The Last Mona Lisa Read online

  I paced. I drank. I could not eat or sleep.

  It was days later that the story finally appeared. Headlines on every newspaper. The famous Mona Lisa stolen!

  I purchased all the papers and read every word. I had to see what they knew.

  They did not have a clue.

  The Louvre was closed for a week. Sixty policemen searched every inch of its forty-nine acres. They found nothing. Only the glass and frame I had left behind in the stairwell.

  The French borders were closed. Every ship and train in and out of the country was searched.

  I must admit it gave me pleasure to know the painting was in a trunk just a mile from where it had been hanging.

  I read how Parisians grieved for the painting as if it were a loved one and I went to stand among these foolish mourners who left notes and flowers for a painting. I watched people cry. And I cried too. But not for the painting.

  When the Louvre reopened thousands flocked to see the empty space on the wall where the painting had once hung.

  Rewards were posted. The Louvre offered 25,000 francs. One newspaper offered 5,000. Another 40,000.

  I was tempted to return the painting and collect the rewards myself!

  Then I read how every worker at the Louvre would be interrogated. I knew they would eventually make their way to me. And they did. Four of them. An inspector by the name of Lapine. His fat assistant. And two gendarmes. They searched every inch of my apartment. Everywhere but the trunk.

  Lapine sat me down at the table. The very trunk disguised as a table. He asked me why Ticolat had dismissed me.

  I told him about Simone’s illness. How I had stayed home to take care of her. How Ticolat had no pity. I cried. And it was not an act. I said Lapine could ask anyone at the Louvre if I did good work. Anyone but Ticolat.

  Lapine asked what I had been doing for work since I had been fired. I told him I had been living on what I had saved from my wages. He gave me a suspicious look. But how could he prove otherwise?

  He asked why had I come to France? And what I had done before? He asked about every facet of my duties at the Louvre. Especially my work with the Mona Lisa. I took my time to describe how I had constructed the wooden box piece by piece. How I cut the glass and fitted everything together. How I had prepared the walls for the bolts. I explained everything in minute detail. Over and over. His eyes began to glaze and droop. Just as I had hoped.

  I knew Lapine was suspicious. But a calm had come over me.

  Until he told me a fingerprint had been discovered on the frame left in the stairwell! Like every Louvre employee I knew my fingerprints were on record.

  Lapine inked my hand and took new prints.

  But luck was on my side. The museum had only printed each employee’s right hand. And the print on the frame was from my left thumb and not a match!

  Lapine had me sign a statement of innocence. He laid the document onto the very tablecloth that covered the trunk. I signed the paper picturing the painting only inches below.

  The police were about to leave when I had a thought. I asked Lapine if he knew the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. I said how much I admired the man—the whole time thinking of the cruel things he had written about my artwork. I told Lapine how I had just read Apollinaire’s column in L’Intransigeant. How he had called for the burning down of the Louvre. I quickly added I was sure he must be joking. I did not want Lapine to think I was trying to implicate the poet. Which of course I was. I added that Apollinaire might have sold some sculptures to the artist Pablo Picasso. And it was possible those sculptures might have come from the Louvre. I said this all in the most casual manner.

  Lapine’s eyes grew wide. He asked me how I had this information. I said I did not want to get anyone in trouble. I waited until Lapine demanded I tell him. Then I said I had seen the objects in Picasso’s studio. Lapine was immediately anxious to leave.

  It was soon after that I heard Apollinaire and Picasso had been arrested. I pictured the arrogant poet and the self-important Little Spaniard sweating while the police interrogated them. I took pleasure in it. And when I heard that Ticolat and the Louvre director had been fired I took pleasure in that too.

  Days passed. And I waited. Waited to hear from Valfiero. And for the next part of the plan to begin.

  36

  I knew about Picasso’s arrest and Apollinaire’s humiliation. I had read lengthy descriptions—the artist and poet detained, stripped naked, interrogated for a full week, then tried. Now I knew it was Vincent’s payback.

  I took a moment to mull over all I had read and what I hoped to learn. I looked down at the journal, then up at Chiara and Beatrice. That thought again, my fingers practically itching, though I knew I could not get away with it. But could I possibly smuggle my cell phone in and photograph the remaining pages? But where would I hide it, and how would I take pictures without being seen?

  I glanced over to the far end of the table, what I had to come to think of as Alexandra’s seat: empty. I replayed the other night—missed our banter, her smile, the smell of her perfume, the way she held herself like a dancer—then her last-minute bolt from the restaurant. I still couldn’t figure it. Maybe it was better that she wasn’t here. I didn’t need the game-playing, the disruption. A lie. I missed her and knew I’d sign up for more game playing if I got the chance.

  I wrote her name on my pad and circled it. Jesus, I was like some moonstruck teenager. At least I hadn’t drawn it inside a heart! I crossed her name out and wondered again about her sudden departure. Had she had seen through me? Underneath my facade of cool? What if she never came back to the library? What if I never saw her again?

  I let out a sigh so loud the two other scholars on the opposite side of the table looked up. I smiled sheepishly and shrugged an apology. This was ridiculous. I was ridiculous, letting a woman I hardly knew get under my skin. Is this what I’d done to the women I had dated—drawn them in, played games, then disappeared once I had them on the line? Perhaps this was some karmic payback? Another sigh. It was nearly closing time, and I was tired. I closed my laptop and slid it into my backpack, along with my pencils and notepads.

  I leaned over Chiara’s desk, and she looked up, smiling, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. I asked her if she had seen Signora Greene, perhaps this morning when I’d been out?

  Chiara’s lips pursed. “No,” she said, letting go of her hair. “I am the librarian, not polizia.”

  I cut through the cloister and alleyway, the guy beside me before I even noticed him.

  “Hey, John Smith. Remember? From the other night—at the hotel bar?” He exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke, as if he’d been holding it in for too long.

  I eyed him sideways, still wearing his shades and the baseball cap pulled down to his eyebrows. Though art dealers came in all shapes and sizes, he didn’t fit any mold I knew, no Prada suit, no designer shoes or sneakers. I asked what he was doing in this part of town.

  “I had business a few streets away, was just passing by, and here you are. What a coincidence.”

  I thought of my uncle Tommy, the retired cop, how he always said there was no such thing as coincidence.

  “How about a drink?” Smith asked. “You look tired. Your research wearing you out?”

  Had I told him I was doing research?

  “A quick one—on me,” he said, “at the café beside your hotel again?”

  I took in his strong build, the hat, the cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth: Brother Francesco’s description.

  We walked to the café, the sky growing dark, Smith whistling the whole time, which annoyed me. We found seats at the bar, and he asked what I’d like to drink, reminding me that he was paying, and frowned when I said “Pellegrino.”

  He ordered a beer, a Peroni, and made a big deal out of it being my name, joking that I was obviously the heir to an Italian b
rewery fortune. When I pointed out the different spelling, he waved it away, refusing to give up the joke, which he seemed to find funny and I found annoying.

  When he asked again how my work was going, I turned it around and asked about his. He said it was going slowly, and I asked why, and he went into a thing about no one caring about old master art anymore and how it cost ten times more to buy an Andy Warhol than a Titian, and I pretended to commiserate because I wanted to keep him talking.

  “Some people don’t even like what they buy,” he said. “It’s all about the name, the prestige of owning something of known value.”

  I didn’t think that was anything new, pictured my own paintings, bubble-wrapped and gathering dust in my studio.

  “I hate the idea that art is traded like a commodity,” he said.

  “Isn’t that what you do?”

  He took off his cap for the first time and scratched his head, his hair buzzed a fraction of an inch, a shadow on his skull, but he kept the shades on, paused a moment as if considering what to say. “So what’s worse, being an art dealer who has to buy and sell art he doesn’t really like or being an artist who has to kiss up to collectors and critics?”

  I told him I’d never been good at ass-kissing, and he said, “But you must make sacrifices to get what you want.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, thinking more about the things I might have sacrificed by coming here—my teaching job, my art career—then turned the attention to him again. “How about your sacrifices?”

  He paused as if composing an answer, then said, “It’s an addiction, don’t you think?”

  I had no idea what that meant, though the word addiction was loaded for me. I wondered if he had picked up on my drinking problem and was giving me a dig. But why? “What do you mean by addiction?”

  “Art, you know—making it, collecting it.”

  I told him I’d never thought of making art as an addiction.

  “Collecting then,” he said, “acquiring. Some people can’t get enough.”

  “Then they have to pay for it. Simple as that.”

  “Not always so simple,” he said, finishing his beer in one long pull, then ordering another. I was tempted to ask if he had a drinking addiction. “What if the art is not for sale?” he asked.

  “Like art theft?”

  “Sometimes people buy stolen art without knowing it’s stolen.”

  Unless I was reading into it—and that was possible—the conversation was definitely taking a weird turn. Was it possible he was offering me stolen art?

  I asked if he worked through other art dealers or if he had an office in Florence, trying to glean more information.

  “Who needs an office these days?”

  “So what then? You use a coffee shop or a library—maybe the Laurentian Library, like today?”

  “I wasn’t at the library, just passing by,” he said. “I told you that.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot. Are you often in this part of town?”

  “Not really,” he said, taking his time to light another cigarette. “You know, sometimes people want something so much they stumble into dangerous situations without even knowing it.”

  Where did that come from? “Has that happened to you?” I asked, yet again trying to turn the question around. “Have you stumbled into a dangerous situation?”

  “Me?” he said. “No, not me.”

  I didn’t know what sort of cat-and-mouse game Smith was playing, but I was willing to play. For now. “Who then?” I asked.

  He took a long pull on his beer, dragging out the moment. “When it comes to valuable objects, people can be ruthless,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve seen it in my line of work.”

  I felt like we were at a tennis match, lobbing non sequiturs back and forth. “So how are you spending your days here? Exactly. I mean, without an office?”

  “I go from dealer to dealer, client to client, like I said.”

  “Did you? I forgot.”

  “You have a poor memory, Luke Perrone.”

  “Actually, I have a very good memory, John Smith.” I added a thin smile. “Like, didn’t I see you hanging in front of San Lorenzo the other day?”

  “What? No. You must be mistaken.”

  “One of the monks described you.”

  “So was it one of the monks or you who saw me?”

  I didn’t bother to answer, let my silence hang there, suspended between us.

  A moment passed, then Smith asked, “Which monk?” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, let the smoke out slowly while I stared at the glowing tip of his cigarette.

  “Just one of the brothers of San Lorenzo.”

  “I see,” he said. “Well, I’ve been too busy to hang out.”

  “I thought you said your work was going slowly.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. Perhaps it’s you who has the bad memory.”

  He scoffed a laugh. “Not when it comes to something important. Then I remember everything. In detail.”

  “Good for you,” I said, but I’d had enough of this—whatever this was. I said good night, and this time, he didn’t try to stop me.

  At the café door, I glanced back, caught Smith chugging the last of his beer. Then he raised the empty bottle like a toast, though there was nothing celebratory about it.

  37

  The morning was dark, the clouds low. As I headed out of Piazza di Madonna, there were sirens in the distance, a normal part of Manhattan’s background music but here, in Florence, something I was unused to hearing. It was not until I came around the long, curved wall of San Lorenzo that I saw the cop cars, their lights flashing, and all the polizia and the crowd lining the perimeter of the piazza. Carabinieri were stationed at the alleyway and the cathedral and by the stairs that Brother Francesco had pointed out to me as the place the stranger had waited. The door behind the stairs was ajar, red-and-white diagonally striped police tape across it.

  I asked one of the polizia what was going on, but he ignored me. Then I spotted Chiara, weeping theatrically, dabbing her eyes and cheeks with a lace handkerchief. I asked what happened, but she was crying too hard to answer. I put my arm around her, and she sagged against my chest, sobbing.

  “Cosa è successo?” I asked.

  “Una tragedia!” she said, lifting her head, tears tracking mascara down her cheeks before she fell back against my chest.

  Beside us, an elderly monk with a face out of an old Rembrandt portrait wailed, “È morto!”

  “What? Who?”

  “Fra Francesco,” he said.

  Had I heard him correctly? “Che cosa?”

  The monk looked up at the dark sky and said it again. “Fra Francesco—È morto—È morto!”

  No way. Brother Francesco. Dead? Impossible.

  Another monk joined him, the two of them crying in unison, crossing themselves over and over and repeating, “Fra Francesco.”

  Chiara looked up at me with swollen eyes. “Nel sonno è suffocate,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe it; the idea of such a young man suffocating in his sleep didn’t seem possible. I asked about the door and the police tape. She shook her head. “An old door, è rotto, broken.”

  I patted her back, then looked past her to see the Italian equivalent of EMTs coming through the dark alleyway, a body covered with a sheet strapped to a gurney.

  “I must pray,” Chiara said.

  I nodded, the idea of prayer something I had always loathed, but right now, it seemed like the absolutely right thing to do.

  The alleyway to the cloister was closed, but the cathedral was open.

  The interior was a surprise, expansive and impressive behind that plain, rough-hewn facade. Everything gray, white, and massive, the diamond-patterned floor leading me down a long, wide nave lined with tall columns that drew
my eyes up to an ornate ceiling, hundreds of white squares lined with gold, each with a gilded floret in the center, a few with the Medici gold shield and small red balls. Nothing like any church I’d ever known, certainly not St. Mary Star of the Sea, the redbrick church my parents had dragged me to, always against my will—until I was twelve and refused to ever go again.

  At the end of the nave was a sign for the Old Sacristy and a plaque that said it had been designed by Brunelleschi. It was a smallish room with a dome that looked like a large opened umbrella perfectly divided into twelve segments, and below it, on the back wall, a simple crucifix. The seating was cordoned off, and I knelt on instinct and made the sign of the cross, then headed back into the main church, which was practically empty. I found a seat in a pew and watched an old woman light a candle in the apse. Then I closed my eyes, and the young monk’s words came back to me.

  Continua così. Avanti così.

  Stay on course.

  I had wanted to ask him if what I had been doing here in Florence was the right course, but it was too late now.

  Though I doubted that Brother Francesco needed my help, I recited a prayer, one I was surprised I remembered.

  Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,

  and let perpetual light shine upon him.

  May the souls of all the faithful departed,

  through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

  According to my Sunday School teacher, the prayer would help those who had not yet reached heaven and would shorten their time in purgatory. I was pretty sure Brother Francesco was not stuck in purgatory—I didn’t even believe in purgatory—but I said the prayer just the same.

  Outside, Piazza San Lorenzo looked normal, a few people strolling, the kiosks open, a tour group taking pictures. How was it that life went on in the face of tragedy? The alleyway to the cloister was open again, everything back to business.

  I headed through the alley and pictured Brother Francesco tending the cloister garden. It didn’t seem right that he was not here. It didn’t feel right to go back to the journal either, but what else was I supposed to do?