“And what was it you wanted, Sol?” I looked at him.
“Justice, kid, just like you.” He slowly dealt out the cards.
I didn’t pick them up. I just sat there, staring at him. Then I put my hand on his as he went to turn over the play card. “I want you to know, Sol, I never told anyone. Not even Ellie.”
Sollie stopped. He tapped his cards and pressed them, facedown. “You mean about the Gaume? How I knew all that stuff was written on the back? That’s good, Ned. I guess that sorta makes us even, right?”
“No, Sol,” I said, looking at him closely, “not even at all.” I was thinking about Dave. And Mickey and Barney and Bobby and Dee. Murdered for something they never had. “You’re Gachet, aren’t you? You stole the Gaume?”
Sol stared at me with those hooded gray eyes, then he hunched his shoulders like a guilty child. “I guess I owe you some answers, don’t I, son?”
For the first time I realized I had totally underestimated Sollie. That comment he made once, about Stratton believing he was the biggest fish in the pond but there always being someone bigger.
I was staring at him now.
“I’m going to show you something once, Ned,” Sol said, putting down the cards, “and for your silence ever after I’m going to pay you a lot of money. Every penny you thought you were going to make that day when you went to meet your friends.”
I tried to remain calm.
“That’s a million dollars, Ned, if I remember right. And while we’re at it, how about another for your friends, and another for Dave. That’s three million, Ned. I can’t repay you for what happened to them. I can’t bring back what’s been done. I’m an old man. Money’s all I have, these days…Well, not entirely…”
There was a sparkle in Sol’s eyes. He got up from the card table. “Come on.”
I got up and Sol led me to a part of the house I’d never been in before. To an office off his bedroom wing. He opened a plain wooden door I never would’ve figured was more than a closet. But it faced another door. A keypad on the wall.
With his skinny fingers, Sol punched in a code. Suddenly the second door slid open. It was an elevator. Sol motioned me in. Then he punched in another code. The elevator closed and we began to go down.
A few seconds later the elevator stopped and the door opened automatically. There was a small outer room with mirrored walls and another door, solid steel. Sol pushed a button and a metal shield slid back, revealing a small screen. He placed his palm onto the screen. There was a little flash, then a green light, and the steel door buzzed.
Sol held my arm. “Hold your breath, Neddie. You’re about to see one of the last great wonders of the world.”
Chapter 114
WE STEPPED INTO a large, beautifully lit room. Plush carpet, gorgeous molding on the ceiling surrounding a recessed dome. The only furniture was four high-back leather chairs in the center, each chair facing a wall.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
There were paintings on the walls. Eight of them. Masterpieces.
I was no expert, but I could tell the artists without having to look in a book. Rembrandt. Monet.
A Nativity scene. Michelangelo.
Images indelibly imprinted in my brain. All priceless.
One of the last, great wonders of the world!
“Jesus, Sol,” I said, looking around wide-eyed, “you have been a busy fucking bee.”
“C’mere…” Sol took me by the arm. On a wooden easel, set in the center of the room, I saw what I had only heard described before. In a simple gold frame. A washerwoman in a gray dress. At a basin. Her back to the viewer. A ray of gentle light illuminating her as she worked. I noticed the signature at the bottom.
Henri Gaume.
In every direction there were masterpieces. Another Rembrandt. A Chagall. I shrugged at Sol. “Why this?”
Sol stepped over to the painting. He gently lifted the canvas. To my shock, there was another painting hidden behind it. Something I recognized. A man sitting at a table in a garden. Fuzzy red hair peeking from under his white cap, sharp blue eyes. There was a thin, wise look on his face, but his eyes were cast in a melancholy frown. My own eyes stretched wide.
“Ned,” Sol said, and stepped back, “I want you to meet Dr. Gachet.”
Chapter 115
I BLINKED, fixing my eyes on the sad, hunched man. It was a little different from the likeness I had seen in the book Dave left me. But it was unmistakably the van Gogh. Hidden, all this time, beneath the Gaume.
“The missing Dr. Gachet,” Sol announced proudly. “Van Gogh painted two portraits of Gachet in the last month of his life. This one he gave to his landlord, and it spent the last hundred years in an attic in Auvers. It came to Stratton’s attention.”
“I was right,” I muttered, anger building up in my chest. My brother and my friends had died for this thing. And Sollie had it all along.
“No,” Sol said, shaking his head, “Liz stole the painting, Ned. She found out about the phony heist and came to me. I’ve known her family a long time. She intended to blackmail him. I’m not sure she even knew what was important about it. Only that Dennis treasured it above all else and she wanted to hurt him.”
“Liz…?”
“With Lawson’s help. When the police first responded to the alarm.”
Now I was reeling. I pictured the tall Palm Beach detective who Ellie thought was Stratton’s man. “Lawson? Lawson works for you?”
“Detective Vern Lawson works for the town of Palm Beach, Ned,” Sol said, shrugging. “Let’s just say now and then he keeps me informed.”
I stared at Sollie with a new clarity. Like someone you thought you knew but now saw in a different light.
“Look around you, Ned. You see that Vermeer. The Cloth Weavers. It’s thought to have been missing since the 1700s. Only it wasn’t missing. It was just in private hands. And The Death of Isaac, that Rembrandt. It was referred to only in his letters. No one’s even sure it exists. It sat undetected in a chapel in Antwerp for three hundred years. That’s the ultimate beauty of these treasures. No one even knows they’re here.”
I couldn’t do anything but stare in amazement.
“Now the Michelangelo over there…” Sol nodded approvingly, “That was hard to find.”
There was a space on the wall between the Rembrandt and the Vermeer. “Here, help me,” Sol said, and lifted the Gachet. I took it from him and hung it on the wall between two other masterpieces. We both stepped back.
“I know you won’t understand this, son, but for me, this completes the journey of my life.
“I can offer you your old job back, but as a man of some means now, I suspect there’re other things you want to do with your life. Can I give you some advice?”
“Why not?” I said with a shrug.
“If I were you, I would go to the Camille Bay Resort in the Cayman Islands. There’s a check for the first million dollars waiting for you there. As long as this remains our little secret, they’ll be another check every month. Thirty-five thousand dollars for five years wired to the same account. That should last longer than me. Of course, if you have second thoughts and the police happen to find their way down here, we’ll consider our accounts cleared.”
Then the two of us didn’t say anything for a while. We just stared at the missing Gachet. The swirling brushstrokes, the sad, knowing blue eyes. And suddenly I thought I saw something in them, as if the old doctor were smiling at me.
“So, Neddie, whaddya think?” Sol stared at the Gachet, his hands behind his back.
“I don’t know…” I cocked my head. “A little crooked. To the left.”