The Hypnotist (9 page)

Malachai swung the shiny gold disc slowly, back and forth, until the child’s eyes grew heavy and closed.

“Where are you, Veronica?” Malachai asked the little girl sitting opposite him.

“It’s so dark…” she whimpered.

“Where are you?”

Nothing.

“Do you recognize this dark place?”

“Yes…” Her voice was quivering.

“Tell me.”

She shook her head,
no,
and then again
no.
“Don’t go.” She sounded frantic, almost hysterical. “Don’t go.”

Robert Keyes inched forward on the couch. Malachai knew he wanted to stop the hypnosis, but he shook his head at Veronica’s father and mouthed,
She’s fine.

“Has someone left you in the dark?” Malachai asked.

“No.” Her little voice broke.

“What’s happening?” Malachai asked.

She was half panting, half crying.

“Can you step back from where you are? Try to see what’s happening, like a picture in a book.”

The little girl’s panting intensified.

“They’re here.”

“Can you tell me where you are?”

“Inside.”

“Inside your house?”

She nodded.

“Where is your house? Where do you live?”

“Shush,” Veronica said. “I live in the ghetto.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

“1885.”

Malachai had been a reincarnationist for over thirty years and by now knew about almost every culture and country. Shush was in Persia, which at the end of the nineteenth century was a very difficult place for Jews. They weren’t allowed to travel outside the ghetto’s gates or to wear most colors. They needed to be easily identifiable.

“What is happening to you?”

She was oblivious to his question, reenacting a scene in her mind that had happened over one hundred and thirty years ago. “Don’t go,” she whimpered, her lower lip trembling, and then she reached out with her little hands to grab at someone who wasn’t there, whom Malachai couldn’t see.

Farid Taghinia had left work at six o’clock. The rest of the employees departed quickly after he did, so by six-fifteen the mission was empty, but Samimi had decided to wait a bit longer before venturing out of his office. Now that it was seven, it was certainly safe, but he was nervous nonetheless. He was always nervous lately. If his actions were discovered, he’d be sent back to Iran and killed. He had no doubt.

To make it look as if he’d gotten up without premeditation, Samimi left an unfinished document open on his computer, picked up a sheaf of papers, walked down the hall to his boss’s office and, using a key he wasn’t supposed to have, opened the door.

After laying the papers on Taghinia’s desk, Samimi pulled on gloves and then picked up the phone. He always held his breath during this part of the operation. If Taghinia had found the bug he’d be cagey enough to set a trap for whoever had placed it there.

The device was where Samimi had put it last week.

His hands shook as he removed it and slipped it into his pocket. No matter how many times he’d performed the ritual of putting the bug in and taking it out, his fear never lessened. And he’d been at it now for almost six months. Once every ten
days, the night before the offices were swept for listening devices, Samimi retrieved his pet and took it home with him, only returning it to its nest the evening after the inspections. That meant that every fortnight he missed twenty-four hours’ worth of Taghinia’s phone calls. It bothered him, but what could he do? So far he’d been able to pick up where he’d left off in most of the conversations without too much confusion.
But was he missing anything critical?

At his boss’s door, he listened before he walked out. Nothing but street noises and the whir of office equipment. About to leave, he remembered the papers, his excuse if he was caught.
I just came in to leave these here,
he’d say. And if Taghinia questioned him about the locked door?
It wasn’t locked.
He’d rehearsed it all in front of the mirror at home a dozen times.
I didn’t know you locked your door at night, Farid. Why do you do that?

Back in his own office, Samimi extracted the day’s phone tape from the hiding place he’d constructed in his bookshelf and left the mission for the night.

An hour later he sat sipping Scotch and playing the tapes in the kitchen area of his small Queens studio, which was decorated with clean, modern furniture and not a single Persian rug. He was halfway through his drink and so far none of the calls were important or relevant to the Hypnos rescue.

Since Vartan Reza had discovered the forgery, plans had been speeding up. The statue had first been a symbol of power but now, with the possibility it was a legendary map to unleashing unconscious powers, it was valuable as much more than an artifact. If his country had been determined to reclaim it before, now they were desperate. Something like this could not belong to anyone else. Could not be discovered by anyone else. Hypnos had to come home and be examined.

That was why Samimi was being so careful now and why he’d bought himself such an expensive insurance policy last Friday.

Following Taghinia’s instructions, Samimi had driven a gray Mercedes up to the garage in Lake Placid. But not the same Mercedes that had been used in the murder of Vartan Reza. Samimi had put that car into a storage space he’d rented in the Bronx and had driven a replacement he’d bought up to the garage. It had cost him almost half his savings, but how could he put a price on having evidence against Taghinia for vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of a crime?

What to do with that evidence weighed on his mind, though. He was afraid to send it to anyone, but he’d written a letter explaining what he’d done, which he kept folded up behind his credit cards in his wallet. If anything happened to him, someone
would
find it.

“My boys loved the last set of American movies you sent, Farid. Thank you,” Nassir was saying on the most recent tape. “That young actor—what was his name? Jon Heder. Very funny.”

This was it. The minister who was the mastermind of the plan to bring Hypnos home, was employing the code. Ready with a pencil and pad of paper, Samimi wrote down every word the two men said for the next four minutes. When the call ended, he worked on the translation for half an hour. By the time he had it all deciphered and read it through, he needed a second drink.

In code, Nassir told Taghinia he was arranging for a delivery of five pounds of Semtex, the Czech-made plastic explosive. Specifying pre-1991 Semtex, which had no commercial tracing chemicals in it, so it was virtually undetectable. It would arrive via the diplomatic pouch and be delivered to the warehouse the mission owned on the west side of Manhattan. More than enough explosives, Nassir said, to blow up a stone building six stories high.

Hypnos was in the Met. The Met was built of stone…Samimi considered its size. Were they talking about the museum?
What was going on?
He drained the second drink in less time than it had taken him to pour it.

“I’m here to see Andre Jacobs,” Lucian said as he offered his badge to the uniformed doorman. While the man inspected the agent’s credentials, Lucian studied the lobby. It looked the same as it had twenty years ago when he’d camped out upstairs in Solange’s parents’ Fifth Avenue apartment while they were traveling.

For years after the accident, he had avoided this block. Once he’d been in a taxi that stopped at a light on the corner, instinctively glanced over, counted up ten floors and stared at the darkened rectangle of glass that had been her bedroom window. And suddenly, there in the car, Lucian could smell Solange’s lily-of-the-valley scent and feel her body pressed up against his. Unwilling to luxuriate in the agony of missing her in the back of a lousy cab, he’d pushed the memory away.

After that if he came down Fifth either on foot or in a car he avoided looking left; he’d just keep moving.

The doorman hung up the house phone. “You can go on up, Agent Glass. Mr. Jacobs’s housekeeper is expecting you. When you get off the elevator it’s to your right. Apartment—”

“Ten B,” Lucian said, walking to the elevator.

Upstairs, he faced the familiar forest green door, rang the bell and waited. The hallway was small—there were just two apartments per floor—and quiet except for the whir of the elevator as it descended. Lucian examined the brown marble tiles shot through with gold veins, the tan, gold and white wallpaper with its slightly Oriental design, and the gilt-framed mirror hanging over the narrow table centered between the two doorways. In a cut-glass vase was an arrangement of dried flowers that looked as if someone had put them there, fresh, years ago and then forgotten about them.

Finally Lucian heard footsteps, but it wasn’t a housekeeper who opened the door. The wasted, worn-out man was a shadow of the person he’d once been. In Andre Jacobs’s watery eyes and ravaged face was the evidence of two decades of sorrow.

Lucian started to introduce himself when Jacobs interrupted.

“I didn’t call the police,” he snarled, as if he’d dismissed the idea that the law could ever be of any value to him a long time ago.

Jacobs hadn’t recognized him, but Lucian wasn’t surprised. They’d only met a couple of times, and that had been two decades ago, when he’d been nineteen years old, not yet grown into his features, just one of a group of Solange’s friends. No, Jacobs hadn’t recognized him, but surely he would remember the name that had appeared alongside his daughter’s for months in reports of the crime the press had dubbed “the art theft of the decade.”

“I’m from the FBI, Agent Lu—”

“The FBI? Well, I certainly didn’t call the FBI.”

Lucian forced himself not to react to the stink of gin that accompanied the words. It was only three in the afternoon.

“I’m here because we need your help. Can I come in, Mr. Jacobs?” He was going to have to tell the man his name, but now that he’d seen his physical state, he thought Jacobs should be seated in case it came as a shock.

“Is this about art? Because I’m not in the art business anymore. I can’t help you with information about any stolen paintings.” Jacobs spat out the words.

“This time it’s about a painting that has been found.” Lucian took a step forward, hoping that if he invaded Jacobs’s personal space it would force the man to step farther back and let him in.

“That’s been found?” There was a flicker of interest in the old man’s eyes, but then it faded. “No, I’m not in the business anymore. I can’t help you.”

Looking past Jacobs, Lucian could see into the foyer. The decor hadn’t changed in all these years. “I only need a few minutes of your time.”

“Ask me what you want to ask me, and then leave me in peace.”

“Twenty years ago, one of your clients gave you a painting to reframe…”

Jacobs leaned more of his weight on the door.

Lucian noticed and continued. “It was a Matisse…”

Jacobs slumped; he was holding on to the door for support now.

“…entitled
View
…”

Jacobs flinched.

“…of St. Tropez.”

Jacobs recoiled viscerally.

“The painting was stolen from your shop, on May sixteenth.” Lucian’s voice was almost a whisper now. “You remember that day, don’t you?”

Jacobs barely nodded, as if his head was too heavy to move. This was more difficult than Lucian had anticipated and he was angry with himself for not passing this part of the job on to Matt Richmond as Doug Comley had suggested. But time had brought the past full circle. This was his case and he needed to see it through.

“Mr. Jacobs, we believe the painting found yesterday is that Matisse, but there’s no way to confirm—”

“Absolutely not,” he interrupted even before he heard the full request. He shook his head as if the movement would put up a wall between the past and the present.

“Please let me just exp—”

“You…” Jacobs was staring at him. “I know who you are!” He was shouting again, as all the pieces of the puzzle came together for him at once.

“What’s wrong?” The door blocked the speaker but her voice was clear. Even laced with anxiety it had a lightness to it, as if it were being played in the upper octaves of a fine, well-tuned piano.

Lucian watched the woman as she came into view. She had alabaster skin and pale blond hair that dipped over her forehead, skimmed her shoulders and shone as if it were polished metal. She was dressed in a sleeveless cream-colored shift and wore gold ballet slippers. Everything about her seemed to glow. Later, Lucian would realize that it was sun from the living-room windows sidelighting her, but in that first moment it appeared as if she had a nimbus surrounding her.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked Jacobs as she reached his side and hooked her arm in his in a graceful gesture, offering support.

He fixed his rheumy gaze on her and tried to smile, but all he managed was the remembrance of a smile. Jacobs looked like someone who’d just seen a ghost.

And Lucian was that ghost.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked again. Her voice was both soft and hoarse at the same time, the way velvet felt different depending on which way you brushed the nap.

Jacobs nodded, but she didn’t seem reassured. Lucian didn’t blame her. She had probably heard the shouting and all she had
to do was look at Jacobs to know he wasn’t well. Dissatisfied, she turned to Lucian. Her eyes were a fiery amber color, like honey made by electrified bees.

“I’m from the FBI—” Lucian started to say.

“He isn’t well,” she interrupted. “Is this really necessary?”

“It is. I’m sorry.”

She frowned. “Can I at least help him to a chair first?”

“Sure, absolutely.”

“I’m not sick. I can get to a chair myself,” Jacobs interjected, but he continued to lean on her as they walked across the foyer.

Lucian followed her inside and looked around, reacquainting himself with the apartment. On the left was the dining room with celadon walls, ivy-covered latticework covering the windows and collection of still lifes worthy of a small museum. On the right was the living room, where afternoon light spilled in from the large windows overlooking the park. Two late-period Matisse watercolors and two Degas ballet dancer pastels hung on the walls, and an Art Deco black-and-green rug covered the floor. Everything was the same. Suddenly he could smell lilies of the valley mixed with turpentine and linseed oil—the perfume and art supplies that made up Solange’s one-of-a-kind scent. Was her bedroom still intact? When he’d last seen it, it was a collage of leaves painted in every shade of green and affixed to the walls in a way that at first seemed haphazard but then succeeded in making you believe you were in a thicket deep in a primeval forest.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Dad?” the woman asked as she helped Jacobs into a chair at the antique card table by the window.

Lucian had been remembering Solange’s scent, remembering her in this apartment, thinking about her bedroom. That had to be why he thought he’d heard this woman call Jacobs
Dad.
Twenty years ago Andre Jacobs had had only one daughter, a
nineteen-
year-old
who’d been murdered during the robbery of a Matisse painting from his framing store. Even if he and his wife had had another child right after Solange’s death, she’d be only nineteen now. This woman was in her late twenties or early thirties.

“Now, what is this about? What do you want with my father?” she asked without preamble when she returned to Lucian, who was still in the foyer.

He held out his badge. “I’m FBI, Art Crime Team. Special Agent Lucian Glass, and I—”

Her gaze intensified as she reacted to his name. “No wonder my father’s so upset. You were in the papers a few weeks ago when they reported on that mass hypnosis session in the Viennese music hall. The reincarnation concert, they called it, right? It was terrible for him seeing your name…remembering…”

“Emeline?” Jacobs called out feebly.

“I’ll be right back,” she said to Lucian as she ran out.

So Jacobs had seen the press. Although Lucian had refused to answer any questions about what had happened during that performance of Beethoven’s
Eroica,
it hadn’t stopped the reporters from writing about his presence there. Forensics still hadn’t found any evidence of a chemical attack that might have caused a drug-induced delirium. Had reincarnation been proven in the Austrian concert hall? The possibility was so provocative, the story wouldn’t die. In newspapers, magazines and Internet sites and on TV and radio talk shows, reincarnation had itself been reincarnated into a hot topic that no one seemed to tire of.

“My father was upset for days just reading about you in the paper,” the woman said when she returned. “The past isn’t ever very far from his thoughts, and seeing your name in print brought it that much closer.” She paused as if it had been difficult for her, as well. “Now that I know who you are, I think it would be better if you’d go.” They were standing
two feet apart, but her tone put an even greater distance between them.

Lucian couldn’t force Andre Jacobs to talk to him. The man wasn’t a suspect.

She opened the door and he stepped out into the hallway. He turned, about to ring for the elevator, then turned back. She was about to shut the door. The light from the chandelier shimmered on her hair. Nothing about her looked familiar, and yet he felt as if they knew each other well.

“There’s one thing…”

She stopped.

“We need your…your father to identify a painting. The Matisse stolen from his store.”

“That would be torture for him,” she whispered in a voice that reminded Lucian of the smoke that wafts up after a candle is extinguished.

“I am aware of that.”
It’s also torture for me.

“Then why him?” There was nothing aggressive about the soft-spoken words themselves, but in his ears each one snapped like an expletive.

“Before the Matisse was stolen it had been in a private collection for over forty years. The owners, the original dealer, even the adjuster who insured it—have all passed away. Your father is the only person left who can identify it.”

“He’s not an art historian. Doesn’t the museum have people to do that?”

“We found some uncharacteristic markings on the canvas that a framer might have seen and noted. We’d like Mr. Jacobs to come to the Met and take a look. Believe me, there is an enormous amount at stake or I wouldn’t be asking. The man who sent this painting might be able to lead us to whoever stole it. And then we’d know, after all this time, who killed Solange.”

Emeline was staring at him. He noticed her fingers were gripping the edge of the door so hard her knuckles were white.

“Will you ask your father if he’ll help?”

“It’s been a long time. It would be better for him to leave the past in the past.”

As it would be for me, too.

Her cat’s eyes fixed on him. “As it would be for you, too.”