The Icon Thief (4 page)

Wolfe studied the sand blocking their way. “Maybe the sand wasn’t here at the time.”

“Exactly.” Powell went back to the fence. He noticed again that part of it was newer than the rest, with green plastic mesh covering the links. Because this section was less permeable to windblown particles, drifts of sand had piled up there until the area was impassable.

“When the body was dumped, this part of the fence
hadn’t been installed yet,” Powell said. “It was probably just a chain link that would leave the ground clear. If we can figure out when this section of fence was installed, we can narrow down the window of opportunity.”

Powell turned away from the wall of sand and headed in the other direction. He found that he could walk without difficulty for a hundred yards. After another few steps, the sand reclaimed the space under the boards. Just before it became completely blocked, he came upon a second gate.

“This is where he came in,” Powell said. “The entrance at the parking lot is exposed, but this is sheltered from the street. From here, he could drag the body to where we found it.” He turned to the patrolman. “Can you open this?”

“Sure.” Reaching through the fence, the patrolman opened the padlock and undid the chain. Emerging into the open air, which was sweet compared to the stink of the boards, they found themselves at the rear of a building set below the level of the boardwalk. An empty Dumpster sat nearby.

“So he brought the body here,” Powell said. “Either he had a key for the padlock, or he cut through it with bolt cutters. He dragged the body inside and took it as far down the boardwalk as he could. But why didn’t he just bury it here? Maybe he thought that if the body were found close to the gate—”

“—it would be connected to him,” Wolfe said flatly. “Because look at where we are.”

Powell followed her gaze. Ahead of him, a service door was stenciled with the name of a restaurant. “The Club Marat.”

Wolfe switched off her flashlight. “If this is where the body was taken, our man went under the boards ten feet from Sharkovsky’s back door. I don’t know how they did things at the Met, but that’s good enough for me.” She handed the light back to the patrolman. “So what do we do now?”

“We talk to homicide,” Powell said. “Find the fellow in the blue gloves and tell him what we’ve found. Try to be tactful.”

“It’s the only way I know how to be.” Wolfe headed for the steps. “You coming?”

“In a moment,” Powell said. He watched as Wolfe and the patrolman ascended the ramp to the boardwalk. Then he turned back to the club. Above the service entrance, a single light was burning.

Powell leaned against the metal railing of the steps, his arms folded. In the darkness, which was broken only by the row of lamps overhead, he was little more than a shadow. He continued to look at the Club Marat for a long time. Faintly, from inside the club, he could hear the low pulse of music.

M
addy arrived ten minutes early. As she waited at the bar, nursing a club soda and lime, she studied her face in the mirror. It was long and angular, like her body, the hair gathered back with a tortoiseshell clip. A stork’s face. Growing up, she had always felt four inches too tall, and in the absence of a more attentive mother, it had taken her years to learn to dress in ways that complemented, rather than concealed, her natural length of bone.

A second later, the mirror disclosed another face. Turning, she saw a familiar figure sailing serenely across the restaurant floor, dressed in a peasant skirt and floral thrift store cardigan. Tanya was a librarian at the Frick, not yet thirty, her blue eyes blinking behind raven bangs. At school, they had not been particularly close, but Maddy had long since learned how useful this young woman could be.

Maddy rose, drink in hand. As she was approaching Tanya, she saw the final member of their party enter the room. He was handsome in a harmless sort of way, with a neat fauxhawk and an easy smile, and when Maddy went over to meet him, the warmth in her greeting was
entirely genuine. Although he wasn’t exactly her type, he was eager, ambitious, and a phone clerk at Sotheby’s.

“I went to see the installation last year,” Tanya was saying a quarter of an hour later. “It’s in its own room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. When you go inside, you see an antique wooden door set into a brick archway. At first, it looks like there’s nothing else there. But if you go closer to the door, you see light coming through a pair of eyeholes. And if you look inside—”

“—you see a headless woman on a bed of dry grass,” Maddy said. They were seated together at a table in the garden, among the wisteria and tin deer. “She’s nude, and her face is missing or obscured. In one hand, she’s holding a lamp. There’s a forest with a moving waterfall in the background. Duchamp built the figure himself and covered it in calfskin. The illusion is perfect.”

Tanya took a reddened sip of cranberry vodka. “And it felt like a betrayal. Duchamp’s entire career had been devoted to conceptual art. He appropriated existing icons or objects and used them for his own purposes. The readymades. The urinal. The shovel on the ceiling. But his final work was grindingly representational. It made people wonder if he’d been toying with them all along.”

The phone clerk leaned back in his café chair. He was wearing a pale pink shirt with a semi-spread collar, the lapels of his suit as peaked as a devil’s ears. “So what’s it supposed to mean?”

“Nobody knows,” Maddy said. “Duchamp worked on it in secret for at least twenty years, claiming all the while that he’d given up art for chess. It was revealed only after his death, when it was installed at the museum without a word of explanation. And this new study upsets the
established chronology. Previously, the earliest known study for
Étant Donnés
dated from the late forties, but the evidence suggests that this picture was painted more than thirty years earlier.”

“Although it’s hard to be sure,” Tanya said. “It was found in Budapest, wasn’t it?”

The clerk hesitated, martini in hand. “Yes. I can’t give you the name of the seller, of course, but he’s a legitimate dealer with a long history with the firm. Apparently he was browsing in an antique store, looking for nothing in particular, when he saw the painting hanging by a rack of samovars. The owner said it had been part of a larger consignment, but he didn’t know where it was from—”

“And nobody knows where it went.” Maddy glanced at the clerk. “Or almost no one.”

The clerk smiled at her over the rim of his glass. “Even if I wanted to tell you, I don’t have access to that information.”

“Come on,” Maddy said, suppressing an urge to strangle the clerk with his own pin-dot tie. “I know how the system works. There must be a copy of his passport or driver’s license on file.”

The clerk shook his head. “No more than two people know the buyer’s identity. It isn’t even something that the auctioneer would need to be told. You know how it is. Nobody wants to be responsible for leaking the name—”

“Of course.” Maddy paused. She sensed that the clerk wanted to tell her something, but there was no need to force the issue. A year ago, the failure of her gallery in Chelsea had been avidly dissected at Sotheby’s, creating a peculiar, illusory intimacy. It left perfect strangers with
the impression that they knew her, which made them more likely to reveal something of themselves.

Finally, the clerk lowered his voice. “Listen. I’ve seen the bidder before. A few weeks ago, I was pulling a file at client services when I saw him talking to a girl at the front desk. He took a huge stack of Russian art catalogs, and before he left, he
tipped
her fifty bucks. Typical Russian.”

“At least they tip well.” Maddy studied the slush in her glass. “Who was the girl?”

“Look, I’ve said too much already.” The clerk drained his martini. “Why do you care, anyway? If you’re hoping to cut a deal with the buyer—”

“That isn’t what we want,” Maddy said. “At this price, we have no further interest.”

Tanya finished her drink. “Quality counts, price doesn’t. Isn’t that what Ruskin said?”

“Ruskin also hyped Turner canvases while selling them on the side. In the financial world, he’d be guilty of insider trading.” Maddy smiled. “It isn’t hard to see why this painting set a record. Duchamp is the most influential artist of the twentieth century, so any unknown work would have caused a sensation. But if I’ve learned nothing else in this business, it’s that price counts. Most buyers overpay. And masterpieces tend to underperform.”

This was a line from an investor meeting that she had seamlessly appropriated as her own. As the table fell into silence, she remained aware of the clerk’s curiosity about herself and the fund. Looking into his face, she saw that he was, in fact, rather attractive. A year ago, she might have been tempted to pursue this inclination, but these days, her solitude felt like the only thing that was entirely hers.

When the check came, she paid it, implying that the fund would be glad to pick up the tab. Outside the restaurant, they stood in an awkward circle until the clerk, taking a hint, headed off alone. “He likes you,” Tanya said as soon as the clerk was out of earshot. “If I were you, I’d go for it—”

“Never date a man who uses more product than you do.” Maddy watched the back of the clerk’s fauxhawk wander up the block, feeling an odd twinge of regret, then turned to Tanya. “I have a job for you.”

Tanya went to the curb, scanning the street for a cab. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’m going to send you a picture of the Russian from last night’s auction. There’s a symbol on his cufflink. A red circle. I was hoping you could tell me what it means. I’d do it myself, but I don’t have the time. And you’re the only person in New York who is better at this sort of thing than I am.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Tanya said. Because her salary at the Frick did not come close to covering her student loans, she was usually open to whatever arcane assignments Maddy threw her way. “When do you need it?”

“Tomorrow morning. I have a meeting with Reynard, and I’d like to have something to show him.” Maddy took a sealed envelope from her purse. “Your consulting fee. Courtesy of the fund.”

Tanya took the honorarium, which, in reality, had come out of Maddy’s own pocket, then slid into the cab that had pulled up at the restaurant. She looked back at Maddy, who had remained at the curb. “We didn’t have a chance to talk tonight. You sure you’re all right?”

“Nothing that a lifetime of therapy won’t cure,” Maddy
said. She smiled and waved at the departing cab, then continued on her way. Farther up the street, the clerk was walking alone. For a second, she toyed with the idea of catching up with him, but finally decided against it.

In her years in Chelsea, she would have taken a cab herself, but those days were gone for good. She glanced at her watch, the band of which had been invisibly repaired with a strip of electrical tape, and exhaled. As she headed for the subway, she felt drained but satisfied, her heels clicking rapidly against the sidewalk. It would be a long ride home to Brooklyn.

I
lya Severin, who sometimes still thought of himself as the Scythian, moved through the terminal without any sense of haste, surrounded by a cloud of other arrivals from London. In his slim brown suit, he might have been just another foreign tourist, although his luggage consisted of nothing but a suitcase barely large enough for three changes of clothes, along with a shoulder bag containing his hardbound copies of the
Midrash Rabbah
and
Sefer Yetzirah
.

He passed through an automatic door to the meeting area. At the edge of the crowd, a man in his early twenties leaned against one of the pillars that supported the terminal ceiling. He wore a tight shirt emblazoned with a double eagle, a medallion of the Virgin dangling from his neck. A bracelet and ponytail completed the picture. As Ilya drew closer, the man saw him at once, although his expression of mild boredom remained unchanged. “Severin?”

“Yes.” Ilya inclined his head, but did not extend a hand. “And you must be Zhenya.”

With his arms still folded, the man used his back to push himself away from the wall, then headed for the
elevator bay at the rear of the terminal. He did not offer to take Ilya’s suitcase. “Come with me.”

Ilya fell into step beside Zhenya. The cool reception had confirmed his misgivings. Once, he would have been welcomed with respect, but ever since Budapest, he had been dealt another hand entirely.

They descended to the garage, where a sport utility vehicle was parked among the orange piers. Ilya lifted his suitcase into the rear compartment, keeping the shoulder bag. Zhenya slid behind the wheel and started the ignition. At once, the dashboard lit up like the console of a spaceship, and
blatnie pesni
, songs of the criminal underworld, began to pour from the speakers.

Merging onto the expressway, they followed a route that Ilya had studied beforehand. It was twelve wordless miles to Brighton Beach. When they left the parkway, it was early afternoon, the sun beating down on the ranks of row houses. Through his window, Ilya could see the same tradesmen and babushkas he had known as a boy, pushing carts along the sidewalk like the ghosts of his childhood.

They parked a block away from the club. As Ilya got out, his eye was drawn to the other man’s ponytail, which would be a good place to grab in a fight. Ilya, his own hair cut short, had learned this lesson the hard way.

His suitcase rolled loudly across the pavement as they walked to the entrance of the Club Marat, which was marked by a faded awning. Inside, he found himself in a cheaply carpeted hallway lined with fake lampposts. The walls were draped in green nylon fabric, with tendrils of plastic ivy strung along the ceiling.

Rounding the corner, they reached a closed door. As
Zhenya knocked, Ilya saw that the walls were covered in countless photos of a man with a silver mustache, either standing beside local politicians or seated in massive trophy trucks that had been stripped and rebuilt for racing.

From inside the office, an unexpectedly soft voice responded in Russian: “Come in.”