The Hypnotist (16 page)

“I always think it helps to fill up your eyes with the real thing before you go off into battle,” Marie Grimshaw said as she and Lucian walked toward the suite of Impressionism galleries. Lucian was aware how carefully the curator kept out of his personal space, despite the Sunday crowds pressing in on them.

“Battle?” he asked.

“Authentication is the one arena where the paintings are the enemy. You have to fight them and force them to reveal themselves to you. Take charge of them. Never allow them to overpower you. Subdue them, make them surrender their secrets.” She laughed nervously. “I must sound crazy.”

“Not at all. It’s an interesting way to approach it. I like it,”
Lucian said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. Marie never seemed able to relax around him, and it was disconcerting.

Lucian had been upstairs with the director. According to the note that arrived with the destroyed Matisse, the man who wanted to exchange Hypnos for the four masterpieces would be contacting Weil sometime Monday between nine and noon. If the museum was willing to make the trade, arrangements would be made on this call. The FBI wanted Weil to insist that a representative from the museum see the paintings before any negotiations took place. Lucian, posing as James Ryan, a Sotheby’s appraiser, would play that role. Done with the prep work for the call, Lucian told Weil he wanted to spend some time downstairs looking at the Van Goghs, Renoirs, Klimts and Monets, refreshing himself with the artists’ nuances and styles. It was possible that he’d have to leave quickly once the call came. Despite Lucian’s insistence that he didn’t need a guide, Weil called Marie Grimshaw at home and asked if she’d come in for a few hours and work with Lucian.

When she had arrived and seen him in the director’s office, she’d acted almost afraid. Weil had been aware of it, too, and made a joke about the FBI being on
their
side. Marie had forced a smile, folded her arms across her chest and asked Lucian if he was ready.

He wished he were visiting the paintings on his own. Other than Solange, he’d never liked going through a museum with anyone…he had his own pacing…pacing only she had matched.

In the first gallery of the Annenberg collection, Marie stopped in front of a medium-size still life. “There was no flower Renoir loved as much as roses…and none he painted as often as red roses. While his early work had delicate, nuanced characteristics, by the time he painted the canvas in the photograph and this one, he had given up on subtlety and was trying to evoke
the tangible rose itself in an expressive, expansive way. You can see that in the circular brushstrokes and—”

Lucian massaged either side of his forehead forcefully. The headache that had been under control all day seemed to have suddenly burst into life inside his skull. Reaching into his pocket, he found the painkillers, shook out three tablets, threw them in his mouth and swallowed them without water.

“Are you all right?” Marie asked with concern. How could she be so uncomfortable around him, almost wary of him, and yet be worried for him, too?

“Thanks. Yes, let’s move on.”

Walking just slightly ahead, Marie led him through rooms he knew well. Lucian often came to visit with these paintings for their beauty and the grace he felt in their presence. He was almost sorry when she stopped in front of Van Gogh’s
First Steps.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to look at one of his favorite paintings with her. The soft colors of the painter’s Arles palette always soothed Lucian; the aquas, blues and pastel lemons were serene compared to the colors in his darker, more turbulent works. Despite the subject matter’s potential for sentiment—a father holding his arms open as his child takes her first steps toward him, the baby’s mother letting go of her child—the master had rendered the moment honestly.

Beside him, Marie talked about Van Gogh painting this in 1890, while he was staying in the asylum at Saint-Rémy. “He based it on an engraving of Jean-François Millet’s painting. He wrote to his brother, Theo, that he felt justified in trying to reproduce the drawing into oils. It was more like translating the impressions of light and shade in black and white into another language—the language of color.”

While she talked, Lucian’s mind turned the father into Andre Jacobs, the woman into Andre’s deceased wife and the child into Solange.

Forty minutes later, having spent time with paintings from all four artists, Lucian left the museum. Outside, he stood on the granite steps and peered down Fifth Avenue. There was a long vista of uninterrupted cityscape on one side and the verdant park on the other. There were people lounging on the steps, some smoking, others talking on cell phones or listening to music.

The pills Lucian had taken hadn’t offered any relief today, and he still had a brutal headache. Sometimes fresh air helped when the painkillers didn’t, so instead of hailing a cab and heading home, he decided to walk downtown through the park.

Legions of New Yorkers were taking advantage of the warm afternoon and the city’s lush playground, and Lucian strolled among them. His headache started to lift almost right away, and he felt grateful for the familiar environs. The air smelled green and fecund, the way it did only in early June, when summer was still a hope instead of an actuality. It didn’t matter which way he went; there wasn’t a path that he didn’t know. Lucian had grown up in Manhattan and, as it was for most city kids, Central Park was his backyard. His school brought students here to play softball in the spring and football into the fall and to ice-skate in the winter. Lucian had smoked his first joint on the hill overlooking Bethesda Fountain and kissed a girl for the first time in the Belvedere Castle, during a rainstorm.

When he reached the sailboat pond, he stopped to watch. He used to come here with his father, envious of the elaborate boats the richer kids had. Lucian’s was homemade. His father had helped him to build it and then encouraged him to decorate it however he wanted and he’d painted it in dozens of crazy colors. Lucian couldn’t remember any of those boats he’d coveted back then, but he could still picture his messy, rainbow-striped vessel gliding proudly on the water, the only one of its kind.

With a loud splash, a little boy with auburn hair dropped his boat into the water, held his breath and watched as it bobbed, tilted side to side, then balanced out and righted itself. “Dad? Dad? Are you watching?” he shouted, and looked back for a second in Lucian’s direction.

Turning to look for the boy’s father, Lucian instead saw Emeline Jacobs.

She was about ten feet away, wearing faded blue jeans and a big white shirt with the sleeves rolled up exposing her fragile wrists. She hadn’t seen him yet. Lucian was struck by how young she looked, how vulnerable. It was an odd coincidence—her being here. Or was it? She lived just across the street. It was a beautiful day. She was taking a walk in the park.

“Daddy, are you watching?”

“Yes, I’m watching!” a man answered. At the same time, Emeline noticed Lucian and called out his name.

Right there, in the sunshine, by the pond, with who knew how many people around, the sight of her mouth forming that one word set off a reaction that surprised him—a physical craving that was different from what he experienced with most women. This was edged with memory and melancholy—and fear. His arms ached to hold her, hold on to her and keep her with him, to keep her safe.

As he went to her he worried that something was wrong, that she’d come to find him, except no one knew where he was.

“Are you all right?” he asked when he reached her side.

“It was too beautiful out to stay inside all day.”

He concentrated on what she was actually saying, trying to let go of the crazy things he was thinking. There were dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there two days ago when he’d last seen her.

“Have you gotten any e-mails today?”

Her eyes clouded. “One.”

“Was it the same message?”

“More or less. Warning me not to talk to the police or he’d come after Andre and me.”

“Are you being careful?”

“Yes, but between Broderick’s instructions about using a car service to go everywhere and being there for my father, I feel trapped.”

“That’s why you came here, to the park, by yourself?”

“On a Sunday with a million people out. What could happen?”

“You can’t take chances, Emeline. It’s not smart.”

“I really am being careful.”

“Not careful enough. You’re here. I don’t want anything to happen.”

The words
to you
were unsaid, but they were implied. Emeline held his glance.

“Did you see anyone following you?”

“Not today. Yesterday, I got that same sensation. But I didn’t see anything.”

They’d started walking and were making a slow circle around the pond.

“When? Where were you?”

“I just left the store to go across the street and get a sandwich. I can’t take a car across the street.”

“No, but you can order in.”

“Are you sure I’m not just getting paranoid?”

“It’s not paranoid when you’re getting threatening e-mails. I know you’re having a tough time, but give me a few more days. I haven’t given up putting pressure on Broderick to give you a security detail. He’s fighting a slashed budget, but he should know tomorrow.”

“Can’t they just find him?”

“They’re trying.” Lucian’s hands turned to fists. He wanted Emeline safe, and he wanted Solange’s killer. “How is your father?” he asked.

“He’s never well anymore, but better today than he was on Friday. I think he’s energized by the idea that whoever was behind the robbery might finally be found. Sometimes I think that’s all that’s been keeping him alive, wanting to see someone caught.”

“You said you didn’t want him to know about the e-mails.”

“I don’t. I didn’t tell him. He thinks you’re going to find whoever stole the painting by tracking down the person who destroyed it.”

“So do I.”

“That makes it my turn to tell you to be careful.” She put her hand out and touched his arm, and he felt her fingers through his jacket sleeve.

They’d come full circle. There were several paths radiating away from the pond, and Emeline took the one that led west. Lucian didn’t notice where they were headed at first. They were just strolling. One direction was as good as the next.

“You should know that Andre doesn’t hold you responsible for what happened to Solange,” she said, her voice even softer than usual, so that he had to strain to hear her, as if even saying Solange’s name was verboten.

“Thanks for telling me.”

“You still do, don’t you?”

He shrugged.

“How could it be your fault?”

“I was late getting to the store. If I’d been there a half hour earlier like I was supposed to be, we would have been gone before your father’s clerk closed up. Solange wouldn’t have been there alone, waiting for me, and this bastard would have just taken the damn painting and left.”

She’d veered off the path, and they walked up a grassy incline. The noise of the park around them struck a discordant note.
This conversation should be taking place in a somber, windowless room,
Lucian thought,
not in daylight, not interrupted by the sounds of kids and dogs and bicycle bells.

“How long did it take for you to get over Solange? For you to find someone else?”

“I was nineteen…I don’t know…eventually…” The truth was, he felt incapable of describing how he had and hadn’t recovered after the accident. Lucian didn’t know how to talk about Solange, to anyone, but especially not to this woman who was also inextricably tied to her. His feelings were twisted strands of so many conflicted emotions, tucked away where they were out of sight and he didn’t have to get tangled up in them.

“It’s easy to mythologize a relationship that ends like that,” Emeline said. “Especially when you’re so young and new at being with someone. Andre put her on a pedestal, too.” She sighed. “To him she’s forever nineteen and beautiful, with so much potential and so much promise.”

“That you couldn’t live up to? That you couldn’t fulfill?”

She glanced at him sideways and smiled sadly. “Could anyone? You probably can give me the answer to that better than anyone. Can anyone live up to your memories?”

They were meandering through a grove of magnolias now with gnarled trunks, shiny, dark green leaves and a few late, pale pink blossoms. The trees in the Met’s Van Gogh would have smelled like this, sweet with just a hint of citrus.

By the time they reached the top of the hillock, Lucian still hadn’t answered her question. Emeline stopped beside one of the trees, put her hand on its trunk for balance and reached up to pluck a blossom. Her fingers rested on a weathered emblem
cut into the bark: a twisting line snaking around a straight line dug out with a penknife years before.

Lucian flinched at the sudden recollection. He and Solange had come to the park for a picnic with a bottle of wine, a baguette, some apples and cheese and found this very spot to spread out their feast. She’d had this romantic notion of the überpicnic inspired by some movie she’d seen and had brought a book of poetry along that she asked him to read. He’d laughed at her and teased her, but he’d done it. The poem was about ill-fated lovers and time that flies too fast and had depressed her. He’d tried to coax her out of her unhappiness, but she wasn’t letting go.

What if something happens to us like that?
she’d asked.
No one will know we ever existed. There has to be some permanent proof we’ve been together.

Lucian had pulled out his Swiss Army knife and scratched their initials in the bark, an
L
with an
S
twisted around it.

Now Emeline’s polished fingernail was tracing those letters, the pale oval touching the curves of the
S
and the straight lines of the
L.
As he watched, mesmerized by the repetitive movement, he wondered just how they had wound up here, at this spot. He hadn’t led Emeline here, he was sure of that.

“I put those initials there.” As he told Emeline about that afternoon he watched her face. Was she surprised by the story? Had she known? He tried, but failed, to glean a telltale reaction.