The Last Mona Lisa

by Jonathan Santlofer

  “Have something to eat. I got some rolls and cheese and coffee.”

  I was starving and tired, emotionally drained, touched that Smith had thought of getting food though I couldn’t bring myself to say so. I ate a roll and drank some coffee, Smith smoking a cigarette, waiting.

  “You know, I may have given up the love of my life for this,” I said, a thought I hadn’t meant to say aloud.

  “We all make concessions,” Smith said. “I’ve made plenty.”

  I didn’t want to get into a pissing contest but pointed out that his concessions were part of his job, a rung up the INTERPOL ladder; my concessions were personal.

  Smith shook his head and stabbed his cigarette into an ashtray so hard the thing almost toppled. “This isn’t part of my job.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Smith eyed me, looked away, then back. “I’m a criminal intelligence analyst, a researcher,” he said, then paused, “not a police officer of any kind. There’s no such position at INTERPOL. Our job is to gather information about a crime and turn it over to police in the countries that subscribe to INTERPOL.”

  “Wait… So you have no authority here?”

  He nodded slowly, the secret he’d been hiding, the one I had glimpsed.

  “Does INTERPOL know what you’re up to?”

  Smith shook his head.

  “So why are you doing it, taking such a risk?”

  “Because I’m as interested in solving this mystery as you are.”

  “And if you solve it, you’ll be a hero at INTERPOL?”

  Smith scoffed a laugh. “Let’s just say if we figure this thing out, make a major discovery, it will make it difficult for them to fire me.”

  “I knew you were lying to me about something.”

  “Yeah, and you lied to me about everything. So we’re even.” He sighed. “You think it’s easy for a man like me to move up the ladder at a place like INTERPOL?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  “I dedicated twenty years to this job. Man, did I ever have dreams. I was going to be the next James Bond.” He snorted a laugh. “When I joined INTERPOL, I thought I’d arrived, that I was finally somebody, no longer a fatherless kid from the projects.” He shook his head. “But you know, taking this crazy risk, it’s almost like I’ve started over, like I’m somebody again.”

  I got that. What Peruggia had wanted too, to be somebody. What we all wanted, dreamed of as kids, before the world got too real and dreams got crushed.

  We were quiet a minute, but I could see Smith was still caught up in something, his eyes unfocused as if he were looking inward.

  “You know,” he said, “I’ve had two semi-serious relationships in twenty years. Both ended badly. I blamed the women, but it was me. It was always about the job—gotta get ahead, you know—and where did it get me? Stuck behind a desk wanting to get out, same place I started.”

  “You’ve got plenty of time. How old are you anyway?”

  “Forty-seven.”

  “Hell, you’ve got half your life ahead of you.”

  “Yeah, the old half.”

  I laughed, but it made me look at my life: a job back home in jeopardy, no gallery, all the women I’d pushed away—and now Alex.

  “When you’re young, you think you have all the time in the world,” Smith said. “Then one day, you wake up and you’re forty-seven and you think: how the hell did that happen? You know, I bumped into one of those women not long ago, the last one I was involved with—two years we were together. She’s married now, couple of kids, showed me pictures on her phone. I congratulated her, but you know what, it made me sad and sorry for myself, all that wasted time.”

  “Threw yourself a real pity party, huh?”

  “Fuck you,” he said. “I regret it is all. She was a good woman. Sometimes you don’t know how precious something is until you lose it.”

  I pictured Alex across from me in the café, then saw her leaving.

  “I’m not blaming anybody but myself,” Smith said, “but I gave up a lot for this damn job.”

  “You think I had it so easy? Oh, wait, you know my whole life story.”

  “Yeah, I do. And I know it wasn’t served to you on a silver platter. Boo-hoo. You think Bayonne comes close to the projects?”

  “So it’s a contest—my lousy life versus your lousy life?”

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  A few seconds passed, then we both cracked up. Laughed for a full minute, stopped, then laughed again. Smith rolled his big shoulders as if shaking it all off, the laughs, the philosophy, the self-pity.

  “Hang on a sec.” He went to the closet, got a shopping bag, and handed it to me. “I thought you might want this back.”

  Inside was my great-grandfather’s painting. I stared at it a moment, a rush of warmth spreading through me, then at Smith. “Thanks,” I said and meant it.

  “Let’s get back to work,” he said. “I’d like to finish so we can plan our strategy.”

  I asked what strategy, and Smith said to find the real Mona Lisa—or at least discredit any forgeries. He went back to his laptop, all business, read off the screen, identifying the three known copies of the Mona Lisa—one in Vienna, one in Dusseldorf, another in a small museum in Antwerp—all dating from around the time Chaudron would have been making his copies. “If we locate another,” he said, “that would be four, and if Peruggia was right, Chaudron painted six.” He said he’d email and print out the stats on the forgeries, and I asked why, but Smith had already hit Print, and his portable copier was spitting out the page.

  I looked it over, noted the INTERPOL name and logo at the top of the page—a globe encircled by an olive branch, the scales of justice below. “What does INTERPOL mean, exactly?”

  “It is a contraction of ‘international’ and ‘police.’”

  “I thought you guys weren’t police.”

  “We’re not. Like I said, INTERPOL does the research, then turns it over to the individual police in a particular country to make the arrest.”

  I looked at the page. “So these are the museums that have Mona Lisa copies?”

  “Right.”

  “How about the list of names and addresses below?”

  “Collectors INTERPOL has linked to possibly stolen artworks and forgeries. Beside their names are artworks we know they own legitimately, but they’re suspected of having other major works in their possession that are not so legit. This is a short list I narrowed down from the annual database that INTERPOL compiles.”

  I scanned the names, the artworks listed beside them, along with addresses, phone numbers, capsule histories—Wall Street CEO, corporate lawyer, retired junk-bond trader. I asked why these people had not been arrested, and Smith said because INTERPOL didn’t have any actual proof, just suspicion, something that tied each of them to a stolen artwork, an important one. “They’re all rich,” he said, “not the kind of men to dirty their own hands.” He paused, exhaling smoke. “If you’re working with me, you should know these things.”

  “Working with you? So we’re like rogues together?”

  “This is serious.” He laid his hand on my shoulder, and I felt an unexpected camaraderie, the kind of thrill I used to get with my Kill Van Kull brothers: a rush of danger. “We’re in this together now, Perrone.”

  “And after? Then what? I just go back to my normal life.” Which was what? My normal life felt so far away, like someone else’s life, and a dull one.

  “Yeah. And I go back to my desk job,” he said, though I knew he hoped for a better desk. “I’m going after these collectors,” he said. “One of them might have a Chaudron copy or even the actual painting. Don’t you want to find out?”

  I told him I did, and he gave me a genuine smile, the first.

  “I just email
ed you the list too.”

  I nodded, went back to the journal, the pages after the missing one. Then I remembered, got my jacket, tugged the wad of pages out of the inside pocket, explained to Smith that they had been behind the Vermeer. The pages were written in sections, with a heavy line drawn under the last sentence of each, some dated, some not, but I could see from the first page that they had been written after Peruggia’s release from prison. I took a few minutes to make sure they were in order, that sentences followed consecutively from one page to another.

  Smith hovered over me, lighting a new cigarette.

  I waved the smoke away. “You know smoking is going to kill you, right?”

  “One day,” he said, taking a puff, pacing, jumpy, “but not yet.”

  I told him to sit down, he was making me nervous.

  “So what does it say? Translate as you read.”

  I skimmed the pages and had another idea. “Look, that’ll take forever—and drive us both crazy.” I told him to take a break, go for a walk, give me time to read the pages on my own, then I’d tell him what they said. Not only did that make sense, but frankly, I needed a break from him and his relentless cigarette smoke.

  “You won’t leave anything out,” he said, not a question.

  I said no, and after a moment, he nodded, then headed out.

  For the next couple of hours, I read. Scribbled a few notes too, though I wouldn’t need them, the pages galvanizing and unforgettable. When I finished, I called Smith’s cell.

  He came back into the room, the smell of cigarette smoke surrounding him like a toxic aura, but I didn’t say anything this time. I told him to relax, that if he wanted to hear everything, all the details, it was going to take time.

  Smith leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes.

  “Hoping for a bedtime story?”

  “It’s helps me to see it,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you everything, do my best to paint a good picture,” I said and began to describe all that Peruggia had written.

  70

  Vincent recalled the nights he had spent watching Chaudron’s apartment just after Chaudron had made his forgeries. How he had observed the couriers coming and going, always late at night, always in a hurry.

  One night, after one of these men had come out with a flat package under his arm, Vincent followed. The man walked a long way, not stopping or idling until he was in the seventh arrondissement, home to the richest Parisians, with its ornate buildings, foreign embassies, and that mammoth praying mantis, La Tour Eiffel. Here, the man slowed, checking one fine home after another until he finally entered a corner building overlooking the Champ de Mars, a luxurious private home with white columns and balcony windows, topped by a large silver dome.

  The man was out fast, with nothing under his arm, and again Vincent followed. This time into a small bar where he chose the barstool just beside him. He waited until the man had a drink, then another, gleefully celebrating, peeling francs off a large roll of bills. Vincent leaned close and slid his knife under the man’s coat. He ordered the man to get up, kept the knife at his heart, his other arm over the man’s shoulder as if they were the best of friends who had had too much to drink. Then Vincent led him into the bathroom, where he got him against the wall, the knife at his throat. He asked about Chaudron and the painting and to whom he had just delivered it.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about!”

  “I will kill you,” Vincent said, and he meant it, giving the courier a prick of the knife.

  That was enough to get the man talking, to admit he had gotten the painting from Chaudron, though he said it was Valfiero who had enlisted him and paid his fee. He claimed never to have met Chaudron before that evening, that he had merely been hired for a delivery job and that was all he knew.

  “I will let you go unharmed if you promise not to divulge a word of our meeting to Chaudron or Valfiero,” Vincent said. “If you do, I swear to find you and kill you!” Then he walked the man home, noting his address with another threat to his life if he did not keep their meeting a secret.

  Now that he was out of prison and free, the nights Vincent had spent watching Chaudron’s apartment and following couriers paid off.

  It was dawn when he found the silver-domed house in the seventh arrondissement, where he chose a park bench across from the house and waited. At eight in the morning, a man came out, tall and distinguished in a fine suit, carrying a smart leather briefcase. Vincent followed him for several blocks and into a bank, waited until the man went into an office, then he approached and read the brass plaque on the door: Georges Fournier, Président.

  A woman came up behind Vincent and said she was Monsieur Fournier’s secretary and asked what he wanted. He told her nothing. He could not afford to cause a scene. No matter what he said, he knew he would be seen as the man in the wrong, the poor man versus the rich one.

  He went back to the same park bench and waited until the end of the day. His stomach growled and his mouth was dry, but he dared not leave his post. Finally, he saw the bank president turn the corner. He rose quickly and made his way to the bottom of the staircase that led to Fournier’s front door. He did not move as the banker came up the path.

  Fournier regarded him as if he were nothing more than a beggar. He threatened to call a gendarme, his face filled with annoyance and disgust.

  Vincent said only two words, the name “Yves Chaudron,” and though Fournier’s eyes widened, he claimed he had no idea who that was. Still, Vincent did not move.

  Fournier threatened to call the police again, and Vincent said, “You should. It will give me an opportunity to tell them about the painting you recently purchased from Chaudron and Valfiero.”

  With that, Fournier ushered Vincent inside, past a surprised-looking maid, up a grand staircase and down a hallway into a small library—though he persisted in saying he knew no one named Chaudron or Valfiero.

  “If that were true,” Vincent said, “then why have you brought me into your home?” When Fournier did not answer, he said, “The painting you purchased is a forgery.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The painting, the one in your possession, the Mona Lisa, is very likely a fake.”

  Fournier tried to maintain his composure, but a corner of his mouth had begun to twitch. “You must be mad!”

  “My name is Vincenzo Peruggia, the man convicted of stealing the Mona Lisa, a crime for which I have gone to prison. I am certain you have read about me. I stole the painting for Valfiero, who promised me money. It is a long story and I will not bore you with details, but Valfiero and Chaudron have disappeared, and I must find them. That is why I am here.”

  “And what has this to do with me?” Fournier asked, intent upon keeping up his charade.

  “Chaudron painted something into each of his forgeries,” Vincent said, “and there are more than one. You are not the only person to have been cheated by this conniving duo. If you let me see the painting, I can prove it.”

  “What is this proof you have?”

  “Chaudron has put identifying marks into his forgeries.”

  “Tell me what kind and I will look for them myself.”

  “So you admit to having the painting.”

  “I admit no such thing!”

  “Monsieur, you would have thrown me out long ago if it were not true. Please, stop wasting my time—and yours—and show me the painting!”

  “How do I know you will not simply steal it from me? You, a convicted thief.”

  “I have done my time as a thief. All I want now is revenge, and not against you.”

  Fournier made him empty his pockets, then searched him for a weapon. All he found was a small jar of turpentine and a swatch of cloth Vincent had brought with him. When he asked why, Vincent told him he would see.

  Fournier hesitated a mo
ment, then led him up another staircase and down a long hallway where he tugged an attic staircase from the ceiling. He told Vincent to follow him up the stairs.

  Vincent expected the usual dust-filled attic. Instead, it was pristine, with whitewashed walls and a shiny wooden floor. There were four easels with a cloth-covered painting on each. A chair set up in front. Beside it, a small table. On it, a bottle of brandy, a crystal glass, and an ashtray with a half-smoked cigar. It was Fournier’s private viewing room!

  Fournier lifted the cloth off the center picture, and there she was, with her knowing eyes and enigmatic smile. For a moment, Vincent wondered if he had made a mistake, if it was indeed Leonardo’s original. He went closer to the painting and took hold of it by its sides.

  “What are you doing?” Fournier shouted.

  “Turning it over,” Vincent said, and he did, setting the painting back on the easel, upside down. Then he leaned in and squinted at the place just below Lisa del Giocondo’s hands. “There,” he said. “You see those two marks?”

  Fournier came in close. “Yes. What are they?”

  “Initials. Y and C. For Yves Chaudron. He has signed his painting!” Then he directed Fournier to sniff the painting. “Do you not find it strange that such an old painting still emanates the odor of linseed oil and varnish?” He did not wait for an answer but opened the jar of turpentine he had brought with him and shook a few drops onto the clean cloth. Before Fournier could stop him, he swiped it across a small swath of canvas, then turned the cloth around so Fournier could see it had come away stained with pigment. “Do you think five-hundred-year-old paint comes off so easily? No, monsieur, it does not.”

  Fournier was up now, unveiling a painting on another easel, a still life of fruit and flowers. “I know this painting is legitimate. I purchased it from the most reputable gallery. Its provenance is undeniable.” He snatched the turpentine cloth from Vincent’s hand and dragged it over a tiny corner of the still life. When he turned the cloth around, it was clean.

  “At least you have one legitimate painting,” Vincent said.

  Fournier scowled as he unveiled the third painting, a Venetian scene. “Canaletto,” he said. “Purchased at the same gallery. I have the provenance papers of authentication to prove it.” He whisked the painting with the turpentine cloth. Here too, it came away clean. Then he unveiled the fourth and last painting, which Vincent recognized immediately.