The Last Mona Lisa Read online

  I tried to take it in, realizing what I had passed and where I stood were all part of one vast complex.

  Directly ahead, the sand-colored basilica was rough and unfinished-looking, its three arched entrances with heavy wooden doors, all of them shut. To the left of the church was a smaller arch and a dark alleyway, which led me into the famous cloister of San Lorenzo, a place I had only seen in pictures.

  A few steps in and it was as if I were entering a dream, the square garden with its hexagonal-shaped hedges and two-story loggia, classic and harmonious, all of it designed by my favorite Renaissance architect, Brunelleschi. For a moment, I tried to imagine I was an artist of the High Renaissance and not some struggling New York painter who taught art history to pay the bills.

  I sighed, my breath a fog in the late-morning chill, everything in the courtyard covered in a silvery frost. Three monks in long, woolen smocks were wrapping plants with burlap while I shivered in my thin leather jacket. I hadn’t thought it would be so cold in Florence. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about much after receiving the email.

  Dear Mr. Perrone,

  One of Professor Antonio Guggliermo’s last requests was that I get in touch with you regarding what may have been your great-grandfather’s journal. The professor had planned some sort of publication about the journal, which he claimed would be a “revelation.” Sadly, his sudden death prevented him from ever writing it.

  The journal, along with the professor’s books and papers, has been donated to the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy. I was the one to catalog his works and placed the journal in a box labeled “High Renaissance Masters.”

  To see Professor Guggliermo’s documents, you will need to obtain a cultural permesso, which should not be difficult.

  If you request the papers, I suggest you do not mention anything about the journal and would prefer that you kept my name out of the request.

  Sincerely,

  Luigi Quattrocchi

  [email protected]

  I had contacted Quattrocchi right away, and he’d emailed back sounding serious and sane, assuring me of the journal’s existence though he couldn’t guarantee its authenticity.

  For years, I’d been writing letters and emails for any information regarding my great-grandfather. Most went unanswered. The ones who did answer invariably demanded money, but none had ever panned out. This time, the information had come free of charge and with no ulterior motive—at least none I could see.

  “Scusi, signore,” said one of the monks, young, with a russet-colored beard and startling blue eyes. “You wait for library to open?”

  “Yes!” I practically bit his head off, then apologized. “You speak English.”

  “A little,” the monk said.

  I told him I spoke Italian.

  “Il bibliotecario e’ spesso in ritardo,” he said. The librarian is often late.

  I checked my watch. It was exactly ten; the library was supposed to be open.

  The monk asked where I was from and I said, “New York, but my people are from Ragusa,” though I had never been to the Sicilian town and hadn’t meant to say where my family had been from; I hadn’t meant to say anything.

  The monk extended his hand. “Brother Francesco.”

  “Luke Perrone,” I said and glanced back at the door that led up to the library.

  “It will open soon,” he said. “Pazienza.”

  Patience, right. Never my strong suit, and clearly not now, when I’d bolted from my life on nothing more than a hunch.

  I watched Brother Francesco rejoin the others in the garden, noted him whispering, then all three monks looking my way, their eyes narrowed in the cold winter light. I moved into the shadow of the arches to avoid their stares, leaned back against a pillar, pictured my Bowery loft and the haphazard collection I’d begun as a boy in my Bayonne, New Jersey, bedroom. It now filled an entire corner of my painting studio: copies of hundred-year-old newspaper stories, a floor plan of the museum with my great-grandfather’s escape route mapped out in red marker, a metal file cabinet crammed with articles detailing the theft and various theories, one drawer devoted to the letters and emails I had begun writing as a teenager to anyone who might know anything about the crime or about my great-grandfather—and the answers, which were few and rarely, if ever, illuminating.

  A cold wind whipped through the cloister, and I shivered. A tap on the arm, and I flinched.

  The young monk again. “Mi scusi, ma la biblioteca e’ aperta.”

  I gave him a quick nod, then headed down the arched path to the wooden door, which now stood open.

  3

  INTERPOL Headquarters

  Lyon, France

  John Washington Smith read the emails for a second time. Like everyone in INTERPOL’s Art Theft Division, it was his job to watch all the obvious communiques and websites—antiquities dealers, art galleries, anyone suspected of smuggling or selling stolen art or artifacts—all of it continuously updated on one of his three computer screens. Of particular interest to him—something that had, over the years, become an obsession—was the 1911 theft of Leonardo’s most famous painting, what went on during its two-year disappearance, and the idea that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum today was not the original. For years, he’d heard the rumor that the thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, had kept a prison diary, something that had never been confirmed. But here was the thief’s great-grandson, Luke Perrone, an American artist and art historian—someone he’d had under communication surveillance for years—emailing with an Italian professor about just such a diary.

  Smith slipped off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache between his eyes. The result of too many hours staring at the pulsing light of the computer screens arranged in a wide U that filled most of his desk, a white Formica slab balanced on thin metal legs, jointed in such a way as to remind him of ET. The wireless keyboard and mouse were also white, as were the boxy file cabinets that formed the other end of the unit. White ceiling. White walls. Pale-gray tiles on the floor in a “nubby” pattern to give the illusion of being a rug. The tiles were slightly springy too, and Smith often wondered if that was for the benefit of the INTERPOL workers’ feet or to create a virtually soundless space, though it hardly mattered since all the researchers wore some form of sneaker or walking shoe. Smith’s were thick-soled white Nikes, which he kept clean with a soapy toothbrush.

  Smith read the emails again, tamping down his excitement while taking stock of his options. He could notify the local authorities and have them watch Perrone and this Italian professor or issue one of the eight color notices INTERPOL used to designate the degree of a suspected crime—a red notice being the highest—but there was no evidence of a crime, not even any wrongdoing, not yet. No way could he get the general secretariat to issue such a notice.

  Smith glanced at the computer screen on his left, the one reserved for data on international art objects currently missing or stolen and the date they had disappeared. Art theft and forgery were serious crimes, and the people involved—collectors, thieves, and middlemen—were not only unscrupulous but often dangerous. According to INTERPOL’s statistics, art theft alternated between the agency’s number three and four spots in priority and importance, just below drug dealing, arms smuggling, and money laundering. Smith took it seriously, the way he did everything, like the daily calisthenics and weight lifting, which had added considerable muscle mass to his almost six-foot frame. The idea of being weak or perceived as such, something a black kid from Manhattan’s Baruch Houses project had learned early he could not afford. Smith had never known his father, though he had taken the man’s last name as his middle, a way to make the ordinary-sounding name more memorable.

  He checked the time, nearly noon. Along with the headache, his back had started to ache after four hours of sitting since the drive from his one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts
of Lyon, then fighting the city’s traffic to get to the steel-and-glass monolith of INTERPOL’s international headquarters, something he did every day, twice a day.

  He needed a break, time to think, and a cigarette.

  The cylindrical elevator took him down to the octagonally shaped courtyard in the center of the building. There were a few people here, though the cool minimal space made them appear unreal, like androids. Smith wondered if he looked robotic too, though he doubted robots smoked Marlboro Lights. He inhaled deeply while debating the pros and cons of what he was considering, knowing it was strictly against INTERPOL policy.

  A look up at the courtyard’s angled enclosures reminded him of the Baruch Houses’ walls, both spaces a kind of prison, though these were graffiti-free and there was no one lurking in the shadows selling weed, meth, or H. Ironic, he thought, having traded one prison for another, though he had imagined this one would offer not only a way out but also success and glory. Was it too late for that? Another pull on his cigarette, a thought taking shape as if the smoke were skywriting in his lungs or on his brain: If you are ever going to succeed, ever make a name for yourself, you need to do this. Smith eyed the people across the space and wondered if they could read his thoughts. He had done things in his life he was not proud of; some he had never confessed to anyone. But could he do this?

  He was still debating that when he finished his cigarette, continued to debate it in the elevator, was still debating it and all that was at stake, as he made his way across the analysts’ soundless floor. He passed researchers in open cubicles, others in what looked like small padded cells, three walls of tufted gray material to muffle conversation, used when one researcher needed to speak privately to another. He slowed down at a glassed-in conference room where an analysts’ meeting was in progress, one he had not been invited to. He hurried past, fists balled at his side, neck muscles tightening, crossed the space, and sagged into the ergonomic chair behind his desk.

  At forty-seven, he was still a criminal intelligence analyst, just one of many in INTERPOL’s Art Theft Division. Every year, he saw other, less dedicated analysts ascend the ranks to join the General Assembly, INTERPOL’s governing body, while he was passed over. Twenty years of logging data and research, twenty years since graduating from New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice with a degree in data science and cryptography, and what did he have to show for it? A chair behind a computer ten hours a day.

  Smith heaved a sigh, sat back, and stared up at the long, flat tubes of warm incandescent light. He needed to do something, something big, something unique, something that would be talked about, something to show the men and women at the top he was someone special.

  He leaned forward and reread the emails between the two men, then routed them, along with their texts and calls, to his personal email and cell phone, something that would not be questioned—particularly as no one else would see it. He dragged his cursor down a column of documents and files he had been compiling for years, all of them pertaining to the notorious art theft, and opened one labeled Perrone. His center computer screen filled with every known fact on the man: the almost twenty-year correspondence Luke Perrone had conducted with various people regarding his great-grandfather, his art exhibitions and teaching jobs, high school suspensions (there were four, one for smoking in the boys’ room, two for classroom fistfights, one for gang affiliation), a list of women Perrone had dated for more than six months—there were many—with subdocuments on each, a DWI at sixteen, an arrest for breaking and entering, supposedly expunged as Perrone had been a minor, though working at INTERPOL had made it easy for Smith to tap into Bayonne’s police records and obtain a copy, as well as documents on Perrone’s parents and relatives.

  Smith added the recent emails to the file. He found the number for the Carabinieri Comando Provinciale in Florence to inform the local Italian police, as was procedure, the way things were done at INTERPOL. He began to press it into his cell phone and stopped—a brief moment to consider the consequences—then called the Lyon airport and booked a flight to Florence.

  4

  Florence, Italy

  At the end of the cloister, I headed through the open door, then an enclosed stairwell to the upper level of the loggia, all that pent-up energy propelling me forward. At the top, a faded fresco of the Annunciation caught my eye but didn’t stop me. A guard, sitting at the library’s entrance, a woman in plain clothes, went through my backpack, then waved me through.

  The Laurentian Library’s famous five-hundred-year-old vestibule was much smaller than I’d imagined, but it hardly mattered. All I could see was Michelangelo’s grand freestanding staircase and the way it filled the room like a living, breathing thing. I imagined the stone in liquid form spilling forward like waves of lava, hardening and taking the shape of stairs, the movement trapped within.

  The center staircase was cordoned off, so I took a smaller, flanking one and mounted the stairs slowly, one step, then another, as if I were not only walking up but into the past.

  The library stretched out in front of me, long and rectangular, awesome and reverential. I was careful to stay on the rug that protected the delicate mosaic floor as I headed down the aisle, glanced up at the coffered wooden ceiling, then the stained glass windows that filled the room with warm natural light, which spilled over pew-like wooden benches. A childhood memory: crammed in a pew between my father and mother, the after-odor of beer, my father’s breakfast chaser, loitering on his breath as he read responsively and I dreamed of getting out.

  It was then it hit me that the benches were cordoned off and I was alone, not a single scholar nor visitor in the room. Then a moment of confusion followed by panic: would the journal really be here, in this mausoleum? Did anyone read in here? Had Quattrocchi made the whole thing up?

  I reversed my steps, stopping by a young woman at a small desk hidden beside the entrance, and leaned over. “Scusami…” The word amplified, echoing in the space. “How do I…request books…papers?”

  “In here?” Her face screwed up. “Is not possible. This is a monument. No longer a functioning library.”

  “What? Since when?”

  “A long time. My mother studied here, but it has been thirty years.”

  “No, that can’t be. I’ve come all this way—” I tried to think, got my backpack off, found the permesso and the letter. “But…I have this.”

  The young woman looked the papers over. “Is okay.”

  “Is it? How? If the library is closed—”

  “Devi calmati, signore. Calm down.” She reached out and patted my arm. “You want the research library. Next door. Just outside. Ask the guard in front.”

  I took a deep breath and a minute to process her words, then thanked her, turned, and headed down Michelangelo’s grand staircase, this time practically running.

  The guard out front perused my letter, then pointed to a heavy wooden door decorated with large nailheads like bullets, beside it a worn metal plaque, Medicea Laurenziana Studios, and a modern-looking box with buttons for a code and a bell, which I pressed, hard.

  The woman who answered wore a cheery flowered dress though there was nothing cheery about her: midforties, cropped hair, tight-lipped, glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, which she raised to read my letter. She handed it back to me without a word. Inside, she took my backpack before ushering me through a full body scanner.

  When the alarm sounded, I emptied my pockets, keys and change deposited into her waiting outstretched palm. Then I walked through again. When I set off the alarm for a second time, she put up a hand for me to wait, disappeared, and returned with a gray-bearded man in a baggy wool vest, who patted me down, torso and sides, up and down my legs and inner thighs, stopping just short of my crotch, the whole time avoiding eye contact.

  The tight-lipped woman got my cell phone out of the backpack, held it up, and pointed to a sign on the wall: Ni
ente Telefono. Niente Fotos. “I will hold,” she said, “give back when you leave.” She dropped the phone into a wire mesh basket on her desk, then continued to rustle around in the backpack and came up with a small box of hard candy, which she inspected as if it were a bomb.

  “Caramella,” I said, “You know, candy.”

  “Mangiare nella biblioteca e’ vietato!” she barked.

  I promised not to eat any and made the sign of the cross, a vestigial tic from my strict Catholic upbringing. She looked me over, squinting. I smoothed my hair behind my ears, wished I’d gotten a haircut and taken the time to shave, the whole time feeling as if I were waiting for my high school principal to tell me I was suspended.

  She took my laptop out of the backpack, set it aside, then found the small bag of Jolly Ranchers. “Mangiare vietato!” she said again and tossed the bag into the wire basket. She slid the laptop back into my backpack, handed it to me, stared at me another moment while speaking in Italian to the man who had all but cavity-searched me, as if I could not understand. What she’d said was, “Show him into the research room but keep an eye on him.”

  The gray-bearded guy led me through a small room with a wall of card-catalog boxes, a glass-topped wooden table stacked with books, and a large hissing radiator. Then, into the actual research room, medium-sized and brightly lit, three walls lined with books, a long table that stretched from one end to the other. Two librarians, both women, seated at small desks, looked up when I came in. The bearded guy, who introduced himself as Riccardo, turned out to be a librarian as well and a lot nicer away from the commandant out front. In a hushed tone, he indicated that the long table was for scholars, like me, to read, that I would request any books or papers from the head librarian at the front of the room, then introduced me to her.