The Icon Thief (20 page)

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.

T
he 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 far 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.”

Powell made a note of this as he went to examine the dead man’s belongings, which had been laid on a clean sheet of paper. No wallet or keys. A few coins, a wad of tissue, and a paper scrap, which he picked up. On the slip, a string of numbers had been written in ballpoint pen, along with what looked like a manufacturer’s code. “Any idea what this is?”

“We called it in already,” the detective said. “Judging from the format, it’s the serial number for a memory card, probably used for a digital camera. Not sure what it means, though.”

Powell set the scrap of paper down. “Have you recovered any slugs from the bodies?”

“Two so far,” the medical examiner said. “The younger one in the cooler had a nine-millimeter slug, too misshapen to eyeball. Our friend here has what looks like a.45 ACP with a clockwise twist. Why?”

“There’s a comparison I want you to run. A revolver we found in Southampton. It’s a Smith and Wesson Model 625, which fits your bullet.”

“I’ll have our ballistics unit follow up,” the detective said. “Anything else you need?”

“No. We’re good for now.” Powell signaled to Wolfe, who seemed more than ready to move on. “Let’s go.”

They left the decomp room. A few minutes later, they were back in the car, the smell of the morgue still lingering. Powell slid into the passenger’s seat as Wolfe got behind the wheel. “So what do you think?”

Wolfe took a bottle of perfume from her purse and misted the air before responding. “Honestly? I’m not convinced that Sharkovsky was a part of this. The modus operandi doesn’t match up. Instead of losing their head and hands, these guys were splashed with acid. It doesn’t fit.”

“True,” Powell said. “But it doesn’t mean that Sharkovsky wasn’t involved. Maybe he got someone else to take care of the bodies. Because what we’re looking at here is a mob deal gone bad.”

Wolfe started the car and pulled away from the curb. “What makes you say that?”

“The page in the dead guy’s pocket. It’s standard operating procedure for an overseas exchange. Say you have a shipment of weapons coming in. You give your supplier a camera of your choice. He mails it overseas to take
pictures of the merchandise, then returns it. Before you look at the pictures, you check the serial number to verify that the memory card is the same.”

They halted at a red light. “So what kind of merchandise are we talking about?”

“Guns,” Powell said. “According to my guy in the wire room, we’ve been hearing rumors of a weapons deal. So we need to make sure that any warrant for the club includes camera equipment.”

Wolfe turned onto Second Avenue. “I don’t know about you, but I doubt we’ll be seeing a warrant anytime soon.”

“So do I,” Powell said. For now, at least, they had hit a dead end. The hatchback at the vineyard had been rented with a stolen credit card. Since the heist, neither Zhenya nor Ilya had been seen, while Sharkovsky had gone to work as usual, sporting a bandage over one eye. In the absence of more conclusive evidence, however, the investigation had been left with no choice but to focus on side issues. One was the oligarch. The other was the art fund.

As Wolfe continued down the avenue, her thoughts seemed to be running along similar lines. “You know what I was thinking? If I were Maddy Blume, and I knew who stole the painting, I’d cut a deal with the thief. If you could buy the painting at a fifth of its legitimate value—”

“—it would be a real bargain.” Powell rolled down his window, hoping to disperse the remaining stench. “And if I were the thief, I’d want a buyer lined up. Otherwise, the painting would be almost impossible to move.”

“So maybe they made a deal with the fund, and the
girl was there to see it through. Or maybe she cut a deal of her own. Her background check says she’s a true prodigy, but ran a gallery that went belly up last year, so she’s loaded down with debt.” Wolfe spoke with the disapproval of one convinced that debt was the worst of all possible evils. “So she might have been willing to work with Sharkovsky.”

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Powell said. “But even if the fund got its hands on the study, the underlying problem remains. How do you sell the most famous stolen painting in the world? A heist like this only makes sense if the recipient intended to keep it for himself. Not a dealer, but a collector. Sharkovsky doesn’t qualify, but a man like Vasylenko, perhaps—”