WIN

by Coben, Harlan

  “Ah,” I say.

  “Ry Strauss stole your paintings.”

  “Seems so.”

  “Naturally, I followed the story with interest.”

  “With personal interest?”

  “Yes.”

  I was glad that the Reverend Sinclair was not going to give me a giant song-n-dance pretending that he had no idea why I was here, had never heard of Arlo Sugarman—all the verbal red tape I had feared having to waste time slicing through.

  “Come along, Reginald.”

  He gives the leash a gentle snap. I stop scratching Reginald behind the ears. They start walking. I stay with them.

  “How did you find me?” he asks.

  “Long story,” I say.

  “You’re a very rich man, from what I’ve read. My guess is, you are used to getting what you want.”

  I don’t bother to reply.

  Reginald stops by a tree and urinates.

  “Still,” Sinclair continues. “I’m curious. What part of our life gave us away?”

  I see no reason not to tell him. “Oral Roberts University.”

  “Ah. Our start. We were more careless then. You found Ralph Lewis?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiles. “That was three aliases ago. Ralph Lewis became Richard Landers and then Roscoe Lemmon.”

  “Same initials,” I say.

  “Perceptive.”

  We are behind the church now, heading toward a path in the woods. I wonder about that. I wonder where we are going, whether there is a destination or whether the Reverend Sinclair is just taking his mighty Reginald on their daily walk. I don’t bother asking. He is talking, and that, after all, is what I want.

  “After we graduated,” Sinclair says, “Ralph and I went on a missionary trip to what was then known as Rhodesia. It was supposed to be a one-year deal, but with the heat still on him, we ended up staying on the continent for the next twelve years. He and I had different interests. I was religiously focused, albeit in a much more liberal way than what we’d learned at Oral Roberts. Ralph despised religion. He had no interest in conversions. He wanted to work the classics: feed and clothe the poor, get them access to clean water and medical care.” He looks at me. “Are you a religious man, Win?”

  “No,” I tell him.

  “May I ask what you believe?”

  I tell him the same thing I tell any religious worshipper—be they Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu: “All religions are superstitious nonsense, except, of course, yours.”

  He chuckles. “Good one.”

  “Reverend,” I begin.

  “Oh, don’t call me that,” Sinclair says. “In the Episcopal tradition we say ‘the reverend’ as an adjective, a descriptive. It’s not a title.”

  “Where is Arlo Sugarman?” I ask.

  We are in the woods now. If we look straight up, we can see the sun, but the trees are thick anywhere off this path. “There is no way I can convince you to just go home and let this go, is there?”

  “None.”

  “I figured as much.” He nods, resigned. “That’s why I’m taking you to him.”

  “To Arlo?”

  “To Roscoe,” he corrects. “You know something funny? I’ve never called him Arlo. Not once in the more than four decades we’ve been together. Not even in private. I think it’s because I was always scared that I would mess up and call him that in front of other people. This was always our big fear, of course—that this day would come.”

  We are getting deeper into the woods now. The path narrows and veers down a steep incline. Reginald the Bulldog stops in his tracks. Sinclair sighs and lifts the dog with a huge grunt. He carries Reginald to the landing below.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “He didn’t do it, you know. Arlo—yes, I’m going to call him that—backed out. He wanted to draw attention to the war by throwing what appeared to be Molotov cocktails, but in reality, the bottles would only be filled with water dyed red to look like blood. Just something symbolic. When Arlo realized that Ry meant to really firebomb the place, they had a falling-out.”

  “Yet,” I say, “he ran and hid anyway.”

  “Who would have believed him?” Sinclair counters. “Do you know how scary-crazy it was those first few days?”

  “Curious,” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you also going to claim that he didn’t kill a federal agent?”

  Sinclair’s jowly jaw is set, but he doesn’t stop walking. “Patrick O’Malley.”

  I wait.

  “No, I won’t claim that. Arlo shot Special Agent O’Malley.”

  There is a clearing up ahead. I can see a lake.

  “We’re almost there,” he tells me.

  The lake is gorgeous, serene, still, almost too still, not the slightest ripple. The blue sky reflects off it in a perfect mirror. Calvin Sinclair stops for a moment, sucks in a deep breath, and then says, “Over here.”

  There is a wooden bench so rustic that it still has bark on it. It faces the lake, but more to the point, it faces a small tombstone. I approach it and read the carving:

  IN MEMORY OF

  R.L.

  “LIFE IS NOT FOREVER. LOVE IS.”

  BORN JANUARY 8, 1952—DIED JUNE 15, 2011

  “Lung cancer,” Calvin Sinclair tells me. “And no, he never smoked. We found out in March of that year. He was dead less than three months later.”

  I stare at the tombstone. “He’s buried here?”

  “No. This is where I spread his ashes. The congregation built the bench and memorial.”

  “Did the congregation know you two were lovers?”

  “It’s not like we made a big thing of it,” he says. “You have to understand. When we fell in love in the seventies, being gay wasn’t accepted in the slightest. Between hiding his real identity and our orientation, we were used to being deceptive. We lived our whole lives that way.” Calvin Sinclair puts his hand to his chin, his eyes gazing upward. “But by the end, yes, I think a lot of the congregation knew. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.”

  I look at the lake. I try to picture it—Arlo Sugarman starting his life as a Jewish kid from Brooklyn and ending up here, in the woods behind this church. I almost see it as a film montage complete with melodramatic score.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I ask.

  “I thought about it. I mean, he was dead. No one could hurt him anymore.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m not dead. I harbored a fugitive. You tell me: How do you think the FBI would feel about that?”

  He has a point.

  “There is one more thing,” Sinclair says, “but I doubt you’ll believe me.”

  I turn to him. “Try me.”

  “Arlo didn’t want to kill that agent.”

  “Well, yes, I’m sure that’s true.”

  “But that agent,” he continues. “He shot first.”

  A cold trickle slithers down my back. I want to ask for him to elaborate, but I don’t want to lead him either. So I wait.

  “Special Agent O’Malley came in through the back door. Alone. Without a partner. Without backup. He didn’t give Arlo a chance to surrender. He just fired.” He tilts his head. “Have you ever seen old photographs of Arlo?”

  I nod numbly.

  “He had that huge Afro back then. The bullet, Arlo told me, traveled right through it. Literally parted his hair. Then—and only then—did Arlo fire back.”

  Two conversations echo and then ricochet through my head.

  First, Leo Staunch’s words about his uncle came back to me:

  “He made it very clear that anyone who gave us information on any of the Jane Street Six—or heck, could prove he killed one—would be richly rewarded.”

  Second, my conversation with PT when this all began:

  “We only sent two agents to the brownstone.”

  “No backup?”

  “No.”

  “Should have waited.”
/>   Why hadn’t they waited for backup?

  The answer seems fairly clear now.

  Without another word, I turn and start back down the path.

  I know it all now. Leo Staunch had hinted as much to me. He told me when I found Arlo Sugarman, I would find all my answers. He was right, I realize. In terms of the Jane Street Six, there is still a bit of cleanup work to do, but I came here for answers and now I have them.

  Calvin Sinclair calls after me. “Win?”

  I don’t stop.

  “Are you going to tell?” he calls out.

  But I still don’t stop.

  CHAPTER 31

  Back on the jet, I get three calls.

  The first I see incoming is from PT. I don’t want to talk to him quite yet, not when I’m so close to the end game, and so I let it go into the voicemail. This will no doubt displease PT, who will quickly deduce that I am avoiding him, but I can live with that.

  The second call is from Kabir.

  “Articulate,” I say, opening up the browser on my laptop. Kabir will normally email me all relevant backing documentation because, again, like my daughter, I am visual.

  But his reply catches me off guard: “I have Pierre-Emmanuel Claux on the line. He sounds upset.”

  It takes me a second to remember the name of the art curator and restorer whom I had insisted the FBI use to authenticate and tenderly care for the family’s Vermeer. I tell Kabir to patch the call through.

  “Mr. Lockwood?”

  “Speaking?”

  “This is Pierre-Emmanuel Claux at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU.” I hear the muffled panic in his tone. “You asked me to look into a painting the FBI recently located for authentication and condition purposes—The Girl at the Piano by Johannes Vermeer.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “When can you get to the institute, Mr. Lockwood?”

  “Is this urgent?”

  “It is, yes.”

  “Is there an issue with the Vermeer?”

  “I think it’s better if we discuss this in person.” I hear the quake in his voice. “As soon as possible, please.”

  I check the time. Depending on traffic, it should take about three hours in total.

  “Will you still be there?” I ask him.

  “The institute will be closed, but I won’t leave until you arrive.”

  The third call is from Ema.

  After I offer up my customary greeting, Ema asks, “Any updates?”

  I fill her in on the day’s happenings. I don’t hold back. I don’t sugarcoat. I do feel my heart swell, but alas, so what? As Ema might say, “Get over it.” I finish by telling her I’m heading straight to New York University Institute of Fine Arts’ Conservation Center across Central Park from the Dakota.

  “Oh good,” Ema says. “That’s why I called.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m going over the FBI witness transcripts for the art heist at Haverford,” she continues.

  “And?”

  “And the early investigators seemed convinced that it was an inside job, most notably the night guard, Ian Cornwell. In the end, they had no proof so they dropped it.”

  I tell her I know all this.

  Ema says, “You questioned Cornwell, right?”

  “I did. He’s a political science professor at Haverford now.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. What did you think of him?”

  I do not want to prejudice her reaction. “What do you think of him?”

  “I think the original investigators got it right. There is just no way it could have worked the way Ian Cornwell claims.”

  “Yet,” I say, “those investigators couldn’t make the case.”

  “Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.”

  “Doesn’t mean that at all,” I agree. I hear street noise. “Where are you?”

  “I’m heading into the subway, so I can catch the train home.”

  “I’ll have someone drive you.”

  “I’d rather do it this way, Win. Anyway, I don’t know how, but we need to get Ian Cornwell to talk. He’s the key. Oh, and let me know what the art conservator tells you.”

  Ema hangs up. I replay the conversation in my head, and I know that as I do, I have a smile on my face. I close my eyes and try to nap for the duration of the flight. That won’t happen. I am feeling itchy, antsy, and I know why. I take out my phone and find my favorite app. I set up a rendezvous for tonight at midnight with username “Helena.” Midnight is later than I normally do, but it seems today will be a hectic day.

  NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts is located on Fifth Avenue in the French-styled James B. Duke House, one of the few surviving “millionaire mansions” from New York’s Gilded Age. James Duke—yes, my beloved alma mater, Duke University, is named for his father—made his fortune as a founding partner in the American Tobacco Company, modernizing the manufacturing and marketing of cigarettes. The old adage is that behind every great fortune there is a great crime—or, as in this case, if not a great crime, the fortune was certainly built on a pile of dead bodies.

  The institute has a boatload of security for obvious reasons. I pass through it all and find Pierre-Emmanuel Claux pacing alone in the second-floor conservatory. He wears a white lab coat and latex gloves. When he turns toward me, I can see something akin to terror on his face.

  “Thank God you’re here.”

  The conservatory is a hybrid of the old-school mansion and a state-of-the-art research center. There are long tables and special lighting and tapestries and paintbrushes and scalpels and what look like microscopes and dental tools and medical testing equipment.

  “I’m sorry for the dramatics, but I think…”

  His voice fades out. I don’t see the Vermeer, that image of the girl at the piano. The longest table holds but one item, a possible painting facedown, and it is approximately the correct size of the Vermeer. Next to it sits a Phillips-head screwdriver and several screws.

  Pierre-Emmanuel walks toward it. I follow.

  “First of all,” he says, his tone steadier now, “the painting is authentic. This is indeed The Girl at the Piano by Vermeer, most likely painted in 1656.” There is a hushed awe in his voice. “I can’t tell you what an honor it is to be in its presence.”

  I give him this moment of silence, as though this is a religious service, which, for him, may be apropos. When I meet his eyes, Pierre-Emmanuel clears his throat. “Let me get to why I so urgently needed to see you.” He points to the back of the painting. “First off, there was a Masonite backing board covering the entire reverse of your Vermeer. It’s not original obviously, but Masonite backings are not uncommon. They protect the painting from dust and physical impact.”

  He glances over at me. I nod to show that I am listening.

  “The backing board is screwed in, so I carefully took out the screws and removed the Masonite in order to inspect the painting more thoroughly. That’s the backing board over there.”

  He points to what looks like a thin school blackboard. On it, I can see the faded Lockwood family crest. Pierre-Emmanuel turns his attention back to the flip side of the Vermeer. “You can see here the stretcher up against the back of the canvas. That’s not uncommon either, but the thing is, first you need to remove the backing. Then you need to look under the stretcher. It’s not easy to do. But that’s where someone hid them—under a screwed-in backing board and taped between the stretcher and the canvas.”

  “Hid what?” I ask.

  He has it in his gloved hand. “This envelope.”

  It had probably started life as white, but it is now yellowed to the point of being near manila.

  “At first,” he continues, his words a rushed babble now, “I was so excited. I thought maybe it was a letter of historical importance. Oh, and it wasn’t sealed. I wouldn’t have slit it open or looked inside, if that was the case. I would have just put it to the side.”

  “So what was inside?” I ask.

  Pierre-Emmanuel leads me
over to a desk and points. “These.”

  I look down at the brown yet transparent images.

  “They’re film negatives,” Pierre-Emmanuel continues. “I don’t know how old they are, but most people take digital pictures nowadays. And those screws hadn’t been removed in years.”

  The shape of the negatives appears odd to my layman’s eyes. You usually think of negatives as being rectangular. These, however, are perfect squares.

  I look at Pierre-Emmanuel. His lip is now trembling.

  “I assume you looked at them.”

  His voice is a terrified whisper. “Only three,” he manages to tell me. “That’s all I could handle.”

  He offers me a set of latex gloves. I snap them on and turn on his lamp. I carefully lift one of the negatives with the pads of my thumb and forefinger. I raise it to the light. Pierre-Emmanuel has taken a step back, but I know that he is watching my face. I show nothing, but I feel the jolt everywhere. I gently put the negative back and move to a second. Then a third. Then a fourth. I still show nothing, but there is an eruption going on inside. I won’t lose control. Not yet.

  But the rage is coming. I will need a way to channel it.

  After I view ten of the negatives, I say to him, “I’m sorry you had to see these.”

  “Do you know who those girls are?”

  I do. More than that, I know where the photographs were taken.

  In the Hut of Horrors.

  CHAPTER 32

  It is dark by the time I arrive at the faculty housing area of Haverford College.

  I drove myself from the airport because I want no one around. I drive fast. I drive with a fury. When Ian Cornwell sees me at his door at this late hour, he is unsure how to react. Part of him still fears my name and how important my family is to this institution—but more of him, I have come to believe, wants nothing to do with me or the awful past I keep dragging back to his doorstep.

  “It’s late,” Ian Cornwell tells me as I stand on his stoop. He blocks the door so that I cannot enter. “I already told you everything I know.”

  I nod. Then without warning, I punch him hard in the stomach. He folds at the waist as though it has hinges. I shove him inside and close the door behind me. The punch was well placed, so as to knock the wind out of him. His eyes are wide with fear as he retches, seeking air. I know that I should feel bad, but as I explained previously, violence gives me a rush. It would be dumb to lie and pretend otherwise.