheerfully outlined the impact of a theft on demand for an artist’s work.
Now, as Maddy and Ethan related what had happened, Reynard listened in silence. When he finally spoke, his words were for Ethan, and they were the last thing Maddy had expected to hear: “Would you leave us alone, please?”
Ethan seemed surprised as well, but he rose quietly, his eyes touching briefly on hers as he left the office. As soon as he was gone, Reynard turned to Maddy. “There’s something we need to discuss.”
Maddy suddenly knew precisely what was coming. Her eyes strayed, of their own accord, to the picture above Reynard’s desk, the woman on a kitchen floor with a scrap of newsprint in her hand. “What is it?”
“I know you’re in debt,” Reynard said. “We’ve never spoken about this before, but people are going to ask questions now, and we need to be ready. When your gallery went under, it put you in a difficult position. Am I right?”
Maddy felt the office walls pulling away from her in all directions. “I owed money to vendors and clients. I also had a lot of credit card debt. You knew all this when you hired me.”
“Yes. There was talk of a lawsuit, if I remember correctly. Artists claimed you’d sold works without paying them—”
“It never went to court,” Maddy said. “I was late paying a few artists, yes, but that was only because I needed money to keep the lights on. It was all settled a long time ago. I’ve been through debt restructuring and consolidation. Half of what was left has already been paid down—”
“But that leaves half still outstanding. Under the circumstances, your position at the fund must present you with certain temptations. As far as we can tell, nobody else knew where this painting was. You had a convenient motivation for selling this information. If you’ve done anything like this, I need to know.”
Maddy shook her head, a region of numbness spreading throughout her body. “Listen, I know how bad this looks—”
“I’m not sure you do,” Reynard said sadly. “This business is founded on reputation. A painting is only worth what the market believes. The same is true for dealers. Taste can’t be proven either way, so the art world runs on trust. I’ve spent years building this fund’s reputation. It’s all I have. And if I don’t make an example of you, everything I’ve tried to accomplish here will be lost.”
His voice hardened. “As of now, you’re suspended from all contact with our investors. Ethan, too. As far as the outside world is concerned, you no longer exist. I’m also revoking your bonus for the year. To get it back, you’ll need to make yourself useful. We’ll discuss the details later, but for now, you’re an unperson. Now tell Ethan to come in.”
Reynard turned away. Maddy wanted to speak, anything to ease the sting of these last few words, but she only stood in silence. Going outside, she felt something close around her wrist. Ethan, who was standing in the corridor, had taken her by the hand. “Hey, it’s going to be all right. And about everything else—”
Maddy saw that he was trying to comfort her. It was only then, with complete clarity, that she realized what she had to say: “It was a mistake. We need to stay focused, and this will only complicate things.”
She could tell that he was surprised. Before he could respond, she set her face into an expression she had mastered as a gallerina, cool, helpful, but utterly unavailable, even as her heart continued to pound.
“It can’t happen again,” Maddy said calmly. “But listen to me. You were right. This painting was stolen to order. If anyone can figure out who took it, we can. And I can’t do it without you.”
Watching his face, she saw him take this in, then nod. “All right,” Ethan said. “I have an idea about where to look first. But I need some time to work it out. Maybe we can talk tomorrow?”
“That would be fine.” Maddy said nothing more, hands at her sides, until he gave her a smile and went into the office. She stood where she was until the door had closed. Then she felt her legs almost give way.
As she returned to her desk, she reminded herself of something that Lermontov had often said. In the art world, buyers tended to follow the heart instead of the head, so her job was to be the one person in the room who kept her wits at all times. She accepted this without question. But when she looked down at her hands now, she saw that they were trembling.
Her cell phone rang for the second time that day, breaking into her thoughts. Maddy reached into her purse, wondering if it was the press or the police, and saw that the number was restricted. “Hello?”
Instead of a response, there was nothing but silence, a seashell emptiness on the other end. It was more than just the absence of noise. Someone was there, but would not speak. Before she could ask who it was, there was a gentle click. The caller, whoever it was, had hung up.
30
The boy in the cooler was looking rather the worse for wear. He had been shot at close range in the back of the head, and at some point after his death, his face had been lightly splashed with acid. In the places where it remained whole, his skin had turned a sickly green, but on his upper lip, which was miraculously intact, a cleft palate scar was faintly visible.
Looking at the yellow burns on the boy’s cheeks and forehead, Powell reached into the body pouch and withdrew the right arm. He did this gently, aware that the loose skin of the hands could slip off altogether, like a latex glove. Taking it by the wrist, he examined the boy’s hand. More acid had been applied to the tip of each digit, eating the fingerprints away.
He turned to regard the two other bodies lying nearby. Each had been subjected to similar treatment, their faces and fingertips also erased. One had been shot at the base of the skull, while the other bore a starfish wound in its decomposing chest, the mark of a shotgun blast.
Powell let the boy’s hand drop, then left the cooler, emerging into the relative warmth of the decomp room. Glancing at Wolfe, he saw that she looked a little green herself. The morgue attendant seemed to notice this as well. “If you’re going to be sick, do it in one of the sinks,” the attendant said, closing the cooler door. “Don’t forget to take off your mask first.”
“I’ll be fine,” Wolfe said. They were standing in a small room off the main morgue. The walls and floor had been painted with gray acrylic that could be easily mopped and bleached. In the ceiling, next to the fluorescent lights, an exhaust fan was loudly at work, but the most distinctive part of the room, far more than its visible furnishings, remained its indescribable smell.
At the center of the room stood a single autopsy table, a rolling metal pan on swivel wheels. Its narrow end had been mounted to one of the sinks lining the fa
r wall. On its steel surface, which was sloped to allow fluid to drain, a fourth body was in the process of being undressed by the deputy medical examiner whom Powell had encountered before. Next to him stood the detective he had last seen at the scan of the dead girl, his face as pink as always.
Powell and Wolfe approached the body. Beside the table stood a gurney draped in a white sheet. On it, the dead man’s clothes were being laid one article at a time, along with the contents of his pockets.
As they drew close, the deputy medical examiner looked up. Behind his plastic safety glasses, his eyes crinkled. “Glad to see you again. You always manage to show up for the most interesting cases—”
Powell gave a nod of greeting, then turned to the body. “What do we know so far?”
The detective cleared his throat. There was a dab of mentholated ointment under his nose. “We found them at an industrial site in Gowanus, a few blocks from the canal. My guess is that someone planned to dump them in the water, then got cold feet. Each body was stuffed in a steel drum. The lids were sealed, but not very tightly. The smell drew the workers to the scene.”
Wolfe looked down at the dead man. His face and fingerprints had also been erased. “Do we know who he is?”
“No identification or wallet on the body, so it’s hard to say, but we’re pretty sure that it’s a gangster named Arshak Gasparyan. Armenian, late twenties, arrests for assault and firearms possession. Vanished last week. We’re still waiting to identify two of the others through dental records. The youngest one was the easiest. His cleft palate scar narrowed it down pretty quick—”
Powell studied the remains of the dead man’s face. The skin of his head and forearms had turned green, but the parts that had been covered with clothing were in better shape. “Do we know what kind of acid was used?”
The medical examiner spoke up. “Based on the yellowing of tissue, it looks like nitric acid. Not something that most people have lying around the house. It’s used primarily in chemical fertilizers. And to stain wooden furniture.”
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