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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2021 by Jonathan Santlofer

  Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  Cover images © Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (between 1503 and 1506), zefart/Shutterstock, Paladin12/Shutterstock

  Internal design by Ashley Holstrom/Sourcebooks

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Santlofer, Jonathan, author.

  Title: The last Mona Lisa : a novel / Jonathan Santlofer.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020056377 (print) | LCCN 2020056378 (ebook) | (trade paperback) | (hardcover) | (epub)

  Classification: LCC PS3619.A58 L37 2021 (print) | LCC PS3619.A58 (ebook)

  | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056377

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056378

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  August 21, 1911

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  The South of France

  Author’s Note

  Reading Group Guide

  A Conversation with the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Joy, who loved this book from the beginning and with my deep regret that she is not here to see it realized.

  Based on a True Story

  “Imitation…is a double murder, for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence.”

  —Madame de Staël

  “Nothing is original.”

  —Jim Jarmusch

  August 21, 1911

  Paris, France

  He has spent the night huddled in the dark, mind burning with Bosch-like scenes from hell, hideous monsters, people writhing in flames. He stares into the gloom, knowing that he will spend the rest of his days in darkness.

  We lose the things we do not cherish enough, his one thought, his only thought, as he slips into his workman’s tunic, buttons it over his street clothes, and opens the closet door.

  The museum is unlit, but he has no trouble making his way down the long hall. He knows the layout perfectly, his intention fueled by guilt. The Winged Victory casts a predatory shadow that causes him to shiver though it is stifling, airless.

  Her face appears like a specter, beautiful lips cracked, flesh tinged gray. Somewhere, a baby cries. The crying swells to a sickening shriek. He covers his ears and lets out a sob, twisting one way then the other, searching in the dark for his lost love and his child, whispering their names, walls closing in, room tilting, that empty feeling in his gut expanding until that’s all he is: a hollow man. Now he understands that the emptiness he has felt for so long has been a foreshadowing, a preview of the rest of his life, that he has been practicing to be a dead man.

  Footsteps?

  But it’s too early, and a Monday, the museum closed to visitors.

  He stops and peers into the dim hallway and sees nothing. He must have imagined it, no longer sure what is real and what is not. Gloved hand cupped around his ear, he listens, but it’s quiet, only the sound of his own heavy breathing and the scudding of his heart.

  A few more steps, through the arch and into the Cour Visconti Gallery, the high-ceilinged room large enough to hold mural-sized paintings. In the dark, the canvases appear as black rectangles though he can picture them: a landscape by Corot, a famous Delacroix battle scene, Jacques-Louis David’s Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon, the dictator clad in outrageous finery, animal-skin cape, crown of ivy, a smug look of victory on his face.

  It is then, as he pictures Napoleon, that his fevered brain comes up with the explanation he will give later, the one the newspapers will print: I stole the painting to restore it to its rightful home.

  He will be a patriot, a hero, no longer
the immigrant, the man without a home.

  Steadier now, he heads down another narrower hallway, mind focused and filled with purpose. He will show them he is someone.

  In the smaller Salon Carré Gallery, he can just make out the shapes of the paintings, Titian and Correggio and the prize shimmering between them—the lady of the rocks, the vampire who never sleeps, the most famous woman in the world: Mona Lisa.

  Heart pounding, nerve endings tingling, a dozen thoughts in his brain as he unscrews the small wooden panel from its iron bolts. A man possessed, blind to the shadow of his face reflected, distorted in the glass he himself installed only last week.

  It takes all of five minutes.

  Then he is moving, the painting clutched to his chest, a shadowy figure darting out one doorway, through another, down a hallway and into a stairwell where he stops to remove the painting’s heavy frame and plate glass and leave them behind. Moving again, through a narrow corridor lined with marble sculptures, faster now, panting, sweating, he cuts through an archway until he comes to the side door, the Porte des Arts, all of it exactly as planned, a perfect dream. Until the doorknob does not turn.

  He tugs and twists, pulls and jerks, but the knob will not budge, his spinning mind the only thing that is moving.

  A deep breath, then another until it comes to him: the screwdriver, of course! The same tool he has just used on the bolts he now uses to unscrew the hardware until the doorknob drops into his hand and he stashes it in the pocket of his workman’s tunic, which he strips off, rolls up, and tucks firmly into the back of his belt.

  He slides the panel under his shirt, aged canvas abrading his skin as he buttons his jacket over it, his heart beating against the mysterious four-hundred-year-old beauty who has witnessed her own abduction more than once, observed countless assignations from the wall of Napoleon’s bedroom, and endured the gapes and stares of millions, and now, tired and world-weary, she yearns to rest—but her story is far from over.

  1

  December 2019

  Florence, Italy

  Carlo Bianchi dabbed the handkerchief to his dripping nose. His shop, on the Via Stracciatella, not far from the Ponte Vecchio, was small and cramped, books in shelves, on his desk, scattered around the floor in stacks like miniature Mayan villages, everything covered in dust, the place reeking of mold and damp.

  Bianchi was looking for a book on rococo garden design, which he knew was here somewhere. He finally found it at the very bottom of a tall stack. Lying on his side, beard picking up lint, he was just inching the book out when he saw the man’s thick-soled sneakers.

  Bianchi twisted his neck for an angled view. “Posso aiutarla?”

  The man peered down at him. “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes,” said Bianchi, getting to his feet, slapping dust from his pants and jacket. “One learns many languages in a lifetime of dealing with books.”

  “I am looking for a diary, a journal that you recently purchased from a French book dealer named Pelletier.”

  “Pelletier? Let me think. I should have a list of recent purchases.” Bianchi made a show of sorting through a mass of receipts on his desk. He knew every book he sold or purchased, including those to and from the French dealer, Pelletier, though he never gave out a customer’s personal information.

  “This journal was written over a hundred years ago,” the man said. Pelletier had sworn he’d sold the journal to Bianchi, and people rarely told lies when they had just lost a finger and there was the threat of losing another. “Surely, you would remember buying such a book.” He laid his hand over Bianchi’s, then pressed it against the wooden desktop.

  “Sì, sì, I remember,” Bianchi said. “It was handwritten and in Italian!”

  The man eased up, and Bianchi slid his hand out, backing away, practically bowing. “I am sorry…but…the journal… I have already sold it.”

  “To who?”

  “To an old man who collects such things, no one important.”

  “His name?”

  “I don’t re—”

  The man grabbed Bianchi by the front of his jacket and lifted him off the floor. “The name. Now.”

  Arms flapping, legs dangling a few inches above the floor, Bianchi gasped the name: “G-Guggliermo!”

  The man let go, and Bianchi landed unsteadily, knocking over a tower of books.

  “And where might I find this Guggliermo?”

  “He…he is a”—Bianchi tried to catch his breath—“a professore, at the university—in Firenze—but, but I think he is retired.” He stole a glance at the window to see if there was anyone outside, a passerby he might call for help, but the man shifted his body to obscure his view.

  “His address.”

  “I–I am certain if you inquired at the university—”

  The man gave him a dead-eyed stare, and Bianchi quickly thumbed through his Rolodex, fingers trembling. He found the card and began to read from it, but the man snatched it from his hand. “You did not read the journal, did you?”

  “Me? No, no.” Bianchi shook his head back and forth.

  “And yet you knew it was handwritten and in Italian.”

  “Pelletier must have…told me…or…perhaps I glanced at a page, but that was all.”

  “I see,” the man said, lips pulling back to reveal tobacco-stained teeth. He slipped the card into his pocket. “And you will not speak of my visit, not to this Guggliermo, not to anyone.”

  “No, signore. No. Not even to Pelletier. I would never say a word.”

  “Of course not,” the man said.

  Bianchi was still trying to recover his breath and balance when the man thrust a fist into his chest. Bianchi stumbled back, arms flailing, knocking over another stack of books before he fell.

  The man lifted him up, hands around his neck, tightening and squeezing.

  Bianchi tried to speak, to plead, but managed only a few strangled squawks, the room going in and out of focus.

  “No. Not a word,” the man said as he felt the bookseller’s larynx snap.

  2

  Two Months Later

  The email had arrived less than two weeks ago, and here I was, unable to think of anything else, bolting from my life on a possibility, a whim.

  I tried to tamp down my anxiety, stopped to stretch the kinks out of my body, then wheeled my suitcase through one long corridor after another, a mix of exhaustion and adrenaline after an eight-hour flight from New York where I’d been too keyed up to sleep.

  Leonardo da Vinci airport was like most: impersonal, crowded, harsh lighting. The fact that it was named for Leonardo struck me as prophetic, though clearly, they hadn’t named it for me. I checked the time, 6:00 a.m. Then searched for the airport train and was proud of myself when I found it, slumped into a seat, and closed my eyes, a dozen thoughts buzzing in my brain like gnats.

  Thirty-two minutes later, I was in Roma Termini, the train station huge, crowded, a throbbing nest of travelers, but with an element of romance, all those trains hovering just beyond the ticket stalls, belching white smoke into the winter air.

  I cut through crowds of people—“Scusami, scusami”—thankful to my parents for speaking to me in their native tongue from the time I could crawl, moving from one train to another, clutching my ticket, eyes on the big board searching, for Firenze as minutes ticked away. I almost missed my train, listed only by its final destination, Venice, a place I would love to see, but not now when I was on a mission.

  The train to Florence was clean and new-looking, the seats comfortable. I got my suitcase onto the rack above, took off my backpack, and twice nodded off to images of pages wafting through the air and me trying and failing to catch them.

  I drank a Coke to stay awake and stared out the window, the landscape going from flat to hilly to distant medieval towns dotting the tops of even larger hills, all of i
t slightly unreal, as if I were in a movie and not on my way to discovering what I hoped would finally answer a hundred-year-old mystery and twenty years of research in pursuit of my family’s most infamous criminal.

  An hour and a half later, I was outside Florence’s bustling train station, Santa Maria Novella, in the center of the city, lugging my suitcase over cobblestone streets, hazy sun dipping in and out of low clouds, the air crisp and cold. I replayed the events of the past two weeks: receiving the email, buying an open-ended ticket, going to the Italian consulate where I sweet-talked a young woman into giving me a cultural permesso and a letter stating I was a university art professor, which granted me access to Italian cultural institutions, then the call to my cousin in Santa Fe—a sculptor always eager to make the New York City art scene—who was more than happy to sublet my Bowery loft. A week later, I’d bubble-wrapped my paintings, left my college classes in the hands of my graduate TA, and taken off a week before intersession, a rash move for an assistant professor hoping to get tenure.

  I crossed the wide street in front of the train station into a warren of smaller ones, trying to follow my cell phone’s GPS that was constantly rerouting. I had to change directions twice but about ten minutes later came into a large rectangular plaza dominated by a sienna-colored chapel with a redbrick dome, the Piazza di Madonna, and there, spotted the hotel, Palazzo Splendour, its name spelled out in old electric lettering.

  The hotel’s lobby was the size of a cramped Manhattan kitchen, the walls in need of a paint job, floors of badly cracked white-variegated marble, the only decoration a faded black-and-white photo of Michelangelo’s David.

  “Luke Perrone,” I said to the guy behind the desk—youngish, ropy arms laced with badly inked tattoos, handsome in a drug-addicted sort of way, puffing on a cigarette, cell phone crooked between his ear and shoulder.

  “Passaporto,” he said without looking up. When I asked in my best Italian if I could leave my suitcase and come back later, he held up a finger as if I were disturbing his call, obviously personal unless he called all the hotel guests “il mio amore.” I didn’t wait for his answer, left my suitcase, and headed out.

  Google Maps said San Lorenzo was five minutes away, which seemed easy enough, though I walked the wrong way before realizing I was reading the map upside down. I backtracked, rounded the domed chapel in Piazza di Madonna one more time, and followed the route, which led me alongside a series of stacked, ochre structures, then past a long expanse of ragged stone wall with stairs leading to blind arches, which ended at the corner. Piazza San Lorenzo was open and mostly empty, except for a few tourists and a couple of monks in long, brown smocks.