“But,” he said. Quite suddenly, one of the hands moved away and switched on the conventional light. “Your Soutine is a fake. You’ve spent a great deal of the museum’s money on a fake.”
As that statement hit home, she snapped her eyes away from those hands and onto the man’s face. “Fake,” she said, shaking her head dazedly. “But that’s-I have the provenance. And it was a good one, proving where the painting has been every moment since it left Soutine’s studio in France in 1939.”
The man straightened up-he was quite tall-and he inched closer to her. His movements, like his words, gave the impression of a bad actor, not quite sure how to act the part of human being. “I read your provenance,” he said. “It doesn’t add up.”
“But I talked to the family.”
“You talked to con men.”
“What?” she gasped.
“The whole provenance is fake. Like the painting.”
“Oh, my God.” For a long moment she thought about a promising career, now smoldering in ruins. The years of graduate school, the overwhelming student loans she could barely pay, even with this prestigious job. And now-it was all over. She would be fired, disgraced, permanently unemployed. All she had worked for her entire adult life slipping away into shambles; the embarrassment she would share with her family, who had been so proud of her; the museum’s first African-American curator, a symbol of sorts to her community, something she’d never wanted but had become.
“I’m afraid there’s no doubt at all,” the man said, putting those long hands of his together in front of him.
“Oh, dear God.”
“A bit of a career-killer, isn’t it, Justine?” He used her name as if it were in quotation marks.
“I-there must be something…”
He smiled. His teeth were large but white and strong looking. “Something… we can do?” he said mockingly. “To make it all go away like it never happened?”
The young woman just shook her head.
“Or did you mean something I can do-to save your career, hide your mistake, keep your life from sliding down the drain?”
“Is there?” she blurted out.
He stared at her for what seemed like a long time. Then he straightened and took another half step toward her. “There might be something. But…” He shook his head.
“But what?” Justine asked, barely breathing.
“It’s a huge risk for me. Personally and professionally. I would have to know that I can trust you completely.”
“You can trust me. You’re holding my career in your hands.”
“Of course, but that’s not enough.” He fluttered one of those big hands, as if to say, What’s in it for me? and she could not look away from it for several seconds. When she finally did and their eyes met, there was really only one thing to say.
“I’ll lock the door,” she said.
Later, after Justine was gone, Christopher Thomas sat up on the large leather couch and straightened his clothing. He felt rather pleased with himself, refreshed, and ready to get on with the night’s real work. He stood up and stretched, then moved over to his desk. Justine had provided a pleasant interlude, but a great deal was still left to do tonight.
The desk telephone stood beside a five-by-seven picture frame that held a shot of his wife, Rosemary, and their two children. A pleasant-looking family group, and Thomas felt mild affection for the three of them: nothing that would prevent him from gratifying his frequent urges for other women, of course. He seldom seemed to have any time to spend on his little family, what with his work as curator and his other less public projects. Still, it was nice to have a family in the background. It made him feel so much more… authentic and irreproachable. Especially with Rosemary’s pedigree-a child of wealth and privilege. Marrying her had been one of the smartest moves he had ever made. He gave the picture a brief, synthetic smile, pure reflex, and picked up the telephone, dialed a number from memory, and, after hearing a curt “Yes?” on the other end, spoke.
“I have three paintings you will be interested in.” Again the corners of Thomas’s mouth twitched upward in a mechanical smile. “Including a rather rare Soutine.”
A moment of silence on the other end was followed by a harsh breath-an exhalation of cigarette smoke?-then the voice said, “Describe it to me.”
Thomas did: the wild, almost otherworldly exuberance of the brushwork, the sense of immediacy that jumped off the canvas and into the viewer’s heart-assuming the viewer had a heart, which Thomas did not. But it didn’t prevent him from gauging the effect this painting would have on others.
Another long pause on the other end of the line was punctuated by two harsh breaths. Finally, the man said, in a soft and raspy voice, “All right.”
Thomas smiled again. This time it looked a bit more like a real smile because he was about to get a great deal of money, and Christopher Thomas needed money. In spite of his rich wife and high-profile job, Christopher Thomas needed money badly, and quickly.
“I’m sending three canvases to your restoration company tomorrow afternoon at three thirty,” he said. “They will travel in a white panel truck with the museum’s name and logo on the side. All right?”
After one more long, harsh exhalation, the voice said softly, “Good,” then the line went dead.
Christopher Thomas hung up the phone, feeling pleased with himself. Tomorrow afternoon, the three paintings would disappear from the truck taking them to be cleaned. Naturally, the museum would be upset, but they would also get a large check from the insurance company. And a collector somewhere would get three nice works of art, and Thomas would get a hefty chunk of cash. As an added bonus, the young woman who had recently left his couch would certainly be grateful that he had allowed her to keep her job. A return bout on the reliable leather couch was clearly in his future.
So a self-satisfied Christopher Thomas locked his office and went down the hall to the marble staircase. Things were looking up, and just in time. He mentally counted the money he would get as he headed down the stairs. He hit the landing and circled around, continuing down to the main floor of the museum. The sound of the guard’s radio reached him, a roaring crowd that echoed into a confused blur and muffled the noise of his steps on the marble stairs. For just a moment he allowed himself to pretend that the crowd was cheering for him; he had done it. Payday. Hooray for me, he thought.
Thomas walked past the marble javelin thrower to the security station by the front door. “Good night, Artie,” he said to the guard.
The man looked up, his face lit with an eerie glow from the half dozen video screens that surrounded him. “Hey, Mr. Thomas. You going to call it a night?”
“Yes. We all have to go home sometime.” Thomas had arranged for Artie Ruby to get this job in security at the museum despite Artie’s checkered past. The way Thomas saw it, didn’t hurt having a crooked ex-cop working for you in security-it even came in handy sometimes.
Artie smiled. “Ain’t it the truth. All right, you have a good night, Mr. Thomas.”
Thomas nodded and moved to the front door, waiting for just a second before the guard pushed the security buzzer, then he was out through the glass double doors and into the night.
Thomas walked through the bright orange glare of the security lights on the front of the building and circled around back to the staff parking area. The long walk was annoying, particularly at the end of a hard day, but the insurance company insisted that the back door remain locked. Not that it would do them any good this time, he thought, wondering again just how much the Soutine might bring.
The parking lot was a great deal darker than the front of the building. It was normally lit by two large lights, one at each end, but Thomas saw that one of them, the one nearest his car, was out. He frowned and shook his head. Maintenance was supposed to check the lights regularly-again, as dictated by the insurance company-and someone had neglected the job. He made a mental note to scold the maintenance people in the morning. He certainly didn’t need trouble with the insurance company, not right now when they were about to write the museum a hefty check.