The Hypnotist (24 page)

The stone tunnel had an unpaved dirt floor littered with hundreds of rodent skeletons.

“How much of the movie did they shoot down here?” Richmond asked Lucian as they steadily moved forward.

“It wasn’t that good a movie. I don’t remember the details, Matt. It’s amazing the way your mind works.”

“My mind?
Amazing
isn’t exactly what I was thinking.”

“I’m going to have to rent this flick when we get out of here,” O’Hara said, his voice echoing in the narrow passageway. “Isn’t this place too small to get all that equipment in?”

“They probably shot this part with a handheld,” Jeffries said.

“Well, listen to you! When was the last time you shot a movie?” Richmond asked.

“My brother-in-law is a cameraman.”

“Here we are,” Lucian called out as he reached the end of an S curve and shone his light up to the ceiling, revealing a second iron staircase exactly like the one they’d just used, but this one offered a dozen steps leading up to a hatch. “I’d better change places with one of you. If that’s stuck I won’t be able to put much strength against it.”

Richmond climbed up the stairs and pushed. Nothing budged. He tried again. Wood creaked. “One of you want to get up here and help me? I know there’s not much room, but I’m not going to be able to move it on my own.”

O’Hara climbed up, and together he and Richmond shoved the hatch open. It fell out with a loud crash. So did the radio that O’Hara had been carrying. Lucian tried to catch it as it whizzed by him, but it was beyond his reach.

They entered. The shack was six feet wide and unfurnished. Just a room with a hole in the floor and a door cut into one wall.

“Okay. Looks like we’re almost out of here,” Lucian said. “God knows what’s on the other side of this door so everybody needs to be on alert.” His shoulder and his head were both throbbing, and he knew his voice was sharper than it needed to be. In the flashlight’s gleam he could see they had their guns drawn.

Richmond opened the door and Lucian stepped out first, relishing the cool evening air on his face. Twenty feet away was a thicket of trees that would offer camouflage. He pointed to it, dropped to his knees and, gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, crept forward. Was this the same grove they’d seen when they’d scrutinized the area upon arriving almost an hour before? There was no way to tell.

Continuing, careful not to come down hard on anything that might make a crack or rustle, the team members skulked ahead, all of them reaching the edge of the tree line in less than a minute.

“What the hell is that?” Richmond whispered, pointing at the fence in front of them.

“I should have realized…from the movie…everything is the same. That’s an aluminum blockade that went up around the building as soon the explosion hit.”

“Electrified?” Richmond asked.

“Not in the movie.”

“And the building—where Shabaz and the sculpture are—is that on this side or that side? Are we locked in? Are they?”

“If I remember it right, we should be on the outside now, Shabaz and the sculpture on the inside.”

O’Hara rounded the curve ahead of everyone else and almost immediately there was a burst of shouts. But Lucian couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. The sudden pulse of a helicopter drowned out all the words.

When he rounded the same curve he saw Gary Fulton and the rest of the agents running toward them.

“Good to see you’re safe,” Fulton screamed over the chopper. “What the hell happened in there?”

Once the agents had been airlifted back over the fence and made their way to the building where their investigation had started they found the FedEx truck still parked in front. According to St. Christopher, the sculpture was also still inside. So were five people.

Richmond and Lucian stood in the doorway for the second time that night, but now they knew who they were looking for. Using a bullhorn he’d grabbed from one of the guys on the chopper, Lucian shouted, “Give it up, Shabaz. We’ve got a dozen agents outside. A helicopter overhead. Let’s cut the games short.”

There was no sound and no movement. Lucian repeated his message. When there was still no response, they proceeded inside cautiously, hugging the wall, working their way to the atrium where they found the two guards, still cuffed and secured.

Gun drawn, Lucian flung open the door to the screening room. “FBI. Drop your weapons, Shabaz!”

The guards and the fake FedEx truckers were all there, right where the FBI had left them.

The crate was there, in the same state—partially unpacked—with the sculpture’s swaddled head exposed.

And there was a fifth man, his back to the door, who was in the process of turning around. But it wasn’t Shabaz. It was a stranger, wearing a baseball cap with an emerald lightning bolt zigzagging across the front.

At midnight, with Hypnos in its belly, the courier jet was cleared for takeoff. As the plane ascended, Lucian watched the city below change from recognizable shapes into dots of yellow lights decorating a black canvas. Pulling out his sketchbook, in only a few minutes, he managed to draw Shabaz’s face. “His fame’s going to work against him getting away, but his fortune will work for him,” Lucian told his partner as the pilot turned off the seat belt sign.

“I’m getting a drink,” Richmond said as he stood up. “You want one? We’re officially off duty for the next six hours.”

Ten minutes later, halfway though his vodka on the rocks, Lucian got a call from Gary Fulton in the L.A. Bureau office. “It looks like Shabaz vanished into thin air,” Fulton said.

“Impossible.”

“No, I’m being literal. I just got confirmation that his pilot filed a flight plan to Mexico City and that his plane took off an hour ago from the Santa Barbara airport.”

“Have you been in touch with Mexico City?”

“Sure have, and according to the plan they should be landing in an hour and a half. We’re working with the authorities there to detain Mr. Shabaz when he gets off the plane.”

“If he gets off the plane, you mean. How much do you want to bet that plane flies right over Benito Juarez International Airport with no plans of landing.”

“We’d both be on the same side of that bet. There’s something else, Lucian,” Fulton said, and filled him in on what he’d discovered.

“We lost him,” Lucian said to Richmond after he hung up with Fulton.

“Not yet.”

“Fuck your optimism.”

“Ditto to your pessimism. We just started, and you’re giving up?”

“This guy has more money than Midas. He’s got his own plane. And he’s French.”

“Shabaz is French?”

Lucian nodded. “Fulton just told me.”

“We are so screwed.” Richmond stared down into the amber liquid then took a big swallow.

“That’s what I was saying,” Lucian said, then turned and stared out the window into the blackness. A few moments passed without either of them speaking.

“France won’t extradite their own citizens once they return home if the crimes were committed on foreign soil, but this is a crime that involves five paintings, four of which were created by French masters of Impressionism,” Lucian finally said. “Do you think that will move them?”

“All of them were stolen from American collectors. I don’t think they’ll give a rat’s ass.”

Lucian was surprised by his partner’s response. “Now who’s being pessimistic?”

“There’s a difference between pessimism and realism.”

“Not that I can see.”

“Screw that. I still say we’re going to get him.” Richmond was back on the upswing. “You’ll see.”

“You have a plan?”

“Not yet, but we’ll come up with one. And we do have the paintings.”

“You’re right. We have the paintings. But I’m never going to be satisfied till we get the guy and find out who he was working with,” Lucian insisted as he picked up his pencil and started sketching again.

Samimi opened the envelope that had arrived in that morning’s mail. His name was handwritten by a calligrapher on the front and the return address of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was engraved on the back. Running his fingers over the type, he felt the raised letters on the smooth, creamy stock. His hand actually shook a little as he pulled out the invitation and read the date and time of the event, one day short of a week from today. He was elated and nervous at the same time.

You are cordially invited to attend a private showing of Impressionist Masterworks Tuesday, June seventeenth, at six o’clock in the evening The American Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

There was a name, and a phone number and a request to RSVP. Yes, he’d respond. He reread the invitation. June 17. Between now and then there were so many things he had to get right and so many things that could go wrong.

Over another dinner two nights before, Deborah had told him about the event, excited because it would be the first time in decades anyone outside of the Met would see any of the paintings or the sculpture.

He’d commented that it sounded like an odd grouping—Impressionist masterpieces and the statue of Hypnos that his country was so intent on having returned—but she didn’t explain.

“No one outside the museum has seen Hypnos in over a hundred years,” he said wistfully as he signaled the waiter to refill their wineglasses. “What does it look like? What kind of condition is it in?”

She’d smiled and said if he wanted to know, he should come to the reception.

Bingo,
he thought, and then smiled. American slang was so expressive.

Now, holding the invitation, he walked across the Persian carpet, headed for Farid Taghinia’s office so he could show him what had come in the mail, but at the door, he hesitated. He should go over Nassir’s plan once more before he faced his boss. The next set of moves was complex and would require skill, concentration and nerves. Taghinia would question him over and over. Test him. Samimi needed to be prepared three and four steps ahead, plan for each contingency. The outcome of this operation would affect more than where Hypnos wound up and who would own it. The trajectories of many people’s lives, his included, were at stake. This was his opportunity to show everyone what he was capable of. If all this worked, he’d be a hero. He’d never have to answer to Taghinia again. But living in New York was an expensive proposition. How long would it take to find another job? He needed…what did they call it? A nest egg, yes, that was it.

Punching a number in on his cell phone, he listened to it ring three times before he heard a man with a gravelly voice answer. Samimi identified himself and exchanged a sentence or two of pleasantries. Then he looked down at the date on the invitation.

“The rugs need to be cleaned, and I think it’s time to do those repairs you suggested before any of them get any worse. Would it be convenient for you to come and get them next Wednesday late afternoon, about four? I’d like to have them all done at the same time.”

It’s not stealing if what you are taking belongs to you, Taghinia had said to him, referring to Hypnos. Did that apply to treason, too? Was it even still treason if those who expected and demanded your loyalty were themselves disloyal?

In the office the Metropolitan Museum had given him to use during the investigation, Lucian fed the shredder and watched strips of paper fall into a basket.

“The detritus of a job well done,” Tyler Weil said from the doorway.

Lucian looked up at the director. “There’s always a lot to clean up when a case ends.”

“You sound melancholy.”

“That would be an indulgence.”

“Nonetheless, I detect something in your voice and see something in the set of your shoulders.”

“If you insist, Mr. Weil. I liked having an office at the museum. It’s a special place to me.”

Weil nodded. “We’d be happy to keep an office here for you.”

“That’s something you don’t want to wish for—the need for an in-house ACT agent.”

“You’re quite right.” Weil laughed. And then he held out a cream-colored envelope and watched Lucian open the invitation and read it. “If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t be able to
have this little party celebrating the return of the paintings to their rightful home. We do hope you can come.”

Lucian smiled gratefully. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

“It’s going to be quite an event, the first time these paintings have been seen in years and the first and only time Hypnos will be on view until the new galleries open.”

“You’re putting Hypnos on view now? With the paintings? Why?”

“The sculpture was the impetus for the return of the paintings. Marie and I thought it would be fitting, and it will generate great press, which is something our lawyers want us to concentrate on. Build up support now, so when the time comes to argue the provenance of this piece, public opinion is on our side.”

The mention of Marie bothered Lucian. He’d had the same reaction every time he met with the curator or heard her name. There was nothing logical about his feeling. It was free-floating anxiety—that inexorable pall that hung over so many of his days now—something he’d never experienced before his trip to Vienna. He shook his head, wishing the movement could dislodge the feeling.

With his eye for detail, Weil noticed the agent’s reaction. “Something bothering you?”

Lucian had no intention of attempting to explain what was inexplicable even to him. “Not at all. I’d be honored to come. Thank you very much for thinking of me and for coming down here yourself.”

“I wanted to thank you personally. You took on a situation fraught with physical and emotional hazards and did an amazing job. On behalf of the museum, I’m very grateful.”

Weil was talking about pigment applied to canvas, about streaks and swaths of colors, about gold and ivory and wood. What was it about these creations, these fragments of imag
ination, these re-creations of reality, this art that so hypnotized men and women that they devoted their lives to creating it and then preserving it and safeguarding it? Lucian had come to believe it was because every great work of art contained the soul of its creator. And by respecting and protecting the art, he believed, we respect and protect not only the soul of our collective past but our hope for our collective future.

But did any of that really matter when Shabaz had gotten away? When the men who’d stolen the paintings—at least one of whom had killed to steal a painting—had gotten away?

“I also brought this.” Tyler held out a second envelope. The calligraphy spelled out Emeline and Andre Jacobs’s names and their address. “My assistant was going to hand-deliver it to them, but with everything you’ve all been through, it occurred to me that there was something fitting about you taking it over, as if the past and the present were coming full circle. If you want to, of course.”

“I do,” Lucian said as he took the proffered envelope. He’d talked to Emeline late Monday when he got back from Los Angeles and talked to her again last night. He’d wanted to get uptown to see her, but Emeline said Andre was too ill for her to meet him. Lucian was worried about her. The threatening e-mails had stopped and she hadn’t sensed anyone following her since the police detail had been assigned to her. But now she was getting menacing phone calls. Sometimes they were quick hang-ups, other times whispered warnings from a mechanical voice taunting her, telling her the police wouldn’t be able to keep her safe forever and he’d be waiting for her when they left.

There had been four or five calls every day, each too short for the police to trace.

The woman who answered the phone at the store said
Emeline wasn’t there, so Lucian took a chance that she would be at the Fifth Avenue apartment and walked across the street without calling.

“Nice surprise,” she said when she greeted him. A breeze from inside—she must have had the terrace door open—blew her fragrance toward him, inviting him in even before she did.

She was wearing a sleeveless white shirt, white jeans and silver ballet slippers with silver barrettes holding her blond hair off her face. Her eyes were a little more wild and worried looking than the last time he’d seen her, her skin more translucent. It felt as if it had been a long time, but it had only been three days ago. He wasn’t surprised by how great a toll the stress she was under had taken. Being hunted was horrifying. He doubted she’d slept at all unless she’d been smart and taken pills.

“I’m so glad everything turned out all right and you’re back safe.” She hesitated and then added in a lower voice, as if it was a secret, “I very much missed you.”

He smiled. “And I missed you, too…” He didn’t finish his sentence. She’d used the exact same odd phrase Solange used whenever she saw him after a few days apart.

Emeline was looking at him with a combination of relief and palpable pleasure. He wanted to ask her why she’d used those specific words but at the same time didn’t want to question her about it lest it wipe her smile off her face.

“I’m playing messenger.” He held out the envelope. She took it, glanced at the return address and then put it on a low bench by the door where there was an assortment of other mail and magazines.

“I’d love to get out of here,” she said. “I’m going crazy between Andre and my police escort and staying away from the gallery because of the incessant calls. Could we get a drink somewhere? At least with you I’m safe.”

They sat across from each other at a small table in the Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle Hotel, and both ordered martinis. As Lucian sipped his he noticed how, in the low light, Emeline looked as if she’d been painted by an old master. Half her face was hidden in deep shadow, the other half illuminated; the chiaroscuro making her expression mysterious and hard to read.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

She gestured to the fanciful murals of rabbits and dogs, squirrels and schoolchildren all playing in the park. “It never changes here, does it?”

“No, never. That’s its charm, isn’t it?” He told her how when he was a boy his grandmother brought him and his sister here on Saturday afternoons for hot chocolate. “My sister, who was a huge fan of Ludwig Bemelmans’s books, would always make a pilgrimage to that wall when we got here and just stare intently at Madeline for a few minutes, enchanted by the meshing of her fantasy friend and this reality.” He took another sip of the icy gin. “That’s the power of art.”

“Why did you give up on being an artist?”

“I didn’t care enough anymore. And you can’t do it unless it’s the only thing you care about.”

She picked up her martini with fingers that looked as delicate as the glass stem. “But you have all your supplies sitting right there where you can always see them. Sometimes the desire must come back?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“And what do you do then?”

He stared at her, unclear about what she was asking, not sure if he was being too naive or too suspicious.

“I give in. And for a while I’m just another poor schlep who will never get what he wants.”

“And what would that be?”

“My fantasy was exactly the cliché you’d expect it to be, Emeline.”

“But you didn’t even give it a chance. That’s sad.”

“Only if you equate desire—thwarted or otherwise—with happiness. I don’t happen to buy into that equation.”

“What equation do you buy into?”

“Your glass is empty. I can buy into getting us more drinks.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m already feeling this one.”

“Do you want me to take you back to your father’s apartment?”

Her no was immediate. “You know what I’d like? To see some of your paintings.”

“Why?”

“I’m curious.”

Twenty minutes later, Lucian was rifling through the rack of his old canvases. He pulled out three. They were all compositions of people visiting museums, standing in front of and mostly blocking sensuous marble statues of nude Greek goddesses or famous Renaissance masterpieces that he only hinted at with frames and corners of color and style. Looking at them after so many years, he couldn’t see talent, only drive.

He lined the paintings up along the wall facing Emeline, who was sitting on the couch.

“Do you have any wine?” she asked without taking her eyes off the paintings.

When he returned with the glasses and the bottle, he found her standing, examining his work up close.

“They’re so good, and there’s so much promise in them. You were trying to do so much.”

“
Trying
being the operative word.”

“You shouldn’t have stopped.”

“It was a kid’s dream.”

“What do you dream about now? Catching the bad guys?”

He smiled. “That’s not such a bad dream. Don’t say it like you feel sorry for me.”

“Not sorry for you. Sorry for the art you might have made. Beauty matters, too.”

“That’s why I catch the bad guys.”

Now she smiled.

“What do you dream about?” he asked.

“These days? I dream about you catching the bad guys,” she said, and then held his gaze in a certain way that made it almost impossible for him to look away.

A feeling of inevitability overwhelmed him. There was no question about why she was here or what she wanted or what he wanted, but as he leaned forward toward her he noticed that the distance between them was greater than he’d imagined it would be, as if his ability to make judgments was off. Not one martini off and a few sips of wine off, but profoundly disturbed.

Lucian fell into the kiss, lingering there on the edge of her mouth for a time that lost measure. He could feel her bony shoulders against his and her small breasts pushing into his chest. At some point he undid her barrettes and loosened her silky hair and her scent, that curious combination of spicy amber and innocent vanilla swirled around him.

Their embrace had an intensity, a wholehearted energy, as if there was nothing else that could matter right then but them being together, now, tonight, this way.

It had been like this with her on Sunday in the park, and like this with Solange years ago. The two sets of experiences merged too easily into one.
No.
He didn’t want to remember but just be here in this moment with this woman.

As if she sensed what he was thinking, Emeline pulled back,
turned, walked over to the couch, sat down and picked up her wine. She took a sip, then another. The lamp in the corner of the room cast her shadow across the floor, and it spilled onto the paintings.

Lucian went to her, sat beside her and took her hand. He turned it over, then bent down and kissed her palm. Lifting his head, he looked into her eyes, held her gaze. “I want you.” He whispered the answer to the question that this time, for the first time, she hadn’t asked.

Emeline leaned forward and answered him by kissing him, full on the mouth. His hands twisted in her hair, his fingertips wrapped in the silk. His lips didn’t leave hers and if either of them stopped to breathe they weren’t aware of it.

He’d said “want,” but he didn’t want her. He didn’t want to unbutton her blouse and push up her brassiere and feel her breasts and touch her skin—it wasn’t want—it was a crazy, desperate hunger, and as he did those things and touched her cool skin and felt her small nipples pucker and as she shuddered in his arms he knew that he was gone, that he’d slipped into another dimension that somehow was and wasn’t his past but might be his future. She was breathing his breath, inhaling the air he was exhaling, and he was inhaling hers. And all the while the ghosts of him and his first love sat across the room, watching, because he and Emeline were breathing in each other’s air the same way and touching each other the same way and living on the edge of their passion for each other the same way and his heart wanted to break for the awful loveliness of this woman who was alive and the one who wasn’t.

“I want you, too,” Emeline whispered in his ear with hot breath that was his breath, and the only thing in the world that mattered then was to sink into her and become lost in the time
warp that folded around him and held him in a brutally cruel embrace for all that it promised and teased.

Once they were in his bedroom, even before he had a chance to touch her, Emeline was stepping out of her silver shoes and then stripping off her clothes. Not undressing for him, he thought, but proving something to herself.

Naked, she stood before him, staring at him with a brave and brazen look in her eyes, and when she spoke they were the last words he ever expected to hear, the exact words he should have been prepared for even though he didn’t know how or why. This woman had been a child when Solange had been killed. There was no way that she could have known what Solange had said to him the first time they were together. Not
make love to me,
not
sleep with me
or
touch me
—but
paint me,
and he had. He’d spent hours standing in front of her naked body and working on that painting.

Emeline’s words traveled across the room to embrace him or slap him, he wasn’t sure which. As he listened to what she said, under her voice, he heard Solange’s voice. How did Emeline know these things that no one could have told her because no one knew about them except for a woman who had been dead for twenty years?

“Paint me, Lucian.”

He couldn’t fight it—or he didn’t want to fight it—he didn’t know which and didn’t care. Everything was there—the battered beechwood box, the stained palettes, the can of sable brushes and old bottles of linseed oil and turpentine—all there just waiting. Most of the canvases were used, but there was one that had just a few blue brushstrokes in the upper corner, as if he’d started to lay in a background, been distracted and then never gotten back to it.